Charmed Wolf Read online

  “What’s wrong?”

  Because not only was she here at an entirely inappropriate hour with a baby she knew I wasn’t a fan of, an ocean-like tang of salt had filled the air as soon as the glass barrier no longer separated us. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying gallons of tears.

  Forgetting the baby, I slid onto the sofa beside her. “Who,” I added, “should I kill?”

  “You always sound like you mean that literally,” Kale observed. He’d returned to leaning against the sliding door, an attempt at nonchalant masculinity. It sat uncomfortably on his skinny frame, nothing like Rune’s panther-like suavity.

  I blinked away the memory. “Because I do,” I answered, keeping my attention on my best friend even as I spoke to her son. “Natalie. Talk to me.”

  And she did, but not about the reason she’d come. “Bad date?” she asked, reaching up to finger one damp curl.

  I shook my head, unsure how to respond to that. I mean, obviously Rune wouldn’t be my Consort. But I couldn’t quite make myself say the date had been bad. It had been...

  ...irrelevant. “Natalie,” I prodded, reminding her about the elephant in the room.

  She took a deep breath. “I need a favor.”

  “Anything.” Well, anything except holding the baby. But Natalie and I had come to terms with my disinterest in her younger spawn months ago. In my opinion, children became human at the age of five or ten or, depending on the child, sometimes as late as fifteen.

  Kale was human. The baby was not.

  Natalie’s response pulled me back to the more important issue. “My mother had a cerebrovascular accident.”

  I blinked. I had no idea what that meant, which wasn’t strange. Natalie was a scientist and sometimes she forgot to speak English. “I’m guessing that’s not good?”

  “A stroke,” my friend translated, her breath catching in a hiccup.

  That I understood. I pulled her in into a sideways hug, the best I could do with the baby between us. Then I released words I couldn’t share with pack mates. Words that would make an Alpha look weak.

  “Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”

  Here with Natalie, I could be myself. I could be myself and hold tight to this human who had no wolf inside her. Since I wasn’t capable of doing what I really wanted to—pushing wild strength through her skin—I settled for rubbing her nonexistent fur.

  Meanwhile, I waited for more tears. But none came. Instead, Natalie shook her head and pulled herself together. “I need to see her, but Kale has school....”

  And his dad couldn’t dependably get his name right, let alone peer into the dark recesses of a twelve-year-old’s insecurities. The baby had been a last-gasp attempt to repair a broken relationship, but instead a second child had finally pushed Natalie over the edge into filing for divorce.

  For that, at least, I owed the infant a debt.

  “I can stay with friends,” Kale observed from his perch by the sliding door. He wasn’t even looking at us. Instead, he peered out at the horizon. The moon, he and I could both see, was just barely peeking up between a gap in the trees.

  When Kale turned around to face me a second later, wordless understanding passed between us. A memory of our conversation last week when Kale had demanded to know why I no longer let him come for sleepovers. “It’s because I’m a boy,” he’d guessed.

  “No,” I growled, wolf leaking through my human skin as I answered. “At the risk of sounding trite, it’s not you, it’s me. There are challenges here every night after the moon rises. Not human appropriate. We’ll do sleepovers again after I’m confirmed as Alpha.”

  And...he’d nodded. Accepted that I had a life he couldn’t be part of, even though he’d been my little buddy ever since he’d learned to wash his hands without help.

  Now he was remembering our understanding. I could tell by the way his eyes dropped to the plant in his hands, the way he gently fluffed up leaves that didn’t require fluffing. His mother was into chemistry and he was into botany. His nervous motions were akin to hugging a security blanket around his shoulders.

  Natalie had overheard the sleepover conversation then, but she forgot in the midst of her pain now. “You have gender clinic Tuesday,” she reminded her son, oblivious to the silent discussion Kale and I had engaged in. “I’ll probably be back by then, but just in case, you should be with someone you’re comfortable with driving you there. If you want to come out to your friends....”

  This time, Kale’s gaze fell to his toes. The kids at his old school hadn’t taken well to his change of pronouns. In the new school district mandated by the move out of Natalie’s ex’s house, he’d introduced himself as Kale—he/him—with no complicated backstory.

  Like most transgender kids, though, Kale hadn’t biologically transitioned. Not at twelve years old. Instead, he took hormone blockers, a way of putting off the decision until he was older. The fact he trusted me to drive him to his gender clinic warmed my icy Alpha heart.

  “Of course, I’ll keep the kids,” I jumped in, accepting the fact that challenges would be a little more complicated for the foreseeable future. I was Alpha, though. I could handle complications.

  Of course, as soon as I spoke the baby cooed and waved her hands at me. I swallowed. Shifted my attention to Kale. Please, my eyes said.

  And he was a good kid because he strode across the room and put down the plant so he could pick up his little sister. “Who’s a cutie pie?” he asked, crossing his eyes then sticking out his tongue.

  The baby slapped him on the face. He laughed. I cringed.

  “Are you sure? I don’t know how long I’ll be.” Natalie was standing now, sliding from foot to foot. She either needed to use the bathroom or....

  “Your flight leaves soon.”

  “Yeah, but if you don’t feel comfortable with Hazel....”

  “We’ll be fine,” I told her. And, since she wasn’t a wolf, she couldn’t hear my lie.

  Chapter 5

  I left the baby with my old nurse, whose eyes lit up as if Hazel was a treasure rather than a ticking poop bomb. “Oh, the little toes!” she cooed. “How long can we keep her?”

  “Days,” I promised. “But you won’t be on call 24/7. Bring her to the nursery in the morning and they’ll take over. If you get tired of the baby before then....”

  “I won’t.” She turned away as if I intended to snatch the baby back. “My little darling. Look at your nose!”

  The wily old wolf who’d slapped down three teenagers last week for eating the last sliver of pie she’d laid verbal claim to lowered her head to sniff the infant’s cowlick. Her face broke out in an angelic grin.

  So that was settled. I’d never understood the obsession with baby scent. But if it was going to help me outsource my sticky problem, I wouldn’t look a gift instinct in the mouth.

  I only realized Kale was still trailing my footsteps when I stepped outside, toed off my shoes, and reached for my shirt. “You realize you shouldn’t really strip in front of me,” he observed.

  Right. I’d forgotten I had an older human child to deal with. “Your room is where it always is,” I reminded him.

  “Come on. My grandmother’s in the hospital.” He pouted out his bottom lip the way he used to when I refused to give him a second piece of candy.

  He’d always gotten that second candy. And, most days, a third candy. Still....

  “You want to see wolves tearing into each other?”

  He nodded.

  “Blood won’t bother you? You won’t run in and try to ‘save’ me?”

  Kale shook his head, then grinned. “Your air quotes are awful.”

  He was right. Human gestures weren’t really my strong suit.

  Challenges, on the other hand were. If Kale was intent on coming along...I supposed I could handle one human kid plus tonight’s challenges.

  “Okay,” I decided. “I’ll walk you there then shift.”

  “Great!” Kale’s enthusiasm returned immediately. “I w
anted to get a closer look at your Veronica officinalis anyway.”

  When I looked at him blankly, he elaborated. “Your speedwell. Little blue flowers? These.”

  He tapped the ground with one foot.

  “Oh, sure. Those.” I skirted around flowers I didn’t know the name of but did understand the Guardian had a particular fondness for.

  “They’re usually such drab little blooms,” Kale continued. “But they’re brighter and bigger here than I’ve ever seen before. Do you think they might be a new subspecies?”

  I hummed and his face fell. His voice, when he continued, was a whisper I likely wasn’t meant to hear. “Boys aren’t into phytobiology.”

  And even though the moon was already two fingers above the horizon, meaning I was late again, I stopped dead and turned to face him. Because I didn’t understand scientist-speak, but the flatness of Kale’s tone had been thoroughly understandable.

  “Translate,” I demanded.

  His ears reddened, but he obeyed me. “Flowers. Boys don’t like flowers.”

  Okay, that was predictable and wrong. “Do you like flowers?”

  Kale’s eyes were on his feet when he answered. “Yes.”

  “And are you a boy?”

  His voice rose at the end into a question. “Ye-es?”

  “Then boys like flowers,” I growled, or perhaps my wolf growled. Didn’t matter. Kale wasn’t going to second guess himself on my watch.

  And his face turned up, cheeks rounding and catching the moonlight. “Okay, Tara.” His scent was as sweet as the candy I used to ply him with.

  Nodding decisively, I dropped the issue. “Now hurry up. We’re late.”

  A CIRCLE OF WOLVES awaited us in the east clearing. The first to see me howled a greeting. A dark shape—Willa—padded away from the others and placed herself by Kale’s side.

  So that was taken care of. No one in my pack would forget themselves and attack a human, let alone an underage human. Still, Willa’s presence was a good reminder. I left her to her job, stalked far enough away from Kale so he wouldn’t be offended by my nakedness, then I fell into mine.

  Fell into fur that swallowed me and warmed me. April in Appalachia was as fickle as a tween’s willingness to have his hair tousled. Tonight, chill hung above the soil. By morning, there would be frost.

  Now, though, there was only heat as the first wolf rushed me. He was barely strong enough to hold his head up in my presence. But it was good to give weaker pack mates a chance to stretch their muscles. I sidled around him while he snapped and feinted. Then, remembering the long line of contenders still awaiting their turn, I lunged in and rolled him over onto his back.

  He panted out regret that I wouldn’t choose him as Beta. At least not tonight, not based on this showing. That, after all, was the point of these challenges. Because Willa had been my father’s Beta, but since we were both women she couldn’t be mine.

  And the Guardian was getting antsy. I could feel it when I walked barefoot through the forest. Could feel it every time another month passed without me conceiving an Heir and choosing a Beta.

  Still, it was hard to make a selection while fighting males who had no chance of beating me. Eventually, I hoped, one might improve enough so I could choose him as my second-in-command. It needed to happen soon. I could only hope the Guardian’s patience stretched that long.

  So we fought. One on one, five more battles. By the time the moon crested the top of the oak tree at the edge of the clearing, my right forepaw throbbed from where I’d clawed too deeply into an opponent’s flank. There was blood on my tongue. And I’d finally worked my way up to the wolves who I couldn’t fight with my eyes shut.

  Ash was one I’d been considering for the role of Beta. He wasn’t as strong as Willa yet, which was a problem. But he was my friend, someone I trusted to have the good of the pack as his guiding light always. As a result, I’d been training him in private, taking him through his paces time after time until he leveled up from novice to amateur.

  Ash had clearly been practicing on his own also. Because a double feint surprised me. His jaws clenched down around the tip of my ear.

  A less experienced wolf would have yelped and flinched, perhaps even submitted. But ears were just shreds of tissue. I ripped away, ignoring the sharp pain and the warm blood, using Ash’s overreach to toss him earthward. Unlike the others, I did him the honor of lunging for his jugular, proof that I considered him an actual threat.

  And he submitted...or seemed to. But as I turned away, something dark flitted through my peripheral vision.

  “Look out!” Kale’s voice rose to the pitch of a girlish shriek.

  And even though I knew the kid was safe beside Willa, I turned toward him. After all, Natalie had put her children in my care. Kale’s safety was my top priority.

  Sure enough, the kid was fine. Just pointing wildly toward my blind spot.

  Before I could swivel back to face the danger, something hard barreled into my shoulder. Together, Ash and I went down.

  THE MOVE HAD BEEN SNEAKY, not what I’d expected during an official challenge. Not what I’d expected from an unofficial friend either.

  Still, it was nothing I couldn’t deal with. I let Ash’s momentum push me into a roll. For a split second, my belly lay exposed between us. But before he could pounce, I was back upright. Feet clawed grass. Then my teeth bit into his skin.

  Up until this point, I’d drawn little blood. Just enough to give wolves the feeling they’d been taking part in more than a training session. Now, though, I didn’t hold back. My fangs grated against Ash’s cheekbone. Deeper. Harder.

  He still didn’t stand down.

  I had just enough spare energy to send a quick order to Willa down the pack bond. “Get Kale out of here.” Because while earlier tussles hadn’t risked sparking a twelve-year-old human’s nightmares, what was about to happen might.

  “Leave me alone!” Kale cried, but this time I didn’t allow myself to be distracted. Instead, I bit down harder on Ash’s face. Already, the wound I’d made would leave a scar. More risked breaking bones to the point of disfigurement.

  “This isn’t appropriate bedtime entertainment,” Willa growled behind me. “How about a cookie?”

  She was worse than I was with children. I would have laughed if Kale had been anything other than my favorite mini-human. I would have laughed if causing so much pain to a friend wasn’t making me sick.

  Beneath me, Ash didn’t whimper but he did relax. Not quite a submission, but the next best thing to one.

  Did he really think I was about to fall for the same trick twice?

  Still, I didn’t want to break his jaw if I didn’t have to. Releasing him, I took one stiff-legged step backwards. Meanwhile, behind me, the debate between Kale and Willa twisted and turned sour.

  “I’m not a child,” Kale countered. “If I was a wolf, I’d be nearly old enough to shift. Then you wouldn’t send me away from here.”

  “But you’re not a wolf, are you?” Willa’s words dripped with condescension. Kale sucked in a breath that almost sounded like a sob.

  “The Alpha,” Willa continued, “said it’s time for you to go.”

  “Tara didn’t say anything!”

  “You will call her Alpha.”

  Willa’s growl was twice as threatening as Ash’s posture. Beneath me, my opponent lay still as a stone.

  But he wasn’t done. His muscles were coiled. And, as we’d learned during sparring matches, his bulk considerably outmatched mine.

  If he managed to find his way onto my back, I’d be the one at a disadvantage....

  I shook my head, focusing on the present. I was willing to take that risk to shut down the conversation between my buddy and my Beta before it spiraled all the way out of control. Before the fight between me and Ash descended into cascades of blood no twelve-year-old should see.

  So I risked taking my eyes off my opponent. Lunging toward Kale, I communicated in the only way I could with an erra
nt human. I bared my teeth and I snapped.

  The kid jumped backward as fast as a rabbit. “Tara...Alpha.”

  His voice was a whimper. I’d always acted more like a pet dog than a scary wolf in his presence. I’d wanted him to trust me, not to react with fear.

  I growled anyway. And he must have thought that growl was an agreement with Willa, a dismissal of his young adulthood. Because his face folded. The same way it did when his dad got busy and forgot to pick him up for the weekend. The same way it did when kids from his old school used his dead name.

  I froze for a split second, hating that I’d broken the bond I’d worked so hard to build with Natalie’s son. Froze and watched him follow Willa away into the darkness.

  A rush of air warned me one split second before Ash landed on my back.

  Chapter 6

  The boulder at the edge of the clearing. Ash must have clambered atop it while I was dealing with Kale. There’d been half a dozen wolves up there watching, though. Shouldn’t one of them have warned me about impending attack?

  No matter. Ash was on top of me now, his fangs cutting into the thick skin at my ruff. He was going for my jugular, but it would take a lot of mouthing to work his way around my neck and get there.

  And I wasn’t waiting. With Kale gone, I didn’t have to hold back any longer. And even though Ash had the literal upper hand—upper paw?—I was far from vanquished.

  Because my opponent spent too much of his time human. Like most who practiced primarily on two legs, he’d decided to focus on expanding his right side’s skills at the expense of the other.

  In contrast, wolves were ambidextrous. As Alpha, I’d spent days learning to work my left paws as well as my right.

  So I twisted my neck until it ached, going for Ash’s left armpit. A well-trained wolf would have been able to block me. But Ash just scratched feebly, unskillful with his off side. In his efforts to free himself, his hold on my neck slipped.

  And that was my cue. Lunging sideways, I pulled Ash into a roll along with me. Brittle flower stems crushed as we thrashed our way out of the official challenge clearing and into the forest.