Haunted Wolves: Green Pines, Book 2 (6 page)

“Yep.” He reached for his coffee. “I joined up when I was a teenager, and I was in my early twenties when Fletcher rolled in. I’ve known him the longest. Shane drifted in a few years later, and Jay was the last. He’d barely been around a year when we left.”

Interesting. “So…why? Why did you leave?”

Colin considered the question as he slowed to take a lazy left turn onto the highway. They joined the few cars cutting through the early-morning gloom, their headlights reflecting off the lingering fog. Fletcher’s restored Corvette hummed as Colin accelerated. “It’s a rite of passage, I guess,” he said finally. “When you’re young, you follow a strong alpha out of respect. And when you’re older, or tired, out of loyalty. But when you’re strong and coming into your power, you have to fight.”

As natural as breathing—for alphas. She’d seen Kaley do the same thing, could see it in the distance between the girl and their new alphas, Jay and Eden. An instinctive distance, and necessary, because maybe the wolf inside Kaley never knew when she would have no choice but to fight them.

When Lorelei didn’t reply, Colin shrugged again. “Some people get over it. Pretty sure I did. Fletcher… He has a lot more resentment to get past. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to follow.”

Fletcher acted like a man who’d found his place and lost it, not like a man still searching. “What’s his story?”

“I’ll tell you if you hand me one of those biscuits.”

He was teasing her. Lorelei ignored the gentle wash of power that rolled over her and lifted an eyebrow as she searched through the bag again. “I didn’t know you charged for conversation. This changes things.”

His lips curved upward. “I only charge for the really epic stories.”

She handed him the paper-wrapped biscuit. “Fletcher’s must be legendary, then.”

“
Legend
being the key word.” Colin folded back the wrapping without taking his gaze off the road. The scent of egg, cheese and bacon filled the car, and his stomach rumbled. “Fletcher’s from this fishing village in New England, up near the Canadian border. Very old school, very off the radar—but not the usual sort of sanctuary, either. Witches and wolves control the town together, and intermarry like European royalty trying to keep the peace.”

“They do
not
.”

“Oh, yes they do. Take themselves as seriously as European royalty, too.”

She waited for him to say more but he didn’t, so she nudged his arm. “Get to the good part.”

“Ah, but the good part’s pretty awful. His father was the alpha, and when Fletch was nineteen, the pack’s beta challenged his father…and won. The new alpha drove Fletcher out of the pack.”

And out of his home. Lorelei bit her lip. “That
is
awful.”

“Worse when you know he left his childhood sweetheart behind, and the only reason he wasn’t killed on the spot is that his mother agreed to marry the new alpha in exchange for sparing her son’s life. Legitimize the rebellion, or some kind of crazy dynastic bullshit. I’m telling you, the place he’s from is medieval.”

A whole different world from what she’d known, and it didn’t sound much better. “Now I feel guilty for teasing.”

“Don’t.” Colin polished off the biscuit and reached for her hand. “It’s one more story, right? We all have ’em. Don’t know many wolves who don’t.”

“No, not many.”

“Maybe someday you’ll tell me yours.”

Lorelei tensed. “It isn’t very entertaining.”

He squeezed her hand and then released it, leaving her with the warmth of his presence without the pressure of his touch. “So hand me another biscuit, and I’ll tell you another story.”

She recognized the careful, encouraging timbre of his voice. She’d used it herself, a gentle nudge toward trust. And she knew he couldn’t help it, that instinct demanded he push, no matter what.

It wouldn’t work. But he had no way of knowing that, and even if she told him, he wouldn’t believe. He’d just keep trying, and she’d have to keep shoving him away.

There was no straight shot from Clover to Memphis. It was another one of those things he kept forgetting about small-town life—sometimes, in order to get anywhere, you had to drive fifty miles out of your way on tiny country highways with few convenient rest stops and fewer topics of conversation.

The drive hadn’t seemed so long when he’d last come to Memphis. But Fletcher had been driving then, and Colin had been in the passenger seat, texting his contacts and cursing every time his phone lost signal.

Not now. Nothing to do but stare at the road and chew his lips raw to stop himself from trampling over the silence Lorelei clearly preferred. He’d always been partial to quiet himself—it was one of the many reasons he preferred Shane’s company to Fletcher’s—but this wasn’t the comfortable silence of friends who didn’t need to fill the quiet with useless words. This was awkward, tense silence, heavy and claustrophobic. Two near-strangers used to the buffer of pack, her vibrating with unease and him with frustration because there was nothing about her distress he could fix.

When signs for Millington began to pop up along the highway, relief warred with renewed irritation. He
had
to break the silence now, if only to discuss where to go first, but every mile tightened that knot of tension. If his wolf had his say, Colin would be burning the tires off Fletcher’s cherished Corvette just to get Lorelei as far from Memphis as possible.

Soon,
he promised silently as he tightened his grip on the wheel and cleared his throat. “Where to first?”

Her hair hid her face as she stared out the window. “I don’t know yet. We could go to Christian’s place, but it might not hurt to lay low for a day or so. I don’t know who’s in charge now—or how they operate.”

Nobody seemed to. At least, nobody Colin knew—or who was willing to speak to him. The best he’d been able to get was an assurance that one of the enforcer safe houses in Memphis was secure. “I have a place we can go. Keep us safe, at least, until you can reach out to the people you know.”

Lorelei turned to him and squinted against the bright sunlight. “I meant what I said. It’s not as simple as making a call. We might need to take to the streets for a few nights.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Even if her fear and unease had shredded his nerves by the end of it. “The place I’m thinking about is downtown. Was that Christian’s territory?”

She shook her head. “His stomping grounds were south—near Whitehaven. Downtown belongs to a family pack. They keep to themselves. They don’t fight, but they don’t take anyone in, either.”

The name tickled at the edge of his mind but slipped away before he could catch it. They were the wolves Fletcher had told him about, undoubtedly. He seemed to know every powerful wolf bloodline in the country, though he hardly could have learned about them in some off-the-grid fishing town halfway up Canada’s ass. Probably part of his prince-in-exile schtick, knowing all about other important families.

It didn’t matter now. For Colin’s purposes, an insular family that wouldn’t necessarily beat him down for trespassing in their territory was as close to perfect as things got. And it was probably the reason some past enforcer had picked that neighborhood to build a safe little den for anyone who needed to go to ground for a few days.

He forced a smile. “Then we’ll be okay in this condo. Might need to swing out and get some groceries, though. Last time I stopped in one of these places, there was nothing but flat soda, beef jerky tough enough to chip a tooth and a dozen bags of stale chips.”

“Downtown is good,” she murmured. “Close to midtown, close to Christian’s old place. Downtown is good.”

The eerie repetition chilled him. “Lorelei, honey? Are you all right?”

Her gaze snapped to his face. “I’m fine.”

There were too many cars on the road to allow him a lingering look at her, but she seemed spooked. Wide-eyed, too pale—afraid, but fighting so hard to keep it bottled up. He needed to get her inside four walls. Get her back against something solid, curl up around her,
something
. Until he could, he just had to keep her with him.

No choice, then. She’d have to talk. “Tell me about these people we’re looking for.”

Lorelei’s knuckles had gone white, and she relaxed her hands and stretched her fingers out on her legs. “I need to talk to Boz first. Even if she doesn’t have what we need, she’ll know where we should start.”

He nodded. “Tell me about Boz. She’s one of the ones who stays off the radar?”

“She’s an older wolf. Homeless.” Lorelei hesitated. “She took care of me for a while.”

Someone as protective of her privacy as Lorelei wouldn’t want to share that much of her past with him. Colin understood her reticence now, at least, but it stung. “And that’s why it’s hard to track her down?”

“No, it’s hard because she’s homeless. And unless I run into someone who’s been around long enough to recognize me and tell me where she is, we’ll have to get lucky.”

Colin chomped down on his tongue to keep from saying anything stupid. His clumsy attempt to sidestep questions about Lorelei’s painful past ended up more awkward than reassuring. Jay had trusted him with her sanity and well-being, and failure loomed before him, a bottomless chasm.

He’d give a fucking kidney for something concrete to fight. “Okay, so we hit the streets. That’s how I used to do this, before Shane tried to upgrade me.”

She flashed him a skeptical look. “And how well did you blend with your nice boots and your shoulder holster? You look like a cop.”

There’d been a time when those words would have been unfathomable. “I cleaned up all pretty before coming into Jay’s town, but I dirty down all right too.”

“It’s okay. I’ll watch out for you.”

That pricked his pride, but he choked back a defensive retort. “It’s your turf, sweetheart. I sure hope you will.”

The first hint of a smile played at the corner of her mouth as she nodded toward the windshield. “The next exit might be best this time of day. Miss the traffic.”

It felt like taking a step away from that cliff. “If you can get me to Main Street, that’ll help.”

“North Main or South?”

He rattled off the address from memory, one of the two dozen or so he had bouncing around in his head. By mutual agreement, the enforcers never left a written record of any of the safe houses scattered across the country.

She shook her head. “Then stay on the interstate. We’ll get off at Madison and cut through.” Once he’d shifted lanes, she arched an eyebrow. “That’s only a few blocks away from the courthouse, you know.
And
the jail. Do enforcers like to hide in plain sight, or something?”

Colin shrugged. “We’re not usually hiding from human law. The wolves we’re chasing tend to avoid it, though.”

“Right.” She tapped her fingers on the car door. “I’ll have to get used to that.”

“Should be easy in Clover, what with the human law living across the hall and all.”

She rolled her eyes and grinned. “Jay’s a werewolf who just happens to be the law. That’s different. Besides, Zack trusts him. Zack never trusted the cops here.”

Zack was shaggy, tattered around the edges and covered in tattoos. Colin would bet his too-shiny boots that the man didn’t clean up to look terribly respectable. “Well, I wouldn’t trust the human law around here, either. But I’ll sure as hell make use of them.”

“I bet you will.”

At least he’d found a way to hold her nerves at bay—all he had to do was ask for her help. “Stop being a smartass and tell me where I’m going next.”

Lorelei leaned her head back, her grin subsiding into a smile. “Keep your eyes peeled for three round buildings, all grouped together. You can’t miss them.”

She was smiling. She was
breathing
, and some of the choking tension in the tiny car had eased. He’d figured out what she needed all on his own, so maybe he wasn’t too broken to do a little good in the world.

He could do this. He would do it. For her.

Chapter Five

Lorelei paused, waiting for a line of traffic to pass, and took the opportunity to study Colin in the dim, yellow light from the humming street lamp.

He’d discarded his clean-cut attire for something a little rougher, and a day’s worth of stubble covered his jaw. But he still stuck out, even as a shadowed figure in the darkness. He was too big, maybe, or he carried himself with too much assurance. Comfortable in his own skin, something no one on the city streets ever seemed to be.

Or maybe it was just the fact that he didn’t look like the usual sort of human predator that prowled this area, but no one watching the way his gaze scanned the streets could mistake him for anything else. He was a hunter, one who could never be prey.

“You look like you want to hit someone,” Lorelei whispered. “Try to tone it down. If people see you coming, they’ll run for cover.”

Colin exhaled slowly. “I do want to,” he admitted as he rolled his shoulders. “But I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”

Maybe not to most people, but living on the street was different. If you didn’t hone your instincts and learn to recognize danger before it recognized you, you could wind up beaten—or worse. “You’ve been starving for a fight since before any of this went down.”