Heir To The Pack (The Cursed Pack Book 1) (25 page)

“About time.” She snapped
the magazine shut and laid it aside. “She’s been pining after you for the last
three years. Now, don’t let that be the last time, you hear me? You young
people can be so stupid about sex. And love.” She sighed. “Take what you get,
and hold on to it with both hands.” She demonstrated, by stretching out her
hands and grabbing fistfuls of air.

Behind him, Gaelan
snickered. He’d pay for that later.

“Um,” he said, concerned
she might continue her advice. “Where’s Annie?”

“Jack’s sleeping,” Daisy
said, “with Annie curled up beside him. She went to get him out of bed and lay
down for a minute. Next thing I knew she was asleep. That’s how I know you wore
her out. You grab her, you hear me? And don’t let her go. I told her the same
thing.”

Dash smiled and nodded as
he backed out of the room. Given what he had to deal with today, Annie’s
crazy—he amended that to eccentric—mother was the least of his
problems.

Truth be told, he agreed
with every word she’d said.

He walked down the hall
and eased open the door of their room. Jack lay asleep on his back, arms and
legs akimbo, Annie curled up beside him in the fetal position.

Dash moved over beside the
bed, and lowered his hand to stroke the boy’s forehead. Had his face grown
paler since yesterday? The shadows under his eyes drew dark circles,
punctuation to his illness. The darkness seemed to lie below the skin, like a malignant
current flowing there, leeching the color out of him.

Dash blinked away his
fancy. Things were bad enough without letting his imagination run away with
him. He’d let them sleep. They both needed it, and rest might give Jack a
little longer. Longer for Dash to come up with a plan.

Somehow, in the next twenty-four
hours, he had to find the witch and kill her to save his son’s life. He also
had to duel Michael for the leadership. And find a killer. And spend as much
time with his family as he could, because even if he managed all that, there
was no guarantee that Annie would agree to stay with him.

Gods help him.

*
         
*
         
*

Dash jerked awake. Where
was he?

Gaelan moved into his
field of view. “I have news,” he said. His face was pale. That, and his tone of
voice brought Dash sharply back to reality. He’d dozed off in the chair next to
Annie’s bed, watching over Jack.

He cast a glance at the
bed, and saw they were gone. “Where’s Jack?” His heart pounded in sudden panic.
He couldn’t be dead. Not yet.

“They got up a little
while ago and now they’re watching a movie with the three witches.”

“Daisy isn’t a witch,”
Dash said, absently, rubbing at his eyes, coming down from the fear. Some Lycaon
he’d make. The world was ending and he’d taken an unscheduled nap. He didn’t
have time to be tired. Disgusted with himself, he hauled his ass out of the
chair.

“She may as well be,” G
muttered. “She fits right in.”

“You had news.” Dash
stretched, readying his body for the next onslaught, weary from fighting so
many different battles. Something else had happened, or Gaelan wouldn’t be
standing there. “What’s wrong now?”

“Two of the guards were
patrolling, and they found the scent of an injured wolf out in the east
pasture. Blood trail, apparently. One of our pack, but they didn’t know the
wolf. “

Dash’s focus sharpened. Someone
else had been injured, perhaps attacked. “If they’re sure about the pack scent,
but don’t know the wolf...must be one of the ones that lives in town. Is anyone
missing?”

“Did you ever get hold of
Bill?”

His sixth sense screaming
danger, Dash said, “We’d better take a look.”

“Want me to go? I can
report back.”

 
“I don't like this,” Dash said. “I want
to see for myself. Besides, I could do with working out the kinks before I have
to deal with this idiot, later.”

“Don’t—”

“—underestimate him,
I know, I know. Can you all stop offering advice and let me thrash the son of a
bitch?”

Gaelan laughed,
unexpectedly, and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Let’s go check
out this scent trail.”

He went out to the living
room where a veritable gaggle of women hovered around Jack, eating cookies and
watching an animated movie. He squinted at the television. “What is that?”

“The Jungle Book,” Annie
said. “It’s about a boy who’s raised by wolves.” She smiled at him, sweetly. “It’s
Jack’s favorite movie.”

He snorted. “Good boy.” He
ruffled his son’s hair. Jack barely gave him a glance, so engrossed was he in
the film.

“Me and Gaelan are going
out to take a look at something,” he said. “We’ll be back shortly. You have
lots of company, and, of course, the guards are here if you need anything. There’s
six of them at the door.”

Annie nodded. “We’ll be
fine.” She stretched her arms up to him, and he bent over her, meaning to give
her a quick goodbye kiss. But once his mouth was on hers, he lost his mind.

“Ahem.” Elaine cleared her
throat. He broke away, caught Jack staring at him, wide-eyed.

“Are you going to marry
Mama?”

His face heated instantly
and there was nowhere in the room that was safe for him to look. Four sets of
female eyes bored holes in him. And he’d thought this day couldn’t get worse. “We’ll
talk about that later.” Straightening up, he smiled tightly at them all. “That
is, Annie and I will talk about it. Just to be clear. Now, I really have to go.
I’ll be back soon.”

He stepped back, nodded at
Gaelan, and they headed outside, past the suite guards, stopping downstairs to
pick up the patrollers who’d found the scent. Every able member of his pack had
stepped up to guard duty this week. Dash hadn’t expected to need quite so much
guarding, but now he had a family to protect.

They paused to disrobe in
the mudroom on the eastern side of the house and changed forms on the porch. Dash
finished first, as usual, and sat on his haunches while Gaelan and the others
finished their change. As soon as they were done, he broke into a lope, headed
directly east. He sensed the others dropping in behind.

It was a medium-length run
to the east pasture. Long enough to get his muscles nice and loose, not long
enough to tire him out. The movement drained some of the tension out of him,
but nothing could shift the weight of fear that sat like a stone on his heart
whenever he thought of Jack.

When they reached their
destination, he stopped, regarding the rippling yellow-green grasses that
stretched in front of him, dotted with copses, and reaching all the way to the
foothills in the distance. This was a good place for rabbits at this time of
year.

One of the scouts passed
him, leading the way to the scent trail. They followed him through the meadow,
stopping at a low point, where a tiny rivulet of water, barely a creek, made
its way through the pasture.

 
The wolf put his head down, one paw
raised, and turned to look at Dash. Here was the scent.

He padded forward, and the
scout got out of his way. Lowering his head, he drew in the scents from the
ground. Yes, there was a faint scent here, and he recognized it instantly.

Novie.

She was usually joined at
the hip to Bill, everywhere they went. He did not smell Bill’s scent at all. But
he did smell blood.

The scent was faint, and
fading rapidly in the heat of the day. He understood why they’d come to get
him, rather than try and track her. There wasn’t a scent trail, as such, just a
whiff of scent, here, on this specific rock. Looking closer, he saw a drop of
blood on it, from which the scent rose. Dry now, but fresh enough.

He spiraled out from the
creek on this side, but found nothing more. Gaelan waited back with the scouts,
avoiding muddying what scent there was.

Dash hopped over the creek
and repeated the exercise there. Nothing more.

She must have been
following the creek. He looked upstream and down. To the north lay the
foothills, to the south, open pasture and, eventually, the smelly metal road. If
she’d come from the pack’s other den, she’d come from the road, traveling
north.

Upstream, a short run
away, was a small wood, with berry bushes, squirrels, and rocks to hide in. If
he were injured he’d go there. He climbed out of the stream, shook the water
from his coat, and, with a glance at his pack mates, moved off in a silent,
ground-covering trot toward the woods.

He didn’t know what he’d
find, but the way his luck was running today, it wouldn’t be anything good.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

Annie forced herself to
sit still, forced herself to sit through the end of the movie. When it finished,
Jack said “More!” She stifled a grimace and stood to rummage through Dash’s
movies on the shelves, hoping for something appropriate for Jack, that she
hadn’t already seen a thousand times. She sighed. “Finding Nemo?”

“Yay!” Jack thrust his
fists in the air, but didn’t get off the couch. He seemed flat today, and Annie
couldn’t help but obsess endlessly about what to do next to help him.

Elaine and Marjie had
shadowed them since they’d woken from her nap. They’d said little, and she had
a fair idea they were keeping something from her. Daisy met her gaze as she
straightened from the DVD player, and she realized her mother thought something
was up, as well.

“Juice?” Jack’s eyes never
left the screen.

“Sure, honey.” She walked
to the kitchenette. “Marjie, would you give me a hand in here?”

If the lumberjack-like
woman thought it odd, she said nothing, but she did follow Annie out of the
room.

She’d picked one of the
two randomly, but as soon as she was alone with the big, raw-boned woman, she
wished she’d chosen plump little Elaine, instead.

Marjie leaned one hip on
the kitchen counter. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Annie folded her arms. Time
to get the facts. “You all rushed off to that meeting this morning, and none of
you have mentioned it since. In fact, you’ve barely said a word. Neither has
Elaine, which strikes me as unusual. I can’t believe you don’t have something
better to do than watch Disney movies with Jack. What’s going on?”

“I hoped Dash would tell
you. But between the two of you, you’ve slept the morning away.” Marjie rolled
her eyes. “Not much sleep last night, I take it?”

She refused to be
embarrassed, but her face heated anyway. “That’s between Dash and I,” Annie
said.

“Well, I guess I’m gonna
have to tell you.” The older woman sighed. “Michael has challenged for the
leadership. They’ll duel, tonight. It probably won’t be to the death.”

It was as if the woman
spoke Chinese. Annie struggled to put the words together. “A...duel? With
pistols? Death?” Just when she thought she was starting to understand this
culture, she lost her way, again.

“Teeth and claws. We duel
as wolves.” Marjie bared her teeth, although Annie wouldn’t have called it a
smile.

“God.” Annie closed her
eyes and braced herself. Dash. Fighting Michael. Probably not to the death. Her
stomach roiled. “What happens if he loses?”

“It’s hard to say. It’s
not good to be the pack that the new leader doesn’t like, put it like that. But
it’s been a while since there was a change of leadership.”

“When was the last one?”

“Dash’s grandpa fought the
Nordic alpha, a damn sight younger’n him, too. He was a mean son-of-a-bitch and
needed killing. That’s how we ended up with Gaelan.”

She opened her eyes. So
people did get killed in these duels. Her imagination sketched a future with no
Jack, and no Dash. Cold fear raised goose bumps on her arms, dried her throat,
turned her stomach. “How?”

“He was the only one left
alive from that family, and the pack didn’t want him. He and Dash were of an
age, so we raised ’em as brothers.”

Poor Gaelan, but it explained
a lot. Dash was all darkness and Gaelan light. But under the skin, they were
true brothers. “What happened to Dash’s grandpa?”

“He didn’t lead for long.”
Marjie waved one hand in an impatient gesture. “That’s ancient history. Point
is, after tonight, things will either be much easier, or much, much harder for
us around here.”

Beyond hard. Without Dash,
her hopes of saving Jack became vanishingly small. Even though she’d known Dash
for such a short time, the thought of never seeing him again made her chest
hurt. She had to concentrate. She’d pulled Marjie aside for a reason. “That
doesn’t explain why you two are hovering.” The words sounded rude in her ears,
and she hastened to add, “Not that I don’t like your company, of course.”

“Separate issue.” Marjie
grunted. “Thought you’d figure it out.”

“Jack,” she said at once. Why
were they staying with him? What was wrong now?

“We’re trying to surround
him with pack magic. Seems to help him some.” The glib words did nothing to
calm her.

“He doesn’t seem very
energetic today.”

The older woman said
nothing, and her gaze skittered away from Annie’s.

“You think he’s getting worse,
don’t you?” Her skin rippled with heat and cold, and a prickle of sweat broke
out across her back and neck. She’d known this was coming. And she was still
helpless to do a damn thing about it.

“Get through tonight,” the
old woman said. “After that, Dash’ll be Lycaon, and it’ll be much easier to
find this stupid bitch. Witch.”

It was good advice. Annie
pressed her nails into the palms of her hands, to keep herself from sobbing. She’d
get through tonight. She would. One more day. Besides, what else could she do? “All
right.”

Marjie grinned, her
crooked yellow teeth stretching a mile in her long face. “When we find her,
I’ll hold her down while you kill her, if you want.”

“Thank you. I think.” Weird
as the offer was, support meant everything to her today. And she was glad, now,
that she’d chosen Marjie.

“Elaine and I do have a
few things to do, to prepare for tonight. So we’ll give you all some time on
your own. I bet we’re getting on your nerves.” She cackled. “Not used to living
in a pack, are ya?”

Annie’s heart thumped. “But
I thought you said he needed your support? Won’t he get worse if you go?”

The old woman shook her
head, decisively. “We’ve cast what spells we can, for now. We’ll weave more
tonight. He’s under our protection, as best we can give it.”

Impulsively, Annie stepped
over to the big woman and gave her a hard hug. Neither of them were the hugging
type and she didn’t really know what to do with her hands. Marjie thumped her
on the shoulder blade with one hand, awkwardly, and they released each other.

“Don’t worry about our
Dash,” Marjie said. “He was always sneaky in a fight. Chances of that idiot
getting the better of him are pretty small. Man’s a fool.”

“Thank you,” Annie said,
although the words did nothing to slow her rabbiting pulse. Marjie nodded at
her and headed back to the living room, leaving Annie to pour Jack’s juice and
ponder their exchange.

*
         
*
         
*

At the edge of the woods,
Dash found the trail again. Novie had passed this way, exiting the creek right
here. The scent trail was warm, recent enough, and the dew in the shadow of the
woods preserved the evidence of her passage.

No other trails followed
hers. Dash let out a yip of curious greeting.

In return came an
answering whimper. He broke into a trot, headed directly for the sound,
following the scent trail. There! A furry body slumped in a heap beneath an
overhanging rock. He came to a halt in front of her, with the others hard on
his heels.

She smelled and looked
rough. Part of her face was missing fur, half an ear had been ripped off. He
scented her blood, and the strangest burning smell.

He stepped closer,
inhaling her familiar scent. There was something else: a hint of that evil
magic.

Dash couldn’t help it. He snarled.
The scent was faint and cold enough that he knew it was residual. Not Novie’s
own scent, but the scent of someone who’d been spelled.

Growling, he backed away,
heard the others move back behind him. His wolf smelled enemy, and only the
human corner of his brain fought back, telling him to wait, watch, talk to her.

He did the only thing he
could think of. He drew down his Alpha powers to force Novie’s change. It might
hurt her, and it would drain energy he needed for later, but he needed to turn
her, and turn himself, to hear her human words to understand what had happened.

Fortunately for him, he
only had to give her the slightest push. She was ready and wanted to change,
but was too weak. He lent her his strength so she could make the change without
exhausting herself completely.

In human form, she was in
much worse shape. Dash slid through his change, watching her the whole time,
assessing.

“You’ve been burned,” he
said, as soon as he had a tongue capable of it. That was an understatement. Novie
was missing her eyebrows, half the length of her dark curly hair, even her
eyelashes. The skin beneath was shiny and red. She’d heal this, but burns took
a lot longer than simple flesh wounds. They hurt like hell, as well.

She rolled on to her back,
eyes blank with a thousand-yard stare. “They burned down your house. Burned it
with magic. The guards are dead. Bill is dead. They watched it burn, but I got
out through the tunnel.”

Fuck. Bill. He’d never
taken the time to really get to know him. In fact, he’d been kind of a bastard
to the poor guy. And now he was gone, along with the others. The stab of savage
grief turned to rage, in an instant. He would avenge them.

“Who,” Dash said urgently.
“Who watched it burn? Did you see them? Who did this? The Russians?”

She shook her head, once. “Mexicans.”

Dash swore. Michael’s
pack. Fucker had planned this. Coward. There was no way Ramon had anything to
do with the betrayal.

“When?”

“An hour after you left. I’ve
been running since.”

For the first time he saw
her feet, blistered to ribbons, running with blood. He’d rip Michael’s head off
for this.

Deliberately keeping his
voice gentle, he asked, “Why didn’t you call?”

She winced. “Got into wolf
form to escape and didn’t think. Just got here fast as I could.”

Dash wanted to sigh, but
she’d been brave. He knew the simple view of the world being wolf gave you, and
he understood how it had happened. “You did good, Novie. You did good. They’ll
pay for this.” He turned to Gaelan, who stood beside him, still in wolf form. “I’ll
kill that bastard.”

The huge white wolf
growled in agreement.

Whoever set this fire had
done it with magic. He could smell the magic, uncannily familiar, mixed with
the char on her hair.

“Who cast the fire? Pack
witch?” His mind churned through images of the Mexican pack, trying to remember
a witch other than the Oracle. Somewhere in there was his enemy.

Novie shook her head,
slowly. “It makes no sense,” she said.

“Who?”

“It was Michael.”

The words dropped like
stones in Dash’s gut. But how could Michael be a witch? All witches were women.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure?”

“I saw him.” Her eyes
focused on a memory, and she swallowed. “I will never forget.”

Dash let her go, turned
away to think. Michael. He didn’t understand how Michael could be a witch, and
how their theory about Shura played into any of this. But he knew one thing
now. Michael had planned the challenge, long before the death of the Oracle. He’d
bet his last dollar Michael had killed the Oracle. Michael wanted him dead, and
the leadership in his own hands.

Michael was his enemy.

He turned to the guards. “Patch
her up, and bring her to the house. Gaelan, you’re with me. This bullshit ends,
right now.”

He forced himself into the
change as fast as possible. As soon as he had four legs, he broke into a run.