Hungry Like a Wolf

Two

Honor Tate bolted through the front door of her home and straight into the bathroom. There, she proceeded to throw up her breakfast, her lunch, and several of her internal organs. It didn’t help. The taste of blood in her mouth was strong and metallic. It should have been familiar. Instead, it was sickening—sweet and sticky—and it coated her tongue in a thick, persistent layer like an oil slick.

She clutched the rim of the toilet bowl and heaved again, so violently she almost missed the sound of footsteps padding across the wooden floor of the big cabin’s great room.

“Honor? Honor, are you okay?”

She bit back a moan, her fingers clenching, as another dizzy wave of nausea swept through her. Her cousin’s voice sounded as soft and concerned as always, and it was the next to last thing she felt like dealing with right now. She spat into the toilet, trying to rid herself of the taste of blood and bile.

“I’m fine, Joey.” As fine as a Lupine could be after chewing off the hand of one of her oldest friends and pretending to enjoy it. “I just wanted to wash off some of this grime.”

There was a pause, then she heard a soft question. “Why don’t you go upstairs, then? Take a proper shower? I can make you some dinner and bring you up a tray.”

The word “dinner” set her stomach racing toward the back of her throat, and she quickly shoved on the faucet full blast to mask the sound of more retching. Trembling violently, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and forced her voice to sound steady as a rock and calm as Sunday church. “Well, I was going to finish up delivering this week’s wood to the cabins on the lumber road…”

She let her voice trail off and crossed her fingers that her tenderhearted cousin Josephine would reply as she hoped.

“Don’t be silly. You’ve done enough today.” Joey’s voice sounded firm and soothing, and made Honor’s shoulders sag in relief. “Michael can finish the deliveries. You should take a shower and relax this evening. Or if you have to, work on the books. But stay in and get some rest. It’s been … a difficult few days.”

Honor stifled a laugh and flushed the toilet, grabbing a neatly folded towel from the bar beside the sink. A difficult few days? Why? Just because her previously healthy, arrogant, indestructible father had died, she had inherited his position as alpha over the White Paw Lupine pack, and had fought three alpha challenges in the same number of days? Pshaw.

She cupped her hand to her mouth and rinsed away the last taste of bile. Then she wet one end of the towel and used it to wipe her pale, chalky face. Damn it, she looked like hell, and that was not the sort of face she could let anyone in the pack see. Not even Joey. If Honor was going to assume the title of alpha, she would need to act like an alpha at all times. Even when she felt more like a sniveling, whimpering puppy.

Even when she felt like crying.

Stuffing down those very dangerous thoughts, she draped the towel around her neck and used one hand to hold it to her face as if she were cleaning up, then reached for the doorknob with the other. One deep breath later, she stepped out into the great room with a false smile and the towel half concealing her face.

Joey stood just beside the door, her hands clasped nervously together, her brow wrinkled in concern. “I’m sorry it was Paul,” she said in that soft, come-down-from-the-ledge voice she thought was soothing. “I know how close you two always were.”

“Don’t be.” Honor forced her voice to sound casual as she turned and headed for the stairway. “If it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else. That’s just the way it goes.” As soon as she had her back to Joey, she let the towel drop and reached for the banister instead. She made a point to barely touch it rather than to clutch and lean against it the way she wanted to as she walked up to the second floor. “Go ahead and tell Michael to finish the wood deliveries. I’m going to go take that shower. Send up a tray whenever it’s ready.”

Her steps remained brisk and measured all the way down the hall to the master suite and did not vary until the door closed securely behind her. Then she leaned back against it, squeezed her eyes shut, and willed herself not to cry. Pallor she could handle with a little makeup, but red, puffy, bloodshot eyes would take a lot more effort to conceal than she felt capable of just now.

“Damn you, Dad.”

The curse had somehow become her mantra over the past three days. Damn him for dying, damn him for leaving her his business, his pack, and his problems all in one fell swoop, and damn him again just on general principle. The bastard deserved every extra second he spent in whatever passed for hell these days.

Pushing away from the door, Honor paused for a few seconds, swaying gently with the rush of fatigue and nerves that seemed to plague her constantly now. She could barely remember what it felt like to relax. And to think the fun of leading the pack was just beginning.

Wheeeeeeeeee!

She padded across the floor toward the bathroom, thinking that right now a shower sounded better than sex or chocolate. Or sex involving chocolate. The smell of blood and sweat and soil lingered on her skin and clothes, and she was pretty sure she carried enough small twigs and dried leaves in her hair for a decent fire. She doubted the ability of soap and hot water to make her feel clean, but at least it could get rid of the surface detritus.

Ignoring the cavernous room, looking even bigger now that it had been denuded of all her father’s personal possessions and the stamp of his decidedly masculine taste, she pushed into the bath and flipped on the lights. She turned on the shower and let the water heat while she stripped. Her clothes landed in the wastebasket rather than the hamper. She’d never be able to bring herself to wear them again, so why bother scrubbing out the stains?

When she stepped under the stinging spray, she hissed at the scalding temperature and felt her skin immediately heat to a rosy glow. She kept her eyes squeezed shut as the water sluiced off the worst of the blood and dirt, not wanting to see the water turn as pink as her skin as it circled down the drain. The steel fence she had erected to cage in the memories of this afternoon still had a few weak spots, and she couldn’t afford to encourage any escaping thoughts.

She lingered in the shower, scrubbing herself from head to toe with a loofah three times before she could stand the feel of her own skin. That’s when she opened her eyes and reached for the conditioner. She applied it liberally to the mess of knots and debris that passed for her hair and let the thick liquid ease everything free. When she couldn’t feel any more pieces of bark or clumps of mud, she rinsed and applied a generous handful of shampoo. She lathered, rinsed, and even repeated it twice before she could make herself stop. Then she conditioned again and turned off the shower.

Hesitating for a long moment on the bath mat, dripping water onto the porous rectangle, she contemplated grabbing a towel, but found herself heading for the bathtub instead. She still didn’t feel really clean, but the shower had done the best it could. Time to give the big Jacuzzi and her least favorite scented bath salts a shot.

She set the tub to fill, grateful for her father’s ridiculously large water heater, and wrapped a towel around her hair before dumping two huge handfuls of subtly spicy-floral salts into the tub and turning on the jets. She slipped in before the tub was full, leaning back against its sloped side, and left the water running until she was submerged up to her chin. Eventually, she used her foot to turn off the water and let the rumble of the jets lull her into a half-trance.

That was her first big mistake. As soon as her body began to relax from the pounding streams of water around her, her mind began to wander. And, of course, it went directly to the places she didn’t want it to go.

Damn Paul Clarke, anyway. Why had he needed to play the big man with her? Why now, just two days after she’d lowered her only surviving parent into a cold, dark grave? They’d been friends since they were whelped, for God’s sake. They’d spent their childhoods playing fetch and chase together, their teen years learning to hunt side by side. They’d even brought down their first deer together. She’d considered him a friend. So why the hell had he chosen today to challenge her for the leadership of the pack they both loved? What the hell had he been thinking?

That he could win.

The thought echoed in her head, mocking her with the simple fact that it was completely true. That was exactly why Paul had challenged her now, when stress clouded her thinking and grief slowed her reaction times. As the beta, second-in-command of her father’s pack, and a young Lupine in her prime, Honor should logically have been too much for him to take on. But as an unprepared and insecure new alpha—as a female alpha without any sort of extraordinary power—she had been ripe for a challenge. Three of them, as a matter of fact, so the one coming from Paul never should have surprised her.

But it did. It shocked her to her toes. She hadn’t known what to do at first. Not until it became clear that even if she didn’t want to take the challenge seriously, that’s exactly how he had meant it.

Deadly serious.

He had gone for her throat, and as tough and strong as Honor was, she couldn’t underestimate a male Lupine who outweighed her by a good fifty pounds and had several inches on her in reach. Her father had taught her that every challenge needed to be dealt with swiftly and decisively, and he had made sure she knew enough to make her moves count. If she couldn’t compete with strength and size, she could use speed and treachery and use them well. Her father had pounded that into her until it became instinct. He had preferred the traditional end to a challenge—death—something Honor hadn’t been able to do. She had held back at the last minute and taken Paul’s hand instead.

She hadn’t wanted to. She’d tried stopping at a pin, as she had with the first challenger, but as soon as she let up, Paul had attacked again. So she’d hamstringed him, thinking if he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t fight. But still he had come for her, launching himself toward her throat with his good hind leg, and suddenly there hadn’t been any other choice. It was his hand or his throat, and Honor had chosen his hand. He wouldn’t thank her for it, but at least her conscience would survive for another day.

She laughed at herself, not with humor so much as disbelief. Like she could afford a conscience. That item now counted as a luxury in her life. It would until the challenges stopped, and she knew exactly when that would happen.

When she died.

Or when the Silverback alpha came to Connecticut and formally acknowledged her as the White Paw alpha.

Right. I predict that will happen on the third Tuesday after he also names me High Queen of the Oompa Loompas.

Honor sighed again and reached up to turn the jets to a lower setting, no longer quite in the mood to be battered. At first, she had thought sending that letter to Graham Winters was the solution to her problems. The alpha of Manhattan’s legendary Silverback Clan commanded respect from just about every Lupine east of the Mississippi River, and, she suspected, from a few of those out West, too. She had only met him once, when she was nine, but she remembered him vividly. He’d been a handsome young man then, only a decade or so older than her, but worlds apart. He had known his place as alpha and lord over the Northeastern Clans. She’d heard he had a good heart, as well, and recently, rumors of his marriage to a human had circulated into her pack’s little corner of Connecticut. They said the regional alpha had a son now, another Winters cub to lead the Silverback Clan into the future.

Good thing someone’s future was secure.

Honor made a face and turned the tap with her toes to let more hot water flow into the tub. The temperature had dropped below scalding while she brooded over Paul. If she made a habit of this, she’d need to get a second job just to pay her water bills. The way things looked, Paul wouldn’t be the last childhood friend to try their luck against the new, female alpha. Not unless the Silverback Clan finally got around to answering its frickin’ e-mail.

She growled.

“Honor? Are you okay in there?”

Argh. What spawn of Hades gave Joey her sense of timing?

“I’m fine,” she called out. “Just enjoying a soak.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I brought you a supper tray. I made venison stew. And biscuits.”

Honor’s stomach launched a violent protest at the thought of food, reminding her exactly how badly she needed to brush her teeth. “Just leave it near the chair, Jo. I’m almost done in here.”

“Okay, then. Is there anything else I can get for you?”

Some warm milk, perhaps?

“Nothing. Thank you.”

Grateful for her Lupine hearing that could pick out the sounds of Joey moving around the bedroom even over the roar of the tub jets, Honor listened until she heard retreating footsteps and the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing. Only when she was sure Joey had gone did she sit up in the tub and turn off the jets. Time to brush her teeth and flush that dinner down the toilet so Joey would think she’d eaten.

She dragged herself dripping from the tub and wrapped herself in a huge towel before padding over to the sink and the comfort of her toothbrush. The cinnamon flavor of the paste improved greatly on the lingering traces of blood and bile in her mouth. She scrubbed for several minutes, making sure to brush her tongue thoroughly before she rinsed out her mouth and reached out to unwind the towel from her hair. The long, dark strands, almost black with the weight of the water, fell down her back in ripples that would dry into semiwild curls. She ran a comb through them quickly then left her hair to dry and headed back into the bedroom.

As she had expected, Joey had turned down the bed, lit a couple of lamps, and touched a match to the fire laid in the hearth. The tray of stew, biscuits, and chilled dark beer sat next to her father’s overstuffed armchair. It looked like a room well prepared for the lord-of-the-manor routine, except that she didn’t feel a bit like a lord.

But the man staring at her from the door to the hallway certainly looked like he did.

Logan watched the slim, young brunette emerge from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, and placed an immediate stranglehold on his need to pounce. And sniff. And lick. And maybe taste. Even through the perfumy fragrance cloaking her natural scent—bath salts?—she smelled nearly good enough to eat. He inhaled deeply and considered whether or not to try a nibble. Suddenly she turned and noticed him standing in the door, and he revised his plans.

Definitely nibble.

“How did you get in here?”

Logan tore his eyes from the plane of creamy, pale skin rising from the top of the woman’s towel and saw the weary suspicion in her gaze. He also made note of the long, fresh scratch across her forehead and the bite mark on her right shoulder. It looked as new as the scratch. Seeing the obvious wounds, he made a surreptitious inspection of the rest of the skin he could see—which was quite a lot, praise be—and noticed a good dozen bruises. Some looked a few days old, others just pale shadows, not yet fully formed. She also had one skinned knee and a slowly bleeding cut on her left shin. This would-be alpha had gone through an interesting couple of days.

“Your housekeeper let me in.” He looked her in the eye as he answered her question, curious to see how she would react to the aggressive action. It also helped him ignore the stirring of involuntary interest he had immediately felt in her. She met and held his gaze, her brown eyes steady and serious, but made no other show of force. Maybe alpha, but not stupid with it. “She also offered me dinner but I stopped in town and ate while I got directions up here. You aren’t exactly easy to find.”

“She’s my cousin, not my servant. Now, who the hell are you?”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “Some say they’re all servants to the alpha.”

She didn’t answer.

“My name is Logan Hunter.” He watched her face for a reaction. “I’m beta of the Silverback Clan. My alpha has requested that I offer you his condolences on the recent death of your father.”

“Beta. Sent to offer his condolences.” She blinked; her wide, chocolaty eyes seemed slow to focus, but her expression didn’t shift. “Right. Tell your alpha to shove them.”

Then she turned her back on him and walked to a closet.

Logan tore his eyes from the point where her towel dipped down far enough to threaten to reveal what looked like a truly luscious bottom. Before Missy, he’d never really been an ass man, but as Graham could tell you, that little human had an ass that could inspire men to poetry. It had inspired Logan to a thing or two over the last few months, but now the image of this stranger’s derrière had all but supplanted Missy’s from his mind.

The thought caught him by the scruff. Lately, part of Logan’s subconscious had compared any female he encountered with the Luna, because he couldn’t get the woman out of his head. Just because he knew he couldn’t have her didn’t stop his wolf from insisting that no other female was worth his trouble. Until now. When he looked at Honor Tate, his finicky beast made not a peep of protest.

Huh.

With all that going on in his head, it took Logan a few extra seconds to register what she had said.

Shove them?

“Excuse me?” he ventured.

“You heard me. Tell him he can shove his condolences up his ass with a pogo stick. I don’t want them, and I didn’t ask for them.”

Logan watched as she pulled some things from a drawer inside the closet and tried to keep his mind off the possibility of that towel coming loose and landing on the floor. And of him coming loose and landing on top of her.

“He knows that. He doesn’t offer you sympathy because you asked for it. It’s just the right thing to do.”

“No, the right thing to do would have been to come here himself instead of sending his lackey. And to have agreed to my very sensible request for a formal recognition of my new position as alpha of this pack. Since he has done neither, he can go take his pogo stick and have a little moment of privacy with his thoughts.”

She began pulling on clothes with that peculiar talent women have for dressing without undressing first. She pulled a pair of loose cotton pants on under the towel and topped them with a tank top that she managed to don without displaying one additional millimeter of skin.

Logan bit back the wave of disappointment and shoved his hands into his pockets while he attempted to wrestle his attention back to the question at hand. “The Silverback alpha hasn’t made up his mind about whether he’s going to agree to that request or not. That’s why I’m here. Before he makes a decision, he wants to hear an outside opinion of the workings of the White Paw Clan.”

“The White Paw Clan works just fine,” she growled, turning to face him and tossing aside the towel. “You can tell Graham Winters I said that. And you can tell him that if he will not honor the request of his fellow alpha, then he and his pack members are not welcome in our territory.”

Logan heard the fierceness in her tone and scowled. “That sounds like a hasty decision. Breaking ties between the clans won’t benefit either one of them. And in your current situation, frankly, it can only make your position in the pack even more precarious. Your people are not going to like hearing that you bu-fued three hundred years of cooperation between our clans in a fit of pique.”

He hadn’t expected her to move so quickly, and only instinct kept him from jerking backward when he blinked and found her about three inches from the end of his nose, snarling up at him with a fierceness that surprised him.

And aroused him.

“This. Is. Not. Pique.” The low rumble in her chest told him she meant every word she spoke. “And I am not the one who ‘bu-fued’ anything between our clans. That would be your alpha, the one who has denied our request in our time of need.”

Logan did not back down; it wasn’t in his nature—the only creature on earth he backed down from was Graham, and even that was a struggle these days—but he willed his hackles not to rise to the bait she presented. He could make her regret taking this attitude with him, but he was here on a diplomatic mission and pinning and mating the alpha of another pack with no warning, no invitation, and no permission stretched the bounds of allowable behavior. Actually, it was out of bounds. But it would have been satisfying.

“If you would listen more carefully to my words, you wouldn’t need to make an ass of yourself by making groundless accusations and hurling unnecessary insults.” He spoke through clenched teeth until he managed to force his jaw to relax enough for normal speech. “Graham Winters has denied you nothing. What he has done is to send me to observe the situation in your pack and conclude exactly what decision he can make that will result in a positive long-term outcome for both our packs. Graham has no horse in this race; he doesn’t personally give a shit who leads this pack, but as the alpha of this region, he most definitely does give a shit that whoever leads is qualified to do it. The most important thing to him at the moment is preserving the peace we currently enjoy in this part of the country, and he’s not going to let anyone jeopardize it.”

She sneered at him, her tempting pink lip curling up to expose her white canines. “Right. And what exactly do you plan to conclude then, Mr. Hunter? How long will you hang around here pretending to mull things over before you run back to Papa Wolf and tell him no female could ever be qualified to lead a pack as well as a male?”

“I won’t be pretending anything, Ms. Tate.” He tried not to make it a growl, but a man could only do so much. “I’m here to do a job, and I intend to do it, not just go through the motions or phone it in. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got better things to do with my time than play games like that. I was sent here to check out the situation, so that’s what I’ll be doing, and if it takes me a day or a week or a fucking year and a half, then that’s how long it takes. This isn’t something I can rush, Ms. Tate, and neither can you. When we last spoke, the alpha and I figured it would take at least a week or more before any conclusions could be drawn.”

She laughed then, though the sound had not a trace of humor that Logan could detect. “Right. In a week or more, I won’t need your alpha’s endorsement, Mr. Hunter. Because I will already have been forced to cripple every adult male in my pack. So don’t you tell me about waiting for a royal blessing from his majesty, the King of Indecision.”

Honor turned her back on him then, but not before she saw his nostrils flare and his lip curl at the insult. She really couldn’t have cared less. Her day had already been for shit; this just topped the cake. She had been counting on Graham Winters, and now she’d found out her problem wasn’t even important enough to get his personal attention. He’d sent a worker bee instead. Well, fuck him. She’d been dealing for this long, she could deal a while longer. As long as it took.

She stalked back toward her closet, determined to don a pair of fuzzy slippers, find a bottle of Valium, and dose herself into oblivion at least until morning. She didn’t want to hear one more thing about Lupines, packs, alphas, challenges, or even the remotest connection to reality for at least eight hours. After that she’d go back to coping, but damn it, she needed a break.

It was a lovely thought, but it didn’t last much past the foot of the bed. She got about that far before she sensed his movement. She spun around just in time to avoid being tackled to the carpet, but not fast enough to prevent his getting a good grip on her upper arm. She felt his fingers digging into her skin, nearly bruising her, and she instinctively bared her teeth.

“I just took off one man’s hand, Silverback. I don’t have a problem with taking another.”

“And I don’t have a problem with putting you in your place, White Paw.” She saw his golden eyes snapping and felt her stomach knot at the knowledge that he spoke the truth. “I came here as an impartial observer, but if you want to make this personal between us, feel free. No one dismisses me but my alpha. Understand?”

She growled at him. “Oh, I understand perfectly well, beta.” She spat the title like a curse. “But you need to understand that no one gives me orders in my own territory. I don’t care how big, bad, and wolfie you might think you are. I am alpha here, and I don’t take insults lightly.”

“You might be alpha of this pack, but you still answer to the Silverback Clan. Don’t forget that.”

“I respect the Silverback Clan, beta. I answer to no one.”

Their gazes clashed for a long moment, a heavy silence weighted with rapid pulses and the sharp smell of temper. Neither of them blinked. Then the Silverback beta’s hand slid from her arm to the back of her neck, and he hauled her forward, mouth descending on hers for a rough, violent kiss.

It lasted no more than a handful of seconds, but it seared her senses with lips, tongue, teeth, and hunger. She tasted the thick, spicy flavor of him, smelled the musky, woodsy scent that clung to his skin, and felt the sharp edge of his strong, white teeth. When he pulled back, she blinked up at him, silent.

“We’ll see, honey. We’ll see what happens once I get around to asking the right question.”

Then he turned on his heel and strode out of her bedroom, closing the door softly behind him.

Honor stared at the white wooden panels for a long time before her knees unlocked enough for her to sink to the bed, where she sat for a while longer, trembling.