Black Wolf's Revenge (5 page)

So he hadn’t worked out exactly how, or if, he would be able to get his girls back, but he was making strides for them anyway.

Step one was build a log cabin.

Easier said than done in Texas, because log cabins weren’t a staple like they were in snow country. So Grey had to order a log cabin kit that included all of the lumber and supplies. Then he had to hire a contractor who knew what he was doing and could get a good crew under him. A crew who were willing to drive to a worksite in the middle of nowhere every day.

And that’s how he met Daniel Forbes. The contractor had listened openly as Grey made suggestions and drawings of the home he wanted. Daniel even suggested Grey make the main rails for the large wraparound front porch, giving him the specks for them so he could get started.

That had been three months ago.

When Grey pulled up to the property, the crew was taking their lunch break. Daniel waved him over. “You ready to have plumbing in this place?” he asked, taking a bite of a sandwich and shaking his hand.

“Yeah, I’m ready. This is the fun part, when everything starts coming together. I’m going to go get some work done. Yell if you need anything,” Grey said, heading for the work shop he had built to the side of the main house.

“Marissa is already in there,” Daniel called. “She got here a couple of hours ago.”

Grey had brought all of his tools to the woodshop within a few days of Daniel suggesting he do the railings for the porch. The walls of the workshop had gone up within the week. It was bigger than the rooftop shanty his landlady let him use above his apartment, with more room for bigger projects. The tiny shop on the roof had been peppered with buckets to catch rainwater that dripped from holes in the roof, but his tools and materials stayed nice and dry here. Paradise. And apparently, Marissa thought so too.

The door creaked open as he pushed on it with the palm of his hand. Marissa looked up from her work and smiled. The girl had changed around him--opened up and become relaxed in a way he never saw her act around the rest of her pack. Thank goodness, because her low stress meant Wolf wasn’t always on high alert. She was sitting on a chair sanding down one of the plain railings on a work bench. He had decided to do every other railing plain and understated, while the others he would handcarve with wolf, bear, and deer motifs. Marissa said each of the already finished rails were like works of art, and he’d realized her compliments meant a lot more to him than he’d like to admit.

“Logan and Jason at the house?” he asked as he shed his sunglasses.

“Only Logan this time”. She was getting good at taking herself away from the tension that came with the young wolves’ rivalry over her, and most of that escape came from spending time working on the cabin. Daniel and the crew didn’t mind her being around, and everyone teased her and treated her like a little sister. Thank goodness for that, because he’d be sorely tempted to take their limbs off if they made her uncomfortable.

She was quiet with a quick wit when she needed it. A pretty girl, new to her teens and still lanky and awkward, she had a youthfully appealing face, long, wavy light brown hair, a button nose with big green eyes. A smattering of freckles across her nose kept her looking her young age, but she had seen too many things early on to ever truly be a child again. He had always wanted a sibling and a dog growing up, and there she was--a little sister with a tendency to shed fur.

“I ordered a pizza. It’ll be here in half an hour,” he said. He knew better than to let her go hungry. Her appetite rivaled his, and she could be a vicious little thing when she was hungry.

“Grey?”

“Yeah,” he said distractedly. He picked up one of the posts and examined one of the corners he hadn’t smoothed quite enough.

“I like when you are around. The boys never even look at me when you are there. One look from you and the tension goes away. You are like this scary older brother who may or may not actually murder anyone who messes with me.” She smiled with a far-off look in her eyes.

“What is that face for? I think you enjoy the idea of me murdering them sometimes,” he muttered.

“Not me, but my wolf does. She gets”--she paused, as if searching for the right word--“defensive.”

“My wolf thinks about it too. More often than makes me comfortable. He is always thinking about scenarios where he would need to kill someone and how he would do it.” He scribbled a mark onto the wood and frowned. “It’s actually really disturbing.”

He could tell her things like that for two reasons. The first was she wasn’t scared of him anymore. He wasn’t a threat to her, would never want her as more than a friend or pressure her. He had no interest in her in that way. The second was that her wolf had disturbing quirks too, probably caused by the monstrous make-up of both of their creators. Or maybe it was because all werewolves were a little disturbed.

Marissa nodded. “Uh, yeah, I can tell. The way you look at people sometimes, it’s like you are planning something. It wouldn’t be so bad if your eyes weren’t bright gold, but they make you look like you are going to eat people. Sometimes I get a teeny bit scared for them, and then it makes me glad I’m on your side,” she said, flipping the post over.

Wolf reveled in purpose. He liked having Marissa around. She was distracting and gave him someone to protect. She gave him something to do that involved probable chaos and fighting.

Sawdust filled the air as he blew the post clean. “How many more of the plain ones do we need to finish?”

“I think only two, but you still have to carve four of the motif ones. You have finished three of each of the others, so it is going to be an odd number of one of them. What are you going to do about that?”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that yesterday. I think I’ll start with a wolf motif on the left side and then end with a wolf motif around the other side. I’ll do an extra one of those.”

He picked up the unfinished bear he had started a couple of days earlier and got to work on it, pulling safety goggles down over his eyes. They worked in silence for about an hour before Marissa got up to grab a couple of bottled waters from the mini fridge in the corner.

“Morgan said they got the birthday present you sent for Lana. She said to thank you.”

His gut twisted at the mention of Morgan’s name, and he sighed as he put down the parting tool he was using to rough out the edges of a grizzly bear’s face. Marissa liked to keep him updated on Morgan. She was convinced it was good for Wolf to know how they were doing, but he wasn’t so sure. He always had a bad night after hearing even the tiniest piece of information about them.

Morgan frequently went out to Dean’s house to make sure she Changed enough to be safe for Lana. Cunning little wolf. She was a fighter, determined to keep her girl safe, even if that meant from herself. He, on the other hand, had fought his Changes so hard for the first six months because accepting the monster hadn’t been an option. Time with the pack had made her transition easier than it had been for him. And though he was glad she had that resource to make her life manageable, it was an impossible situation for him. He was a couple of miles away from the only people who mattered, and he couldn’t even see them.

He lifted his nose into the air instinctively but only smelled sawdust and metal. Sometimes, when she was at Dean’s, he could catch the barest whisper of her intoxicating scent. It probably wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with her absence, but she was an addiction he would never want to kick. Besides, when the pain cut too deeply, he would Change and let Wolf’s logic take over. One addiction for another--what a junkie he had turned out to be. “Did she like it? Lana. Did she like the rocking horse?”

“That’s all Morgan said,” Marissa said with a shrug. “Look, I need to tell you something, but you have to promise not to freak out, okay?”

“Is she dating someone else?” he asked flatly. The way she broached the subject made it sound like bad news, and the worst thing he could think of was Morgan moving on and finding another mate.

“What? No. Well, not that I know of anyway. No, look, Dean has been fielding phone calls for the past week. We couldn’t decide whether to tell you or not since there is nothing you can do, but I think you should know.”

Setting the post down, he lifted his safety glasses. “Keep going.”

“It’s probably nothing, but other packs have been calling because they heard a rumor that we have a silver wolf in our pack. Thankfully, she isn’t officially in our pack, so Dean keeps telling them it’s not true and then tries to make them feel bad for listening to the rumor mill. They can’t possibly tell he’s lying because he isn’t and his tone is steady.”

The blood in his veins went cold as if someone had doused him in ice water. “How did they find out about her? If the other packs even suspect what she is, it’s only a matter of time before they start visiting to find out for sure.” Shaking his head against the seething anger that filled him, he gritted out, “Someone said something about her. Who was it?”

Marissa waited, as if debating whether to tell him what she knew or not. “Okay big bad brother wolf, you are about to get me in trouble. I told Dean what I thought but he wouldn’t hear it. I don’t think he disagrees, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Dean never gave Alexis the order not to talk about Morgan. It couldn’t have come from our pack, you see. Dean gave all of us an order, and we would never put Morgan and Lana in danger like that anyway. None of us would. So it has to be Alexis, right? She was locked up with Morgan. She could see her coloring. Even if she didn’t know what a silver wolf was, all she had to do was tell one person Morgan was white and they could do the research on it. I mean, Dean found records of the Silver Wolves in his own books. He didn’t even have to look around too hard to get information on her.”

Alexis. Of course, she would have found a way to cause problems, even from Colorado. He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his unshaven jaw. Morgan and Lana were living unprotected in their little house in the city, far away from the only people who could protect them. “Does she know?”

“Of course. Dean told her after the first call. He offered to put her and Lana up in the house to keep them safe, but she doesn’t want to move. She said she needs to deal with this on her own. She said she just has to wait until it blows over and that everything will be fine.”

Grey slammed his fists against the table and it splintered up one side. “That’s proof she doesn’t understand the danger. She doesn’t understand any of it. She is too new to all of this and doesn’t realize the obsession werewolves will have with her.”

“Obviously,” she said blandly. “Grey, you have to keep them safe.”

“How?” he yelled. He had no control over their safety and hated that more than anything. “She won’t see me. I can’t even talk to Lana on the phone. I’ve sent her flowers and she sends them back, like she can’t even stand to look at something that came from me.”

“I told you not to freak out,” she said quietly, gazing at the ground with her neck exposed. “You have to find a way or you could lose them.”

“I’ve already lost them! Why can’t you see that?” His voice faltered, and he started again. “What about the pack? Couldn’t they send someone to stay with her? Someone she would let in?”

“Like who? Who in our pack could do what you could do for her? Logan? Brent? They can fight, but they can’t fend off the numbers that could come for Morgan.” She dragged her gaze back to him and fear and determination swam in the sea-green depths. “You can. We all watched you do it the night Morgan was turned. You were ready to kill every last one of Dean’s pack, your own friends, if they touched a hair on her. She needs a beast, Grey. As much as you hate being that, it’s what she needs. It’s time to embrace Wolf.” She put down the rail she had been working on and stood to lean across the table. Her fists were balled as she pressed her knuckles onto the dusty surface, and the softest growl rattled from her throat. “Who cares what she might think she needs. We know what is coming, and she and Lana are going to need protection from someone who would gladly die to do it. Don’t you even shake your head like you wouldn’t. I’m here with you every day, watching you mourn her and the girl, watching you force yourself to breathe, and eat, and drag yourself out of bed.” She marched to the door as he slumped down with his head in his hands. “Get your shit together, Wolf. Protect your mate.” She turned and slammed the door behind her.

* * * *

Crap. Morgan slowed the truck to a crawl and leaned forward. Grey and Dean were arguing on the front porch. It wasn’t like she could just turn around and disappear before they saw or heard her. They were freaking werewolves. Nobody could sneak up on them.

“Morgan, let’s go play with Rissa,” Lana said from her car seat in the back.

Morgan sighed and gripped the steering wheel until her hands hurt. Well, project Avoid Grey for Eternity had failed epically. “Okay, baby. We’re going.”

Grey froze and turned his glorious gaze in their direction. Stunned at the sight of him after so long, she swallowed hard. She put the car in park and tried to remember how to breathe. He was so beautiful it hurt. He wore a dark gray cotton shirt and jeans that clung to his tapered waist just right. How could she look at his toned physique and not imagine how perfectly sculpted he was under his clothes? She’d reveled in his perfection, run her fingertips down his stomach and brushed the strength of his back with her hands. Her gaze dipped to his mouth, set in a grim line she’d never seen before. She wanted to kiss his lips soft again.

“Mr. Grey!” Lana yelled. “Grey, Grey, Grey,” she chanted as she struggled to unbuckle her seatbelt.

“No, baby. Not yet. Let me talk to him and then we’ll go in.”

Lana burst into tears and her struggles became frantic. Morgan threw a frosty glare at him. His fault. Lana’s tears were his doing. If he hadn’t been here, she could have shown up, had dinner, gone on the full-moon hunt and slunk back to her den in the city feeling a little less tortured.

“Are you coming or going?” she asked as he approached the truck. “Because if you’re staying, I’ll leave.”