Green's Hill Werewolves, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  But it was long enough to drive the silver deep into Teague’s body, and that was bad. That made the wound worse than it would be on a human. Teague was starting to froth blood at the mouth and turn gray, like a guy with a really fatal infection, and wherever Green was, it was time for me to pony up and do some first goddamned aid.

  “I was throwing a shield up,” I muttered, squirting about half the bottle of salt wash on the wound.

  He hissed. “I’d forgotten you could do that, Lady.”

  “Well, goddammit, remember! I can protect you. It’s my job to protect you!” I parted the wound to see how deep it went. It was already turning a dark gray, like Teague’s skin. Shit. I knew what I’d have to do.

  “I… beg… to… differ….”

  “Fuck.” I would not argue about this right now. I swore again, and then without wincing or cringing or any of the girly shit I really really really wanted to do because I was so not a healer, I shoved the little plastic bottle as far into his flesh as I could before the icky, squishy give stopped. Then I took it in both hands and squeezed as much of the salt wash as I could into the wound.

  Teague gasped again and made a “manly pain” sound. “Green!” I called in my head, with all the shock and terror I was not voicing, and he was suddenly next to me, holding his hands to his ears.

  “Holy blue fuck!” he snapped. “Even in my head, that’s worse than a grieving bean sidhe—now move!”

  I did, looking helplessly at my red-dripping hands, while Green moved in to bend down and kiss Teague on the lips. Sex was the hallmark of his healing—the kiss was as necessary to Green as a bandage would be to a human doctor.

  “Cory?” Nicky said. He’d apparently arrived on Green’s heels. “That guy on the wall—are you going to kill him, or is he going to be art?”

  I looked at the guy. His skull was reshaping itself, so apparently I hadn’t killed him straight off. “He’s too ugly to be art,” I snarled, and I was a werewolf’s whisker away from squashing the guy flat. MacShitsyerpants yelped, and there was a sudden rank smell of urine as five frightened werewolves voided their bladders.

  “Lady, please don’t.”

  The voice was soft but sound. Teague had apparently broken away from Green’s best healing kiss to stop me from killing Dumbfuck MacShitsyerpants, and I was damned if I knew why.

  “Any particular reason?” I asked, skeptical.

  Teague sat up and nodded respectfully to Green, who in turn gave Teague a hand up. His skin was already flushing, and his wound had knit while Green was touching him, but his dark blue T-shirt was split wide down the middle, and blood—red and the infected gray—saturated both the T-shirt and the gray-green flannel shirt over it.

  “It’s my job,” he said tersely. “Tomorrow, fair fight. These guys”—a nod at the other werewolves—“can see whose dick is bigger.”

  “These guys” were crouching in a puddle of their own piss making puppy-whimpering noises. I think if someone had asked them at that moment, they would have told me my alpha was five feet nine inches of pure dick with a topper of dark blond hair.

  “Awesome.” I glared at my hands and forced down nausea. I’d had blood on my hands before, but it was usually from someone I’d killed or fought with. And it hadn’t been turning gray. “We’ll have a gladiator death match, complete with audience and are-you-fucking-shitting-me, asshole?”

  Teague blinked and gave a thin smile of retribution, not even surprised at how fast I’d downshifted. “I want to kill the guy who just knifed me, Lady—and if I recall, he was the one shitting.”

  “Auuuugghhhh….” I wanted to scrub my gory hands through my hair and over my face, but I couldn’t. I was just going to stalk outside to the anteroom at the bottom of the stairs when I heard Green clear his throat. This werewolf thing was my barbecue. I was Teague’s entrée to the new world of the preternatural, and wolves got really confused with too many leaders. With a sigh, I looked around again at the odd assortment of frightened young men who had signed on for what they’d thought would be an everyday gang rumble and ended up the surviving members of a massacre.

  “You! Assholes!” I barked. “Are you ready to go get a shower and change out of those dumbshit clothes?” They’d come dressed as their own little brown-and-green gang—they looked like big fat dorkfish.

  They nodded hopefully.

  “Excellent. Nicky?”

  “Yes, my liege.” He bowed ironically, and it was all I could do not to flip him a gore-crusted bird.

  “I want you and seven of your closest werecritter friends to escort these guys upstairs. They can wait in the anteroom for now, and as soon as the vampires wake up, let them know they’re breakfast.” The vampires would be able to keep track of the werewolves for a little while after the blood donation. It wasn’t a sure-fire security system, but these guys had never been fed from. They looked scared enough for it to act as a pretty darned good threat.

  Nicky nodded and trotted up the stairs to gather suckers to help him, and I looked at the four saddest werewolves on the planet.

  “You! Assholes! Strip to your skin, leave your nasty old laundry in here, and meet us out in the anteroom.” I gave MacShitsyerpants a squeeze, just to hear him gurgle. Then I raised him up to the ceiling and dropped him, smiling with some sick satisfaction as he yelped at the crunch of an ankle bone. It would take that a good couple of hours to heal completely.

  “You! Dumbfuck! You get to stay here all night. And we’re not cleaning jack.”

  Teague was looking at me beseechingly, or I really would have killed the fucker who’d knifed him. Bring a knife to a negotiation? MacShitsyerpants deserved to die just for being that ass-stupid. As it was, I led the way outside of the anteroom to let the werewolves get naked. Just as I cleared the vault, I was thrown into the side of the door hard enough to see stars.

  “What in the fu—”

  “What, you’re not happy that he’s got to serve you, you want to fucking get him killed too?”

  I glared at Jacky, wondering when my head had exploded. “Jacky?”

  Suddenly Bracken was between me and Jacky, growling, which is never a good sign, and Teague was hauling at his partner’s arm.

  “Jacky, it was my own dumb-fuck fault, you hear me? She was throwing a shield up, and I just—”

  “You say that, but you’re the one with the blood—”

  I reached behind my head to feel the bump back there—it felt like it was actually bleeding—but Green got there in time to stop me.

  “Don’t want to mix Teague’s blood and yours, beloved,” he warned softly, and I jerked my hands away. Don’t want to mix. No making vampire werethings, no having the werecritters bite the sidhe, no werecritter sorceresses or vampire sorcerers, nope, nuh-uh, no thanks. We’d seen where that ended, and it wasn’t pretty.

  He passed his hand over the bump on my head and it went away. So did the pain, which was good—because if Bracken thought for one minute that Jack had really hurt me, he’d kill him, and then we’d be fucked.

  “Bracken! Down, boy!” I snapped, jumping into the fray. Bracken glared at me.

  “He hit you!”

  “He pushed me. It was an accident!” I hoped Brack would take it at that. It had felt more personal than that, but I wasn’t going to cry foul.

  “You!” Jacky turned away from Teague, who was gruffly ordering his beta out of the room. “You got him hurt. Are you happy? Is there anything else you want from him? More blood? You fucking ghoul—”

  My eyes widened with shock—not so much at the harsh words, since I give out plenty of that on my own, but from the anger aimed at me. Jacky closed in on me and grabbed my arm, shaking me, forgetting he was a werewolf and I was not. My head was smacking back against the wall, even though Green had my shoulders and was trying to keep me still. Jacky’s grip on my arms hurt, but I fought the urge to throw up a shield. If Bracken knew how rattled I was getting, he really would kill Jacky, but ouch… damn it… I couldn’t focus�
��and then Teague jumped in and stopped the whole thing.

  He went wolf, and Jacky—bonded to him in his heart and probably his body as well by now—went with him.

  In a heartbeat, even less, Jack was on his back, his furry body tangled in a puddle of jeans and a thermal shirt, whining in submission. Teague’s blond hackles were up all along his spine, and his jaws were locked—without biting—around Jacky’s throat.

  Green, Bracken, and I stared at the wolf tableau for a moment, shocked and saddened.

  Christ. What a fucking choice. It was one I’d never want to make—but it was also one Bracken or Nicky wouldn’t force me to make either. We all loved Green too much to hurt him that badly.

  Teague growled and backed off, staring at Jacky’s puzzled, hurt wolf with fierce, ungiving eyes. This was his wolf’s decision—support the pack over his lovers.

  Jacky whined and bumped noses, and Teague licked him resignedly, and that much giving, that much forgiving, made him abruptly human again.

  Teague was much less assured as a man than he was as a wolf. He looked down at his mate, who was now human and lying on the floor looking stunned and devastated.

  “Jacky…,” he mumbled. Jack looked away.

  Teague didn’t have a whole lot of resources in him to deal with a lover turning his back. In fact, he only had one. In a moment he was a wolf again, hauling ass up the stairs for the main room. I said, “Fuck!”

  Green touched my face and the back of my head again, then said, “I’ve got Teague. You get this goatfuck!” And then he was gone. He breezed by Nicky, who had returned and was looking at us with horrified eyes, and I squinted at him, wondering if it was the adrenaline or the tears making my vision so blurry.

  Then I couldn’t look at Nicky anymore, so I turned toward the goatfucker in question. “Nicky, help him up,” I said numbly. Jack looked at me with unfriendly eyes.

  “You know—” I stopped for a minute to wipe my eyes with the heel of a shaking hand. “—I could have grown old and died without forcing him to make that choice.”

  Jack dropped his glare, misery suffusing every line of his long, nearly unblemished body. “I thought he’d choose me.”

  “He did,” I snapped, wiping my eyes again. Fuck. The blood on my hands was making them sting. “If he hadn’t done that, Bracken would have killed you.” I was deadly serious. I could feel Bracken’s entire body vibrating behind me. Jack had yelled at me. He had gotten in my face, he had grabbed my arm through my sweatshirt with bruising, supernaturally strong fingers. Green hadn’t known about the bruises to heal them. They throbbed now under my sweatshirt, and I made a mental note to hide them until they could be taken care of. Nobody did that to me, not with Bracken at my side.

  Jack looked up, startled, and saw Bracken. My beloved’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in a horrible snarl, and he was growling like a true wolf. Jack turned pale and looked at me, really looked at me. I am small—a lot smaller than he is—and my hands, and by now probably my face, were covered in Teague’s blood. My face was cold, so it was probably pale, and all in all I looked little and plain and human.

  And Jack had hurt me—and hurt me on purpose. But I didn’t think he was a dishonorable man, not at heart. Teague couldn’t love somebody like that.

  “I’m sorry,” he said weakly, gazing into space at something I couldn’t see. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay,” I said automatically, but I wiped my eyes again.

  Bracken snarled, “The hell it is.”

  “All right, it’s not,” I sniffled. “But we’ve got other stuff to do. Jacky, get your clothes. Nicky needs to go find us some more wolves. Go with him. If you don’t want to do that, go to the common room, or back to your bedroom, or… hell, anywhere but right here, right now, okay?”

  “I’m so sorr—”

  “Okay!” I was nodding, trying to get him to find his good sense and go. Clumsily, as though not actually seeing what he was doing, he gathered his clothes in front of his groin and did just that. I found myself hoping his good sense was wadded up somewhere in his jeans and boxers, because I certainly hadn’t seen it from where I was standing.

  As he wobbled his way up the stairs, I turned to the wide-eyed werewolf “negotiators,” who had come out of the vault in time to see most of what had just happened.

  “That gold werewolf,” I said, with the strongest, angriest voice I had, “was your alpha. He just picked me and Green over his own mate.” I looked them in the eye, one by one, letting my fuck-with-me blaze out my eyes. “If you want to die slow, you can get in the ring tomorrow with your buddy in the other room. If you want to die quick, you can fuck with me today. If you’re set on choosing life? Then I suggest you do whatever the fuck I say. Are we understanding each other?”

  Four heads—different heights, different hair colors, different eyes. One motion—bobbing earnestly up and down—as they all agreed with exactly what I was saying.

  Mama Cory, Papa Green

  THE SIDHE treasured their parents, after a fashion.

  The fact was that in Bracken’s family, parents and children working in concert to support a leader was the norm, probably from the race’s inception. It was one reason among many that incest was not a taboo for Green’s people.

  The leader was the parent. The people in the parent’s hill were the children. Having a taboo against “incestuous” relationships would have doomed the race.

  Some sidhe broke away from their parents. Green had when he’d been only fifty years old. For much of his life, he’d preferred to flit about the world. He would find a lover, usually mortal, and settle down until his mortal died. After he’d mourned, always longer than the sidhe thought proper, he would move on.

  But Green’s first leaders had been compassionate and indulgent. As Green started his own faerie hill, he’d remembered them fondly. They played, broke bread together, and made love frequently and with great enjoyment. Green’s childhood had been a happy one.

  But he learned very quickly that not all mortals had that sort of comfort.

  It had been a hard realization—and for a century or two, Green avoided the human race as a whole simply to avoid that terrible, aching pain that came with having lovers who had never been taught how to love.

  Eventually he learned the joys of teaching them how to love, a discovery that made all the greatest joys—and all the greatest pains—of his long life possible.

  When Cory joined the hill and became a lover to its two leaders, she had, unwittingly at first, assumed the job of the hill’s mother. If he had asked Cory, Green was sure she would have said Grace, the very maternal vampire, did a fine job as hill mother, and her own services were not needed—but both Green and Grace knew that while Cory was still learning like a journeyman learns from a master, she was the true hill mama, down to her tough-love disposition.

  And she had done a fine job mothering Teague. She had listened, given advice, kept him from the worst parts of himself, and, along with Green and Bracken, stood back and prayed when it was time for Teague to confront his own demons. She had even chased him into the rain and forced him to forgive himself—a classic mother move if Green had ever seen one.

  Teague went to her when he was stressed, confided in her when he was confused, and valued her beyond measure.

  But boys—especially human boys—sometimes had violent human reactions that many women—including Green’s beloved—were not comfortable with.

  Sometimes a boy just needed his father.

  Teague’s heart had been screaming for a father since he was born.

  Green snagged a blanket as he blurred through the house. As he outstripped the wolf streaking through the gardens to the South Placer hills beyond Green’s environs, he kept it tucked under his arm.

  Elves could move in what Cory called hyperspeed—Green thought of it as blurring or moving—but he didn’t need his hyperspeed to keep up with Teague. He just needed to run, barefoot, fleet, and graceful, across th
e earth that sustained him. He did, for several miles across the rough grass and twiggy undergrowth of the foothills, until Teague showed signs of flagging.

  Of course, Teague being Teague, it took a while. Even after his pace slowed, he still pushed himself until his body was straining, his fur was slicked against his lean wolf’s body with sweat, and his breath was coming in ragged pants. Suddenly, just like a switch going out, his back end flopped to the ground as his front paws churned into the mud in front of them.

  Slowly Green stepped out from behind the trees he’d been using for cover. He held the blanket spread out between his hands and waited patiently. Teague looked at him from miserable wolf’s eyes—green-hazel in color, like Teague’s as a man.

  Teague whimpered and looked away, and Green sighed, kneeling to the forest floor to wrap him in the blanket. As Green’s arms moved around him, he felt the change, and as he stood, he held a short, scrawny, exhausted man wrapped in a blanket like a child. Green walked back toward the hill and the house at an easy pace, cradling Teague like the little boy he’d never been.

  “He turned away from me, Green.”

  Green looked at Teague. They were the first words he’d said in nearly twenty minutes. His hair was plastered to his head with sweat, the same as his fur had been when he was a wolf, and he was pale—so pale. If Teague didn’t figure this out, didn’t find his balance with his lovers, Green had no doubt he’d make himself sick, just as Cory had before Bracken. Unlike Cory, Teague didn’t have any good memories to sustain him. As a package of flesh, he would probably catch pneumonia, get a fever, develop cancer—something physical that doctors would give a name to. As a supernatural being—even a werewolf—he would simply waste away.

  “He didn’t understand, mate. Give him time. He’s nearly as stubborn as you, right?” It was true, Green had no doubt. Jacky had a good heart under all that jealousy and selfishness. He’d never had a reason to look beyond his own needs, that was all.

  “How can he love me again?” Teague asked, and his naked, bleeding voice was all the proof needed that the man was at the end of a very short survival rope. “He thinks I turned against him… that I picked you over him. I… I’m no damned good at this.” That naked voice hardened, became bitter. “You should have never put us together, Green. I’m only going to hurt them.”