Still, the girl adamantly refused to utter a single word. So I changed gears. “I’m not saying you killed that ram. But even if you did, I’d understand being scared that you can’t keep your wolf in line. After all, I’m scared too.”
My stomach knotted with tension as I admitted to a dilemma I hadn’t even felt comfortable sharing with my life partner. “I don’t know what’s going on with my wolf right now,” I continued, my words becoming quieter as the admissions became harder to bear. “She keeps making me do things my human self doesn’t want to do. And last night I just blacked out. For all I know, she took over and killed the sheep.”
I’d meant the final sentence as a consolation for a girl whose cheeks were chapped and red from crying. But a shiver ran through me as I realized I’d also been speaking the honest truth. Had I been the one to risk our clan’s safety by running wild in lupine form? Was I the one who’d brought Stormwinder down on all of our backs?
Lupe sniffed loudly, wiping her nose on the parka’s shoulder before slipping her arms into the sleeves at last. Then she gazed over at me with eyes clearer than I’d ever seen them before. “You know that’s pretty normal, right?” she asked. “I mean strong wolves do that. And you’ve been trying to give your wolf her head lately. No wonder she’s acting as if you were a teenager. I’ll bet you never had puberty power struggles at the normal time since your wolf was so weak. So now she’s just pushing her boundaries, feeling you out to see how far she can go.”
“Huh.” I hadn’t considered the option that what I was going through was merely normal—if belated—shifter puberty rather than the first symptoms of losing my mind. “You think?”
My companion shrugged. “Well, I mean, I’m no expert. But it makes sense.” She paused, her momentary happiness fading as she remembered the issues she was also dealing with. “I think that’s what happened to me last night,” she admitted, shoulders hunching up a bit, but not as high or as hard as they’d been when I first arrived. “I was just so angry at everybody.”
And afraid, I added silently, in my own head alone. Yeah, it would have been freaky for the kid to go running with our pack moments after being berated by her alpha.
“So, I dunno, I think I lost it,” my charge continued. “I don’t actually remember killing that stupid sheep. But maybe I did? I know I left the pack and just drifted for a while, then I came home to make sure you were alright.”
Despite my reservations about trying to raise a damaged bloodling, I couldn’t resist smiling and running a grateful hand across her matted hair. “You were worried about me?”
“Well, duh. You’re the only alpha I’ve got,” she muttered under her breath. But her cheeks were twitching as her mouth fought her brain’s moratorium on smiles.
“I don’t have to be your only alpha, you know,” I countered. “Hunter’s ready and willing to take on the job. It would be easier for everyone if you accepted him and accepted our pack.”
I expected her to shoot me down the way she always had before, but this time the teenager merely shrugged. “Yeah, you’re probably right. And about that sheep—maybe I could spend the rest of winter break here so you can keep an eye on me and I’ll keep an eye on you? The buddy system?”
“I’d like that,” I agreed. And as the weight fell off my shoulders, I could feel my wolf stretching against the lining of my stomach, her enthusiasm equal to my own. Just as I’d decided to fully embrace my role of alpha, damn the consequences, Lupe was finally, willingly, entering our pack.
Chapter 9
After a full day of upheaval, I almost didn’t believe it when Wolf Landing returned to its regular routine without a whimper for the rest of the week. Sure, we’d accumulated an uninvited house guest—Grey, who’d been left behind to “assess the pack’s willingness and ability to manage community expectations.” A rental car had been dropped off for the enforcer’s convenience, and he took off at random intervals to do who-knows-what.
And yet, despite his other duties, Grey still managed to hang around the community house whenever Hunter was present, proving that two uber-alphas added up to one too many for our small pack. To his credit, my mate held onto his temper with an iron fist and the rest of us learned to grin and bear the intrusion.
Meanwhile, Lupe and I wasted far too many calories spooking at our own shadows, uncertain whether or not we’d been the ones to slaughter Silas Lerner’s high-dollar ram. The evidence at the scene of the crime had proven inconclusive, with hundreds of pointy hooves trampling out paw prints or intriguing aromas and leaving us with no more information than what we’d begun with. So our pack pulled together the cash to pay off the farmer just in case we were responsible, then Lupe and I admitted that none of us might ever discover who’d killed the darned thing.
The trick, I decided, was ensuring the error never happened again. Which would have been significantly easier had Celia not signed me up to lead a doggy obedience class at the Arborville elementary school...with seven of our best-behaved bloodling adolescents in tow as ambassadors for our supposed rescue operation.
Five days until All-Pack and I’m training bloodlings to heel, I thought, trying hard not to laugh aloud at my own actions. So much for building alliances and prepping my wolf to stand up against stronger pack leaders. Maybe we should try agility training next?
“Sit,” I told the four-legged members of my team as the first one-body students began filtering into the gymnasium that evening. I hadn’t spent much time in town since Celia’s house had burned down four months earlier, and now the tension in my shoulders resembled overstretched bowstrings—hard and taut and near to breaking. The townies hadn’t been exactly welcoming when I’d initially arrived, and I wasn’t so sure that leading a pro bono obedience class was going to make a huge difference in their analysis of Celia’s prodigal daughter either.
But the first woman who stepped out of the starlit night greeted me much more warmly than she had when I’d staked out her cafe during my first foray into town life. “I’m so glad you’re running this thing,” Samantha said...seconds before her tremendous malamute took off across the room, yanking her mistress along behind her. “Twinkletoes is a little hard to handle,” the young woman huffed as she flew, “and I could use some pointers.”
Just when I thought for sure the waitress would end up learning whether slick floor tiles could create rug burn, she planted her feet and pulled backwards with all of her might. Twinkletoes coughed against the constriction of her collar for a moment, then settled right down.
“She’s a beauty,” I said half-heartedly. I mean, yes, Twinkletoes did possess the stunning build and blue eyes typical of her breed. But she reminded me far too much of the bloodlings currently sniffing at the air and trying to decide whether Sit meant sit-down-for-thirty-seconds-then-you’re-free-to-play or plant-your-butt-on-the-ground-and-don’t-move-or-else.
“Stay,” I tossed over my shoulder for good measure, hoping the command would at least alert my two-legged pack members that they needed to pretend to be restraining their buddies now that real students were filtering in. The bloodlings themselves, I suspected, were a lost cause.
“Beautiful, stubborn, and hard-headed,” Samantha agreed, knocking one fist lightly against the malamute’s skull. She and I both grinned as the cranial cavity echoed like a ripe watermelon.
And, with that shared moment, I decided I liked the young woman and her problematic dog after all. “She’ll fit in perfectly,” I agreed.
But before I could figure out how to make an overture of friendship toward a one-body, a seemingly innocuous little girl walked shyly through the door in the wake of several other townspeople. Instantly, my sleepy wolf went into high alert and my human muscles tensed in sympathy.
The newcomer was as cute as a button, as polite as a debutante...and the most trouble I’d ever seen wrapped up in such a small package. I wasn’t very good at scenting out human relationships, but a glance was enough to inform me that this was Amanda’s granddaughter. After all, the
kid boasted perfectly brushed and styled hair while she was dressed in a smaller but otherwise identical version of the pantsuit the mayor had been wearing when she unlocked the building for us half an hour earlier.
“That’s a disaster waiting to happen,” Grey said as he stepped up behind my back. And I should have agreed since the enforcer’s words echoed my own sentiments. But, instead, my wolf growled her resentment quietly enough for Samantha to miss but just loudly enough for our unwanted companion to hear.
The trouble was that my animal half and I were both losing patience with the omnipresent enforcer. He never had anything but snarkiness to offer to our mate and his presence in the heart of the retreat we’d so carefully built for ourselves was tough to stomach.
Currently, my wolf was even more on edge since Grey’s annoying refusal to remain behind at Wolf Landing an hour earlier meant that Hunter had bowed out of the current expedition in an effort to keep the peace. As a result, my voice was snippy when I replied. “She seems perfectly nice,” I countered, not bothering to turn my head to meet the uber-alpha’s eyes.
“Not the meat,” Grey corrected, his tone as smooth as if he hadn’t just insinuated that Amanda’s granddaughter was good for nothing but eating. “The dog.”
For the first time, my attention zeroed in on the pet cradled in the girl’s skinny arms. The toy poodle was just as carefully groomed as its mistress, a shiny pink bow around its closely cropped neck taking the place of a collar. And even as I raised my eyebrows at Grey’s assessment, the tiny dog proved him right. Leaping out of the little girl’s arms, it took off like a heat-seeking missile directly toward my pack of grounded bloodlings.
The poodle yapped as it ran, so it wasn’t as if my pack mates couldn’t see it coming. But what exactly were they supposed to do when faced with a canine approximately the size of a real dog’s chew toy?
Leave it alone, I thought as loudly as I could, hoping the bloodlings were tuned into my channel of the pack bond, despite the general static and poor reception that generally lay between us. They and I were all well aware that Hunter was their true alpha and that they obeyed me more out of a sense of kindness than through pure lupine instinct. Still, to my relief, the stolid seven did stand their ground this time around...or rather, they sat it.
Well, they obeyed me until the poodle’s beady little eyes settled on gentle Calla as the easiest prey. Then, with the grace of an acrobat, the mayor’s pet pushed off the floor and soared toward its target, latching onto the bloodling’s throat with what I knew were needle-sharp fangs.
To her credit, Calla tried to remain stoic. But despite being fully grown in wolf form, the kid was only five in human years. Could you really blame her for letting out a yelp?
No, the attacked bloodling was well within her rights to complain. Sinsa, on the other hand, should have known better than to react as she did. The calm and stable bloodling who had easily taken on the role of Hunter’s second in command growled once nearly too low to hear...then the air filled with ozone as she prepared to shift.
***
What was I thinking when I chose to bring a thirteen-year-old bloodling to a human meet-and-greet? I berated myself as I sprinted toward the least predictable members of my pack. Sinsa was only six months younger than Lupe, which was plenty old enough to enjoy her first transition by werewolf standards. In fact, Lupe had found her human feet at nearly the exact same age.
Well, I knew what I’d been thinking...even if I now wished I could go back in time and slap myself upside the head in order to knock loose a bit of that deep-seated stupidity. Sinsa was the protector of the pack. She was slow to anger, fast to nurture, and had always made the other bloodlings feel safe. Of course she was the first one I’d thought of when Celia came to me with excitement in her eyes and an ill-fated plan on her tongue.
Unfortunately, a werewolf’s first shift was generally uncontrolled and uncontrollable, so no amount of good nature was going to impact the events to come. And as the scent of ozone grew stronger while static electricity attempted to suck the hair away from my head, I had to admit that Sinsa might have already reached the point of no return.
This was it. The disaster Grey was waiting to record, proof that our pack was too dangerous to be permitted to settle close to a one-body community. Not only would Sinsa’s shift mark the end of our bid for territorial rights, she was also poised to write the death sentences for twenty-odd humans currently chatting with their neighbors as they waited for class to begin.
I tried to console myself with the knowledge that the pets, at least, would be left alive. After all, poodles and malamutes couldn’t sell the story of werewolf mayhem to the press. Unfortunately, the mitigating factor did nothing to ease the massive hole forming in the pit of my belly.
It was a lost cause, but I had to at least try to stop the train wreck before it left the station. So my feet continued to pound their way across the slick floor, but I closed my eyes as I ran and concentrated on the pack bond that tied me to the other shifters in the room. The one sure way to reel Sinsa in would be through the sharp slap of an alpha compulsion, and I was the only pack leader available to do the deed.
Time to focus and see how much alpha ability I can muster.
To my delight, a web of silvery strands immediately sprang up in the darkness behind my closed eyelids. Since I’d last tried this trick, my wolf and I had bonded more fully and now she seemed willing to lend her assistance to tasks that had previously been constrained by my half-shifter status.
With both wolf and human brains united, in fact, Lupe immediately became visible as a brilliant spark hovering above the ground, our formerly tenuous connection having solidified overnight into a tether nearly as vibrant as the one that bound me to my absent mate. Almost as hefty were the illuminated ropes that connected me and my original pack members, all of whom were converging on Sinsa’s location with the same single-minded intent my wolf and I currently acted upon.
Or I assumed Ginger and company were converging upon Sinsa’s location. Because the seven bloodlings at the center of the room were entirely invisible from a pack-bond perspective. Instead, a sea of darkness marked the location, as if Hunter’s rescuees were one-bodies or members of a different clan entirely.
I dropped the invisible net as I opened my eyes, half hoping that somehow the bloodlings had ushered themselves out of sight in the interim. Surely I hadn’t been lax enough to lead seven adolescent werewolves into one-body territory when we lacked pack-bond connections entirely?
Unfortunately, the view that met my eyes was very much the same as the one I’d blocked out only seconds earlier. The pesky poodle was still gnawing at Calla’s throat in search of a jugular while five other bloodlings whined in distress. Nearby, Sinsa lay panting on the ground, her shift drawing inexorably closer by the moment.
Half hidden by long, silver fur, in fact, I could make out a hint of human toenails forming on the bloodling’s hind feet. The youngster’s tail was visibly shrinking as her ears receded into her skull. And the zing of electricity in the air was so strong I half expected lightning to gather along the ceiling of the gymnasium then coalesce to strike us all down.
Might be better than the alternative, my wolf suggested. Still, she stretched her spine and leapt upwards to join with my human consciousness as we prepared our mild alpha powers for the task at hand.
The wolf was single-minded, but my own mental acuity was splintered by the reality of the scene before us. It had been so easy to focus my attention on Lupe over the last couple of weeks since she was the squeaky wheel who required the grease. But how had I failed to realize that Calla and company’s perfect behavior had more to do with their hero-worship of Hunter than it did with their connection to anyone else? Without a pack bond, would my meek alpha compulsion even manage to lift a single hair on Sinsa’s gradually morphing head?
Still, I had to at least try. So I took a deep breath as my wolf raised her chin into a silent howl. Then, together, we yelled as
loudly as we could down the pack bond.
Stop!
Vaguely, I caught the more integral members of my pack wincing, their feet planting into the ground despite the urgency of their wish to help. Gentle Calla must have at least sensed something because she stopped moving her head fitfully from side to side and instead sat stoically still as the poodle bit down yet harder against her throat.
But the bloodling at whom I’d aimed my command didn’t even flicker an eyelash. Instead, the air began to hum just beneath a human-discernible wavelength and a shimmer of energy created a foggy haze along Sinsa’s lupine spine.
Command or no command, the bloodling had reached the point of no return. She was going to shift.
Chapter 10
Reprieve came from an unexpected source. One moment, Grey was leaning against the wall, bored by the entire event. The next moment, my teeth began to chatter as the auditorium filled with a gust of wintry chill.
“Who left the door open?” a one-body asked loudly, bringing the babble around us to an abrupt halt. Just what we needed—for the entire audience of pet owners to start paying attention at the critical moment when I itched to keep them all profoundly in the dark.
Meanwhile, Amanda’s granddaughter finally broke free of the fear that had frozen her feet in place. “Fluffy!” she screeched, flinging herself into the middle of the pack of disordered werewolves, one of whom was poised to become an entirely naked teenager in short order.
In response, Fluffy growled around his mouthful of hair while Calla whimpered a little more loudly. But to my surprise, the electricity sparking through the gymnasium lessened in intensity as Grey stepped out of the shadows and paced intently toward the transitioning bloodling.
Only then did I realize the alternative solution that had slipped my mind as I focused on the alpha compulsion I’d been unable to make stick. A stronger werewolf often guided a youngster through her first shift...and the same trick could be applied in reverse to halt a transformation occurring at an inconvenient time and place.
Wolf Landing (Alpha Underground Book 3) Page 6
