Past My Defenses (Taming the Pack series) (Entangled Ignite)

by Wendy Sparrow

  He’d become a good judge of fire damage after interning in what he’d nicknamed Matchstickville. He’d gotten off lightly. It’d be mostly smoke damage.

  Travis was going to win a medal or a key to the city. He’d gotten credit for reporting this too. He was everywhere all at once, it seemed.

  Thankfully, he hadn’t left Vanessa at home, because they were already calling it arson. His relief was so complete that he didn’t even mind when Jordan showed up. He just kept his arms around Vanessa—which he’d been told was his job. She really was mental about wanting to save his bed.

  Jordan surveyed the scene with a scowl before stalking over to them, shaking his head. “I was going to say that it’s just as well she’s staying with you…up until this.”

  “We weren’t home.” Dane answered as Vanessa huddled deeper into his arms, still staring at his house. Then, it struck him what Jordan had said. “Wait, why is it just as well?”

  The pack Alpha looked harried as he jerked a hand through his hair, shifting anxiously. He looked almost…high. “I’m not feeling well. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me.” He blinked extra long. “I’m not sleeping. I keep going out patrolling, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore. I can’t seem to sit still.”

  This caught Vanessa’s attention, and she switched to staring at Jordan. She didn’t tip her chin down—if anything she lifted it and tilted her head to the side. “What have you been eating? Or drinking? You look like someone slipped something in your drink.”

  So, she had the same thought he had, but she’d assumed Jordan wouldn’t do this to himself. It seemed out of character for him to be drugged out, but his ex-girlfriend had been planning on killing the girl he’d picked for his future girlfriend and then Cheri had ended up dead herself…plus, Vanessa was Dane’s now. Maybe he’d needed something to get over losing Vanessa. The thought of Jordan taking drugs because a human had swiped Vanessa right out from under him shouldn’t make him smile. He bit his lips.

  Jordan groaned and opened his eyes wide. “I’m not on drugs. Look at my pupils. I think it’s just…a flu.”

  “A flu that makes you crazy?” Dane said slowly—drawing out the syllables for maximum effect.

  It earned him a punch from Vanessa, but was totally worth it.

  Jordan didn’t snarl back—he shook his head as if he was shaking off water and looked at the house again. “You two have somewhere to go, right?”

  “Yeah. My house,” Vanessa said.

  “I’ll have to fix the door.” Geez, he should have already done that. Her house was sitting empty and easy to break into, and he’d forgotten about it. It shouldn’t be too difficult to replace the door.

  “Send over the dimensions, and I’ll have someone send one over,” Jordan said.

  “Look, I don’t need…”

  “I’m a damn contractor, and you’re in my pack. Now shut the hell up and let me help you.” This time he did snarl, and the wolf shimmered in his eyes.

  Vanessa groaned and shoved them apart, even though they hadn’t approached each other. “Dane, don’t be a stubborn moron. I work for the company, and they can get us a door before it gets too dark. Think of it as a company benefit.” She turned to Jordan and looked him in the eyes. “Look at my eyes, Jordan. You’re losing it. Go home. You know what happens when an Alpha loses it. You don’t want it going this way.” She’d hissed it all quietly after looking around.

  He clenched his teeth and nodded at both of them before turning and walking off.

  “What was that about?” Dane asked.

  Vanessa shook her head tightly as Jordan turned and called to her, “And make sure to shut your den entrance.”

  She tipped her chin down after looking around and said, “I will,” louder than necessary.

  …

  She was glad Dane didn’t ask her questions on the ride to her house. She wasn’t sure if she should answer him. If anything counted as “pack business” that shouldn’t be spread, this was it. On the other hand, Dane might inadvertently say something, not realizing what he was saying. Or he might say something on purpose because he and Jordan couldn’t seem to stop butting heads on everything.

  She wanted to run. She needed to run. This was the sort of situation you just ran and ran from, until you came back and faced it—if you had to.

  Staying was sometimes harder.

  The minute they arrived, Dane grabbed a tape measure from his Jeep, measured the doorway, and wrote it down. He handed it to her with a disgruntled look. She texted it in.

  “Explain.” He’d at least waited until she’d sent the text—that was about five seconds longer than she’d expected of him.

  She dragged him toward her room, but he dug in his heels at the doorway. “Look, distracting me will only piss me off.”

  She’d have to tell him or he’d grumble about it and who knew who’d overhear. She should give him credit for being so intelligent that he understood something significant had happened. Instead she wanted to kick him for being bullheaded.

  “There has never been, in all the history of sex, a time when a female was thinking what I am and anticipating it leading anywhere near what you’re thinking. Not even in Reno.”

  He let her drag him into the bathroom where she turned on the shower, motioned for him to stay, and went and turned on the radio in her room to country—loud, twangy country. He looked so adorably baffled when she came back in.

  She rose up on her toes, with her mouth right next to his ear, and said, “I don’t know who is listening outside.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You really think the Lycan that keeps chasing you is out there with the racket over at my place.”

  She shook her head. “No, but I’m sure Jordan has sent other Lycans to patrol this house.”

  “And?”

  She sighed. She wouldn’t have to explain this to another Lycan if he’d seen what Dane had seen. “You know the phrase, ‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link’?”

  He nodded and shrugged at the same time.

  “A pack is only as strong as its leader, and there is someone out there killing Lycans. Jordan can’t deal with a power struggle right now—and there are Lycans in the pack who might try it if they think he’s weak. Deference is instinctive in the presence of an Alpha…it’s a compulsion. I’m not the most submissive among Lycans, but that’s because I fight it since I’m stubborn. I felt no instinct to be submissive to him earlier and even those who don’t fight it will notice eventually, and there’ll be a coup attempt.”

  His furrowed forehead smoothed as he realized what she was talking about. “But maybe it’s for the best if he’s on drugs or something.”

  “He’s not on drugs.” Stupid, obstinate, irritating man…and if he thought she hadn’t caught that smirk of superiority when she’d mentioned it to Jordan, well, he was wrong. “I don’t know what’s up with him, but this isn’t the time for him to look weak.”

  “Who would take over?”

  “Well, Travis is the acting Alpha when Jordan is away, but he wouldn’t challenge him, and I’m not sure he’d win in a challenge fight because he’s not bloodthirsty enough. And it’d have to go to a challenge fight because none of them could get the pack to vote in a majority to overthrow Jordan. There’s too many families—and Lycans with families don’t like change if it’s not necessary. In my old pack, there were challenges fairly regularly, and the idiots overthrew one of the better Alphas we had. They were younger and stupid. Jordan’s been Alpha for nearly a decade. So it’ll have to go to a fight. There are two or three others in the pack who might take Jordan down in a fight if he was out of it like he was tonight, and they are bloodthirsty, and every one of them would kill him after the challenge fight to prove they’re Alphas.”

  “Once again…maybe that’s for the best.”

  She half sighed, half growled. “I know you don’t like Jordan.” A huge understatement. “But the pack is united in following him. He’s a goo
d Alpha. Any of the others, aside from Travis, wouldn’t get the full pack’s support. Hell, I wouldn’t follow any of the others. And I’d want to shake Travis a dozen times a day, even if I would follow him. Without a central leader, the pack will be vulnerable, and the poachers will bring one of the strongest packs in the country to its knees. It will kill us—literally.”

  He grimaced, but he nodded. “What are these poachers? I know one helped kill Cheri, and they brought them here, but what are they?”

  She sighed. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but I will because the odds that a random arsonist targeted you are just so…so…” She sighed again.

  He deserved to know, but it definitely wasn’t something she’d wanted to discuss with him. It’d been her fault that his house was set on fire, and she wouldn’t blame him if he walked away once he thought she was safe. He wouldn’t right now due to his protective streak, but that might be the only thing binding him to someone who nearly got his house burned down.

  “You know how you can buy a kidney if you have enough money?” she said after swallowing uncomfortably.

  He nodded and then winced, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, but it gets more vile. You know how you buy exotic animal parts on the black market—to cure anything wrong with you supposedly?”

  Dane was a smart guy. He paled and grimaced. “I’m going to have nightmares.”

  “Well, join the pack.” She stared off into space for a moment as something occurred to her. “I wonder if this was planned—whatever is affecting Jordan. I wonder if this is how they’re going to take down this large a pack—targeting the Alpha and then, while everyone is repositioning, they’ll just pick us off like sick animals. Maybe they’ve even taken down other packs like this, but we’re all too damn stubborn to share stuff like that.”

  “How many other packs have they attacked?”

  “This might be just one poacher, and the others must’ve been hit by several or maybe they had a Lycan on their side too. No, with how fast they move, it must be several poachers…but having a Lycan to target for them would make for a quick entrance and exit.” She shook her head numbly. It was too horrible to even think about. One of their own kind turning against them here was bad enough, but more than one…she didn’t even want to consider it. “And that’s what they do. They’re in and out usually within days. Sometimes they dump the bodies, but sometimes the packs assume anyone missing is dead. With how we guard pack land, they can’t really spend much time on our land, scouting out our locations—we’d know.” A shudder ran through her. “Having a Lycan with them…”

  He stared at her…blinking.

  “What was your question?” She’d forgotten what started that horrible monologue.

  “How many packs?”

  “About two dozen around here. It’s been going on in other countries longer, but only about two dozen packs have reported it here. Well, that I know of. We don’t always share stuff like that—tell each other we’re vulnerable. Lycans don’t like to admit to being vulnerable.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  She almost smiled.

  “How many in each pack did these poachers get?”

  “About half—and then they move off just as other packs come to help or when they’d start closing in on them.”

  “Which means how many?”

  “Depends. Six or seven in the smaller packs—fifteen in the largest ones they’ve attacked. They’ve never taken on a pack as large as the Glacier one. Nowhere near this size. And we’re densely packed too. The Multnomah pack I belonged to was one of seven in northern Oregon, but we were spread out, and much smaller. That pack had twenty-three Lycans in it.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s one of the reasons I left that pack—I knew eventually I’d want a mate and dating in the pack I grew up in always struck me as creepy. And my choices were limited, and I’d already crippled one of them. Plus, they kept the hierarchy there, and I got sick of fighting to maintain a position I didn’t even want.”

  “How big is Glacier pack?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t tell you.” It’s possible Jordan might ease up on that someday, but not soon with how Dane was behaving. They were like throwing water in boiling oil.

  “Over thirty?”

  She nodded. She’d give him that…that much should have been obvious from what she’d already said. Although that might seem like a lot to someone who hadn’t realized he’d moved into a rather dense colony of Lycans. The resident population of the surrounding area wasn’t that big.

  “Over fifty?”

  She narrowed her eyes. Reaching into the shower, she shut off the water then nodded at the radio. “Can you shut that off? It’s killing me.” A poor choice of words. These weeks were going to change her vernacular. Forever. A moment later, the loud music stopped, and she collapsed on the toilet lid. “Ugh. I just want to hurl. I think we ought to play that to get rid of our phantom Lycan. The pitch of that music on a day when my hearing is good…”

  He came back in and slid his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. She leaned against him. She could get used to having him around.

  Except…

  It was her fault they’d tried to burn down his house.

  …

  Ethan Carter arrived with the door a half an hour later, and then he stuck around to help Dane install it. Ethan Carter…the fifty-year-old guy who had volunteered to help find a missing kid four months back and brought the kid back twenty minutes later, safe and sound. Ethan was a Lycan. Dane had been surrounded by Lycans ever since he got here.

  He just wanted to grab someone and tell them because it was like he’d dropped into a psych ward and was beginning to buy into the crazy. He wouldn’t tell anyone, but it was so surreal. When he opened the smashed-up door and saw Ethan, his first thought was to shout, “You too?”

  Now he’d see Lycans wherever he went. He’d look at cashiers and think, “Are you on four feet in your free time?” Go to the drive-through and wonder if he should check his food for stray fur.

  Ethan! Ethan was the last person he would have suspected.

  Ethan talked the whole time they were working about the different types of wood they were using to build staircases. Dane agreed and contradicted and argued a good case for maple over Brazilian cherry.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I like the look,” Ethan said, hammering in finishing nails. He wore earplugs the whole time to soften the noise. “We had this idiot a few years back import this chandelier with Swarovski crystals and eighty-four lights—gorgeous. Probably a fifty-thousand-dollar chandelier, and he wanted to put laminate flooring right below it—and not even a good laminate. I thought Jordan was going to cry.” He slanted Dane a look. “He wouldn’t, of course.”

  Twenty minutes later, they were surveying the new door with a healthy sense of accomplishment.

  “You did that?” Ethan asked, pointing at the old door.

  “I was worried about Vanessa.” The door looked like a bear had gotten to it. It was mostly him, anyway. The sheriff probably hadn’t contributed all that much.

  “Not bad, skinny. You have the makings of a solid beta—not that we obey the hierarchy around here. It’s a shame you weren’t blessed with four legs or you’d be giving Jordan a run for his money for Alpha even.”

  Somehow when Ethan called him “skinny” it came out sounding less insulting than when Jordan did. He saw Vanessa pause inside the house and shoot him a look.

  “Your pack seems too big and like too much work,” Dane said. “How big is it?” He could feel Vanessa drilling holes into his head with her eyes. She’d be pissed, but that didn’t bother him as much as it should.

  “Oh, let’s see…if you include all the human offspring, mates, or relatives we’ve taken in as pack members, there’s about seventy of us.”

  “Seventy? How about without all the humans?” His hearing wasn’t as good as a Lycan’s, but he heard Vanessa slam a drawer inside.

/>   “Sixty or so. Which is big—real big. Jordan has his hands full.”

  “Wow.” The biggest understatement he’d ever uttered. There were sixty Lycans around? That was insane. He’d been here seven months and hadn’t known about a single one until two weeks ago. “I think I’ll leave that to your Alpha. I can’t even get Vanessa to listen to me.”

  Ethan laughed. “No, I think you’d have an easier time with the entire rest of the pack combined. I told Felicity when Vanessa came to us four years ago that she’d have to find a mate as stubborn and ferocious as her, and I’d have never thought to look outside the Lycans—that’s more rare. Even in our size pack, you’re only the second mate who’s on two legs. It’s a good thing our nature knows what’s best.”

  “Yeah, that’s good.” It was an interesting way of putting this whole scent-match thing—something in their nature.

  “Boy, if Felicity hadn’t scent-matched to me, I’d never have convinced her otherwise that I was right for her. She likes things with a little more class than me. I say, what’s wrong with being practical? She keeps trying to talk me into an antique French provincial dining room table, and we’ve got twin three-year-old grandkids. It’s like she’s trying to put me in my grave.”

  After he left a few minutes later, Dane couldn’t shake the feeling that Ethan was an older version of him. In twenty-five years, he’d be trying to talk Vanessa into a marble countertop, and she’d be arguing for concrete—though only a crazy person would pick concrete over marble, and then they’d fight it out, and then make love on whichever counter they settled on.

  “What are you thinking?” Vanessa asked, dropping onto the couch beside him.

  “That someday we’ll have a marble countertop.”

  She squinted. “You know, I’ve heard that men think about different things from women, but I assumed it was mostly related to sex.”

  “Also that we’d be having sex on that marble countertop.”