The Alpha's Daughter (6 page)

Hooded or holding umbrellas to keep the
drizzling rain at bay, a small crowd had gathered on the street in
front of the house. Clusters of two and three formed a staggered
line around the corner of the house. Holy shit! Were all these
people lining up to see the doctor? How could that be?

Wolvers were a fairly healthy breed, at least
that's what she was always led to believe. Their wolf side made
them immune to many human maladies and their human side protected
them from many canine diseases. They healed fairly quickly and
their good health gave them long lives. What was wrong with these
wolvers?

Jazz opened the front door and stepped out
onto the porch. In spite of her meeting Millie and the twins and
the wave she received from the two on the porch, she was cautious.
Many packs, including her father's, didn't welcome outsiders with
open arms. By the way the three women were looking at her now, the
vote was split in Gilead; one for, one neutral, one against.

They said nothing, but continued to
stare.

Others began to gather around the foot of the
steps and she noticed most of them were women. The line that had
formed to Doc's office now reversed and made its way around to the
front of the house. They too stopped and stared.

Jazz knew what they were waiting for. She'd
seen this tactic before, too many times to count. Hell, she'd
participated in it. If she was a male, there would have been
snarls, a showing of teeth, maybe a challenge… or two.

Since she was female, the intimidation would
be more subtle. They would circle and stare until she lowered her
eyes in submission and preferably fell to her knees. In her
father's pack the men wouldn't bother with this. They would leave
it to the women to discover the new female's place in the pack. Her
mate's standing would offer some protection, but the rest she would
have to earn.

She scanned the crowd. Most of these women
were more wary than hostile. They'd come to watch the show. Jazz
smiled and no one would mistake it for friendly. If they wanted a
show, she'd give them one, because she'd be damned if she'd bow her
head to anyone.

The
woman on the porch was the one to watch. She was tall, square
shouldered and a firm, no-nonsense face. She wasn't fat, but her
body and jeans clad legs were thick with muscle and Jazz would bet
the arms, hidden beneath an old canvas jacket, were just as
muscular. Her hands, lightly balled into fists, were broad palmed
and short fingered. Her position on the porch, away from the rest,
declared her status. Among the females, this woman was top wolf in
this pack and yet she hadn't declared herself to be the Alpha's
Mate.

There were two more women in the crowd who
bore watching; one who'd positioned herself at the bottom of the
steps and one over to the right on the edge of the crowd. The one
by the stairs was a match for the woman on the porch; a little
older, on the far side of middle age, and powerfully built. Her
shoulders were broad enough to give form to the faded man's coat
she wore.

The third, much younger than the others and
more fashionably dressed, stood watching from the edge of the
crowd, her bright red umbrella standing out from the faded browns
and grays. She watched with pretended disinterest, hip cocked, bust
prominently displayed, innocently glancing over the crowd. It was
her big brown eyes that betrayed her. They were bright, glistening
with excitement. She wouldn't participate, but she was eagerly
anticipating the outcome.

Right before the woman on the porch separated
herself from her companions and took a step forward, Jazz spotted
the twins. They were both smiling and nodding and gave her little
finger waves as if they hadn't a clue about what was about to
happen. Jazz lifted her chin another inch and widened her smile in
acknowledgement.

The woman's flattened hand shot out in a
challenging shove and if Jazz was smart, she would have accepted
the shove, cowed her head and waited. This woman was obviously
someone powerful within the pack and would make a better ally than
enemy, but Jazz was an Alpha's daughter and she'd never played
second to anyone, not even her father's second Mate. She
sidestepped and avoided the push and then used her turned body to
put more force into the roundhouse punch she let fly as she turned
back. Her closed fist made contact with the woman's cheek in a blow
that should have taken her attacker off her feet. Jazz felt the
shock of it all the way up into her shoulder. The woman only
staggered back to be replaced by the one coming up the steps.

Jazz pivoted on her firmly planted foot and
dove for the woman whose outstretched arms provided the perfect
target of her exposed abdomen. There was an 'Oooph' as Jazz's
shoulder slammed into the woman's gut and the two of them went
sailing over the steps and down into the mud.

There were shouts and vague noises from the
surrounding onlookers, but Jazz didn't stop to listen or try to
figure out what they had to say.

They rolled in the mud. The other woman was
sturdier, heavier, but Jazz was more agile and quickly gained the
position on top, straddling the woman's hips. The woman scrabbled
beneath her, freed her arm and reached for Jazz's head. Jazz's hair
was too short to offer much of a purchase and she snarled in
derision. A hair puller! A girly fighter!

"You lose, bitch," Jazz growled at her
opponent.

Uncle Moose, whose name wasn't Moose and who
wasn't her uncle, had taught her how to fight and it didn't include
hair pulling or scratching. By the time she was twelve, the other
cubs in the pack, male and female, left her alone in their
mini-battles for dominance. Moose taught her that when she fought,
she should fight like her life depended on it.

Of course, as an adult, the men were heavier
and stronger. They could beat her down, but men rarely struck a
woman who wasn't their mate and that would never happen to Jazz. A
mate would have to beat her to death before she bowed down to any
man which was exactly why she had never found one to her
liking.

Moose taught her to be fast, hard, and
brutal. Don't give your opponent time to think or reorganize and
don't stop until they can no longer stand.

To that end, Jazz drew back her fist and let
it fly. The woman beneath her yelped, but Jazz didn't have time to
enjoy the sound. The woman from the porch was back, hands on Jazz's
shoulders, dragging her back. Jazz wrenched her shoulder away at
the same time swinging her curled leg out and over her downed
opponents head, missing her face by an inch. She planted her foot
by the woman's ear, rose up as she turned and let go with her left
fist. This time, she only grazed the woman's cheek, but she
followed through with her sock covered foot and connected with the
woman's soft midriff. Jazz regretted not wearing her boots. The
kick knocked the wind from the woman, but did no real damage.

She danced around the woman on the ground,
who was struggling to her feet, and launched an attack on the one
still standing. Her next blow never landed. She was swung off her
feet and pressed up against a familiar granite chest. She'd been
there before. Unless there was another man in the pack as big as
the grizzly, he'd once again interfered with a fight she could
handle herself.

"Let me go, you hairy bastard!" she shouted
and kicked backward at his legs. She thrashed and twisted, back and
forth in an angry frenzy, to jab her elbows into his arms. "Let me
go, damnit!"

"Stop!" he roared. The buzzing of voices was
suddenly cut off. The shouts were silenced. Even the birds in the
trees responded to the command and stopped their twitters and
squawks… except for the two little black birds at the edge of the
crowd.

"Oh, oh," Edna tittered.

"Now that didn't turn out as expected," Edith
giggled.

"Tom. Help Ellie around to the office," Doc
ordered as he moved backward up the steps with Jazz dangling from
his arms. "Harvey. See to Donna. The rest of you go on home. Go!
There's nothing more to see." This was said as he kicked the door
shut.

Jazz was still kicking her feet and flailing
her arms and snarling every foul name she could think of. Once they
got inside, he dropped her without warning and she had to scramble
to get her feet under her before she landed hard on the ground.

She spun on shaky legs and raised her fist.
"I didn't want your help. I was doing fine! I don't need some big
old bear coming to my rescue."

He brought his chest to within inches of hers
and stared down at her. "That's good, because I wasn't rescuing
you. I was rescuing them. I've known you for less than twenty-four
hours and I've had to break up two of your brawls. What the hell's
the matter with you?"

Jazz stretched up on her toes to bring her
face closer to his which only made her more aware of the wet and
muddy socks clinging to her feet and did nothing to increase
intimidation. Shit. Did he have to be so damned big?

"The matter with me? In case you hadn't
noticed, Griz, I was attacked!"

"Having known you for a day," he growled into
her face, "I'm not surprised, but Ellie Dawson's never attacked
anyone in her goddamned life."

"It wasn't me," she argued. "I was
defending…"

"Stop," he said as he stepped back and held
up his hand. "I don't have time for this. Ellie's got a broken nose
and Lord only knows what you've done to poor Donna."

"Stop," he said again when she would have
spoken and looked down at his mud streaked chest. "Shit. This was
my last clean coat." He took the silver pen from the breast pocket
and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans, then removed the
stethoscope from one of the side pockets and put it around his
neck. He dropped the coat to the floor and raised his finger in
warning.

"Don't move. Don't say a word. Don't answer
the door. Don't move an inch until I get back."

Jazz clenched her hands into fists and ground
her teeth as he turned his back and walked to the door to his
examining room. The coffee mug the bastard bear had left on the
table when he'd answered the twin's knock had a mouthful of cold
coffee left in it. She picked it up and hurled it at him. It hit
the wall next to his head.

The bear didn't jump, didn't even flinch. He
looked at the runnels of coffee dripping down the wall and at the
mug, unbroken on the floor and said in a frighteningly quiet voice,
"I said, don't move."

He turned at her muttered "Fuck you" and the
look in his eyes kept Jazz from saying anything more.

"And get those wet clothes off. You're
dripping mud all over the floor."

"Who'd notice," she said after the door was
closed behind him.

As much as she wanted to disobey, to show him
he wasn't her boss, she stayed where she was. She was angry, but
she wasn't stupid. What she was was homeless and after the dustup
on the front porch, she wasn't likely to have many offers of
shelter coming her way. Like it or not, the grizzly's den was going
to be home until she could get her act together and figure out what
to do.

It shouldn't take him too long to fix
whatever damage she'd inflicted. Hell, a broken nose or a few
broken ribs weren't anything to a wolver. She could wait it out.
Like she'd heard so many times from members of her father's pack,
"I could do the time standing on my head."

A minute passed and then another and another.
She shifted her weight from her right foot to the left and watched
the office door. A bright light shined out from under it and she
wondered what instrument he had that could make that kind of light
without electricity.

Another two minutes passed. No big deal. She
heard the quiet murmur of voices, then silence, then voices and
finally the outer door closing. More time passed. She shifted feet
again and began to bounce with impatience. Standing still had never
been her thing. Time outs when she was a cub resulted in a
screaming banshee child and her mother didn't use them often. The
only time she was able to stay still was on the back of a
motorcycle and that wasn't until her teens. Even then, she hated
being a passenger. She wanted the control to make the bike take her
where she wanted to go.

Jazz stared at the door impatiently.

Damn. How long did it take to fix a broken
cheek? There were more voices and the light was back. Jazz started
to wiggle to the tune in her head, anything to pass the time.

Now that the heat from the adrenaline rush
was subsiding, her wet and muddy clothes felt like icicles against
her skin. The old grizzly said to take them off, didn't he? She
could do that almost standing still and it would serve the bastard
right. She peeled off her soggy socks and dropped them onto his
white coat taking satisfaction in the plopping sound they made.
Shimmying out of the leather slacks, she noted that they were
really looking bad and it was going to take more than a sponging to
get them back in shape. The slacks followed the socks.

The shirt followed the pants. Her underwear
was still clean and dry, but the red satin bra and the bikini candy
striped in the same red, weren't much protection from the chill of
the room, though she was a bit warmer without the wet clothes. She
rubbed the goosebumps from her arms and stamped her feet to keep
the circulation going.

Finally, she heard the outer door close
again. By the time he came through the office door, she was
standing with her arms to her sides, shoulders relaxed as if she'd
been that way for the whole time.

It was gratifying to see his eyes widen at
her near nakedness before he bowed his head and did that shaking
thing with it that only emphasized his bearlike appearance. Jazz
smiled to herself. It was good to know the guy had a human side
that reacted to a female form. Her body might never make her a
magazine model, but there was no denying that men appreciated her
ample curves. She could put that knowledge to good use.