by Maddy Barone
“I’ve wanted to do that for years,” he murmured. “The last time I kissed you I scared you. But I’ve dreamed of doing it again, only better. Nicer, more gentle.”
“You could have done that years ago if you’d just come back.”
The sweetness on his face vanished. His expression reverted to cool distance. “I’ve told you why I couldn’t.”
“You could have come back for a visit, but you never did, not a single time. Not even for the Grandmother’s funeral.” She hadn’t meant to sound so accusing. She softened her voice. “That was such a hard time for me. I loved that old lady like she was my own grandmother.”
A quick glance at his face showed a ripple pass over his features. Grief? “I’m sorry, Rose. I wish I could have come. My competitors would have taken advantage of my being gone to try to take control of my house and the women there.”
“The same men who tried to hurt that woman? Ms. Mary?”
“Yes, the same ones.”
Rose wondered what it would be like to live in a place like Omaha. She would hate it, of course, because of the way women were treated, but Kearney was so boring. Nothing exciting ever happened here, where the biggest social outing was viewing the arrival of the train. A twinge of guilt singed her for even thinking that. She was safe here. In Omaha she would have had to pay sixty gold for still being single for the six years since she’d turned eighteen. She looked at Sky in his city casual wear, and wondered if he would miss the excitement of Omaha.
“If you were in Omaha, what would you be doing now?”
He shook his head with a sigh. “Probably working on the house budget for October, trying to figure out how to pay for a Halloween party that will draw paying customers away from the other houses.”
Rose stifled a giggle. Sky as party coordinator? Who knew? “Who will be doing that kind of thing now? Is Ms. Mary still there?”
Sky’s face stilled into carefully bland lines. “I’ll be doing it, with Ms. Mary’s help.”
Rose stilled too. “But you’re here now, so how can you plan parties for Omaha?”
He reached for her hand. “Rose, I have to go back. The train comes through again in two days. I’ll go back on it.”
She shook him off. “Back? You just got here.”
“I have to go back to Omaha.” He used both hands now to cup her face, staring into her eyes with almost mesmerizing force. “Omaha isn’t free yet. Eighteen-year-old girls are still being forced into sexual slavery. I can’t abandon them.”
“What about me?”
He closed his eyes with an expression of pain on his face. “I’m asking you to wait for me. Just a year, maybe two. Just until the Women Acts have been abolished.” He dropped his forehead until it rested against hers. “I can’t leave the women under my protection until I know they will be safe. Please understand, Rose.”
She did. That’s what made this so hard. In only an hour he had gone from being a slick stranger to someone she thought she could like. How had that happened? “But I’ve been waiting already for eight years,” she whispered in misery. “Another two years? I don’t think I can bear to wait that long.”
“You have to,” he whispered back. “God, I wish it was different. I wish Omaha would fix itself. But it won’t. Things are coming closer to change, but not close enough for me to leave. I have to be there.”
She pulled away and stood to wrap her arms around herself. “So what then? You’ll court me, get me pregnant, and leave me? Like your brother Jimmy left his wife?”
“No! I would never do that to you.” He stood too and pulled her arms loose to take her hands. “Rose. Rose, please don’t shut me out. If I had a choice, I would stay with you always.”
Wait two more years before she had a chance to hold her own child in her arms? Longer, actually, since it would take some time to conceive and carry the baby. Maybe, if she truly loved Sky, she’d be willing to do that, but she barely knew him. In the last hour of talking with him she’d found some respect for him and the choices he’d made, but that was a long way from love. “Sky, you do have a choice. Think about this from my point of view. I’ve waited—”
“No.” His voice was gentle as he squeezed her fingers, but a touch of the smarmy slickness she hated crept in. “The world doesn’t revolve around your timetable. You’ll need to wait a little longer, princess.”
Princess? “Will I?” She was proud of the calm, cool tone of her voice. She pulled her hands back and bent to gather up the gardening tools. “No, I don’t really think so. Excuse me. I’ve spent enough time outside today.”
*
Sky watched his mate walk away from him with a torrent of swear words climbing up his throat. He jumped six inches when something bit his ankle. He rounded to see an ugly brown cat glaring at him out of narrowed eyes. “Get out of here.” He kicked at it. “Get!”
Paint’s voice came from behind him. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Rose loves that cat.”
The feline sneered up at him with an expression of disdain only a cat could produce, gave a sharp hiss, and turned to trot after Rose, tail stabbing up like a one finger salute. Sky clenched his hands into fists at his sides.
“I hate cats,” he muttered.
Paint snorted. “Every wolf hates cats. It’s the canine in us, I guess. But if you want Rose to accept you, you better accept her cat.”
Sky brushed the thought of the cat away. “Rose didn’t listen to me,” he said in a harsh whisper. “I tried to tell her about Omaha, but she didn’t listen.”
Paint pounded a fist into his shoulder in a show of sympathy. “She did. Give her a day to let it settle.”
“That’s all I have.” He turned to look at his cousin, not caring that his wretchedness showed on his face. “I shouldn’t be here now. We finally have enough sway with some of the council to bring a proposal to a vote.”
Paint’s face sharpened. “What proposal?”
“An amendment to the Woman Acts. A woman wouldn’t be legally an adult until the age of twenty-one instead of eighteen. Instead of one hundred gold for marriage, it would be fifty, and five gold annually for the Single Status Tariff. It’s not the change we want, but it’s something, a step in the right direction.” He punched his fist into his thigh. “The hearing was yesterday afternoon, but I wasn’t there so I don’t know what the vote was. And why wasn’t I there? Because my prima donna princess of a mate couldn’t wait for me.”
“That’s bad timing,” Paint agreed. “But Rose couldn’t have known that. You never told her why you stayed in Omaha.”
Sky rounded on him. “You know why I said nothing! The mail is read in Omaha.”
“Not if you gave a letter to me when I left two years ago. You could have written whatever you wanted to and no one would have gotten the letter from me.”
A new scent told Sky Taye was coming. He shifted to watch Taye join them. The alpha’s eyebrow rose in inquiry. “That sounds reasonable,” he remarked, dark eyes steady on Sky. “You gave Quill and Paint messages for me, but nothing for Rose. Now you expect her to sit around here and wait for you for another two years.”
Sky ground his teeth. “How much did you hear?”
“All of it.”
Sky brushed dirt off the knees of his pants with hands made jerky by anger. “I hate it. If I didn’t have to go back to the city, I wouldn’t. But I have to go. You can see that, can’t you?”
Taye nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. And I can see Rose’s side too. In the past seven years, she’s watched her friends find men and have baby after baby. She holds them and she plays with them, but it’s not the same. That’s why I agreed to let her be courted. If she doesn’t want to wait two more years for you, I won’t make her.”
“Dammit! She’s my mate.”
Paint gave a humorless chuckle. “It wouldn’t be the first time a mate married someone else.”
Sky flinched for his cousin’s pain. “Sorry, Paint. But, Taye…” He trailed off, not sure what
words to use to convince the alpha to relent.
Taye raised a hand. “But I do have a solution.”
He felt his breath go out of him as hope rose. “What?”
“Take Rose with you to Omaha and court her there. I’ll send half a dozen of the Pack with you. Give it a month. If she still denies you, then send her home with the men.”
Horror crowded out the hope. “Omaha is no place for a woman.”
The alpha jerked a chin at Paint. “He told me wives are very safe in Omaha.”
“Yes.” He thought about it, hope rising and crashing. “I would need to present a certified marriage certificate, one witnessed by a church or a city official. Without one I’d have to pay the Marriage Tax. I can’t afford the damn tax.”
“Mayor Madison owes the Pack a favor.” Taye smiled. “A certificate from the Mayor of Kearney good enough for you?”
Hope rose again. He still had a niggling worry about taking his mate to an ugly place like Omaha, but the idea of having her close to him was seductive. That kiss hadn’t been anything like what he really wanted from her. In Omaha he would have the opportunity for more. “Yes. Yes, a marriage certificate signed by Mayor Madison should be fine.”
Chapter 6
Rose looked out the window at the land rushing by, discreetly trying to shift away from Sky. The train’s bench seat was so narrow there was no way to keep from pressing against him. She clenched her hands together in her lap. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into going back to Omaha with you,” she told the window. “I must have been crazy.”
Mitzi, trapped inside the closed basket at her feet, screamed agreement. From the corner of her eye she saw Sky give the basket a narrow-eyed glare before he settled against the hard back of the seat. The train’s passenger car was set up with hard wooden benches that seated two. The car could seat twenty-four. Right now it held only her and Sky, and six men from Taye’s Pack. In the bench behind them sat Stone and Paint, and on the other side of the aisle were White Horse, Snow, Standing Bear, and Mike. All of them wore jeans and shirts and either shoes or moccasins. For the Pack, it was practically formal dress. She wore jeans and a peach colored, cowl-necked blouse in cotton sateen. Lisa had designed it, so she knew it would be fashionable enough for Omaha. Her outfit was a little dressier than what she usually wore, but Sky, in another of his splendid Omaha suits, out-dressed them all. At least she wore the pearl drop earrings Sky had given her a couple of years ago for Christmas.
Paint leaned forward and patted her shoulder. “You wanted to see Omaha, didn’t you?”
She tried to smile. Her gaze slid sideways to Sky’s face. He stared at her hands. The third finger of her left hand wore a lie. He’d slid the thick gold band there yesterday evening, when he and Taye had come back from talking to Ray Madison. They’d also brought back a marriage certificate that said she and Sky had been married on September 27, 2072. “Yeah. It will be exciting to see what it’s like to live in a whorehouse.”
Sky definitely winced. “Don’t call it that.”
“Sorry. I just think using euphemisms makes it easier for the mayor to get away with what he’s doing.”
Sky’s hand fell heavy on her thigh and squeezed. “Don’t say things like that out loud,” he warned in a hard voice.
“Geez. Sorry. I won’t.”
“Listen, princess,” Sky snapped. “You didn’t have to come.”
She jerked her head around to glare at him. “I said I didn’t want to. I told you no. This was your idea.”
“It was Taye’s idea. I wanted you to wait for me at the den.”
“Wait? Why should I wait when I’ve already waited long enough?”
“Now, now, children,” Paint murmured.
She clenched her teeth on more words. She was acting like the spoiled princess Sky called her. Slowly, she exhaled a calming breath. “That’s in the past. I promised I would keep an open mind and let you court me for an entire month before I decided anything. I’m sorry I said that.”
The anger melted from his face, making it look young and unbearably handsome. He picked up her fist with one hand and stroked it into relaxation with the other before raising it to press a light kiss to her fingertips. “I’m sorry too. I’m troubled. Bringing you home with me right now could be a mistake. Omaha is likely to be volatile, and I’m worried about you.”
She glanced around at Pack members around them. “Taye sent extra manpower to keep me safe, and I have my knife.” She patted her side, where the knife rode in a sheath sewn to the inside of her jeans.
“For God’s sake,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Don’t let anyone know you have a knife. Weapons are forbidden in Omaha.”
She’d never heard any of the Pack refer to God. Sometimes Sky seemed almost foreign. “Okay, I’ll keep it quiet. All my pants have a sheath on the inside, so no one will see it.” Getting at the hilt when it was under her shirt was a little trickier, but Taye and others had drilled her in drawing her knife a few thousand times, so she was confident she could do it well. “No one will search me, will they?”
“No.” The word was edged by a wolf’s growl. “No one will lay a hand on you.”
The other men rumbled agreement. The cat yowled.
Other than a quick glare at the basket, Sky ignored Mitzi. “No, on the surface, women are protected and respected in Omaha. The City Guard is trained to respond promptly to the sound of a woman’s whistle. You’ll be given one of those when you are issued your papers. Every woman wears her whistle whenever she leaves her house in Omaha.”
Mike, never given to rash speech, spoke in his usual, thoughtful tone. “How many people live in Omaha? How many women?”
“There was a census taken two years ago,” Sky answered, and added in a slightly sardonic tone, “Omaha needs to know exactly how many women it has so it can calculate its income for the next decade.”
Mike left his seat to stand in the aisle beside Sky, lithe body swaying easily with the movement of the train. “How many?”
“Twenty-six thousand five hundred people. Two thousand and eight females.” Sky gestured. “Everybody listen up. We may as well talk now, before any other passengers board. No one in Omaha knows I have a wolf. Some people have asked, but I tell them I’m not a wolf, and the stories about the wolves are exaggerated.”
“You lie?” Stone sounded appalled.
White Horse snorted. “Everybody knows what happened when our women were stolen. The Lakota Wolf Clan is famous.”
“Yes,” Sky agreed. “But that was nearly twenty-five years ago. Memories are short, especially in the cities.”
Rose stirred. “What about the Eatery? People come from all over to eat there, and Des isn’t shy about telling them to behave or else.”
“How many visitors have actually seen him let his wolf out?”
Rose thought about that. “Probably not very many.” She thought some more. “Maybe not anybody.”
Sky nodded. “So far, I’ve convinced people that I’m from the Wolf Clan, but I don’t have a wolf, and hardly anyone else does either. So while you’re in Omaha, do not let your wolves out where you can be seen.”
Mike frowned. “Are you ashamed of your wolf?”
“No. Of course not. He’s my secret weapon. If any enemies think all I have is a popgun, they’ll be unprepared for the twelve gauge shotgun I blast them with.”
The men from the den all nodded with obvious approval. “Will it come to a fight, do you think?” Paint asked.
Sky hesitated. “It could.” He shrugged. “The poorer people in Omaha are restless. They see the mayor and the councilmen getting richer and richer off the misery of their daughters and sisters, and they resent it. If the Council vote went against us, there could be a riot. The City Guard would retaliate.”
“It would be a bloody mess,” Paint finished, frowning.
Rose shivered, remembering the television newscasts back in the Times Before. She imagined the people of Omaha massing in front of a
line of soldiers, who sent volley after volley of rifle fire into them, thinning their ranks and splashing blood onto the pavement. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
Sky’s arm closed around her shoulders. “Don’t be frightened. You’ll be safe in my house. And hopefully, it won’t come to that. We want a peaceful solution.”
There was a strange comfort in being held by him. Strange, because half the time she wanted to slap him. But right now she breathed in his scent and relaxed. “Who is ‘we’?”
He hesitated. “I have allies in the upper ranks in Omaha. I can’t tell you their names. The less you know the better.”
“Why? Will your enemies capture me and torture me to get the names?”
She meant it as a joke, but the wolves all growled. “Of course not. Calm down, everyone.” Sky kept his arm around her but raised the other to swipe fingers through his hair. “Rose will be safe in Omaha. We’ll have her registered as my wife once we arrive, and that means she can’t be touched without my permission. Even if a wife is arrested, her husband has to be notified.”
“Arrested?” Snow growled.
“No one will arrest Rose. They have no reason to. No one knows that I’m working to bring down the mayor and his laws.”
“And you have the marriage certificate to show when we go to get me registered?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She couldn’t help but glance back at Stone. His marriage certificate had been left behind two years ago at Mel’s family’s ranch in Kansas. Too bad there weren’t telephones anymore. She could have called Mel and Snake asked them to bring the certificate with them when they returned from their visit to her family. Instead Taye had sent two of his men down to Kansas to get the paper and bring it Omaha. That way when Stone claimed his wife and brought her back to the den he wouldn’t have to pay a hundred gold. And he would bring her back. They would accept and love one another. Rose would beat both of them until they did.
