by Lynn Red
“Seems stupid,” he continued. “I mean, why do I need a big model of myself? I’m right here, baby! Everybody who wants to see Dane Somerset in all his glory can see him right here!”
The fact that His Royal Highness the would-be alpha was sitting around in a tank top and torn sweatpants didn’t seem to affect his ego any. Our whole plan was slightly stupid. Get him to make the statue of himself, which would hopefully convince the rest of the pack how dangerous it would be to have this psycho as an alpha.
It was a long shot, but to be honest, every shot we had was like hitting a bull’s eye at a hundred yards with a non-compound bow. In the snow. With a lot of wind in your face.
Then again, if werewolves took their independence as seriously as Jake seemed to think? Maybe convincing Dane he was the next best thing to Ramses the Great coming back to life and walking the planet would work.
“It’s not that you need it. It’s that you deserve it. Think about all the kings and the pharaohs and the emperors and—”
A smile spread across his lips. This is going to be easier than I thought.
“I get what you’re saying. Great kings, great alpha. But I don’t know if I’m quite ready for this step. I mean, I still do have to actually take control of the pack. It won’t take much effort, except that my obnoxious brother refusing to honor the challenge means I have to fight instead of just moving into the mansion.”
What I wanted to say is that Jake doesn’t need to fight, or move into a mansion, or even posture at all. All he has to do is lead and people listen. I decided that maybe taunting this idiot wasn’t the best idea. Looking back on it, I wondered where the idea for that gorilla analogy came from, but damn if it wasn’t genius.
“How much interaction did you have with the human world?” I asked, seemingly from out of nowhere. I’d slowly been testing my boundaries with Dane. At first he was really prickly and kind of defensive whenever I’d ask anything, but after a couple of days he started opening up and letting me, you know, talk, without permission.
He shrugged. “Not much. Well, aside from the hunting I did when I was away. Have to stay on top of the food chain and all that.”
My stomach turned. Just knowing that he was some kind of half-crazed murderer was bad enough, but when he started talking about how wolves were superior and humans were weak or whatever, it really made me want to put a knife in Dane’s temple instead of pretending to be his loyal and subjugated woman trophy.
“Why?” he asked a moment later.
“Well, there’s this thing people say. Psychologists, marketing people. They say that you shouldn’t act like the job you have. You should act like the one you want.”
I had to change it a little from “dress for the job you want” since he got sensitive if I critiqued his fashion choices. All he needed was a big, gold male-symbol pendant to complete the look. I smirked to myself, but killed it so he wouldn’t see. I had to oversell this thing like hell if he was going to buy it.
At first I’d tried subtlety, but as it happened, Dane’s mind – as fierce and strong and powerful as he was – had about the level of subtlety as a locomotive that went off the tracks and then fell off a cliff. And then hit a tree and a nitroglycerine truck.
“So... make this clear for me. Human psychologists think you shouldn’t act like you want your job, you should act like you want a different one?”
It was really hard not to sigh. I could roll my eyes silently, as Dane’s gaze was fixed on the episode of Antiques Roadshow we managed to pick up with only mild image distortion, but if I sighed, he’d hear, and then he’d go on another tear about respect or whatever 1950s male bullshit he could think up.
I thought for a moment, carefully choosing my words for maximum deference. “Close,” I’m talking to him like a fifth grader. “What they mean is that if you’re not happy where you are – like how you are waiting to be the alpha – then you have to act like you already are that. People, or wolves, or whatever, they’ll start to think of you as already having that position. Make sense?”
“Yeah. Hey! Look at this hick on TV! He found a bunch of ugly paintings and thinks they’re worth something. What a moron.”
He stood up and flicked off the set.
The ugly paintings he’d chuffed at were a Monet, a Van Gogh sketch and a couple of things I couldn’t name off the top of my head but knew were from the same period. I’d shoot myself if I had to deal with this kind of snorty, sweaty creature for the rest of my life, and I’m no snob.
Dane sighed and sat back in a comically small recliner. It squeaked a little under his weight. “What’ll it look like?”
“The statue?”
I stared at him blankly for a moment, not realizing he actually asked that. “Well... it’ll be of you. I can make it really big.”
There wasn’t a lot of time, I knew, so I’d somehow have to pass his brother’s sketched out statue for his own. Dane would almost certainly notice, but maybe he’d like it even more if... yeah, he definitely would.
“I can have it done in a few days. Your brother was having one done, but he’s,” I laughed. “Well you know how irrelevant Jake is,” and then gave another psh! for emphasis. “May as well use it for some real purpose, you know?”
The idea of slighting his brother apparently appealed to Dane just the way I figured it would. “Could you have it done in time for the marking?”
I accidentally let out a sigh. The official ceremony was in four days – that coming Saturday night. That was when it’d all come down. If I went through with the whole thing, it would be official – Jake would be exiled, Barney and Jeannie would be set free from their house arrest, and I would be vita to a werewolf alpha so filled with machismo that it smelled a little.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I said, “I can have it done. But I’ll have to work all the time. I won’t be around to make your meals.”
He started growling.
“But Dane! Think about how embarrassing that’ll be for your brother. Think about the look on his face when we pull back the sheet and show your statue that replaced his. He will absolutely flip out.”
“And it’ll leave no question who the boss is,” he was scratching his chin, deep in thought. “He’ll look like such an idiot.”
I nodded. “He will look like a complete idiot. And then you can take over, you can start your war, whatever it is you want to do. You’ll be in charge, Dane. You’ll be the alpha and you’ll have the company and you’ll have me.”
When I said that, he shot his eyes in my direction. “I’ll have you now, if I want you.”
This, I hadn’t considered. Before then he hadn’t really shown much interest in consummating our relationship, but I might have accidentally set him off. “Aren’t we supposed to wait until the marking is official before we...”
“You didn’t wait with my brother,” he said, a growl tickling Dane’s throat. “You let him ravish you straight away. Why should I have it any different? Why should I have any less?”
Sweat popped up on my forehead. Thinking quickly, I came up with a thousand excuses, but none of them would do much more than insult Dane. And that would be a bad thing. “Tradition,” I spat, more for something to say than anything else, but as soon as it was out of my mouth, I was fairly proud of myself.
He eyed me sideways, narrowing his eyes to slits. “What do you care about tradition, girl? You’re not one of us, what the hell does it matter to you?”
I knew that I was treading a dangerous line. I knew that if I screwed up, I’d lose all the headway I’d made, and the plan would fall straight through into the toilet. And if that happened, I’m certain time was too short to come up with anything else.
“Because they should,” I said, stalling for time. “I’m going to be the vita of the pack, right? The life and all that? I’m supposed to know things like traditions and lore and I’m supposed to care.”
I stepped closer to him, my heart thudding in my chest. “That is right, isn’
t it? You need a good, loyal vita don’t you?”
Draping my hands over his neck, I almost choked as I sat down on his lap, draping my legs across his. I hoped I could convince him, but if I had to, I was ready to do whatever he wanted to keep him convinced.
A haunting smile crept across Dane’s full lips. “I do,” he said. “But I also know what I want. I should have what I want, shouldn’t I? I’m the alpha, after all. Why should I have to wait?”
I thought for another short second. “Because if you don’t respect the traditions, then your brother doesn’t have to honor them either. And as far as me and him goes, that was before I knew about any of this.” Not that it would have changed anything, I wanted to add, but somehow restrained myself.
That gave him pause. A finger curled into my hair. The little tug at my scalp sent a wave of goosebumps down the side of my face and underneath my shirt. “How would anyone know?” he kissed me under the chin. I was about to vomit. “It’s just us in here, isn’t it? You gonna go telling someone what we do in our spare time?”
At that point, I started considering options. There was a gun somewhere in the house, but that wouldn’t help much. There was an umbrella by the front door, and then a little toolkit under the sink. I couldn’t hurt this idiot if I had a car and a machine gun. A toolkit and a half-broken umbrella weren’t going to do a damn bit of good.
I curled my fingertips against his cheek, letting my nails rasp across his stubble. If I couldn’t think of something, and fast, then...
“I would know,” I said. Of all the long shots, this was the king. I was assuming he had any kind of feelings at all for me, and would concern himself in any way with that. “It would bother me. I’ve never done anything right in my life, Dane,” I kissed his cheek, hoping to woo him with a mixture of my sad tale and gentle touching.
“And this is?”
“It didn’t start that way,” I said. “But now that we’re doing this, I want to make the most of it, you know? I want to do everything right and be the best vita I can be. It’s important to me that I jump into this whole werewolf thing without screwing it up. You can wait a couple days to give me all that rough, hard loving you want to give me, right? I’ll owe you.”
I bit my lip, trying to look as innocent and helpless as possible. From the way he’d stopped groping at me, I thought it was working.
“You being for real?” he asked. “I don’t get why you’d care this much, but...”
I kissed him again, tenderly on the lips. “Thank you,” I whispered, and crawled off his lap before he had time to reconsider. My soul heaved a heavy sigh of relief as I left his heat behind, and stood. “I know you want this, I know you need it. But just trust me. I... I mean it. I really appreciate you letting me have this right.”
“Yeah,” he said dismissively. “So when do we make this statue?” A laugh escaped Dane’s lips. “I can’t wait to see the look on that idiot’s face when he sees this.”
Something just occurred to me. “Dane, why is Jake going to be at the marking? Don’t you think that’s just inviting trouble?”
“We can start tomorrow,” he announced. “Early. About noon. As for him being there, how else is he going to officially renounce his title and give up his claim? This is how it goes, babe. You like all these traditions, you’ll like this. You know what happens to an alpha who renounces his authority, right?”
The smile that came across Dane’s lips told me everything, but it still made my blood run cold. “Exile?” I guessed, hopefully. I still wasn’t sure this plan was going to work, not at all, so I’d been telling myself that absolute worst-case, Jake would just be packed off somewhere to live out his life as a grocery clerk or something.
“He dies,” Dane said, relishing both the words, and apparently, the way I reacted. “You like wolf traditions; this is a good place to start. We mark each other, he kneels, and then... I take his head.”
I swallowed, choking down the bile that bubbled up inside me. “Oh,” I said weakly. “Well, um... what if he tries to start trouble?” My voice cracked as I spoke.
“Seriously?” he asked with a smile. “I love trouble.”
-18-
“This is really happening right now?”
-Delilah
“Get up!” Dane was shouting, carrying on. I opened my eyes and pushed the blanket off my head. I liked to hide in the corner of the bed and wrap myself in one of my favorite blankets – a white fuzzy one – to help convince myself that I was somehow safe from him. “Wake up!”
“Huhn?” I blinked in the darkness. For a second, I wasn’t sure where I was. A whole list of fantasies rolled through my mind before I felt his heavy, hot hand on my shoulder, shaking me out of my imaginary security. “What is it?”
“I said get up, you get up.”
“Okay,” I said, shaking my head. “Okay, all right. I’m just half asleep. Do you need something?”
Dane shifted positions on the bed, so that his back was against my thigh where I was sitting on the edge of the bed. “My shoulder,” he said. “Right along my neck. I need you to rub it. It’s sore.”
“I, uh...”
“Now,” he growled. “Rub.”
I blinked again and yawned loudly. Without saying another word, I squeezed the massive trapezius muscle, running my hands long the line that separated it from the next muscle. He was groaning, moaning, and making all kinds of awful noises. As I rubbed and massaged and squeezed, the only thing I could think was how good it would feel to put this guy in his place. To give him what was coming to him.
It would feel so good to see him make a complete fool of himself and get thrown out of his own pack once and for all.
That is, if the plan worked.
Otherwise... I shuddered as I remembered the relish Dane had when he said “then I take his head” and a cold chill shot through me. Morning could not possibly come soon enough.
When the giant wolf started snoring, I slid out from underneath him and covered his body up so hopefully he’d keep right on snoozing. I wondered what Barney and Jeannie were doing... what Jake and George were doing.
“Sleeping, I’m sure,” I whispered. Just the sound of a voice that wasn’t Dane’s gave me a little comfort.
Of course, as tightly wound as I was, as panicky as I felt, I wasn’t the one who was going to die in four... three days now. I decided right then and there to stop doubting our crazy plan. If there’s only one chance for something to work, then... well, it just has to work.
*
“This is it?” Dane said, chuffing a laugh. “I thought you said you had a business, not a shack in a warehouse district. You’ll be taken care of. You won’t need to pretend to know how to run a business. Don’t worry.”
His graceful, uncaring misogyny had stopped being surprising, but it still pissed me off. I bit my lip to keep from saying anything that’d give away exactly how tenuous his grasp on me was. The plan’s going to work, I kept repeating inside my own head. It’s going to work and everything will be fine.
“This, yeah, Dane, this is it,” I said, turning the key in my old lock and taking a deep breath of the aroma of old plaster, paints, and dust from a thousand different kinds of stone that welcomed me home. That the lock turned far more easily than it normally did wasn’t lost on me. “This is where I made my living. Although, I guess that I won’t be doing much of that anymore.”
He didn’t catch the sadness in my voice, if he was even capable of catching sadness, or capable of anything resembling human emotion. “Nah,” was all he said, and then, “not any need for that. Pack money is big money,” a moment later.
“Anyway, back here is my stuff,” I grabbed his hand, leading him back to the studio part. I cast a longing gaze at Jeannie’s desk, remembering her easy jokes, her snarky sweetness and her undying loyalty. That, of course, made me think about the reason for all this – Jake and his damn brother.
In that flicker of a moment, I saw something that wasn’t supposed to be t
here. A letter? “Weird,” I said, reaching for it. “Must be a bill.”
Of course it wasn’t. And of course, I also knew without even looking, who it was from. But how had he gotten in? And why take the risk? He was well aware that I’d be bringing Dane here. Maybe he realized Dane would be so bloated with pride that he wouldn’t give the first shit about anything but himself.
The only response from my fiancé was a grunt and a laugh. I can’t wait to be rid of this jackass.
“Come on back, I’ll look at this later.” I slipped the note into the inside pocket on my jacket. The crinkle of the soft envelope thrilling against my skin, I took a deep breath. I could almost smell his sweat and his musk. I could almost feel his kiss on my neck, his fingers on my skin. But I had to put that feeling away. I had to bury the good feelings and embrace the bad ones.
I had to pretend, just for a little while longer, I told myself – just a couple days. That’s nothing to trade for a lifetime, right? That’s what I told myself anyway, and for a time at least it worked. I swallowed my pride, swallowed my emotions, and watched Dane strut – actually strut, in a way I haven’t seen outside professional wrestling shows – back to the studio.
On his way he kicked over some piled up magazines, and snatched a flowerpot that I’d made a few weeks before. “What a waste of space,” he said as he tossed it to the ground and watched it shatter. “All this crap built up everywhere. Humans are so ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” I said, giving no clue as to what it was, I thought, that was the waste of space. “We certainly are.”
The trip back to my studio was short and thankfully uncommented upon by Dane’s wit. As soon as I opened the door – which had been repaired; it used to stick when you slid it – I was surprised, but not really, to see that all of my makeshift tools had been replaced.
Holy shit, I had to force myself to keep quiet. A Roto-Mate 2000. I’ve wanted one of these lathes forever. And the fancy lathe was far from all. All of my chisels were new, there was a new chainsaw hanging from the back for my ice sculptures, and all my brushes, aprons, and smocks had been replaced.
