Little Wolf (49 page)

Tim studied him and sighed a little. “You didn’t want me to go, so you didn’t tell me that the threat level was higher than I thought it was. Well, I didn’t tell you everything either.” He chewed on his bottom lip, then stopped himself.

Nathaniel snorted. “That isn’t news.”

“If I had told you the nature of the threat, you probably wouldn’t have wanted to keep me here. In fact, you would have sent me on my way, and I wouldn’t have blamed you.” Tim rushed it out as one long sentence, then sucked in a breath. “That’s part of the reason I didn’t. Tell you, I mean. One reason I didn’t tell you more was that you would have sent me packing.”

“You think so?” Nathaniel’s voice was soft. “You still don’t know me that well. Or should I say, you still don’t trust me that much.”

Tim raised his head. “You might get ideas about saving me, but when it comes to the town, you’d sacrifice me. Who wouldn’t? The town is about more than one little wolf.”

“This town is about saving people,
especially
the ones who need saving.” Nathaniel took a step forward, then halted at Tim’s utterly confused frown. “For fuck’s sake!” he exclaimed. Hearing Nathaniel swear was disconcerting. Nathaniel straightened and fixed Tim with an absolutely blazing look. “I’m going to say this, and I need you to listen: you are worth saving.”

He wouldn’t allow Tim to look away until Tim’s face was hot and his eyes were stinging.

“It’s the town’s business to save people. They told me.” Tim shut his eyes, then opened them to stare at his bare feet. “That’s the opposite of almost everything I grew up learning, but nice. Maybe it isn’t the opposite, if you think of a pack as something else than how my uncle thought of it. I don’t know.”

“That is the town’s business,” Nathaniel agreed. “But
you
are
my
business.”

Tim glanced up at him and felt his mouth fall open. “It’s like you say things designed to make me want to blow you 24-7.” He shut his mouth with a snap.

Nathaniel didn’t so much as crack a smile.

“Look,” Tim told him with increasing desperation. “Whatever you think of me now, it’s going to change when you realize the danger I knowingly put you in.”

“I seem to recall you trying to warn me away several times.” Nathaniel cocked his head to one side. “What were the other reasons you didn’t tell me the ‘nature of the threat’?”

“Protection.” Tim crossed his arms. “If I told you, I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t contact them and hand me over.” He sat up when Nathaniel’s eyes widened. “That was before I knew you! And then it was—” He bit his lip unrepentantly. “I didn’t want you to laugh.”

High school geek Nathaniel might have been, but he didn’t understand living as a misfit every day. Tim swallowed. “You might say I’m the black sheep of my family. Or maybe redheaded stepchild is better. Humans have such interesting phrases for things. Changeling might have applied if I weren’t still clearly were and that term weren’t so offensive to fairies.

“Anyway.” Tim cleared his throat. “Whichever phrase you pick, I was the freak.” He stared thoughtfully at the wall. “Imagine a family in which everyone looks like
you
.” He had seen the pictures of Nathaniel’s family. They all did look like Nathaniel, big and strong and pretty. Tim sighed. “You know what I mean. Perfect weres. Ideal weres. Down through the generations, each one bigger and scarier than the last. Every one a conqueror, a leader. Then imagine me. Little and weak, obviously, inescapably part human. The watered-down, pathetic scion of a great line who has spent his entire life hearing about the deeds of his family and who knows he can never do what’s expected of him.”

“Tim….” Nathaniel worried so much for him. Tim loved that, he really did. “They locked you up?”

“Embarrassed, probably.” That was the only motive Tim could think of, unless his uncle had been trying to protect Tim from bigger weres or public ridicule. But embarrassment was the most likely explanation. “I embarrassed him. I can see that. It would hardly have made the board happy to see me being groomed to take over. And maybe he thought I was safer in the manor house, out of the city. He commuted home every day to see me, despite the apartment in town. That has to mean he cared, right?” Tim focused back on Nathaniel. Nathaniel hurt in a different way. “Not that it matters. The point is I was hidden away out of the public eye while being reminded again and again of what a proper alpha wolf would be. Then I escaped.”

“Sounds like the actions of a leader to me,” Nathaniel suggested, coming forward to sit next to Tim. “You refused to accept an untenable situation, and you found a way out.”

Tim shook his head. “An alpha wolf would have challenged them. Or, maybe not, I don’t know.” Tim was less sure now than he had been. “So I was told.” He drew in a startled breath when Nathaniel bent his head to kiss his shoulder. “I am telling a story here. Are you even listening to me? I’m telling you I ran, like a bitch.”

“Like a survivor. You ran—as a teenager, you said, and made it on your own in the human-dominated world for years.” Nathaniel kissed Tim’s freckles. It was somehow the height of perversion for Nathaniel to be kissing Tim’s freckles while Tim was trying to confess his dark secret. Tim’s life could have been a soap opera of its own, except for how Nathaniel wasn’t cooperating.

“What I don’t get is why he keeps looking for me.” Tim’s chest felt tight. “I’m gone. He should be grateful. Instead he’s been searching for me this whole time.” He thought of Uncle Silas in his chair in front of the chessboard, the cognac in his glass that he drank every night although it would never get him intoxicated. He’d given Tim birthday presents every year after Tim’s mom had died and Tim had come to live with him, usually books, once a chess clock. He’d let Tim sip some cognac too, on his fifteenth birthday. Tim had not enjoyed it but had listened to the old speech about how humans viewed knowledge of such things as a symbol of status and rank.

“Maybe it was all training to run the financial side of the business.” Tim scowled, and Nathaniel stopped his kisses. “Maybe that’s why he won’t stop looking. Perhaps it’s about the money. Or probably he’s worried that I’ll embarrass the family on my own. Well, if I haven’t in the past five years I doubt I’m going to start now. The company and the name are safe.”

“The name?” Nathaniel leaned away from him. “The money?” He made a strangled noise in his throat. “The
company
?” His voice rose, and above the overwhelming fresh soap scent and Nathaniel heat, there was something too still to be labeled as mere surprise. Nathaniel looked like he’d had an epiphany. “Little Wolf, are you a Dirus?”

“That’s me,” Tim answered miserably, jerking his chin up for the hell of it. He might be the worst Dirus, but he
was
a Dirus. There were only so many old wolf families. Even fewer with reputations for bullying other weres. Only one with his family’s resources.

Nathaniel stared at Tim without speaking for what felt like forever. Then he fell back onto the bed and stared at Tim from a lower perspective. Tim tensed and waited. A smile came and went on Nathaniel’s face. “You’re the long-lost Dirus heir?”

Tim frowned and turned away from him. He was unprepared for Nathaniel’s hand petting down his spine, the delicate touch of Nathaniel’s fingertips at Tim’s hips. “Timothy Dirus.” Nathaniel said Tim’s real name in the same soft voice that nearly always made Tim blush. “Timothy Dirus is my Little Wolf.”

“Go ahead and laugh.” Tim knew it was ridiculous to try to seem taller by straightening, but he couldn’t help himself.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… I should have known.” That was not what Tim had expected to hear. He glanced around. Nathaniel was studying him with wide-open eyes. He smiled and kept smiling even when Tim gave him a wounded look. “It’s funny for entirely unfunny reasons.”

“You said it,” Tim replied, though he had no idea what Nathaniel was talking about.

Nathaniel covered his face with his hands and gave a small, shocked laugh. “Timothy Dirus is in my town. The long-lost Dirus heir is in my bed. Timothy Dirus is my m—Little Wolf.”

“You’re getting repetitive.” Tim was starting to wonder if he’d broken Nathaniel with his revelation. He knew he wasn’t the image of an old wolf family and a billion dollar corporation, but this level of surprise was insulting. It stung more to have it coming from Nathaniel.

He could detect his own hurt in the air, and Nathaniel must have too, because he put his hands down and sat up. He took a breath. “They were here before, you know. Your family. The Dirus family. Holy—”

“You know what—wait, what? They were here?” It was Tim’s turn to gape in disbelief.

Nathaniel was deadly serious once again. “Of course you’re the Dirus heir. Of course you are.” He sat back as if content to stare at Tim until the end of time.

Tim got twitchy after about half a minute. “What.” It wasn’t even a question. “What are you talking about? Tell me. Tell me or you can make your own lunch.”

Nathaniel took a deep breath. “About five years ago, private detectives started coming into town, werewolf detectives, the best of the best, and right behind them was Silas Dirus himself.” He stared some more. “That’s your uncle. The one who locked you up. Silas Dirus.” His growl was music to Tim’s ears. “If anyone should know better—”

“My uncle was here?” Tim redirected him.

Nathaniel focused on Tim. “We found out later his people had gone to every one of the were refuges still operating in this country. He might have even gone out of the country. When he came here, it was like something out of a legend.” There was awe in Nathaniel’s tone. Tim didn’t know what to make of it. “He was a giant. The scar across his neck was massive even though it was old. You could tell it was a miracle he’d survived. He had a team of weres with him, although when he came to see the old sheriff he only had one with him. I think it was a sign of respect. He had so many detectives here, he had practically invaded the old man’s territory, but he came to pay his respects with just one of his pack with him.”

“Not exactly a pack,” Tim muttered, but then tossed his head so Nathaniel would continue the story. He’d never considered how his uncle might seem to an outsider. To Tim he was a face across a chessboard, not a living legend.

“I guess he thought you knew about the refuges, or that someone would have told you.” Nathaniel paused in his reminiscing to study Tim. “He apparently didn’t realize you would avoid all weres. Perhaps because weres on their own tend not to last long, and imagining you young and scared and alone in a city is enough to keep even the strongest were up at night.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t teach me to rely on others,” Tim sniped. The rest of what Nathaniel was telling him was something he didn’t want to think about. Not now, not ever. “Go on. What’s so funny about this?”

Nathaniel’s expression hardened. “For all that he made a show of respect, he offered little. He knew what this town was, what it stood for, yet he demanded that we hand you over if we were offering you sanctuary.”

Tim flinched. Uncle Silas was all about were tradition. It made no sense for him to make a demand like that.

“The sheriff was hardly going to cooperate with him, but he was older, and they took his quiet refusals as a weakness. They wanted a challenge and”—Nathaniel set his jaw—“I was young.”

“Oh my God, you challenged him!” Tim had never goggled at anything in his life, but the image of a twenty-four or twenty-five-year-old deputy Nathaniel Neri getting in his uncle’s face was worth goggling over. He realized, after a minute or so, that he was breathing in wheezy bursts.

The glower on Nathaniel’s face was perfection. “I jumped in. I didn’t lower my voice. I stared them down, him and his smug lieutenant, and I snapped that we didn’t have you, but even if we did, we would never offer you up. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”

“I can’t imagine you losing that much control, even if you were young.” Tim really couldn’t. Even as a wolf, Nathaniel had been contained. He thought he understood; Nathaniel, more than most other weres, had to contend with the stereotypes about angry, scary werewolves. He couldn’t afford to lose his temper in public.

Nathaniel seemed unsettled by the memory of the one time he had. “I could smell his loss, and I knew it had to be the reason he had offered such an insult, but all I could think of was a fifteen-year-old kid showing up, needing our help, and being turned away because some rich, old-blood family demanded it.”

“He didn’t fight you on the spot?” Tim tried to be helpful, but he was as stunned by this information as Nathaniel was.

“The sheriff backed me, and like it or not, with the entire town on our side, Silas was outnumbered. But no, he didn’t have to fight me to punish me.” Nathaniel growled, then changed it to a cough. He turned to stare straight ahead. “Prior to that incident, our town was funded much as other refuges are, largely through donations from older families.”

“Oh no.” Tim instantly understood. “He took away your funding for the disrespect.” Going for the metaphorical throat could be as satisfying as going for a real one.

“And persuaded or intimidated others to drop theirs as well.” Nathaniel looked at Tim. “It was my fault. I could have handled it differently. I could have shut up. I still don’t know why I didn’t.”

“Silas has that effect on people,” Tim remarked quietly, picturing Nathaniel challenging his uncle on Tim’s behalf before he’d ever known him.

“Tell that to the town.” Guilt was sour, unpleasant, wrong from Nathaniel. “We struggled that year, turning the Full Moon Fest into something to draw in more crowds. Things grew from there. We made it through. But it was my fault.”

“It was my uncle’s fault.” Tim forced out a furious breath. “He knew what this town was, and he punished it anyway.” He’d probably thought Nathaniel and the town would cave. Instead they’d thrived. They’d made Nathaniel their leader.

What had Nathaniel said? He felt responsible, so he’d stepped up. The brochures and fake dates made a lot more sense in that context.