Hungry Like a Wolf (7 page)

“But Honor said—”

“Honor is mistaken.”

Joey didn’t say anything else, just placed a mug of steaming coffee on the table in front of him and turned back to her frying pan, but he could feel the way she kept shooting him suspicious glances while he ate. Needless to say, he didn’t linger over the meal.

He took the last slice of bacon with him, munching as he left the house and followed Joey’s nervously worded directions about where to find her cousin.

She’ll be down at the stone yard. That’s where the Howls happen. She and some of the men will make sure everything is secure and safe for the pack. But I don’t think she’ll be expecting to see you.

Logan disagreed. He knew that if Honor Tate had half the intelligence he credited her with, surprise would not be her first response to seeing him again.

And he should have been less surprised when a voice called out behind him.

“Morning!”

The greeting came from the direction of the gravel road that Joey had mentioned led to some of the pack’s communal structures—a dining hall, an informal rec center, and the like. Logan turned to see a man approach wearing battered fatigue pants and a plaid flannel shirt. He looked like the illegitimate offspring of G.I. Joe and Paul Bunyan, but he was smiling widely and extending his hand as he strode to a stop.

“You must be the Silverback I heard was in town,” the man said, gripping his hand just a little too firmly, his smile broad and toothy. “Thought I’d take a minute to welcome you to the territory. Name’s Darin Major. Pleased to meet you.”

Logan had never been one to back down from a dominance challenge, but neither did he have any interest in macho pissing contests. He shook the man’s hand with his usual grip, but he met his gaze straight and square until Major’s smile dimmed a watt or two.

“Logan Hunter.” He nodded and withdrew his hand without breaking the eye contact. That would be the White Paw’s job. “But you didn’t have to go out of your way to play Welcome Wagon for me. I’ve already been greeted by your alpha. She’s been gracious enough to put me up at her house while I’m here.”

And it seemed to have strained her grace to the limit, but Logan didn’t mention that. Instead, he watched Major’s smile wilt like an unwelcome erection and the expression in his green eyes shift from calculating to resentful.

“This pack happens to be between alphas at the moment,” Major said, hooking his hands into his pockets and shifting his gaze to Logan’s left ear. “The alpha died a few days ago—from disease, not a challenge—so we’re what you might call in transition until the matter sorts itself out.”

Logan had noticed the change in Major’s sight line. It was subtle, but significant. The weaker wolf couldn’t hold a more dominant Lupine’s gaze any longer, but he had tried to save face by looking just to the side in an attempt to fake the eye contact. Logan wasn’t fooled. He also wasn’t impressed. He remembered Graham mentioning the name Darin Major in their initial meeting as one of the male pack members who might pose a challenge to Honor. From what he’d seen so far, he’d bet Honor could take him. Major wasn’t alpha material.

Not to mention that the scent of him rubbed Logan the wrong way. His instincts clearly told him that Major wasn’t worth the time it would take to kick his ass, but they also told him not to turn his back on the wolf anytime soon. His scent smelled of treachery.

Logan smiled coolly. “Come on, Major, we both know there’s no such thing as a pack without an alpha, not even during a ‘period of transition.’ Nature might abhor a vacuum, but a Lupine pack hates it even worse. You might not like having Honor Tate as your alpha, but that doesn’t mean that’s not exactly what she is. And you know the way things work. Whoever claims the title of alpha holds it until someone stronger takes it away.”

The last of the White Paw male’s genial good-ol’-boy persona faded away in a snarl of resentment.

“No female is fit to run a Lupine pack. At least, not this pack,” Major spat, “and you know it, too, or you wouldn’t be here, Silverback. If your alpha had any confidence in that bitch’s leadership, he’d have thrown his support behind her with a formal acknowledgment, not sent some lackey to scope out the lay of the land.”

Logan met the sneer with a hard look. “How do you know that’s not exactly what I’m here to do? Maybe I
am
the formal acknowledgment of Graham Winters’s support.”

“And maybe cats make great pets for werewolves. An acknowledgment takes fifteen minutes timed for the start of a pack Howl, not a full suitcase that shows up four days before the event. The Silverback alpha knows the bitch can’t lead, and you’re the proof.”

Eyes narrowed, Logan leaned forward and curled his lip in warning. “I’d be careful about putting words in Graham Winters’s mouth if I were you. Almost as careful as I’d be about putting them in mine.”

Major backed up a step and glared, but the object of the expression seemed to be Logan’s shoulder so the visitor remained unaffected.

“The bitch can call herself alpha until her lips turn blue,” Major growled, “but when the pack gets together and sees how weak she really is, she’ll be singing a different tune. Just you wait.”

The Lupine spun and stalked away, leaving Logan gazing after him until the trees swallowed him up.

“So much for pack solidarity,” he muttered, and turned back to the direction he’d been headed when Major had stopped him. Now he was even more anxious to lay his eyes on Honor Tate again. He wanted to see if his impressions of her from the night before held up, because the woman he remembered could have handed Major his own testicles in a fair fight. If Major was her biggest threat, maybe he really would be acknowledging her claim and heading home sooner than he’d expected.

He followed the trail that Joey had indicated through the woods. The scent of the pine trees and the crisp chill of winter air lessened a little of the tension inside him. The terrain was certainly a far cry from his home hunting grounds on the streets of Manhattan. Usually he didn’t mind the city. He’d lived there for as long as he could remember, so it felt comfortable and familiar to him. Like home. But there was something about the forest, the crunch of packed snow beneath his boots, the tang of pine and soil in the air. The smell of game and the rich sounds of a living ecosystem all around called to his primal instincts.

He snorted to himself and ducked beneath a low-slung branch. Primal instincts? If he wasn’t careful, he’d be scratching behind his ears in public any minute.

The path wound through the woods long enough for him to stretch his legs, but he wasn’t worried about getting lost. He could smell the years of Lupines winding through the trees, concentrated on the path ahead of him. It guided him more surely than signposts. Every pack had its own scent, and he thought he was beginning to recognize that of the White Paw, but he didn’t particularly care. The only scent he cared about was rich and earthy and still bore the faint trace of flowers.

Sweet pea, he thought. And clover. Delicate blossoms under the masking jasmine and ginger of last night’s bath. But even the scent of flowers couldn’t hide the trace of her approaching heat. Now that he had tasted her, he knew what that trace of spice to her scent had signified, and it made the fit of his jeans tighten uncomfortably.

He swore under his breath and kept walking. Speaking of complications he didn’t need, this had to be the biggest. Adjudicating the right of an alpha to lead his—or, in this case, her—pack was a touchy subject to begin with. Not many people appreciated an outsider settling pack business, as Darin Major had so kindly pointed out. Heaven knew Logan would have bitten the face off anyone who tried it with the Silverback Clan. Yet here he stood, ready to do it to the White Paw. He didn’t blame Honor for being a bit miffed with him.

From the little bit of information he’d managed to pry out of her cousin—and from the tenor of Major’s recent greeting—Honor’s brief tenure as alpha had not been a peaceful one. At the pack meeting she’d called to announce her father’s death, she’d received her first challenge from a young male who thought a female beta could be overlooked, but a female alpha should be overstepped.

Honor taught him the error of his ways, fairly bloodlessly, by accepting the alpha challenge and pinning him by the throat in less than five minutes of combat. She had thought a swift display of strength would cement her position and demonstrate to the pack that she intended to keep the title that had come to her. No such luck.

Two days later, the second challenger had stepped forward. According to Joey, Honor had almost welcomed it. The Lupine who called her leadership into question was a bad apple in the pack. Less intelligent than he was brawny, Chet had needed to be taken down a peg or two, and if Honor had to be the one to do it, so be it.

The fight hadn’t been a quick one. While Honor had been fighting to the surrender, Chet had been fighting to the death. They had wrestled across the pack’s ceremonial grounds, the stone yard, for almost two hours before Honor had admitted to herself that Chet would not surrender unless forced. She had applied that force to his hind legs, slicing through his hamstrings with razor-sharp teeth and leaving him alive, but crippled. The injuries would heal, though not quickly, and Chet would remember the bite of both an alpha and humiliation for a long time to come.

The final challenge had apparently been the worst for Honor, and it was the one about which Joey had said the least. It had occurred just the night before, only a few hours prior to Logan’s arrival on White Paw lands. The challenger, he gathered, had been one of Honor’s childhood friends, and his bid for alpha had shocked her. Even more shocking to her had been Paul’s insistence on turning their challenge into a death match.

She hadn’t killed him, Logan knew. Joey hadn’t given him any specifics, but it sounded as if Honor had again gone for a crippling wound instead of taking her challenger’s life. It didn’t speak well for her in terms of her ability to lead the pack. Logan admired compassion from a theoretical point of view, but he knew it had little place in the hierarchy of a Lupine pack.

For all the veneer of civilization their human forms lent them, at their core, a Lupine pack functioned in much the same way as a wolf pack. The strongest led, the others followed, and the weakest either made themselves useful, or they didn’t live to see another winter. To humans it sounded brutal; to Lupines it was the way things worked. They didn’t make the rules out of cruelty. They simply knew that the survival of the pack was more important than the survival of any one pack member, and a hell of a lot more important than manners.

Given the three challenges Honor had had, Logan wondered why Major hadn’t followed—or even preceded—any of them with a challenge of his own. He clearly thought he would make a better alpha than a female, no matter how wrong he might be, so what was he waiting for? Did he think the others would wear her down and make her more vulnerable, or did he have some other sort of scheme in mind? Logan’s curiosity had been piqued.

He made no effort to silence his footsteps as he strode toward the stone yard, and he wasn’t surprised to break through the tree line into the clearing to find Honor and two teenaged males staring at him.

Honor thrust the tip of her shovel into the dirt at her feet and pointed toward the west. “Town is that way.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He smiled pleasantly and walked toward her and the fire pit she and the teens looked to be repairing. “For when I’m ready to leave.”

“You’re ready now.”

“Not true. You’re ready for me to leave, but me? I prefer to stay a while.” He turned toward the two boys who watched the interplay avidly. “You guys might want to go now.”

Both boys turned to look at Honor, who scowled but nodded curtly. “Go. Head up to the offices and tell Mike I want you to go along when he looks at that pipe work we want to replace in cabin twelve. I can finish here.”

This time the boys nodded and moved off, heading back along the same path Logan had used. At least the young ones knew enough to take orders only from their alpha. But teenaged boys were one thing. He still wasn’t sure about her qualifications for leading the entire pack. Just because the one challenger he’d met was a puffed-up windbag didn’t mean every adult male in the pack would be the same. There could still be a serious claimant to the title waiting in the background.

As soon as the sound of the boys’ footsteps had faded from their sharp ears, Honor turned on Logan with a snarl. “What the hell are you still doing on my land? I thought I made myself pretty damned clear last night. I want you gone.”

“Oh, you were clear. And so was I.” He met her gaze squarely, not bowing to anyone else’s alpha. “I’m not leaving until I finish the job I was sent to do. That means I’m not leaving until I see for myself whether or not you have what it takes to run this pack.”

She threw down her shovel and planted her hands on her hips. “Who the hell are you to tell me if I have what it takes? I grew up in this pack, and I’ve been its beta since I was fifteen years old. I know the way things work around here a hell of a lot better than you do, so who the hell do you think you are to give me orders?”

“I’m the man who intends to see them carried out.”

She laughed at him. Literally threw her head back and laughed, but when her eyes met his again, the look in them had very little to do with humor. “You go right on thinking that, city boy, and I’ll tell you what my father told me. ‘A White Paw leads the White Paw, and everyone else can go fuck themselves.’ You can make any damned decision you want, and you can go carry your news to your boss back in New York. But I am telling you right now, what you two think won’t make one bit of difference to this pack. We do things the way we do them, and to hell with you both.”

Logan smiled, which was the only way he could think of to keep from snarling. Not that he disagreed with what she was saying, because it made sense—although in the end it wouldn’t make any difference to his decision or Graham’s—but he did have to exercise every iota of self-control he possessed not to jump her where she stood. In the heat of her anger, her scent had intensified. It trailed across the space between them and teased his senses. The spicy note seemed even stronger today, confirmation of how close she was to her heat. He wanted to lick that fragrance from her skin and nibble his way up the insides of her thighs until he could feast on her, unimpeded.