Donovan shrugged at her, indicating it was her decision. With one last questing look into his bright molten gold eyes, she lifted a shoulder in a what-the-hell, gesture and stepped forward. “I’m Beth,” she told the woman.
“And I am cold,” came a reply from behind the door.
“Don’t mind that one,” the cotton-ball puff said. “She’s always cold.” With that, she closed the door in Donovan's face and led Beth to a stool by the fire, where she made herself useful by pouring tea for the ladies, at their suggestion. “That’s Marybell,” cotton-ball puff said. “And I’m Margo. We’re the ones in charge of dressing the nation,” she sighed, in a martyred way, and then grinned mischievously. “So you’re Donovan’s mate, then. How did that come about?”
“Yes,” Marybell leaned forward eagerly. “We thought it was Bradley wanted a mate, not the youngster.”
Beth glanced from Margo, with her cotton-ball hair and her face a mass of wrinkles, squinting at a piece of cloth she was weaving, to Marybell, somewhere around middle-age, with salt and pepper hair, and the brightest blue eyes she’d ever seen. They both labored over their work, bodies still lean even though they must have spent most of their time in this hut. “I’m not entirely sure,” she replied. How trustworthy were these women?
“Seemed a little fishy to me,” said Marybell. “Bradley been on his own up there in that Great House for more’n twenty years.” Her eyes glinted in the firelight. “Why all of a sudden would he want a mate?”
“Great Mother alone knows,” replied Margo, hissing as she stuck herself with a needle. “But he’s too old to want cubs at his age.” She peered at Beth, her rheumy eyes seeing far more than they should have. “Lucky escape there, if you ask me.”
Beth burst out laughing. “Well,” she told them both, feeling at ease for the first time since they’d walked into the oppressive atmosphere of the Alpha’s house. “I can’t argue with you ladies there. He’s very...intense.”
“Ha!” barked Margo. “Our Alpha was intense twenty five years ago. Now, he’s...” she slowed, seeming to consider her words carefully. “Frightening, I suppose,” she continued in a hush, her face wearing a sad and lost expression. “For those who haven’t changed his diapers as a baby, that is,” she sniffed.
“Margo, Bradley never wore diapers. None of the cubs do,” jeered Marybell.
“Tsk, you know what I mean.”
“Hmm. Anyway, Beth, isn’t it? How are you finding our Donovan?” Marybell winked, fiendishly. “Quite the looker, eh?”
“Oh yes,” Beth breathed. “He definitely is that.”
“Oh!” gasped Margo. “She’s not sold yet!” Grimacing as she pricked her finger yet again, she continued in a kindly voice. “Give him a chance, dear. He really is a sweet boy. I don’t know how Bradley managed to have such a wonderful son.” She cocked a wisp of white eyebrow. “Not that I’ll ever admit to saying so.”
~~~~
An hour later, bursting with tea and with a rear end numb from sitting on the stool, Margo informed her that she might find some younger company in the Common House. “All the young ones seem to hang around there.”
“I might find younger company,” she informed them in a sing-song voice as she waltzed out the door. “But I doubt I’ll find any company as informative. I’ll be back, ladies!”
“Bring a cushion next time,” Marybell pointed to the edges of a cushion peeking out from under her own stool. “My poor bottom hasn’t been the same since I started weaving with Margo.
Beth laughed all the way down the steps. She felt so much more at home in that tiny hut than in her own – temporary – home that she felt she was giving something up by leaving in search of younger wolves.
Spotting a young male dawdling in the opposite direction, she hurried to catch up and introduce herself. “Hi.”
He turned luminous yellow eyes in her direction and grinned at what he found. “Well hey there,” he drawled in a Southern accent of some description. “Where have you been hiding?”
“Oh, you know,” she bantered. “Hanging out with the ladies in the weaving house, drinking foul tea, having my butt numbed. I’m Beth.”
“Mickey,” he nodded. “Numbed, huh? I could try and rub some feeling back into it for you, if you’d like...” he swatted her rear in a joking manner, and she laughed. “I think Donovan might have something to say about that. You see,” she replied. “He’s my mate.”
“Ah, all the good women are taken here,” he protested good natured. “I shoulda stayed in the deep South. Plenty of wild women down there.” He winked at her, eyes like an owl’s, and invited her to join him on a stroll to the Common House.
“I was just headed there, in fact,” she replied, delighted. “I had hoped to find some younger company.”
“Yeah,” he grinned. “The weaving house don’t exactly cater for younger personalities. The Common House is this way.” He led her around a cottage and into a doorway, where he smiled at her in a friendly way and reached around her to open the door. “Whoa,” he stepped back swiftly. “You sure you’re Donovan’s mate?”
“Um, yes, I think I know his name by now,” she smirked.
“Well, okay then.” But he didn’t look convinced. Damn Gareth and his stupid damn scent marker! She’d have to be careful to keep some space between herself and the rest of this pack until she had Donovan’s scent marker on her skin.
Every head seemed to swivel on its axis when she stepped in ahead of Mickey. The tangy scent of foreign wolf permeated the air as she glanced around, taking in her surroundings. Long tables and benches lined the walls, while smaller round tables dotted the expanse of the wooden floor in the center. A roaring fire in the huge hearth on the far wall spat and sizzled as someone threw a giant log into the grate.
There were men and women, and wolves, of course, lazing around the room in various stages of dress. Most of the men wore jeans but no shirt or boots, and the women wore flimsy dresses. So they could shimmer in a hurry, Beth gathered. There were a few naked bodies peppering the room, also. Those, she guessed, had recently shimmered.
While it was true that from a practical stand-point, the wolves spent a lot of time in human-form, the only time they felt free and easy was when they had four legs and a tail. “This is Beth.” She heard Mickey's voice from behind her. “She’s just mated into our pack, with Donovan,” he concluded, doubtfully.
The sheer volume of silence that greeted this announcement surprised her. She supposed a lot of these women had wanted to mate with Donovan themselves, and that could be reason enough for their silence, but she couldn’t guess at the males’ reserved reception.
About to turn tail and run, literally, Beth was stopped by a hand on her arm. Mickey, again. “Say hello,” he muttered.
“Um...” She glanced around slowly. Each face seemed to be awaiting her speech, and she frowned, wondering what to say. Anything was better than ‘um’ though, so she barreled on. “I’m Beth, as you heard. I look forward to getting to know you all...”
Mentally slapping herself for her idiocy, she realized they actually had been waiting for her speech. Putting two and two together, she came up with Alpha female. At some point in the future, she would be this pack’s Alpha female, and they knew it. Starting as they meant to go on, they were affording her all the respect she would come to expect.
Suddenly finding herself way up in the hierarchy was bewildering; she was used to being at the very bottom of the food chain, so to speak, being an un-mated female, an outsider, and too willful by half. She was still an outsider, but this time around, she had the power of the Alpha heir apparent on her side. This might not be so bad, she had time to think, before the pack introduced themselves.
“Felicity,” one tall, willowy female with hair the color of freshly shorn wheat introduced herself, with a curtsy. “I am Apprentice to the pack’s healer, Shale.”
“Nice to meet you,” Beth had time to say, before another stepped forward, and another, and ano
ther.
In the next hour, she met with the healer, Shale, who was the most fearsome looking wolf she’d ever seen in her life – besides Bradley, that was – who had the most tender way about him. He was tall and broad, as most males were, with bright amber eyes. With promises to introduce her as a novitiate into the healing arts, as per Bradley’s not so subtle hint in his office hours beforehand, he gave way to the next wolf wanting to present themselves.
“Wallace,” muttered a middle aged male wolf, who appeared to have seen better days. He was hunched and battle-scarred, with wariness in his eyes that said he’d seen it all and was tired.
“September,” a short, red-headed female whispered shyly. “I’m a cook in the Alpha’s kitchen. I’m sure we’ll see each other in the Great House.”
“I’m sure we will, September,” Beth replied, thinking what an unusual name that was. Deciding it suited her, she confided in a mock stage-whisper, “I like my eggs scrambled,” with a grin, and was rewarded with a wide smile and an assurance that they would be on the menu in the morning.
At that moment a whippet-thin, dark haired, dark eyed, woman grasped her hand and bid her welcome to the pack, with a confident air, and presented herself as “Alanna.” She executed a twirl/bow/curtsy type thing, and then giggled. “I’m in charge of teaching all those born without grace, the breathtaking arts of dance and music.”
“A modern Patina, well I never...”
“Your old pack’s Mistress of the Dance?”
“Indeed,” Beth replied, thinking what a shame it would be if Alanna ever grew to be as crotchety as old Patina. “Although not nearly as jovial as you!”
“Not many are, darling,” she answered in a sing-song voice, before skipping away to rejoin two of her peers by the fireplace. Beth watched the way she shimmied and shook, even as she walked, and had to admire the girl. For someone with little or no figure, she certainly drew the eye to each minuscule curve she had.
Overwhelmed and already starting to forget the first couple of wolves who had introduced themselves, Beth almost sobbed in relief when she felt a heavy arm settle around her waist, and a devilish whisper in her ear asking, “how about that sojourn in the woods?”
“I’d love to,” she told her handsome mate. “They were all beginning to look the same.” Although she had noticed that one or two of them had had silver eyes very like her own. It made her feel as though maybe she really would belong here.
He laughed, spreading his full lips in a wide grin and tugging on her heart strings. He really was a gorgeous example of the pack, and considerate enough to make a saint feel greedy. “I’m going to steal my mate away for the time being,” he announced, to the obvious delight of the present pack members.
Wolf-whistles and whoops followed them out the door of the Common House and echoed behind them as they strolled toward the tree line, hand in hand.
“They’re good people,” Donovan said softly. The low hush of his jeans came to a halt just inside the tree line. “Some of them,” he grinned. “The rest are great.”
“They seem like a really nice bunch,” Beth answered, wrapping her arms around herself. This late in the day, when the sun was just beginning to sink into the horizon, it was cold, and she wished she’d thought to bring a sweater.
“Cold?”
She nodded absently and twisted her lips in a smile when the heavy weight of Donovan's jacket slid over her shoulders. They were good people, she could tell that already, but they weren’t her people. As gossip-fueled and condescending as they could be, she missed her pack. She thought now of the tear-filled goodbye she’d shared with her Den Father.
“Take care,” he’d whispered brokenly. “Never think that you don’t have a place here.” He’d indicated the center of his chest where she knew a heart of gold beat to the rhythm of his blood. “You were always the daughter of my heart.”
It was then that she’d broken down crying like a little girl and begged him to think of a way out of this whole mess. “There’s nothing any of us can do now,” he’d confirmed what she’d already known. “I wish you’d tell me what happened.”
He’d been talking about the new frisson of contempt she’d had for Gareth, of course. But she steadfastly refused to go there. No way was she going to drag that conversation into the light. No doubt David could smell the marker Gareth had left on her skin, and was wondering why she still chose to leave with the foreign wolf. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she’d told him with a finality that shocked even her. “Whatever was between myself and Gareth is good and buried.”
He’d asked her if she was sure, and she’d nodded firmly. “Alright, Little Wolf,” he chucked her chin. “Maybe it’s best this way.”
“Yes.” Her heart broke all over again when she had to turn her back on her Den Father to take the hand of her new mate. Wasn’t she supposed to walk off into the sunset to live happily ever after? Where was her happy ending?
She still felt like a commodity. Granted, she couldn’t exactly be sold on, but she still had a duty to perform.
“What are you thinking?” her mate asked her in a curious tone. “You just suddenly seem to have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“And no wonder,” she forced a grin. “This coat weighs a ton! What do you have, like, super winters here?”
“You bet,” Donovan took her in his arms and lifted her until her feet dangled around his shins. “I need me a woman to curl up with on those cold winter nights.”
“Oh really?” Beth squirmed, taking off with easy speed as he released her. “Haven’t seen any around here,” she shot over her shoulder.
“Come back here,” he called, laughing with mirth, his amber eyes reflecting the last rays of the sun. “I’m sure you’ll do until I find one!”
“Come and get me, Donovan Tall Grass!”
Her legs pumped and her heart raced. This was what she lived for. The thrill of the run. The pure and utter freedom of it struck her more and more with each foot fall. Leaves crunched under foot, and the dying sun made her path disappear in front of her. That wouldn’t stop her. She had keen senses.
If she remembered correctly – and she usually did, when it came to trailing – this was the way Donovan had brought her to the pack, and just up ahead...yes, there it was. The threadlike branch of some river bubbled lazily, and just beyond that there was a thicket big enough to hide a horse in. She hunkered down to wait for the signs of Donovan’s approach.
Not long after she settled in – boy, he was fast – she could hear the unveiled advance of her mate, and shifted into a ready stance, her clothes already discarded in a messy pile beside her. When she judged he was just reaching the brush, she shimmered, her wolf-form flowing over her like water, and leapt.
They went down in a tangle of human and wolf arms and legs, him laughing, her growling softly as if to say, give it up, buddy, you’re caught.
“Alright, alright,” he called out as she clomped down on his forearm hard enough to get a grip but not break the skin.
She immediately released his flesh, only to be caught in a grip of iron, as he wedged her head in the crook of his elbow. The growl that tried to ripple up her throat fizzled out into a gurgling as he applied pressure. “Dirty fighter,” he reminded her. “Now,” he announced, gaining even more purchase as he got his feet under him. “Let’s find out if you’re warm enough to curl up with.”
Shimmering was second nature to Beth – a fact Donovan hadn’t yet gotten the gist of, it seemed – and within seconds she was gloating above him with her foot on his neck. “Dirty fighter,” she confirmed. “Got it. Nuh-uh,” she reproved, pressing harder with her bare foot. The hand he’d raised to wrap around her slender ankle fell away slowly and she nodded. “Good boy,” she crooned. “I win.”
His eyes sparkled with an inner delight as he also shimmered, wriggling out of his human clothes with lightening fast speed. Beth stumbled with nothing to balance her stance and landed on her face in the dead leav
es. “Dirty,” she groaned. “Dirty, dirty fighter.”
A soft growl was her only reply. She’d forgotten how magnificent Donovan appeared in his wolf-form. When the matter of this pesky tie business was settled, she’d have to make sure they ran together often. And get as much revenge as I can for losing this fight, she reflected as the sharp canines of the large wolf closed tight around her throat.
“You win,” she grated. “This time.” Wiping spittle and forest debris from her throat and body, Beth pulled her clothes from the thicket, mulling over the fact that she was not at all self-conscious without her clothes.
Thinking back on how exposed she had felt each time Gareth caught a glimpse of her naked flesh, she realized that Donovan was never going to replace him in her heart, much as she wished for it. He was kind and giving, caring and sweet. All the things she could ask for in a mate. Handsome as all hell, too. So why couldn’t she get the other wolf out of her thoughts?
“I win every time.” Donovan's arms came around her waist as she finished pulling her clothes on. Darkly tanned and lightly dusted with hair that felt soft as silken strands, she held onto them, letting him hug her from behind. Tonight, she promised him silently.
CHAPTER TEN
“I hope you like steak.” Bradley lifted a glass of wine to his smiling lips and took a deep draught.
“I don’t mind it,” Beth replied carefully. In truth she’d never really cared for steak, preferring to eat something she’d hunted herself. Failing that, she preferred her meat fresh from the source. It was always the way things were done in her pack. Her old pack. She found she had to keep reminding herself.
“I love steak,” he went on in his gravelly voice. “I do prefer it rare,” he confided. “But I wouldn’t tell September that. She seems to think if it’s not charred to within an inch of its life, it’s not healthy.”
She’d learned that September had only recently joined the pack as a result of a sexual encounter gone awry. Apparently, Mickey had been on the prowl in a bar in the human village, and September caught his eye. Wolves were not the best lovers for humans. During sex, when emotions ran riot, some were prone to shimmering, if only in part, and even the slightest scratch could infect a human if they were susceptible. September, unfortunately was.
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