Big Bad Wolf

by Christine Warren

  He wrapped it around her, trying not to notice the way she curled up into a little ball beneath it, one hand resting under her cheek, the other tucked between her legs just above her knees. The urge to slide his own hand in beside hers, only higher, gripped him, but he shook it off and pulled on a pair of jeans before he padded barefoot down to his kitchen.

  The pitch-blackness outside the windows told him it was still the middle of the night, and the clock on the microwave read 4:02. A little late for a midnight snack, but it was either food or sex, and he figured option two had already gotten him in enough trouble. He needed a few minutes to get his equilibrium back. Finding his mate apparently knocked a wolf for a bigger loop than he’d thought.

  He rummaged through the refrigerator for a minute, dropping a hunk of roast beef to the counter and only looking up when he heard a knock. He darted out of the kitchen and down the hall to answer the door before the sound could wake Missy. Not until he had the door halfway open did he remember she was human and asleep and unlikely to have heard the soft knock even if it had been on the bedroom door, let alone a floor down and a few rooms away.

  “You busy?” Logan asked as he stepped inside and closed the door after him. “I didn’t want to interrupt anything. . . .”

  Graham scowled at the other man. “Save the meaningful glances,” he grumbled. “I was just grabbing something to eat.”

  He stalked back into the kitchen with Logan prowling after him. Graham didn’t bother to worry that there was an emergency. When you ran a twenty-four-hour nightclub that catered to vampires, lycanthropes, and other assorted supernatural types, you got used to working at four in the morning.

  “So what is it?” he asked, slicing off some chunks of raw beef. He dipped one in horseradish before popping it in his mouth. “Did Lourdes get blood on the carpet in the dining room again? I swear, I’m going to make that slob wear a bib next time he wants to eat in.”

  Logan shook his head. “It’s not the vamp. The club’s fine. This is pack business.”

  “At four A.M.?” Graham couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice, but as his beta, Logan knew the pack almost as well as Graham did. If it was important to his second in command, it had better be important to him, too. That philosophy had saved him a lot of trouble over the years. “What’s up?”

  Logan snagged a piece of beef and looked around the room. “Are you sure you want to get into this with her still upstairs?”

  Graham didn’t ask how his friend knew Missy hadn’t left. Her scent permeated the air, too fresh and intense to be just a remnant. It made Graham’s balls tighten, and he reminded himself to breathe through his mouth. The urge to force Logan to do the same, by breaking the other man’s nose, surprised him.

  “She’s none of your business,” he dismissed, trying to be civilized but unable to stifle the instinct to stake a claim. “Forget about her. She’ll stay put. Now what’s going on?”

  Logan gave him an odd look but shrugged, licking a smear of horseradish from his thumb. “Curtis.”

  “Shit.” Graham’s reaction was pithy but appropriate, since his cousin and chief headache, Curtis MacAlpin, had a lot in common with the stuff. Both were composed chiefly of waste and bile, both tended to turn up underfoot at the least opportune moments, and both stank to the high heavens. Only in Curtis’s case, the stink was more of a moral one than a physical one. “What’s he done this time?”

  “He’s been grumbling for months. You know that, right?”

  “Logan, what has he done?”

  The beta sighed. “He’s sent up a Howl for the next Moon Night.”

  Graham cursed, long and creatively, and clenched his fist so hard that beef blood oozed out of the meat and trickled from between his fingers.

  Howls were the Lupine equivalent of town meetings. Packs had them occasionally when there was trouble brewing, or when one of the members had big news to announce, like the formation of a new pack or the birth of an alpha’s new pup.

  “And what the hell made him think he had any right to do that?” Graham growled. “He’s mid-pack. He’s got no right to lead a Howl. I’m alpha. That’s for me to do.”

  Logan settled his long frame onto one of the stools that butted against the island counter and raised his eyebrows. “We all know that, Graham. The problem is that Curtis doesn’t care.”

  “He’ll start caring once I rip a bloody stripe out of his hide. He needs to learn his place.”

  “I disagree. The problem is that Curtis knows his place; he just doesn’t like it. He wants your place instead.”

  Graham’s eyes narrowed. “He’s thinking of challenging me? That puny little cub? He’s barely twenty-seven, and scrawny to boot.” Graham’s scowl stretched into a savage grin. “In that case, let him at it. It’ll take me five minutes to knock him back down to size, and we can forget all about this.”

  “It’s not going to be that easy.”

  Graham raised his brow. “Are you implying he’s strong enough to fight me?”

  Logan rolled his eyes. “He’s not strong enough to fight most of our infants. But he’s clever, and that could be more dangerous. If Curtis were planning to issue a traditional challenge, he’d have been taken down months ago. Remember, he has to go through the entire rank before he gets to you. Even if someone like Tobias or Ethan didn’t manage to take him out, he’d never get by me.”

  Graham acknowledged that with a nod. Logan had earned his place as beta a long time ago with a combination of intelligence and brute strength. The only pack member he’d never taken down was Graham himself, partly because of the loyalty between the two men and partly because neither of them could be absolutely positive who would win, and they weren’t sure they wanted to know.

  “True enough,” Graham acknowledged, “but if Curtis isn’t going to challenge me, what are you all worked up about? There’s only one road to alpha, and you just said he’s not taking it.”

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Logan said, his gaze level and intense. “Curtis isn’t going to challenge you because he thinks he won’t have to. He’s going to call for you to step down.”

  Graham snorted. “He can call until he’s too hoarse to howl for all the good it’ll do him. I’m alpha of this pack, and I mean to stay that way.”

  Logan grimaced. “You might not have a choice.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think Curtis is going to call on Breeder’s Rights.”

  The term sounded vaguely familiar, but Graham couldn’t place it. Lupine society overflowed with so many old traditions and rights and laws and customs that only an anal-retentive history professor could keep track of them all. As alpha of the Silverback Clan, Graham had more important things to worry about than whether or not someone had forbade the eating of deer meat on Tuesdays in all Februaries with blue moons.

  “Old Lupine Common Law,” Logan explained when Graham just scowled and shook his head. “It started back in the Dark Ages, as far as I know, when the humans were hunting us down just a little too successfully. In order to ensure our survival as a species, the elders made it a law that the alpha of any pack must be a member of a proven breeding pair. That way, each pack was guaranteed to produce a next generation strong enough to do the same. An alpha without cubs didn’t do them any good.”

  The information left a sour taste in Graham’s mouth, like rotten meat. He pushed the rest of his snack aside. “And Curtis thinks that because he fucked a brick-stupid omega and got her pregnant, he’s suddenly the big wolf on campus?”

  “Brick-stupid omega or not, Frannie whelped a healthy pup,” Logan pointed out. “According to Common Law, that means something.”

  “Fuck Common Law!” Graham snarled. “I’m not stepping down so my cousin can feed his megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur, especially not when he hasn’t got the balls to challenge me to dispute like a real alpha contender.”

  “Hey, I’m on your side,” Logan said, leaning forward to meet Graham�
��s furious gaze. “But Common Law still holds a lot of weight with the pack, especially with the elders and the conservatives. You and I know there’s a lot more to being alpha than getting cubs, but traditions die hard for Lupines. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “What do you suggest? I just step aside and let Cousin Curtis take over my pack and lead them all to hell in a handbasket? Should I wave to them on the way down?”

  “You can take your sarcasm and shove it up your ass,” Logan barked. “I’m trying to help you here. All I’m saying is that you’re going to need to tread pretty carefully if you want to get around Curtis’s argument. It would be a lot easier if you’d at least taken a mate, whether or not you had a cub yet.”

  Graham stilled, not sure he felt quite ready to share the news of his new mate, not even with his beta. Logan would have to know eventually, though, and the knowledge rankled. It felt almost like sharing her, and Graham still didn’t have this possessive streak quite under control. He forced his mind away from the sleepy, sexy blonde in his bed and gritted his teeth.

  “Even if you were newly mated and didn’t have cubs yet, they’d have to give you one season of moon cycles to prove your fertility as a breeding pair,” the beta continued. “If she got pregnant, the challenge would be thrown out and things could go back to normal.”

  Shit. Graham knew it would be hard enough to explain to Missy about their mate-bond. How was he supposed to break the news that he needed to knock her up as soon as possible? And it was all her fault. If she hadn’t been wearing that ass-flaunting dress, he’d never have noticed her and never have gotten her alone and close enough to smell her above every other competing odor. Damn her and her sugar cookie scent.

  Logan stared at him, brows knitting together and head tilting to the side. “What are you thinking?” he asked. “You’ve got a really weird look on your face, and if you inhale any harder, I think your face might cave in. Not that I don’t agree she smells fabulous, but—”

  “Keep your nose to yourself, Hunter.” The possessive warning lashed, jagged and sharp, between them.

  Logan eyed his alpha’s feral snarl, and his eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

  “It’s none of your damn business what I’m thinking,” Graham growled, scooping up the remains of his snack and dumping the lot into the garbage. He needed to get back upstairs to Missy.

  “It is if you’re thinking about taking someone you just met last night to mate. And it’s doubly my business if that someone happens to be human!” Logan grasped Graham by the arm to keep him from leaving the kitchen. “That makes it pack business, Graham, and the pack will not appreciate having a human as its alpha female.”

  Graham ripped his arm out of the other Lupine’s grasp and growled a warning. “I don’t care what the pack wants, Hunter. The pack will do what I tell it to do, or it will face the consequences.” His snarl held a world of menace and more than a hint of frustration. “If it’s so important that I take a mate, then let the others live with my choice of one.”

  Logan’s hands curled into fists, as if he had to fight to keep them to himself, a wise move if he wanted to leave the alpha’s house with both intact. “They would be able to live with any choice you made if it was one of our own kind. Silverback alphas have been bred by your family for the last seven generations, but you won’t breed the eighth if you insist on getting your cubs on a human.”

  “It’s not like it’s never happened before. We’ve been interbreeding with the humans from the first, and our genes are always dominant. Our pups are still Lupine.”

  “But they’re not full-bloods. They’re mongrels, and none of the pack are going to be willing to submit to a mongrel alpha.”

  “They’ll submit if he’s strong enough to make them,” Graham proclaimed, arrogant and unyielding in the knowledge that Fate had already made the decision sometime when he wasn’t looking. It was irrevocable. Missy was his mate. Case closed. “Alpha isn’t a matter of heredity anyway. It’s a matter of power. If my pup isn’t strong enough to lead the pack, someone who is ought to have the job.”

  “And give up seven generations of tradition?” The confusion in Logan’s tone drained away some of Graham’s anger. If his beta didn’t get it, he ought to get used to no one else getting it, either.

  “Traditions can be broken and new ones founded, but a mate is permanent.” Logan pointed out, switching tactics. “Lupines may mate for life, but humans don’t always do it, no matter what they claim. What happens if she changes her mind?”

  Graham’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “She won’t.”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  “Not this time.”

  Logan was silent for a moment. “It really doesn’t matter to you what I say, does it?”

  “No.”

  Graham knew it to be absolutely true. Missy was his mate. Whether he would have admitted that after one night if not for the challenge from Curtis was a moot point. Graham needed a mate, and his instincts wouldn’t let him have any mate but Missy. He met his friend’s gaze with a steady one of his own.

  Logan sighed. “Does it matter what she says, then?”

  Graham thought of the things she’d said when he’d had her pinned against his bedroom door, and the things she’d said when he’d woken her an hour later with his tongue buried in the sweet honey between her thighs. His lips curved into a smile, and he hardened beneath his jeans.

  “No,” he said, heading for the stairs and beating back the niggling feeling that maybe he was taking one or two things for granted here. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I could always say I was drunk.

  Missy lay in the unfamiliar bed, curled up beneath a nubby cotton blanket that didn’t quite combat the chill of the room, and practiced the fine art of not panicking.

  He didn’t spend much time talking to me, so he probably won’t remember if I was slurring my speech. Wait, he can probably smell stuff like that, and I know I didn’t smell like a brewery. Darn it.

  She’d woken up when Graham left the bed. Sleeping in a sixty-degree bedroom was fine when you had a werewolf radiator cranking out heat beside you, but once he got up, the cold brought awareness back in a hurry. Not that she hadn’t pretended to still be unconscious. Until she figured out how to handle this situation, she had every intention of playing possum.

  Except you can’t stay here forever, unfortunately, her inner voice told her. So that really isn’t an option. Better go to Plan B.

  There is no Plan B.

  There should always be a Plan B. Didn’t you learn that in Girl Scouts?

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Missy groaned and yanked the blanket up over her head. The movement let some of the icy air seep into her cocoon, and she felt her skin pucker into gooseflesh. She doubted even God himself could deliver her from the situation she’d managed to get herself into. Even she couldn’t quite grasp the reality of having been kidnapped and screwed senseless by the wickedly sexy werewolf of her dreams. The same one who had never been able to remember her name before last night.

  To be precise, he couldn’t remember it last night, either.

  In fact, I’m not quite sure he’s managed to figure it out yet. You may still just be slut du jour.

  And that’s what was turning her stomach into a knot. Missy was not the slut type. She was a kindergarten teacher, for heaven’s sake! Kindergarten teachers were not sluts. They were plain and kind and boring and wore sensible shoes and unflattering clothes. Missy had been living with those guiding principles for the entire four years of her teaching career and had even gotten in some practice while she was still in college. After her disastrous experience with Jim from her child psychology practicum, she had pretty much resigned herself to the whole frumpy-spinster-with-cats scenario, and she was okay with that. After all, someone had to be the frumpy spinster. Cliché preservation could be an admirable cause, and Missy
had been serving dutifully until some twisted instrument of Fate had decided to step in and make her fantasies come true.

  How the heck was she supposed to deal with that? She wasn’t the type of woman who lived fantasies, not even when her friends handed them to her with great big bows on top. This one night had managed to set her entire world tipping into surrealism. The only thing that kept her from convincing herself that she had dreamed the whole thing was the irrefutable physical evidence.

  Like the fact that she was lying in a strange bed, under a strange blanket, in a strange room.

  Naked.

  Whisker-burned.

  And sore in some really uncomfortable places.

  Missy winced and sat up, then immediately shifted her weight onto one hip, pulling the blanket with her to wrap it around her like a cape. Apparently, sitting normally wouldn’t be happening for a while yet. An estimate of when it might eluded her. Which was when she realized she had no idea what to do next.

  The problem with abstinence, she decided, was that once you got out of practice, picking up on the ritual behaviors of sex stopped being second nature. Once upon a time—back in college when the term “sex life” had actually applied to her—the idea of what to do the morning after had seemed like second nature. But now, as she sat in the strange bed, the language of bedroom etiquette made about as much sense to her as the things Dmitri mumbled in Russian when Reggie exasperated him.

  Was she supposed to stay where she was? Maybe she should throw off the blanket and pose across the sheets or something, so she’d be ready when Graham came back to bed. Or maybe she should feign sleep, so she could pretend that he’d woken her when he crawled back in. That way she could take her cues from him. If he seemed like he wanted to talk, she could do that, or if he seemed like he wanted more sex . . . well, maybe she could suffer through that, too. After all, Graham might get to sleep with women four times prettier than her every day, but she knew what the chances were of her ever again getting the opportunity to snuggle up to a man half as gorgeous as Graham Winters: precisely nil.