Not The Leader Of The Pack (3 page)

She shifted beside him, her breathing irregular. “You okay? If you want to leave, we can,” he offered.

She studied him so long before replying that he had to wonder what hidden meaning she found in his words. “No. It’s sort of a weird switch, but it’s nice to be reminded about life outside the hospital.”

“Yeah.” The heat of her body made him think plenty of thoughts about life outside the hospital. “Do you like the beer?”

She took a considering sip, then made a face. “It tastes like honest-to-God moose drool.”

“I’ve never actually hunted one of those.”

Juli smiled for only a second before her expression turned serious. “Neil, I wasn’t ready for any of this.”

He tightened his arm around her. “Of course not. How could you be?”

“Pack alpha?”

Neil cleared his throat. It was just like her to take him off balance by diving straight into the heaviest part of the conversation. He needed to respond carefully. “Juli, if that’s a burden to you, I may be able to help.”

“I hope so! I don’t know what I’ll do without you staying on as beta. I’ll need you to help me with so many things, Neil. Names, current standing. Everything. It’s been five years. What if people don’t accept me?”

Neil blinked. He’d expected to find her desperate to relieve herself of the responsibility Darrow had dumped on her. She’d left years ago, after all, and had never seemed to spare a backward glance for the pack, or for him. “You mean, you actually want to do this?”

She pulled back a few inches and stared. His body cried out at the loss, and he had to resist the urge to close the distance she had opened between them. “I have to do this. My father used his dying breath to pass this on to me. I have a duty. You of all people ought to understand.”

That came through loud and clear. Neil knew people talked about how much he’d sacrificed for pack duty. His baseball career, for one thing—he’d gotten plenty of chances to move up in the Minor League, if only he’d been willing to leave Missoula. That stung, but not as much as his decision to pass on the opportunity he’d had with Juli.

He spoke before he had a chance to think. “Maybe it’s time to stop worrying so much about duty. Maybe it’s time to think about what’s right for us individually.” He should have kissed her that night years ago. She shouldn’t take this responsibility now, when she clearly didn’t have the resources or the training for it. Both these things could be fixed. He took the little step toward her, wanting to sigh aloud at how perfectly she fit against him.

“What are you doing, Neil?” She looked frightened. Neil reminded himself to slow down, to act like a man and not a wolf.

“Juli. We’re the only pack members who saw your father pass that ring to you.” He paused to allow the significance to sink in. “You have another life in Lewistown. You have a career. You’ve made it clear you’re not interested in this pack. We can say whatever we want about what took place in that room. He could have passed the ring to me as far as anyone else knows. No one would question that.”

He would have kept talking, except that Juli wrenched herself violently out of his grasp at that point. “Not interested in this pack? We can say whatever we want?” He heard her just fine despite the new distance between them. In fact, he worried who else had heard her mention the pack. And who else had seen that furry paw she’d thrust into his face.

They both froze for a second, staring at her latest lapse of control.

“Damn it.” Juli’s curse came out more as a growl than as words.

“We need to get out of here,” Neil said. “You just focus on staying cool.” She knew better than to argue with him. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out, leaving their beers behind. They could finish this conversation in his truck.

They ran for the truck like the rest of the world was on fire, and slammed the doors behind them once they got there. Juli writhed in her seat, gasping, her wolf form rippling just on the other side of her skin. Neil panted in response. He didn’t normally have trouble controlling his shift, but with her beside him, so close, too much of him wanted to meet her in a place of complete abandon. He wanted to run with her under the moon, fight her for supremacy until neither cared who wound up on top or on the bottom. Then, with one last vicious pounce, he wanted to surrender to the merging of their bodies. He swallowed hard.

Stats. He ran through the winning World Series teams for the last three decades. He tried to calculate his total career RBIs. The stream of data calmed Neil down. He started the car. “I’m going to drive us somewhere a little more private,” he told Juli. “Just in case.”

“Back to the hospital.”

“You’re in no shape—”

“Back to the hospital.” She showed fangs. Neil didn’t need that so soon after he’d regained his own control. He stopped arguing and pressed the gas. They’d go somewhere. He just needed to be driving so he had something to concentrate on besides the idea of Juli giving herself up to the beast. He needed a really good reason to remain in human form.

The truck’s cab filled with her labored breathing. Neil turned on the radio to distract himself from the sexual images the sound called up for him. He’d always avoided being alone with her, afraid to give even the appearance of impropriety. Right then, Neil wasn’t sure if he was grateful for the trouble he’d saved himself or sorry as hell for what he’d missed. The instinctual attraction he felt for her was off the charts.

He got so caught in his reverie that only Juli tugging at his sleeve alerted him that her struggles had become sobs. “Neil, can you pull over?” Her voice sounded deflated. “I’m sorry I insisted about the hospital. I’m not ready to go back there yet.”

Her obvious misery immediately pierced his sexual fog. Neil pulled the truck into a convenience store parking lot and looked at her. “Do you want a minute? I can go get some water.”

“No, it’s okay.” She hesitated, chewing on her top lip. “Are you about to tell me I need to ask Dr. LaMont for some lycanthropy suppressants? I’m obviously way out of control.”

He hadn’t expected this. Neil sighed. He wished he weren’t in such a land mine of a situation. “Juli, you know better than I do how the Werewolf Council feels about public acts of lycanthropy. The problems you’re having could lead to trouble with them, sure. But your father just died. It can’t be easy to keep a lid on things, and Lord knows the full-moon exemption isn’t coming soon enough. I don’t believe in shoving lycanthropy suppressants down people’s throats the moment a little life happens. You’re feeling very emotional. That seems normal to me. What kind of person would you be if you weren’t having trouble with control right now?”

She gave him a teary smile that threatened to break his heart. “Thanks for that, Neil. It means a lot to me.”

He watched her face carefully. “About what I said in the bar... I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You just think I don’t care about any of this.”

“Well, do you?”

Her head snapped up and a bit of the wolf flickered behind her eyes again. “How can you ask me that?”

Neil blew out a long breath. She wanted him to make his case? He could do that. “What would you even do for work? You know being pack alpha doesn’t pay.”

She stared at him as if he were a fool. “I’m a registered nurse, Neil. There are two large hospitals here. I think I’ll be fine.”

“What about your fancy job in Lewistown? The one that was so important you couldn’t come back here to visit your dad?”

She rubbed her eyes. “Can you try to keep the venom out of this, Neil? Jeez, you’re so bitter, you’d think I failed to visit you.” Bingo. But Juli continued speaking, oblivious. “Gabriel’s not going to like it if I resign. He talked a lot about developing new talent when he hired me. But it’s not like the Council can’t run without me. This was my father’s last request. Besides, the pack probably needs me more.”

He swallowed, unable to believe she had the nerve to say these things. “Maybe I’m underestimating how good you are at walking away from things. Foolish of me, since I have personal experience.” Neil shook his head, uncertain if the anger surging through him was directed at himself or at Juli. “The pack needs someone really committed, Juli. Not someone who will leave again the next time it’s convenient.”

She snapped her gaze to his, her eyes widening with understanding. A wave of fear rushed through him. He’d revealed too much of his personal feelings. They needed to decide about the pack first. “You were the one who rejected me, Neil,” Juli said, her voice so soft he almost couldn’t hear her. “All I did was move on.”

She’d mentioned the elephant in the room, and now it filled all the available space, making it difficult for Neil to breathe. “That’s not what I want to talk about.”

“Neil.” She lifted her big, blue gaze to his. “Since I have to stay to lead the pack, maybe we can talk later about... what happened. If you want. If it’s something you regret.” Neil gritted his teeth. He remembered this look. She’d looked just this way the last time he’d seen her, the only other time they’d been alone together. One hand fluttered toward his. If she touched him, he’d be lost.

Neil pulled his hand away, shoving it into his pocket. The cab of the truck felt too damned small. “You’re not thinking clearly right now. Even if you did stay, what’s going to happen six months from now when you miss your job in Lewistown but you’re stuck leading a pack? Have you ever even fought a challenge? What happens when Jesse Hoak hears we’ve got a weak new leader and decides to drive over from Helena on a full moon? Will the pack even accept you? How are you going to win the trust of the people you abandoned five years ago to go to college in Idaho when there’s a university right here in Missoula?” He paused to catch his breath, then threw his biggest pitch. “What are you going to do without me?”

She actually gasped. “Without you?”

“Without me. I’m not a possession, Juli. You don’t get to inherit me. I’m not going to be on your side.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Neil?” All the softness had gone out of her expression now.

He expanded his chest, knowing she would pick up on the animal body language. “Darrow should have named me alpha. We both know it. I could have taken it any time I wanted. He had no right to deny it to me after the respect I showed him.”

Her eyes widened. She barked a short laugh. “No right? Since when is it a rule that when werewolves are nice to each other, we give each other things? If you wanted to be alpha, you should have challenged him. End of discussion.”

“Juli, you don’t really want this.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Try me.”

“You don’t really care about this pack.”

Her nostrils flared, but she spoke with cold determination. “I see what this is about now, Neil. Get me out of the hospital. Buy me some beers. Suggest that you really did like me all those years ago. Maybe take me to bed tonight. Then in the morning, I give you the leather ring like a good little puppy, right? And you get to be the nice guy and the alpha, and I get to go back to Lewistown with my tail between my legs, and you don’t have to feel bad about any of that because you know I didn’t want to stay in Missoula in the first place.”

“Juli, I was not planning to seduce you.”

She flinched as if he’d slapped her. “Right. You don’t like me that way. Whatever your tactic was going to be, then. It doesn’t change what I said overall.”

Neil had meant for this conversation to be so much friendlier. He’d never imagined she’d be willing to stay in Missoula for any reason. He’d expected her to give him the ring with a sigh of relief, and, yeah, maybe he’d hoped for one night with her before she drove back to Lewistown. Since she’d given up her membership in the pack to take her Werewolf Council job, nothing stood in their way anymore. He hadn’t meant to insult her, or to trigger this stubborn insistence on staying.

He certainly hadn’t intended to make her glare at him like she wanted to rip him in half. “I just wanted to help.”

She lifted her chin. Her eyes blazed defiance. “If you want to be alpha, Neil, you can challenge me for it.”

“
Challenge
you?”

“Yes. The way it’s always been done. The way accepted by werewolf law. The way you should have done it with my father.”

How could she insult the loyalty and respect he had always given to her father? He started the truck without responding.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you back to the hospital.”

She waited, but he didn’t have anything else to say to her.

“Are you challenging me?”

Neil shook his head. “If I wanted to challenge you, I’d have to acknowledge you as the alpha.”

She lifted her hand. “I’m wearing the ring.”

“I don’t think you can pass down rank like that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Have you ever heard of pack leadership being inherited? I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“It’s never happened, because usually a weakening alpha doesn’t have a misguided beta shielding him from other challenges!” Juli made an exasperated noise. “If my father thought you would make a good alpha, he would have given this ring to you. Believe me, he wasn’t sentimental about me. He didn’t think you were ready, and I’m beginning to see why. You don’t have the leader’s edge, Neil. If you want something, you have to take it. You can’t sneak and deal your way into it. That’s not how werewolves work.”

He cast her a sidelong glare. He had the uncomfortable feeling she was talking about a lot more than the position of pack alpha. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He pulled into the hospital parking lot. She wanted to see what happened when Neil Statham stood up for himself? When he stopped playing nice? Fine. He’d show her. “You can get out of the truck now, Juli. And you can expect to hear from your colleagues soon. I’m calling the Werewolf Council to dispute this.”

She laughed again. “Why don’t you just challenge me, Neil? Are you scared?”

He brought his face as close to her as he dared. He still wanted to kiss her, but fought the urge down. “Yeah, I’m scared. I don’t want to have to hurt you, Juli. So I’m going to handle it this way.”