When a Pack Dies

by Gwen Campbell

  She barely reacted when her door opened.

  “You okay?” Cutler looked down at the beautiful little woman he was going to make his mate. The sure realization of that fact staggered him but he held himself upright by hanging onto the roof of her sporty little SUV and forcing a smile.

  “Hmm? Oh. Yes I’m okay,” Fina replied absently and undid her seatbelt. She took his hand when he offered it. She stepped out of her vehicle but Cutler didn’t step back. Instead, he lay his hands on her waist and stood so close their toes touched. The bulky ends of his steel-toed boots pressed against the tips of her dainty, strappy little flat sandals.

  “You’re part of my pack now, Fina,” he said gently. His aqua eyes moved over her face, liking everything he saw. “This is your home. Yours and Ryan’s. You’ll always be safe here.”

  Fina trembled. She believed him but being touched by a male—a monstrously huge Alpha in his prime no less—brought back every repressed terror inside her.

  Cutler’s brow furrowed when she seemed to shrink in size. He smelled her fear again. He hated it...wanted to tell her she was being foolish and irrational but in his work he’d seen the after-effects of trauma too many times to be that callous. Offering Fina what he hoped was a reassuring smile, Cutler stepped away, took her keys from her and opened up the back of her vehicle to retrieve the luggage.

  He whistled loudly in the direction of the paddock. “Hey...Ryan! Give me a hand with this stuff, buddy.”

  Ryan stretched his arm through the fence, offered up the grass he was holding to an interested heifer then ran back to them.

  As he unloaded the vehicle, Cutler looked at Fina. She had her back to him, scanning the house with its wide, inviting porch and big windows. She was wearing a pretty little outfit—just a sleeveless blouse and a pair of modest shorts that ended above her knees. But her ass had that very fine, sculpted look to it and her legs were long for a woman who stood only maybe four inches above five feet.

  Again, his wolf reared its head and looked over its mate with raw desire. It said two words this time.

  Mine. Wait.

  Cutler and his wolf were in complete agreement on the first. It was the second directive that threw him. His wolf was more primitive than he was. It was an instinctual creature and powerful enough to never have to deny its desires. It was a hallmark of the privilege and responsibility of being an Alpha. So why when this sexy little waif was standing only a few feet away from him and smelling like a wet dream come true was his wolf willing to wait to claim her? Willing? Hell the thing was telling him to wait. It had always been the other way around, mostly because single, pretty women didn’t much care for being thrown onto the hood of their car and fucked like animals. Even if they did want to get out of a speeding ticket.

  Shaking his head, Cutler led Fina and Ryan up to the house. He noticed the look she gave the empty, iron urn-shaped planters flanking the door. He kept forgetting to pick up flowers to replace the ones that died off in the fall. Cutler opened the wide front door and stepped aside.

  “Oh it’s lov—” Whatever compliment Fina was about to pay the broad entryway that ran straight through to the back porch died in her throat when she got her first whiff of the interior. “There’s another wolf here,” she whispered with dark fear. Ryan had already dropped his pack and was trying to climb up her back, clutching at her for protection. She grabbed onto his leg and hoisted him up, keeping him close so she could run if she had to.

  “Damn I forgot to tell you. My—”

  “Brother?” Fina whispered harshly after she’d inhaled again. This time, she saw past the terrifying specter of an unknown, prime male and realized that the man was a member of Cutler’s pack and a blood relative. She exhaled shakily but she didn’t tell Ryan to climb down.

  “Yes.” Cutler was disturbed by his woman’s fear but not surprised. He knew she’d need time to get over whatever had happened to her and him ordering her to wasn’t going to help matters. “Nath,” he called out loudly, directing his voice toward the back of the house. “Come out here will ya? We’ve got guests.”

  Fina felt the weight of the second man’s steps through the wide-planked pine floor before she saw him. Great, just what she needed, another behemoth.

  “Who—?” Nathaniel Powell stood stock still in the hallway of his home. All six-foot-two of him straightened up suddenly as he caught a whiff of the most exciting female he’d ever come across. Exciting? He was surprised he wasn’t running toward the smell, salivating and whipping it out. Lust dug into his belly hard and he was glad he was wearing underwear beneath his jeans or he’d bust out the zipper.

  His mouth dropped when he got his first look at her, looking small and scared, with a scrap of a child clinging to her back, waves of fear pumping out of her little body like sweat off a mill worker’s ass. Her heart-shaped, perfect little face was framed by a luxuriant fall of reddish brown, wavy hair. She had a small waist, slender hips and breasts that were a little too big for her frame...although he’d always thought they couldn’t be too big. His wolf recognized her as its perfect mate but it wasn’t lust that moved its feet, it was the smell of her fear.

  It propelled him forward and without a word, Nath obeyed his wolf’s instinct. He lay his forehead on the woman’s and let it rest there, breathing her in and letting her breathe him in. He suppressed his inner fuck-urge and projected as much calmness as he could. The child clinging to her whimpered at his closeness. Nath lifted his head then ran his jaw slowly and gently across the child’s temple. After a few seconds, the child whined—a small, plaintive sound then he tipped his head so he could nuzzle the side of Nath’s face before pulling back.

  One corner of Nath’s wide, sensual mouth quirked up. “So I guess this means you’ll be staying for dinner.” Deliberately not paying attention to his big brother’s impressive, angry growl, Nath lifted his head and reached for the woman—and was surprised when she backed away from him. Again his wolf invaded his consciousness, instinctively chasing after anything that ran from it—especially when that anything was going to be the mother of his children. This time Nath didn’t listen to it and he dropped his hands and took a step back, respecting her need for space. He looked up when his big brother snarled ominously.

  “This is Nath Powell, my kid brother. He’s my Beta. Feel free to ignore him,” Cutler added curtly and, with his hand firmly planted in the small of Fina’s back, led her and Ryan down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

  * * *

  “Just what the fuck are you trying to do?” Cutler stormed into the office where Nath was pretending to work. Cutler knew better. His baby brother was lurking, waiting for Fina to emerge after unpacking.

  “Hey, back down, Sheriff,” Nath shot back testily. “I don’t know how you managed to poach her but I gotta say thank you for finding me my mate.”

  “Your mate?” Cutler roared. He slammed the door shut behind him and advanced on his brother. “The woman’s already been claimed. Little brother,” he added with a sneer.

  “Who—? Oh.” Nathaniel’s ruddy, sun-darkened cheeks puffed out, momentarily obliterating his dimples. “I guess that complicates things.”

  “No shit.”

  The two brothers fell silent, glaring at each other and considering the ramifications of their mutual attraction to their newest pack member.

  “So how come you haven’t marked her?” Nath asked suddenly. As Alpha, his brother had the right to mate with any female in their pack. He nodded in the direction of the door. “She’s out there and you’re in here. I don’t see you rushing out to slobber all over her.”

  “Nice mental picture.”

  “Nice avoidance technique. They teach you that one in the military or is it a police-academy special?”

  Cutler snarled, revealing the tips of his upper canines. Nath had grown up watching his big, bad brother pitch conniption fits like this. Unless Cutler backed it up with a left hook, Nath wasn’t going to sweat it. His brow did go up however when
Cutler dug his fingers into his short hair, walked around him and flopped down in the chair behind the desk they shared.

  “I’ve never met anyone like her and she confuses the hell out of me,” Cutler admitted grudgingly. He rubbed his temples. “I saw her and it was like being kissed by the bumper of a Mack truck. I was just spinning around up there and didn’t give a damn if I ever touched the ground again.” He waved his index finger in the air in a vague circle. “One damn sniff of her and I knew...I just knew she was my mate. Didn’t know her name. Didn’t know the first thing about her. You know she tackled Dorothea Pike when she got between her and the kid down at the café?”

  “No way.”

  “Most definitely way,” Cutler replied with a grin and a nod. “Well, shoved her is more like it. Point is, instead of arresting her ass or handing her over for trial as a rogue, all I could think about was claiming her. Hell my wolf was all over that one like wet on water.”

  “I’ll bet,” Nath snorted.

  “Only he...”

  “He what?”

  “Well you know how the damn things think. They put everything into one of three categories—you either eat it, pee on it or fuck it.”

  “Let me guess which door yours picked.”

  “Yeah but it wasn’t that,” Cutler insisted hotly. He dropped his hands onto the wood desk. “Bastard took one good whiff of Fina and said two things. The first one was mine.”

  Nath cocked a dark brow at his brother that clearly said I told you so.

  “The second one was wait.”

  “Wait?”

  “Is there a fucking echo in here? Yes, Nath. The damn thing said wait. It wants her so bad I’m sporting a woody that could bat one out of the park. But it also knows there’s something about her that needs me to wait before I claim her.”

  “You know what it is?”

  “No. Her scent confuses the hell out of me. It’s...contradictory.”

  “Well what do you know?” Nath demanded irritably.

  “I know she and that boy are the only survivors of the pack from Eastfield, Tennessee.”

  Nathaniel Powell’s jaw dropped slowly. He closed it just as slowly, nodded, and followed his brother when Cutler stood up and left the office.

  * * *

  “You two getting settled in all right?” For the second time that day, Cutler dredged up his friendly-guy smile as he knocked on the open door of the single bedroom he’d assigned to Ryan.

  Fina lifted a final two pairs of socks out of Ryan’s vivid-blue suitcase and slid them into the room’s chest of drawers. “We’re good,” she replied brightly, lifting her eyes past the sheriff’s massive chest and looking up into those damned gorgeous aqua eyes of his. She glanced back at Ryan who was sitting on the bare mattress with his legs crossed and playing with one of his electronic games. “Ryan can see the cows from his window. Can’t you, Ryan?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah.” Ryan jumped off the bed and crossed over to the window. It looked like he was making sure the cattle were still there. “They yours, Cutler?”

  “It’s Sheriff Powell, Ryan,” Fina corrected him gently. She grabbed the hem of his striped t-shirt and tucked it back into his shorts.

  “Cutler will do fine,” the big sheriff said with a grin and his grin only dimmed a little when Nath stepped around him and walked into the room. His brother was carrying an armful of bed linens.

  “Let’s get you squared away, big guy,” Nathaniel said with that easy, natural charm of his that Cutler had always envied. “Maybe we’ll take a trip out to the barn after. Check out the rabbits and shit...” His vivid, blue eyes dimmed when Fina shot him a look.

  “Um, rabbits and other animals,” Nath corrected himself quickly. He was saved from further embarrassment when the police radio hanging from Cutler’s belt started squawking.

  “What?” Cutler barked harshly into the radio as he stepped out into the hallway.

  “Take one too many grumpy pills today, Sheriff?” Officer Suzanne Young’s annoyingly pert and saucy voice grated on Cutler...even more than usual.

  “I am down to one last nerve today, Young, and you’re on it,” he growled in warning. His dispatcher took the hint.

  “Report of an altercation at Townline Roadhouse. Otto called it in himself. Said if you didn’t haul ass down there and give him some value for his hard-earned tax dollars, he was going to break out the Woodinator and take care of it himself.”

  Otto was always too damn quick to pull out that monster baseball bat of his whenever the customers got rowdy. “Any report of weapons?” Cutler asked curtly. He crossed over to Fina, touched her cheek then left. Whatever his dispatcher’s response was, Cutler was gone before Fina heard it.

  “He’ll be fine. He’s good at his job. Real good,” Nath assured them. He grinned and for the first time, Fina noticed how much he looked like his brother.

  “So is it just Nath or does it stretch on after that?” she asked with a humor that felt a little awkward after two weeks of disuse. She grabbed a sheet and started making Ryan’s bed.

  “Nathaniel,” he answered with another grin. “You just gotta accept the fact that if you give a boy a name with three syllables, the world will be hell bent on shortening it down to one for the length of his days.”

  Fina laughed quietly and this time, it didn’t feel as awkward. Nath stood on the other side of the bed and helped her tuck the sheet in. He had dimples on either side of his perpetually happy mouth and his eyes were blue, not aqua. She remembered that Cutler didn’t have dimples. The two, really cute features balanced each other off, making both brothers equally, devastatingly handsome.

  “Do you work, Nath?”

  “I do indeed, pretty lady,” he said then tapped Ryan on the shoulder. He handed him a pillow and a pillowcase. “Pitch in here, big guy.” Ryan put his game down without argument. “I’m the President and CEO of Green Mountain Eco Tours.”

  “Eco tourism is very hot these days.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Nath agreed happily. “We operate mostly in the summer months. When kids are out of school,” he added with a nod in Ryan’s direction. “Actually, you’re lucky you caught me at home today. I just finished taking a group of Japanese businessmen on an overnight hike and don’t go back out until tomorrow morning.” He tucked in the top sheet then tossed a cotton blanket and a thin quilt on top. “Ready to see the sights?” he offered with expansive good humor and took the badly covered pillow out of Ryan’s hands. He dropped it onto the bed. “You know the best way to see them?” he asked Ryan with a fiendish twinkle in his eye. “Upside down.”

  “Nooo,” Ryan squealed and giggled as he tried to evade the Beta’s grasp. He spun away, grinned and swerved to the left.

  Ryan’s small body telescoped his moves. So did the direction of his laughing eyes.

  Nath let him dodge away, twice, making a mock grasp at empty air a second after Ryan moved. Then he scooped the six-year-old up, wrapped a meaty hand around Ryan’s skinny ankles and held him upside down. He ran off down the hall, bellowing like a banshee with Ryan screaming in delight.

  * * *

  Cutler was glad to see pieces of the steak on Fina’s plate actually making it into her mouth. Nath had barbecued—something even Cutler admitted his little brother did well—and they were sitting at the table on the back porch. Ryan was sitting on the local phone book so he could see over his plate and was shoveling forkfuls of baked potato, baby carrots, meat and salad into his mouth faster than Fina could cut them for him.

  “Slow down, buddy,” Cutler cautioned and handed him a napkin. “There’s plenty more where that came from.” He refilled Ryan’s milk glass and felt his mouth turn down into what his mother had always told him was his serious line. He looked at Fina. “You had enough money to keep him fed on the road?” he asked quietly. Ryan was too busy eating and looking at the cattle to pay much attention to adult conversation.

  Fina exhaled deliberately and set her fork down. Cutler was Alpha—he’d
insist on knowing his people were provided for. “Yes. I think his body’s just gearing up for a growth spurt.” She hesitated. “Before I answer that further, I need to know what your financial expectations will be if I join your pack.”

  In Cutler’s mind—and he could tell from the look on his face, in Nath’s mind too—Fina was already a member of their pack. Ryan too. Just like she was their mate and the boy their responsibility. Maybe even a surrogate son. “Explain,” Cutler said in that no-nonsense, demanding tone of his. He took a sip of the red wine his brother had served with dinner. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Fina had chosen milk instead.

  “I mean that my father was Alpha of our pack. The terms of his will gave me sole control of the pack’s assets as surviving heir. His personal ones too. I...I emptied the piggy bank before I left Tennessee. The rogues may have rightful claim to our lands by pack law but that doesn’t entitle them to the money,” she added with enough verve that one of Cutler’s dark brows shot up. He and his brother exchanged a look.

  “Accepted,” Cutler said curtly. He set his wine glass down. “You had his will probated?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well if human law says it’s your money and the bank accepted that, that’s good enough. Pack law deals with land, inter-band relations and turning of humans only. It leaves money in the hands of individuals and the businesses they run.”

  Fina nodded. “Thank you.” A part of her had started to worry she hadn’t been in the right by taking all of the pack’s assets. “He’ll have a number of financial needs before he reaches adulthood,” Fina said, nodding in Ryan’s direction. “His education—mine too.”

  “Yours?” Nath asked. He wiped the residue off his plate with a slice of bread then popped it into his mouth. “I never asked how old you were.”