Running with Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 1) (11 page)

“He’s teaching
Latin
,” said Zeke. His voice was vicious, and Elliott could see all his teeth, his smile turning awful. “At the college.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” his mom said. “It’s nice that you kept up with that. You always did like your Latin classes in high school.”

He looked at Tamara, her face frozen in surprise.

I’m sorry
, she mouthed, but Elliott just shook his head, his wolf pricking at the inside of his skin, practically begging to get out and tear all these humans to pieces before they could even blink.

“The guys are gonna be thrilled to hear that you kept up with your studies,” Zeke said, that same vicious smile still on his stupid face.

Once, in high school, a teacher had come across Elliott getting beaten up in the hallway. She’d sent all the other boys back to class with a light scolding, then patted Elliott on the shoulder and told him that he needed to stand up for himself more. Elliott hadn’t bothered explaining that he’d tried and found it useless.

Not anymore
, Elliott thought.

“I’m an associate professor at Cascadia State,” he said, standing up straight. “That’s why I moved back.”

“I thought you got a job on a ranch?” his mom said, seeming more confused than anything.

“He was so ashamed that he lied about it!” Zeke crowed. “Once a fucking dork, always a—”

Shane’s fist caught Zeke squarely in the nose, and Zeke stumbled backward, clutching at his face.
 

It took him half a second to shift, but Shane was already a wolf and lunged for the other wolf’s throat. Tamara’s kid screamed and hid behind her.

“Hey!” Tamara shouted, though she gave them a wide berth.

Everyone gave them a wide berth, except Elliott, who leapt in, grabbing Shane and pulling him back, shouting the entire time.

Then everyone stepped back, and suddenly, Charles walked up to the fighting wolves.

“Knock it off,” he boomed.

Zeke hesitated, and Shane looked from the other wolf to the alpha. Elliott could tell that he was still thinking about attacking, even with the alpha there, but then Shane looked at him.

Please don’t do this
, Elliott thought.
Please, for me
.

Zeke sat, still baring his teeth, and Shane did too.

“If you’re going to do this shit, do it somewhere else,” Charles said, pointing at Zeke.

“And you,” he said to Shane. “If this is how you are, you can go join another pack.”

Elliott stepped forward and opened his mouth to apologize for his mate.

Then he shut it and just stared at the alpha, feeling Shane’s wolf eyes on him.

Be on Shane’s side here
, he reminded himself.
He’s more important than the pack
.

“Let’s go,” he said to his mate, and then turned to leave.

Chapter Eleven

Shane

For the second time in a few days, Shane trotted after his mate, still in his wolf form. This time, though, he wasn’t sorry at all. Zeke had totally and completely deserved to get punched right in the face.

I’d do it again
, thought Shane.
I’d do it twenty more times. He can’t talk to Elliott that way.

He shifted back to human and got into the car, in the passenger seat, while Elliott got behind the wheel. Shane could see one vein pulse in his mate’s face. Elliott was just as pissed as the last time that he’d tried to beat up Zeke.
 

The difference was now Shane was pissed too.

“You can’t go around punching everyone in heRustvale every time something happens that you don’t like,” Elliott said.

“Not everyone,” retorted Shane. “Just Zeke, because he’s an asshole.”

“You could have cost us our place in the pack!” Elliott said. He hit one fist against the steering wheel with so much force that the frame of the car shook.

“You mean the pack that wants all its women pregnant and its men doing manual labor jobs only?” Shane said, feeling his own white-hot rage begin to boil over inside him. “The pack where the alpha offered to
sell his daughter
to someone thirty minutes ago, because apparently it’s so horrible to be single and childless when you’re all of thirty?”

“You don’t understand packs because you never
had
one,” retorted Elliott. “Just because your parents were weird outcasts doesn’t mean that you have to be.”

“Don’t drag them into this,” said Shane.

Elliott still hadn’t started the car.

“You think you’re too good for the pack,” said Elliott, viciously. “You’ve got some lone wolf fantasy about Shane, the cowboy, out alone on the range and he doesn’t need anyone but himself.”

“And you’ve got some fantasy about family and friends who care about you,” Shane shot back, in no mood for one of Elliott’s high-and-mighty moods. “You care about them ten times more than they care about you. You’re just a cog in a wheel to them, a way for the pack to get more wolves someday when you reproduce. They don’t care if you’re happy, they just care if you follow the rules.”

“Sure, and you’re a rebel and renegade for being the first wolf who thinks he doesn’t need a pack.”

Shane opened his door again, still naked, letting the cool air rush in.

“I’m walking home,” he said, getting out.

“Shane, get back in the car,” Elliott shouted, but Shane stood and slammed the door.

Elliott got out and said something that Shane couldn’t hear, his words lost to the night, but Elliott still looked
pissed
.

Shane shifted. Then he trotted around the front of the car and looked up at Elliott.

“Sure, you’re proving your point,” Elliott said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “That’ll fucking show me.”

Shane shook himself off, then trotted into the woods in the direction of their house.

The moment he was out of sight of the barn, he grabbed a sapling between his teeth and
pulled
, doing his absolute best to rip the tiny tree out of the ground, growling as he did.

Fucking Elliott
,
he thought.
Those assholes don’t care about him and they never will. No one ever really changes, not people, not shifters. Tigers don’t change their stripes and wolves don’t change their... fuck it, whatever.

He twisted his head from side to side, making the little tree bounce crazily around, its leaves whipping through the air as he could feel the roots begin to pull out of the earth. It felt
great
to destroy something, even something as small and helpless and
stupid
as a baby tree.

What he
wanted
was to punch Zeke in the damn face again, and then maybe he’d punch Elliott’s parents for hardly giving him a chance in life, and
then
he’d punch the alpha into sometime next Tuesday.

There’s no way I’m joining that pack
, Shane thought.
I’m not about to just go along with what some asshole says I should do. Especially if that asshole’s also going to treat his daughter like a piece of meat or a goat for sale or some piece of land that a guy can just fucking park himself on—

The sapling finally came out of the ground, sending Shane reeling back, landing hard on his haunches. Even though he was still angry, he couldn’t help but feel the pleased canine inside him, delighted that he’d pulled a stick out of the ground, and his tail wagged, just a little.

This is why I need wolf time
, he thought to himself.
Because sticks are still pretty great.

He grabbed a branch between his teeth and tore it from the sapling’s thin trunk victoriously.

It was the best form of anger management therapy he’d ever found.

Hours later, he padded into the clearing, then sat, just in front of the tree line, examining the big house, the downstairs lights all still lit. For a moment, Shane wasn’t a hundred percent certain that it was his house — he’d only lived there for a few days, and had barely seen it from the outside at night — but the moving truck in the driveway was a dead giveaway.

Glad to see I already know my way home,
he thought.
We should return that truck.

Elliott left the lights on for me.

Maybe he’s not as mad as he was.

He walked up the front steps, then paused at the door, looking down at the welcome mat.

We haven’t hidden a key again yet,
he remembered.
Shit.

Instead, the door opened, and Elliott stood there, a fire crackling away in the fireplace behind him.

“There you are,” he said.

Shane shifted back, his human form cold in the night air.

“You stayed up,” he said. “It must be three in the morning.”

“Two thirty,” said Elliott, and shrugged. “I wasn’t sure you knew the way home.”

“I guess I did.”

“You coming in?” Elliott said, his voice low. He stepped back, and Shane came through the door, shivering.

Elliott reached behind him and handed him the wool blanket they kept near the sofa, and the two men looked at each other for a long moment.

“Sorry for running off,” Shane said.

Elliott shook his head, running his hand through his hair.

“I’m sorry for making you come to that meeting,” he said. “I knew you weren’t really interested.”

“I probably shouldn’t have punched Zeke.”

Elliott snorted, half-smiling.

“I’m only mad you punched Zeke because I didn’t do it first,” he said.

“Not because the alpha’s mad at you?”

Elliott sort of shrugged.

“You’re not the first wolf to get in a fight in the middle of a meeting and you won’t be the last,” he said.

“True.” Shane paused for a moment, not quite sure how to say what he wanted to say. Talking about his emotions had never been his strong suit, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t about to get magically easier.

“You’re too good of a person sometimes,” he said, knowing that he wasn’t quite conveying what he meant. “I just mean, you always think the best of people, sometimes, and I’m worried that you have this idea about the pack, that they’ll be your new brothers and always have your back.”

He swallowed.

“But you think that they’re all the same people they were in high school?” asked Elliott, finishing his sentence for him.

Shane nodded, and Elliott watched him, sadly.

“I think you’re right,” Elliott said, simply.

“I’m sorry,” said Shane. “I don’t want to be right.”

Elliott just shrugged.

“There’s more than one way to make a family,” he said. “Joining the pack is one way, but no one says we can’t still be happy and healthy and whole. I’ll probably still join, because it feels weird not to, but I don’t want to depend on them.”

Shane nodded.

“What about Greta?” he asked, softly.

“Greta’s gonna do what Greta’s gonna do,” Elliott said. “I think she made that pretty clear.”

“I hope she decides we’re worthwhile,” Shane said.

“Me too,” said Elliott. He took a step forward, then pulled on the blanket wrapped around Shane and gave his mate a long, lingering kiss.

“Come to bed,” he said. “I waited up until nearly three in the morning, and I’ve got work tomorrow.”

Shane rested his forehead against his mate’s.

“She wouldn’t run away, would she?” he asked.

“Too early to worry about that,” Elliott said. “It’s been a couple of hours. She’s got her family and the bar. She’s probably fine.”

“You’re right,” said Shane, pulling Elliott closer to him, the feeling of flannel against bare skin. “She can take care of herself.”

The two of them walked up the stairs to their bedroom, hand in hand.

Shane called Greta every couple of hours for most of the next day, but she never picked up. The more he called the more he felt like a weird stalker, like she must think that he and Elliott were only interested in her for all the reasons her father had said. Because they thought she’d be easy to get, already past her prime or something.

“Hi,” said her voicemail yet again. “You’ve reached Greta Waltz, and I’m not in right now...”

Shane hung up without leaving another message.

Please let her not have run off,
Shane thought.
I know she can go wherever she wants and do anything, but please just let her call me back and tell me that she’s all right.

He wanted a lot more than that from her — he wanted to pick up where they’d left off, he wanted to taste more of her delicious, perfect skin in front of the fire, listen to her laugh turn to yelps of pleasure — but mostly, he just wanted her to be all right.

“I’m starving,” said Elliott, the moment he came through the door.

“We’ve got frozen dinners and a microwave,” said Shane. “I was unpacking today.”

“What, no gourmet surf-and-turf from my doting house husband?” Elliott teased.

“You can have your office unpacked or your dinner made on time,” Shane teased right back. “Today you get the office.”

Elliott stuck out his tongue, grabbed two microwave dinners from the freezer, and put them in.

“You hear anything from Greta?” he asked. Shane could tell that he was trying not to sound worried, but he was.

“No,” Shane said.

“Me either,” said Elliott.

“I’m sure she’s okay,” said Shane. “She’s probably back at home or at the bar, cooling off from the pack meeting.”

They waited in silence for a few more minutes, until the microwave beeped.

“Want to go over there after we eat?” Elliott asked. “See if she’s there?”

Shane hesitated. On one hand, she’d been pretty clear that she needed some time.

On the other hand, that had been almost a full day ago.

“Okay,” he said.

Elliott grabbed a fork from the drawer and just dug in, leaning against the counter. Shane had fully intended to at least sit at the table, but watching Elliott eat his mushroom pasta, he gave in and started eating right there in the kitchen as well.

Fuck it
, he thought.
We’re animals, after all.

Even though the dinner wasn’t very good, he nearly licked the plastic tray clean, he was so hungry.

Before he could figure out what else there was to eat, there was a knock on their front door.