Call of the Wolf (7 page)

* * * *

"I've got good new, bad news, and worse news,” Seth muttered when he joined the others in Abby's backyard.

Cameron eyed him with disfavor. “What I'd like to know,” he growled, “is why she trusted you enough to tell you and not the rest of us. She's known you—what?—five minutes longer than the rest of us?"

Seth hated to admit it, but he did. “She don't trust me anymore than she does the rest of you. She trusts the uniform—at least in the sense that she believes it represents law and order.

"So what's the good news?” Adrian asked impatiently.

"The good news is that she doesn't have a fucking clue of what we are. I have to admit it occurred to me she might suspect and that that accounted for the fact that she nearly has a heart attack any time one of us comes upon her unexpectedly."

Cameron sent him a look of disgust. “I'm damned if I can see where that's good news. I'm good, but I ain't that damned good,
mon ami
! Cain't none of us figure on takin’ her as a mate if she doan know we're wolfen. We gotta break the news, gentle her to the notion, and convince her to take the mark in less than a fuckin’ week?"

"That's the really bad news,” Seth retorted shortly.

"I thought you said you had good news, bad news, and worse news?” Adrian snapped. “Now we got really bad, too?"

Seth slid a glance at him. “The other good news is she's no con woman, but that's also part of the bad news. She's in the witness protection plan because some fucking psycho wants her dead. And, I'm guessing here, that's probably why she nearly has heart failure anytime she's startled,” he added grimly. “I'm guessing she's been living for a while with the expectation that somebody's going to walk up to her one day and put a bullet in her head."

"Son-of-a-bitch!” Cameron snarled. “Why didn't you tell us that start with? Poor baby! Who is the bastard? I'll go take care of the son-of-a-bitch."

"It might take more than one to do the job,” Seth said. “According to her, he's currently serving time."

"And that's the bad news?” Jerico put in. “Well, shit! That ain't no big thing. They ain't got walls high enough to keep us out."

"No, the bad news is that the agent in charge will be arriving this week and I'm guessing he's going to want to pull her out."

Adrian shrugged. “So? We take him out."

Seth sent him a look of disgust. “The council wouldn't go for that. You know damned well they wouldn't. The thug is a different ball of wax. They wouldn't be happy about us interfering in anything within the human realm, but as long as we were tidy, they'd look the other way. Aside from the fact that we have to assume the Fed is one of the good guys, the Feds aren't just going to ignore it if one of their agents goes missing, which leads us to the worse news.

"Since we didn't manage to get to Abby before she could place that damned call, we've got at least one Federal agent descending on us as we speak—and quite possibly a whole slew of them—and we've got Wolfen gathered here from all over for the intercontinental mating rites and more coming. What we don't need right now is any kind of snooping by Federal agents."

That announcement produced a prolonged silence. “Ok, so that's really fucking bad news,” Jerico muttered.

"Fuck!” Cameron growled. “Christ what a fucking mess! When's the council due to arrive?"

Seth uttered a disgusted breath. “Saturday."

"Maybe we should give them a call and tell them to haul their asses down here a little sooner?” Jerico mused.

Seth, Cameron, and Adrian turned to glare at him.

"Think, numb nuts!” Cameron growled. “I realize you've got your mind in your dick right now, but just how do you suppose they'll decide to resolve the problem? They'll pack Abby off with the Feds so fast her head will still be spinnin’ when she gets to where she's goin'!"

Adrian stepped in and planted his palm in the center of Jerico's chest before he could lunge at Cameron. “Chill, Jerico!” he snapped. “This ain't the time ... and it sure as hell ain't the place. You want to scare Abby to death?"

Jerico subsided, but he sent Cameron a challenging glare. “We could always follow her,” he put in after a few moments.

"We can't count on that when none of us have marked her,” Seth growled with determined patience. “Aside from that, we can't leave the gathering."

"And, aside from that, the chances of the council givin’ any of us an ok to take her as a mate at any other time or place are virtually nil,” Cameron added irritably. “The entire focus of the international meet is to freshen the gene pool. They won't like it anyway, but they can't very well argue against it under the circumstances, particularly when the Weres will be allowed to participate and
they
are part human."

Jerico glanced around at the others. “I thought you said the council would accept as long as it was a consenting human!” he growled. “Now you're saying even if she does consent and we fight for her, the council might not let any of us claim her?"

Seth, Cameron, and Adrian exchanged a look.

"We're Alphas,” Seth answered for all of them. “If the four of us present ourselves at the rites and lay claim to her, they'll have to allow the challenge whether they like it or not. The problem with the gene pool is, and always was, a shortage of females. She can't make the change. You know yourself there isn't one in ten that
can
survive it and that's why they made the laws to begin with—a human female has to enter the clan as a human. If she accepts us as we are and accepts one of us as mate, then it'll have to be allowed ... especially now that Prince Balin has taken a human, or at least, mostly human, female as mate."

"Right!” Jerico snapped. “
If
. What are we supposed to do? Just walk in there and say—By the way, Baby, I'm Wolfen and I'm real keen on the idea of you having my pup. So ... what do you think?"

Cameron glared at him. “We woo her,
mon ami
,” he growled. “Just like we would if she was Wolfen ... or a Were."

"Well, the problem is she
ain't
!” Jerico snarled. “Setting aside the fact that we all just scared the pure hell out of her—and that wasn't nothing compared to the jolt she's gonna get when she learns what we are—we're gonna be fucking tripping over each other trying to woo in a damned week! And that's only with the four of us! What if some of the others look her over and decide
they
want her? This place is going to be crawling with Wolfen and Weres by the end of the week!"

"Well hell!” Seth growled. “Ok, so that's another fucking problem we're going to have to work out."

There was no getting around the fact that the situation was a total fucking mess, unfortunately, Seth thought irritably. It flickered through his mind, briefly, to wonder if such a Herculean task was even doable ... or desirable. His gut answered the latter question.

Abby had thrown him completely for a loop the moment he set eyes on her. Granted, he was ripe for mating and on the hunt for one. He knew that and he also knew his instincts made him highly susceptible to any female that met his criteria for physical attraction at the moment. Everyone taking part in the festival was geared up and revving to find ‘the one’ that had eluded them in previous hunts—or to find ‘the one’ because they'd finally reached the point where they couldn't deny the urge to settle on a mate anymore.

He hadn't consciously acknowledged it before—that that group included him—even after he'd found out the council was calling for an international meet to freshen the gene pool because it had been a decade since the last one and clansmen had begun to grumble over the dearth of available females. He'd felt stirrings of interest, but he'd been more concerned about keeping order from the time he'd discovered the scope of the festival than whether or not he might meet up with the one female that felt ‘just right.'

He certainly hadn't had any expectations when Beth had sent him to invite Abby to join them for supper, despite her broad hints that he was going to find Ms. Winthrope a ‘surprise.’ From the time he'd learned that they'd found a replacement for poor old Ms. Mortimer, and heard the name Abigail Winthrope, he'd pictured her as a younger version of Ms. Mortimer, and it wasn't an image that held any appeal for him. He had wondered if she was Wolfen, or even Were, mostly because he was concerned about the likelihood that she wasn't and the problems that could arise out of that when the vast majority of Ajax's residents were one or the other.

It wasn't a problem ordinarily. The humans among them knew about the Wolfen community and the two managed to muddle along together reasonably well, but it became a problem whenever someone new moved into the area that was human. Everybody had to step warily until they'd had time to get to know the newcomer and determine whether or not they could be trusted with the knowledge that most of their neighbors were either Wolfen or Were. Once they reached that point, they either came to an understanding, or the newcomer moved on.

He'd known, long before he reached the corner and set eyes on her that Abby was human. He'd smelled the emotional upheaval—threads of anger and fear. He'd even known that her scent was teasing his libido in a wholly unexpected and unwelcome way. What his senses hadn't told him was what to expect when he'd rounded the corner just in time to see her bend over and plant the grill in the yard. The low riding jeans had slipped lower still and given him a glimpse of a three quarter moon rising above Venus and he'd known instantly that those luscious globes didn't belong to any lanky, middle-aged female even before she turned and stalked back onto the porch. The mesmerizing bounce and sway of her high, full breasts had completed his descent into catatonia. He didn't think he'd even breathed until she flounced up the steps and briefly disappeared from his view.

He supposed, wryly, that that was why she hadn't noticed him. Aside from her preoccupation, he'd been standing as stock-still as if he'd been turned into a pillar of salt.

Actually, he amended, although he hadn't realized it at the time, his wolf had gone into full alert, frozen to absolute stillness as his instincts took over, assessing his quarry by expanding his senses to optimum awareness. The tantalizing scent that had first teased him filled his nostrils and lungs like an opiate, trailing fire and drunkenness. His ears pricked, picking up the soft sigh of her breath—rapid now with anger but easily imagined as breathless with passion. And when she'd bounced down the steps again, his keen eyesight, sharpened with hunger, hadn't missed the opportunity for a thorough examination of the prize that had his mouth watering with anticipation.

From the bouncing, glossy locks of dark auburn hair around her shoulders to her dainty feet, everything he saw made the want pounding in his skull surge a little harder. His instincts had every muscle in his body taut, gathering to pounce, when the nearly overpowering smell of fuel knocked him to his senses. Completely baffled by his scrambled wits, he'd merely stared at her while she emptied the can of lighter fluid on the coals, not really registering the grim determination of her set features until she pulled out a box of matches. He wasn't sure he would've been able to fully gather his wits, then, if his instincts hadn't suddenly shifted from the need to stake his claim on her to the need to protect her. Charcoal, plus a full can of lighter fluid, and a lit match had abruptly equaled explosive combustion, however.

He shook his head at the memory. The woman had a temper. He still wasn't completely certain what had brought on her tantrum, but he'd begun to suspect it was pure out rebellion. The Feds had pushed her into a corner, given her no outlet, no chance to fight back, and she'd snapped.

Truthfully, between what he'd first seen as unreasoning anger and her jumpiness, he'd worried his little goddess might be flawed in a completely unacceptable way. Now that he had at least a piece of the puzzle, he realized it was more of a testament to the sort of strength and resilience that was as important to him as beauty and desirability in a mate. She'd been tested in a way few were and she'd held herself together. She hadn't broken even when she'd jumped to the conclusion that they were a threat to her. She'd panicked, but she'd still held it together enough to flee to the nearest defensible position and call for help. She hadn't merely sat like a stone on the couch like he'd ordered her to, quivering in terror and waiting for the ax to fall.

It hadn't done her any good, but then she'd been surrounded by Wolfen. Nothing she could've thought to do would've helped any more, and he couldn't fault her instincts.

Barring the fact that she was human, not Wolfen, he didn't think he could've stumbled upon a female more to his taste or more perfect for him.

The problem was, he was already looking at some fairly stiff competition that had the same idea.

He was reasonably confident, though, that if he could just overcome her aversion to cops—which might be harder than overcoming her shock of discovering he was Wolfen—that he could beat the odds—as they stood. He couldn't do anything about late contenders once he dragged her into the hunt—
if
he managed it—but he thought he could convince her to lay low between now and then and, if he could, then it wasn't as likely that the ranks of contenders for her would get completely out of hand.

If that sack she'd worn to supper was any indication of her wardrobe, that was bound to help at least some—if he could keep her from running around half naked. One look at the shape under that shapeless sack, though, and he was in big trouble.