Weremones (32 page)

“The getaway car?” Adam allowed himself to grin, finally. He couldn’t have kept up the stern face much longer without choking. “Now that’s a story I’d like to hear.”

“Urp!”

Karen landed with a thud in Bradley’s lap. The boy literally took matters in his own hands. He wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her off her feet. He winced hard when she made contact and buried his face in the back of her neck.

He garbled something that sounded like, “Show some respect.” But it was hard to make out through the whimper.

Adam stood and turned to face Mack. The ex-soldier was leaned back against the bottom of the sofa, arms crossed. He upended his hands in the air.

“Don’t look at me. I’d shoot you myself before letting anyone else at your hide.”

Adam shook his head at Mack’s off the wall answer. Yet, he had no illusions that his friend wouldn’t take him out if he deemed Adam a danger.

“Let’s get down to business folks.”

He crouched down, unlaced his work boots before toeing them off, and stowed the socks inside. Everyone else who wore shoes followed suit.

Adam whipped his tee shirt over his head. Karen gave a squeak of protest.

“Hey! Wait a minute!”

Adam turned back to the girl with a smile.

“Don’t worry. It’s important to be comfortable for this ceremony. Less restrictions on the body.” Less mess too, he refrained from saying out loud. “If you want to change clothes, feel free to do so. Remember, there will be some touching of skin to skin.”

He glanced a make to make sure the man understood he’d be included in this, too.

“Nothing perverse, I promise. Everyone keeps his, and her, hands and body parts contained appropriately.”

Almost everyone in the circle nodded. Karen beat a hot retreat up the stairs to her room. Adam stepped over Seth’s outstretched legs and crouched in front of Brandon. He kept his hands in plain sight on the tops of his jean covered thighs. His voice was low and careful.

“That okay with you, buddy?”

Brandon drew his knees up under his chin. He looked past Adam, trepidation oozing from him. Adam kept his body language non-threatening. He didn’t need another outburst from the boy.

No, he didn’t think he could
handle
another outburst like the kitchen incident.

“You’re making Chase and Tank your wardens.”

“Yes, I am. But they’re not so much my wardens as the pack’s. A warden’s job is to protect the pack from harm. Any harm. Even if it’s someone in the pack that’s doing harm. And frankly, as is, we’re not strong enough to hold our territory against other predators.”

“What about the werecoyote pack?”

“Well,” Adam felt as though he was walking a thin line. One wrong answer, and the kid might take him up on walking out. Brandon might make it alone, but he’d fare far better with his pack to buffer for him. “I’m going to order a purging.”

“What’s a purging?” Seth sidled closer. Serious curiosity lit his dark eyes. “Are you going to kill all the werecoyotes?”

Adam reached out and set a hand on the fuzzy dark curls. Chatter started up around him. He raised a hand in the air to quiet them.

“Good God, people. A purging is an evacuation of other predatory supernaturals. It’s not a slaughter.”

He didn’t know if his kids were naturally a bloodthirsty lot, or they acted that way because of all they’d been through.

Though, truthfully, a purging was exactly that before the various supernatural leaders got together and hammered out a treaty.

“What sets wolven apart from weres is that we are an organized society. A strict society that protects itself. We can’t do that if we let in the weres, vampires, and other predators, that do not follow our laws, run amok in our territories.”

Adam stood. All eyes followed his movement.

“We are wolven. We keep what is ours safe and we don’t share with outsiders.”

“But are you going to kill them?”

Adam looked down at Brandon. He sighed and crouched back down to the boy’s level.

“What do you think?”

He waited, feeling the weight o the boy’s judgment.

“I think that you will try to be fair. Some are going to die because Benj won’t want to leave his businesses behind. And he thinks we owe him.”

A slow smile formed on Adam’s face. Sharp, white teeth, pointed for tearing his prey, gleamed.

“Benjamin Gates will die.”

Brandon nodded. His knees bumped his chin. His focus found and centered on the two strays they were about to adopt. He was okay with whatever plans were made. Soon, his tormentor would be unable to bother him again.

“I don’t like to be touched.” Brandon’s protest was small, but harsh in the scheme of the pack. A rejection.

“All right.” Adam agreed. He knew the statement was false. Brandon was in constant physical contact with those he trusted. Bradley, Karen, Diana, and to a lesser extent the other boys. Occasionally, the boy brushed up against Adam to fulfill the need to connect that all shape shifters shared, wolven and weres.

Adam slapped his palms together. It was time.

———

Diana woke to the sense that something was about to happen. Something momentous, she should be a part of. A glance at the clock said that she’d been asleep for only a few minutes.

Like before, Diana used the wall for balance. At the head of the stairs, Adam’s voice lured her on. She descended the stairs, careful to hold on to the handrail.

“The Welcoming is a ritual as old as time, going back to before memory, when our kind slipped away from the human tribe to run with our cousin the wolf.”

Adam’s story swirled in her mind, as half remembered images tried to surface.

She felt herself slip into the pack bond.

“Eventually, curiosity lured the wolven ancestors back to the human realm. But, after living so long among the pack, they were no longer human. But neither were they completely wolf. We were Wolven.

“A pack is more than a group that hangs out together. It is comforting your pack brother. Helping with homework. Watching for other predators that could harm the whole. The pack is family.”

“Tonight we welcome Tank and Chase into our family.”

He turned to the strays.

“We offer you acceptance. The comfort and trust of the pack. Do you accept?”

Both males stepped forward. Tank took another half step, presenting himself to the alpha. He swept his hair off his shoulder, baring his neck in a formal gesture of submission and went to his knees.

“In return for your gift, I offer blood and meat to the pack. My muscle to protect and provide. My blood to bind and heal. My allegiance to the Pater Canis and to the well being of my Pack.”

Adam drew a pale claw tipped hand delicately over the vulnerable dark skin covering Tank’s artery.

The words beat a familiar cadence in Diana’s head, as if she’d heard them before, taken them inside her to live. She made it as far as the entry to the living room, edging around the frame to slide down the wall and watch the mesmerizing ceremony.

Adam took one sharp claw and drew it up his forearm. Blood welled and ran in scarlet lines down his wrist. He offered the arm to the man kneeling before him. Tank took the offering, lapping up his chosen leader’s life’s blood. A sense of satisfaction eased from the dark warrior.

“Blood to Blood. Brother to Brother. Hunt to hunt.” Once Tank released the arm, Adam placed both hands on the still kneeling man’s shoulders. Red drops ran down his forearm, dropping onto Tank’s chest in the region of his heart. “Now, we run as one, my brother. Heart-Hunt-Pack.”

Adam lifted his arms and Tank rose in a single fluid motion. He stepped back gracefully, making room for Chase.

Diana was drawn by the power in the ceremony. The sizzle ran through her, the connection made. Her limited understanding glimpsed what it was to be
pack
.

She felt joined with every male and female, running through the woods in harmony together. All four of her paws were the wind, her fur the cloud the wind pushed along, and the woods were her sky.

Diana sucked in a breath as she came back to herself.

While she was out running metaphysically with the pack she missed some of the proceedings. Chase was now kneeling in Tank’s place at Adam’s feet.

Adam started the chant again. This time, the pack,
everyone
, joined in. The swell of power lifted her up into sky again. Howl-song surrounded her. When it was gone, run to its end, the pack, human and wolven, flopped in a satisfied half furry heap together.

Diana smiled from her place at the door. She was too tired to crawl into their cozy pile, but it looked right. None of the wolves were unaffected by Adam’s call of power.

He was an alpha all right.

He lay back against the bottom of the sofa like a pagan god. His pack lay scattered around him.

Silvery gold fur gilded the dense muscles of his body. He was bigger in his manwolf form. A pale blonde mane fell over his pale blue eyes, half closed, sleepy and satiated, after the huge amount of power he’d shared and tied to his pack.

The peculiar pale blue of his eyes fastened on her and he smiled at her, a strange and still handsome movement of his muzzle that exposed white predator’s teeth. In that moment Diana felt a connection with him, a oneness of purpose that she’d never felt before.

A shaggy golden wolf rose and stumbled over to her, breaking the intensity of the connection. Adam smiled again and turned to gently scratch the neck of the wolf boy curled up next to him. The boy made a wuffy giggle.

“Chase, right?”

The gold wolf bumped his head against her shoulder and settled down. He laid his head across her lap. Soon a lanky wolf, so dark a brown he was almost black, curled up on her other side.

Chase reached his snout over, snuffling at his new companion then after a couple of cursory licks relaxed back into Diana’s lap.

Their coats were clean with the twin scents of musk and woods. From a distance their fur looked silky and soft. Up close, with her fingers dug in, Diana felt the stronger, wirier over-pelt. Underneath, the second layer of fur was soft as down.

Comforted by the soft warmth of their bodies, Diana drifted back to sleep tinged with the images of the forest beckoning to her.

“I want to go with you.”

Adam pushed in the clutch and brake, and shifted the truck into neutral to look at the boy framed in the open truck window.

He clutched the door like a lifeline, as if his will were anchored to the truck. The boy’s washed out features looked even worse in the night.

Adam’s wolven night vision leeched the color out of everything leaving behind the stark, strained tension in Brandon’s face.

Hell, he could feel the kid’s need as if it were his own. As Pater Canis of the pack, it was. Adam’s need for retribution was a fire in his belly.

“Not this time, son” Adam shook his head. Death glittered in his eyes. He kept his gaze on the house instead of the boy. No sense scaring the crap out of the kid again tonight.

He tried to keep his tone mild, for Brandon, but he was already preparing himself for what had to be done tonight. Before Benjamin Gates discovered where he left his nuts and retaliated.

Adam had already let one night go concentrating on Diana’s injuries. Another would undermine his authority.

“There’s going to be violence tonight. People will die.”

Brandon nodded, leaning into the door. The heady scent mix rolling from the boy was a combination of gut fear and determination. His voice was hoarse.

“I want to go, sir.
Please
.” Brandon took a breath. Once he started talking, he couldn’t stop. His dark eyes pinned Adam with a feverish intensity the alpha leader could feel in his soul. “You said you would kill him.”

Adam looked up at Brandon, meeting the boy’s eyes. God. He didn’t want any of the kids tagging along on this hunt.

Brandon especially, didn’t need more blood on his hands after losing it over that psychotic biker. The kid needed a clean hunt, a rabbit, something for food. Not another vengeance killing.

“I said I would. I will. Now, get in the house. I want everyone under wraps tonight.”

Part of the light went out in him. Brandon sort of folded in on himself. His hands dropped away from the truck window as he stepped away to give Adam clearance.

Adam put the truck in reverse and pulled out into the street. The red taillights put a darkish cast over Brandon’s form in the rear view mirror. The boy’s image in the mirror shrank then vanished from lack of light as he started down the street. But he was still in the yard watching.

Would he wait there, in the driveway, until Adam returned with news that the last of the bastards that had tormented him was gone? Torment was such an understatement for what they’d done.

Adam slammed on the brakes. He threw the truck in reverse and backed up the way he came. He slammed the brakes again to stop in front of the yard. He leaned on the door, resting his elbow out the window.

“You stick like a burr or I’m going to rip you a new one.”

“Yeah!”

He watched Brandon run around the front end like he’d been invited to Six Flags and scramble into the cab.

Brandon squirmed in the seat. He retrieved a folded baseball cap from his back pocket.

“Are you ready?
Seatbelt, son. Seatbelt
,” Adam grumbled.

Brandon pulled the Lobos Luna cap over his head and reached for the seat belt, buckled it in place. He flashed Adam the first predatory expression the alpha had seen on the boy.

“Bloodthirsty whelp.” Adam laughed and grinned back, then shifted gears.

Let the hunt begin.

———

Adam drove to the job site, leaving the truck in plain view. He and Brandon walked to the back of the house. There, they quickly stripped down and stashed their clothes inside the tool shed. Adam relocked the shed and buried the key.

They changed. Bones and muscles reshaped in a pleasure/pain of sensation. Fur flowed like water over their bodies. Their faces elongated, teeth exploding into muzzles.

The larger wolf, pale cream and silver, nearly glowing in the moonlight, waited for the smaller wolf to finish the transition. By no means could either wolf could be termed
small
. The alpha snuffled over the smaller, almost black wolf.