Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  “Do you trust him?” Renee asked.

  Kelly only had to think a few seconds. “Yes. I get a generally good feeling. Regardless of what you think about the average werewolf diet, most of us aren’t intrinsically bad people, Renee. Grant was truly an exception.”

  Renee touched Kelly’s wrist lightly but didn’t take her hand. “Do you want to go with them?”

  “What?”

  “If you trust him, why are you hesitating? Be honest, Kelly, this was only temporary,” Renee said. Her eyes were clear blue and intelligent when she let Kelly look directly into them. “You came here because you didn’t know where else to go. I would have let you stay here the rest of your long life. You know that. But we both know this isn’t where you belong.”

  Kelly went quiet, not just in her silence—her body became very still. Renee, of course, had put a finger right on the thrumming pulse of the truth.

  If it had been just her, the decision to go back to her pack might have been easier. Damien had already impressed her as a decent sort of alpha. Her life as a werewolf didn’t need to be as it had been with David. She could truly start over.

  Her hesitation at this point wasn’t so much for herself.

  “You’re right,” Kelly said. “I think I could belong with them.”

  “That’s how I made my choice to not to go with Grant. No matter how bad the rest of the world is for me the way I still am, I belong here,” Renee said quietly.

  “You made your choice knowing that you could make your world better in time,” Kelly said. “I think I could, too. But… I guess whatever I decide depends on Malcolm, and right now he’s not in a place where he wants to join the pack. At least let them stay around a little while longer to see if Malcolm wants to come along. I don’t want to just abandon him without knowing things will be okay. If I leave, I’ll be too far to run back in time to stop something bad from happening.”

  Renee nodded. “All right.”

  She left Kelly’s side and returned to Damian. “You and your pack can stay, but I do have to ask you to minimise your time and your numbers on the property. You’ll scare the dogs.”

  Damien held out his hand to shake in agreement. Jake’s grip on the gun tightened and Renee held back, not out of fear of an attack but because she was leery to touch someone she didn’t know. But she reached out and took his hand. Damien stayed gentle, which Kelly appreciated.

  “I don’t suppose I get a say in this,” Malcolm said.

  “No,” Renee said. “You get to choose to stay or go. But it’s my decision to let them stay.”

  “And that decision ended so well last time,” Malcolm said.

  “That’s not fair,” Jake said, advancing.

  “No?” Malcolm snarled, stopping Jake in his tracks. “It’s easy for you to say, Jake. Grant didn’t come after you. He didn’t bite you, he didn’t bite Britt and he didn’t bite Renee, all the people you care about. He bit me because he was making a point to her.”

  Renee swallowed, but her eyes remained dry. “Like I said, you get to choose to stay or go. I’m not making you do one thing or the other. If Kelly thinks it’s okay for them to stay, I trust her judgement. I thought you did, too. Are we done here?” she asked Damien.

  “If you are,” Damien said, nodding to his pack, who slowly relaxed. “We’ll head out of the sanctuary so you can let the dogs out. Kelly will know where to find us.”

  Kelly nodded at Lily and Tanya as the pack started to leave the compound. Tanya smiled—Lily didn’t, but she rarely did. The male beta was the last to change and make his way into the forest. In spite of his hard face, she sensed no aggression in him.

  In fact, as far as she could tell, Jada, Jeremy and Stephanie were the only ones with a history of aggressive tendencies—aside from the alpha, naturally. However, it was beneficial for a pack to have a few aggressives. Like a soldier carrying a few grenades in his arsenal.

  Damien’s collection was a smart one, though unusual.

  Kelly turned to Malcolm, who was still sulking quite unattractively. Kelly reminded herself that anger was closer to the surface of a new wolf, like a teenager. She had to be patient.

  “You were doing so well,” Kelly said. “Have you ever given some thought about maybe moving past what happened to you a few months ago and working with what you got?”

  “Gee, that never occurred to me, Kelly,” Malcolm replied. “You’ve definitely given me some food for thought.”

  “There’s no need to be surly. All she’s done is try to help you, and all Renee’s done is not kick you out,” Max said.

  “No one asked you!” Malcolm roared, whirling around to yell at Max. But Ki was there, too, her eyes fearful and reproachful, and Malcolm reeled back, half changed.

  “Run,” Kelly whispered, her command reaching his sensitive ears.

  His feet dug into the ground until they became paws and had better traction. He fled before he could do any more damage. Ki’s pain was evident at the sight of Malcolm changing in the daylight, now that she could really see what Malcolm was.

  “I have to apologise,” Kelly said, touching Ki’s shoulder.

  “Why?” Ki asked.

  “You’re not the one having problems,” Max added.

  “Malcolm’s never met an alpha,” Kelly said, “and that can sometimes cause some friction. Malcolm’s ambivalence about his lycanthropy mixing with his close temper… It was an already volatile situation. I should have prepared him better for it.”

  “You tried,” Ki said. “You told him to brace himself.”

  “I could have done more. But at least next time he’ll know what to expect,” Kelly said, rubbing her eyes. Juggling pack dynamics and a new wolf’s outbursts was tiresome.

  Britt had changed back, and she was talking softly with Renee and stroking her arms. Renee was shaking, but her demeanour remained resolute. Jake still looked alert, but he had set down the gun.

  Max tried to put his arm around Ki again to comfort her. She shrugged him off, not unkindly. She was just upset. Kelly wished that she could reassure Max with more than the commiserating look that they shared.

  Kelly passed by him to tell Renee, “The wolves are out of the sanctuary.”

  Renee nodded. Kelly headed to her trailer to shed her robe and go after Malcolm.

  * * * *

  Malcolm changed back into a man and faced her, parts of the wolf lingering. “Stop following me!”

  “You want a real fight?” Kelly asked, holding her arms open as though she were asking for an embrace. “Come on. You can do whatever you want.”

  “Stop doing that!” Malcolm screamed, literally tearing at his hair. Tufts of it came out in his hands. “Stop trying to bring the wolf out. I don’t know how much clearer I can be. I want no part of it, none. I don’t want to fight you again, and you can’t trick me into it like last time.”

  “It’s no use,” Kelly said. “You’ve already seen what happens when you try to ignore it.”

  “This isn’t the man I was, nor is it the man I would ever wish to be,” Malcolm said. He practically vibrated with anger, but he looked tired, tired of going over the same path over and over again.

  “Malcolm, I want you to listen to me,” Kelly said sternly. “I’m sorry to destroy any illusions, but this is the man you were.”

  She swept her hands through the air down the line of her body then gestured to his, the whole man. “There’s a beast in all of us. If they’re lucky, humans never have to know it’s there. But that’s what a werewolf is. Whatever you are, whatever anger you feel, whatever fight you feel you need to have, this is what you always were. The werewolf merely brings the monster to the surface.”

  Her claws grew and her teeth went sharp, partially out of frustration with him, but also from self-frustration and shame that what she was saying was true. To look in a mirror and see the wolf and know it was as much her as the woman… That kind of knowledge was overrated. But Malcolm needed to hear it.

  “You ar
e the man who takes care of his partner,” Kelly said, speaking more gently. “You are the man who takes care of those in your charge. You’re still that man, which is why you could”—she swallowed before she could manage to say it—“make love to me and why you should be able to be that man with Ki. But you also carry all this anger and self-loathing and violence, because you always did. The beast who fucked me in the forest is the same beast you were before, but now it’s been brought out as strongly as the man you were. This is what people are, Malcolm. This is what they really are.”

  She approached him, and although every inch of him quivered with tension, he didn’t run from her again.

  “We can’t put on the mask like they can. We can’t pretend we’re civilised. But strip away all the trappings of civility and what do you have? It’s no wonder we fuck well. And it’s no wonder we want human flesh and blood. In the end, humans want nothing more than to consume each other. They cannibalize themselves in more acceptable ways, but our transformation makes us the predators that humans can’t be. And we’re allowed to enjoy every freaking minute of it if we let ourselves. I choose what I allow. I don’t eat humans, but that doesn’t stop the desire to do so.”

  Kelly ran the tips of her claws over Malcolm’s chest, catching on his nipples and making him twitch, but he still didn’t back away.

  “So,” she concluded, with an edge of a growl in her voice, “when I tell you to fight me, it’s because I want you to.”

  Malcolm bared his mouthful of lupine fangs, but not from anger. Not anymore. Her words sank in and what she offered was too tempting for him to refuse.

  “Come at me,” she whispered, raising her arm to rake her claws over his chest.

  He didn’t allow her to get that close. He batted her wrist down and came at her.

  She didn’t yield the fight.

  By the time they were done, they were a collapsed collection of human body parts, still assembled but appearing random with the way they had contorted themselves.

  “I want you to run until you’re near exhaustion tomorrow before you go in to Ki,” Kelly said, thoroughly satisfied and replete. “Do you have any objections?”

  “I think you have a dismal view of human beings,” Malcolm said. He panted against her calf. “But yes. Sounds like a plan.”

  “For a man older than me, you’re surprisingly naïve,” Kelly replied. “I only say what I know, what I see. I have a distinct advantage in that arena.”

  “Maybe,” Malcolm said.

  “And you’re the one with the dismal view of werewolves.”

  That should give him something to think about.

  Chapter Six

  In spite of the events of the day before, Kelly noted Malcolm was in a significantly better mood at breakfast again, and he ran all afternoon. He stopped by Kelly’s trailer after he’d finished his run, but Kelly didn’t answer the door. She pretended she was asleep like a teenage girl. She smelt his gratitude the way she smelt the forest through the open window.

  In spite of her efforts to stay no more than friendly, she had no wish for him to thank her for making him more palatable to another woman.

  Ki was a wonderful girl. Like Max, she really tried for Malcolm. Kelly didn’t think it was enough. They couldn’t accept all of him any more than he could right now, which wasn’t helping. But Kelly should know better than to believe Malcolm wanted her for anything other than simply satisfying the werewolf. It was understandable for Malcolm to get attached to her, just as it was understandable for her to get attached to him, the only two werewolves in the sanctuary. However, it could never be anything more, not when Malcolm couldn’t embrace the same part of himself that was also in her.

  “You are truly an idiot,” Kelly whispered to herself. She pulled her sheets over her head.

  When her eyes closed, she saw Malcolm and Ki meeting alone together for dinner. Kelly couldn’t hide a slight smile, though, when she saw that Ki had made herself a stew and cooked Malcolm a very rare steak.

  “This is ridiculous,” Kelly said, throwing back the sheets and forcing herself up. Butch Cassidy was still out doing whatever mischief he could before ten, which was usually when he came back in through the open bedroom window. It meant that her trailer was an icebox until she returned, but if Butch Cassidy got too cold, he could just crawl underneath the two quilts that Kelly kept at the foot of the bed for him. She was nothing if not a cat spoiler.

  As Ki got her first tentative taste of werewolf in a kiss—which was far better than how he smelt, a constant olfactory assault of danger that she had to ignore as best as she could—Kelly walked into the forest. Her effort to put distance between herself and what was going on between Ki and Malcolm was as pointless as Renee attempting to get drunk. Her psychic abilities were extensive but unskilled. She usually didn’t make a point to peek in on other people, so she didn’t have the experience to take a more nuanced approach when she actually did.

  This made it a little better, letting the forest swallow her in its sensory feast, the crackle of leaves, grass and twigs, the crunch of snow, creaking branches, the breeze rustling tenacious leaves and needles. Kelly tried treating the psychic channel as white noise. She focused instead on the swirl of the breeze over her naked body, the way it caressed her, and not on the faint sound of moaning in her head and the sense of other wary eyes on the couple.

  “For someone so attuned to your surroundings, you’re awfully distracted. How did I manage to sneak up on you?” Damien asked.

  “Who said you did?” Kelly said. She turned around slowly, hiding the fact that he had startled her. “What do you want? I’m not prepared to give you an answer yet.”

  “What’s stopping you?” Damien asked. His posture was relaxed, not even deceptively casual. Then again, although he had a right to be cautious with her, he also had no reason to and he knew it. “I mean, this is wonderful forestland, I can’t deny. And it’s clear you like the morsel, considering you sacrificed your place in the pack for her. But I’m offering it to you again, as well as everything I suspect you’ve always wanted from us.”

  “If it were just me, maybe I would have snapped up the offer before you could finish it,” Kelly said. “But it’s not just me.”

  Damien nodded, the skin around his eyes going feral. Briefly sharp teeth glinted behind his lips. “Ah, so you’re partial to the pup. Not much of a fighter, though.”

  “He fights with me just fine,” Kelly said.

  If he were someone like Shawn, who had been part of David’s pack before, he would have said something like, ‘If a bitch is all he can fight, it doesn’t say much for him’.

  But Damien just said, “Well, he’s young.”

  Kelly tilted her head and regarded him curiously.

  “What do you see, witch?” Damien asked, his smile slowly fading to show the alpha behind it.

  “A wolf I wouldn’t have thought would achieve alpha over all the area packs,” Kelly said.

  “You can’t see my secret?” Damien asked. His demeanour was enigmatic.

  “I’m a little distracted.”

  “What’s got your attention?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Very well,” Damien said. “Then let me tell you what you can’t see at the moment. The reason I won all the dominance fights is why David’s dead and I’m not.”

  He began to circle her, and when she lowered her eyes, she caught a glimpse of his physical interest in her. He made no attempt to hide it. Werewolves rarely did.

  “Most alphas or wannabes just accept things as they are and have always been,” he continued. “They think alphas are the biggest and baddest. Alpha gets first taste of his pack. Head bitch or beta belongs to alpha, at his discretion. Omegas don’t get to say no, and they show their throat when their superiors demand it. Bitches can’t challenge alphas, can’t overpower them. Humans are the only prey worth the hunt. A human has no worth as a living creature, unless he or she is to be changed. Just because it has alway
s been that way, we call it our nature.”

  He stroked her chin and lifted her head to meet his gaze. “I call it wilful ignorance. Ignorance got David killed. Ignorance got Grant killed. I won against all the other alphas because I never underestimate my opponent, my enemies, my allies or my prey, but they underestimated me. I won’t underestimate you, Kelly. I don’t understand everything about your abilities.”

  “Neither do I,” she said.

  “But I will always respect them. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re bitch or human or a freaking rabbit shapeshifter, you’re more powerful than I am.”

  “Is that why you took in Lily and Tanya?” Kelly asked, letting him draw her to him.

  “A pair of bitches were never so neglected, as though no one ever saw them fight together.” He bared his teeth in disgust. “Who cares if I can’t fuck them? I’ve got more than enough to satisfy without requiring my entire pack to submit to me in that way.”

  “Speaking of…” Kelly said.

  The muscles of his abdomen twitched as she slid her hands over them.

  “If I join you, I don’t want the head bitch position. Jada’s better at it than I am because she wants to be there.”

  “Done. I’m quite happy with her.” Damien bit her earlobe then sucked it into his mouth.

  “And she’d very much resent it if I supplanted her again.”

  He chuckled. “Too true.”

  “But I won’t be treated as less because of it.”

  “Haven’t I been telling you this whole time that I hold you in the highest respect?” Damien asked. He pushed his hand between her legs and cupped her mound, fingers tantalising the lips of her cunt. “I protect every member of my pack, from the fiercest to the meekest. They all contribute something invaluable, many of them with traits considered worthless by other packs. But their blindness is my gain. You would be no different, witch.”