Sherry's Wolf (2 page)

Des grinned. “Training. After that mess when the den was attacked, Taye decided that all the women had to learn to use a knife and a gun. So three days a week Taye sends some guys to collect about half the women and take them out for fighting lessons. They alternate who goes which day.” Des chuckled like he couldn’t keep it in. “Your Sherry is wicked with that cane you made her.”

Stag clenched a hand on the edge of a drawer. “Yeah, I’m sure they can, but that’s not the point. How many women can we afford to lose because they get killed in a fight?”

“How many can we afford to lose when they get stolen because they don’t know how to protect themselves?” Des countered.

Stag stared at his friend and cousin. “I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”

“I never had a mate before. A man learns a lot about women once he has one of his own. Connie is an independent woman.” Des smiled fondly at some unspoken memory. “She’s not stupid, though, so she knows she can’t do all the things she did in the Times Before. Did you know that back then women did everything men did? They had jobs and they went alone to their work every day. They traveled hundreds –thousands!— of miles from home by themselves. They didn’t need a man to escort them everywhere. They were even in the Army!”

That just didn’t seem right to Stag. “Men didn’t steal them?”

“Guess not.”

Stag remembered the Grandmother, the elderly woman who was the matriarch of the Wolf Clan, saying that when she was young, women outnumbered men. Maybe with so many women to choose from men didn’t need to steal a wife? Stag wondered if Sherry had had a job? He would have to ask her. But this whole conversation unsettled him. The very thought of women risking their lives in a fight terrified him. In his mind, women were too precious to jeopardize. Anything else was upside down. Was this what Sherry meant when she told Russell she was lost? He shook his head and moved the conversation to a less confusing topic.

“We got three packs now, huh?” he asked. “The Clan out on the prairie, Taye’s Pack at the den, and now this little one. We’re growing. That’s good.”

“Yeah. We’ve taken more mates in the last four months than in the past fifteen years combined.” Des looked directly at him. “I’m Alpha of the Plane Women’s House Pack. That gonna be a problem for you?”

Stag shoved the drawer shut. It reluctantly closed with a squeal that hurt his sensitive ears. He shook his head. “No problem. Even if I did have a problem with it, I’m not Alpha enough to challenge you. Who are your Betas?”

“Just Hawk for now. We’re not big enough to need more. Are you going to be staying?”

“I’ll be here for a while at least. Depends on Sherry. If she wants to live here, I can do that.” He was willing to do almost anything for Sherry, but he had responsibilities to the Clan, too. “I’m being trained to follow Kills Bears as wicasa wakan for the Clan. I don’t want to give that up. Now that the Clan is building a bunch of houses, maybe Sherry would like to live there.”

Would Sherry ever accept him? His wolf turned in tight, agitated circles inside him. Stag threw Des a tortured glance and thumped a frustrated fist on the top of the bureau. “Des, I just don’t know. I’ve been patient, waiting for my mate to open up to me. I’ve been gentle. Anything she needed or wanted I’ve given her. I even left for a month when she demanded I give her time to work things out. I’ve been hanging back, waiting for her to decide something. How much longer do I have to wait?”

Des straightened up. “Maybe not too long. She’s been talking to Jodi and Dixie, the women who were counselors in the Times Before. She’s gonna sit with you at supper tonight. Maybe it will be soon. You want some advice?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t waste your chance tonight. Ask her questions. Get her to talk to you. Women sure do like to talk.” Des flipped his hair aside to scratch the back of his neck. “One thing I’ve learned since coming to live with a whole bunch of women is that they will talk themselves to death about any little thing and they get pissed if you don’t let ’em. Best thing you can do is ask her a question, and then just shut up and listen.”

“Nah.” Des shook his head. “Women can go on for an hour about it. If she likes pink, she’ll tell you what shade of pink, and how many pink shirts and dresses she used to have and then she’ll tell you which shade of pink she
doesn’t
like.” Des shook his head again, with fond wonder. “Women. They can hold a two hour conversation about a color. Funny thing is, they smell so good and their voices sound so nice while they’re talkin’ that you won’t even care.”

Sherry leaned lightly on her cane and took a deep breath outside the dining room. Everybody called it “the big room”. It was the communal area that would be the Plane Women’s Restaurant sometime in the spring. In the evenings, the room was open to the visitors who came to flirt with the women in an effort to woo them into marriage. Few men dared to flirt with her. Stag’s barely leashed jealousy kept other men away. Sherry was grateful and resentful at the same time. Some of the men could be overbearing, and Sherry hated that, but a choice would have been nice too.

Sherry let the breath out carefully. Stag was back. It was time to put on her big girl panties. Since the plane crash she had lost her hard-won self-confidence and acted more like the timid child she’d been in her Korean grandparents’ house. That was going to stop now. She would talk to Stag tonight. Show him who she really was. A grimace curled her lips. Maybe that would scare him off.

She shifted her cane to wipe her sweaty palms on her pants, and walked into the dining room. A quick glance around the dozen tables showed about fifteen women, a few of the wolves who lived there, but no Stag. A feeling uncomfortably like disappointment went through her. Marissa, sitting beside her husband Red Wing at one of the smaller tables, waved.

“Come sit with us, Sherry,” she called.

Marissa had married one of the werewolves last month at Taye’s den a few miles north of town. That was the same time that Stag had tried to cajole her into marrying him. She’d refused, but he had made quiet, one-sided wedding vows to her anyway. That bossy werewolf didn’t know how to take “no” for an answer. Sherry sat across from Marissa at the six-seat table, leaning her cane against the next empty chair and said hello to her werewolf husband. Red Wing was Native American, but with his tumbled curls of golden brown and hazel green eyes he didn’t look it.

“Stag’s back,” Marissa announced.

“Yes, I know,” Sherry said quickly, trying to sound happy about it. Or at least not unhappy. She tapped her cane lightly against the chair next to her. “I’m saving this seat for him.”

Red Wing gave her an approving smile. Sherry gave him a half-smile back, and glanced around. Most of the tables had people at them. There were Dixie and Jodi, who were counseling her. Renee was no doubt running the show in the kitchen. Connie, whom they all called “Lupa” now that she was married to Des, was already at the table closest to the kitchen. Sherry had mixed feelings about Connie. Last month she had told Sherry not to be so mean to Stag. As if she didn’t have a right to be upset at the way Stag hounded her to be his mate!

Mate. Lupa. Alpha. Werewolves. Good lord. The men were offended by that label. They preferred to be called wolf warriors or just wolves. Sherry gave a tiny shake of her head. She would have to break herself of the habit of calling them “werewolves”. Before she’d decided to try to get to know Stag she hadn’t cared if they were offended. Now she had to care. Her stomach flip-flopped as she remembered Stag’s nearly naked body when he had bent to pick up her yarn this afternoon. She would never admit it, but she had missed him. For months he had been a faithful protective shadow who did little things to make her life easier. There had been times when she’d been tempted to let down her guard and allow him to court her. That was an old-fashioned word, but it was what everyone used here. The perfection of his muscular body did bad things to her libido. His bossiness did bad things to her temper.

“I sure miss electricity,” Marissa was saying glumly. She cast a glance of loathing at the faint smoke from the oil lamp on the table. “Life was so much easier with real lights. And cars. And computers.” She sighed. “It’s only been fifty years! You’d think someone would know how to get stuff working.”

Sherry agreed with Marissa’s gripe. Okay, without gas cars wouldn’t work, but wasn’t there oil in Texas? Or what about ethanol? She didn’t know how that sort of thing worked, but someone had to. It was a real shame that none of the crash survivors were electricians or computer geeks or anything really useful.

She opened her mouth to say something about it, but she closed it without a word. The tenderness the wolves showed their women always surprised her. Red Wing smoothed the backs of his fingers down Marissa’s plump cheek in a gesture so sweet Sherry had to look away. Watching such tenderness made her feel like a voyeur.

“So many died during the Terrible Times,” Red Wing said. “Not many were left who knew how to work the gadgets from the Times Before, much less make them or fix them. That’s what the Grandmother says, anyway, and she would know, since she lived through it. And everyone was so busy trying to stay alive that non-essentials took a back seat to things like food and safety.”

The Times Before was any time before 2014. Sherry shifted in her hard wooden chair. It was weird to think that to people like Red Wing, her whole life was a science fiction story. Nuclear bombs, asteroids and plagues had changed the world completely right after her plane had taken off in 2014.

Red Wing grabbed Marissa’s hands, fear sending a visible shudder down his naked back. “You probably would have died if you hadn’t been on that plane.” He kissed his mate’s hands fervently. “The Grandmother says that only one in ten lived through the Terrible Times and hardly any of those were women.” He kissed Marissa’s hands again. “If you hadn’t been on that plane …”

Sherry shifted her eyes away from the horror on Red Wing’s face. A tiny pinprick of envy poked at her. No man had ever looked at her like that, not even LeRoi. She shouldn’t think ill of the dead. Her husband had been a real bastard at times, but he had been trying to turn things around. They’d been on their way to renew their marriage vows on their fourth anniversary when the plane crashed in rural Nebraska, killing or injuring nearly all the passengers. Instead of spending October 28, 2014 in a nice hotel in Vegas making love with LeRoi, she had spent it in a primitive teepee in the year 2064, mostly unconscious from the injuries she’d sustained in the crash. She’d had vivid hallucinations of big wolves that killed her by tearing her into glistening red hunks of meat. No wonder she’d thought the werewolves were unnatural. Part of her still did.

Sherry cast a quick glance across the table. Oh, good, Marissa and Red Wing were back to behaving like adults instead of horny teenagers. They were newlyweds, and acted like it. They spent a lot time holed up in their apartment, sometimes missing meals. When they did join the other residents of the Plane Women’s House they hung all over each other. Looking at Red Wing, she could see why Marissa had a hard time keeping her hands to herself. He was almost as handsome and well built as Stag.

Stag stepped up to the empty chair beside her. Sherry took a deep breath and was surprised that a genuine smile bloomed on her face at the sight of him. Was she happy to see him? The smile faltered into uncertainty as she grabbed her cane to move it out of his way. “Hi, I was saving this chair for you.”

He was so handsome, especially with his muscular upper body completely bare. Wolves seemed to have a deep aversion to wearing clothes. He wore a dark blue wool breechcloth, leather leggings and moccasins, but no shirt. She had to admit she liked the view. His chest and abs were more perfect than any she’d seen on a living man in the flesh, and he smelled faintly of some wonderful cologne. Just the sight and smell of him sparked heat flaring between her thighs. She followed Dixie’s advice and told the shame that tried to fill her to go away. Being attracted to a handsome man did not mean she was a slut. It was a natural physical reaction. She watched him settle into the chair, and suppressed a sigh. She’d been reacting naturally to Stag for quite a while now, even while she shrank from his werewolf side.

As Stag said hello to Red Wing and Marissa, she could feel his attention on her. A cat whose tail was in the tight grip of a five year old boy couldn’t feel more trapped. He always made her feel that way. But that wasn’t fair. Last month she’d told him she wanted him to leave her alone for a while to get her head together. He hadn’t liked it, but he hadn’t argued. She’d told him she needed some time but she promised she would talk to him in a few weeks. He’d done what she asked and left. That was a month ago. He’d given her the time she’d asked for. Now it was time for her to do her part and honestly try to get to know him. Big girl panties time.

“How was your trip, Stag?” she asked. Her attempt to sound breezy and friendly came out strained.

He looked at her with blue eyes fringed with a thick curtain of lashes. Really, the man had beautiful eyes. The color was so unexpected in his dark Native American face that she was surprised every time she looked at them. Actually, all of him was beautiful, from his muscular chest to his tight belly to his long legs.