Otherworld Nights (7 page)

Even if he’d just stood his ground and refused to hide, I wouldn’t have made a big deal out of it. Beaten the crap out of him, yes. Had to. The Law was the Law, and it didn’t matter if a mutt’s instinct to protect his territory was as strong as any Pack wolf’s. Let one mutt break the rules and next thing you knew, they’d be camping out back at Stonehaven, knocking on the door, asking if they could use the facilities.

But this mutt wasn’t hiding or defending his territory. He was stalking Elena. He’d been following us all morning and was now sitting across the restaurant, gaze glued to Elena’s ass as she bent over the buffet table.

When your mate is the only female werewolf, you get used to other wolves sniffing around. I’d spent the last eighteen years dealing with
it or, more often, watching her deal with it. With Elena, interference is not appreciated. She can fight her own battles, and gets snippy if I rob her of the chance. But this was our honeymoon and damned if I was going to let this mutt spoil it. He had to be dealt with before Elena realized he was stalking her. The question was how.

When Elena walked back to the table, the mutt had the sense to busy himself gnawing on a sparerib.

“You okay?” she asked as she slid into her seat. “You’ve been quiet since the Arch.”

She meant the Gateway Arch, one of St. Louis’s tourist destinations, and where the mutt had started following us.

“Just hungry. I’m fine now.”

“I should hope so. After three plates.” She buttered her bread, then studied me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t know …” I pretended to ease back in my chair, then lunged and snagged bacon from her plate. I folded it into my mouth. “Nope, still hungry.”

She brandished her fork. “Then get your own or—”

I snatched another slice, too slow this time, and she stabbed the back of my hand. I yelped.

“I warned you,” she laughed.

The women at the next table stared in horror. Elena glanced their way. Five years ago, she would have blushed. Ten years ago, she would have found an excuse to leave. Today, she just murmured a rueful “Whoops” and dug into her potatoes.

I got another plate of food, avoiding the temptation to pass the mutt’s table. He’d made a point of staying downwind outside and now sat partially obscured by a pillar, too far away for his scent to carry. For now, I’d let him think he was safe, undetected.

When I came back, Elena said, “I think I have an outing idea for us. Someone behind me in line was talking about a state park. Could be fun.” Her blue eyes glittered. “Of course, we shouldn’t go during the day when there are people around.”

“Nope, we shouldn’t.” I speared a ham slab. “This afternoon, then?”

She grinned. “Perfect.”

Planning our second run in as many days meant Elena was bored and trying very hard not to let me know it. When you’re bored on your honeymoon, you know it’s not going well.

The first couple of days had been great. With two-year-old twins at home, the only time we normally got away was when our Alpha, Jeremy, sent us to track down a misbehaving mutt. Being on a mission doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves. There’s nothing like celebrating a successful hunt with sex. Or working out the frustration of a failed hunt with sex. Or dulling that edge of pre-hunt excitement with sex.

But there was also something to be said for skipping the whole “track, capture, and maim” part and being able to go straight to a hotel room, and lock the door. Still, we could only stay in there for so long before we got restless, and when we came out, we’d discovered a problem with our honeymoon destination: there wasn’t a helluva lot to do.

Back at the hotel, we called home and talked to the kids. Or they listened as we talked, and had their answers interpreted by Jeremy. As much as we loved our daily call, we spent most of it braced for the inevitable “Momma? Daddy? Home?” or in Kate’s case: “Momma! Daddy! Home!” Jeremy managed to spare us this time, stopping as soon as Logan asked, “Momma where?” and bustling them off with his visiting girlfriend, Jaime.

Next, Jeremy and Elena would talk about the kids and discuss any new Pack or council business that had arisen. Normally, I’d listen in and offer my opinion—whether they wanted it or not—but today I told Elena I was going downstairs to grab a map and a bottle of water, and I took off.

While I was reasonably certain the mutt hadn’t followed us from the restaurant, I wanted to scout to be absolutely sure. We’d walked to the Arch and then to the restaurant, meaning we’d had to walk back, which had given him the opportunity to follow. A cab would have solved that, but if I’d voluntarily offered to spend time trapped in a vehicle with a stranger, Elena would have been on the phone to Jeremy, panicked that the old wound in my arm was reinfected and I was sliding into delirium.

So I’d suggested we take the long route back. The mutt hadn’t followed. Maybe he’d had second thoughts. If he’d heard the stories about me, he’d know he could be setting himself up for a long and painful death. But if he’d believed the stories, he should have hightailed it the moment he crossed our path. So while I hoped he was gone, I didn’t trust he was.

I grabbed a brochure on state parks, stuffed it into my back pocket, then headed out the front door to circle the hotel. I got five steps before his scent hit me. I stopped to retie my sneaker and snuck a look around.

The bastard was right across the street. He sat on a bench facing the hotel, reading a newspaper. Cocky? Or just too young and inexperienced to know I could smell him from here?

I straightened and shielded my eyes, as if scanning the storefronts. When I turned his way, he very slowly lifted the paper to hide his face. Cocky. Shit.

Normally, I’m happy to show a young mutt how I earned my reputation. At that age, one good thrashing is all it takes. But damn it, this was my honeymoon.

I crossed the road and headed into the nearest service lane.

There were two ways the mutt could play this, depending on why he was stalking Elena. It could be his misguided way of challenging me. If that was his goal, he’d follow me down that service
lane. Or he could
really
be after Elena. He wouldn’t be the first mutt to think she might not object to a new mate.

I walked into the service lane then plastered myself against the wall, lost in its shadow, as I watched the hotel front door. After a few minutes, a car horn blasted and a figure darted between the heavy traffic. It was the mutt, heading straight for those doors.

I loped back down the service lane, circled around the block, then went in the hotel’s side entrance. There he was, hovering near the check-in desk, sizing up the staff. Hoping to get our room number? Before I could step out, a pale blond ponytail bounced past on the other side of the lobby. Elena. I opened my mouth to hail her, then stopped. Better for her to keep walking and I’d catch up outside the front doors—

Shit. He’d walked
in
the front doors. His scent would still linger there, and Elena had a better sense of smell than any werewolf I knew. I started walking fast to cut her off. She caught sight of the brochure rack and veered that way.

“Elena!”

I yanked the park guide from my back pocket and waved it. I moved to the left, blocking her view of the mutt. While she couldn’t smell him from that far away, she was in charge of the Pack’s mutt dossiers and might recognize him.

“Got the maps,” I said. “I was looking for water. I can’t find a damn machine—”

She directed my attention to the gift shop.

“Shit. Okay, let’s grab one and go.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the mutt watching us. Elena’s gaze traveled across the lobby, as if sensing something. I took her elbow and wheeled her toward the gift shop.

She peeled my fingers from her arm. “I’m looking—”

“The gift shop’s behind you.”

“No kidding. I’m looking for the parking garage exit. I was going to say we can grab a drink on the way. It’s too expensive here.”

“Good. I mean, right. The stairs are back there, by the elevators.”

She nodded and we headed that way.

The park wasn’t busy, so avoiding humans was easy. That took some of the challenge out of a daytime run, but a new place to run is always good.

We spent most of the afternoon as wolves, exploring and playing, working up a sharp hunger for the hunt. We’d found a few deer trails, but all of our tearing around had scared the small herd into hiding. Probably just as well—in places like this, people pay attention to ripped-apart deer carcasses. We settled for rabbits—the fat, dull-witted sort you find in preserves with few natural predators.

The snack was enough to still the hunger pangs without making us sleepy, so we followed it with more games, these ones taking on an edge, the snarls sharper, the nips harder, fangs drawing blood, working up to the inevitable conclusion—a fast Change back and hard, raw sex that left us scratched and bruised, happy and drowsy, stretched on the forest floor, bodies apart, feet entwined.

I was on my back, shielding my eyes from the sun shifting through the trees, too lazy to move out of its way. Elena lay on her stomach as she watched an ant crawl across her open palm.

“What about a second stop for our honeymoon?” I asked.

Her nose scrunched in an unspoken
What?

“Well, I know St. Louis isn’t shaping up to be everything you’d hoped …”

“This afternoon was.” She rubbed her foot against mine. “I’m having a good time, but if you’re not …”

How the hell was I supposed to answer that?
No, darling, our honeymoon sucks. I’m bored, and I want to go somewhere else
.

If it had been true, I wouldn’t have minded saying so, though I supposed, being a honeymoon, I’d have to phrase it more carefully.
Walking away from a threat set my teeth on edge but would be better than having this mutt ruin our honeymoon. Still, given the choice between staying and fighting this mutt or making Elena think I was having a shitty time, something told me option one was a whole lot safer.

“I’m fine,” I said. “You just seemed a little … bored earlier.”

Alarm brightened her eyes and she hurried to assure me she was having a good time. Which was a lie, and any other time she’d have had no problem saying she was bored. But a honeymoon was different. It was a ritual and, as such, came with rules, and admitting ours was boring broke them all.

Elena might squirm and chafe under the weight of human rules and expectations, but there was one aspect of them she embraced almost to the point of worship. Rituals. Like Christmas. Ask Elena to bring cookies for the parent-and-tot picnic and she’ll buy them at the bakery, then dump them into a plastic container so they look homemade. But come mid-December, she’ll whip herself into a frenzy of baking, loving every minute because that’s part of Christmas.

When the subject of “making it official for the kids’ sake” came up, I knew she’d want the ritual—a real wedding, the kind she’d dreamed of eighteen years ago when we’d bought the rings, her face alight with dreams of a white dress and a new life and happily ever after.

Instead of the happily ever after, she got a bite on the hand and the kind of new life that had once existed only in her nightmares.

I won’t make excuses for what I did. The truth is that your whole life can change with one split-second decision and it doesn’t matter if you told yourself you’d never do it, or if you stepped into that moment with no thought of doing it. All it takes is that one second of absolute panic when the solution shines right there in front of you, and you grab it … only to have it turn to ash in your hand. There is no excuse for what I did.

It took eleven years for her to forgive me.
Forgetting
what I’d done, though, was impossible. It was always there, lurking in the shadows of her memory.

When Elena vetoed a wedding, I thought it was just the weight of human mores again—that it didn’t feel right when we already had kids. So I’d decided I’d give her one, as a surprise. Jeremy talked me out of it, and it was then, as he waffled and circled the subject of “why not,” that I finally understood. There could be no wedding because every step—from sending invitations to walking down the aisle—would only remind her of the one she’d planned all those years ago, and the hell she’d gone through when it all fell apart.

But the honeymoon was one part of the ritual we hadn’t discussed. So, if a wedding was out, the least I could do was give her a honeymoon.

So I’d planned everything. I’d picked St. Louis because she’d mentioned once that she’d like to go there. I’d made all the arrangements—my way of saying that I’d fucked up eighteen years ago and I was damned lucky we’d ever reached the stage where a honeymoon was even a possibility.

I gave her this honeymoon, and maybe it wasn’t what she’d imagined, but at least I could make damned sure this mutt didn’t ruin it completely.

The mutt resurfaced at dinner, spoiling my second meal in a day. Not just any meal this time, but a special one at a place so exclusive that I—well, Jeremy—had to reserve our table weeks ago. It was one of those restaurants where the lighting is so dim I don’t know how humans can see what they’re eating or
find
what they’re eating—the tiny portions lost on a plate filled with inedible decorations. But it was romantic. At least, that’s what the guidebook said.