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Infiltrating Her Pack
Copyright © 2015 by Dominique Eastwick
ISBN: 978-1-61333-865-0
Cover art by Fiona Jayde
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC
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Black Hills Wolves Stories
Wolf’s Return
What a Wolf Wants
Black Hills Desperado
Wolf’s Song
Claiming His Mate
When Hell Freezes
Portrait of a Lone Wolf
Alpha in Disguise
A Wolf’s Promise
Reluctant Mate
Diamond Moon
Wolf on a Leash
Tempting the Wolf
Naming His Mate
A Wolf Awakens
The Wolf and the Butterfly
Coming Soon
Omega’s Heart
Claiming the She Wolf
Uncaged
Rebel’s Claw
Dangerous
Worth Fighting For
Promiscuous Wolf
Also by Dominique Eastwick
Strawberry Kisses
The Duke and the Virgin
The Marquis and the Mistress
The Earl and His Virgin Countess
Coming Soon!
Shifting Hearts
Siren’s Serenade
Healing His Soul’s Mate
Dedication
Special thanks to Rebecca Royce for thinking enough of my writing to allow me to play in her world
To T.t and Toni for loving my books as much as I do.
As always, thank you to Nadine who pushes me to stop procrastinating.
Infiltrating Her Pack
Black Hills Wolves
By
Dominique Eastwick
Chapter One
Silence—complete and utter silence.
Z stood for a moment, allowing it to roll through him. Ah, the familiar atmosphere of hostility and distrust. Nothing new, and exactly the way he liked it. If a room full of wolves suddenly gained a trust or desire to be in his presence, then they knew more about him than he wanted them to know, and more than was safe. One by one, the customers at the tables in the old, rustic honky-tonk in Los Lobos began to chatter, lower in volume, more intense in conversation than moments earlier.
“Welcome back, Z.” Gee, the owner and pack historian, waved in greeting without even glancing in his direction when Z approached the bar. But then, the barkeep didn’t need to look up to know who’d entered his establishment with that kind of reception. Had the room yelled Z’s name, it wouldn’t have been as effective as the deafening silence that always greeted his return. No one knew anything about him other than his name—Z.
Just Z.
As much as he would have preferred to head straight to the room he’d rented, social etiquette demanded he at least say hello to his landlord. Z placed the large, plain cardboard box he carried on the scarred wood surface between them and waited, knowing the bear-shifter could hold out only so long.
Gee lifted his head from what he had been doing and licked his lips. In a voice so low even Z had to strain to hear, he asked, “Is that what I think it is?”
“Why not open it and find out?” Z pushed the box a little closer.
Gee took a step. As he reached out to touch the package, he paused and glared at Z. “It’s not another one of those blasted beeswax candles, is it?”
“No, no candles. You didn’t like the candle, I take it?” To be honest, Z hadn’t known what to do with the candle, but the store owner had given it to him for free when he’d bought one of each of her varieties of honey. So, he thought maybe the guy could burn it or give it to his daughter as a present.
“Do you have any idea how long it took me to get the wax out from between my teeth?” Baring them, Gee growled.
“You ate it!”
“Would you lower your damned voice?” He searched the room to ensure no one noticed them before focusing on the box once again. “It smelled like honey, and I was…out.”
“Out? There were twenty-four plastic teddy bear bottles in that case.” Z couldn’t help himself—he threw his head back and howled with laughter. He laughed until his sides hurt, and when Gee punched his arm to get him to stop, it only drove his amusement further. Again the customers hushed, no one there having ever seen any human side of Z. Only Gee had, and only when the two would meet over drinks and cards. Gee said something to the bar which Z couldn’t make out over his own chuckles.
“You need help, bear, like rehab help.” Z pulled out an example as evidence. “As you can see, it’s all thick, golden-sweet honey.”
Gee licked his lips again before grabbing the container and holding it close to his chest. “Will you lower your voice?” he demanded again.
“What are you afraid of? Your secret will get out that you have a serious addiction to the sweet stuff?”
“I would prefer to avoid being compared to Winnie the Pooh, if you please.”
“Your secret is safe with me.” Closing the box, Z tapped the top. “Can I get a beer?”
“What would you like?” Gee asked, opening the top again and lifting out each honey jar then running a rough finger over the homemade labels before replacing them gingerly.
“Is there a choice?”
“Not really, but you can choose which cooler I get it from.”
“Seriously, man, you have to do something to improve this bar. Even if it is the only place in the town, have some self-respect, some pride.”
“People like things the way they are.” Gee cradled the case like a baby. “North Carolina?” he asked, referring to the Made in NC labels.
“Yeah, good barbeque and sweet tea that would make even a healthy person diabetic.”
No one but Drew, the Alpha of the pack, had a clue where Z headed at any given time. Perhaps Drew’s Enforcer, Ryker, might, but as the Enforcer and Z didn’t talk much, Z had no idea what information Ryker had on him as a pack Infiltrator. And if he did, Ryker wouldn’t talk. So Gee had come to rely on the honey as his way of tracking where Z had been.
“Here is your beer. The linens are where they have always been. And feel free to join me for dinner tonight if you’re in the mood.”
“We shall see. Of course, you might be in the grip of a honey coma by then.”
“You might be right. And in that case, you’ll have to run the bar.”
Z snorted, grabbed his beer, and took the stairs to the second floor.
“Oh yeah, and Drew wants to see you as soon as you get into town,” Gee yelled at his back.
So much for getting some rest. Z rubbed his face and steeled his shoulders. Turning right at the landing, he strolled the length of the upper floor, only stopping at the linen closet to retrieve a set of clean, yellowed-with-age sheets. The floor below returned to its normal hum, the stranger already forgotten. At the very end of the landing, he paused at the last door, ensuring the saf
eguards he had put in place were still intact then opened it.
Z chanted under his breath until a soft glow illuminated the charms and they came to life before crumbling into a pile of dust as his feet. Brushing it aside with the tip of his boot, he crossed the threshold, convinced the room hadn’t been disturbed since he’d left it three-and-a-half weeks before. He trusted Gee, Drew, and even Ryker, but he had no reason to trust anyone else in the Tao Pack any more than they trusted him. For that reason, ensuring even an empty room remained untouched had to be of the utmost importance.
He dropped both the sheets and his bag on the twin bed before crossing to the window, repeating the same ritual from the door before he could open it. Taking a swig of his beer, he watched the people along the dusty main street. Bit by bit, the small town and pack were repairing and healing. It would be years before they could move on from the evil grasp of their former Alpha, Magnum, but Drew, the new pack leader, exceled so far where his father had failed.
Breathing in the fresh air, Z evaluated the old town. A few buildings showed signs of some TLC. Progress might be slow, but progress nonetheless. He stretched with a jaw-popping yawn. He yearned to jump into the small bed in the corner, wanting—no, needing to get some serious sleep. Weeks had passed since his head had rested on a pillow under the roof of someone he trusted. He had spent weeks sleeping with one eye open and an ear peeled for the slightest thing. Although the people here didn’t trust him, he trusted Gee, and he could let his guard down…if only a little.
A female beta strolled along the road alone below the bar. Z also smelled, though they were not in his line of sight, two young males following her in the distance. But he couldn’t sense any spike in testosterone to warn him the female might be in danger. The boys showed no interest in her at the moment.
Closing the window, he turned back to the room. He cocked his head, inhaled and relaxed. Then with the next breath, shifted. Unlike most Wolves, whose change from human to wolf form could take some time, Z and all his kind had the ability to shift from one second to the next.
He brushed against the metal bed frame, then the old wood chair, leaving his scent heavy in the room. Anyone on the second floor would smell his presence, even the most dimwitted of Wolves. Convinced anyone foolish enough to search for him would believe he remained in the room, Z gave his fur one last shake, removing the last of the scent with it.
He left and, once on the landing, closed his eyes to locate each of the individuals in the bar below. The only human appeared to be in the kitchen, not the main hall, which made his escape much easier, and the Bear remained too focused on his new case of honey to care. The problem with Wolves, and most shifters for that matter, they’d long ago stopped relying on their sight and let their sense of smell alert them to danger. Humans, however, did the opposite—relying on sight and forgetting to follow their nose. Humans would believe what they saw over what they smelled. Z had witnessed it recently, when humans dismissed a wolf at a party as a figment of too much champagne.
As expected, Z slipped undetected out of the bar and right out the front door with no one the wiser. He took the long way around the center of town to get to Drew’s office, wanting to assess any weaknesses the Alpha and his Enforcer might have missed. They were doing a great job, but sometimes it took an outside set of eyes to see flaws in procedures. And as an Infiltrator, no one could do the job better than Z. If he couldn’t get through a security checkpoint, no one could.
The Infiltrators were much like the ninjas of myths. Some believed they didn’t exist and most who knew about them didn’t live long enough to tell. Tallying the mental list of items to talk to Drew about, Z entered the old barn. Skirting the edges, he avoided any sign of anyone. Drew had made good strides repairing the neglect his father’s reign had played on the pack. Approaching the battered door to the room Drew used for an office, Z listened and smelled before comfortable turning the corner through the crack in the door and into the office.
Z made it halfway into the room before the Alpha paused in his paperwork, sniffed the air as if sensing something amiss. Good sign. The other times Z had done this very exercise, Drew had shown no acknowledgement of the Infiltrator’s presence. Word should be reaching him soon about the strange wolf’s reappearance in town.
As if on cue, Ryker, the pack Enforcer, stormed into the office, bristling with unspent fury.
“He’s returned.” The large man crossed his arms, blocking the door.
“He?” Drew didn’t stop working on the papers before him.
“Z.”
The Alpha placed his pen down and faced his Enforcer. “Good. I’ve been anticipating his return, though not for another week.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t trust most.”
“I trust him and his kind even less.”
Z shifted unnoticed and slid from his place in the corner, prepared for Ryker’s attack should the Enforcer feel a desire to vent his spleen on his head when he realized the bane of his existence had been in the room. “A wise decision,” he said. “My kind should never be fully trusted.”
Drew rose, prepared to stop a fight. “Damn it, Z, don’t antagonize him.”
Z, who stood a few inches shorter than the two men, simply shrugged. “It’s a part of my charm.”
“Charm, my ass. Both of you have a seat.”
Although Drew wasn’t his Alpha, Z followed the request nonetheless. Dour and brooding, Ryker took a seat. The man might not have a great deal of friends, but he happened to be one of the most well-respected Enforcers alive. He held true to his blood oaths and somehow managed to protect the pack from the madness of the previous Alpha the best he could. That being said, getting into a fight with the man whose fists were the size of ham hocks did not rank on Z’s to-do list.
Obviously gauging the chance of violence between the two wolves, he asked, “What do you have for me?”
“The Smoky Mountain packs have no idea where Malcolm’s rejects are. I did trace two to an area outside Boone, North Carolina. I have some trackers on it, but they’re deep in the forest bed, and those woods are dense. It might take some time, but they will come into town somewhere, and my ladies will be there when they do.”
“And the threat from the pack in Georgia?”
“Confirmed, but at the moment, that pack doesn’t know its nose from its ass and is chasing its own tail.”
“You’re doing, I take it?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny my involvement.”
“So, I shouldn’t expect their Alpha demanding to challenge Drew anytime soon?” Ryker asked.
Shaking his head, Z focused his attention on his adversary. “I‘ll make another pass through there in a few weeks, but they have other fish to fry at the moment closer to home. Coming out this way would leave them open to attack from other packs.”
Drew leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head, and took a deep breath. “What did you think of the improvements to town?” He didn’t mean the new coat of paint on the general store.
“I was impressed. It took me a good hour to get through the patrols. They’re more observant. But, they need to shake things up. By watching for an hour, I saw their security pattern and slipped in. I suggest randomizing it a bit.”
“Did you hide your scent?”
“I did not.”
“So, how do we keep your kind out?” Ryker asked.
“You can’t. But if you would teach those damned pups to open their eyes and not their nostrils, you would have a slight bit more luck. Otherwise, I recommend a human on patrol every now and then.”
The Enforcer simply growled.
“It’s harder to fool both races at once. The other issue is the safety of your women. I walked right next to a group, gave off the air of an aggressive male, and not one took notice.”
“It’s a fine line between letting everyone breathe easily and keeping them on their guard.” Drew wiped a hand over his weary face.
“That is why I have no desire to ever fall in my father’s footsteps and be Alpha.”
“Your dad is Alpha?” Little shocked Drew, but Z’s comment had his head snapping up. But then Z rarely spoke of his pack to anyone.
“He is, but succession is voted on in my pack.”
“Interesting. I was unaware of that. Seems far more civilized than I expected.” Drew smiled. “I failed your test again when you snuck in.”
“You didn’t pass, but you didn’t fail. You knew something was off. You looked around. That’s a huge step. I doubt I’ll be able to fool you again.”
When Z had first met Drew, the wolf had been angry, alone, and desperate, the metal storage shed he’d lived out of the only protection from the oncoming full moon. Drew was dependent on the full moon and forced to shift. Z, having been born moon-dependent, could still remember the pain, even a century on, of defying his nature to shift. Infiltrators possessed a mutant gene that allowed them, with due diligence, to alter their need and abilities to shift. With a great deal of initial pain, patience, and force from the elders in his pack, he’d eventually broken his lunar connection.
Infiltrators’ ability to discern a person’s character had been bred in them and a key to their ability to stay alive. Immediately, Z had seen the honor of the younger Drew. Well-informed on the chaos of his former pack, Z had searched Drew for the signs of madness his father, Magnum, had become infamous for. Z had been charged with checking in on the young wolf from afar. But after watching Drew deal with a full moon, Z could no longer stay in the distance.
Over the years, he’d met with Drew, making sure the man had whatever help he would accept, all the while establishing his sanity or lack thereof. The Infiltrators wanted to keep track of Drew as the Tao Pack rapidly descended into its downward spiral. None of which Z informed Drew of, since it was against the code of Z’s pack to interfere with what the Fates dished out. Infiltrators could defend, they could scout, and in extreme cases, fight, but their main goals were to act as information recon.
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