Impressive.
She would still have to be found, though, and fast. Uncontrollable shifts were a fact of life for teenage werewolves, and we didn’t want humankind’s first official sighting to come when a confused, outpack girl made a mistake we’d all end up regretting.
Plus, there was that pesky Tribunal reaction to consider. If an untrained shifter transformed in front of unwary humans, we’d be lucky if she made it out of the mess alive.
So I’ll just find her before they do, I thought, nose to pavement as I followed the girl’s scent from group home to high school. Stopping in front of the closed doors, I decided the kid could handle herself for a short time while I regathered car, clothes, and human form. After all, there was no way I was getting into the educational facility in lupine form.
Nor, apparently, in human form. “Who knew one-body society had so many rules?” I groused half an hour later as I reread the sign on the locked entranceway ordering all visitors to report to the principal’s office. While I would have been glad to comply, I couldn’t figure out precisely what to say.
“No, I’m not related to her and I don’t even know her name. But if you’ll let me smell all of your students, I’ll tell you which one needs to come home with me.”
Yeah, that would definitely fly amongst humans.
Not.
“May I help you?”
I’d been so intent upon the conundrum that I didn’t even hear the woman slip up behind me. Turning, I took in the view with raised eyebrows.
My new companion was hugely pregnant, her belly the size of a beach ball and her face open and inviting. Despite myself I sniffed the air—yep, she was carrying twins. No wonder the one-body could barely waddle up the paved walk.
“I...” I began, not quite sure how I planned on explaining my behavior. Loitering in front of a school was bad form among humans, I gathered, and I knew my shifter-punk apparel was off-putting to two-leggers. I had trouble managing human expectations at the best of times...and after Hunter’s betrayal this morning and my more recent worry about the rogue teenager, I was definitely not at my best.
And yet, the pregnant lady continued to smile at me, patiently waiting despite the fact that I could tell her feet were killing her and she literally ached to sit down. I wanted to jump back into my car and leave the confusing one-body behind, but I wasn’t willing to let the bloodling’s trail go cold so soon. So I hovered with my mouth open, never quite managing to finish my sentence.
“Please tell me that you’re here to apply for my job so I can finally go on maternity leave,” the woman said at last, looking me over. “You do have a high-school diploma, right?”
“Um, a GED,” I mumbled, eyes on my feet. I couldn’t quite figure out why the woman made me so uncomfortable. After all, I’d been around a few one-bodies during my lifetime...although I mostly tried to steer clear ever since my mother gave me the cold shoulder and took both herself and my father out of my world in one fell swoop. Perhaps my confusion stemmed from the wolf-like compassion radiating out of the teacher’s eyes?
She waited, clearly expecting a longer explanation. So I muttered an addendum. “I was homeschooled.” That wasn’t giving anything away. All werewolves were homeschooled.
Well, all werewolves except the one hiding behind these locked human doors.
“Good enough,” the one-body answered, her cheeks glowing with innocent pleasure. “I suspect you’ll fit in here perfectly. How about I take you to the principal’s office and get you off on the right foot? Then I really should get to class—those hoodlums have probably torn the place apart waiting for me.”
Even though I was presently in human form, my hackles rose at hearing the bloodling pup referred to as a hoodlum. But then I realized the woman was kidding, her eyes twinkling as she hunted through an oversized purse for her key.
Cocking my head to one side, I assessed the one-body again. My instincts kept telling me that there was a wolf inside her body providing strength and mental fortitude. But no. Still no spark of life other than the two fetuses growing by the minute within her belly.
As the human unlocked the door, some strange sense of chivalry prompted me to grab the handle and pull it wide to allow her oversized form to more easily squeeze through. Then I immediately lost all interest in one-bodies as the bloodling’s scent increased in magnitude, the essence of ammonia and rose petals filling the air so strongly I was forced to breathe through my mouth in self-defense.
It felt as if the pup had marked this entire territory as her own. I just hoped she’d done so in human form, rather than shifting to pee on the walls.
The foundling is dominant, I realized. Far more dominant than I was now that I’d lost my gifted alpha mantle and had returned to the weak halfie nature I’d been born with.
Dominant and without an alpha to keep her in check...which meant she’d inevitably strengthen her own aggression to fill in the gap.
Dominant werewolves are never thrilled when strangers enter their territories.
I could imagine the foundling walking by this spot later in the day and smelling another shifter within her domain. Worst-case scenario, my simple presence might be enough to make her flee. Best-case scenario, when we met she’d attack—with human words and fists, I hoped.
But as I followed the pregnant one-body down the echoing hallway, I felt my shoulders drop down and my spine stretch erect anyway. I’d made it in the door at least. And I was bound and determined to break through the bloodling’s internal walls as well.
AN HOUR LATER, I STILL hadn’t seen the foundling, but I did have the job. Substitute teacher for remedial English, classes starting at nine o’clock the next morning. If my hunch proved correct, the bloodling pup would be present and I’d possess the perfect opportunity to gain her trust.
But, for now, I had time to kill and no mate willing to take my calls. So, grumpily, grudgingly, I brought back up the address that had been programmed into my GPS that morning. And I turned back the way I’d come in search of another elusive two-legger.
It should have taken me only about half an hour to reach Celia’s hometown of Arborville. But after a few minutes on the highway, hairs started prickling on the back of my neck and my wolf woke from her slumber.
Danger, she told me.
Sometimes I wished my wolf would expand her vocabulary. But I didn’t have any problem getting the gist at the present moment. Instead, I could feel the same sensation she’d noticed of intent eyes boring into the back of my human skull. I flicked my gaze to the rear-view mirror as subtly as possible in search of the cause.
The highway wasn’t rush-hour busy, but it wasn’t deserted either. So it was hard to tell which of the half dozen vehicles within sight had tripped our internal radar. Was our stalker in the battered pickup? The big black SUV? The ruby red sports car?
And when had the pursuer latched onto my tail? I’d allowed the ache of Hunter’s absence to sidetrack me from awareness of the present moment, but now I realized the sensation of being stalked wasn’t entirely new.
No, the hairs might have been slowly rising on the back of my neck ever since I left the police station, fingertip swirls ingrained with ink from a criminal background check required for school-system employment. Had I spent too much time in town and given the meth-lab owner the opportunity to track me back to my car?
More likely my pursuer was Mr. Puppy Pusher, who had been rightfully enraged when Hunter flicked a match at his warehouse last night and stood back to watch the gasoline-soaked building go up in flames. But while the bloodling trafficker had motive, I wasn’t so sure he had opportunity. After all, I was now a hundred miles distant from his property and driving a different vehicle entirely.
Even as these thoughts circled through my mind with the speed of thoroughbreds on a race track, my car deftly slipped between two other vehicles and cruised down an exit ramp. Pulling up before the stop sign at the bottom, I paused to see who would follow at my heels.
At
first, I thought my wolf and I must have both imagined the sensation because the road remained stubbornly devoid of life. But then, when I’d almost resolved to hop back onto the highway and ignore lupine intuition, the black SUV came rolling up beside me.
Shit. Tinted windows didn’t allow me to see inside, but the Escalade’s shiny exterior was decidedly ominous.
I suddenly found it hard to breathe. I wasn’t used to being off on my own without a pack around or even a mate to back me up. I wasn’t used to being in sole charge of my own destiny.
Pushing the gas pedal all the way down to the carpeted floor boards, I surged across the access road and back up onto the highway, already planning further evasive maneuvers. Now that I knew who was following, I had high hopes I could throw the pursuer off my trail. I’d seen my ex-pack mate Ginger weave through traffic often enough to know how it was done, even if I’d never tried my own hand at offensive driving in the past.
But as I curved into the left lane and sped past a tractor trailer at a rate that would have traffic cops throwing the book at me, no one moved to follow suit. And when I drifted through a few small towns, eyes always trained on the rear-view mirror, the Escalade never pulled back into view.
The obvious conclusion was that I’d lost him. Still, I shivered despite the summer heat beating against my closed windows.
Something told me my stalker wasn’t gone for good. And my stomach felt hollow from the absence of pack.
Chapter 6
CELIA WAS A REAL-ESTATE agent. Or so I gathered when I pulled up in front of the address where my GPS had unerringly led me. There was her smiling face shining out of a more-than-life-sized sign stuck in the grass out front. There were listings of overpriced, perfectly manicured dwellings tacked to the front window of the building. There was a young couple walking up to the door arm in arm, ready to be sold a dream of the perfect family built around the perfect house in the suburbs.
I wasn’t buying it. Or maybe I was just chicken shit. Either way, I locked the rental car—who says small towns are safe?—and turned in the opposite direction so I could slip inside the diner across the street.
A cow bell above the door clanged and I jumped. The place was empty, but plates and other debris strewn across the tables suggested I’d just missed the breakfast rush.
A waitress who looked to be about my age glanced in my direction and graced me with a guarded smile. Clearly, if you couldn’t recite your genealogy back to the town’s founding fathers, you weren’t entirely welcome here.
Or maybe it’s my ink, I thought, glancing down at my arms with a self-deprecating smile. I hadn’t taken the time to dress down my appearance to match small-town human standards before I rushed out of the hotel room that morning, and the principal I’d interviewed with earlier in the day had given me a similar uneasy once-over. So I couldn’t entirely blame this one-body for eying me askance.
Still, the waitress did finally deign to wave a vague hand around the room at the available tables. “Sit anywhere you want, honey.”
The woman was way too young to be honeying me, but I figured I might as well try to blend into this human town despite my rocky start. So I offered a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes then slipped into a booth by the window. Slumping my shoulders and cocking my head to one side to display my neck, I exuded I’m not going to hurt you.
And sure enough, within minutes, the waitress was hovering by my side, full of curiosity and itching to pump me for details about what I was doing in her little community. Before she could do more than take my order, though, the momentary lull ended and locals began filling tables and booths. Soon, the diner was bulging at the seams and the waitress’s curiosity about my strange presence was entirely forgotten.
Not that I paid much attention to the humans swirling around me. Instead, my eyes remained riveted on my mother’s place of business as customers trickled in and out.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard I stared, the only signs of Celia were occasional flickers of movement barely visible through the plate-glass windows. Did that flash of pale skin belong to the well-dressed businesswoman I’d seen at her husband’s graveside the day before? How about that streak of color?
It was impossible to tell.
After more than an hour, I was finally forced to admit that the sun’s angle and my location weren’t quite right to allow me to gather any further information from a distance. The bad sight line was both tantalizing and frustrating...and I was too much of a coward to walk across the street and do this the easy way.
“Mind if I join you?”
The voice that broke into my train of thought was nearly as deep as Hunter’s, and for a split second my heart leapt as I imagined that my mate had tracked me down despite his reservations about my recent behavior. After all, I was here doing what he’d told me to do, so why shouldn’t Hunter stand by my side as stoically as he’d stuck up for me in the past?
But no. The man slipping into the seat across from mine—without permission, mind you—was entirely human. He was older than me but younger than Hunter, his dark hair cut short in that pseudo-military style that certain clean-cut one-bodies seemed to prefer. And his lips were spread into a wide smile.
On a wolf, I would have parsed that expression as warning because the man’s eyes were cold and hard. I frowned and blinked...and then realized I’d been mistaken. No, this one-body’s expression was as open and welcoming as they came.
“I’m Robert,” he introduced himself, reaching across the table to shake my hand. His grasp was firm but not too firm—not a challenger but not a pushover either.
And now his mouth quirked up into a self-deprecating grimace. “I know it’s rude to invite myself into your booth. But the place is packed. And if I don’t get some coffee into me soon, I think I’m going to implode.”
Despite myself, I laughed at his easy humor. “I’m Fen,” I answered. “And if you need coffee that badly, you can have mine. I don’t drink the stuff. But the waitress already thinks I’m nuts so I was afraid to tell her to just bring water.”
Robert scooted the mug toward him and tipped his head back to gulp down a big slug. Only then did I realize that I should have added a warning since the liquid in the mug was stone cold—didn’t coffee drinkers prefer their beverage hot? But even though Robert’s eyebrows rose in surprise, he just shrugged and continued to sip a bit more slowly.
“So, Fen,” my booth mate said once his caffeine craving was at least mildly dulled, “what are you doing hanging out in a small-town diner where no one knows your name?”
Was I so obviously an outsider? Glancing around the room at people talking over chair backs or stopping to chat with someone at another table before finding their own place to take a load off, I realized that I was.
But Robert appeared to be similarly unattached. Why else would he have begged my open seat when there were at least half a dozen other similarly empty spots scattered around the room?
Then the one-body’s fingers grazed mine as he plucked a napkin out of the dispenser beside my plate. Was it my imagination, or did my companion’s hand linger longer than was really necessary before he pulled away?
I gazed up into dark eyes that were abruptly full of intention. I’m mated, I wanted to say. Or, I guess the human term would be “married.”
But was I really?
Then Celia stepped out of her office’s front door. The human was as perfectly put together as she’d been the day before at her husband’s funeral, but now there was a dash of color added to her black-on-black wardrobe. Beneath today’s business-style coat, her blouse was the same vivid blue as the sky. Added to that, a touch of orange dangled from her earlobes.
I wasn’t sure why, but the rich hue made me smile.
The human slipped into the driver’s seat of a red mini-Cooper, and I stood without fully realizing what I was doing. My nerves jangled and something told me my first meeting with my maternal unit was coming either now or never.
“I�
��ve got to go,” I said, not bothering to meet my booth mate’s eyes.
But Robert wasn’t willing to let me slip away so easily. Rising to follow, he grabbed my hand, the pointy corners of a business card sandwiched within our shared grasp. “Okay. But call me,” he ordered as my mother pulled out into the empty street.
Stuffing the one-body’s card into my jeans pocket, I waved a hasty farewell as I speed walked to my car. Mates and strangely adamant humans aside, it felt imperative to catch Celia before she rolled out of sight. Because the splash of color, the set of her shoulders, and the gentle up-curve to her lips wasn’t at all the Celia I remembered.
A strange sensation settled in my chest as I kicked the rental car into gear. It felt giddy and tight and uplifting all at once.
It was the same sensation I experienced every morning when I woke to Hunter’s head lying beside mine on a hotel-room pillow. Despite all evidence to the contrary, my body persisted in filling me with hope.
I NEEDN’T HAVE WORRIED about losing track of my prey because my mother drove like an octogenarian who’d forgotten her reading glasses. Slowly and carefully, she led me down Main Street, through a tree-lined residential neighborhood, then along a two-lane highway just beyond the outskirts of town. There, her bright red vehicle turned up a gravel drive toward an imposing edifice perched atop a grassy knoll.
If this was Celia’s home, it was no wonder she’d turned up her nose at our pack’s decrepit living quarters.
I pulled over onto the shoulder and let my rental car idle as I watched the human unlock the house and prop the front door wide open. Out of her trunk came potted pansies and geraniums, and the back seat soon revealed caterers’ trays of food that I could almost smell from a tenth of a mile distant.
Alpha Underground Trilogy Page 23
