She punched his chest and laughed. “Is that all you wolvers think about?”
“That’s pretty much what all males of any species think about,” he chuckled, and then he pulled her away from him so she could see his face and know that he was no longer teasing. “One more night. That’s all I ask. If you can make it one more night, I promise you’ll sleep in the softest bed with the hottest wolver in town.”
“Oooo,” she purred, “When will you introduce us? How tall is he? Should I wear heels?”
“Smartass.”
“Takes one to know one and I’m holding you to that promise, big guy.”
Bull grinned and kissed her nose. Round one to the big guy. Round two wouldn’t be so easy.
~*~
“Are you going to take me tonight?” Tommie asked. They were sitting side by side back on a log, eating pork chops with their fingers.
“Take you? That sounds like funny business to me, spitfire. Damn, and I thought you didn’t like Bully Bulworth.” He wiggled his eyes brows at her, making her laugh.
She leaned into his shoulder and whispered, “You know I do.” And then whacked him. “Now get your head out of my pants, Bully Bulworth. I’m talking about tonight, when you shift, transform, whatever you call it.”
“Go over the moon.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Are you going to take me over the moon?”
“Not tonight. I need to go out and you can’t come with me. You need to stay here where it’s safe.”
“Yeah, because that’s worked so well this far.”
“No one got hurt.”
“Oh, so now it’s okay to use my own argument against me. The same argument, I might add, for which you nearly bit my head off.”
He kissed her nose. The affectionate gesture was his way of apologizing and it worked.
They were hiding out behind the school bus like a couple of teenaged lovers. It was the only place in camp where they could find a little privacy. All Tommie needed was a pile of books to carry in her arms. She giggled. She didn’t carry many books in high school.
“What are you laughing about now?” he asked.
“I was imagining what you looked like as a teenager, all arms and legs and big feet. I bet you were the class bad boy that all the girls like me daydreamed about.” She gave him a sly smile. “Or were you the kind of guy who fulfilled as many of those dreams as possible?”
Bull didn’t think she was funny. His eyes stared blankly over her head at the chipped black and yellow paint. “I never went to high school. I was gawky and shy when I shifted that first time. I was a man when I came home.”
“Oh, come on Bull,” Tommie said lightly. She didn’t like the sad and wistful look on his face. “Surely the Today-I-am-a-Man thing is figurative. I can’t picture our three cubs turning into men overnight.”
She was referring to the three boys who’d performed so bravely. They were hers now too. Pathologically overblown maternal instincts be damned.
Bull blinked and gave her a disappointingly friendly hug. “You’re right. It didn’t happen overnight.” He was smiling again when he looked down on her. “I have to go. Eli has to be taken care of.”
All light heartedness left her. “I thought you’d change your mind about him after what he did for Macey. They were going to kill her, Bull. He saved his daughter’s life.”
“I know. I was there.” Bull’s face became an inscrutable blank. “He still needs to be taken care of.”
“You don’t take care of. You eliminate. That’s what you do, right? Eliminate the problem?”
He’d told her that himself and even if he hadn’t, she’d watched enough television dramas to know a euphemism for kill when she heard it. She’d tried not to think about it just as she used to try not to think about the inner disturbances caused by her wolf.
“Yeah, that’s what I do, eliminate the problem.” Bull agreed quietly and without hesitation. “I take on the monsters most wolvers don’t want to think about. I make the nightmares disappear.”
“You kill people.” She immediately felt a twinge of guilt, since she wasn’t exactly blameless in that department. She was glad the Alpha was dead and she had no remorse at all for the deaths of Buster and Stu.
“I don’t kill people. I kill wolvers, feral wolvers. Humans rarely enter into it.” He shrugged. “At least they didn’t until I met you. I told you, Tommie, this is what I do for a living.”
“No, you didn’t. You told me you were an investigator.”
“Yeah, a pretty title for an ugly trade, but if you read the fine print on my job description, you’ll see words like tracker, hunter, and killer. It’s what I am. It’s what I was fated to do.”
“It may be what you do, but it’s not who you are, and it’s certainly not fate. You’re not a killer, Bull. You have free will, a choice.”
“Fate, good or bad, molds us into who we are, Tommie. I made this choice a long time ago.” His face became stony, his voice hard. He was shutting her out. “This isn’t the conversation I wanted to have tonight.”
“Well isn’t that too damned bad,” she snapped. “Because we’re having it. This is the twenty-first century, Bull, not the middle-ages. These are men, not monsters or nightmares. You have no right...”
“I have every right,” he snapped. “The Convocation of Wolvers and my Alpha give me that right. I’m the judge and the jury, and the decision is mine alone.”
“Well it shouldn’t be,” she insisted with her hand on her hip.
“Well,” he mimicked her stance. “Why don’t you just step right up and tell it to the Convocation. Stop and pick up some diapers on the way, because what you call huffy-puffy is going to take on a whole new meaning. You stand before the Convocation with a few dozen Alphas staring you down and you’ll be pissing in your pretty pink panties.”
He held his breath for a moment and Tommie could tell by his whistled sigh that he was trying to keep a hold on his temper.
“You’re thinking like a human being, Tommie. We’re wolvers. There’s no counseling for us, no therapy. You of all people should know how well that works out, and I thought you of all people, doing what you do, would understand.
“You thought I was wrong for trying to capture Eli after his escape. Did you ever think how wrong it was not to? How long it would be before someone down there noticed a black wolf roaming through their neighborhood? How long it would be before Eli got hungry? What kind of prey would he find down there?
“Believe me, rats and mice are quick and hard to catch and it takes a helluva a lot of them to fill a belly that size. Dogs and cats now, they’re easy prey, and much more filling. What if he hurt a child? Have you thought about that?”
“Don’t!” Tommie cried, covering her ears. The thought of it was incomprehensible. “You’ve seen his family. Eli would never hurt a child.” But even as she said it, she thought about the man she’d seen in the cage. That man wasn’t entirely human.
“Eli the man wouldn’t, but a cornered wolf might.” Bull’s voice became brittle and then he repeated her thought. “What you saw in that cage wasn’t Eli. Even Samuel recognized it and understood the possible consequences, and Samuel loves the man.” He sighed again, this time in exasperation. “Eli’s wolf doesn’t understand human moral boundaries any more than yours does, and if the human is buried too deep, the wolf will do what nature intended with no thought to right or wrong. If it’s trapped, it will fight. If it’s hungry, it’ll seek the easiest and weakest prey. When an animal is hungry enough, meat is meat. Pet rabbit or yappy little dog, cattle, sheep, it doesn’t matter.
“Once that happens, it’s too late. You can move them into wilderness areas, but they won’t stay. Hunting wild game is hard work for a lone wolf. Why bother when they already know where prey is plentiful and easy. If I don’t take care of it, Tommie, someone with a shotgun or a rifle will. A wolf that size will cause a stir, and that might lead to questions from people like Gantnor.”
Tommie
thought of Molly and the hopelessness in her eyes when she spoke of living without her mate. “But Eli has a family, people who love him. He deserves a chance.”
“How many families would you like to put at risk to give Eli his chance? One? Two? Five?” he asked, his anger exploding. “One wolf killing pets or livestock can bring down a shitload of trouble for the rest of us. Open season on wolves means open season on wolvers, too.”
He had an answer for everything. Feeling like a child who’d been reprimanded, she waved her hand and turned to walk away, dismissing him and his argument.
“Fine. Whatever. Go do whatever you have to do. Have a high old time running poor Eli to ground. I wouldn’t expect you to understand what he’s going through, but don’t expect me to celebrate with you when you get back, either.”
He spun her around so fast she crashed into his chest. She hit so hard, she was pretty sure she bounced. When she caught her startled breath, she looked up, ready to tell him what she thought of guys who manhandled women, but immediately thought better of it.
The Bull that looked down at her was one she’d never seen before. The deep rumbling sound that vibrated up from the depths of the rock hard chest was nothing like the sexy growl she heard while making love. His eyes were clouded with pain, but behind that cloud shined a fierceness she found a little frightening.
“I do what I do because few others have the stomach for it, but don’t ever imagine I take pleasure in it. Don’t ask me to apologize for it, either. Until you’ve seen an entire pack slaughtered, don’t talk to me about what one wolver deserves. Don’t think for a moment I don’t know what happened to you in that cage. In here.” He tapped his finger against her head, driving his point home. “And don’t think I don’t know exactly what Eli’s family feels, because I do. To the depths of my soul, I do.”
He was still angry when he gripped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her. It was hard and fast and filled with desperation. When he released her, Tommie could only stare at him while running her fingers over her bruised lips.
“It may be a barbaric process, but it’s all we’ve got and I don’t make my decisions without serious thought, deadly serious thought.” Bull turned away from her, but before he did, she saw the horrendous pain in his eyes. He called over his shoulder as he walked to his truck where Bogie was leaning against the front fender. “If I didn’t, you’d be dead. Think about that, Thomas Mortimer Bane.”
Chapter 29
“Think about that, Thomas Mortimer Bane.”
Tommie did think about it. It was all she could think about. Bull was at the clinic looking for her. He wasn’t investigating Raymond Gantnor. He was looking for her.
“I am the judge and the jury.”
He was also the executioner, yet he hadn’t killed her. Was she the exception or were there others?
“I don’t make my decisions without serious thought, deadly serious thought.”
Decisions. That meant there were alternatives to death. Eliminate didn’t have to mean death. Bull said he had to take care of Eli. She was the one who interpreted it, just as she was the one who interpreted eliminate.
“I thought you of all people, doing what you do, would understand.”
Why? Why would she understand? She sure as hell didn’t deal in death sentences. At Harbor House, she dealt with people who were down and out. Her job was to offer a helping hand to lift them up. Hard times could hit anyone, just ask the woman in the nice car and expensive clothes who regularly stopped in at the food bank. That car and those clothes were all she had left of a bad relationship and they didn’t feed her kids. No, Tommie didn’t judge the people who came to Harbor House.
Or did she? Didn’t she have her little group of favorites, women she knew she could help; women she knew would benefit from the support they found in each other? Weren’t there others for whom no amount of help would make a difference, either because they didn’t really want their lives to change or because they were so deeply imbedded in a certain lifestyle that they couldn’t? She did what she could for them, but invested her time and heart into those who would benefit most.
She made decisions and judgments all the time. The difference was that a mistaken judgment on her part wouldn’t cost lives.
Macey sat down beside her.
“You look like you’ve lost your last friend,” she said. “Since I’ve lost all of mine, I figured I’d keep you company.”
“Ah, Macey, you haven’t lost them all. You still have me and the others will come around when the see the effort you’re making.”
Macey’s crime deserved punishment and at Bull’s strongly worded suggestion, it was agreed that the girl’s first shift would be delayed for one year. If they didn’t find an Alpha to take her over the moon, he would do the honors for her. In addition, she would serve as the group’s omega for a period of six months.
Still not understanding how pack hierarchy worked, Tommie didn’t see how a group who’d spent most of their lives being abused by the position could now be so enthusiastic in consigning one of their own to it. Bull clarified it for her.
“The position of omega just became a defined sentence of punishment and not a permanent placement. Serve your time and you’ll be free.”
Since her brush with banishment, Macey had gone to great effort to do everything she was asked and to make amends. A few doubted it would last, but Tommie didn’t. She could feel the change in the girl. Not wanting her to feel she was bereft of all support, Tommie decided to help with Macey’s assigned tasks when she could.
The punishment sounded harsh, but it was fair. It also sounded as if Bull intended to maintain contact with the group... unless Tommie’s judgmental behavior drove him away.
Judgments and decisions; a wrong one could affect the group as a whole.
“Oh, Macey,” Tommie lamented, “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
The girl shrugged. “Look at it as a setback. You learn from it, make amends, and move on.” She gave Tommie a sly grin.
Out of the mouths of babes and teenaged girls.
“Smartass,” Tommie laughed. “I thought you’d given up being a bitch.”
Macey’s grin widened. “Can’t. The bitch lives inside of us. It’s in our nature. I just decided to pattern myself after a good one.” The smile turned shy and the girl’s face turned pink. “You know, like you.”
“Oh God, I think I just went from liking you to loving you.”
With Macey’s faith in her as inspiration, Tommie made another decision. She would try to make amends for her harsh judgment of Bull... if he gave her the chance.
~*~
They ran as wolves and when they’d picked up a scent strong enough to tell them that Eli passed that way often, they ran back to the truck, reformed into men and returned to the spot with a cooler of meat.
“Why?” Bogie asked on their trek back to the truck.
Not for the first time, Bull wondered what life was like between Bogie and his mate, Louise. The wolver’s conversation consisted of one word questions and answers.
Though he complained and teased her about it, he liked listening to Tommie’s chatter and for the most part, she was easy to talk to. Except for tonight. He could have put it better. He could have explained, but it was so damned hard to say aloud what only he and Eugene Begley knew.
Bogie was watching him, waiting for an answer. Asked as they were, the wolver’s questions sometimes needed interpretation. It was like taking a shot with your eyes closed. This one was easy.
“Eli’s gone wild, but he’s not feral, at least not completely. I can’t find anything, other than the bastard doctor, that says he’s drawn human attention. I want to keep him fed until I see evidence he’s hunting game.”
Bogie raised his eyebrows.
“I know. He broke Primal Law when he attacked up at the shack, but the Law also says to protect his cub. Which Law would you obey?”
“Cub.”
“Me, too. I’ve only
seen it once before, when I was a cub. It left an impression. I can’t condemn a guy for doing what I’d do.” They walked in silence for a few minutes before Bull spoke again. “You up for a different kind of run?”
Bogie’s eyes lit up with interest. He nodded.
“I chose you because you’re a man who can keep his mouth shut.”
Bogie didn’t see the humor. He nodded.
“And because I couldn’t find Tommie’s keys.”
Bogie got that one right away. His eyes lit.
They left Bull’s truck where he’d parked it, and went instead to one of the SUVs that were still parked by the showers. Bull found the key under the front bumper right where the wolver had stashed it before the moon rose. Bogie stopped to pee on the rear tire.
“Jesus, the fucking bathrooms are right there, man.”
Bogie shrugged. “Habit.”
Bull shook his head. Tommie had two bathrooms. There was no guarantee they’d use them. Her neighbors were going to love it.
“She’s determined to take you all there tomorrow,” he said, adding no urinating outdoors to the list of orders he would give them before they left. “I want the place checked out. You’re the breaking and entering guy. I figured you’d be the one I needed.”
“B and E, and clean-up.”
“Yeah.” Whatever the hell clean-up meant. “I need to know if it’s being watched, and by how many. I need to know if the place is rigged.”
Bogie nodded and there was nothing left to say. They rode in silence for the rest of the thirty mile trip, Bogie thinking whatever Bogie thought, and Bull thinking about Tommie.
He would have to tell her the truth about what he did and why he did it, and pray she understood why he did it and why he would continue to do it. If he could get her that far, then he would then try to find a way to keep her without bringing her into Begley’s all male pack.
He’d like to talk to his Alpha about it, would have to sooner or later, but except for the snide little messages, the little bastard still wasn’t answering or returning his repeated calls.
Wolver's Rescue Page 24
