You’re not welcome here.
The gift note had been autogenerated in some distant warehouse, leaving no telling scents or handwriting to go on. But the box was addressed to my mother and the threat had been called in to her phone.
The upshot was clear—someone was out to do Celia harm. But why? My mother seemed like the perfect fit for this small human community. Just looking at her, I could tell she mowed her lawn to the requisite height at the requisite times, that she bought food she didn’t want from school bake sales, that she never exceeded the designated speed limit on Main Street.
Who could possibly want her gone?
“Well?” the younger cop demanded, shaking me until my teeth rattled as he attempted to regain my attention.
“I tried to tell you I don’t have anything to do with....”
“Oh, so it’s just a coincidence that you spent all morning staking out the victim’s place of business?” the older officer interrupted. I flinched, and not because of being manhandled either. Nope, I was disappointed to find that the one-bodies weren’t as inept as I’d thought, having already pegged me as the stranger in town with an unhealthy interest in one of their own.
“I was just hanging out,” I lied, then moved on to tell at least part of the truth. “I’m in town visiting family and didn’t want to get in anyone’s hair during business hours.”
The older policeman spread his lips into what looked like a smile...but felt like a wolf playing nice moments before tearing out his opponent’s throat. “Who exactly is your family? We’ll give them a call and they can come pick you up.”
My nostrils flared as I imagined meeting Celia for the first time while being marched home hand-cuffed like a truant teenager. I didn’t have high hopes for our eventual reunion, but that wasn’t at all the way I’d pictured the event. So even though I knew the evasion would highlight my supposed guilt, I replied with: “I’d rather not say.”
The law-enforcement officers exchanged telling glances, then the younger cop took over with a not-really-question. “And it’s a coincidence that you’re the one we find when Celia calls in a bomb threat?” The officer still clenched my arms in a painfully tight grip, and now he turned that implied threat into actual violence as he shoved me aggressively into the porch-support post as punctuation to his words.
Splinters cut into my cheek and I closed my eyes to prevent further damage. But the move was actually much appreciated because I was finally starting to get a handle on the situation that I’d accidentally fallen into.
I hadn’t been able to decipher the emotions underlying the policemen’s brutality at first. But now my captor’s scent rose to the forefront, rich with both lust and protectiveness...neither of which was aimed in my direction. That, plus the younger cop’s use of my mother’s first name, suggested he had more than a professional interest in keeping Celia safe.
My wolf growled beneath my skin and I had to work hard to stifle the sound before it emerged from my own lips. Sure, the young cop—Lambert read his name tag—seemed to be looking out for Celia’s best interests. But someone who would jump to conclusions and rough up an innocent bystander simply because she was new in town wasn’t a good enough mate for my mother.
Match, I meant. Not mate. Grumpiness at my own mental slip had me barking back before my more rational side could remind me to keep sass to a minimum. “What are you? Her boyfriend?” I demanded.
Rather than answering in words, Officer Lambert shot a single look at his partner before frogmarching me down the steps so rapidly I nearly lost my footing. Pushing my head down with one large hand, he threw more than assisted me into the back seat of the police car.
“Perhaps you’ll change your tune once you have a little more time to think about it,” the cop said grimly. Then, without checking to make sure my limbs were all safely clear, he slammed the door shut with far more force than was really necessary and walked away without a backwards glance.
Yep, I was officially persona non grata in the small town of Arborville.
***
“So it wasn’t a bomb?” The edge of terror that my mother had hidden so well from her audience earlier on now trembled through her voice as she interrogated her interrogators inside the house-for-sale.
I had to strain my human ears to their utmost and nearly relinquish my body to the wolf in order to hear what she had to say from my point of incarceration within the cop car. But the effort was well worth it for the insights provided into my mother’s character.
Celia had seemed so spineless when I was a child. Long angry silences, explosive bouts of tears, even her screaming fits had been as impotent as they were tempestuous.
Now, in contrast, the one-body’s fear was barely audible as she tamped the emotion down in consideration for the people around her. Celia hadn’t raised her voice once, I noticed, and I had a feeling the reason was found among the families still milling about in the backyard. From the sounds of happily playing children in the distance, it seemed that the realtor’s force of will had paid off.
“No, ma’am,” the older cop answered. “But there was a written threat in the box. Perhaps you could tell us who might have wanted to roll up the welcome mat and drive you out of town?”
I heard nothing for a long moment as my mother presumably read the same words I had. And the lull gave me time to assess my own situation.
Although I was handcuffed inside a police car, the situation was actually far from grim. I’d enjoyed enough recovery time since this morning’s transformations to ensure that I could now shift to fur form and wriggle out of the restraints easily enough. Then, if my beast and I both worked together to our utmost, we could probably regain two legs in a timely enough manner to open the door of the uncaged cop car before Officer Lambert came back to rough me up again.
Eluding pursuit would be tougher, of course. But that reservation wouldn’t have been enough to hold me back from escape. Instead, it was the words that came out of my mother’s mouth next that stilled my forward momentum.
“I’m not sure who wants me gone. But this isn’t the first threat,” Celia said so softly I almost couldn’t hear her speak.
“Celia, why didn’t you tell me?” Recognizing the younger cop’s voice, I could almost see him running a troubled hand through his spiky hair. At least Officer Lambert seemed to honestly care about my mother, even if he wasn’t the most open to alternative explanations from out-of-towners.
“I don’t know, Paul,” Celia answered. “Maybe I didn’t want to make it any more real than it had to be? I thought it was just some kind of prank....”
Her voice trailed off and I was almost tempted to shift and escape just so I could creep closer to the house and peer through a window. Was the one-body about to descend back into the tremulous damsel-in-distress mode that I remembered so vividly from childhood? Or would she remain a member of the stiff-upper-lip club?
“Paul, give her a little space,” the older cop said gently. I could imagine the nameless policeman sitting my mother down in one of the plush armchairs that encircled the home’s ornamental fireplace. Patting her hands. Soothing her out of her jitters.
Or at least I hoped the cops were offering the victim that level of attention. You never could tell with one-bodies and my ears weren’t good enough to pick up on the rustle of movement from this far afield.
“Do you need something to eat? Something to drink?” the older cop asked.
“No, really, I’m fine.” My mother attempted a strained laugh, which I suspect fooled no one. But the men chose to let her hold onto the thin veneer of bravery she’d so carefully erected around herself anyway.
“What happened the first time?” the older cop asked after a pause so long it was beginning to feel like the end of the conversation.
“This morning,” Celia started, then paused as her voice broke. “There was a...a dead cat on my doorstep. I thought it was roadkill, that some neighbor kid must have dragged it to my place as a joke. It was rotting
and smelly and I didn’t want to look at it. I called my yard crew to haul it off.”
An hour earlier, the mention of Celia’s groundskeepers would have been enough to make me turn up my nose in disgust. She’d left me in what appeared at the time to be unremitting poverty in order to build this middle-class lifestyle for herself. Every hint of the woman’s wealth had scraped like claws against my insides as recently as this afternoon.
But now I didn’t particularly care if Celia had figured out her priorities during the intervening decade or not. Because a dead cat on her doorstep in the morning and a bomb threat at her workplace only a few hours later pointed toward a clear conclusion. Someone was out to do my mother harm...and I didn’t plan to let them get away with any such thing.
I guess I’m not evading arrest after all, I thought, relaxing back onto my seat.
So I almost missed it when Paul used the information he thought he had at his disposal to allay my mother’s fears. “You have every right to be upset,” the younger cop told the object of his affections. “But you don’t have to worry any more. Because we’ve got the perpetrator in custody already. And I can promise you, she won’t threaten anyone ever again.”
Chapter 9
To shift or not to shift? That was the question.
I was still just as intent on protecting Celia as I had been before Lambert made his declaration. Still, I wouldn’t be able to help my mother from behind bars.
Meanwhile, the notion of being confined to a locked cell with one-body video cameras and nosy guards preventing me from stretching out into lupine form sent shivers running up and down my spine.
Before I could make a rational decision—or, let’s face it, could do something stupid—aid came from an unexpected source. “If you mean the young lady who went to investigate the bomb threat,” my mother said, her voice so loud and clear that I almost thought she was speaking for my benefit as much as to the cops, “then I can promise you she’s not the guilty party.”
“You know her?” the older policeman asked, his voice sharpening with interest.
“No,” Celia started, only to be interrupted by her admirer.
“I know TV shows make it seem like most violent perps are men,” Officer Lambert lectured. “But this sort of action—leaving a dead animal on your doorstep, calling in a bomb threat when there’s no bomb—suggests the criminal holds a grudge but isn’t brave enough to face you directly. It’s weak and cowardly behavior and the woman we have in custody fits that profile to a T.”
“Are you calling women cowards, Officer Lambert?” Celia asked, her voice abruptly as frigid as mine would have been under similar circumstances. I started to stifle my giggle, then realized none of the one-bodies could hear me with their less than sensitive ears. So I gave in and laughed out loud. Despite her lady-like demeanor, my mother could be a badass when she wanted to be.
“No, I...”
“Better stop while you’re ahead, Paul,” Lambert’s partner interrupted, and I could hear amusement in the older cop’s voice that matched my own. Then the unnamed officer resurrected the occasion’s previous solemnity as he returned his attention to the witness, my mother. “You don’t know the woman in question, yet you’re positive she’s not responsible for the threats. Care to elaborate?”
The summer air hung heavy, even the children in the backyard having gone oddly quiet. Off in the distance, a tractor trailer rumbled down the not-too-distant interstate while an airplane too high to be heard left a stark white trail across the otherwise clear sky.
The whole world felt different now that I was alone in human territory. Harder-edged, louder, more constrained. I couldn’t say I liked the sensation.
Still, my mother’s next words made tears well up in my eyes...and they weren’t tears of anger or frustration either. “I know she’s not responsible for the awfulness,” Celia answered, “because that girl is my daughter. And Fen would never do anything to cause me harm.”
***
Paul was pissed, his partner was wary, but Celia had apparently grown a spine during the last dozen years. Somehow she’d managed to recognize me on the other side of the crowded room during our shared moment of terror an hour earlier. And now she wouldn’t take no for an answer after demanding that the cops release me into her loving arms.
It wouldn’t have flown in a big city. But here in Arborville, where Officer Lambert wanted to get into my mother’s pants and Officer No-Name was almost certainly a family man old enough to have adult kids of his own, a real-estate agent really was able to spring a potential hoodlum from prison without bothering to call in a lawyer.
She was able to have me released from custody, but not to take me off law enforcement’s radar entirely.
“I’ll be watching you,” Paul murmured into my ear as he unlocked my cuffs a little more forcefully than was really necessary. But I was used to brawls in lupine form, so the twinge of pain running up my left arm barely registered. Instead, my eyes locked with Celia’s and held.
Twelve years. It had been one hundred and forty four months since I’d last looked upon my mother’s face. Four thousand days filled with werewolves and danger and camaraderie and pack dynamics. It was hard to tell where this estranged one-body would fit into that fully formed world.
Or whether I wanted her to.
“Fen?” she said, the word a question far too profound to answer here and now.
The cops had stepped aside to give our reunion a little space, but I could smell their attentiveness. Neither man would leave the area until I gave them proof that I wasn’t a threat...a fact that actually made me glad. After all, I’d opted to spend some extra time here in Arborville for the exact same reason, to protect my mother from harm. It was good to have backup, even if the cops weren’t shifters and did think we were working at cross purposes.
My wolf was uninterested in the males, though. Mommy, she whispered inside our shared mind and I winced at the childish term of endearment. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the same yearning to be close to the mother who had tossed me aside like moldy takeout a decade earlier.
Celia seemed cordial and interested in me now, but I didn’t trust the evidence of my own eyes. So instead of running into her arms as my wolf wished, I walked forward warily as if the one-body was a stray dog who was as likely to snap a sharp-toothed warning as to return my affection.
Slowly, gently, I eased my way into my mother’s personal space. I ached to be enfolded in the kind of parental hug I could only barely remember. I wanted her to kiss me on the brow and promise we’d never be separated again. I wanted us to be a family.
No, that was the wolf and her pack mentality at play. Shaking my head to clear it, I still let myself reach out one pinky finger to trail ever so lightly across my mother’s palm. “Celia,” I answered.
“Will you be in town long?” Her words were as stilted as if we were strangers meeting for the first time.
Which, face it, we basically were.
But my mother didn’t jerk away from my tentative touch. And that lack of repulsion was enough to settle my wolf and let my human half completely take the reins.
I cleared my throat, wanting to tell her: I’ll be here until I know you’re safe. That was too much too soon, though. So instead I stuck to one-body reasoning. “I’m substitute teaching about half an hour down the road. It’s summer school, so a few weeks max. But, yeah, I’ll be around that long.”
“You’ll stay with me,” Celia offered. No, demanded in her polite one-body fashion where steel was nearly invisible beneath soft skin and gentle smiles.
I started to shake my head, but then the region’s month-long dry spell abruptly broke. Squeals of excited children, a crash of thunder, huge droplets of water erratically plummeting from the darkening sky. We weren’t saturated yet, but my knowledge of southern weather promised we’d be soaked to the skin in approximately sixty seconds or less.
“I want to check over your car before you drive it again,”
Officer Lambert spoke up, stepping into the middle of our abruptly truncated reunion. “Just to be on the safe side.”
The one-body glared at me through menacing, squinty eyes, but I could smell his acceptance of my innocuousness beneath the posturing. He was just being a cop now—like he said, better safe than sorry.
“I’ll drive my mother home,” I offered, shepherding Celia toward my rental just as the sky opened up to disgorge its laden bounty. The locks beeped open from a distance and the two of us made a mad dash for the car, falling into our seats at the same moment as if we’d been racing for a prize. Our doors slammed in unison, shutting out the larger world and encircling us in our own little island of dryness and safety from the storm.
I settled into my seat, then froze as I caught a glimpse of Celia out of the corner of my eye. For the first time in living memory, the one-body was laughing. Her perfectly coiffed hair had fallen down into curling tendrils that caught on her cheekbones while her breast heaved with the same exhilaration mine showed after racing against the weather. I could see why Officer Lambert was moonstruck—my mother was beautiful, vibrant, full of life.
She was nothing like the Celia I remembered.
Maybe we could stay longer, my wolf whispered. Build a family. The beast yearned to steal back my body, to don fur and curl up in our mother’s lap. What kind of bliss would that be—to be taken care of rather than always being the one in charge of protecting someone else?
You shift and she’ll run, I warned my wolf, slipping the key into the ignition and preparing to drive. I couldn’t get too attached. Not to a one-body who had ditched me once and who would ditch me again at a moments’ notice once she recalled my tendency toward fur and fang.
But it was so tempting to trust my wolf and let down my guard. Until, that is, my mother reached down beneath her butt in an effort to dislodge the items I’d strewn across the passenger seat earlier that day.
Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) Page 6
