I wrinkled my brow in confusion. Yes, I’d been thinking about asking Hunter for help in finding Lia, but I hadn’t actually voiced my thoughts. Leave it to Ginger to assume that an uncontrollable kiss had instead been a calculated ploy to bring a reluctant ally over to our team.
“Calm down,” I told my angry pack mate. Then, glancing in the uber-alpha’s direction to see how he’d take my reply, I added: “We’re not throwing away any of our independence, but Hunter is the obvious solution to finding Lia. He’s already been on the trail of the SSS for a while now and he’s strong....”
To my relief, Hunter nodded as if agreeing to lend his support to our upcoming adventure. Ginger was less complacent, though.
“He’s strong,” the trouble twin spat back. “Is that all that matters to you? I’m strong. You’re strong...or would be if you didn’t keep your wolf on such a tight leash. You and I have been doing fine leading our group together and we’ll do even better now that you’ve finally figured out the pack bond. We don’t need a bloodling to step between us.”
Hunter growled and I glanced away from the angry trouble twin in order to meet the uber-alpha’s eyes. Had the object of my affections so quickly changed his mind about helping Lia? I didn’t think so. But I got the distinct impression that I was missing something obvious, something that both he and Ginger were dancing around with both their gazes and their words.
This whole argument just didn’t make any sense. Sure, emotions were high ever since Lia went missing, but I couldn’t quite understand why everyone was so angry all of a sudden.
“You’re going to have to spell it out for her,” Hunter said after a moment of intense silence. It had been obvious that the uber-alpha and the trouble twin shared a deep-seated antipathy ever since they first met, so I was surprised now to see the former pointing his words in Ginger’s direction. This was the first time Hunter had deigned to give the trouble twin the time of day, and she certainly didn’t seem to deserve his regard after flying off the handle. So why was the uber-alpha eying my friend with something that distinctly resembled pity?
Like a cat watching a ping-pong match, I turned my head to see what Ginger would make of a statement that hadn’t clued me in at all. Surely the redhead would be as blindsided by Hunter’s non sequitur as I was.
But, instead, she just got angrier. The furious blush on her cheeks now rivaled the color of her hair as she ground out: “Seriously? Like she doesn’t know how I feel.”
The trouble twin’s pair of ice-blue eyes bored into mine, the stare a clear lupine challenge. And if I’d had a wolf worth her salt, the two of us would have inevitably come to blows.
But my animal half was sound asleep and my human side saw no reason to fight over what must be a misunderstanding. So I raised both hands in the air in confused surrender.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” I offered finally when both of my companions seemed unwilling to let the issue—whatever it was—drop until I’d chimed in on the matter. “I understand you’re not a fan of Hunter and I understand that you’re worried about Lia and Cinnamon. So am I. Well, I mean, so am I to the last two points. But I have to admit I am a fan of Hunter. He’s never done anything other than help us out of tight spots....”
My voice trailed off as I remembered the event that had initiated our original tight spot. Still, I’d worked past my anger at Hunter for thrusting us unceremoniously out of our original pack. He’d thought he had my best interests at heart, and maybe he’d been right.
More recently, the uber-alpha had proven to be a remarkably steadfast companion and a wolf I was happy to have at my back. So, yes, I stood by my initial assessment. I was a fan of Hunter.
“Unbelievable,” Ginger said after yet another lengthy silence. “You’re telling me you haven’t been treating me like a partner all this time, letting me lead hunts and brushing up against me.”
Brushing up against her? I shook my head, deciding not to touch that part of her statement with a ten-foot pole. “Of course I let you lead hunts,” I said as slowly and as calmly as I could. The two of us needed to remember that we were pack mates in a dicey situation and tone this altercation way the hell down. “Your wolf is the strongest one we’ve got and mine is chicken shit. It would be absurd to try to take that right away from you.”
Ginger clenched her jaw and closed her eyes for a second, clearly trying to rejoin me in the land of rationality. But her next words continued to make no sense. “Okay, let’s start over. Why do you think we came with you on this ill-fated expedition into outpack territory in the first place?”
I’d asked myself this same question during many wakeless nights as I listened to my new pack mates slumbering all around me, so this time I had a ready answer for the trouble twin’s nosy question. “Well, Glen felt obligated, I think,” I said, ashamed of myself for letting any of these young shifters be drawn into my outcast status against their will. “He and I have been pack mates for a lot longer than the rest of you. And after a mutual friend died, I think he felt responsible for making sure I didn’t get myself killed too.”
Ginger rolled one hand in the air to speed me up. She clearly didn’t care why Glen had thrown away a safe life at Haven to follow a half-assed halfie into the wilds of outpack territory.
“Lia, I think, came along because she wanted a half-blood role model,” I mused. “Plus, with you there, she felt safe. Cinnamon....”
I looked down at the comatose wolf, my throat tightening as I remembered the danger I’d drawn all of these wolves into due to my own weakness. But Ginger’s stern gaze demanded an answer, so I continued with my assessment. “Cinnamon came because you came.”
“And why did I come?” Ginger asked, pausing between each word as if speaking to a five-year-old...or someone in need of a swift kick in the butt. It was easy to guess which of the two options my companion thought best represented me.
“You came to have fun?” I guessed.
“And is that why you kissed me?” she demanded. “To have fun?”
I wrinkled up my brow in continued confusion and Hunter’s growl grew louder and more ominous as Ginger’s words rang out across the still forest air. “I didn’t kiss you,” I replied, my words finally taking on a bite of their own. I knew I called Ginger a trouble twin, but I hadn’t expected the young woman to take her name quite so literally while we were in such a precarious situation. “You kissed me to get Quill’s attention.”
Now it was Ginger’s turn to growl. And, to my surprise, Hunter broke out into a laugh in response. “Completely clueless, remember?” he rumbled from the other side of me.
The young woman who ably held all of our attention in her manicured hands took a deep breath, and for a split second I thought I could feel her heightened emotions within my own belly. That rabid skunk I mentioned earlier? It seemed to be tearing my friend apart from the inside out.
I winced, hoping Ginger would hurry up and put us both out of our misery. But when she spoke, I had to admit I’d rather have maintained my previous blissful ignorance.
“I joined your pack, I led your hunts, I kissed you, because I loved you,” the young woman muttered.
And even through my shock, I couldn’t miss her pointed use of the past tense.
“I...” I STARTED TO say I was sorry to have led Ginger on. But I hadn’t led her on, at least not purposefully. I’d just assumed she enjoyed filling her position of power within our pack. I’d merely treated her like a girl friend.
A friend who’s a girl, that is. Not a girlfriend.
Ack! I was beginning to see why Ginger might have been confused by the whole situation.
“But you’re always flirting with guys,” I said finally, trying to understand. “That whole bar full of outpack males last night. Quill. Everyone.”
“I was just trying to get your attention,” the teenager muttered, eyes averted.
Abruptly, I felt sorry for her. Ginger was a pack princess and had almost certainly been cosseted
her entire life. While I only had two additional years on her, my halfie heritage and the months I’d spent clan-less during my time as a troubled teenager had forced me to grow up fast. As a result, I couldn’t remember ever feeling as young as Ginger currently appeared.
So I apologized after all. “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to pull her into a hug, then changing my mind at the last minute and instead merely patting her shoulder. “It’s no reflection on you that I’m not interested, though. I just don’t swing that way.”
“You don’t swing that way?” Ginger flicked one painted nail through my untended hair, trailed the same fingertip down across my tattooed arms. “This and this and your so-called wardrobe, and you’re telling me you’re straight?”
I shrugged, hoping against hope that the trouble twin would laugh at my unintentional misrepresentation of my sexuality and let the whole misunderstanding slide. Yes, she’d lost face by hankering after someone who wasn’t available, but I’d lost face with my rough dress. So we were even, right?
Wrong.
“Not that it matters now,” Ginger said, taking a firm step away from me and picking up a shiny, metallic object that she must have dropped at our feet when attacking Hunter. “The real issue is that you don’t have the foggiest clue how to be an alpha. You trust this...this....” She shook her head furiously, clearly unable to come up with a slur strong enough to describe how she felt about the uber-alpha in front of her.
“Asshole?” Hunter suggested unhelpfully.
“Oh, thanks so much for pointing out how you self-identify,” Ginger said, verbally tearing into him for thinking he could complete her sentence.
But Hunter’s chosen moniker was only a side note in the scathing tear-down the trouble twin had in store for me. Thrusting the object into my hand, she demanded. “Look at this.”
Obediently, I turned the shiny thing over and over in my fingers, trying to understand what I was seeing. It resembled a twisted razor blade, but one that was sharp on all sides rather than on just a single surface. I nicked my finger merely examining it, and I wished one of us had been wearing clothes so we could put the treacherous object safely into a pocket before someone else got hurt.
Still, I had no idea what I was looking at. So I raised my eyebrows at the trouble twin in question once again.
She flared her nostrils, clearly thinking no explanation should have been necessary. And, as she elaborated, I figured she was right—a real shifter would have understood the metallic object’s past use immediately. Because a real shifter would have been able to smell Lia’s blood clinging to its sharp edges.
“I found this razor on the path where Lia cut her foot,” Ginger explained, spelling it out for me since I was clearly too slow to make the necessary connections on my own. “Someone dropped it there specifically to injure her so she’d end up separated from the pack and easy to kidnap. Someone who’s been sniffing around our group for weeks on end, looking for a weak link. Someone,” she added, pointing a finger at Hunter, “exactly like him.”
Chapter 15
The uber-alpha was lupine in an instant. The hairs on his ruff came menacingly erect and he advanced in absolute silence toward the female trouble twin. Hunter had passed the point of warning, I saw, and was now prepared to deal with the female who had been a thorn in his paw ever since their first introduction.
True to her nickname, Ginger was also ready and willing to meet her opponent on the field of battle. But she’d shifted one too many times that day already and her clenched teeth and strained features made no difference against the simple physics of exhaustion. Instead, she remained clad in thin human skin, no fur and wolf hide forthcoming to protect her from the other shifter’s imminent attack.
I guess that means saving my unruly pack mate’s neck is up to me.
“Stop!” I ordered, flinging myself between the two combatants. I didn’t expect my command to do any good against the uber-alpha...especially since Ginger had made a very valid point about his sudden presence at the exact same moment Lia had gone missing. Rationally, I knew that I should be joining the trouble twin in driving the danger out of our clan.
But, irrationally, I trusted Hunter. He wouldn’t have hurt Cinnamon. He wouldn’t have kidnapped Lia. And, now, he wouldn’t tear through me to get to my obstreperous pack mate.
Or so I hoped. Despite my best intentions to stand as tall and brave as Ginger behind me, my whole body quaked when it dawned on me that Hunter’s sharp teeth had ended up inches away from my bare thigh.
The wolf raised one side of his lip in what might have been a snarl...but was, I soon realized, instead the lupine equivalent of a leer. Yes, I had just thrown my crotch directly up against my opponent’s nose. All he’d have to do was open his mouth to lick the portion of my anatomy that was feeling distinctly moist....
“This...this....” I lost all grasp of nouns for a moment, but pushed forward nonetheless. “This whatever-it-is can be dealt with later,” I said firmly, alternating glances between the irate trouble twin and the amused uber-alpha. “Right now, we need to get Cinnamon some medical attention and then figure out how we’re going to find Lia. So the two of you can just get over yourselves for the moment. That’s final.”
Fake it ‘til you make it. My favorite technique, remarkably, seemed to work just as well on a wolf-brain uber-alpha and an incensed pack mate as it did on the world at large. Because Hunter promptly sank into a lupine sit and reached jaws over one shoulder to tease a burr out of his matted fur. Meanwhile, Ginger released the clenched fists that had been resting on her ample hips and crouched back down by her brother’s side. Cat-like, the pair of antagonists was momentarily united in the belief that the best course of action was to pretend they’d never menaced each other in the first place.
Disaster averted.
Or mostly averted. “This isn’t over, backstabber,” the trouble twin muttered just low enough that I could pretend not to hear.
I tensed, waiting for Hunter to dive back into the field of battle. But his ears merely flicked forward briefly then away, accepting the verbal sally without comment.
Before Ginger could prick at the uber-alpha’s pride further, Glen and Quill came bounding out of the woods together. To my supreme relief, the scene greeting them looked remarkably like a group of three worried pack mates rather than like enemy armies preparing for battle. And when Glen glanced a quick question at me, I nodded permission for my beta to shift into human form and hoist Cinnamon over one broad shoulder.
“Let’s go,” I ordered before Hunter or Ginger could renew aggressions. And we turned as a unit—albeit a very disjointed one—to head back toward the parking area that we’d left so gleefully behind only an hour earlier.
“THIS IS A WOLF, NOT a dog,” the vet said as soon as he walked into the crowded examining room to find a comatose Cinnamon lying atop his examining table.
“Part wolf,” I lied glibly, repeating the commonly used pretense that our animal forms were just big puppy dogs and no danger to the general public. “He’s harmless, I promise. Gentle as a lamb.”
“Uh huh,” Dr. Anderson answered, disbelief evident in his voice. He rolled up both sleeves to display a network of scars running up his forearms. “This and this and this were caused by harmless animals too. And this one,” he pointed to yet another pale line welting his skin, “was made by an actual lamb.”
My pack and I stopped breathing as one. Yes, we could get back on the road and keep driving until we found a second clinic. But Cinnamon hadn’t so much as opened his eyes since we’d carefully placed him in the car in the first place. Despite our best efforts to stem the flow of blood, our wounded companion was still leaking vital fluids, and every moment we spent seeking assistance felt like a year hacked off the trouble twin’s life expectancy.
I opened my mouth to plead with the human, but he sighed and caved before I could do so. “I’ll treat him, but he needs to be muzzled and restrained,” Dr. Anderson said firmly.
Around me, three male shifters and I all released sighs of relief. But Ginger was less impressed. Instead, the sound emanating from her throat was a full-formed lupine growl, proof of a loss of control she had never before exhibited around non-shifterkind.
Before I could sidetrack her, the female pushed forward into the vet’s face. I held my breath, hoping she’d fall back on her usual weapon of heightened sex appeal in order to solve this problem. But the young woman neither pushed out her breasts nor ran a hand across her full lips. Instead, worry over her brother’s waning health had worn away any semblance of civility.
“He’s not even conscious,” the trouble twin said, her words just short of a shriek and her face more reminiscent of a harpy than a Barbie. Ginger pushed both hands hard against Dr. Anderson’s lab-coated chest and knocked him back a step with the force of her blow. “He’s losing blood as we speak. He needs help. Just stitch him up. Please.”
I was pretty sure that last word had never before come out of my friend’s mouth. But the vet wasn’t swayed. “Look, ma’am,” he said, clearly rethinking his willingness to deal with the crazy people who came along with the wild wolf. “Restraints won’t hurt him. They’ll just protect us all from an animal who’s clearly a scrapper.”
As if to illustrate his point, Dr. Anderson motioned at the wounds that covered Cinnamon’s unmoving body. And I had to admit the doctor had a good point. In the animal world, a beast who kept fighting while his hide was being torn to shreds wasn’t the kind of patient any vet would want on his operating table. In fact, we were probably lucky Dr. Anderson hadn’t turned us out of his clinic already.
Little did the man in front of us know that Cinnamon was the most laid-back member of our little band of werewolves. Both his human and his animal natures were inherently gentle 99% of the time. The twin’s mean streak only came out when he was trying to protect a cousin who was more like a kid sister than a distant relation.
Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1) Page 26
