Werewolves in Love 2: Yours, Mine and Howls (29 page)

“I’m sorry? What man? Who explained what, and why did Cash let them go?”

Hank Cash, a middle-aged sergeant fated never to advance any further, was a vocal bigot who didn’t like wolves. Cade had hoped he wouldn’t be on duty tonight, or else bailing Dylan out might take longer than he’d led Ally to believe. Which was another reason he hadn’t wanted her to come.

“Why don’t you come with me? I’ll take you back to see the boy.”

There was no one else in the intake room. Still, it was odd that Zelma would leave the front desk like that. And she wasn’t normally so cheery or chatty.

He started to tell Ally to wait, but she was on his heels as they walked through the security door to the holding tank. He wouldn’t argue in front of strangers.

Hank Cash leaned against the open door of Dylan’s cell. The only other prisoners tonight were a couple of disheveled frat types who whistled at Ally when she walked past. A look and a growl from Cade sent them running back to their benches. It earned him a grin from Ally.

“I’m telling you, kid, you’ve got plenty of time to get back to Cue’s and that pretty girlfriend of yours. This whole thing was a— Oh, there you are, MacDougall.” Cash straightened at their approach. For the first time in their acquaintance, he nearly smiled at Cade. He did smile at Ally, nodding his head and saying, “Ma’am.” Cade didn’t feel like introducing them.

“Cash, what’s going on here?”

Dylan leapt to his feet. “Ally, you’ll never believe who showed up!”

The sergeant interrupted. “MacDougall, I was just explaining to your nephew that since his altercation with the foreign guy was clearly not his fault, and I shouldn’t even have arrested him to begin with, he’s welcome to leave. He wanted to wait for you.”

“Son? What happened?”

Dylan looked fit to burst, waiting for a chance to speak. “It was that weird dude we saw that day, Ally! He showed up here!”

“
What
?” She goggled, looking a little pale again.

“Ally, what the hell is he talking about?”

She ignored him. He fucking hated when she did that.

“What did he do?” she asked.

The words poured out of Dylan in an excited rush. “He came down here with this guy!” He pointed his thumb at Cash. “They were talking, and the weird guy was telling the cop that he knew me and Lind, and that Lind was a, a jerk or something, and he—I mean the weird guy—was sure it was Lind’s fault, and the whole thing was just a misunderstanding, and they should just let us go. He seemed pissed off at Lind, told him he’d caused enough trouble and he didn’t want to see him—Lind—again, and Lind got mad and started to say something but the old guy just said ‘you won’t argue with me, you’ll leave town now’ and so Lind shut up, just like that, and then…then it got really weird.”

“Dylan,” Ally said anxiously, “Just tell me what happened.”

“He looked at me, and he said, ‘Tell Eirny I’m sorry, I meant no harm. I want to see her’.”

Ally gasped and looked at Cade.

The world tilted for a second. He grabbed a bar of the cell to stay upright. To hear his mother’s name here, in such a bizarre context…

He knew he needed to ask Ally a question, but a painful buzzing noise in his head made it hard to think.

“Cade? Baby? You okay?”

Dylan and Cash were looking at him, Dylan worriedly and Cash in confusion.

He focused on Ally. “What’s he talking about? What weird guy? And why would he know my mother?”

Dylan started to answer, but Ally stopped him. “Let’s get out of here. Right now—we don’t need to talk about it here.”

The part of Cade’s mind still working properly was grateful, and annoyed, at the way she quietly took over as soon as she saw he was in trouble.

“Dylan, come on, sweetie. Sergeant Cash—” the cop blinked and smiled at her “—we’re going to talk to Chief Shepherd about this in the morning.”

On their way out, Cade asked, “Ally, what the hell is going on here?”

She shook her head. “Wait ’til we’re in the car.”

He made no move to turn the car on once they were buckled up. His mind had rebooted itself and was functioning again. He turned to look at Ally, who sat lost in thought.

“High Fae?”

She looked up, surprised. “Has to be.”

She had Dylan tell him about a strange man who’d watched them and followed Dylan the day she got Becca’s hair cut. Something cold and slimy crawled across his skin as he listened to a description of the stranger. When Dylan recounted the man’s questions about their mothers, Cade exploded.

“Why the fuck would you not tell me about this?” he shouted loud enough to be heard at the ranch. Behind him, Dylan whimpered.

Ally had been twisted around, talking to Dylan in the backseat. Now she turned to face him, but she didn’t, as he expected, lose her own temper. She peered at him for a minute and then said quietly, “I’m sorry. We decided he was some doped out Fae, and then when you got home the next day, everything happened and I just forgot about it.”

“What, you think a doped out Fae is
normal
? You think we get them around here all the time?”

She shrugged, face drawn with worry. “I didn’t think about that. I’ve met a few in Houston, and I’ve never heard of them hurting anyone. They’re too stoned to be violent, and with their talents dulled, they’re not dangerous. We assumed he mistook Dylan and Becca for someone else, and we forgot about it.”

“But obviously he recognized them because he knows who my mother is!”

“So then why’d he ask who Dylan’s mother was, or Becca’s?”

“Yeah,” Dylan piped up. “When I told him my mom was Gracie, he didn’t believe me, and that’s when he started with the war gulf crap.”

“So did you talk to him when he showed up here tonight?”

“Not really. Lind was yelling, and he told Lind to get lost—oh! I see what you mean about Fae,” the teenager mused. Cade snorted in exasperation. “He told Lind to leave, and Lind left. He told Cash and that old lady it was all a big mistake and they should let us go, so they did. But if he can mind whammy people, why didn’t it work on me? That day in town, he looked at me and said ‘you didn’t see me’, but I still knew I saw him.”

“I have no idea how we figure that out. I’m more concerned with how he knows my mom.” Mama had no family, and the pack members her age were long gone. Only Shawn and Sindri had known her. A Fae, a guy Cade didn’t know, showing up here and mentioning her made no sense. He was missing something here, something important.

“Y’all still haven’t told me what the guy looked like.”

“Tall,” Ally began. “Long white hair, almost silver, tied back in a ponytail.”

“Eyes?”

“Eyes? Oh, right. No, I couldn’t see them.” She ran a finger across her face, from her eyebrow to her opposite cheek. “He had a scar across his face, though.” She jumped. “Cade? What’s wrong?”

He’d just shouted—a hoarse, sharp cry—and now he couldn’t answer her because he was shivering and shaking like he’d swallowed dry ice.

“Cade? Baby, answer me! Right now!”

He put his forehead on the steering wheel. It rattled beneath his shaking hands. Ally’s cool, soft hands stroked his face and neck.

“Baby? Please, can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“It’s him,” he whispered, swallowing hard and concentrating on not throwing up. He wouldn’t shame himself by falling apart in front of his wolf and his mate.

Ally slid across the seat to put her arm around him, but he pushed her away. To accept her comfort was to admit he needed it. Instead, he stilled the shakes, banished the sick and cleared his head, taking emotional refuge in dominance.

In the backseat Dylan whimpered, terrified by the stress his Alpha was shedding.

“It’s who, Cade?” Ally asked quietly.

“The guy from my dream. The guy who killed my father.”

After a few minutes’ silence, Ally offered to drive, but he refused that as well.

“I thought you couldn’t see the guy in your dream, couldn’t remember what he looked like.”

“Couldn’t before. Can now. The scar. Mama cut his face with the knife that killed my dad.” Now, for the first time in thirty-three years, he saw the guy clearly in his mind’s eye, saw the lean, eerily handsome face and the long silver ponytail whipping in the wind.

Dylan whined again. Cade wanted to say something to calm the pup, but he couldn’t summon the thought to form the words. He rolled his window down. The cool night air cleansed his lungs and dried the sweat on his face and neck.

“The guy who killed your mother shows up here,” Ally said softly. “And he knows Lind. And he wants to know about Dylan’s mother and Becca’s mother, and he wants to tell
your
mother he’s sorry. For what? For killing your dad? Thirty-three years ago? Doesn’t he know she’s dead? Dylan, honey, didn’t you say the guy looked familiar?”

“Yeah.”

Cade could barely hear him. Ally was the only one who didn’t stink of fear and misery. Cade was grateful, once again, for her levelheaded nature, but he wished she’d shut the fuck up so he could concentrate on not changing while driving.

“Dylan?” he rasped. “You okay back there, son?”

“I think so.”

“If it’s the same guy, what does he want?” asked Ally.

“Don’t care what
he
wants.
I
want to find him and kill him.”

“Forget about finding him for a minute, baby. Think about this. He saw us in town almost three months ago, but he didn’t try to hurt us. He seemed almost frightened of Dylan when Dylan cornered him, didn’t he?” She looked back at the teenager.

“Yeah. I thought he was gonna run away from me.”

“So they talk, he does that pathetic ‘you don’t see me’ bit, and he disappears. And tonight, when he sees Dylan, he gets him out of jail and says to tell Eirny he’s sorry. That doesn’t sound like a threat. I agree you need to find the guy, but I don’t get the feeling he’s out to hurt you or Dylan. Or Becca.”

He didn’t answer. What she said made sense intellectually, but his intellect wasn’t working right now. The urge to run back to town, find the bastard and rip his guts out vied with the urge to run into the woods, find a deep hole and crawl in for a few months. Or just lock himself in his room and get well and truly shitfaced. Only the first option, of course, was available to an Alpha.

“Well?”

“Well what, Ally?” he yelled. He could feel her flinch all the way on the other end of the seat. “You want me to speculate on the bastard’s motives? How the hell do I know what he wants? He killed my parents. You want me to give him the benefit of the doubt now? If you’d told me about the guy earlier,
when it fucking happened,
maybe I’d know by now what he wants!”

Cade locked his jaw and stared straight ahead, waiting for her to burst into tears. But no—that’s what she would’ve done before, like the day he’d shown them around the ranch. Now she was his mate, and it had changed her as much as it had him.

His mate didn’t cry. His mate busted his balls. He steeled himself for a tongue-lashing.

It never showed up.

In a soft voice, a voice full of love and concern he didn’t deserve, she said, “Does emotional turmoil cause all alphas to act like assholes? Is it some kind of defense mechanism?”

It caught him so completely off-guard that he choked on a laugh. The tension in the car didn’t evaporate, but she’d burned off a good fifty percent of it all at once.

“I don’t know about all alphas, but yeah, I’d guess most.” He rolled his shoulders and pressed them back against his seat as he stretched, forcing his body to loosen up a little bit. Glancing up at the rearview mirror, he caught Dylan’s eye and nodded shortly. His nephew closed his eyes and put his head back.

Ally unbuckled her seat belt, slid over and buckled the middle belt. She tucked her arm behind his and laid her head on his shoulder. “If you try to push me away again,” she murmured, “I’ll bite you.”

“I might wreck the truck.”

“So don’t push me away.”

So he didn’t. And when she took his right hand and placed it in her lap, covering it with both of hers, he didn’t take it back. Her touch eased the heartache, her scent calmed the rage. If she insisted he accept a comfort only she could provide, a comfort his body had been screaming for, then he would.

Sindri must’ve started cooking as soon as he learned of Dylan’s arrest. The kid followed his nose straight to the kitchen.

Ally made an exasperated sound.

“Could anything kill his appetite?”

Cade laughed and drew her close. Glad to be home, she snuggled into his arms.

“Hey,” he murmured into her hair. “You okay?”

“I am. Are you?”

Just then, her stomach growled loud enough to be heard outside. Cade’s chest rumbled with laughter against her ear, and he squeezed her tighter.

“I will be, but I think I need to feed my girl. Come on, let’s go see what Sindri’s making.”

Hand in hand, they walked into the kitchen, where Sindri toddled from stove to table as Dec laughed at Dylan.

“All right, pup. Can you stop eating long enough to tell us what you did to merit your first arrest? Please say a pretty girl was involved.”

Ally sat down next to Dec. Cade fetched beers from the fridge and sat down across the table from her. Dylan paused in his inhalation of meatloaf long enough to grin. “I was with a pretty girl, yeah, but she wasn’t really involved.”

“Well, what was it, then?”

Sindri put two more plates on the table. Ally got up to fix her own, but he shooed her back to the table. Her stomach growled again. No one noticed.

“Thank you, Sindri, this looks great. You’re not gonna believe this, Dec,” she said when she saw that Dylan was hoovering the meatloaf again. “Jakob showed up at Cue’s.”

“
Lind?
What’s that gobshite doing in town? How’d he find us?”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Cade said. “I think I’ll take Michael and go back into town to look for him.”

“Tonight?” She’d assumed all the drama was over for the evening. “I mean, you’re exhausted, you’ve had a big shock. You should get some rest.”

He reached across the table to squeeze her hand, a hint of irritation lurking behind his smile. Pack Alphas probably didn’t like their females clucking over them in front of others. “Baby, I told you I’m fine. We need to know what Lind’s doing in town and if we wait ’til tomorrow, he could be gone.”