Hungry Like a Wolf
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To all the amazing readers who have taken this journey with me, and wandered around in the world of the Others. I wouldn’t be a writer today without all of you.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
With special thanks to my editor, Monique Patterson, for discovering my work and deciding to share it with everyone else.
I’ll never forget that.
Contents
Praise for
New York Times
bestselling author CHRISTINE WARREN
One
Logan Hunter and Rafael De Santos strode up the wide granite steps to the front door of Vircolac’s, braced to plunge headfirst into the heart of the enemy camp. Well, Logan was braced. Rafe’s step had a suspiciously eager spring to it, and his expression looked more lazily amused than wary. He’d recently defected.
Few people had been more surprised than Logan when Rafe decided to take a mate, especially a human witch. Actually, Rafe might have been slightly more astonished, considering he’d spent most of his adolescent and adult life demonstrating where the expression “tomcatting around” came from. But he had taken a mate, and apparently it didn’t matter to Rafe that he was supposed to be one of Logan’s closest friends. In matters of marriage and mating, not even friends could be trusted.
“Last week they somehow managed to rig the door of Graham’s office to lock from the outside.” Logan held open the door for his companion and checked the hallway to be sure none of the perpetrators he was currently griping about lay in ambush. “Then they sent me in there to wait for him. As soon as I stepped inside, the door slammed shut and trapped me in there with Annie. Annie, of all people!”
Rafe grinned at Logan’s obvious dismay. “I thought you liked Annie. She is a very attractive woman, after all. And intelligent. I would think she’d make some lucky Lupine a fine mate.”
Logan growled. “I grew up with her, man. It would be like sniffing my sister.”
“You and your pack mores. It’s not like she’s actually any blood relation to you.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Right. Because the point is that you probably humiliated a beautiful and sensitive young woman by tearing down the office door just to get away from her. How do you think that made her feel, you insensitive clod?”
Logan scowled. “I didn’t tear it down. I just kicked it in. But Annie knew it wasn’t about her. She’s cool with it. She’s not interested in me, either.”
“Right, puppy. She just smiled and thanked you for opening the door and told you to have a wonderful day.”
Logan paused and remembered. “She told me to shove the door up my ass and shit splinters.”
“Precisely. Logan, you need to learn that whether she’s a werewolf, a shapeshifter, a witch, or a human, women are women. They all need to be flattered and coddled and made to feel special.” Tipping the attendant who took their coats, Rafe led the way down the main hall and toward the club library. “It is a wonder to me that you’ve ever managed to get a woman to stand still long enough to take her clothes off.”
“And that’s such a sophisticated observation,” the Lupine scoffed. “Don’t bother to pretend with me, De Santos. Under that pampered, nancy-boy Casanova image you like to project, you’re just as much an animal as I am.”
“I might be an animal, my friend, but
I
am not a dog.”
“Very funny. And it’s
wolf,
Garfield. Not dog.”
Rafe smiled a feline smile.
“You can’t tell me all those single females didn’t drive you crazy.” Logan sniffed the air in the hall outside the library. His keen senses caught the faint but unmistakable odors of breast milk, perfume, and female skin, and his body went on high alert. Well, part of it went on high alert, the rest just went tense and frustrated.
Damn it.
Bracing himself, he clenched his jaw involuntarily as he reached out to open the door. “They were after you almost worse than me.”
“They meant well.”
“I don’t care what they mean. I want them to leave me alone.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be happy about the idea of finding a mate and settling down with one single female forever and ever and ever? You canines usually seem so taken with the idea.”
Rafe slipped ahead of Logan and entered the room. The fire crackling in the hearth at the far wall cast a very becoming glow on the skin of the two women standing beside it. Logan shook his head as he saw his friend’s gaze shift and fix on the one who looked like a curly-headed urchin. He was still getting used to that possessive gleam that sparked in Rafe’s eyes every time they turned toward Tess Menzies De Santos.
“And you took to it just fine, Morris. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do my own finding, damn it.” Logan had lowered his voice, and he looked carefully away from the women at the hearth. “Missy’s friends just don’t seem to understand that mating is a whole different ball game from just getting married. Maybe if they weren’t all so … human.”
Rafe shrugged. “Regina is not human. And Tess might technically qualify, but she is a cut above the average, you must admit.”
“Regina has been Other for less time than it takes me to mark a fire hydrant. And Tess doesn’t count. She’s a witch. And she’s taken.”
“Damn right.”
Logan heard the possessive note in Rafe’s voice and watched the Felix stalk toward his wife. The Lupine fought the simultaneous urges to snicker and roll his eyes. A couple of months ago, Logan would have bet his left canine tooth that Rafe would never settle down with one woman, let alone one who wasn’t a shapeshifter. Good thing for him no one had taken him up on that bet, because the marital bliss that followed Rafe and Tess around like a cloud would have meant some seriously tough hunting for Logan.
He still really didn’t get it. Not that he had anything against taking a mate—he was Lupine, for God’s sake—but he liked for there to be a certain sense of order to his world. And in his world, a Felix did not settle down with one woman and look happy about it. Of course, in the ideal version of his world, the only woman he’d wanted for himself in longer than he cared to think about didn’t up and marry his best friend—who was also the pack alpha—either.
Shit.
Tearing his gaze away from the sweet, smiling face on the other side of the room and plugging his nose to the warm, milky scent of new motherhood that wafted from the same direction, Logan turned on his heel without bothering to say hello to the ladies. Damn Graham for getting to Missy first, and damn himself for caring. Graham Winters was like a brother to Logan. For all intents and purposes, the men
were
brothers, and Logan did not poach on his brother’s territory. Even if the concept didn’t go against every fiber of his loyal body, it also meant risking a fight to the death with an outcome that he honestly couldn’t predict.
He swore once more and then again, quietly, because in this house, you never knew who might pick up on it. Some of the folks who frequented this club had sharper ears than he did, and that was kind of a scary thought. He took a firmer hold of his self-control and tried to beat back the restlessness that seemed to roil constantly inside him these days. He had been called to a meeting with his alpha about pack business, and he’d present a businesslike demeanor if it killed him. Graham did not need to know that his beta had the hots for his mate.
* * *
Graham kept an office on the first floor of Vircolac in the heart of the action. He said it helped him keep an eye on the happenings at the club, and when your clientele consisted mostly of werefolk, vampires, and other assorted creatures of the night, keeping an eye on things made a heck of a lot of sense. Technically, it should have been Logan’s job as head of security, but Graham was the owner and the alpha, and that made him the boss. Logan suppressed the instinct to growl and stuffed back the newly ferocious tide of resentment. He could not let himself go there.
Puppy, you have got to get ahold of yourself. You are not the alpha here, and your best friend is. So quit trying to sniff on his wife and do your damned job.
He let himself into the outer office then paused outside the door of Graham’s inner sanctum to take a deep breath. He repeated his new mantra a time or twelve.
Not mine. Not the woman, not the pack. Not mine.
He took another breath and waited for the hair on his neck to settle back into place before he raised his hand to knock. He ignored the voice in the back of his head that pointed out how the settling was taking longer and longer to happen these days.
“Come on in.”
Logan pushed open the door with his game face on. His brown eyes took in the office, empty except for Graham, and he met the other Lupine’s gaze for a second before he shifted his own to stare politely over his alpha’s shoulder. “Sorry I didn’t come earlier today. I was at the gym until after two, and I didn’t get your message until I got back.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Graham pushed back in his chair and closed the folder he’d been working on. He waved Logan to a seat. “It was your day off. I didn’t expect you to be on call.”
Logan settled himself in the leather armchair that faced Graham’s desk, but he didn’t relax. Oh, he sprawled and stretched out just the way he always had, but relaxation was out of the question. On the inside, he remained coiled and tense, the way he always did these days, and he felt Graham’s gaze on him. The sensation made his hackles rise, and he fought back the growl that wanted to rumble low in his chest.
Damn it, this is not happening. You are not challenging your alpha in his own damned home, moron, so shut up and play nice doggie. Now.
He clenched his teeth so hard, he thought he heard the grinding sound echo in the quiet office.
“All right. That’s it.” Graham leaned back until his chair threatened to tip over. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What the hell is your problem lately?”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“Right.” Graham’s eyes narrowed, and Logan looked at the alpha long enough to guess his own were probably sparking with an eerie amber light. “That’s why in the past month you’ve been in four fights, broken three pieces of gym equipment, driven six waitresses to tears, and destroyed the door to my office. Because you don’t have a problem.”
“Right.”
The nasty little voice inside Logan’s head was telling him to go ahead, pick a fight. Let him and Graham have it out and finally see who deserved to be alpha over this pack. To hell with the Winters line, to hell with Silverback tradition. To hell with loyalty. Alpha was about strength and ruthlessness and power, and Logan had more than enough of it to make the pack his own.
Logan had to fight the urge to curl his lip and meet the alpha’s gaze head-on, no more turning aside, no more avoiding the fight his wolf wanted so desperately to pick. His wolf wanted more, wanted a pack of its own, wanted to lead and rule and run at the front. His wolf knew it had the strength to be alpha on its own, and the role of second-in-command had started to feel more like a muzzle than a medal of honor.
The man in Logan hated that his wolf had begun to erode his relationship with the man he’d always called brother. That side of him, that voice was the one that screamed a denial every time the wolf began to growl and pace and look for a weak spot. Damn it, Graham was his best friend, the closest thing he had to family, closer than any other member of the pack. Logan would die for that man.