Wolver's Rescue (22 page)

“
Some dogs know where
they’re supposed to lie.”

Tommie recognized that for the insult it was.
Reinforcing what Bull had told her, little Sammy had shared what
she assumed was a bit of life experience.

“
Don’t ever, ever, ever call
a wolver a dog,” he’d warned her with all the seriousness a four
year old could muster. It even came with a finger wag. “You do, and
Mommy will whup your bottom for sure.”

“
Then we’ll just have to
wait until they all get back,” the Alpha continued. “Unless I get
what I came for before then.”

Samuel straightened as if the Alpha’s words
shocked him. There was a noise behind the bus and all intruders’
eyes followed it. The men surrounding the Alpha all dipped their
right hands into their leather jackets in perfectly choreographed
intimidation.

“
Come on out,” the Alpha
ordered the noisemaker. “Now. Unless you’d like to see the old
cripple die.”

The boy, still holding his awkward bundle of
sticks, came from behind the bus. Samuel motioned him over and
wrapped a comforting arm around him.

“
He’s no threat. He’s just a
cub,” Samuel said.

To Tommie, something felt very contrived
about this whole scene. The Alpha and his henchmen were real
enough, but the rest of it felt staged. Samuel was lying. Where was
everyone and why hadn’t the cub dropped his bundle of sticks and
run for the safety of the woods when the SUVs first arrived.

The Alpha shrugged. “Omegas breed omegas.
Nits grow into lice. You never know when one might jump.” He
stomped his foot and laughed when the cub jumped. Then he got back
to business. “I’m willing to let all this go.” Alpha Magnanimous
waved his hand, willing to make the great and superficial sacrifice
of two rusted out vehicles and a half a dozen decrepit tents. “But
you took something from me and I want it back.”

The bastard was talking about Macey! Tommie
heard Molly’s frightened gasp behind her. She looked around the
camp to see if the others, too, understood the import of the
Alpha’s words. Her eyes stopped at Cora whose own eyes begged her
to move on. Above Cora’s head, Tommie saw why.

Macey stood just beyond the edge of the trees
where she watched and waited. She didn’t run forward, but she
didn’t step back into the shadows of the trees. She was either
undecided or wanted to see how far her dream man was willing to go
to get her back.

Tommie went with undecided and she knew that
if Alpha Shitass looked up, Macey’s decision would be made for her.
Tommie couldn’t let that happen. Before Molly could hold her back,
she stepped forward, away from the shelter of the tents and into
Alpha Shitass’s line of sight.

He turned away from Macey’s direction and
toward Tommie. “Well, well, well, what have we here?”

Tommie walked forward. “What is it that you
want, Alpha? Maybe I can help.”

“
Who the hell are you?” he
asked as if she was something to be scraped off the bottom of his
shoe.

“
Nobody. She’s from a pack
up north,” Cora interrupted, keeping her head down. “They don’t
have much of nothing either, so we thought they might take us in.
She’s got pack coming later tonight.”

“
You’re lying, and so are
you,” he said to Samuel.

The Alpha stared at Tommie a moment, eyes
rudely speculating and then he sniffed audibly.

Her wolf took offense to the gesture. She
snarled and curled her body as if responding to the threat, while
urging Tommie to back away.

But this guy was a bully and backing away
gave bullies power. She’d learned that in first grade. “What is it
you want?”

“
I want the ten thousand
dollars they stole from me and I want what’s rightfully mine.” The
Alpha looked directly at Macey standing at the edge of the trees
and then back at Tommie. He smiled and that smile sent a shiver of
revulsion down Tommie’s spine. “I want you,” he said so quietly
only Tommie heard.

“
Run!
”

The Alpha made a grab for her hand just as
she heard her wolf’s warning and stepped back to turn and flee. Her
hand slipped from his grasp, but that slight contact made the bile
rise in her throat. Tommie stumbled to her knees and all hell broke
loose.

Scrambling to her feet, she heard the blast
of a shotgun roar and dropped back to the ground. She saw one of
the missing wolvers emerge from her tent, rifle raised. Another
wolver stepped from Molly’s tent with the weapon hidden in the
woman’s laundry basket cocked and ready. Yet another wolver came
from the rear of the bus. Samuel, who’d fired the shotgun into the
ground close to the Alpha, pumped it single handedly and this time
aimed it directly at the Alpha’s chest. The cub’s bundle of
branches lay scattered at his feet. The boy at the woodpile held a
handgun as did Cora and her neighbor at the table.

The Alpha and his men were effectively
surrounded.

Samuel was no longer stuttering. Bracing the
shotgun on his arm, he followed the line of men. “Lay your weapons
on the ground and kick them over this way. And kick ‘em hard or you
won’t be kicking much of anything again. We took what was ours and
we’ll keep it.”

“
If you took what was yours,
you’d have taken nothing and you’ll end up with less than nothing
by the time this is done,” the Alpha snarled. “How long do you
think you’ll survive without protection? You’re not rogues. You’re
omegas, a worthless bunch of cripples and half-wits. How are you
going to earn your keep without someone telling you what to do?
Your females’ll end up as truckstop whores and you’ll end up as dog
meat for another band of rogues.”

“
That’s our worry now, not
yours. All we want is to be left alone. The money’s mostly gone,
but that doesn’t matter. You don’t think we’re worth that money,
but I’ll bet you think you and your men are, so we’ll call it even.
You gave us that money and we gave you your lives. Swear on it and
you can get back in those vehicles and head on home. Drive fast and
hard and you’ll get there in time for moonrise.”

The Alpha curled his lip and nodded his head.
“Get back in the car,” he told his men.

~*~

When Bull and Boris returned, the celebration
was well under way. Bull was greeted with cheers and claps on the
back as he carried a box of supplies to the bus.

“
We did it! We won! It
worked!”

Everyone wanted to tell him their part in the
drama. He wanted to tell them they were lucky it wasn’t a massacre.
Theirs.

Samuel’s smile was the widest of all. “Worked
just like you said it would, Bull. Wish you could have been there
to see it. We were all shaking like leaves in a good wind, but that
fool Alpha thought it was fear of him. Scared hell out of me when
Tommie stepped up, I can tell you that. Looked the Alpha right in
the eye she did. No fear in that one, and with all eyes on her and
the Alpha, it was easy to give the signal and get the drop on ‘em.
Though I might have felt a little more comfortable if you’d told me
when you changed the plan.”

“
I didn’t change the plan.”
Bull’s eyes went directly to Tommie who was pouring freshly popped
corn into a bowl. “Sorry, Samuel, we’ll talk later. There’s someone
else I need to talk to first.”

Samuel touched his arm. “Now Bull, don’t be
too hasty. She maybe misunderstood. She has a lot to learn.”

“
Damn right she does and
it’s going to start right now.”

“
Well hi there.” She greeted
his approach, smiling as if all was right with the world. She
reached under the table and came up with a bottle. “You missed all
the fun, but I saved you a beer.”

“
Fun? Fun?” Bull grabbed the
bottle and handed it to the woman standing next to her. “Excuse
us.”

He grabbed Tommie’s hand and, pulling her
behind him, strode off into the woods. She had to run to keep up.
He didn’t care.

“
Bull. Wait. Stop. What’s
wrong? You’re hurting me.”

That stopped him. He let her hand go and
gripped her shoulders, bending low until they were nose to
nose.

“
Hurting you? God damn it,
spitfire, you could have gotten yourself killed back there. You
could have gotten someone else killed or hurt.”

“
No one got hurt,” she
argued.

She always argued, but this time the last
word would be his.

“
You put yourself in the
middle of what could have been a gun battle. If one of his men got
off a shot or if one of our wolvers got nervous and fired, you
would have been the first to fall. You knew we hadn’t practiced
this. You knew they had no experience with guns and you had to know
how important it was that everyone played their part exactly as
planned. But no, you had to do it your way. Did you even bother to
look at the plan?”

“
But Bull...”

“
No ‘but Bull’. I put you
with those pups for a reason. Their safety was in your hands and
you let Sarah and Macey do it alone. What if the plan had gone
south? Who would have been there to take care of them? Sarah’s a
good woman, but she wouldn’t last ten minutes on her own never mind
with those pups in tow. Pack comes first. Not Tommie, not Bull, not
any individual. Pack. And while this may not be a real pack, it’s
the closest thing we’ve got and until I find you a real pack or
they find a real Alpha, I’m also the best thing you’ve got and
you’d better do what you’re told.”

To keep himself from shaking her, Bull pulled
her into his chest, his hand holding her head over his heart. He
was so angry his hands were shaking. She could have been killed and
he wasn’t there. He should have been there.

Her arms slipped around his waist.
“Bull?”

“
Just shut up and let me
hold you for a minute.”

“
So you can catch your
breath and yell at me some more?”

“
I wasn’t yelling.” He was
calmer now that she was in his arms, but she had to know how
serious her offense was. She had to learn if she was going to
survive in the wolver world.

“
Yes you were. It wasn’t
loud, but it was yelling.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his chin.
“You were worried about me.”

“
Someone has to be,” he said
and sighed. Finding a comfortable place in the sun to sit, he
pulled her to the ground with him. She shifted her hips slightly
and landed in his lap.

“
I’m glad it’s you,” she
said and snuggled against him.

How was he supposed to argue with that?
Still, he tried.

“
Consider yourself lucky. If
this was a real pack, you would have been brought before the Alpha
when he held Court. All this would have been said in front of the
entire pack and it would have been followed by punishment.
Something like this would be taken as a betrayal of the pack and
that’s never taken lightly.”

“
But I didn’t know. No one
told me. I never saw a plan.”

Bull held her away from him. “What do you
mean you never saw a plan?”

“
I swear it. I never saw a
plan. I saw Macey.” She told him what had happened beginning with
her following Molly into the woods and ending with Macey standing
at the edge of the trees. “They had guns, Bull, and that Alpha has
something really creepy and sadistic going for him. I had to give
her a chance.”

Bull felt his jaw harden as his previous
anger was redirected at Macey. “She was to sketch out copies of the
plan for everyone, including you. She volunteered for it,” he told
Tommie when he could speak without snarling. “It was a map of the
campsite showing everyone where they were supposed to be when the
watch sounded the alarm.

“
It was a simple plan. I
spent my time with the cubs who’d be standing watch and carrying
the weapons hidden in the wood. Your job didn’t need explanation so
I left it to her. I wonder who else she left in the
dark.”

“
It doesn’t matter. It’s
over and done and no one got hurt. Macey’s young. Maybe she forgot.
It doesn’t matter now.”

“
That’s where your wrong,
spitfire. Young doesn’t cut it in a group this size. Everyone has
to pull their weight. I had cubs out there a whole lot younger than
her and they were doing the job. They were scared shitless, but
they did it and she could have gotten them killed and she didn’t
‘fess up once she saw what happened. She needs to learn the
lesson.”

Tommie snuggled a little closer. “Maybe this
is a lesson for us, too. Maybe we shouldn’t give that kind of
responsibility to children, I mean cubs, that young.”

“
Maybe you should stop
saying we when you mean me. Maybe you should trust me since I’ve
been a wolver a lot longer than you.” He kissed her nose to take
the sting from his words. “We, however, need to get back. We have a
few hours before the moon rises and I need to get them ready for
their Alpha’s next move. He will be back. I guarantee
it.”

“
How did you know he was
coming today? How did you know he’d come after them at
all?”

“
I didn’t know it would be
today. That was sheer bad luck. They should have known he would be
coming from the very beginning, but they ignored it. They managed
to keep moving, stay one step ahead, but with Samuel and Eli
captured, they stayed close. Until Gantnor kindly loaned them his
weapons, they didn’t have any way to fight back and with them, they
didn’t know how. They don’t have the ability to outthink an
Alpha.”