Destiny and Deception (16 page)

“Does my love seem cheap to you?”

His eyes widened in realization. “Oh, shit.
Nyet
 … there’s nothing cheap about you.…”

“Quit backpedaling and tell me this: How much time do we have, Pietr?”

He checked his watch. “Three minutes before the tardy bell.”

“No. I mean how much time—overall—do we have, Pietr. You and me. In our lives?”

He paused and swallowed.

“A decade? A year? A month? A day maybe?” I pushed. “Do you know what tomorrow will bring?”

“Of course not,” he snarled.

“Neither do I. I have this moment and maybe the next, if I continue to be lucky. You’ve taught me that life is short.”

“You’ve taught me that life is precious.”

“Then understand. This is my mother’s influence. She did this same thing—telling me she loved me so much, spreading it around like the words were nothing. I called her on it, too. I called her on it, Pietr. I told her that. That all her little ‘I love you’s’ were shit because she tossed them around like nothing. Do you know what she said?”

He shook his head.

“She reminded me we’re farmers and said it takes a lot of shit to make something beautiful grow. And after I’d shut my mouth, totally stunned, she explained that she always figured if she said those words often enough that when she was finally gone, although I’d doubt and I’d forget a bunch, at least I’d remember she told me ‘I love you’ a few times. And you know what, Pietr? Now she’s gone, and all I want is to hear her say those words. Again.”

“I didn’t realize,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” He gathered me to him, and we stood silently together in the hallway and just let the tardy bell ring.

Alexi

I’d taken the VW Rabbit to Johnny Bey’s to try my luck with the Tuesday night crowd. As the convertible was not quick to sell, nor was Pietr quick to find work, I reverted to what I did best: watching people, examining their strengths and weaknesses, and playing a role that’d get me an opportunity I needed to win money at pool. In short: hustling.

Although I was quite a good player, I never challenged the men I judged to be the best at the tables—they did not have egos that needed proving like their more mediocre counterparts. An ego that needed proving was often backed up by large amounts of money.

Amy would have called such action “overcompensating,” which only reinforced the fact that I liked Amy.

Men who overcompensated believed they were unbeatable. Or at least
said
it. Saying it with cash was good enough for me to be willing to put them to the test.

I was observing the action and trying to choose a target when the wolf walked in.

I drew back, leaning into a shadowed corner by the long, slick bar, and watched her stalk around the edge of the pool tables.

Long-legged and slender, with a tiny waist, she had a build like my sister’s if Cat had been stretched out another four inches.

She wore a short top that exposed just a hint of her stomach, and tight blue jeans that were scuffed at the knees and ended in black high-heeled suede boots. Long red hair fell loose around her shoulders, and I wondered if what I was feeling seeing her stalk the room was a modicum of what the man in Farthington felt for my mother.

Nothing in her body language hinted at insecurity: no stoop to her shoulders, no slow stride as she walked, no darting of her large and shining eyes.…

She knew she owned every room she walked into.

I was certainly not the only man to notice.

I was observing a female alpha.

A female alpha who was, as Max would say, “Off her chain.” She wore no necklace or what Cat called a “collar” to dull the intensity of her allure. That fact was nearly as frightening as the beast she could become at will.

Thankfully, being raised by wolves had granted me a soft immunity to their charms. Unfortunately the other men in the room did not have that same advantage. They were nothing more than prey animals with no idea they were the ones being hunted.

She ran her fingers lightly over the bar’s sleek wooden surface, smiling at each man as she went. Where they saw sex and flirtation, I read
danger
. She was as much shark as wolf, circling the smoky room slowly and drinking in the scents of alcohol and the haze that pervaded everything.

She was waiting to scent blood in the water.

The way she took in her surroundings, I had to presume if she found no blood, she would make someone bleed simply to satisfy her desires.

I was so intrigued by her I nearly missed the man who trailed her silently at a distance. If I had not known wolves, I would have thought they had come separately and arrived at the same hunting grounds as a matter of coincidence.

But there seemed no coincidence in Junction.

He moved with the same quiet animal grace that she did—a grace and power others would wrongly mistake as leonine. Those who had never seen a wolf in action, a wolf in the wild, no doubt would misjudge him as a lion among men.

Though they moved in a similar fashion, he was as unique as she. Dark, African, or Caribbean in descent, the red that lit his hair muted among the rich brown and ebony he wore in lengthy dreadlocks. He was as broad across the shoulders as Max and nearly as tall as Pietr. The men in the pool hall were smart enough to give him wide berth as he passed by.

A few men boldly stood taller or threw back their shoulders and puffed out their chests, but I could not be sure if it was in response to her or the threat of him.

Remaining in the shadows, I watched and waited for a moment to slip away unnoticed.

When she finished her round through the pool hall, her companion not far behind, and went to the bar for a drink, I headed for the door.

“Don’t I look twenty-one?” she asked the bartender, and I glanced over my shoulder in time to see her motion down the length of her body as if it were all the ID she needed.

“You look amazing, hot stuff,” the man replied, wiping at the same spot on the bar he had been rubbing with great intensity since she’d walked in, “but if I get busted for serving minors, I’m screwed. No card, no Coors.”

Her friend joined her, his hand on her shoulder. He leaned in and whispered something. She pulled away from him, her hands balling into fists that rested on her hips.

“I deserve a drink,” she snapped.

“Come on, George, there aren’t any cops around…,” someone called from the end of the hall.

“And it wouldn’t be your ass in a sling if there were,” the bartender replied.

“Here,” another man said, reaching across the bar, “I’ll help you myself—”

“What the—” the bartender hit him with his towel. “What are you thinking?”

“They’re thinking they want to buy me a drink.” She laughed.

“And I said
no
,” he shouted. “You need to leave.”

Fists started flying, and I ducked out the door. I had been in enough bar fights with Max to know how things would end—with broken chairs, tables, and maybe a broken arm or a leg for some participants. I had no interest in being a part of that.

I looked around the parking lot, wondering what car they had come in. If I knew where they were from, it might give me some clue to their destination or their goals.

If they had goals.

Finding their vehicle might also help me determine their numbers.

What if there were more than the two?

If Wanda had been along I would have asked her to run license plates, but my stomach tightened at the thought of getting more help from Wanda.

The way Mother had called her a traitor when Wanda helped us rescue her—there had been such vehemence to the word it was hard to believe it was merely the dementia of a dying wolf.… What if Wanda had betrayed Mother in the past?

I slid into the car, still contemplating the vehicles crowding the lot. A few motorcycles, some standard two-door and four-door cars, and an old box van. A lot of wolves could fit in an old box van.

Starting the Rabbit, I thought about how few of us fit in it. Amy already joked about needing a shoehorn or a better understanding of the game Tetris to get Max in and out of the vehicle.

Backing the car out, I hoped both wolves had squeezed into the tiny two-door I saw parked near the lot’s back.

And I hoped they needed no more room than that.

Marlaena

Gareth found me in the old farmhouse’s kitchen, opening cabinet doors and rummaging through drawers. “Even mice are in short supply here,” I muttered.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Gareth warned, his eyes soft with worry.

“Searching an abandoned home for odds and ends?” I teased him, knowing he was dragging up the bits of Gabriel’s recent suggestion to make a connection with a very questionable character.

He pressed closer to me, his face grave. “The Russian.”

I pushed past him and through the doorway to the tiny living room. I looked at the pups in their faded hoodies and jackets, all huddled together in the best corner of the building. There was no denying they were cold and hungry. No denying they were my responsibility. I was their alpha. “He offered money?”

Standing in the other entrance, watching me, Gabriel nodded slowly.

“How much?”

He shrugged.

“How much is your safety worth?” Gareth asked over my shoulder.

I shrugged and remembered how it felt as a pup on the run with a stomach grumbling all the time. “And he’s not some wolf hunter?”

“He’s like nothing we’ve ever dealt with before,” Gabriel answered.

“And he’s not some perv with some bizarre kink, right?”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow at me, the smirk sharp on his already crisp features. “Are there such people?”

“You have no idea,” I muttered. “So. Freaky Russian dude with money wants to meet a werewolf and talk business.”

“You sound intrigued,” Gabriel said, approval clear in his voice.

“Intrigued?” I shrugged again, noncommittal. “Curious? Yes.”

Margie—not my mother but the woman who signed papers and claimed motherhood in the name of a wicked tax deduction and the ability to then call herself a philanthropist—was fond of warning, “Curiosity killed the cat.”

If she thought curiosity was rough on felines, she had no clue how hard it was to deny in canines.

Besides. Freaky Russian dude? What harm could possibly come of it?

Of course, cats got nine lives. And werewolves? Just one.

And a short one at that.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jessie

Pausing outside the boiler room door, I thought about it. I’d searched for Harnek’s group of special students during my homeroom and study hall for a few days now. What were the odds that the something weird I was searching for was going on down there? Just because boiler rooms were some of the creepiest places in movies—besides the spiderweb-filled attic or basement of somebody’s cat-obsessed aunt …

I twisted the door knob and—to my surprise—it opened easily. From somewhere under the staircase, lit by a soft glow of light from below, came the sound of steam and liquid passing through old pipes and beyond that—the sound of voices.

I paused on the first step. I could go into the heart of it alone or—I touched the cell phone I kept in my hip pocket—I could call Pietr and ask for backup.

Of the decidedly sensitive sort.

Dammit
.

He’d overthink things and slow down whatever progress I might be able to make by just going in and exploring. I could jump in feet first and figure things out as I went.

But … I could get hurt.

Killed
was even an option.

Pietr would want to take the time to lay out a cautious and concise plan. There’d probably be at least one carefully created chart.… Maybe a Venn diagram.

That did it.

I hurried down the rest of the stairs, stooping to see as much as I could as fast as I could.

Desks were arranged haphazardly and at a decent distance apart, one student at each one, all focused intently on something in front of them.

I descended another two steps.

With her back to me a petite blonde was verbally railing against one student who seemed to be struggling to complete whatever weird assignment would bring you to a makeshift classroom in the boiler room of Junction High.

“I said,
Do it again!
” she bellowed, nearly doubled over, fist and clipboard at her sides.

“Sophia?” I squeaked, finally recognizing the blond hair and slender form.

She whipped around to look at me, confirming my suspicion as to her identity, her eyes wide. The kids scrambled to—they pulled out books and homework—appear
normal?
In the boiler room. Well, we all tried our best to seem less than strange.…

Sophie smiled, her voice changing from the drill-sergeant shout and sinking back into the soft near-whisper I’d become so used to. “Oh. Hey,” she said. “Come on down.”

She turned back to them as I came down the last few steps and said, “It’s okay everybody. Go back to what you were doing—it’s only Jessie. Hi, Jessie.”

“Hi, Jessie?” I repeated, stunned. “Just: ‘Hi, Jessie’?” I waved at the room of students focusing so hard on their separate tasks—oddly reminding me of the aspiring Hogwarts wizards, minus the feather-stuffed wands, robes, and strange hats. I looked at one particular kid and corrected myself. Okay, so at least one of them had a strange hat.

Sophie shrugged and turned back to watch them, jotting down quick notes on her clipboard as she began to wander through the awkwardly arranged desks. She had to know I’d follow.

I peeked over her shoulder at a girl who focused on an orange. “What’s she doing?” I whispered, but Sophie waved me to silence.

The orange wobbled, rolled down the slanted desk …

“Gravity works,” I muttered.

The girl cursed in frustration and stuck a hand out to grab the orange as it tumbled off the desk’s edge—but suddenly it was hovering just above her hand. She cursed again and it quivered in midair, rising a few more inches.

Soph made a
tsk-tsk
noise with her tongue. “If you use that same passion, the emotion behind that cuss that just singed my ears—
twice
—you’ll have it floating in no time. And not get stuck with detention,” she said with a sigh, tugging off a pink slip she’d just filled out.