by Holley Trent
“Tell me who. Tell me something.”
He didn’t think she would tell him. She was always so good at putting the cork in and stoppering her words just before he found out anything remotely helpful, but then she dropped her hand onto his.
He clenched it tight between his palms so she couldn’t dare take it back and so she’d know nothing bad would happen if she gave up that modicum of trust to him.
“The inquisitors,” she said.
It was exactly as he’d feared when she’d told him she’d left Granada.
“You got swept up in the Inquisition?” he asked to be sure.
A tiny nod.
“You survived it, though.”
“Barely. A few minutes more, and I would have . . . They’d lit the pyre, and my aunt . . . at the last minute . . . ” Willa tried to pull her hand away from his, but caged as it was and lacking the strength to truly resist him, she gave up the struggle. Palm clammy, her fingers tensed and then relaxed against his. He was making her nervous, but in a different way than she had been before. The hormones were different. Subtler. Less pungent and indicative of taking flight. Overwhelmed, but controllable overwhelm. More like curiosity.
He liked that. Curiosity wasn’t generally what he read off women. Lust, yes. Interest in what was in his wallet—a hell of a lot of that. Confusion, plenty, because he was weird with his degrees and his arcane knowledge of history and trivia.
Curiosity was new.
The beast inside of him liked the smell of it.
“I’ll do what I can to make sure that bell never rings again,” he said.
She smiled, but he hadn’t been joking. He was a Coyote. Premeditated crimes didn’t always arouse in him the kind of guilt they did in most normal, moral people. He was too practical for such strict adherence to ethics, especially when certain kinds of morality hurt people.
“You’re not like your brothers,” he said, looping her back to her previous trail of thought, hoping she’d finish it.
She closed her eyes and let out a short, quiet exhalation before nodding sharply. “I’m not like them. They have our father’s blessing. I’m the one he punished.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother told him no. She finally had the clarity of mind to tell him no and that she was done, and he didn’t like that.” Willa’s thumb brushed tenderly over the back of his hand, energizing the coarse hairs there.
The part of Blue, deep down in his chest, that had always been turned off stuttered awake. He took one hand from Willa’s, put his palm over his sternum and rubbed worriedly. That thing burned around his heart, his lungs, like a furnace that had come on after too many seasons of inactivity and had to burn off all the soot. Instead of the beast inside him settling down and waiting out the flash, he was doing the magical equivalent of blowing on a hot coal. He was trying to create a blaze in a snowstorm because he was tired of keeping himself warm.
Blue was the one who pulled his hand away from the link.
What’s this shit?
The muscles in his back and neck burned and spasmed beneath his fitted shirt, cramping and threatening.
The dog was having his say in the only way he could, and Blue wasn’t listening.
Blue wasn’t listening because he tended to only respect the animal when he made sense, and he wasn’t doing that. That part of Blue that was wild had always been just fine with superficial connections, because Coyotes were superficial creatures in general. Coyote shifters tended to take whatever mates were convenient. Maybe they’d stick around, and oh well, if they didn’t. That was why he always held in the back of his mind that if worse came to worst, he and Sheena wouldn’t be a forever thing. It couldn’t be because he knew he wouldn’t be able to feel anything.
Blue hadn’t wanted to get tangled. Hadn’t seen the good of it and wasn’t going to make some woman miserable because he wasn’t 100 percent committed. Or 50. Even 50 percent required effort.
His inner coyote had always been silent about relationships. He hadn’t cared that Blue had always been a rolling stone, but suddenly, he cared, because Willa was a worthwhile opportunity.
Coyotes seized opportunities better than any other shifters, and the animal in him was obviously considering her as a mate prospect. Or maybe as Blue’s only acceptable option.
His restlessness intensified the more he tried to dismiss the idea from his mind.
“Shit,” Blue muttered, studying the side of Willa’s face.
Wide-eyed, she was staring at the silent bell again and wringing her hands, obviously not noticing that he’d taken his away.
Her scent hadn’t spiked with her typical tang of fear again. She was calmer, more focused, and he’d done that to her. He’d pressed his will onto her as though she were a lesser Coyote, not because he’d been compelled to dominate, but because she was struggling and that made him anxious.
No woman had ever made him anxious before, but that fucking dog inside him had never decided to make any of them his mate, either.
He pulled her to her feet and guided her to the gate. “Hey. Let me take you home.” He needed to get her home before he did something stupid, and he couldn’t even guess what that might be. None of the Coyotes back in Sparks had let their beasts choose their mates for them. Blue had no recent precedent for what was happening to him, and he didn’t like operating on ignorance.
If he had a mate—a true mate—there was no way in hell he’d be able to take vows with some other woman, not even if refusing meant Bruno meant the start of a war with the NorCal pack. Blue certainly didn’t want that.
“Have to get up early tomorrow,” Willa said, moving with docile strides beside him toward Maria Heights. “Have to spray-paint lines onto the grass at school so the kids can do marching drills.”
“I’ll send Diana.”
No rebuttal. No pushback. Just the tiniest of nods. “She’s organized,” Willa murmured.
“Yeah.”
At least someone still was.
Chapter Sixteen
The following Thursday, Willa gently cleared her throat and sidled up next to Diana on the sidewalk between the seventh grade hall and the wide patch of lawn they were using to run marching drills. The end of the phalanx of kids was about twenty-five yards away and marching toward Maria’s cold storage facility. The kids would run out of space soon, but before they did, Willa needed questions answered.
“Haven’t seen your brother in a few days,” Willa said matter-of-factly.
“Mm-hmm.” Diana’s bright eyes narrowed in the shadow of her floppy straw hat, and she gave the cowbell she held several attention-getting thrashes with her drumstick. She shouted down the field, “One step per beat! The tempo’s slow on purpose. Did I say we were marching in double-time?”
The kids murmured, “No,” in chorus.
“Stop there for a few minutes and think quietly about rhythm and what it means to you.”
The kids gave each other confused looks, but they stopped.
“You should be at parade rest,” Diana shouted, and the kids snapped back into formation. She turned to Willa then and draped an arm over her shoulder, cocking the other fist redolently on her hip.
It took Willa a moment to figure out what she reminded her of, and the long braid Diana wore over her shoulder helped drive the comparison home. She reminded Willa of another woman who was called Diana by some people—her aunt Artemis. Willa hadn’t seen her in hundreds of years and barely remembered what she looked like anymore, but she did remember that her aunt had always managed to convey command and casualness at the same time.
They didn’t speak anymore, but that wasn’t Artemis’s fault. She’d always been kind, and she’d saved Willa’s life, but Willa avoided anyone who regularly congregated with Apollo. She didn’t want her convening with them to ever be construed as tacit permission for him to visit.
“Blue went away on business,” Diana said. “Took Kenny with him. Been gone for about a week.”
�
�That long, hmm?” Willa tried to sound aloof and nonchalant, but Blue was difficult to forget about. He hadn’t even been in Maria for a year yet, and he’d still somehow managed to permeate every part of the local Coyote culture. She’d noticed it at the Wednesday night gathering at the bar. Many of the pack members seemed to be thinking twice about their drinking and their carousing. There were still plenty of shenanigans, but for the first time in longer than Willa could remember, none of them had been illegal.
And everyone had made it home on two legs rather than a furry four.
“Deal that couldn’t be back-burnered any longer,” Diana said. “Blue can stand to leave a little money on the table, but supposedly, this opportunity was too good to pass up.”
“Oh.” Willa spun her key ring around her index finger and chewed on the inside of her cheek.
“Anything wrong?” Diana gave the back of Willa’s neck an expert massage that quickly dissolved the knot there and made her shoulders fall down from her ears.
Dominant magic. Willa didn’t see the point of balking about it when she needed the relief so badly. Having been unable to settle her brain in the right ways, she’d barely been sleeping.
“Did your brother tell you to do that?”
“Yep. I’m surprised it works.”
“I hate him.”
“Many people do, but you’re in the elite company who’ve seen him naked.”
Willa’s cheeks burned hot as coals. “I . . . actually haven’t. Not completely, anyway.” That didn’t mean she hadn’t been thinking about what might have been under his clothes. Hard not to now that she was paying attention.
“Seriously? You’re telling me you haven’t seen every Coyote in the pack over a certain age naked at least once? Taking off clothes is kind of a prerequisite of shapeshifting.”
Willa shrugged. While she’d seen a lot of shifter flesh in her life, none of the scandalous bits had belonged to that particular male person. She studied her ragged nails, affecting a casual posture, and cleared her throat nonchalantly. “I haven’t been to many full moon gatherings lately.”
In fact, the last one she’d been to had been just before the last alpha disappeared. Her presence hadn’t been doing anyone any good, so she’d figured she might as well abstain.
“And, no,” Willa said, glad to change to subject back to the previous topic. “Nothing’s wrong. Just the usual talk from some of the old-timers. They complain to me knowing the pack is mine, and they assume I’ll automatically take their side over Blue’s because of our long connection. It doesn’t always make sense for me to take sides, though.”
And she definitely didn’t want to mention to those old tough guys that if she were going to take a side, the chances were about fifty-fifty that she might take Blue’s.
Diana raised a brow. “They threatening you?”
Willa shook her head. “No, nothing like that. They just keep leaving voice mails and text messages, reminding me about how things are supposed to be and stuff like that.”
“Willa, that’s threatening. Are they telling you they’re going to cause problems?” Down the field, Diana shouted, “One minute until pivot command. Keep thinking about rhythm and how having it makes you so much cooler.”
“Just the usual,” Willa said.
“What’s the usual? Be explicit. Usual in Maria is probably different from usual in Sparks.”
“Oh, you know.” Willa shrugged. “Like saying how it’d be a pity if they left and how that jerk in Oklahoma has been inviting a bunch of them to come back there.”
“Oklahoma?” To the kids, Diana yelled, “Mark time four, about face in eight, mark eight bringing up horns, forward march for twenty-four. Dex, count it off.”
The saxophone-playing Cougar at the front of the line let his horn dangle from its strap and clapped out Diana’s established slow pace.
“They’re trying to put the squeeze on you,” Diana said with a growl. “They’re making it so nothing you do will be right, and saying that either they’ll stay and raise hell if things here change or they’ll go to Mickey Allenton in Tulsa whose raison d’état is raising hell for other packs.”
“You know about him?” Willa asked, stunned.
Diana scoffed.
Silently, they watched the kids lumber past. When the tubas in the rear were out of earshot, Diana murmured, “My father is an alpha. Of course I know about other alphas. I also know that Mickey benefited for a long time from the chaos in the Maria pack. If shit goes south here, I assure you that not only will Mickey be looking to raid the pack, but so will my father. It’s a numbers game for them.”
“I can’t compete against that.”
Diana gave her an eloquent, scolding look. “You’re not supposed to. The alpha is.”
Willa grimaced and watched the kids march in place for a couple of eight-counts. Half were on the wrong feet, but at least they were mostly in rhythm, thanks to Diana. The lady may not have known a hell of a lot about the technical side of music, but she knew how to run drills. That gave Willa time to edit concert music scores and respond to e-mails about fundraisers that were going to be a huge pain in the rear end and for little payoff.
“Halt them, Dex, and go take a break in the shade.”
With a cracking voice, Dex gave the command and the kids wasted no time collapsing into a sweaty juvenile pile near the elm trees.
“I’m sure Blue will be back before there are any real problems,” Diana said to Willa.
“I’m sure we’ll be fine if he isn’t,” Willa said in a tight, tense tone.
“Really. Lance and I will do what we can.”
“You’re not even supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to be doing pack work.”
“You complaining?”
“No! Of course not. I’m simply making an observation. I don’t want you to get into any trouble.”
Diana shrugged and gave her beat-up drumstick a toss into the air and caught it. It came out of the box of mismatches from the previous year. Some boys defied manufacturer’s expectations for roughness and splintered one out of every two sticks.
“Aw, you care?” There was so much of Blue in Diana’s grin that the tilting of her lips nearly took Willa’s breath away.
Willa clipped her key carabiner to her belt loop and twined her fingers in front of her belly. “Sometimes I care too much. My father would tell you that’s a mental flaw.”
“Your father sounds like a dick.” Grin falling away, Diana took a large step away from Willa and looked to the sky. “He’s not, like, Thor or Odin, right?”
“No, and he’s not omnipresent, either. He’s not going to strike you down with a thunderbolt if you happen to murmur some disparaging thing about him.”
Apollo had plenty of other ways of making people miserable.
Sighing, Willa waved Diana on toward the kids. “Need to sight read some new music before dismissal. Got just enough time today.”
Halfway across the yard, Willa stopped, snapping her fingers. She remembered she’d had another burning question. She put her back to the kids and murmured, “At the bar last night, there was a stranger there with you.”
Diana’s cheek twitched. “Mm-hmm.”
“I usually put my blinders on and block out new faces, but since she was sitting with you, I was curious.”
Another twitch. “Mm-hmm.”
“I recognize most people from Maria. Did you know her?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Oh. Someone from Sparks?”
That would be the worst-case scenario in Willa’s opinion. She was having a hard enough time keeping up with the four outsider Coyotes who were already there.
“Yes, but if you’re asking if she’s a Coyote, no.”
Willa furrowed her brow. “I’m not doing very well at jumping to conclusions here. Help me out.”
Diana pressed a palm to her eye and somehow managed to give it a vigorous rub without smudging her eyeliner. “Long story short. Lanie’s my ex, and she
has a way of finding me when she wants to.”
Speechless, Willa blinked at her.
“Don’t make this weird.”
“No, I’m . . . I’m not surprised that . . . I mean, maybe a little, but I’m . . . more shocked that . . . ” Wishing for even an ounce of eloquence, Willa shoved a hand through her hair. “You were so cordial.”
“Oh.” Diana groaned.
As long as Willa had lived, very little shocked her about who people were attracted to. After all, her father had feuded famously with Zephyr over a young prince who’d ended up dead in the crossfire of their rivalry. Willa couldn’t look at the prince’s namesake hyacinth without being reminded of the event. Willa’s opinions on matters of sexuality tended to land squarely in the range of, “Okay, then.”
Diana lifted the brim of her floppy hat to wipe some sweat from her brow. “Yes, we’re cordial.”
“Does she know you have fur?” Willa asked gently.
“Yes. Blue introduced me to her about five years ago. Alumni of the same university. They have certain converging interests.”
“Weird folklore things.”
“Yes.”
They starting moving toward the kids again. Willa said quietly without moving her lips, “She was very smiley.”
“Yep.”
“And you weren’t.”
Diana shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m always happy to see her, but I broke things off for a good reason. The fact that she shows up out of the blue terrifies me. I’m not a safe person for humans to get attached to.”
“Does she know that?”
“Yes.”
“And yet she still stalks you?”
Diana shrugged yet again. “You can take the girl out of the military, but you can’t take those predator instincts out of the girl, I guess.”
“I thought you were the predator.”
“With most things,” Diana said quietly. “I am.”
Huh.
To the kids, Willa said, “I’ve taken your feedback into consideration about the mash-up I had planned, so we’re back to the drawing board. We’re heading back to the band room to sight read a new piece of music for the concert.”
