Heir To The Pack (The Cursed Pack Book 1) (8 page)

She sighed. She had to
tell him, even though she knew she’d hurt him doing it. It hurt her, too. “You
live in a house with a pack of werewolves. You’re going to be king of them. You’re
not even human. I’m an academic, trying to get tenure, and a single mother. I
don’t have time for anything else. We don’t live in the same state, we don’t
want the same things, and we’re from different cultures. If I ever find the
time and want a relationship again, it wouldn’t be with you.”

His pupils went from huge
and black to pinpoints, even in the softly lit room. His mouth tightened. Turning
from her, he walked to the chair behind the desk and sat down, spreading his
hands on the table in front of him. “Right.”

She understood he needed
to distance himself from her, and she needed the distance, too. But she ached
for him. “Does that make sense?”

He gave a curt nod. “If
you don’t mind, I have some things to attend to.”

“That’s fine. I need to
put Jack to bed, anyway. Good night.”

He did not return her
salutation, merely stared at her. It took every ounce of courage she had to
turn her back on him and walk from the room.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

When Dash opened his eyes,
his bedroom was dark. Not much of a moon tonight to shine through the uncovered
windows. He liked to see out into the night, and for the dawn to wake him. Right
now, he made it to be about three a.m., give or take.

Sleep usually didn’t
present much of a problem for him. Business and pack-related obligations kept
him busy all day, most evenings, and sometimes all night long.

Tonight, however, he’d
lain awake for a couple of hours, haunted by Annie’s words. She didn’t want him
in her life. Worse, she didn’t seem to think him necessary in Jack’s life. He
was merely a gateway on the path to find a cure for Jack’s illness.

Two days ago he hadn’t
known he had a son. Now he had to contend with losing him to illness or, if he
survived, whoever Annie’s next boyfriend might be.

He’d eventually drifted
off, but now he was wide, wide awake.

What had woken him? He lay
still until he heard it again. Someone was moving around in the house. Every
hair stood up on the back of his neck, and every muscle tensed to spring.

Dash rolled from the bed into
a crouch, ready to run, to fight. Annie and Jack. He had to get to them. A
quick look around assured him that no one waited in his room. He gave in to
instinct and began the change. He’d be better able to protect them in wolf
form.

The fur pushed out through
his skin and his body morphed into its true shape, the change coming as easily
as breathing. He shook his ruff, his confidence returning. He was Alpha, and in
this form he could do anything.

His improved vision showed
the room lit as if it were dusk. He sniffed, breathing the scents of the house
deep into his lungs, and knew the scents of each of his pack members who were
present, the hot white scent of Gaelan, and Daisy’s lavender notes.

Over it all he caught,
intertwined, the scents of Jack and Annie. Jack’s note was earthy, sleepy, with
touches of cookies and milk.

Annie’s scent drew him,
warm and teasing, pulling him in. Vanilla, coffee, and sex. Gods damn it, he
needed to think about protecting her, not fucking her. Not right now, anyway. Not
ever, if she had her way.

He shook himself to clear his
head. Sniffing again, he found no foreign scents in the house, and his heart
rate returned to normal. But his sensitive ears picked up another quiet sound
coming from the living room. Dash nosed open the door and padded down the hall.

Jack sat on the floor in
front of the fireplace, almost cold now, although the embers still held
residual heat. He played with the old bone he’d picked up earlier.

Dash grinned, and he sat
back on his haunches, letting his tongue loll out. Chip off the old block. He
was surprised to see the boy up and around – he’d had so little energy
earlier. Perhaps he felt better at night, or perhaps the pack’s energy lent him
strength.

The boy continued to play
with the bone, feeling inside its hollow with his fingers, holding it up to one
eye to look through it like a telescope.

After a minute he pointed
the bone in Dash’s direction and caught sight of him.

“Oh!” His little voice was
high with delight or fear, Dash couldn’t tell. “Good doggie. Want bone?”

Delight, Dash decided. He
strolled forward, not sure whether or not to be happy that Jack wasn’t afraid
of him. Brave was good, but cautious was better.

He accepted the offered
bone between his jaws, and lay down in front of the boy. Propping the bone up
between his front paws, he began idly grinding away at it while watching the
boy.

“Good doggie,” Jack
repeated, and patted him on the head. Gently at first, and then a touch rougher
than Dash would have preferred. He avoided wincing but his eyes watered. Strong
boy, for one who was so sick.

He hadn’t seen much
evidence of the sickness thus far other than this apparent shadow and the fact
that the boy was far too pale and thin. Maybe he was getting better? On some
level that was wishful thinking, but he couldn’t help but hope. Realistically,
he had to be patient. In a matter of days they would see the Oracle and get
real answers.

Jack clambered alongside
Dash and lay down, resting his head on the wolf’s side. Instinct had Dash curl
around him, wrapping his tail over the boy’s legs. The child patted him one
more time before becoming still.

Dash caught his breath,
straining for sound or movement. The boy let out a shuddery little snore and Dash
relaxed. Asleep. Annie would prefer him in his bed, no doubt, but Dash had no
way to move him without waking him up.

Oh well. He found this rug
perfectly comfortable and Jack had found a serviceable pillow. Curling himself tighter
around the boy, Dash closed his eyes and fell asleep.

A siren woke him. His eyes
flicked open. The light of dawn filtered through the windows. His wolf brain
reminded him there was a small pup asleep at his side. He did not leap to his
feet to go find the source of the sound. Instead, he held himself tightly
around the boy’s still-slumbering body, ready to grab him by the scruff and run
if need be.

The loud wailing came
closer, until he realized it was a person making that noise. A very upset
person. He raised his head, looked around, and back down at Jack, who slept on.
He had a fistful of Dash’s fur clutched between his little fingers. Oh. Uh-oh.

Annie roared into the
room, still screeching. “Jack! Jack! Oh my God, Jack! Get away from him, you
mutt!” She reached for the fire irons and came up with a poker. It wavered in
Dash’s general direction like a badly behaved sword.

He fought the urge to
snarl. His brain ticked over, looking for a way to defuse the situation. If he
changed, he’d wake the boy. Instead, he opened his mouth, tongue lolling, and
beat a rhythm on the rug with his tail. She moved further toward him, poker
raised. Much as it pained him to do so, he rolled over on his back, carefully
wriggling so Jack wouldn’t drop to the floor. Dash put his head back, showing
his throat and raising his paws in surrender. More wag. He desperately hoped
she wouldn’t hit him where it’d hurt the most with the poker.

He’d die if any of the
other pack members saw him like this.

She lowered the poker, but
her white knuckles still held it in a firm grip. He let out a whine, which he
didn’t have to manufacture.

Jack stirred, let out a
sigh and deepened his sleep once more. Dash dared not move.

“Dash? Is that you?”

He thumped the carpet
vigorously with his tail. She came closer, up into his field of vision, and her
hands fell to her sides, her face unreadable. She turned and laid down the
poker on the side table. He’d escaped...for now.

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Annie turned back to the
enormous black wolf her son was using as a pillow. He appeared to be grinning
at her with his head on upside down, bright pink tongue hanging out. His long,
black stern of a tail thump-thump-thumped on the colorful rag rug where they
lay together.

Jack was safe with Dash. She
knew this. She tucked her inner mama bear back into the cave she’d rushed out
of with such enthusiasm, and tried to reset her brain into scientific mode.

God, he was huge. She
measured him, nose-to-tail, with her eyes. He had to be almost eight feet long.
The wolves she’d seen in zoos didn’t come close to him. But was that
because
they were in zoos? Was he even
the same subspecies? Perhaps werewolves were bigger.

She’d had a dog growing
up, a yellow Lab named Darwin, and she found herself looking for similarities. Despite
his size, he was narrower through the chest than a dog. She wanted to compare
the shape of his head, but with him being upside down that was relatively hard.
His thick black pelt muddied his bone structure, too. Instead, she looked to
his feet. Naturally, given his size, they were huge, even more so than she
would have expected.

He slowly rolled back over
to one side, Jack shifting along with him and resettling. She knew from
experience that Jack wouldn’t go to sleep or wake up until he was damn well
ready.

Dash met her eyes. His
glowed pale blue like the sky on a winter morning, and his gaze seemed to
pierce through her, to read every thought and emotion she held within. His ears
pricked, tracking her every movement.

She put it all together
and looked at him again. He was a glorious wild thing, lying on the floor like
a pet. An enormous, beautiful, pet. With her toddler asleep on him as if he
were no more than the family dog. This man-wolf-whatever, her former lover, the
father of her son, this beautiful beast.

Annie sagged down on to
the rug. “Words fail me,” she said.

Thump-thump-thump. His
jaws opened, and she could have sworn the wolf laughed at her. He turned to
nudge his nose at Jack.

“You want me to take him?”
Wag. “All right.” She leaned forward and gathered still-sleeping Jack into her
arms. When she sat back, Dash stood.

His midnight fur rippled. A
shimmer swept over him, a wave of velvet darkness, and in less time than the
wag of a tail, the wolf disappeared, replaced by Dash, sitting cross-legged on
the rug. Naked, again, of course.

He’d told her he was a
werewolf. She’d seen evidence of it. She knew now she’d seen him as a wolf that
first day. But this...this was the first time she’d seen him change. Remarkable.
She wondered where the extra mass went, although perhaps it was much the same.

She shook her head to come
back into the moment. There would be time for scientific speculation later.

After her diatribe
earlier, she supposed she should say something about him being naked. But no
one would see it except her, and although guilt tugged at her, she wanted to
look.

The years had been kinder
to him than to her. Was he immortal? Or lucky? He had a rancher’s tan—brown
arms, hands, and face, and the rest of him moon-pale. Hair covered his legs,
and a triangle in the middle of his chest, leading down to... Well, she
shouldn’t stare at that. Her own face and chest heated up and she forced
herself to think of other things.

She supposed she was lucky
he didn’t have a hairy back.

“See what you wanted to
see?”

“I’ve never seen anything
quite like that before.”

Dash threw back his head
and laughed.

Her face warmed. “That’s
not what I meant, and you know it.” She had to respect him for not continuing
to taunt her. Instead, he plastered a grin all over his long wolfish face.

“I didn’t wake him,” Dash
said. “I heard him playing, so I came to check on him.”

Annie couldn’t believe she
hadn’t woken up herself, but she’d been worn thin, exhausted by the last couple
of days. “Thanks. Is it always like that?”

“What? The change?”

“If that’s what you call
it.”

He shrugged. She admired
the movement of his broad shoulders, remembering what they felt like under her
hands. Her palms itched.

“It’s pretty easy for me. Some
people have it harder. It’s one of the perks of dominance.”

“Dominance?” Surely he
didn’t have some sort of unusual sexual lifestyle in addition to lycanthropy.

“Dominance. Being the Alpha
has its own special magic, of a sort.”

“Magic.” The word tasted
wrong in her mouth, and came out as though she’d said, “Poop.” Of course, she’d
seen a few things in the last couple of days that were hard to account for in
her previous worldview.

“Listen,” Dash said,
reaching a hand out to rest gently on her free shoulder. “
‘
The only way of discovering the limits of
the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.’”

She laughed. “‘Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Clarke’s
Laws. I can’t believe you know them.”

“I may not be a rocket
scientist like you, but I told you I’m not stupid.” Dash gave her shoulder a
squeeze. His hand warmed her skin through her thin nightgown. “Speaking of
laws, I believe you wanted me to keep my clothes on. I’ll go take a shower and
get dressed.”

Oh. Yes. She'd asked him
to put clothes on. Now she remembered. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for
trying.”

“I’m very trying, or at
least that's what my aunts tell me.” He stood, and she found herself face to
face with his groin.

She swallowed and averted
her eyes.

“Am I really that horrible
to look at now you know I’m not human?” His voice dropped to a growl.

“It’s not that, and you
know it.” She flicked her gaze up at him. “I can’t afford to get distracted.” Very
deliberately, she licked her lips and watched him react. “You’d better go take
a shower.”

“A cold one.” He turned
and walked from the room. His naked back retreated, his thighs and butt flexing
as he moved away.

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