Seer: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 8) (2 page)

Leonora hated the shift back to her lady shape from her wolf form. The transformation hurt pretty badly when she shifted in the other direction, but—somehow—getting back into her human skin seemed even harder on her parts. One ordeal was like being stretched out on a torture rack. The other was like being crushed by a building.

She felt very flat, very broken, and, when she noticed there was some dude holding her wolfy princess, she felt
very
pissed.

Unfortunately, by the time Leo had noticed the guy, she’d been mid-shift in the clearing, and the warning howl she’d sent out to him ended up sounding like a gurgling water hose being choked.

He stood slowly, gripping her quiet baby to his chest, as Leo scrambled to her feet and attempted to cover herself.

“Give her to me. She’s mine!” she shouted, even while contemplating taking cover behind a nearby tree.

He pinned a bottomless dark gaze on her. He didn’t say anything. Just quirked an eyebrow. Didn’t smirk. Just stared. She
knew
that stare. It was the, “Are you freakin’ stupid?” stare.

She was a frequent recipient.

She cleared her throat and tried to put on the meanest face she could affect, which probably looked pretty silly. “If you did something to my kid—if she’s not breathing—”

Why isn’t she crying?

She thunked her forehead with the heel of her palm.

And why the heck am I just standing here?

She charged across the clearing with her arms extended to grab her baby and her teeth bared, and yet still, he wore that face.

Naturally, he sidestepped her when she approached, but he was close enough that she could feel the shifter energy rolling off him. Strong, too. Stronger than her “husband.”

Maybe even stronger than Alpha’s
.

She sighed. “Dang it. Can’t shake a stick without hitting a werewolf, can I?”

“I’ve never known that to be the case,” came a deep voice from luscious lips that barely moved, “but you pegged me right.”

Oh boy.

Kinzy let out one of those plaintive, “Doesn’t anyone love me?” whimpers that she always did when she was hungry.

Of course she’s hungry.

Leo hadn’t fed her since before she’d had to shapeshift, and the poor little milk leech still liked being fed around the clock. Leo’s ex, or current husband—depending on whose opinion she asked for—said she’d spoiled Kinzy, but Leo hadn’t understood that accusation. Where she’d grown up, folks practiced attachment parenting as a matter of necessity. Being poor was fun like that. Ladies kept their kids in their beds because there wasn’t anywhere else to put them but the floor, and no one in her right mind was going to put her baby to sleep on the floor.

Leo cleared her throat and cocked her chin. She didn’t feel very confident, but she could pretend for long enough for the jerk to give her baby back. “Give her to me.”

Another long stare from Mr. Dangerous.

He smoothed one of his big hands down Kinzy’s back, and the baby quieted again.

Leo realized then why Kinzy had gone silent so quickly when she noticed her shirt tucked into Kinzy’s blanket. It was covered with drool.

Apparently, if Kinzy can’t have milk, cotton will do. Huh.

Leo shook her head at the child. “Just as batty as your mother, aren’t ya?” she muttered.

“Get dressed,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

“Ha.
Sure
. And who the heck are you, anyway? Werewolf CPS?”

Being snarky when she was standing there naked and probably with a few twigs in her hair probably wasn’t having the effect she’d initially hoped for, but she had no other defenses. She’d use what she had, and she’d always had quite the mouth.

Crossing her arms over her torso, she cleared her throat and shifted her weight. “Not letting you take her anywhere. Not to an orphanage, or wherever you people from the state take kids nowadays, and
certainly
not back to Wolverton.”

“Wolverton,” he said in that low rumble and raised his other eyebrow.

“Uh-huh. You know. Wolverton, Wyoming. Population 133 werewolves, give or take a few persistent ghosts. You should visit one day on your next trip through the middle of nowhere.”

“I’ve been to a lot of places like that, and will be driving through plenty more, I imagine.” Still, he made no movement to hand the baby over.

Leo considered kicking his shins, or slapping him or something, but she didn’t think she’d experience the success from that endeavor that she required. He probably had her by a foot in height, and she’d always considered herself to be perfectly average in that department. While he wasn’t the broadest jerk she’d ever met, his presence still managed to be imposing and forbidding.

Or maybe what halted her aggressiveness was the way his eyes looked, or his expressionless face. He had perfect features. She couldn’t help but to look because she was apparently having a staring contest with him.

She couldn’t hold it.

Dang it.

She’d always sucked at staring contests. She couldn’t even win one against Kinzy.

“Get dressed,” he repeated.

“Where are you taking us?”

“Not to Wolverton.”

“Oh. Where to, then? Where do agents of the state dump their runaways?”

“I’m not an agent of the state, though I can’t help but to question if you need one. What the hell were you thinking, living a baby unattended?”

She scoffed and, reflexively because she was that stinking angry, gave the guy a hard poke to his shoulder.

He didn’t budge an inch.

Of course. Of freakin’ course
.

She threw up her hands, but then quickly covered her chest again, because her boobs were like missiles, totally fueled and ready to launch.

Yeesh
.

“Ugh. Come on, guy.” She stomped. “What choice did I have? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s no babysitters’ club out here in the middle of the forest. I did what I had to. Was the idea the best one? No. But I didn’t have a heap of options. You do what you have to do when you’re alone in the world, but I bet you wouldn’t understand that.”

His pretty jaw grated side to side for a few beats.

She gave her head a shake and tapped her foot impatiently. “I mean, look at you. You don’t look like you’ve ever missed a meal, or lost a fight, either. You’ve been living it up, haven’t you? And now you make your living harassing single moms who are just scraping by.”

“Scraping by is one thing. Any rational person would tell you that what you’re doing is reckless.”

“So what do you suggest I do, Mrs. Doubtfire? Hole up in a motel and call a babysitting service before I find some little patch of woods to run howling into?”

“If you knew the moon was coming, why did you leave Wolverton?”

Leo had never once lifted a middle finger to a person because her mother had taught her that the gesture was unforgivably vulgar, but she’d never been more tempted in her life to let one rip.

Two, actually. She had
two
middle fingers.

But to show them, she’d have to peel her arms away from her chest, and that was becoming less of a good idea by the moment. Kinzy needed to be fed, and Leo was leaking.

Leo didn’t doubt for a moment that the man had seen his fair share of naked tits and then some, but she wasn’t in the mood to be ogled. She’d gotten enough of that crap from her “husband.”
“Stand right there so I can look at you, Leonora.”

Dirty bastard.

She rolled her eyes.

“The longer we stand here quibbling over nothing,” the guy said, “the more time will pass before Kinzy gets fed.”

“Nuh-uh. You don’t get to say my baby’s name.” She wagged a finger angrily at him, and then realized how silly and pedantic she must have looked, so she dropped her hand. She wasn’t a schoolteacher, after all. She was a broodmare with ambitions.

Unfortunately, those ambitions weren’t thought out very well before she’d grabbed her baby and fled into the backcountry, but she didn’t think anyone could really fault her for that. She was doing the best she could.

“Where’d you learn her name?” she asked, chin jutted aggressively. “Did my ex or one of his flunkies feed it to you? I wouldn’t trust a thing any of them say. They all have a habit of talking out of both sides of their mouths.”

The stoic giant narrowed his almond-shaped eyes slightly.

Apparently, she’d said too many words for him. If he was confused, she couldn’t really fault him. She had a habit of talking too much, but she couldn’t help it. She’d grown up in a house with six kids, and she’d been right in the middle. She’d had to learn to get the words out the moment she had a chance to speak them.

“Her birth certificate is in her diaper bag,” he said after too darn long.

Leo blinked. “Oh. Duh.”

“Get dressed, so we can go.”

“I’m not doing anything until you tell me where you think I’m going with you.”

“Somewhere safe.”

“Safe for who?”

“All of us.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay. You’ve got to excuse me for being skeptical, but I suspect your idea of
safe
may differ somewhat from my own. Give me some more words, smiley.”

He closed his eyes and forced an exhalation through his nose. “New Mexico,” he said. “There’s a pack in New Mexico that will take you in.”

“Yeah,
nope
. That’s not the way things work with wolves. That’s why I’m out here seeing the beauty of America on my own two feet with a baby strapped to my knockers.”

At the utterance of the words, Leo’s left breast gave a sharp pain of,
Gonna blow soon. Better get ready!
The left one always leaked. Leo had recently come to resort to stuffing baby socks in her bra along with nursing pads to wick the moisture.

“Give me my baby so I can
feed
her,” she said on a whine.

“No,” he said. “Get dressed first. We need to get on the road. Got a lot of driving to do before tonight, unless you want to find yourself shapeshifting in the backseat of a pickup truck.”

“What?” She furrowed her brow at him. He still wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining anything.

“And I’m well aware of the way wolfpacks operate. In spite of what you may assume about me—and your assumptions are
extremely
cute, I must say—I’ve spent the last ten years of my life scraping by. More often than not, the roof I had over my head was that of a vehicle, and not even a
trailer
sort of vehicle.”

“A trailer sounds real nice right about now,” Leo muttered.

He blinked at her again.

“Oh, for goodness’s sake.” She stomped around him, found her underwear and bra and put those on first thing, whimpering a bit at her bra’s punishing compression. Then she put on her jeans, found a shirt in her backpack that wasn’t held together by baby spit, and tugged on a pair of socks.

“Say I go with you,” she said, zipping up her bag. “Not that I am, but say I do. What makes you think this place will take me in?”

“Because that’s what they do.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ve never heard of there being any packs in New Mexico.” She stuffed her tender feet into the hiking boots she’d stolen from her sister, and risked a glance up at her newest male annoyance.

He was stroking the back of Kinzy’s fuzzy little head, perfectly calm, and the baby didn’t seem to mind so much, either.

“Baby probably has bad eyes and a bum nose,” she muttered as she gathered her bags. “Can’t tell that’s a dude holding her. She should be wailing.”

“I’m parked about a mile from here,” he said. “I’ll take the bags. You take the baby. Feed her while you walk. Do you have a carrier of some sort?”

Duh.
She gave
him
a long blink. She figured turnabout was fair play.

“Either you carry her, or I will,” he said flatly. “She needs to be fed. If you’re not up to the task, we can get her some formula when we get on the road.”

“You’re not giving my kid formula. I don’t care what the government says. Formula has mind-control agents inside.”

She was joking…sort of. Still, Kinzy hadn’t had a single swallow of formula since birth, and Leo didn’t plan on starting a new habit just yet.

“I believe I suggested you feed her,” he said. “You’re nursing, are you not?”

“What gave it away? The porn star ta-tas? Not that I’ve watched much porn in my life. Didn’t get good cable where I grew up. I assume that’s the way most porn stars are built, though.”

“They come in all shapes and sizes.”

Her jaw dropped.

He stared.

“Did you just confess to watching porn?”

“I didn’t confess to anything. Sex workers are people, and people are all different. Ergo…” He ground his teeth and scooped up the diaper bag. “And your scent would have told me you were nursing, even if your appearance didn’t. Let’s walk. I’ve got water and some granola bars in the truck. We’ll have to wait to get something more substantial.”

“You’re really taking us to New Mexico?”

“Of all the things I am, a liar isn’t one of them.”

“Why?”

“Why aren’t I a liar? That’s a strange question.”

“No, why’d you come looking for me if my ex didn’t send you?”

“Because I had to.”

“Oh, for goodness sakes.” Leo tugged her shirt’s hem down and started winding the stretchy fabric of the baby wrap around her torso. “I bet next you’re going to tell me you can’t explain any further, except to say that you’re here on the will of the Fates or some such nonsense.”

The guy clutching her kid leaned against the rock and kept his lips zipped as she secured the wrap around her. He kept his mouth shut tighter than Leo’s ex kept his wallet closed until she was done, at which point he asked, “You don’t believe that the Fates pull strings?”

“Sure I do.” She held out her arms for Kinzy.

He made no immediate movements to hand her over.

“Come on, dude. You said you wanted to get moving, so give me the baby so we can move.”

“I asked you a question.”

“And you’re not gonna give me Kinzy until I answer to your satisfaction, huh?”

“I’m not concerned with my satisfaction. I’m not used to the luxury of it. I’m simply trying to discern where your head is at so I can make appropriate decisions.”