Not The Leader Of The Pack

by Leong, Annabeth

  Juli recovered before he did. “You have another visitor, Sarah,” she called over her shoulder. Nodding to Neil, she disappeared before he even caught his breath.

  Neil did manage to lower his hand before the older female werewolf appeared in the entryway, her coffeepot in hand. She still got as much sun as ever, her wrinkled skin a pleasant nut-brown tan. An elastic flowered headband held back wild gray and white hair, and matched her housedress. Silver stars embossed the sides of her bright blue eyeglass frames. No one could have presented a friendlier, more welcoming image, but Neil couldn’t summon an appropriate greeting. Most of his mind had spun off in daydreams of Juli.

  He wanted to kick himself. Considering the trouble he’d started, he couldn’t afford to be so distracted by Darrow Gunby’s daughter. She made him feel like he was twenty again, still a stammering kid casting about for the right thing to do.

  Sarah Edmond gave him an amused smile that made his face flush. “I assume you’re standing on my porch because you want to come inside? Though I’m pretty sure I’m not the reason you’ve got that look on your face.”

  Neil shook himself. “Yes, please. I thought I’d visit, since it’s been a while since I got the chance to see you.”

  The older woman dismissed his words with an impatient gesture. “I’m no fool, Neil. I know why you’re here. Come sit down so we can do this over coffee. And close your mouth. You look like a guppy.”

  She swept back down the hall and into the house. Neil waited another beat, then stepped in and closed the door behind him. Being inside Sarah Edmond’s house felt a little like being on one of the trails at the edge of town. She’d stuffed her home full of pressed wildflowers and other mementos of the outdoors. Water splashed in a miniature fountain to the left of the door, and Neil thought he recognized the rocks inside it as the kind found on the banks of the Clark Fork River. Beside the fountain, he noticed a framed photograph of Will Edmond, the werewolf who had been her mate until his death three years before.

  “Are you coming to the table, Neil, or are you searching my house for valuables instead?”

  Neil came to himself with a jerk. He’d come here to ask for the support of a well-respected member of the pack, and he’d started by behaving strangely on her porch. “Sorry!” Neil rushed into the kitchen to find Sarah waiting with two cups of coffee and a tray of thinly sliced roast beef. On the counter beside the sink sat a dirty coffee cup and an empty dish identical to the one on the table. He nodded. “You just had this exact conversation with Juli.”

  Sarah smiled slowly, the expression spreading creases over her face. “No conversation is ever exactly the same. Juli wasn’t quite so tongue-tied when she showed up.” She slipped her glasses down her nose and studied him over their frames. “You’re both good kids. I’m not going to get between you.”

  “Mrs. Edmond, I’m not sure if Juli filled you in on all the details of the dispute between us—”

  She made a sound of disgust and waved his words away with one hand. “Those fancy people from Lewistown have gotten into you, boy. You call me Grandma Sarah like you always did. And you tell me what you really want to say.”

  Neil hesitated, embarrassed by her criticism. Hadn’t he complained that Lewistown had gotten into Juli? The entire point of this rebellion was to get away from the Werewolf Council’s stultifying, legalistic ways. He cut to the point. “I told them the pack wouldn’t follow Juli. I said we would break off from the Council, and that I would be alpha.”

  Sarah Edmond leaned back, pursing her lips.

  “I guess I came here to ask if I was right. Would you follow Juli? Was that what she just asked you?”

  The older woman sighed. “Why are you doing this, Neil? The way you’ve chosen causes so much trouble, and when you shift, you’re twice Juli’s size. You can just take her down and claim leadership, if that’s what you’re really after. Maybe it doesn’t satisfy all your principles, but it’s practical.”

  “I can’t fight her.”

  “Why not?”

  “I shouldn’t have to. Darrow can’t pass on the—”

  Sarah made another of her impatient gestures. She leaned forward and grabbed a big hunk of the roast beef, rolling it deftly between her fingers and biting it in half with feral enjoyment. “I don’t want to hear your official reasons. If you’ve got a wolf in you like the one in me, you’ve got no patience for that kind of argument. If you can win a dispute with your teeth and claws, under the moon, you go for it. Part of you longs for things to be so simple all the time. What’s stopping you, Neil?”

  Her brown eyes sharpened with predatory interest, and he found himself swallowing and leaning back in his chair. She’d asked a fair question. More than one pack member had wanted to know why Neil made trouble with the Council over this when he’d never had any hesitation about taking on a shifted challenge before. Juli had never even fought officially. He had both size and experience on his side.

  He avoided Sarah’s eyes, took his own bite of roast beef, and thought it over. He imagined himself shifted with Juli, raging, tearing, fighting for supremacy and life. The image raised a host of instincts within him—the urge to claim, to mate, to raise a set of cubs. Then he knew. He lifted his head with new understanding, and saw only knowing humor on Sarah’s face.

  “You’re afraid to shift with her,” Sarah said.

  Neil blew out a breath, half-covering his face with his hand. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, he couldn’t help the grin bursting out of him, along with the knowledge of his feelings for Juli. For him, mating with her wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t something to think over. It was an inevitability, if ever the opportunity arose.

  If Neil ever found himself fully shifted with Juli, a single need would dominate his mind. He’d been telling the truth when he said he couldn’t fight her. Lowering his hand to the table, he jumped to see the thick mat of hair that covered it. “I am so sorry.” Sports scores automatically entered his mind as he snatched his hand off the surface and tucked it into his lap. Sarah only chuckled and shook her head.

  “It’s not a problem, boy. It’s perfectly normal.” She refilled the coffee cup Neil hadn’t noticed himself draining. A fresh sip of it burned across his tongue, helping him return to the present moment.

  His hand shrank and returned to human form. To Neil’s dismay, a dusting of fur spread over Sarah’s kitchen floor. “The Lewistown officials didn’t see it that way. They gave me a citation.”

  Sarah scowled. “When you’re near a likely mate, the shift gets away from you for a while. It settles down shortly after you consummate.”

  “Who said anything about mating?” Neil’s face heated. He covered his nerves with a different protest. “I’ve never heard anything like that before.”

  The old woman just chuckled and continued speaking. “There aren’t as many of us as there used to be, and a lot of werewolves marry humans these days. When was the last time you were around a pair of courting werewolves?” When Neil shrugged, she gave a little nod. Then her eyes grew distant, and she shivered a little. “The month before Will and I mated, I woke up each morning fully shifted. I was lucky if I was still inside my house. One morning, I came to in the backyard with a rabbit in my mouth. Passion is wild, boy. There’s no containing it.”

  Neil cleared his throat. He’d lose his mind if he considered the idea of passion, particularly not how Juli might express it. “Well, I can’t afford not to contain this, Grandma Sarah.”

  “Good boy. You do know how you feel. Now you know what to do.” The older woman leaned forward, both her palms flat on the kitchen table. She lowered her voice. “Go after her, Neil. She can’t have gone far.”

  He swallowed hard, knowing down to his very bones what he wanted to do with Juli. “I can’t do that. For one thing, she probably hates me.” He paused. “For another thing, I’m pretty sure the Lewistown investigators will notice if I shift this afternoon because my feelings get away from me. They’ve been watching me p
retty closely.”

  “Neil, you brought these investigators here, and you can send them back to Lewistown. We don’t need their attention.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Darrow should never have given in to the Council’s prudish suppression of natural instincts, but we have to live with their foolish regulations for the time being. The last thing we need are arrogant kids on lycanthropy suppressants going around issuing citations to every werewolf in the midst of a normal phase of life.”

  She pursed her lips, and he wondered at the heat in her words. He remembered the way she and Will Edmond had stood together at pack gatherings, strong and entwined. “Grandma Sarah, what was it like to have a mate?”

  Sarah smiled faintly. “Maddening. I couldn’t have a weak feeling about him. I wanted him with every cell in my body. When we fought, I wanted to wrestle him all night and then spend the whole next day making up.”

  “That sounds like a pretty hard—”

  “Like being alive. More than I’d ever dreamed possible.” She cocked her head and looked into him with searching eyes. “Don’t fear her, Neil. I know you feel like you’re losing control, but you’re going to find yourself clearer than you’ve ever been. If Juli unleashes the beast in you, that’s a thing to celebrate. If you run away from her, what you’re really doing is running away from yourself.”

  Neil tapped his foot on her wooden floor, but it sounded wrong. He glanced down and swore. His feet had grown and changed, bursting out of his sneakers and leaving his claws bare.

  Sarah touched his hand. “A generation ago, a newly mated pair ran a whole month fully shifted, moon to moon, to celebrate the continuation of life in the pack. It wasn’t just a ritual. They needed it.” She closed her eyes. “I can’t tell you how beautiful it was, becoming myself in a way I never had before, under the trees, with him at my side. I wish the same for you.”

  Her attempt at comfort couldn’t reach through the sick fear twisting Neil’s gut. Werewolves needed control to survive. She described a romantic reality whose time had passed. In the modern world, it just wasn’t possible. “I can’t even imagine what the Werewolf Council would do to me if I tried that.”

  “Neil, you’re fighting the wrong battle with them. You’ve made Juli your enemy, when the two of you should stand together against this strangle grip.”

  “Are you telling me you support joining the free packs in Wyoming after all?”

  Sarah laughed. “Revolutions are for the young. When you get older, you learn how to have your private rebellions. We don’t need the wrath of Lewistown. Why not fight them from within? Fight them by example. Show them what werewolves ought to be. This full moon, shift with Juli. Fight with her. Mate with her if that’s where it takes you. Trust your instincts. Some people call this a curse, but Will always said the beast’s knowledge is our greatest gift.”

  He sighed and pushed his chair back, pulling himself away from her and her fantasies of what his life could be. “How am I going to do any of that when I can’t control myself? If the wolf is bursting out of me every time I see Juli, I can’t go to the pack meeting to look for her and issue a challenge. I can’t see how any of that can work.”

  Sarah whisked the empty plate off the table and turned back to her refrigerator. “Don’t think ahead so much. Do what feels right in the moment. When you called those investigators in, you did it because there was something you didn’t want to face. Stop avoiding it.”

  Neil shivered. “Thanks for the talk.” He stood as well, antsy to get away from her uncomfortable truths. A run on the trail along the Bitterroot River might clear his head. It would be better if he could go in wolf form, but he still had days to go before the exemption kicked in. Irritation rose within him, and he knew it would take hours of exertion to still it again. Neil turned to go.

  “I’m not sorry to upset you,” Sarah said dryly before he could disappear down her hallway. “You need to be upset. I hope the thought of her gets under your skin and won’t let go.”

  He growled a little in the back of his throat and left her, his walk becoming a lope and then an aching, full-out run.

  Chapter Seven

  Juli paced and stared out at the Clark Fork River. The full moon would come in two days, and the accompanying urge to change itched constantly within her mind, making it hard to think. She sighed and dropped to a squat along the riverbank, toying with the rocks and driftwood scattered around her.

  The ceremony that would swear her in as alpha of the Missoula Pack would start in less than 15 minutes, and the only werewolves who’d shown up so far were the Lewistown investigators. For the thousandth time that night, she second-guessed herself. She’d chosen to hold the event at the Jacobs Island Bark Park because she’d always liked the place, but what if the pack had been insulted that she’d chosen a dog park? When she’d lived in Missoula as a teenager, she’d liked to come here mid-month and sit among its pungent animal smells, with the river flowing by on either side of her. Some houses crowded into the view, but if she turned her head just so and focused on the hills rising up on either side of the river, she could transport herself to the wilds even though she sat in the middle of town.

  She sighed and walked over to the Bark Park plaque she’d noticed tonight, which dedicated the place to “Heidi, Millie, Muffy, Buckwheat, and all other animals who enrich our lives.” Juli could easily imagine taking that the wrong way herself.

  A boot crunched in the rocks behind her, and she smelled Heather Compton’s vanilla-scented perfume. “You should get in place,” the cool-voiced investigator said. “It’s almost time to start.”

  Juli turned slowly, feeling gawky and disheveled beside the elegant woman. She fingered the leather ring she wore, trying to gain confidence from her father’s faith in her. Heather’s two companions flanked her, silent as always, even their smells subdued. “We haven’t got enough pack members to make the ceremony valid.” She drew in a shaky breath and looked quickly from side to side to make sure conditions hadn’t changed. “We actually haven’t got any pack members present,” she said darkly.

  Heather’s lips curled into one of her mysterious smiles. “Werewolf Council officials are authorized to substitute for members of packs under our jurisdiction in all sanctioned rituals and ceremonies. We have more than enough present to proceed with swearing you in, along with additional guards to ensure Neil Statham and any followers he may have collected can’t disrupt the event.”

  “That’s great.” Juli licked her lips, noticing that even on this rocky, sandy ground, Heather wore heeled boots. The other Lewistown officials seemed just as incongruous. She’d only been back in Missoula a couple weeks, and already she wondered how she could ever have been part of this stiff, reserved group. Neil’s rebukes at the meeting stung her every time she thought about them, and she couldn’t help speaking up. “Could Neil have been right, Heather? Is it wrong for me to take over without pack support? No matter what my father intended for me?”

  The investigator frowned. “I did mean to speak to you along these lines, though not from that precise angle.” She paused, her hands steepled in front of her. Dark red nails gleamed in the light of the nearly full moon. “From the files I examined in the course of the investigation, you had a promising start to your career in Lewistown. I spoke with Gabriel, and he would be willing to reinstate you to your previous position, your resignation notwithstanding.” Juli started to protest, but Heather held up a hand. “You should consider whether you want to go through with a ceremony that invests you with responsibility for the actions of this pack—not because of the... democratic... objections Mr. Statham raised, but because of the potential consequences for you.” Heather dipped her head significantly in Juli’s direction. “If this pack attempts to secede from the Council, or even if it merely contains a critical mass of agitators, you’ll be held responsible, Juli. You will suffer consequences if your beta is as serious about causing trouble as he sounds. I would hate to see a good werewolf disciplined as a r
esult of the actions of a bad apple.”

  Juli sighed. She couldn’t turn away and go back to Lewistown just because she might get in trouble. She imagined the disgusted twist of the lips her father would get if he caught her bowing out of a duty in favor of personal convenience. Besides, Juli knew Neil would be punished severely if he succeeded in taking over the pack, then broke with the Council. She might have a chance of talking him out of that, or at least softening the blow for him. She didn’t agree with his position on pack leadership, but she couldn’t abandon him to the wrath of the Council after so many years of faithful service to her father. Even if nothing ever came of her own feelings for him, she still cared too much to leave him to his fate.

  She shook her head firmly. “So long as it’s legal, I’m going ahead.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Heather took Juli by the elbow. “Come to the circle, then.”

  The Lewistown officials had arranged river rocks into a rough circle at the tip of the island. The park had closed two hours before, and a few guards waited at the entrance to distract any patrolling city police. The moon rose high above them all, bright and tempting against the black backdrop of night. Juli almost panted for the change, every touch of moonlight teasing her toward it that much more strongly.

  For a moment, she thought she caught Neil’s familiar scent. Her head snapped up, an embarrassing amount of hope surging through her. She peered into the night, searching for any flicker in the shadows surrounding the ritual space. Juli saw nothing.

  Ancient tradition held that the swearing in of an alpha took place fully shifted, which meant these days the ceremonies usually took place on the full moon. Modern realities invaded, in this case. Due to all the regulations restricting the shift, every full moon bore the weight of so many delayed desires, needs, and pieces of pack business that what ought to be a werewolf’s monthly night of freedom sometimes brimmed with obligation. Too often, the occasion didn’t even allow time for the exhilarating run through the wilds that every werewolf longed for so desperately.