Savage (24 page)

She found the messenger. “Tell them to come in.”

“Yes, alpha.” The woman scrambled to her feet.

“Stand. Rise,” Katelyn said, feeling a bit awkward.

Everyone did so and she noticed that now only Justin would meet her eyes. It was a bit unnerving. She realized it was a sign of respect, but it made her feel like she was almost invisible.

“Get dressed,” she told Arial and Regan, who both headed through a door in the back.

Justin took her hand, lacing his fingers through it, and led her to the center of the back wall. Someone else dragged over the chair that Regan had been sitting in.

“Sit,” Justin said under his breath. “You make others stand.”

She sat gratefully. As some of the energy drained out of her body, her legs began to shake. She knew she couldn’t lose control. There were still Gaudins and Hellhounds to deal with.

Justin was still holding her hand and he squeezed it. She desperately wanted to talk to him to get her bearings and some breathing space, but there was no time. The others were settling into place around the room. More were entering, acknowledging her, as if word had gone out that it was time to pay homage to the new alpha.

They were trying to figure out what the new ranking was. She wasn’t a Fenner, so it put everything into a bit of chaos as they tried to figure out their relationship to her and to each other based on the new power structure. Even the older, stronger werewolves who should have been confident in their positions seemed unsettled.

She was glad that Justin was going to be there to help her. And she would never forget how he had been the first one in the room to pledge loyalty. He had been the tipping point that had allowed others to do the same.

She was still a bit stunned that declaring herself alpha had worked, but looking around the room she began to understand. They needed a direction, someone to take charge and tell them what to do. With the two sisters battling it out interminably they were never going to get that.

“It’s going to be okay,” Justin whispered.

Katelyn glanced past him to Lucy, huddled in a corner as far from them as she could get. There were still tears on her cheeks and everyone else had moved away from her as if she was an outcast.

Lucy’s heart was broken. Katelyn felt for her. But this was no time to deal with her.

Katelyn could hear footfalls walking toward the front door. It opened and the messenger entered.

“Alpha,” she said, “may I present Dominic Gaudin, alpha of the Gaudin pack, and his mate.”

Dom and Cordelia entered the room. Dom looked calm, collected, but Cordelia was clearly distraught as her gaze flitted over the crowd.

She’s looking for her sisters
, Katelyn realized.

“Who’s the new alpha?” Cordelia murmured to the messenger.

“I am,” Katelyn answered. She felt a thrill of satisfaction at the look of surprise on both Dom and Cordelia’s faces.

Dom recovered first. “Alpha, I greet you in the name of the Gaudin pack.”

Katelyn took a deep breath. “We both know I suck at the formalities, but I greet you in the name of the” — she hesitated, not sure what to call it. Was it still the Fenner pack? Was it the McBride pack now? — “pack that you see here,” she finally finished. Definitely something she needed to figure out later. “I hope you’ve come to talk peace.”

“We have. We were sent a message by the Hellhound,” he said, holding aloft a similarly blood-stained paper to the one they had received. “He says that if we do not make peace, all of us will be destroyed.”

“And I have good cause to believe him,” Katelyn said. “The Hounds of God have thrown in with him and they mean to wipe us out to the last wolf if we don’t end this war.”

It was obvious that the news startled Dom, but he did his best to hide it. Cordelia’s eyes went wide and Katelyn could tell she was still wrestling with the new order.

“So, let us talk about how we may end this,” Dom said.

“Okay,” Katelyn replied. “Agreed.”

She paused. This should be simple. Everyone stop fighting. But there would be jockeying for position if there was a ceasefire. Who won, who lost? Did either side concede anything to the other? Long ago, she had overheard Dom accusing Lee Fenner of poisoning Gaudin water with silver. Dom had watched his own sister die of silver poisoning.

Her entire pack was hanging on every word. She couldn’t afford to look weak in the slightest or they would turn on her as swiftly as they had turned on Regan and Arial.

She stood abruptly. She had to be free to talk, negotiate on her own.

“Let’s go where we can speak more privately. Justin will accompany me.”

She headed to the door and the others moved with her. Once outside, Justin touched her arm and nodded to the left. Presumably that meant there were no prying ears in that direction.

When they had walked about half a mile they came to a stop underneath a large pine that towered upward into the darkness.

“Okay, first things first,” Katelyn said. She hugged Cordelia hard.

Cordelia hugged her back. “You’re alpha?” she said, her voice wondering, admiring.

“Yes, I am.”

“Holy shit,” Cordelia said, and they both laughed.

Finally they broke apart. Dom was looking amused. Katelyn realized that it probably wasn’t alpha behavior, but he should know by now that Katelyn was different.

“And your sisters are both alive and have acknowledged me as alpha,” Katelyn said, as much for Dom’s benefit as Cordelia’s. It was important that he know she had the entire pack behind her.

“Congratulations, cher,” Dom said.

“Thanks, she replied. “
Merci
. Now let’s figure out what we’re going to do.”

“There has been hostility between our packs for so many years,” Dom began.

“But why?” Katelyn asked. “You’ve both accused each other of the same things: poisoning streams with silver, trespassing.”

“We hated each other in the Old World,” Dom said, “and our cause to hate each other grew stronger here. When we first claimed our territories, there were so few humans that we could run for days, even weeks, without seeing them. The safe places are now being taken by the humans.”

“When two packs are squeezed so close together, it’s our nature to fight for dominance,” Justin added. “That’s what wolves do.”

Trick had said the same thing. At the thought of him, Katelyn’s heart squeezed hard. She was the alpha of her pack now. She would probably be expected to choose a mate. Probably Justin.

Trick was right that they couldn’t be together.

No
, she thought fiercely.

“Times have changed. We’ll have to change, too,” she said, shaking herself out of her reverie. “Here in Wolf Springs, a McBride is in charge and I have no past grudges with you, no slights or insults that I care to dwell on. I have no problem wiping the slate clean and declaring our packs friends, allies.”

“Do you think you will be able to get your pack to accept that?” Dom asked, sounding dubious.

“I’m their alpha and they’ll accept it if I say so,” Katelyn said, chin raised defiantly. Inside, though, she wasn’t quite as confident.

“She’s the boss,” Justin affirmed. “If she declares friendship, we’ll live by that so long as the Gaudins do.”

“So, I guess the question is whether
you
can convince
your
pack to live by the same?” Katelyn said, aware that she was issuing a challenge.

Dom bared his teeth slightly. “They will do as I say.”

“Good. We need to start talking, discuss old wrongs. If your people have been instigating the maulings up here, we need to know. And the guilty need to be punished.”

“We haven’t!” Dom bristled.

“All right. Good. Let us prove that. And the damage from silver poisonings will have to be addressed. And we have to let the Hellhound know what we’re doing.”

“I’m afraid that even if we can convince the monster, the Hounds of God will still push for our destruction,” Dom said. “In our world, they’re terrorists. They’ve always hated us. Who’s to say they won’t kill another werewolf and blame it on us just to get rid of us?”

Katelyn was also concerned that her grandfather and Trick might have already set their plans in motion and not even she would be able to convince them to spare the two packs. No matter how much she had dreamed of leaving her entire werewolf existence behind, she was in it now, committed.

“We have to force a meeting. Make them see things our way,” Katelyn suggested.

“And how do you plan to do that?” Dom asked.

Katelyn was playing a dangerous game and the lives of so many were at stake. She took a deep breath and looked at Cordelia.

Then she said, “I know where the Hellhound’s cave is.”

17

SNOW DRIPPED FROM
the tree branches as the four stood closely together. Cordelia looked so confused that Katelyn had to hide a little smile. Yes, it was risky revealing the location of the silver mine, but it would be riskier trying to withhold it. If everyone knew, the power of that special knowledge would be lost. Wolf Springs had suffered for generations beneath the weight of too many secrets.

She hadn’t heard from her grandfather since Trick had revealed himself to be his apprentice.
Grandpa?
she called out again in her head. She mentally rehearsed different ways to greet him, assuming Mordecai McBride would never want anyone to know that he and Trick were Hellhounds. On the other hand, announcing that she was related to the very being who controlled the fates of two and possibly three packs of werewolves would go a long way toward cementing her position as alpha.

She’d have to wait and see, play it by ear.

“How do you know where the Hellhound lives?” Dom asked her bluntly. “I want proof. This could be a trap.”

“You need to speak respectfully to me, alpha,” Katelyn retorted, and she noted the flush rising up Dom’s neck and across his cheeks. He was going to have issues accepting her as his equal. “You’ll get your proof when you reach the entrance of the mine,” she continued. She narrowed her eyes. “You know the one I mean. The Madre Vena, where all the silver is cached. The one your spies kept crossing into our territory to find.”

Dom parted his lips in protest but remained silent. Katelyn and Justin had spared the life of one of them: Babette, the owner — make that
former
owner — of the dress shop where Katelyn and Cordelia used to go clothes-shopping together. Giggling and whispering about boys, or so Katelyn had thought. In reality, Cordelia had been discussing potential werewolf mates.

“Dom,
I
believe her,” Cordelia said quietly, and he visibly bristled. Even Katelyn knew that Cordelia was taking liberties. Cordelia had come down in the werewolf world: Lee Fenner had planned to make her his successor, and then she would have been Dom’s equal. But since she was only married to an alpha, and not an alpha herself, Dom was her superior.

I’m her superior, too
, Katelyn thought, keeping her chin raised and her gaze steely as she continued to press for Dom’s acknowledgment of her position. She finally understood why it had been so important to the pack to obey Cordelia’s father while he had been alpha, and why Justin had been so shaken even talking about the possibility of challenging the older werewolf for control of the pack. The pride of a pack lay in the strength of its alpha to provide for and protect the group — from predators and enemies, and from disharmony. It seemed a little complex to her, unless she translated it to working in the Cirque du Soleil. A performer could only shine if everyone else — the coach, the choreographer, the riggers and the spotters — all did their jobs. She was the one in the spotlight, but her pack was her team.

It was her job now to show strength and leadership by demanding respect from all-comers. She even understood that by trying to appear supportive and offering her alpha her opinion, Cordelia was actually diminishing her alpha’s stature. Her belief in Katelyn was irrelevant. Dom was in control. And by lessening Dom’s status by trying to advise him, Cordelia was indirectly doing the same to Katelyn.

So Katelyn said, “Cordelia, that’s nice of you to say, but I’m speaking to Dom.”

That got a raised eyebrow from Dom and a barely audible grunt from Justin. Cordelia exhaled, nodded, and crossed her arms over her chest. Katelyn detected a spark of pushback in the other girl’s demeanor and wondered if things had been different and Cordelia had become the Fenner alpha, if she would have risen to the task.

“I do know the location of the Hellhound’s lair,” Katelyn said, “and I give you my word that it’s not a trap. I’m the one pushing for peace. Why would I screw it up?” She jerked her head toward the forest. “We have a more immediate issue. I know you have werewolves on standby waiting for your order to get back to fighting. My side’s the same.”

“Alpha, if I may?” Justin asked. When Katelyn acknowledged him, he gestured for her to walk a bit apart so that he could speak to her in private.

Together they walked over icy patches of snow to a stand of trees. Justin reached out a hand to move one of the branches out of her way. As he leaned against a tree trunk, he let out a low whistle and smiled faintly at her.

“First of all, and I mean no disrespect, but damn, girl, when did you grow a pair? You’re doing great.” He gave his head a little shake and took off his cowboy hat. The frosty breeze ruffled his hair and a little tingle settled in the small of her back.

“Thank you,” she said. “And thanks for training me.”

His mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “I sure didn’t teach you any of this. You come by it naturally. This is what I have to say,” he continued, getting down to business. “If we’re going to tell the Hellhound and the Hounds of God — and may I just say we got an awful lot of hounds around here — anyway, if we’re going to swear to them that we’re going to stop fighting with the Gaudins, we damn sure better make sure that we have.”

“I know,” she agreed. “Do you really think we can?”

“Depends on the strength of our alpha,” he replied, flicking snow off his hat, giving the impression to anyone who was watching them that their topic of conversation was more relaxed than it was. “The wolf side of all of us wants to rip out throats today. The throats of all our enemies — Gaudins, Hellhound, Godhounds, anybody. I’m itching for a fight. I’ll bet you are, too. Itching for all kinds of things.” His voice dropped huskily. “I mean what I said, Kat. Lu and me, you—”