by Michelle Fox
Finn paused at the front door, cut and keys in hand, to look over his shoulder at Tabitha. Goddamn if she didn’t remind him of all the stupid things he was sure he was going to do in the world when he was seventeen, eighteen, all those things he would never do. He was one of the Sons now. He was a Fenris Wolf.
And she wasn’t.
The shifter shook his head and shrugged at Tabitha. Callous as that seemed, it was as truthful as he could have been with her. “Just stay here, Tabitha. Keep the door locked, and don’t answer your phone unless it’s me.”
Fucker. That was what she was thinking about him—at him—as he walked out. Finn didn’t want to think about why he knew that.
As much as Finn didn’t want to deal with the Sons just then, their house was the one place he had left to go and the one place he needed to be. The ‘clubhouse’ wasn’t what most people would have suspected. Rather than a dive in a bad part of town, it was a sprawling if faded villa in Summerside, a part of the city that used to be old money. Now it was just old, with the movers and shakers preferring new and ever more pretentious developments on the north side. The mature trees lining Summerside’s residential streets, coupled with the high walls surrounding each house, made for the kind of privacy that came in handy for bikers and werewolves alike. An automatic gate at the end of the drive opened smoothly as Finn approached, without him stopping to punch in the code. That meant one of his pack brothers was watching the security cams and saw him coming.
The circular brick fountain that on party nights doubled as an ice-filled cooler now sat quiet in the middle of the circular drive. Most of the handful of guys who were there were just getting their shit together, chasing the previous night’s hangover with a bottle of whatever they hadn’t already killed. A couple of girls were still passed out naked on the pool table and another on the couch. There would have been a half-dozen more out cold in various bedrooms.
Finn had made it through the living room and into the hall, headed toward the back of the house, before an unwelcome voice hit him.
“There’s my boy,” Lebeau drawled. Finn, knowing he should have just kept walking and probably could have gotten away with doing just that, stopped and looked into the library that had come with the house. Mick kept it despite the Sons’ decided lack of bookishness. It appealed to his sense of irony and superiority. Whenever Mick was in a mood, as he likely was just then, he’d slump in the oversized leather chair with his feet up on the huge wooden desk and drink the cheapest, nastiest booze he could lay hands on. Such was the scene when Finn peered into the room.
“Dad,” Finn responded in his best Wally Cleaver voice.
“How’s our girl doing?”
This was it, the moment when Mick expected Finn to tell the alpha that Tabitha wasn’t their girl and not Lebeau’s girl for damn sure. As much as the MC president obviously wanted Tabitha for himself, Finn knew he’d have been damn near as happy to learn that Finn had a weakness for her. It was something to hold over the scout’s head, the way Mick tried to play on what he suspected was Garik’s weakness for a little Odin’s Wolf lupa from a rival pack they often tangled with these days. Mick would have given a lot to know how far that had gone—further than he’d have thought, and Finn knew that for a fact. Garik had killed for her—killed other Sons for her, men Finn wasn’t sorry to see dead.
Finn leaned in the library doorway and played it cool, making Mick wait for a response while the scout brushed back his hair and then folded his arms. “Taking up space at my place and making everything smell like girl,” Finn quipped, affecting mild irritation but otherwise unconcerned. “What’d she do this morning to get that shiner from you?”
And if you do it again, I’ll kill you. Might anyway, Mick, ol’ buddy.
Mick smiled. “She doesn’t know when to be afraid, does she?” he asked, like Finn would know. Like he knew Finn would know.
But the scout just shrugged. “Obviously not if she’s walking into Skin and just announcing she’s a latent.”
“Ah, yes, T minus four days and counting ‘til we see how that shakes out.”
Finn huffed out his breath dismissively. In truth, he was using every ounce of control he had to discipline any more telling reaction from his expression. If Mick found out Finn had already bitten Tabitha, what the bite had done, what it had not done, and what Finn suspected that meant, Tabitha would either be dead or locked up someplace never to be seen again. And Finn would be wearing a collar he’d never be able to take off with his leash in Lebeau’s hand for as long as the alpha wanted it that way.
Lebeau’s suspicion went unfed, so he just shook his head and chuckled. “Took her on rounds with me yesterday to see if she’s got the stomach for this. Already know she’s got the curves. Went to see a man about a horse, as they say, in Riverwood Park, and the girl didn’t know enough to do what she was told when I ordered her to stay with the bike.”
Of all that information—that Lebeau had shown the Sons’ seedier activities to Tabitha and surely without mentioning that Finn and several others weren’t all in agreement over being involved in that shit, that Mick still had his eye on the girl’s ass as a mama or worse, that he’d put her in harm’s way and then hit her—it was the location of that meeting that Finn had to pretend the hardest not to notice.
Down the hall a few minutes later, in the control room for all the security gates and cam, Finn sat down heavily next to Garik. “I think Mick is talking to Thomas Poulsen or someone who can get to Poulsen,” the scout told the club enforcer, also known as the pack’s second-in-command. This drew Hagen’s attention from the bank of television screens scanning the grounds. Finn would have bet Garik wasn’t actually looking for anything, just keeping watch while he thought, while he plotted and calculated the best time and best way to move on Mick and those loyal to the MC president—Finn not included.
“What do you know?” Garik asked, arms folded nonchalantly but eyes sharpening.
“Mick had business today in Riverwood Park.”
“Poulsen’s office.”
Finn nodded, having been the one to track the antiquities dealer down after the pack got word he was trading in very old Norse artifacts and weapons. “I don’t know if Mick’s still trying to find out who the buyer was for the Dainsleif sword or not, but….”
“Probably,” Garik agreed, his jaw stiffening at the mention of the mythic sword. That was still a sore subject, with the enforcer believing Lebeau wanted to get his hands on the supernatural weapon to use on Garik and anyone else who challenged him for SoF leadership. “But?”
“He took Tabitha with him, and that doesn’t make sense. She’s not a sworn member or even a turned wolf.”
The darker man frowned down thoughtfully on that bit of intel. “Mick is definitely unusually interested in your girl.”
“My girl?” Finn asked, taken aback.
“I don’t shit you about Rachel.” The Odin’s Wolf scout for the Central Coast Pack. “Don’t fucking lying to me about Tabitha. You two are practically wearing matching half-heart necklaces.”
“For chrissake, shut up before one of the others hears you. Fuck you, Garik.”
“Fuck you right back, pretty boy. Are we done pissing here?”
“No.”
Garik raised a black brow. “No?”
“I need a favor, and it’s big.” Finn paused, not to give the enforcer the opportunity to ply him with questions, which wasn’t in Garik’s nature anyway. Hagen was a watcher, the kind who stayed at a distance until he’d scoped the situation out; then he’d pounce. No, Finn needed a second to swallow down the distaste in his mouth. “Tabitha’s an Odin’s Wolf.”
No surprise or anger or distress. Ice cold and smooth, Garik asked, “How do you know? You can’t smell that.”
“But I can taste it.”
“You bit her?”
“Yeah, and she’s not one of us.”
“It’s not full moon yet. You can’t know she’s not a Fenris Wolf just because you bit her early an
d she didn’t shift.”
“That’s not it,” Finn snarled with mounting agitation. He’d have rather been talking about anything else.
“Then what is it?” Garik asked with equal annoyance. Finn would have done well not to forget that Hagen was just as much a Fenris Wolf as he was, just with stronger self-control. The strongest Finn had ever seen.
Finn slumped in his chair and rubbed his forehead, not wanting to look at Garik as he said it. “I know because when I bit her, we mated.” We mated.
Yeah, there it was. Garik, howling, with laughter. Misery really did love company.
CHAPTER NINE
Tabitha got off of Finn’s bike as soon as they’d come to a stop at the nearly deserted desert rest stop. They were inland east of the beach town of Moonstone, where everything had that upscale Napa feel no matter how poor. Dusty wooden benches stretched out under a shade tree to one end of the dirt parking lot. A small diner sat at the other, grape trellises shading the walls. Tabitha was pretty sure the place’s claim to fame was a 1950’s movie star dying in a car accident right in front of the place. That was California, as obsessed with the way celebrities died as how they lived.
Still astride his motorcycle, Finn pulled off his helmet and shook his brown hair back from his heated face. Damn if he wasn’t the perfect female fantasy of a biker. He’d talk and ride and fuck like a bad boy, all while looking like sin in oil-streaked jeans, but he wasn’t going to rape the teenaged hitchhiker beside the road or shoot a bar owner over whiskey that was too warm—probably.
He was just going to break the heart of any woman stupid enough to fall in love with him, Tabitha. But of course, she might have been just, you know, bitter over him fucking and biting her and then running out the door while she sat there alone on his couch all night wondering what happened. Wondering why she hadn’t turned, changed, or at least stopped loving him. Any or all of the above. Whatever.
“You can ignore me all you want, Tabitha,” Finn told her. And she had been ignoring him, actively. She hadn’t uttered a word to him since…. “But there’s someone here who’s going to help you, and you have to get onboard with it.”
There was some doubt in Finn about whatever this plan was; Tabitha sensed it in him, though she wasn’t sure how. She couldn’t question him, of course, if she wasn’t speaking to him, and she couldn’t be sure he’d tell the truth even if she did ask. So Tabitha just stood there with her arms crossed while she pointedly didn’t look at Finn and he just stared across the parking lot at the diner, waiting.
The stranger pulled up hard and fast in a puff of dust as her Jeep tires skidded a few inches in the dirt lot. Like Tabitha, the woman who perked Finn’s interest with her arrival was blond and chubby. Pretty, too, with a definite California edge to her with waves of naturally sun-streaked hair and the mirrored sunglasses.
“Come on,” Finn said, and he finally climbed off his bike. “We need to meet her in the middle, in the open.”
“Why the caution? She doesn’t trust you?”
This made Finn smile, if only a little. “Our breeds usually try to kill each other on sight.”
“She….?” Tabitha squinted at the curvy woman stalking toward them in a tank top, jeans, and sneakers, looking confident and athletic for her size. “She’s a werewolf?”
“An Odin’s Wolf. I explained a little about that. To boil it down, we’re the cool kids, and they’re the choirboys. We’re the bad guys in the black hats. They’re the anal-retentive law and order a-holes in the white hats. We don’t answer to anyone. They do everything their gods tell them to.”
“Glad we got that sorted out,” the woman said as she stopped about ten feet back from meeting them, her hands fisted firm on her hips. Sharp hearing, Tabitha realized. And Finn apparently hadn’t cared if the stranger heard what he’d said about ‘her breed.’
“Rachel Corey,” Finn said, greeting her in a voice that dripped with passive aggression.
“Fenris Wolf,” the woman responded, and Finn made a face like he’d been wounded by her refusal to use his name.
Grinning, Finn told her, “Garik says hello. He would have come himself, but there’s that thing about you swearing you’d kill him next time you saw him. I assume the last time you two fucked was just a stunning disappointment. Took that personally, did you?”
“Nice haircut,” Rachel said in smiling retort. “I’ll tell Lund it turned out nice.”
If Tabitha was connecting all the dots right, that meant one of this woman’s pack brothers was the wolf who had tangled with Finn and ended up ripping out hair.
The Odin’s Wolf folded her arms and leaned on one hip. “Niceties aside, Hagen went to a lot of trouble and personal risk to arrange this meeting and assure your safety—this once. Is this her?”
“Her?” Tabitha repeated and tilted her head. Irritation edged into her voice. Whatever issue this Rachel had with Finn, Tabitha didn’t appreciate inheriting it. The amused glance she got from the woman surprised her; it wasn’t entirely hostile.
There was a moment’s hesitation before Finn nodded and responded in a lowered voice. “Yeah, this is Tabitha. And don’t bother asking if I’m sure, because I am. She’s an Odin’s Wolf.”
Tabitha blinked and finally turned to speak to the man. “I’m what? Wait, why are you telling her when you haven’t even told me?”
“Because it doesn’t mean anything to you yet, not until… not unless she’s willing to help.”
Thoughtfully, Rachel nodded from behind those concealing shades. “I can see this is a tricky situation.”
Finn snorted. “Damn right it is. Mick is expecting me to bring her to him in three days and prove she can shift, but you know it doesn’t work that way for your breed. If he finds out what she is, or if we try to lie and say she can’t shift, he’ll have her killed. We can’t get her out of town. Even if she’d go—.”
Tabitha glowered at Finn and the constant references to her in the third person, like she was a child, a no-name again. “Which she won’t,” Tabitha put in as her contribution to the discussion.
“Which she won’t,” Finn repeated with an irritated wince, “Mick is keeping an unusually close eye on her. My gut says he’d find her. I took a lot of time and precautions and wrong turns even getting her out here without a tail.”
The she-wolf stood a moment, scuffing one shoe back and forth in the dust as she considered her thoughts. Then she asked Finn, “Why are you helping her if you think she’s an Odin’s Wolf? Why not just let the Sons kill her?”
Clearing her throat, Tabitha raised her brows. “You guys do know I’m standing right here listening?”
Under his breath, Finn growled and snorted, obviously straining to maintain his patience. “It doesn’t matter why I’m helping.”
“Well that’s just bullshit,” Rachel told him, and Tabitha agreed without saying so.
In truth, Tabitha was hot and dirty from the ride and annoyed with both of the shifters for talking over her head like… like she was a kid with no say over what happened to her. There it was again, Tabitha realized. This was a prime example of why she’d braved the folly of tracking down the Sons of Fenris and marching into Skin. Years were going by, and she was still the no-name victim under the care of people who either wanted something from her, like Mick, or wanted to be rid of her, like Finn. Make her a wolf and she’d stop being prey to the world and its whims.
“Why are you helping her?” Rachel asked Finn again.
“Look,” Finn snarled, took a step toward the blond Odin’s Wolf, then growled under his breath and shuffled back a step. “You know why. The same fucking reason you and Garik, for all your threats, haven’t killed each other.”
The female shifter abruptly came at Tabitha, reaching for her, and damn but she was fast. The only one faster was Finn, who put himself between the women. He did let Rachel touch Tabitha, though. Just the collar on her t-shirt. And Tabitha was too slow to react to either of them before Rachel had pulled aside th
e shirt to look at the wound Finn had left in his charge’s shoulder.
After a second, Finn slapped Rachel’s hand away and stood more squarely in front of Tabitha, shielding her. Tabitha wished it was sincere protectiveness and concern motivating him. In her wistfulness, she could imagine she felt that from him, that edge of fear for her. But that was all she could reasonably assume it was, her own wishful thinking.
Finn glared at Rachel. “Satisfied?”
“Why should I help?” Rachel asked.
“Because she’s one of you. Her blood is marked by your gods. They’re not going to let you turn your back on another warrior of Odin no matter how she came to be among you.”
Rachel shook her head. “No, I mean why should I help you, Fenris Wolf. Why shouldn’t I take her and get her the hell away from you?”
Tabitha was about to ask what made the woman think she’d agree to that, but Finn didn’t give her the chance to speak.
“Because this makes another favor a Fenris Wolf owes you and… you’d have one of your own breed on the inside of the SoF.”
And that idea made Rachel stop and huff her amusement and consider. “Don’t mind betraying your pack, Fenris Wolf?”
“I don’t mind undermining my alpha. He’s not the strongest or the smartest or the most calculating. Mick doesn’t deserve to be the leader of the SoF when the stronger alpha is your mate. Garik.”
Tabitha couldn’t help gaping. “She’s mated to Garik?”
“We’re not mated,” Rachel grated through her teeth, glaring and beginning to breathe heavier and faster as her temper strained.
“Right, not yet. Just fucking for now, but you’ll get around to it.”
Rachel was the one who took a step forward then. “You need to leave that alone before I walk away from you.” She included Tabitha in the scope of her glare. “Both of you.”
For Tabitha, it was like accidentally walking up on a confrontation between wild animals. Her own adrenaline started to rise, setting off her pulse and a tremor in her hands. One instinct told her to back away, but another—the one she obeyed—urged her to slide one hand up onto Finn’s shoulder in a visible demonstration that she was standing with him.
