Kitty Rocks the House (11 page)

But he has hunted without the pack, and hunted badly. She feels a driving need to see him cower.

She pushes her mate and huffs at her strongest, her enforcer, one of those who leads the hunts. Together, they run, stretching to cross the field of grasses in long strides. Her hope is that this wolf will see them coming and drop to show his belly.

He does not. Instead, he stands on the carcass he has killed, in victory, in dominance. She pins her ears, lips contracting to bare her teeth at him. When he meets her gaze—a calm, unconsidered challenge, a rage fills her. She charges. Her mate and her second are with her, as is right. Reaching the challenger first, she crashes into him, jaws open and claws reaching. He rears to meet her—and falls away. Tumbles off the bloody meat he’s been picking at. Her mate and enforcer circle. The challenger sidles away, tail lowered. Not between his legs. Not quite submissive. But he’s dropped his gaze.

He’s larger, she can’t stand over him, can only show dominance by glaring, curling her lips. Stand between him and his kill, show her anger. He circles, paces. Mostly seems confused. As if he doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. As if he doesn’t know the rules.

Her mate and enforcer run at him, nip at him, and together they drive him to join the pack. She follows at a stiff-legged lope, looking back once at the half-eaten carcass. Much meat is left. She’s tempted to make use of it, but they’ve already left too much sign of their passing. The urge to flee this tainted spot overcomes her hunger.

The pack has scattered. The deer they might have hunted together has been forgotten in favor of easier, smaller prey. They hunt from desperation now, for rabbits or such, for the scant morsels they can find. Not the organized feast they could have had. For the moment, she has lost control. So she runs, and runs, kills what she can, a couple of rodents, swallows them whole. Runs again. A cry stops her. An arcing note, echoing against the night sky, stabs into her mind, and calls her back.

Her mate meets her halfway. Nips her ear. She yawns at him, rubs herself along his side, fur to fur, and finally feels right.

The pack gathers in their night’s den. All of them, even the stranger. The others give him wide berth. She snaps at him, drives him off in a run before letting him circle back. Just to show him.

She is only able to sleep when her mate curls up beside her, resting his snout against her neck.

Chapter 9

O
FTEN, MORNINGS
after a full moon were muddy, full of strange dreams and half-remembered images. A taste of blood lingering in the film over my teeth, with no real memory of how it got there. Only assumptions, and a hope that I hadn’t done something terrible.

This morning, the night came back to me with the clarity of a photograph. Darren’s solo hunting expedition. His sheer …
stupidity.
What did he think he was doing? He’d put us all in danger.

I propped myself on my elbows and let my nose widen, taking in scents. The pack was here, curled up together after the previous night’s anxiety and chaos. A dozen and a half naked human bodies tucked up against the shelter of the rocks that formed the night’s den. Gaze alert, body tensed, Shaun was awake and looking back at me. I gave my head a small shake. No need to panic. We could handle this, calmly, sensibly, like human beings.

“Where is he?” I growled.

“Hmm?” Ben murmured. He wasn’t awake yet.

I shook his arm. “Come on.”

“What … oh.” He scrubbed his face, waking himself up, but I was already on my feet and stalking around the edges of the den, looking for Darren.

He’d curled up to sleep a few paces off from the others. And Becky was with him. They were naked, together, his arms around her body, her legs tangled up with his, and I didn’t want to know what they’d been doing all night and into the morning. Was this how it felt to walk in on your teenage kid?

I stood in front of them and crossed my arms. I might have tapped my feet.

Darren woke first, moving arms and legs, nuzzling the back of Becky’s neck. Becky started to roll over, to place herself more firmly in his arms, then stopped. Her nostrils widened, taking in my scent, and her eyes shot open, looking at me.

“Morning, sunshine,” I said. She froze, ducked her gaze, and suddenly seemed trapped in the other werewolf’s arms.

“Isn’t it a little early?” Darren mumbled. Still hadn’t opened his eyes.

“Kitty, don’t you want to put some clothes on?” Becky said.

Yeah, I was naked, standing in the middle of the woods, chewing out a guy I barely knew. Didn’t much matter when we were all naked.

“You should talk,” I said.

She shrank, slouching and curling up. Darren leaned over her protectively. Ben, who’d come up to lean on the rocks behind me, straightened and took a step forward. This was not how I wanted my morning to go.

“You look kind of angry,” Darren finally said. “I know I was supposed to meet you last night—”

“That’s actually not what I’m pissed off about,” I said. “Do you remember what you killed last night?”

He thought a minute, and donned a slow smile. “That was pretty sweet. You have a great territory up here. Easy pickings.”

He didn’t get it. Not even a little bit. I yelled, “We do not kill cattle! How are we supposed to stay under the radar if we eat someone’s livelihood?”

“You’re getting this worked up over a
cow
? What’s the big deal? One dead cow isn’t going to hurt anything.”

“Have you ever seen a UFO investigator go after a cattle mutilation investigation? This is exactly the kind of thing they live for, and if they go looking for aliens and find us instead … sure, people know about werewolves, but if they knew exactly where to find us, and came
hunting
for us—”

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“I think you flunked your audition,” I said.

“Whoa, wait a minute.” He extricated himself from Becky’s sleepy embrace, and she shuffled out of his way as he stood. If I really thought about it, I couldn’t blame Becky in the least—he was a good-looking guy, with well-defined muscles and a confident stance to his body. A little too confident—chin up, shoulders back. Looming over me, and not bothering to show a bit of submission. He was taller than I was, which meant I had to figure out how to stare down at him. Fortunately, I had help. Ben stalked forward, arms crossed. Shaun joined me on the other side. Darren took a step back. Good for him.

“Okay, okay, fine,” he said, glancing away, letting his shoulders slump. As if he had to consciously think about showing signs of submission the way I had to think about showing dominance. “You’re right, if I want to be here I need to follow your rules. I’m sorry. I really didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

“If you’d shown up when and where you were supposed to and hunted with the rest of the pack, you’d have known what the rules are.”

“I thought you had a reputation for being different. For being more free-spirited than other wolf packs. ‘Don’t be stupid’ left it pretty wide open, I thought.”

“Disappointed?”

“Maybe surprised. I guess I didn’t really know what to expect.”

“Well, now you do. We have rules, just like grade school.”

He tensed for a moment, maybe getting ready with another snappy comeback. I’d have had some words for him then. Ben and Shaun probably would have had a little more.

But he lowered his gaze and said, “Okay. I understand.” He slunk away, to where Becky was getting dressed near a stand of trees.

He knew what he needed to say to get me off his back, even if he wasn’t entirely submissive about it. Same thing in the end, and did it matter when I got the result I wanted? This was going to take some negotiating if Darren really wanted to stick around.

And we were all still naked, like some weird low-intensity
Lord of the Flies
re-creation. I could tell my human self was slipping back into place, because my skin prickled in the breeze, and I suddenly wanted to put clothes on.

“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered.

The rest of the pack seemed happy to abandon the standoff. The tension in the space faded as people retrieved their clothes, spoke in low voices, and moved back toward the road. Wearing a wry smile, Ben held my shirt and jeans out to me.

“You look like you need coffee.”

“I need coffee,” I muttered, pulling the shirt on, not caring if it was inside out or straight or what, and hopping awkwardly to get the jeans on. Then came the epic debate that I had with myself every morning after a full moon: coffee first, or shower? Which one would make me feel more human? Which did I need more: to clear the morning fuzz, or to feel clean? Some months the coffee won, some months the shower did. I still hadn’t decided what I wanted this morning.

Side by side, Ben and I turned to make our way to the road. We stopped, though, because Trey was standing there, in rumpled T-shirt and dirt-streaked jeans, his frown taut, wary.

Our talk. I’d said we could talk. I closed my eyes and turned my gaze to the sky. I was juggling. Been juggling for a while. This was what it felt like to watch balls drop to the floor in front of me with a thud. Nothing for it but to pick them up and try again.

“You up for coffee?” I asked him.

He blinked, surprised. “Sure.”

“You?” I said to Ben.

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“The coffee, or me trying to dig myself out of this hole?”

“Yes?” he said, smiling.

The predictability of his answer was somehow comforting.

*   *   *

W
E HAD
a favorite diner that we ended up at mornings like these, the kind of place that had coffee cups already on the table and poured without asking if you wanted some. I breathed in the scent—hot, bitter, rich—and felt my skin settle over my body a little more comfortably. Wolf curled her nose at the scent and retreated even further into the background, calm after her night out. Sleeping. Staying human would be easier for the next week or so.

Trey held his cup but didn’t drink. His gaze darted, his leg bounced under the table. He was nervous. I did what I could to set him at his ease, trying not to seem too earnest and demanding. Ben was doing a better job of not looking worried, slouching back against the booth, expression bland. He’d ordered a plate of bacon. Along with coffee, bacon made everything better, right?

“So,” I prompted. “Your girlfriend. Sam.”

His smile was strained. “We talked. I told her.” He sighed.

“And? How did she take it?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know. She said she had to think about it. That she wanted some time alone and she’d call me when she was ready. That’s a bad sign, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know that I’d jump to that conclusion,” I said. But he was right, this certainly didn’t sound
good.
“Telling her what you are, that’s a pretty big deal. She probably really does need to think about it.” I hoped I sounded confident.

“I’m worried I’m going to mess this up,” he said, putting his head in his hands, despairing. “I think I’ve already messed this up. She’ll never talk to me again.”

“If she’s really the one, she will. You won’t mess it up.”

“But if she’s really okay with it … with
me
…” He clamped his mouth shut, looking away, struggling for words, then said, “Wouldn’t she just say so? But I scared her off, I know I did.”

“Not really,” I said. “Not until she really doesn’t call you back.”

“I can’t wait that long. I have to call her.”

“When did you talk to her?”

“Yesterday.”

I grimaced. “You probably shouldn’t have waited until the day of the full moon to talk to her.” We were at our worst on days of the full moon, stressed and irritable. He must have looked slightly mad to her eyes.

“I know,” he moaned. “I just kept putting it off.”

“Give her time, Trey. For real. More than a couple of days. If she hasn’t called back in a week…” Then what? Give up on her? Call her back? Stalk her? “Try giving her a call. Don’t crowd her.”

“That’s your advice. That sounds like something you’d say to anyone.”

“Yeah, it kind of is,” I said. “Why should my advice to you be different? You’re both still people.”

He huffed. “I’m not exactly
normal.
”

“You are for us.”

He seemed startled, sitting for a moment with his gaze turned inward, eyes looking blankly at the surface of his undrunk coffee. The bacon arrived, its fatty scent cutting across the coffee. Another wake-up call, a summons to humanity. Ben nibbled on a piece. Trey looked at him, maybe for confirmation, maybe for a different opinion.

“She’s the expert,” Ben said. Trey raised a disbelieving brow, and Ben added, “Unless of course Sam wants you to chase after her, to prove you really love her, and if you don’t call she’ll feel neglected—”

“Don’t try to game the system,” I said. “Give her a couple of days at the very least. Then call.”

“Can you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Call her. Put in a good word for me.”

“No! I mean, I’d love to meet her, but only when she’s ready. If she’s nervous now imagine what’ll happen when she faces a whole room of werewolves.”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“Besides, imagine what she’d think if this strange woman she’s never met butts into business that ought to be between you two.”

He sagged again. “I guess that would look strange.”

More than a little. “I know it’s tough, but you can get through this. If she’s as great as you say she is, she’ll come around. She’ll be fine.” Please, let Sam be a sensible woman, let this all work out …

Trey was about to respond when my phone rang. Still shoved into my jeans pocket after last night. One of these days, I was going to take a hammer to the device. Justifiable technocide. I checked the caller ID.

“It’s Detective Hardin,” I said, as justification for taking the call. I wouldn’t have, for just about anyone else, but I clicked the talk button.