Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) (10 page)

Before I could reply in kind, I was pulled back into my own life with a jolt. My thumb throbbed with a sudden burst of pain and a droplet of blood welled up from a tiny wound on the tip.

Blinking away the remnants of the circus scenery, it took me a moment to notice that Robert had slid into the booth across from me while I’d been lost in another world. Now the one-body was pulling his own hands back to the other side of the table, his furrowed brow and concerned eyes clearly meant to suggest that he’d merely been trying to shake me out of my trance by reaching toward me. To that end, the one-body backed up the illusion with a muttered explanation: “Darn cufflinks.”

But no part of my companion’s apparel appeared sharp enough to have pierced my skin. And my wolf noted a smug curl to Robert’s lips that promised the pinprick had been intentional. No, this drop of blood on my thumb was anything but innocuous.

Fool me once....

One month ago, I’d trusted unwisely and been drugged and kidnapped as a result. Worse, I’d dragged innocents down along with me. No way did I plan to make that same mistake again, not when an untrustworthy stranger had just pricked my thumb while I was looking in the other direction.

Adrenaline flooded my body even as I yanked my favorite knife out of its boot sheathe.
Exit strategies?
I pondered.

My mind was racing too quickly to think in complete sentences. Instead,
car, locks, highway
whizzed through my brain.

I didn’t know how much time I had before the wooziness would set in, but there were no other viable alternatives beyond flight. Hunter was too distant to come to my aid, I’d relinquished my pack, and I certainly wasn’t calling in the human police.

So I pushed out of the booth in one inelegant motion, overturning my cup of ice water onto the human’s lap in the process. “Stay away from my mother,” my wolf growled between human lips, wasting half a second to stare down the opponent who had shown his hand at last.

Then we were running. Out the front door, across the parking lot, toward the rental car.

It was hard to sprint and disentangle a key from my pants pocket at the same time. I swore as the fob fell to the pavement, bruised one knee as I dove to scoop it back up. I almost dropped the knife, but managed to keep its hilt clenched in one sweaty fist.

I could barely breathe by the time I reached the vehicle. Was that the drug kicking in or just the aftereffects of overexertion? I neither knew nor cared. Just screeched out of the parking lot as if the devil was on my heels.

But he wasn’t. As I turned left onto the main road, I caught a glimpse of Robert staring after me from the open doorway of the pizza parlor. The one-body was leaning against the door jamb, as relaxed and confident as if he already had what he wanted and was willing to let me escape...for the time being.

I’ll have to ditch the rental. Get Celia out of town for a few days while I figure out what the one-body wants.

As I blew through stoplights without catching sight of any obvious tail, my pounding heartbeat slowed and I took stock of my body at last. I was shaky from adrenaline and my knee throbbed. But otherwise I felt normal. Clear-headed, alert, undrugged.

But if I hadn’t been injected with any noxious substances, then what had Robert wanted from me? And why was there a maroon circle of clotted blood on the tip of my right thumb?

***

I drove aimlessly for half an hour before I calmed down enough to go home. Because I’d promised my mother that she could show and tell as much as she wanted tonight as long as she acceded to my overprotectiveness during the preceding power outage. Celia had given in despite her better judgment this morning and I wasn’t inclined to go back on my word now.

Okay, so yes, I was
inclined
. But I was still going to do the honorable thing and take my lumps like a wolf. Just as soon as I sucked down a huge chocolate milkshake to make up for that missed pizza, and once the last shivers finished working their way out of my tensed muscles.

Still, while I fully expected to be blindsided as soon as I pulled into Celia’s driveway, I didn’t expect it to happen in precisely this manner.

“Ginger?”

I would have recognized the redhead anywhere. After all, she’d been as close to me as a pack mate could get until a few short weeks in the past.

Now the young woman was seated on the hood of a black SUV that I thought for a moment was Robert’s Escalade. But no. This one was a little smaller, a little less shiny.

And full to the brim with members of my ex-pack.

The first to approach was my steadfast second. Glen unfolded his long legs from the driver’s seat, strode across the gravel, and lifted me off my feet with a tremendous bear hug. The male was like the brother I’d never had, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed his stable presence until he was beside me once again. So I squeezed Glen back as hard as I could to make sure he was real, keeping my eyes wide open despite the resultant dizziness as he twirled me around in a joyful werewolf reunion.

When my second finally released me to stand under my own steam, Cinnamon moved in to rub his furry head up against my left leg. The wolf’s reddish fur hinted of shared genetics with his two-legged twin, the latter of which had also hopped down to join the fray.

And now Ginger was impatiently tugging me away from her brother so she could enfold me in an embrace of her own...one that I was relieved to discover was entirely platonic.

“I’m over you,” the trouble twin whispered in my ear. Then, a little louder: “There’s a new woman in my life. Amelia is twice as adorable and ten times as tough and I think I’m in loo-ove.” Despite the teasing lilt Ginger gave to the final word, I received the distinct impression that she was 100% in earnest.

“Amelia is also entirely human,” Lia teased, pushing her way into our little huddle. “And you haven’t told the poor human your deep, dark secret. So maybe you’d better not send out those wedding invitations quite yet, huh cuz?”

Lia was just as beloved as the rest of the crew, but I found myself cringing back from this final shifter’s approach despite my best efforts to the contrary. Because if I was being honest with myself, I’d have to admit that Lia was the reason I’d spent the last month packless and alone.

Okay, so sure, my loner status was technically Hunter’s fault since he’d been the one to banish me from my ex-pack’s home territory a couple of months prior. But the quartet and I could have met in the middle. Or at least stayed in touch by phone and email. Anything was better than the aching emptiness that roiled through my gut whenever I thought about the young adults who had been my stalwart partners in life, play, and battle earlier that summer.

Lia was my companion at arms and I failed her.

That was the root of my problem right there. The youngest member of my ex-pack was one of the innocents who had been harmed as a result of my ineptness the month before. And my guilt colored every memory I had of the teenager who stood before me now.

Even before being kidnapped and nearly sacrificed on a crazy shifter’s altar due to my misplaced faith, Ginger’s cousin had been timid and shy. Which was my excuse for returning Lia to the safety of Haven after her near-death experience. If anyone could put the girl back together again, I’d hoped my former alpha would be up to the task.

Yes, I’d returned Lia to Wolfie because I hoped he would help her...and because I was afraid of further breaking what had already shattered beneath my touch. Perhaps that was why the girlish face that floated up into my dreams far more frequently than I liked to admit was terrified and angry by turns rather than open and cheerful as Lia had actually been during our time together. I’d been certain that my failure to protect the sixteen-year-old had scarred her for life, if not externally then at least deep within her psyche.

“Not quite what you were expecting, am I?” the girl asked now. She turned in a slow circle, her posture relaxed, erect, and strong as she gave me time to soak up the unexpected changes.

And she
was
different. Unlike the kid who had gamely followed her cousin into a bar only to require rescuing by stronger shifters half an hour later, this young woman exuded poise and confidence from every pore.

In fact, my lapse seemed to have been her gain. Lia was an inch taller than when I’d seen her last, but her real growth spurt had come from within. And after watching the kid banter with her charismatic cousin then meet my eyes with newfound maturity, I had to admit that my mistakes hadn’t managed to squash the spark of joy in the youngster’s eyes after all.

Before I could dig into the amazing transformation any further, though, the teenager gestured with her chin, turning my attention around toward Celia’s front porch. “I’m packed and ready to go,” the house’s owner greeted us as she turned away from a newly locked front door.

I cringed, expecting an exclamation of horror to emerge from my mother’s lips as she took in the four additional shifters arrayed across her front lawn. Three appeared human, but Cinnamon was still resolutely sticking to fur form. And surely even one-body senses could pick up the calm power radiating off Glen, the animal magnetism of Ginger, and the new star that was Lia’s maturing wolf?

To my surprise, Celia didn’t seem cowed by my guests. In fact, if the rolling suitcase thumping its way down the steps in her wake was any indication, my mother was planning on taking these shifters away on an overnight adventure.

“Going somewhere?” I asked.

“You said the weekend was mine,” the one-body answered, her words cocky. But I noticed a hint of hesitation before she managed to meet my eyes. “So I called up your...um...your alpha. And he said I could borrow Glen, Ginger, Lia, and Cinnamon for a couple of nights. We’re off on an adventure.”

“Ice skating in a fun house!” Cinnamon exclaimed with his usual joie de vivre. In what he probably considered a show of chivalry, the male trouble twin had shifted to human form as soon as Celia joined our little group.

Yes, he’d shifted to
naked
human form. I glanced over each shoulder in quick succession to make sure no Arborville residents were driving past at just the wrong moment. Beloved community member or not, Celia would be eyed askance if anyone noticed a bare-assed twenty-something prancing around on her front lawn.

“We’ve got the whole place to ourselves, so we can do whatever we want. Claw skids, mirror shifts—it’s gonna be a blast,” Cinnamon continued, ignoring my trepidation.

“And, when you’re ready...no,
if
you’re ready,” Celia said quietly, “then you and I can talk about the past.”

Her words were meant for my ears alone, but the human would need to speak more softly than that if she didn’t want my pack to hear. I could feel the loyal quartet forming ranks around me, their wolves alert as they took in my trepidation.

My pack
. One month ago, in a preview of my coming mistake with Hunter, I’d tossed these four young adults into the wind...and they’d still flown back to me. Forever or just for this weekend—it didn’t really matter. For the first time in days, my stomach settled and my wolf curled nose to tail with contentment within my human skin.

“Okay,” I told them all, gaze scanning the circle of expectant faces. “Let me grab my bag, then I’ll be ready to go.”

Listening to my mother’s quiet breathing from the next hotel bed over while I lay intertwined with four wolves that night, I relaxed at last. And as my eyes closed and I drifted into near sleep, my consciousness followed the tether binding me to Hunter until I was once again drifting behind my mate’s eyes.

The uber-alpha was more awake than I was, but otherwise our situations were so similar I accidentally forced a small laugh from his lips. My long, tall mate was stretched out in human form atop a king-sized bed. And scattered around him were wolves.

Big wolves, small wolves. Sleek wolves, scarred wolves.

Every specimen was a bloodling. And every one was blissfully asleep.

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up.” He spoke aloud, his low rumble sounding subtly different through his own ears. Not quite so deep, not quite so enthralling. Was that how Hunter saw himself?

“I didn’t want to interrupt and get you hurt again....”

“How many times do I have to tell you that you’re never interrupting me?” To my delight, my mate crossed his arms around his own shoulders and squeezed tightly. A long-distance hug? Whatever it was, the gesture made me both regret my mate’s physical distance and revel in his emotional proximity.

But I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to stay here in this shared mental space. Plus, there was quite a bit of information that I needed to impart before succumbing to slumber, so I got down to the important business of trading war stories from the time we’d been apart.

As I’d gathered previously, Hunter was living up to his name, tracking down bloodlings who had been sold to unsuspecting humans over the last dozen years. The pups themselves hadn’t been a problem—or so the uber-alpha said, although the cuts and scratches dotting his arms and legs pointed in a different direction. But the Tribunal was making waves.

“They want to put the bloodlings down,”
Hunter whispered silently, his mental voice hushed as if he thought the shifters arrayed around him might catch wind of the topic despite their slumber and his secrecy.

“We can’t!”

“Of course we can’t.”
I could feel but not see my mate’s mouth twitching up into that signature smirk. How could I have doubted that he’d stick his own neck out to save innocents? Despite Hunter’s protestations about not understanding pack, his gut reaction was always to keep the people around him safe.

“The other uber-alphas aren’t thrilled with my decision,”
my mate continued sardonically.
“So I’ve gone rogue.”

He went on to explain that the Tribunal was monitoring his cellphone usage in an effort to track him down, which explained his lack of phone contact. Hunter didn’t quite say that he’d abandoned me in order to protect me, but I could read the words between the lines.

“I might already be on their radar,”
I admitted reluctantly. Then it was my turn to share the story of Lupe, my calls to Meeshi, the danger stalking my mother through the streets of Arborville.

“I’ll come get you both.” Hunter spoke aloud this time and one of the bloodlings on the bed twitched into near waking at the interruption. With shared intent, our hand reached out and stroked the curly fur at the animal’s ruff until the beast fell back asleep.

“No, we’ll manage. I’ve got the pack and you need to find the rest of those bloodlings before the Tribunal finds you.”

“You’re my top priority,” he countered.

His simple statement was sweeter than the L word. Rougher around the edges, but also more profound.

And I was much less scared to reciprocate
that
particular sentiment than I was the other.
“You’re my top priority too,”
I breathed, reaching up with Hunter’s huge mitt to gently trace the outline of cheek and jaw that I couldn’t see from my current vantage point but could at least feel.
“So take good care of yourself. Get your job done. Then come back to me soon.”

***

The facility Wolfie had rented out for us was part skating rink, part haunted house...and all fun. We spent all day Saturday gliding down long corridors filled with mirrors and monsters, pausing to scarf down catered sandwiches that gave Celia’s open-house spread a run for its money, then repeating the antics in lupine form.

And as we played, I could feel the pack bond regrowing between the five of us. I hadn’t meant to tie my ex-clan members back to me, had in fact thought the young adults were better off living in Haven. But I didn’t really have a say in the matter. The tendrils of light that connected us into a web of intertwined bodies, minds, and spirits emerged unbidden with every nip-the-tail gag and affectionate shoulder bump. I wasn’t so sure I was becoming the quartet’s alpha again, yet it was clear we were now and forever a pack.

As my glance scanned across my comrades, in fact, I abruptly found it hard to breathe, repressed pleasure tightening my chest into a painful sort of joy. Still, I knew I couldn’t put off the difficult part of this day forever. So, once Cinnamon had engaged the rest of the shifters in a game of paint ball using ketchup bottles as weapons, I pulled Celia off to one side, gritted my teeth, and said, “Lay it on me.”

I’d expected the one-body to jump at the chance to tell me whatever had been floating behind her eyes ever since I showed back up in her life. But, instead, my mother glanced away evasively as if she was unwilling to break the spell of simple fun that had lain like a mantle across the entire charmed day.

Still, Celia nodded at last and led me back around the edge of the rink until we were well clear of condiment mayhem. Sagging down together onto a bench, we released cold toes from cramped skates in tandem. Then my mother pulled out the tremendous purse she’d been lugging by her side all day long.

“I think you should look through this first,” she said tentatively, “and then I’ll explain anything that doesn’t make sense.”

No wonder she chose such a gargantuan handbag.
As my mother spoke, the pouch in question disgorged a shoe box...but not the usual kind that footwear came in. Instead, this was a box-turned-scrapbook, images and words carefully papered across the sides.

The images were all of me.

Not of me now, but of a growing halfie child. Gangly teenager, pimply pre-teen, even some adult shots I was pretty sure had been taken no more than six months earlier.

My brow wrinkled up in confusion. “I don’t understand....”

“Look inside,” my mother said gently, lifting off the lid to reveal printed emails and additional photographs. Dozens, maybe hundreds of each.

I skimmed the words, saw that the missives were signed by Wolfie and addressed to Celia. The reports were dated the first of every month and they summed up each significant life event with careful precision. My hopes, my dreams, my skinned knees, my minor triumphs.

I couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that Celia had vicariously experienced my entire childhood...while she’d remained resolutely out of arm’s reach. But then I noticed something odd—the first five years’ worth of emails were addressed to my father, then after a gap of a few months they began coming to Celia instead.

Despite myself, my eyes began to water—no, those weren’t
tears
, gosh darn it—as everything clicked into place. “Da...Harbor didn’t die last month, did he?” I asked, Celia’s lack of grief at her husband’s funeral finally making sense. Because why would you suddenly be overwhelmed with tears if your mate had been absent for the better part of a decade?

“No,” Celia answered quietly. She reached out as if to take my hand, then hesitated and wound her manicured fingers together in her own lap instead. Looking away as if unable to meet my eyes, she added, “It took me about two years to get over myself and really accept your father as the amazing partner he wanted to be. That’s when I found out he’d been in touch with your alpha that entire time, and that you had settled into your life even better with me out of the picture.”

“I wasn’t...” I began, but my mother interrupted with a pained smile.

“You
were
better off without me. I was trying to accept your father’s wolf, Fen, really I was. But I just wasn’t ready to give you the nurturing home and family that you deserved. Harbor and I thought maybe once you were a little older you could come visit, but then....”

The last word came out as a sob and I winced, feeling my mother’s pain in my bones. Strange how she could affect me just as strongly as my pack mates did even though she possessed no inner wolf. “What happened to him?” I nudged her verbally after a long moment.

“I still don’t know.” The words were almost a sigh. “Harbor went out one night and never came back. I tracked down his car a few miles away the next morning, found his body torn apart...but he was a wolf at the time and I couldn’t report him dead. Just missing....”

Celia looked down and I realized the nails of one hand were biting into her other palm. I understood where she was coming from—sometimes it was easier to feel physical pain instead of that aching hole in your gut that never seemed to want to go away. Still, I couldn’t prevent myself from easing one of her clenched hands away from the other and smoothing it out between my own fingers.

“It was probably another shifter,” I admitted, even though I didn’t want to give my mother a new reason to hate my fur form. “Harbor wouldn’t have been strong enough to defend a territory on his own, so he was easy pickings for a more powerful wolf.”

A tear trickled down Celia’s cheek, but she didn’t brush it away. “You’ll hate me for this next part,” she said with a little laugh. She made as if to pull her hand away, but I held tight.

Across the skating rink, I could see solemn-faced shifters drifting closer. I hadn’t meant to transmit my feelings across the pack bond, but apparently I had a lot to learn about this web of attachment that had sprung up unbidden between me and the people I cared about the most.

With their concern buoying me up, I couldn’t really regret having shared my pain either.

“It’s okay,” I told Celia and my pack mates alike. The former took a deep breath and nodded once before continuing with the information she felt compelled to divulge about her past.

About
our
past
, my wolf whispered. I didn’t brush her assertion aside, but I didn’t overtly agree either.

“Harbor made me promise that if...if anything happened to him, I’d cash in his life-insurance policy then get in touch with your alpha, ask him for help. Wolfie wrote back immediately to say I was part of his pack and would be taken care of. But I...I couldn’t leave Arborville.”

She paused, catching her breath, then continued illuminating the mysteries of our shared past. “Since there was no body...well, no body the police would understand...I couldn’t declare Harbor dead until recently. The insurance company suggested a funeral would expedite my claim. And I hoped it might tempt you to come back to me....”

Celia’s voice trailed off, her words rough from repressed tears. Her heart appeared to be in the right place and I wanted to forgive her past neglect. But, honestly, holding a funeral as a way of getting in touch with me seven years after my father’s death felt like too little too late. So I kept my eyes averted and flipped through the printed emails to give my mother and myself both a bit of time and space in which to recover.

Then one paragraph caught my eye. “You asked Wolfie if I could come live with you? Again after Daddy died?” I asked in surprise, not even noticing my use of the avoided honorific until it had already left my lips.

After doing some quick math in my head, I realized that I would have been on the cusp of womanhood at the time, around the same age as when I changed my last name to match my alpha’s in a fit of pique. No wonder Wolfie’s answer had been polite but had recommended against the change of scenery...and even against Celia coming to visit me if she wasn’t planning on staying awhile.

I wanted to resent Wolfie’s heavy-handed decision making. But I had to admit that young, angry Fen wouldn’t have dealt well with the one-body whose warmth now pressed ever so gently up against my side. Left to my own devices, younger me might have burned bridges that I would have regretted for the rest of my life. In the end, I had to admit that my alpha had made the right move.

And maybe Celia had as well.

“I’ve been a shitty mother,” she said by way of reply. “But I want to make it up to you, Fen. I’ll do whatever it takes to stay in your life now.”

For the last twelve years, I’d assumed that if Celia ever came crawling back to me, I’d kick her to the curb and spit in her face. I’d thought about how much joy I’d get out of being the one to spurn a parent who had never accepted me enough to really make her abandonment equate to a rejection in the first place.

As a teenager, I would have reveled in the way Celia was currently unable to meet my eyes. In the way her whole body vibrated with tension.

But I wasn’t a teenager. And as I felt the pack bond reach out to engulf the spark of human life that was my mother, all I wanted to do was pull her into a long hug and never let her go.

I wasn’t quite sure our relationship had reached the hugging stage yet, but I
did
grip the one-body’s shoulder briefly before I verbally lifted her off that hook she was dangling from.