by Lauren Esker
"You'd give up your pack ... for me?"
"Julie." He held her face in his hands, and pulled her in for a long, gentle kiss. "I'd give up everything for you."
He helped her up, and they brushed the hay off each other, with frequent pauses to kiss. The electric sense of connection had already begun to fade somewhat—or no, Damon thought, it wasn't quite fading, it was just settling in and becoming part of the background noise of his life. Still, it made him want to press closer to her, to recover the vivid newness of it.
This was what new mates were supposed to do, he guessed. They made love and then spent the entire night curled up together, enjoying each other's presence and company. It was what instinct wanted him to do.
But he'd meant what he'd said about not wanting her bridal bower to be a hayloft. And they needed to be the ones to take this to their families, to control the time and place of the conversation. They needed to approach their parents as fellow adults, not be discovered hiding in the loft like guilty teenagers.
"You should take this back," Julie began, reaching up to slip the jacket off her shoulders.
Damon shook his head. "Keep it. I'll be in wolf form as soon as we're on the ground anyway—I can get home faster that way. It's too big to take with me, shifted."
One thing every shifter child did was conduct experiments to see how much they could carry with them into their shifted state. Most people could only take light clothing and small pocket contents—pens, phones. Some couldn't take anything at all; Damon's mom was like that. Damon could do clothes and shoes, but not something as bulky as the jacket.
"You're sure you won't be cold?"
"I'll be fine. I have fur. You can give it back to me tomorrow."
Tomorrow. The entire future was encompassed in that one word. There was a tomorrow for them—and another one, and another after that. A whole future of tomorrows, stretching out for the rest of their lives.
Damon held onto that thought as he helped Julie onto the ladder. No matter what his father did, no matter how angry he got, he had to respect the sanctity of the mate bond. It was one of the most sacred things in werewolf culture.
"Julie," he began as he climbed down into the light, and then broke off.
Julie had stepped off the bottom of the ladder into the brightly lit feed room, and then stopped cold. Her brother Terry was standing in the doorway, blocking it.
Damon hadn't seen Terry Capshaw since they were teenagers. Like all of them, he'd grown up and filled out. He had the typical Capshaw build—stocky, broad, and muscular. His blond hair and blue eyes were vaguely reminiscent of Julie's, except hers were more vivid. Terry had a slightly sun-faded look about him, like he spent a lot of time outdoors.
Damon was taller, but Terry, with his stocky wrestler's build, might actually be stronger. Damon wasn't sure if he could take him, at least not without one or both of them getting seriously hurt.
Julie was bristling furiously at her brother. If she'd been in genuine danger, though, he would have sensed it through the mate bond. She was merely angry.
Terry, for his part, looked thunderous—but also somewhat bleary. He was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. His feet were bare.
"Terry," Damon said warily. He jumped down the last few rungs of the ladder with lupine grace, and moved to interpose himself in front of Julie. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough," Terry said. He winced, looking suddenly not like the enemy so much as a very annoyed and disgusted older brother. "Way too long, actually. I know what you were doing up there—"
"Really? Do you?" Julie popped around Damon's side like an irritated jack-in-the-box. "Then you heard enough to know exactly how I feel about it. I know my own mind about this, Terry. You can't tell me what to do!"
"Only when you're being dumb," Terry said. He crossed his arms in the age-old pose of exasperated big brothers everywhere. Damon wished it wasn't so familiar from dealing with his younger sister. He didn't want to identify with this stupid sheep. Especially when Terry went on, "You've been listening to this ... this wicked wolf whispering promises into your ears, leading you astray. Like wolves always do. Didn't you pay attention to the old stories at all?"
Defiantly Julie seized Damon's hand, gripping it tight. "Screw the old stories. How many times do I have to tell you I'm not a kid anymore? I love Damon, and he loves me."
"Oh God," Terry said. "It's even worse than I feared."
Damon bristled. Even in human form, he was pretty sure he felt his hackles going up. "She's my mate, you woolly troglodyte."
Okay, that was really not how he wanted that announcement to go down.
Terry's face reddened with anger. "That's the last straw. Get away from my sister, you lupine bastard!"
"Oh really? Make me! Unless you need your whole flock to back you up."
Terry lowered his head belligerently. "I'll show you who needs—"
"Hey!" Julie snapped, her voice cutting across theirs. "Stop it, both of you. Damon, please. I'll deal with my brother. Go talk to your family."
"But—" Damon began.
"But—" Terry said at the same moment.
Julie marched across the room and unceremoniously shoved Terry out of the way. Although she was smaller, he yielded, allowing himself to be moved aside. He didn't stop glaring at Damon. If looks could kill, Damon would be a smoking spot on the floor.
But Damon's anger was already draining away. He thought some of it might be Julie's efforts to calm him through the mate bond—did she even realize she was doing that?—but there was also a dawning realization that, compared to Verne Wolfe, Terry was no threat at all. What was the worst Terry could do, bloody his nose? He'd had worse than that from his dad when he was little.
Still, he took the opportunity to growl softly at Terry as he sidled past him in the doorway. Terry snorted like a ram about to charge, but when Julie glared at him, he held his ground.
As Damon and Julie retreated into the main part of the barn, Terry called after Damon, "Yeah, wolf, you better run!"
"You just wait for next time!" Damon snarled back.
"Calm down, both of you," Julie said with long-suffering patience.
"Your brother is a dick." Damon glanced over his shoulder to find that Terry was trailing them at a distance that just barely managed to stay on the discreet side of open rudeness.
"He's just protective of me and Ava." She smiled and tapped Damon's nose with her fingertip. "I seem to recall a rumor around school that you chased Vanessa's junior prom date all the way down Main Street with a baseball bat."
"He put his hand up her skirt, even after she told him not to!" Damon protested.
"My point being, Terry's a decent guy who's just doing what older brothers do. Let me talk to him alone, and see if I can bring him around."
Damon nodded reluctantly. Tempting as it was, he couldn't use Terry's presence as an excuse to put off the coming confrontation with his father.
As if she could read his mind (and, with the mate bond, it wasn't far from the truth), Julie asked, "Will you be all right?"
"I'll be fine." He kissed her—and, aware Terry was watching, made it as long and deep and dirty as possible. He also put a possessive hand on each of her luscious satin-clad buttocks.
Terry made a noise of incoherent horror. "You're evil, Wolfe."
Damon winked at Julie and gave her ass a final squeeze. Then he turned away, shifting as he went. Color faded; sounds and smells sharpened. He was suddenly, intensely aware of the scent of the Capshaw livestock in their pens—it made his mouth water—and even more aware of Julie's presence. He wished she would shift and run with him.
Instead, she unlatched the barn door and let him out into the night. Damon inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the rich scents of farm and forest.
"Come back safe," Julie whispered, touching the fur of his ruff.
He couldn't answer in a way she'd understand, but he brushed against her leg and then trotted across the f
armyard, into the woods.
It had been a long time since he'd run the trails between the Capshaw and Wolfe farms, but his paws still remembered the way. Glimpses of a waxing moon peeked out of the clouds, tugging at his blood, but he could smell more rain on the air. It would be pouring again soon. He hoped Julie got in safely, out of the wet.
He still felt her presence at the back of his head, a gentle lodestone pull. It wasn't intrusive, merely a reminder that no matter how far he went, he could always find her.
So this is what having a mate is like.
Surely, no matter how much his family hated and looked down on the Capshaws, his father would respect the sanctity of the mate bond. To reject it would be to reject all that made the pack who they were.
He didn't want to leave them. Vanessa, especially; no one else in the pack needed him the way his little sister did. But if he had to choose between them and Julie ... well. He just hoped he wouldn't have to choose.
Maybe they could take Vanessa with them, if they had to run ...
He knew, instinctively, when he crossed the boundary of the Wolfe farm. All wolves knew where their territory was. Leaving the woods behind, he trotted between rows of neatly planted squash, tomatoes, and cabbages.
Across the fields, a light gleamed in the window of the Wolfe farmhouse. Someone was still up. The family didn't stay out all night except on full moon nights, but insomnia was hardly unusual in a family of semi-nocturnal wolf shifters trying to fit themselves to a day-living schedule.
Damon caught flickers of wolf scent as he loped through the fields. Right now, smell clung readily to the wet vegetation, though the coming rain would wash it away. He inhaled deeply, reading the scents as someone else might read a book. Vanessa and his mother had been out hunting earlier, as well as cousins Brad and Barry. There had also been someone else whose scent he couldn't quite place, though it was naggingly familiar. Cain Renner? He certainly hoped not. He hadn't had a chance to get Renner's scent properly earlier. It could also be a guest from one of the other nearby wolf clans. All the wolfpacks in the county were on friendly terms with each other, related through ties of marriage and blood. They all had a standing invitation to hunt in each others' territory as long as permission was asked and given.
Which was, of course, the problem he kept running into in trying to gather allies for his coup against his father. No one wanted to upset the long-standing alliance between the different clans.
Damon shifted back to two-legged form at the edge of the yard, his clothes coming with him as usual. It was considered slightly rude to approach the house as a wolf rather than a human, rather like carrying a weapon onto the property. Usually this was a rule more for guests than for family, but Damon thought that, considering what he was about to tell his father, it couldn't hurt to be as polite as possible.
The cousins' big Harley hogs were under the edge of the open-roofed shed that stored the family's farm trucks. Great, Brad and Barry are spending the night. Just the audience I need.
It wasn't like waiting until tomorrow would make this any easier, though.
A low rumble of thunder shivered the air around him as he mounted the steps to the wide porch of the Wolfe house. His family's house was not too different from the one where the Capshaws lived—both were rambling, turn-of-the-century farmhouses, with the original floor plan difficult to discern under all the additions and remodeling that had been done on the house over the years. As he stepped through the front door, his foot automatically avoided the squeaky floorboard in front of the sill.
The house was very quiet, but a stripe of light showed under the door of his father's home office. Damon took a deep breath and tapped lightly at the door.
When no answer came, he called softly, "Sir? It's Damon. I'm sorry, but I need to talk to you. It's important."
Still no answer. His father disliked being interrupted at work, sometimes with violent consequences. However, it was not usual to simply be ignored.
Perhaps he'd left the light on by accident when he went to bed? But that wasn't normal, either. For all his flaws, Verne Wolfe was a careful and detail-oriented man. Damon could never remember his father walking out of a room and failing to turn off the light.
"Sir?" he tried again, and then very hesitantly, "Dad?"
This was no more effective at getting his father's attention. However, he'd become aware of something else. Underneath all the usual smells of the house—furniture polish, faded cooking smells, his mother's perfume—his sharper-than-human senses detected something else.
All wolf shifters knew what fresh blood smelled like.
"Dad!" Damon was no longer trying to be quiet. He tested the doorknob and found it locked from the inside. This wasn't unusual when his father didn't want to be disturbed.
But he could definitely smell blood.
Damon drew back and threw his shoulder against the door with all of his considerable strength. The tongue of the doorknob tore out of the wood and the door flew inward. Damon stumbled into the room.
The Wolfe home office was a small room, probably once a child's bedroom in an earlier generation when the family was larger, and it was utterly dominated by a huge antique roll-top desk. Damon had always hated that desk, mostly because every memory he had of this room was of his father glaring down at him over the top of it, like a naval captain on the bridge of his ship.
But his father wasn't glaring at anyone now. The smell of blood hit Damon like a slap in the face. It was everywhere—on the desk, on the carpet, even on the walls. Furniture was knocked over; pictures hung askew; papers were scattered on the floor. There had been some kind of struggle.
"Dad!"
Damon stumbled around the end of the desk. His father was sprawled on the floor behind it, face hidden from view. A single glance was enough to tell Damon that his father had been mauled by some kind of large predator.
A shifter. He was attacked by one of us.
Damon crouched and felt for a pulse. He was startled to find one. His father's skin was cold, but his chest still moved with shallow breaths.
"Still a stubborn old bastard, aren't you?" Damon murmured with reluctant admiration.
He had no idea where to begin trying to staunch the bleeding; his father was injured in too many places. Even fast shifter healing might not be able to deal with this. He didn't know whether it was right or wrong to call for an ambulance. Pack business was supposed to stay within the pack, and this would open up all kinds of awkward legal questions. But his father needed medical attention immediately.
"Help!" Damon shouted. "Mom! Vanessa! Someone!"
He wasn't sure if they even could hear him down here. The walls of the old house were thick and sturdy, deadening sound, and most of the bedrooms were on the other end. Clearly, no one had heard the struggle.
Unless one of them did it.
But the idea of either his mother or Vanessa committing a murder, especially an attack so brutal, was too awful to contemplate.
His father stirred slightly, gasping.
"Who did this?" Damon asked, leaning over him, but there was no response. His father's eyelids opened partway and then closed again as he lapsed back into silence. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth.
His father was dying in front of him. Damon looked desperately for something to cover him with. The only thing in sight were the heavy drapes over the window, so he yanked one of them down, and discovered in the process that the window was open. And there was blood on the sill.
The killer had gotten out that way.
Damon covered his father with the drape, trying to tuck it around him and staunch some of the bleeding. "Mom!" he shouted, and thought he heard footsteps upstairs. Finally!
But, meanwhile, the killer was getting away. Unless he or she was still in the house.
In human form, he couldn't distinguish smells well enough to tell who else besides his father had been in the room. As a wolf, on the other hand ...
Damon shifted to wolf for
m. Immediately the smell of blood became overwhelming, drowning out anything else in the room and sending his wolf instincts into overdrive. He tried to shut it out and focus on the other scents in the room. Shifting indoors was always a little dizzying until his senses could adjust.
Slowly the flood of smell began to resolve itself into distinct scents: cologne, cleaning products, wood, carpet fiber, books. He could smell his father's scent, and his mom's, and a few other people more faintly—Vanessa, mostly, but also various cousins and other, more distant relatives.
And the tantalizingly familiar scent he'd noticed in the field was here, too. He still couldn't figure out who it was, but he could tell it was recent.
There's the attacker, then.
He stretched up to the windowsill, trying to sniff it out, just as the heavens opened up and rain came thundering down outside the window. His ears flattened in dismay. This would wash away tracks and scents. But maybe he could still trail the culprit for a short way. He stood up on his back legs, paws on the windowsill, poised to leap—
"Damon!"
Startled, he looked over his shoulder and then shifted back to human. Vanessa stood in the doorway of their father's office, wearing her favorite silk pajamas. Other people appeared behind her, equally confused and sleep-tousled, including Damon's mother and the cousins.
All of them were staring at him in shock and horror.
Damon glanced down at himself. He hadn't even noticed he'd gotten his father's blood on himself, but it was all over him. It would've been all over him as a wolf, too. And when they'd come upon him, he'd been wolf-shaped and ready to jump out the window.
"Damon," Vanessa said again. The first time, it had been a cry of shock. Now it was a whisper of horror.
"I didn't," Damon said blankly. "Nessie—" He hadn't used his childhood nickname for her in a very long time. "Nessie, I didn't. I found him like this. Quick, we need to get a doctor. He's hurt very badly."
No one moved for a moment; then his mother pushed past Vanessa into the room, and knelt beside her husband. She pulled back the blood-sodden curtain, and her face went blank for a moment before she drew herself together. "Vanessa, run to the bathroom and get the medical kit—the big one."
