The Complete Bloodling Serial: Episodes 1-5 Page 13

  "But the child...." The man's voice hit all the right notes of concern in the face of leaving a halfie not yet old enough to crawl alone with an alpha werewolf who appeared to be in the throes of some sort of psychotic fit.

  I didn't buy it for an instant.

  But Chase was a more trusting sort—he had to be to put up with me. My beta shot me one last chiding glance over his shoulder as he guided the stranger back out the open door. "I'll send Lantana's mother over," he said, ostensibly to the oathbreaker but really to me. "Then Wolfie and you can sit down in human form and hash this out."

  Sure, I told my friend with a quick upwards jerk of my chin. I'd listen to the drifter's story. I'd let Tia fill his belly.

  And then I'd send him on his way and out of our lives as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

  ***

  "It was a youthful indiscretion. Stupid really," the oathbreaker murmured, then paused as he blew into the cup of steaming tea that Chase's mother had slipped into his hands.

  He appeared so harmless, sitting there slack shouldered and unsure of himself. And, from the expressions on everyone else's faces, I gathered I was the only one who could smell the aroma rising off the stranger so strongly that I almost expected visible smoke to clog the air between us. I forced myself not to growl, but Chase shot me a warning glance anyway.

  My milk brother, like the rest of our pack, clearly thought the purpose of this gathering was to get to know a potential new pack member. Based on the smiles and good cheer filling the room, everyone was ready and willing to welcome the oathbreaker into the clan with the usual pomp and circumstance.

  This time, though, my goal was a little different. I wanted every wolf I could trust at my back when I led the stranger to the edge of our property and chivvied him on his way. There could be no chance that he'd circle back around and harm one of the shifters beneath my care.

  I hadn't actually put my plan into words, though. And I could tell that most of my companions were being swayed by Fred's self-deprecating manner, making them think this intervention was instead a welcome-home celebration for a new pack member.

  Of course, my companions didn't have the same bloodling nose that allowed me to smell the depth of Fred's character. Or, rather, the lack thereof.

  While my mind wandered, the oathbreaker had been busy charming our pack mother. Now, Tia soothed his supposed woes with a plate of cookies along with the quiet words: "We all grow and change."

  And in reply the oathbreaker glanced up with such gentle good humor that I almost thought I'd imagined the quick flash of assessment when Chase's mother first walked into the room.

  But I didn't doubt myself. And I did doubt the oathbreaker.

  Despite my best intentions to toe the line and let my pack come to their own conclusions about Fred, I rose and crossed the room in three long strides. I didn't want the soiled shifter anywhere near the woman who had raised me like a second son. She'd dealt with enough pain and suffering in her life already without letting a stranger wiggle his way into her affections and then pull the rug out from under her feet.

  "Here, you've done enough," I told Tia gruffly, removing the dish towel from her hands and pointing her toward the chair I'd vacated. "He's far from starving."

  Tia pursed her lips, as unimpressed by my lack of manners as my milk brother had been. But it wasn't as if I was pointing out something our pack mother couldn't see with her own eyes. Fred had a potbelly to go along with his jovial, Santa Claus demeanor. He wasn't an emaciated kid in need of fattening up.

  In response to that thought, my gaze slid across the yahoos arrayed along the other side of the dining-room table. Three of the four teenagers and twenty-somethings had entered our pack as supplicants just like the stranger who currently held our attention. And all of them had since turned into the sort of shifters I'd want at my back in a battle to the death.

  On the other hand, the yahoos had been starving and desperate when they arrived on our doorstep. Fred was anything but. I couldn't see why my pack mates found it so hard to distinguish the two states.

  "Please, tell us the story." My uncle Oscar was the oldest shifter present and he often acted as unofficial spokesman for our clan when my age would have worked against us. Now, I suspected he was just trying to gloss over my complete lack of social graces. But my uncle's authority paid off anyway because it forced Fred to stop offering platitudes and start offering facts.

  Or should I say lies? Because the tale the stranger spun was anything but factual. Or so his subtle facial twitches and body language revealed.

  "I hadn't even realized what I was promising when I swore that oath," Fred concluded at the end of a long, convoluted story that made him out to be a wounded hero struggling to do right in a dangerous world full of evil. "But I knew I couldn't kill an innocent man, even if it meant foregoing my honor. So I broke my word, and the scent has clung to me ever since."

  He gestured at his chest with one hand, as if apologizing for unfortunate body odor, and I could see my tender-hearted pack mates lapping up his words like rich, yellow cream. The oathbreaker had succeeded admirably at his goal of evoking pity despite not deserving any shifter's good regard.

  Now I did growl, a lupine sound that nonetheless emerged successfully from my human lips. And in response, Fred eyed me consideringly.

  Then he stood, hands loosely open at his sides. "I understand." His head was bowed, but I saw the tension of pride in his shoulders. He was still play-acting, working to sway us to his point of view. "You're the alpha and you don't want anything to threaten your authority. You have no way of knowing you can trust me. I'll go."

  Yes, get out of here, I wanted to say. I was the alpha. And authority be damned, it was my job to protect my pack from interlopers like this one, even if the pack members in question didn't know enough to want to be protected.

  But the look on Chase's face moved me where the oathbreaker's manipulations had failed. My milk brother was disappointed by my tough point of view. Can't you give him one last chance? the slant of Chase's eyebrows asked.

  Beside my best friend, the yahoos appeared equally surprised by my combative posture. Why should Fred be forced out of the pack when they'd been allowed to stay, they wondered. I could see the oathbreaker's words trickling into their subconscious, their sudden concern about whether I'd only allowed each of them to join our clan because their youth posed no threat to my leadership.

  If I could so easily toss Fred to the curb, would I someday do the same to them?

  Yes, the stranger was good at what he did. But I could have shored up my pack after he left. Fred's manipulations needn't have driven a wedge into our little clan.

  So why did I let him stay? Because I'd sworn an oath of my own. And someday, I had a sinking suspicion, I might just have to break it.

  Chapter 2

  The debt that had once hung so heavily upon my thoughts had escaped my mind in recent years. After all, I'd been busy growing from an addle-pated pup into an alpha leading a cohesive band of eleven shifters and one human during that time period. And ever since failing Crazy Wilder's test five All-Pack's ago, I seemed to have fallen off the older shifter's radar entirely.

  Or so I allowed myself to believe. It just felt better that way.

  Until, that is, a big black limousine cruised up to our door the day after Fred arrived. The oathbreaker had spent the night bunking in our common area, and now Bernt, Oscar, and the yahoos were showing him the boundaries of our territory. With most of our females enjoying a much-deserved girl's day out, only Chase, Quetzalli, and I were present to babysit Lantana and witness Chief Wilder's arrival.

  The crunch of tires on gravel drew us to the door, and I knew as soon as I caught sight of the vehicle that this was it, the day I'd been pretending would never come. The question was, would I be able to do as the Chief requested without losing my honor? Or would I turn into an oathbreaker like the one who I should have had the balls to send on his way the night before?

>   At a glance from me, Chase handed off the baby he'd been amusing to Quetzalli and the latter loped off toward the woods double-time. No, I wasn't being a male chauvinist pig. All three of us knew that Quetzalli was ten times tougher than the gentle-hearted Chase in a fight. Lantana would be safer in her arms than in anyone's except my own.

  And I had a sinking suspicion I wasn't going to be able to protect the child myself. Instead, I watched as the passenger side front door of the vehicle opened and a huge suited shifter unfolded out of the seat to loom menacingly over my head.

  Behind him, Chief Wilder's scent wafted around the corner of the open aperture and into my human nose. It smelled like his high craziness was present in the flesh, hiding behind the tinted windows but likely judging my reaction with that characteristic smirk on his lips. Yep, this was it.

  "Chief Wilder requests a meeting," the spokesman rumbled. His voice was as deep as the ringing of a gong, but it was my upcoming decision that made a long shiver run down my spine.

  No need to let my benefactor see my weakness, though. So I looked directly toward the source of the scent, staring at my own reflection in the blackened glass. And after several seconds, the door in question creaked open to join its neighbor.

  "Get in," Wilder commanded.

  The limousine's back seat was large and open, but the other alpha filled the entire space through force of personality alone. I felt as if I was being invited into a hungry lion's den empty-handed.

  In other words, I was dinner.

  But there was no alternative. Shooting Chase a quick glance to quell his complaint at being left behind, I stepped forward and obeyed.

  ***

  I'd half expected Chief Wilder to bring up my debt as soon as the door snicked shut behind me, but instead he feigned cordiality. "Wolf Young," the other alpha greeted me, shaking my hand as if we were business associates on our way out to dinner.

  I played along, squashing my urge to shift to lupine form and challenge him there and then. With tact I didn't usually possess, I even refrained from taunting my opponent with the not-so-affectionate nickname we used behind his back—Crazy Wilder. Instead, I offered a sop to the older shifter's ego, addressing him as his own underlings would have. "Chief," I answered.

  My companion smiled, a wolfish grin that meant he knew very well who had the upper hand. But he continued to play human. "Do you like sushi?"

  Which is how we ended up seated on the back patio of a Japanese restaurant, our lupine metabolisms preventing us from shivering in the cold that had sent all other patrons scurrying for cover. We chatted like humans until the food came, then Wilder surprised me by manipulating his chopsticks like a pro.

  In contrast, I surprised neither of us by simply picking up the tasty morsels and drenching them in wasabi sauce before gulping the rolls down like the wolf I was. Why pretend to be human when my animal nature was my greatest strength?

  So, wolf-like, I waited Wilder out until he was sated from raw fish and sticky rice, his erratic lupine half soothed within his human skin. Then, resting his lips on two steepled fingers, my opponent considered me across the small table.

  "You've grown up."

  "It was either that or die young," I responded, trying to quash the thrill of pleasure that ran through my chest at the words. As absurd as it sounded, Wilder had become a bit of a father figure to me, and even this hint of approval warmed me in ways it shouldn't have.

  Something I hoped Crazy Wilder never found out, since he held all the cards and considered me an underling to be manipulated just like every other shifter who had the misfortune of coming beneath his sway.

  The fact was, I'd realized long ago that was what my debt was all about. Sniffing through the other clans' territories at All-Pack, I soon discovered that I'd fallen into one of Wilder's favorite traps. Find a young alpha still growing into his paws, help him out of a tight spot, then hold that favor over his head for years to come. It was no wonder half of our region's shifters fawned at the grizzled alpha's feet while the other half considered him with a mixture of dread and grudging respect.

  I refused to do either. Instead, I allowed my eyes to lock with those of my companion, and I enjoyed the lupine power that surged beneath my human skin in response to our silent contest of wills.

  Neither of us blinked, but Wilder spoke first. "The time has come to pay your debt."

  And tell me something I don't know, I thought, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Chapter 3

  "My hold over clan Wilder is waning," the grizzled alpha said after a short pause, shocking me to my core. I'd considered the Chief an unchangeable part of the regional landscape, like a craggy mountain I'd always considered climbing but didn't really want to cross. I couldn't imagine the terrain without his huge shadow depressing the other inhabitants.

  I forced my open mouth to snap shut, although I continued staring at the older shifter. By human standards he might be close to retirement age, but wolves don't relinquish power easily. So there had to be something more at play than met the eye.

  And there it was, deep within his lupine soul. A spark of madness forming and growing. I'd glimpsed the same flaw nearly six years earlier when Chief Wilder had walked away from me laughing after refusing to support my bid for territorial rights. But now the illness had spread much further, and I could tell my opponent's humanity was beginning to slip through his iron fist.

  I angled myself unconsciously to place my body between the other shifter and the human server who had come outside with the check. "I'll take it," I said curtly, slapping a credit card onto the plastic platter and sending the youngster scurrying back to the safety and warmth of the nearby building. I didn't bother to pretend manners when I called after him. "Don't bother us again."

  My attention never left the wolf before me, though. No, if Wilder was going to spring at the human, I'd catch the first anticipatory bunching of his muscles and would get there first.

  Only when the door had thudded shut did I raise one eyebrow in response to Wilder's statement. It wasn't as if I was a healer...not that I thought the other alpha's ailment could be reversed. No, he was drifting closer to the edge every day, and I suspected that he'd long ago passed the point of no return.

  "My pack needs a strong alpha," the other pack leader continued, his words a harsh growl. But despite his rough tone, his gaze no longer met mine. Instead, it had settled upon a trio of pigeons picking up scraps on the sidewalk, and I almost expected my companion to shift into lupine form and pounce on the savory morsels.

  I didn't particularly blame him—those fat city birds were delicious. But I found myself in the unusual position of being the werewolf required to bring humanity to the proceedings.

  "Not a good idea," I murmured, letting my benefactor take my words however he liked. A firm rebuke, I knew, would send his clothes flying into fragments of shredded fabric faster than I could blink an eye. Hopefully this more subtle form of warning would do the trick.

  Wilder's cold, dark eyes latched onto my face once again, and I had to force myself not to growl. There was no point in responding to his challenge, not here in a human city where neither one of us could risk being seen in lupine form.

  "My debt," I nudged.

  "It's barely a favor. More like an honor," Wilder answered.

  His humanity had returned in its entirety, and I almost thought I'd misjudged the sudden bout of wolfishness. Perhaps I was only reading my own bloodling nature into the other shifter's actions? "Mmm?" I hummed, trying to hurry this meeting along to its conclusion. The day's cold seemed to be seeping into my bones and now I was the one who had a sudden urge to turn wolf and run after small prey.

  "You'll come back to Haven with me and be my second," Wilder said, the words a statement rather than a question. "And, when I'm gone, you will lead the pack."

  I cocked my head, assessing whether Crazy Wilder was really offering a stranger leadership of a clan that had been in his family for generations. I couldn't t
ell whether the other alpha's weakness had made him so desperate that he was willing to go to extremes for the sake of his relatives' survival...or whether he was simply playing a game of cat-and-mouse with me once again.

  It didn't matter. I couldn't accede to his request either way. Because I knew what the other alpha would say in response to the obvious roadblock. Still, I couldn't resist asking: "And my pack?"

  Wilder brushed off the beings who completed my soul like the specks of dirt he considered them to be. "Half-breeds and dykes and useless submissives? They're not worth your time."

  I fought back a snarl, then opened my mouth to refuse. But before I could speak, the scent of the oathbreaker blossomed in my memory, the oily aroma that would soon be mine if I failed to live up to the promise I'd made eight years prior. What good would I do for my pack if I was saddled with a scent that made every nearby alpha wrinkle up his nose in disgust?

  So I did the only thing I could think of. I played for time. "I'll get back to you on that," I said, rising to my feet and letting my white cloth napkin flutter from lap to ground. The motion scared the pigeons, which fluttered into flight behind us, their avian aroma suddenly stronger in the air.

  Wilder was out of his chair and three steps closer to the sidewalk before he could stop himself. Then he paused and turned to face me once again, wolf rampant behind his eyes. "Don't wait too long," he demanded.

  He was loping toward his waiting car before I could make my feet move toward the restaurant. I needed to collect my credit card and beg the use of their telephone, and it wouldn't hurt to warm my toes amid the rich scents of fish and rice for a few minutes either.

  But once inside, I had to stop and wait out the shudders still wracking my body. Wilder was nuts and I still owed him a personal debt.