Not that this complicated series of happenings had occurred during my lifetime, not with Chief Wilder firmly in the picture. But my father's current absence from the debate had clearly created a void that Justin had sneakily stepped into. The question was—could I squeeze the impostor back out? Or would I already be walking on eggshells just by showing up at All-Pack as leader of the Wilder clan in the first place, with a confrontation before the event pushing my action over the edge from probably-ill-advised to just-plain-ludicrous?
"But I thought you and Justin were going to mate?" Camilla asked as the silence between us lengthened. I was ashamed to admit that I'd forgotten all about the young woman's presence, my mental battle with Justin and the more current standoff with my cousin's mate keeping every neuron I possessed firing at top speed. But Camilla wasn't stupid, and she could see that the pieces I'd presented didn't add up—either Justin and I were a couple, or Justin was a backstabber. Likely he wasn't both.
"No," I admitted. It didn't bode well for my future as a conniver, but I saw no alternative to telling my cousin the truth. "It's his brother I'm in love with. Wolfie is my mate." Just speaking the words out loud was a relief, a smile coming to my lips unbidden as I pictured my mate's face. But then I regained my focus and peered across the coffee table to see how my admission had been received.
"Better choice," Chad said quietly, and his shoulders seemed to relax just a trifle in reply. I wondered what the young alpha had thought he'd known when he walked into this room a few moments earlier. And I also wondered what rumors had already made the rounds of the packs for Justin to be confident enough to send out his invitations so early in the month. Was it possible that Chad's earlier aggression was fueled by an assumption that I was allying clan Wilder to the more powerful Young pack, an assumption that must have had its start on Justin's own lips?
And, the Machiavellian Wilder part of me continued, can I use the gossip that Justin started to my own advantage?
"If you're mated to Justin's brother, then why would you need to worry about our support for All-Pack?" Camilla asked as Chad and I engaged in another silent conversation that got neither of us anywhere. "Wolfie's one of the most powerful alphas in our region, even if his pack is a little, well, unconventional."
I finally started paying attention to my cousin again as her words sunk in. Camilla wasn't as much of a pack princess as I'd thought, apparently, her quick mind quite capable of grasping the intricacies of the upcoming power struggles. And, in a way, the young woman was right. If Wolfie and I simply merged our packs together, then my mate definitely could hold off all comers. So why hadn't I taken advantage of being out from under my father's thumb today in order to pound on Wolfie's door and ask him to help me bolster the Wilder's waning power at All-Pack?
In a way I was making the situation more difficult than it had to be by following my father's mandate, but the truth was that I didn't want to surrender leadership of the clan that I'd been born into, even if the pack would be transferring into Wolfie's capable hands instead of into his brother's. My mate and I had chosen to keep our clans divided last fall in the interest of making the leadership transition a little less abrupt for my relatives, and even with a Wilder in charge, it was still rough going bringing my straight-laced cousins and uncles into the twenty-first century. Since the yahoos and Wilders still mixed like oil and water even though they'd been sharing the same space for weeks, it seemed premature to merge our two packs before the time was right for everyone involved.
So, even though I knew that Wolfie could protect my rights at All-Pack, I didn't want him to. The act would have turned my mate into the real alpha of clan Wilder and would inevitably have resulted in a round of challenges from my less rational cousins. In the end, I was confident that Wolfie could tear each alpha pretender apart, but his success would only result in further polarizing Haven into opposing camps, a division from which my relatives might never return.
As I struggled to explain this viewpoint to my cousin, Camilla's face became more confused but her mate's slowly cleared. At last, Chad stopped me before I could walk down any more blind verbal alleys. Standing, the young alpha held out his hand, and I unconsciously rose to my feet to follow his lead.
"Alright," Chad said, his wolf resting its head on front paws now that the decision had been made. "The Wilders have my support."
Chapter 6
So I won one and I lost one. Both Walkers and Reeds (as I later discovered when one of Camilla's younger sisters came to call a few days later) were willing to support my bid to host All-Pack. But Justin had sent out invitations before I thought to do so, and my gut said that I wouldn't be able to garner enough additional supporters during the next few weeks to reclaim clan Wilders' former place in the regional arena. As a result, even though my father growled in protest, I decided to take a slower approach to my goal, ceding the field to Justin for the time being. I was confident that, as long as I was able to hold my own within the Wilder clan, my relatives and I would be able to claw our way back to the top of the werewolf social heap given enough time. So, for now, I'd stay focused on getting Haven's internal affairs in order.
The Chief clearly wanted to argue the point, but our pack's former leader had exhausted his ability to shift into human form during our two previous confrontations, and a lack of human words meant that he could no longer micromanage Wilder affairs. So even though my father's occasional lupine presence was a damper on the yahoos' good spirits, we all enjoyed a bit of breathing room during the weeks that followed.
But I missed Wolfie. I hadn't realized how much strength I'd been drawing from our regular phone calls until they were taken away, and without that release, I instead ended up spending hours every day running through the woods in lupine form just to maintain my own sanity. Everything was simpler when I donned fur, decisions narrowing down to simple branches in the physical trail rather than consisting of treacherous choices about how to manage my uncles and what to do at the upcoming All-Pack. It was a relief to submit to my wolf's simple mind, her lupine brain uninterested in worries about what the future would hold when the present offered open woods and endless trails for our fleet feet.
It also helped that I felt closer to my mate in wolf form, even though the two of us were hundreds of miles apart, with my father continuing to stand between us. I could remember running through woods much like these with the bloodling alpha by my side, and if I closed my eyes now, I could almost hear Wolfie's paws thumping across leaves in tandem with my own. The memory made my lupine and human brains unite in shared joy, and our daily runs made up (at least in small part) for the cold loneliness of our bed at night.
So, when I returned home from the woods one week before All-Pack, my mind had stopped racing and my face was serene. Until, that is, I smelled the faintest hint of leaf mold and pine needles intermingling with the aroma of stew bubbling away on the kitchen hob. Immediately, my hands stilled on my shoelaces and I strained to determine whether the addition of gun metal was also present within the barely-discernible aroma.
But rather than catching Justin's signature aroma, I instead realized that the air was filled with the cool odor of peppermint. And when I turned, I found a female face instead of either of the sets of male features that I'd been expecting.
The stranger was about Blaze's age, but she and the yahoos shared no other traits in common. Instead of rowdy good spirits, this young shifter looked poised to flee, and a glance at her inner wolf confirmed the sentiment. Physically, my visitor reminded me more of my third cousin than of the yahoos since both women were sleek and polished, but there was none of Camilla's exuberance about this girl, and I couldn't help thinking that my visitor looked more cat than wolf.
While I perused her form in silence, the peppermint-scented youngster clutched a book to her chest like a shield in an attempt to block out the terrifying world. And if I'd been feeling kind, I might have turned away then and given the girl space to build up her courage. But something about th
e stranger set my teeth on edge, so I just waited and, finally, my guest unclasped her hands wordlessly and held out the text like an offering.
Even as her arms stretched toward mine, I noticed that my visitor kept her gaze firmly anchored on the floor, her eyes never once meeting my own. And after spending days guiding alpha-leaning wolves who didn't want to follow my lead, a submissive wolf like this should have soothed my soul. So why did my hackles raise at her mere presence?
Taking my attention away from the girl at last, I found that the book was a gift inscribed by my mate, which softened my expression at last. So Wolfie had received my note. Or, if not, he still trusted me to stay by his side regardless of the rumors that must have been swirling through the nearby packs by this time. Werewolves were inveterate gossips, so I wouldn't have been surprised if Justin and I had been married and expecting a child according to the rumor mill by this time. It said a lot about my mate's strength of will that he'd sent me a gift rather than showing up in anger on my doorstep—an eventuality that I'd half hoped for even though Wolfie's presence would have tossed both my and my father's plans out the window.
The thought made me smile, and I ignored the girl in order to open my mouth and fully savor my mate's aroma as I read his words. "The whole pack misses you, but I miss you more," Wolfie had penned with a firm hand, then he'd signed his name with a muddy paw print. "P.S.," the inscription continued. "I'm sending you trouble. But you can handle it."
As I read the brief note, my usually patient wolf had risen up to guide our shared body, taking the lead even though we were currently standing on two feet. Perhaps because of that lupine dominance, I found myself far less interested in the so-called trouble and far more interested in the scents still swirling around the room. Wolfie's vague missive hadn't presented the whole picture at all, and my wolf and I inhaled deeply once again in order to fully capture the odor rising off the pages in front of us. In the process, we discovered that aroma of pine needles and leaf mold on the title page was emanating just as strongly from the girl who was waiting in front of our eyes.
My wolf growled at the realization, and I let the canine have her head, watching our visitor skitter back until her legs bumped up against a straight-backed chair. Neither my wolf nor I liked what we smelled, and the girl understood without words that she was less than welcome here in my family home.
Why the unkindness toward a young shifter who clearly wasn't out to cause any trouble? My wolf's anger had arisen because, as Wolfie's note had opined, the girl herself was trouble. She was trouble because werewolves' signature aromas tended to run in families and I couldn't quite make myself believe that my visitor was Wolfie's sister...especially since my mate had never mentioned the existence of such a sibling. Instead, while the girl shared two of her three scents with my mate, she looked nothing like Wolfie Young. Which seemed to leave two possibilities for the source of the familiar aroma wafting from her form, neither of which made my wolf any happier. My visitor must be Wolfie's daughter...or his mate.
As I ran my eyes across the girl's quivering form, I could hear the yahoos drift into the room and quieten as they came to the same conclusions I had. But then my human half peered more closely and saw something else...and my wolf settled down inside me with a tongue-lolling grin. Perhaps this girl wasn't that kind of trouble after all.
***
Although her wolf was too submissive to discern mine, my visitor was perceptive even while two-legged, and I could see her slender shoulders relax just a hair as my lupine half calmed down. "I'm the trouble," the girl said softly, still not quite meeting my eyes. Her feet were pointing toward the door, and I could tell that she was poised to flee, so I softened my stance at last and reached out to take her hands in mine.
"Welcome, Trouble," I greeted her. "I'm Terra."
For a moment, everyone in the room went stock still, the yahoos gaping in shock both at what they thought Wolfie had sent me and at my anticlimactic reaction to his surprise. I took advantage of the pause to glance over their heads to where Cricket was hovering in the doorway, and I sent the older woman a quick smile to stay any explanation she might have wanted to offer up. Of all the shifters present, my stepmother was the most likely to understand why we were smelling Wolfie's scent on this girl, and the older woman's tentative smile confirmed that fact. Chances were, Cricket even knew this young woman's name and pedigree, a name that I had yet to determine. So I turned my attention back to "Trouble" and raised one eyebrow in question.
"I'm Sarah," the girl said at last, becoming more timid by the moment as the yahoos' scowls darkened further. My wolf could scent their anger from across the room, and when I heard mutters emanating from the young adults, I knew that Blaze, as usual, would be the first to break.
"No way!" the youngest shifter exclaimed, striding forward and grabbing the girl's shoulders to spin her around. Sarah went limp in his grasp, as if she were used to being manhandled, and I would have stepped in if I'd thought that Blaze had a single violent bone in his body.
But instead of striking out at our guest, the yahoo just leaned down to sniff his way across the woman's body, sticking his nose deep within the folds of her baggy clothing. And as Blaze sleuthed, his anger turned into confusion. So I wasn't at all surprised when the young man's nose reached Sarah's midsection...and stuck.
"When are you due?" I asked. At the same moment, the realization of the odor's source dawned upon Blaze, and I thought the room itself exhaled in relief. I was the only one who could see the tiny spark of life within our visitor's belly, but each of us could discern its scent—that woodland odor that had tricked us into drawing the wrong conclusion moments earlier emanated from the tiny wolf pup cradled inside Sarah's womb.
"New Year's Day," Sarah murmured, her eyes still firmly focused on the ground, and I almost laughed at the way Blaze leapt back, as if being pregnant were a disease he just might catch from standing too close to the mother-to-be.
"And who's the father?" demanded Fen, asking the question that was clearly uppermost in all four of the yahoos' minds.
Justin, I thought with a smile. I was confident in my guess, even though I had a hard time believing that any alpha would be harsh enough to cast off a mate eight-and-a-half months pregnant with his first child. Still, if my shameless flirting had been in any way responsible for Justin's decision, then I was glad that the mate in question had wound up on my doorstep. I wouldn't let Sarah fall through the cracks.
But my smile faded fast when my visitor finally gathered up her courage and answered the yahoo's question with a name I hadn't expected at all.
"Wolf Young," she said quietly. And then the room erupted into yells.
***
None of us was pleased by the accusation, but, to my surprise, it was my mild-mannered stepmother who shifted into lupine form and lunged at the girl. If I'd ever wondered whether Cricket really cared about me, or whether she simply put up with her mate's offspring for Chief Wilder's sake, the speed with which the older wolf barreled across the room would have proven the shifter's affection. Luckily for everyone concerned, though, Cricket's emotional transformation had resulted in a wolf tangled in human clothing, so she fell flat on her face mere inches from our visitor's shins rather than achieving her goal of tearing out the girl's throat.
At the same moment, Blaze was lunging toward my stepmother in an unexpected show of chivalry. "Stop!" he commanded thrusting bare human hands toward my stepmother's gaping lupine jaws.
"He told me to say that, but it's not true!" Sarah's high voice rose above the melee, and I was glad to see that the girl's words had a calming effect on the combatants. Because, while I could have shut the struggle down with one alpha bark, Cricket and I didn't have that kind of relationship, and I hesitated to mark the older woman as an underling by forcing her to submit to my will. So it was a relief when my stepmother instead sidled away of her own volition, leaving Blaze to stand alone beside the self-proclaimed trouble.
The girl who drew a
ll of our eyes had ended up standing on a chair in her effort to escape, and she now towered above us, her baby bump very much in evidence now that her clothes had twisted to one side. I wanted to ask about the "he" who had commanded Sarah to lie about her baby's paternity, but the girl continued speaking without any prompting on my part.
"Justin said to tell his brother that Wolf was my baby's father," the girl said, her voice trembling as she edged further away from us, nearly tipping over the chair in her impulse to escape. And although everyone in the room was listening, the girl's face remained tilted toward mine. "But your mate only laughed in my face when I told him, and said that anyone who truly knew him knew that his name was Wolfie, not Wolf.
"And when Wolfie sent me here, he said to tell his mate the exact same thing." The girl's eyes met mine for a split second before skittering away as her voice became quieter and more ashamed. "I didn't want to, but Wolfie said that it was only fair given the rumors that he'd heard." Nearly too quiet to hear, Sarah finished: "And then he said that his mate wouldn't believe me for an instant."
But I had believed. For one split second, I'd truly thought that Wolfie might be this baby's father. After all, when the child had been conceived, my mate and I hadn't even met, so what was to stop Wolfie from finding a beautiful young shifter like Sarah attractive? He might not have even known that she was pregnant when he left, so having an unwed mother turn up on his doorstep eight months later wouldn't discredit Wolfie as a gentleman. Not if he did the right thing and stepped up to be her mate after finding out about his impending child, that was.
Pack Princess: A Fantastical Werewolf Adventure (Wolf Rampant Book 2) Page 5
