“Coming right up.” Joey offered a blush-pink smile of her own and bounded off to the kitchen. Honor choked down more chili.
“Sweet kid, your cousin,” Logan commented, breaking off a chunk of corn bread and raising it to his mouth. “Friendly, too. She’s been real helpful since I got here.”
Honor’s wolf snarled viciously. Possessively. Honor smacked her down, and mustered a passable smirk. “Yeah, well, she’s still unmated, and with the lack of selection around here, it’s easy for a girl to lower her standards.”
“Of course, she doesn’t make my dick hard every time I look at her, so I guess it’s a good thing she wasn’t the one I got naked with a few hours ago, huh?”
This time, Honor choked on more chili. Her gaze flew to his face and narrowed on the gleeful spark in his eyes. The bastard enjoyed throwing her off balance. She wondered how much he’d enjoy it when she threw him out a window. What was she supposed to say to something like that? She wasn’t an idiot, and she knew that in the time he’d been posing his muzzle into her business—Goddess, had it only been one day!—she likely hadn’t made a great impression, at least not in terms of rationality and a cool head for command. Maybe pissing her off was part of his strategy to prove her unfit to lead her pack? Whatever his motive, he seemed to get a real charge out of yanking her tail, and she’d had enough of giving him the satisfaction.
Ignoring him, she set down her spoon and took a swallow of cold beer. It cut through the spicy burn of the chili but did little to cool the heat of the bitch inside her. It whined every time she inhaled and got a whiff of Logan’s musky scent, prompting Honor to wonder how difficult it would be to get her hands on some ketamine. The horse tranquilizer sounded about right at the moment, provided it would actually do the job and knock her out. With her Lupine metabolism, drugs tended to burn off faster than they were administered. She couldn’t even get a good drunk on without resorting to multiple bottles of the hard stuff. Sometimes, there was no justice.
“How are you feeling, Honor?” He leaned closer, his voice rumbling against her ear in an insidious tickle of heat and smoke. “You ran away before I got a chance to look you over. You’re not … hurting, are you?”
The question must have been directed straight between her thighs, because that was the only part of her to answer, and she wasn’t about to mention the ache she felt there. Not when it had nothing to do with injury and everything to do with renewed hunger. If she could call it renewed. If she were being honest, she’d have to admit it had never really gone away to begin with. Her wolf whispered evilly that it would take days and days of privacy before that need had a hope of being assuaged.
She forced the bitch to step back and gathered her sanity for a withering glare. “You might think of yourself as the Big Bad Wolf, Hunter, but I’m no Little Red. You can’t hurt me with a little ordinary sex, so don’t flatter yourself.”
His dark eyes lit with gold, then narrowed. His voice dropped. “’Ordinary’?”
She shrugged. “What would you call it?”
He growled his response through clenched teeth. “If you hadn’t been such a slippery little devil, I’d have called it claiming my mate.”
“You’d have been wrong.”
Honor was so done with this discussion. Bracing her hands on the top of the table, she shoved to her feet. Well, she tried to. A very large and very heavy hand on her shoulder kept her in place.
She growled. “When I say, ‘Move it, or lose it,’ understand very clearly that I will bite your hand off at the wrist. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done it. This week, even.”
“You aren’t going anywhere until we’ve gotten a few things clear between us. Mate.”
“I am not your mate.”
He ignored her bared teeth and laughed, but the sound held little amusement. “Deny it all you like, sweetheart, but you and I both know the truth. You think I wouldn’t have known the first minute I scented you? You think I’m a fool?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“I want you to stop behaving like a brat and admit the truth about a few things. No matter what you keep telling yourself, I didn’t come here to ruin your life, and I don’t have to be your enemy. Why can’t you let me help you?”
It was Honor’s turn to laugh at that.
“Help me.” She studied the expression of grim determination on his face and shook her head. Maybe he actually believed what he was saying, but someone needed to set the man straight. Apparently, that had just gotten added to her little to-do list. “I already told you how you can help me, Hunter. You can go back to New York, back to Graham Winters and tell him that the White Paw Clan has an alpha and it needs nothing from him but that he acknowledge the change in leadership and then leave us the hell alone. That’s the only help I need from you, or from the Silverbacks. Is that straight enough for you?”
“We’ve had this discussion before, Honor, at least twice now. Do you really want to have it again?”
“If it means I’ll finally get through that thick male skull of yours, we can have it three more times tonight and seven times tomorrow.”
A muscle ticked above his cheekbone. “And I thought Missy was stubborn,” he muttered.
Honor beat back her wolf’s displeasure at hearing him speak another female’s name. She really did need him to understand the situation, so maybe it was time to lay it all out for him, to spread every single ugly card in her hand on the table and see if he still wanted to place his bets.
Leaning forward, she caught his gaze and held it, watching the gold lights of his angry wolf play across his brown, human irises. “Look, Hunter, maybe you really do think you’re here to help me. I don’t know if you’re honestly that stupid, but just for a second consider what it is that you think your presence here is going to solve. You’re going to walk around my pack for a couple of days and then decide if you think I’m fit to lead it, right? Well, let me ask you something. If you only have two choices—I’m fit or I’m unfit—what do you think is going to happen here?”
She didn’t give him time to answer. “Let me tell you. I know this pack a lot better than you do, so I think you can give me some credit for an educated guess. I’ve been beta of this pack since I was fifteen. For well over ten years, I’ve been the one supporting the previous alpha and handling both the problems too small to bother him with, and the ones he just didn’t want to be bothered with, and let me tell you; Ethan Tate may have been my father, but he wasn’t a man to go easy on someone just because they shared his name. He treated me just the same as he treated any subordinate member of this pack, and I had to prove myself to him to earn my position beside him. He didn’t go easy on me and he trained me to be able to lead this pack in his absence, whether that was when he went away for the weekend, or when he dropped dead from cancer. Me. Just me. No one else in this pack has the training or experience that I do, so who else do you think is a better choice to lead it?”
Honor saw his expression tighten and fought back the urge to smack him upside the head. She’d had a lot of years to come to the understanding that some men needed to have the truth beaten into them with a blunt object. She’d hoped Logan was smarter than that.
“Being an alpha is about a lot more than just making sure no one runs amok through the local human population, or convincing young males not to kill each other over some female’s first heat,” he argued.
“Oh, really? How nice of you to tell me that. Because as a young female pack beta, I didn’t ever have to fight a grown male to make him submit to my dominant position in the pack. And I’ve never stood at my father’s side while he negotiated a territory dispute with the Riverside Clan to the north of our territory. And I’ve never had to help figure out if the businesses my dad ran were going to provide enough meat to feed the males, females, and cubs in the pack who couldn’t find jobs out here in Northeast Bumblefuck to sufficiently feed themselves. Thanks so much for pointing out all the other jobs that I’ve b
een doing or helping to do here for … oh … my entire life.”
“Do you need a napkin, sweetheart? I think you drooled some sarcasm onto your chin.”
“Fuck you.”
His hand slid from her shoulder to her wrist and gripped firmly. “Been there, done that. And trust me, mate, we’ll get to it again real soon.”
She saw the promise in his eyes and really wished her brain would talk some sense into her other parts and let them know that this was the time to be angry and disdainful and offended, not horny.
“Look, I’m not trying to dismiss what you’ve accomplished in the past, or the status you’ve held in this pack as its beta,” he said, obviously struggling to keep his tone reasonable. “But the fact that you saw your father run this pack for your whole life should tell you that stepping from beta to alpha isn’t like moving up a year in high school. Not every beta is cut out to be alpha. You don’t get there just by being stronger or more experienced than everyone else. You have to be the strongest. Wolves don’t become alpha; they’re born that way.”
“You think I don’t know that?” She waved her free hand at the rows and rows of pack members ranged about the room in front of them. The ones currently pretending they weren’t straining to listen to the conversation between their leader and the strange Lupine who had invaded their territory. “You said you were going to take a look around and talk to the members of my pack before you made a decision about me. You go right ahead and do that. You go try to find someone in this pack you think can lead it better than I can. Then you come back and tell me what you find. Or let me save you the trouble. If you’re looking for a male among the White Paw who you think can be a better alpha than I can, you won’t find him. This is my pack, Hunter. I know my pack.”
“Stop acting like I’m just looking for an excuse to unseat you,” he hissed, never bothering to look at anyone else. “Yes, that could happen, but I didn’t come here with my mind made up. There are any number of ways this could go, Honor. If you’d climb down off your pile of righteous indignation, maybe you could see that.”
Wow, was he really that naïve? She shook her head. “No, this is a true or false question, Hunter, so there are only two possible answers.
“Option one: you take your time looking around, poking your nose into my business and feeling out all the members of my pack, and it finally sinks in that I was right and this was all just a big waste of time. You’ll decide that I am the alpha of my pack, and you’ll go back to New York and tell your boss exactly what I told you in the beginning: Honor Tate holds the White Paw Clan. True.”
He growled at that, and the deep rumble tickled the hairs at the back of her neck. “If you think I’m going anywhere without my mate, you’re operating under some serious delusions, Honor Tate. You can’t get rid of me that easily. You can’t get rid of me at all.”
“Which brings us to answer number two.” She wanted to believe him. Hell, part of her did believe him. Her wolf knew Logan wasn’t lying when he said he was her mate. Her nose wasn’t broken. She could smell the truth for herself. What she couldn’t do was see any possible way in which the two of them could end up with a happily ever after. Some things just weren’t meant to be, and she’d given up on happy a long, long time ago.
“Two A goes like this,” she continued, shoving back a pang of grief she had no right to feel. “You decide I’m not fit to be alpha of this pack. If that happens, you undermine everything I’ve spent the last decade of my life establishing. You tell the males in my pack that you think one of them can challenge me and win, which means they will likely all challenge me. One at a time, I can defeat any male in this pack. I’ve already done it with two of the strongest, and I’m not going to back down from any of the rest. But, if they all come after me at once, there’s no way I can win. Even if they come at me one after the other in honorable challenges, eventually I’ll exhaust myself, and one of them will be able to get through my guard. Either way, I’m dead, so the White Paw Clan really would get itself a new alpha. I just wish I’d be around to tell you I told you so when that new alpha leads the pack down the road to hell within the first three months. Maybe I’ll get lucky and be able to haunt you.”
She saw the roar building up behind his expression and raised a hand. She needed to make him understand what she was saying. She didn’t have time for knee-jerk denials or macho possessive-mate bullshit. This was too important.
“Two B is the one where I don’t die, but listen for a second and then tell me if you really think it’s a better choice. Listen carefully.”
She leaned in close, so close she could see tiny pinpricks of silver in the brown of his eyes where the gold had not completely taken over. Even as she watched, they disappeared, his wolf steadily eroding his control and rising to the surface.
“This is the one where you get your wish.” She twisted the arm he still grasped until her own fingers could curl around his wrist, clasping him in return until his eyes flared an even brighter gold. “In this one, I admit you’re my mate. In fact, I proclaim it in front of my whole pack. Anyone who steps up to challenge me is forced to realize that they can’t try to harm me without my mate stepping in to defend me. Since I would only agree to call a male my mate if he supported me in everything I do, I’d still be alpha of this pack, because even though you had called me unfit, your presence at my side would keep me in the position simply because no one would be willing to challenge both of us together. Which would make you, as the mate of a female alpha, not the beta of the Silverback Clan, but the White Paw Clan’s Sol.”
She paused and watched the truth begin to dawn on this stubborn, arrogant man. Her lips quirked in a bitter half smile.
“So that’s false, Hunter. Now which one is it going to be?”
Seven
Sol.
Male mate to the female alpha.
The title had every one of Logan’s instincts rebelling in an instant. How could she ever imagine he would accept a position as any pack’s Sol? Unlike the Luna of a pack—the mate of a male alpha—the Sol lacked any power or authority. Sure, he was allowed and expected to defend his mate against a direct physical threat; he was still Lupine after all. Outside of that, though, he had no place in the clan’s hierarchy. He was not considered his mate’s beta, he wasn’t an elder, or even a storyteller or lorekeeper, since those were positions requiring age in the first case, and specialized knowledge and training in the others. He’d be the Lupine equivalent of a boy toy, with no power and no identity outside that of his mate.
He’d sooner suffer some sort of comic book–style radiation mishap and wind up a cat. At least then he could pretend to have a little dignity.
His mate’s soft snort brought him back to reality.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought you’d say.” Honor eased her wrist from his lax grip and pushed back her chair. “There’s only one easy way out of this, Hunter, and that’s to name me alpha and then get on with your life. In the city. Keep that in mind while you go around asking questions. Sometimes there aren’t any good answers.”
This time he didn’t try to interfere when she thrust to her feet and addressed the crowd.
“White Paws.” Her voice rang out in the large room, quieting the conversations and drawing all eyes her way. Their way. He saw plenty of curious glances darting toward him, but they all eventually settled on Honor. “I have an announcement to make. I’m sure some of you have already noticed that we have an unfamiliar male in our territory. His name is Logan Hunter, and he’s come here from the Silverbacks to acknowledge the passing of our old alpha and witness our transition into the future.”
Whispers and murmurs swept down the tables, but no one raised a voice or a question. Logan, though, could feel their curiosity and the tension of uncertainty. This was an isolated pack, unused to entertaining visitors. They had also been through quite an upheaval lately. And he was only here to cause more.
“I have granted Hunter permission to stay among us until Sun
day and to witness our gathering on Saturday’s full moon. I expect each and every member of this pack to treat him with the courtesy due to anyone visiting under my authority. If an individual behaves otherwise, I will deal with them appropriately.”
She swept the room with a cool stare. No one said a word.
Finally, she nodded. “Good. Now enjoy your dessert. Smells like pie.”
Without another word, she strode across the hall and out the wide double doors, leaving her dinner mostly untouched and Logan still slightly stunned. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
“Here, son. Have some pie. It’s apple.”
Logan blinked down at the dessert plate that appeared in front of him, pushing aside his bowl of cold chili. Raising his eyes, he watched as an unfamiliar older male pulled a chair up opposite him and settled down with his own slice of pie.
The man raised overgrown gray eyebrows and jerked his chin. “Go on. Dig in.”
Slowly, Logan reached for his fork.
“For Pete’s sake, I didn’t poison it. I think you’d have to worry about that more if Honor had delivered it. Me, I got no grudge against you at the moment. And if I did, I’d sure find a way to show you that didn’t involve poison and the waste of a perfectly good piece of pie.”
The scowl was what finally won Logan over, perversely enough. It reminded him a little of Honor. He’d seen precious few other expressions on the woman’s face since his arrival, so he’d become something of an expert.
“I’m Logan Hunter,” he offered, extending his hand to the elder.
“Yeah, I heard.” The Lupine shook hands briefly, then went straight back to his dessert. “Name’s MacDuff. Hamish.”
“Nice to meet you.” Logan chewed a bite of flaky crust, crisp apples, and cinnamon-laced sugar. He grunted in appreciation. “Thanks for the pie. This is good.”
“Ain’t it, though? One thing about Josephine is, she’s a damn fine hand in the kitchen. Too bad she doesn’t spend more time there.”
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