Hungry Like a Wolf (The Others)

by Christine Warren

  Honor frowned at him. “And you never bothered to tell me about this? Uncle Ham, this pack is my responsibility. I deserved to know if there was a danger they needed to be protected from.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I could never be certain about Josephine. She was better than her mama at hiding it.”

  Graham growled, an impatient sound that refused to be ignored. “As touching as this family moment might be, it doesn’t solve the problem of what becomes of this woman. A nonchallenge attack on another Lupine with the intent to kill is a death sentence. But it seems a little cruel to do that to someone not in her right mind.”

  “Well, we can’t just put her in an institution, can we?” Logan frowned. “It would be worse than a death sentence. I mean, one full moon, one shift, and she’d either be in a lab somewhere being vivisected, or she’d be killed outright as a monster.”

  “Not a human institution, no, but maybe I can talk to Rafe’s mate. When Tess’s grandfather snapped, the Witches’ Council had to find someplace to put him. That means that there must be someplace where she can be confined to keep her from hurting anyone, but where they’d be sympathetic to what she is.”

  “So that’s where you’ll send her.”

  “I can’t send her anywhere,” Graham said pointedly. “It’s up to the alpha of her pack to make those decisions, which means that it has now become even more important that this pack get an alpha. So for the last time, who is the rightful alpha of the White Paw Clan?”

  “There’s no question,” Logan said, his deep voice steady and firm. “This is Honor’s pack, and she is more than able to run it as she sees fit.”

  Honor nearly fell over sideways. What on earth was the idiot talking about?

  Drawing back his shoulders, Logan met her gaze, then shifted his up over her left shoulder in a sign of respect to a dominant Lupine. “And it’s my hope that you will grant your mate the honor of lending you any assistance you might need in the course of your duties.”

  If it hadn’t been for Graham’s outraged roar, Honor figured the sound of her jaw dropping would have echoed through the forest like thunder. “You what?”

  Logan clenched his jaw and drew a deep breath. “I hope you will grant your mate, grant me, the honor—”

  “No, I heard you, you idiot. I meant what the hell are you talking about? I’m not going to be running this pack. You’re going to tell the Silverback that I’m not fit to be alpha—which I’m really not, by the way … Okay, so I’m fit, but I’ve realized I don’t really want to be the alpha, so it’s really the same thing, isn’t it? And then we’re going to go back to Manhattan where you can be beta of your own pack and I can maybe actually get a life for the first time in forever. And then I can concentrate on continuing to be madly in love with you and giving you mind-blowing sex at least twice a day.” She shrugged and smiled. “I had it all worked out.”

  Logan was shaking his head before she made it to “idiot,” and he didn’t stop when she did. “No. You don’t understand.” He met her eyes, this time, his own golden ones soft and warm like aged whiskey. “I have it all worked out. I’m going to tell Graham that I’m resigning my place as his beta and leaving the Silverback Clan. I’m going to move up to Connecticut, because this place is your home, and these folks are your family. We have to live here. You’ll run the pack and I’ll take care of the things you don’t have the stomach to do, and we’d get to be together, being madly in love and having mind-blowing sex at least three or four times a day. It’s a great plan. I had it all worked out.”

  “Did either of you even consider sharing either of these lamebrained plans with me?” Graham bit out.

  The honk of a car horn prevented them from answering.

  Honor, Logan, and Hamish—along with the entirety of the pack, Honor presumed—all turned to look for the source of the noise, but Graham just closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and groaned. A dark-colored SUV pulled to a stop along the rough trail that led down from the house, and the driver’s-side door popped open to reveal a small blond woman with ample curves and a sweet expression on her pretty face.

  “Well, he’s obviously alive and well, Graham,” the woman said, smiling at Logan. “So why didn’t you come back to the house and get me?”

  “Missy, why would I come back to the house to get you when I specifically told you to turn the truck around and get you and Roarke safely back to the city?”

  The Silverback alpha sounded as if he’d asked this sort of question before and didn’t expect to like the answer.

  This time, he didn’t get an answer at all. The woman just turned to Honor and smiled.

  “Hello. I assume you are the new alpha of the White Paw Clan. I bring greetings from your cousins in Manhattan, the Silverback Clan. My name is Melissa Winters, but I hope you will agree to call me Missy.” She offered the formal greeting, and gestured to the glowering male next to her. “Graham, of course, is my mate.”

  The mate in question sighed. “We were in the middle of discussing who would be alpha of this pack when you interrupted us, Missy. And by the way, where’s the baby?”

  “Roarke the Wreck is in the car, of course, still strapped into his car seat, and hopefully sleeping like a lamb. For a change. Now what was this about still not knowing who should be alpha?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t know,” Graham growled, “I just said we were still discussing it.”

  “What is there to discuss?”

  “I was just telling Graham that I would be leaving the pack and moving here to Connecticut,” Logan said calmly. “I’m resigning my position as beta, because Honor is my mate, and my place is by her side. As her Sol.”

  Honor stared at Logan for a long minute. Her mind had been well and truly boggled. This man, this amazing man she’d fallen in love with faster than a lightning strike, was willing to give up his entire life. To make himself submissive to her for the rest of his days, just because he thought it would make her happy. The very idea made her so happy she almost cried. “But you can’t do it,” she told him.

  Logan scowled at her. “Why not?”

  “Because it would make me miserable.” Honor laughed, feeling honestly happy and free for the first time in years. “I don’t want to be the alpha. I never did. That’s why I came up with my plan. Being beta was all well and good, but alpha is too much. It’s too much responsibility. It takes too much time. It doesn’t leave any of me left for the things I love doing, like running in the woods and having mind-blowing sex.” She smiled and wrapped her arms around him. “My plan is much better. I leave the White Paw clan and move to Manhattan with you. It allows for me to not be alpha, you to be with your friends, and still leaves lots of time for the mind-blowing sex.”

  “Clearly a well-thought-out plan.” Missy laughed.

  Graham cleared his throat. “But I have a better one.”

  Heads all around the clearing turned to look at the Silverback alpha.

  Missy’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think they need another plan, Graham. It sounds like they have the situation all worked out.”

  “Not to my satisfaction,” he replied. “It’s not that I dislike the spirit of Honor’s plan. I just feel it fails to address a couple of key points. Namely, that the White Paw Clan would continue to lack an alpha, which I would then have to appoint. And also that if Logan has to spend one more week reporting to me—or to anyone at all, I’m pretty sure—he’s going to end up hurting someone. I’d just as soon it not wind up being me.”

  Logan frowned. “What are you talking about? I have never been anything but loyal to you, brother. You ought to know that.”

  “Oh, I know it. I’ve never doubted it, but somewhere along the line I’ve lost the right to ask loyalty of you, brother.” Graham held up a hand when Logan would have protested. “Shut up and listen, because if you find this news surprising, you’re even dumber than I’ve always said you were. You’ve outgrown your place in the Silverback Clan, Logan Hunter. You can no l
onger be beta to anyone. Which is part of why your plan sucked. You’re alpha, brother, and it’s time you took your place at the head of a pack.”

  Logan shook his head. “No. I won’t. I’m not challenging you, Graham. It’s never going to happen, so just—”

  Honor smiled and smacked Logan hard across the chest. She had a feeling she knew what was coming, and Logan was right—his idea was better. “You really are dumber than he’s always said you were. Logan, shut up for a minute and listen to what the man is telling you.”

  Graham shot her a grin that almost made Honor understand why Missy had shackled herself to the head of an entire region of Lupines. “Thanks, Honor. As I was saying, I think my plan is the best of the three. In it, I will accept Honor’s decision to step down as alpha of the White Paw Clan. I will then announce that I have chosen a new alpha for this pack by the name of Logan Hunter. Any challenges will be swiftly and, I’m sure, successfully dealt with, and Missy, and I will return to the city, where we will proceed to have mind-blowing sex.”

  Missy blushed, but winked at her mate. “Yeah, I think I like this plan best of all, too.”

  Logan finally broke into a grin, actually throwing back his head and laughing. “I only like it if Honor and I can have the mind-blowing sex, too. No way are you guys getting to have all the fun.”

  “Well, okay,” Graham teased, “but you can’t have any more mind-blowing sex than we do. You will, after all, still owe fealty to me, even if you will be an independent alpha.”

  Honor laughed with the others, jumping a little when a large hand tapped her on the shoulder. She turned her head to see her uncle Hamish standing behind her, grinning.

  “Well?” he said, bushy eyebrows quirking. “What do you say we get the formalities out of the way?”

  Logan draped his arm over his mate’s shoulder. “I say, let’s roll.”

  “With your permission, alpha?” Hamish nodded to Graham.

  “By all means, elder.”

  Taking Honor and Logan each by the hand, Hamish led them to the center of the oak stump and stood between them facing the pack members still filling the clearing.

  “Challenge has been made and answered,” he said, his voice ringing with satisfaction. “The Goddess and the alpha of the region have spoken, and a new chapter has begun for the White Paw Clan. From this day forward, you will follow Logan Hunter as your alpha. This title, this pack, and this territory are his, and Honor Tate shall stand as his Luna by his side. To the White Paw.”

  Every single Lupine in the clearing threw back his head and howled.

  Honor felt her heart expand until she wondered whether her body could hold it. Everything she had ever dreamed of, everything she had believed she would never be able to have was suddenly within her grasp. Her pack had an alpha who she knew would restore them to the strength and honor that had slipped from their grasp, and best of all, that alpha was someone named Not Her. She had a mate by her side who alternately fascinated and infuriated her, one who would stand by her side during her greatest trials and give her just enough grief to keep her on her toes. All the threats to herself and her pack had been removed, and the future had become something to anticipate with excitement rather than resignation.

  Could life get any better?

  When Logan turned to smile at her and lowered his mouth to hers, Honor got the answer to her question.

  Oh, yes. Life could get better, and it would, with every minute spent by her mate’s side.

  Read on for an excerpt from Christine Warren’s next book

  HEART OF STONE

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  He had slept for so long that he had nearly forgotten what the world sounded like.

  Centuries of frozen immobility had lulled him into a kind of trance, where the cares of the mortal world washed by him like the babbling of a stream, barely teasing the edges of his unconscious mind. If danger had presented itself, real danger, the kind he had been created to battle against, he knew the magic that allowed his slumber would have allowed a swift reawakening. Guardians, after all, were useless when they couldn’t be relied upon to instantly counter any threat. But for hundreds upon hundreds of years, the world had buzzed along safely, a tacit reassurance that he and his brethren had done their jobs thoroughly and well. Evil had remained at bay. That had not changed.

  Everything else had.

  He didn’t remember the day he had come to this particular place, this stone terrace poised atop a small garden, the large house to his side, and the incessant backdrop of noise, both mechanical and human. By the time he had come here, he had moved so many times and so far from his original post in the center of France that he had ceased to keep so close an eye on his whereabouts. He would know if the threat he guarded against had stirred, and nowhere in his journeys had even the faintest whiff of threat pierced his slumber. The world had rested at peace while he had rested in eternal readiness.

  Now, however, something must have changed.

  The fog of sleep had ebbed and flowed around him for some time now, how long he couldn’t say, but lately something had cut through it. A voice. A scent. The disturbing presence of one particular human. The woman.

  He couldn’t remember when she had first begun to appear at the edges of his consciousness, but he would never forget the sudden rush of awareness he’d felt when she’d first laid her small hand on his stony skin. One minute he’d been dozing, and the next he’d felt life flood through him as if a bolt of lightning had struck directly into his chest.

  Since that moment, he had watched her. He knew when she came near, as if she carried that electrical charge with her wherever she went, rousing him from his slumber just enough to stare through the stony film over his eyes and see her moving about his domain.

  Sometimes, she would pause in front of him and gaze up into his fierce, carved features and speak of him. At least, he thought she spoke of him. She told the humans that he had come from France by way of England, purchased at an auction by a wealthy man who lived north of the city. She said he had been carved from limestone, but of course she couldn’t know how he and his brethren had been made all those centuries ago. If he had noticed one thing over the years, it was that the longer he existed, the fewer humans seemed to understand the magic that permeated their world. It made them even more vulnerable than they had been when the Guardians had last faced down a threat to their continued survival.

  Like lambs milling at the edge of the forest, easy prey to any creature with claws and teeth.

  He couldn’t recall the last time he had seen a human working magic. Being frozen in place didn’t give him the opportunity to see more than a small sampling of them, and often only the young ones, but he had seen not a spark of power in any of them, not in an age.

  Until tonight.

  He had felt her gaze on him, a warmth that soaked into his stony skin like a beam of sunlight. She stood for a few minutes watching him, as she often did when she came into his presence, and as always, something about her pulled him from the depths into the shallower pool of his slumber. Sometimes, she spoke directly to him, much of it nonsense about the troubles of her day, but this time she said nothing.

  Still, he could feel her presence, her warmth, the soft curve of her hip as it pressed against the side of his foot, her shoulder brushing up against his lower leg. She felt so fragile, so human, that it took a moment for his sluggish mind to process that she also felt like magic.

  It hummed softly, almost imperceptibly in the background all around her, like a halo of static electricity. It sparked against his stony skin wherever she touched him, and he wondered how he could have missed it all the other times she had been near him. Magic hated to be contained. Like sunlight, it would seek out the smallest crack and crevice, the thinnest barrier, and beat relentlessly against it until it inevitably found its way through.

  Adrenaline rushed through him.

  Invigorated, he began to struggle in earnest. Something w
as happening, something significant, and this human woman appeared to be the cause. He wanted to know why. His slumber should have lasted until and unless the threat he had been created to counter had stirred. Kees felt no indications that any such thing had happened, so why did he appear to be waking now? Why here? And why did this human seem to hold the key to finding the answers?

  His human grew more intriguing by the minute.

  And he grew closer to breaking free.

  His human stirred, shifted as if to rise, and the magic coursed through him like an electric current, lighting every nerve ending with fierce energy. She was the source, and he couldn’t let her leave until he discovered how.

  One moment he crouched poised on his pedestal, frozen in the same position he had occupied for more than a thousand years, and the next, he and the human stood in unison, stretching to their full heights, his even fuller due to the three feet of slate beneath his talons. She rose in a nearly silent shift of cloth, but after so long in his fixed pose, Kees heard the crack of stone as he lifted himself to his feet.

  His human heard it, too.

  He saw the exact instant the sound and movement registered. She froze in place, her back to him, her every muscle tensing with the rush of primal awareness that signaled danger was near. He intended her no harm, but her instincts wouldn’t know that. To them, something huge and fanged and supernatural had just stepped into their orbit. Even before she turned and saw him, Kees knew that the most basic, animal portion of her brain would be screaming at her to run. Fight or flight, and even the electrical and chemical impulses in her brain possessed enough intelligence to know that against him, to fight would be futile.

  Her only chance for survival, her instincts would tell her, was to run. Now.