Seer: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 8) (6 page)

She shifted her weight.

He cocked his head.

She cleared her throat.

“How about we just not talk about it?” he said.

“Yeah. That’ll work.”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m curious and everything, but honestly, there are just some things I don’t want to know.”

“Ditto.” She reached for a coffee mug, and paused her hand halfway inside the cupboard. “No, I take that back.
Not
ditto. I want to know what’s up with the lady you brought back.”

“Honestly, P, I don’t know much about her.”

“Yeah? ’Cause you bit her last night.”

“Whatever.”

If he and his sister kept on at the rate they were, Arnold was going to take his chances with the coffee.

“You did,” Petra said. “I remember, because I damn near fell into a gully when you performed the act.”

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense. Why would I bite her?”

Petra shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m way behind the learning curve on the wolf stuff. Mom would have taught me all the lady stuff if she hadn’t died. I’m pretty much relying on the kindness of strangers to fill in the gaps for me. You bit that woman. You really don’t remember that?”

“I don’t remember
anything
about last night’s shift, and you know how unusual that is for me. Must have been because I didn’t shift the night before. Fought back the urge, and I guess my wolf went into autopilot mode as soon as I got here.”

“Maybe I’m putting too fine a point on this, but you bit someone else’s mate. She’s someone else’s mate, right? I’m guessing that’s the case, since she could shift before she even got here.”

“Like I said, I’m not sure what her deal is. I don’t get that kind of information in my visions. All I knew was that she and Kinzy needed to be scooped up, that she’s from Wyoming, and that she has a questionable marital status.”

“Uh-huh.” Petra pulled down a mug and splashed some coffee inside. “
Kinzy.
”

“That’s her daughter. Leonora’s, I mean.”

“
Mm-hmm
. And Leonora didn’t, maybe, smell a certain kind of way to you?”

“Did she smell like she had a mate? Yeah.”

“From what I’m hearing, that’s usually a strong enough deterrent to keep a wolf from sniffing around a lady.”

“Petra, I already told you that I don’t remember shit about last night. You say I bit her? Well, I don’t remember biting her, and I have no idea why I would. I’ll apologize to her later.”

“There’s a chance she won’t remember, either.” Petra took a long sip of her coffee and rolled her gaze toward the ceiling. “Gotta say, it seemed to me like she wasn’t putting up much of a fight. She may as well have rolled over and painted an
X
to mark the spot right on her neck for how submissive she was.”

“Leo? Submissive?”
Well, damn.
Arnold dragged a hand through the hair at the top of his head.

Petra grunted. “Yeah, maybe she won’t remember.”

“Maybe,” he said through a cringe.

He’d fucking bit some other man’s mate. That was more than a gaffe. That was trouble just waiting to happen.

If Leonora ever decided to go home, everyone would know something was off about her. The men would certainly know at first sniff.

She’d be labeled an adulteress, or a whore. Her treatment in her old pack could deteriorate to an even worse place. She’d already had a reason to run, and suddenly, she had even more. Worse—her predicament was entirely his fault.

“Shit,” he spat.

“Yep,” Petra said cheerily. “
Shit
.”

Leo had never been invited to sit at her alpha’s table before. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if the alpha in Wolverton actually knew her name, beyond the fact that she was, “One of those Hughes girls.” Adam Carbone, on the other hand, seemed to have an open-door policy as far as his house was concerned. More than half of the people in it at the moment were female, and they weren’t even afraid of him.

Weird.

She should have been eating. Her omelet was going cold in front of her, and she was famished. Kinzy was nursing away, oblivious to her mother’s disoriented state, and taking what little energy reserves Leo had left.

Wincing, she picked up her fork with her free hand and tried to ease back into the flow of conversation Adam was having with his son.

“That’s not what Lora said,” Vic told Adam. “She said Muriel would
want
to pay for the meeting house out here, because she’d need to make sure the construction was up to Norseton specs.”

“We didn’t ask them to pay for the building, though,” Adam said. “It’d be for our use. There’s no good reason to keep having them subsidize things that don’t fall under the category of housing. They’ve been too generous already.”

“The way Lora explained Muriel’s insistence to me was that any place where the queen might put a foot needs to be equipped with a safe room.”

“And so they’d pay for the entire structure on the off chance Queen Tess might come visiting?”

Vic shrugged. “Probably just an excuse, but don’t you prefer that to them bossing us around outright? Let them pay for the building if they want to. They’ll probably find some way to write the whole mess off on their taxes.”

Leo couldn’t take the suspense anymore. She leaned into the dark-haired young beauty beside her—the one who’d been tirelessly minding Kinzy all night—and whispered, “Who are they talking about?”

“Oh.” Leticia leaned in to whisper back, “The Afótama. They’re the clan who own this huge tract of land. They’re the reason we have a safe place to roam around. They let us live here in exchange for the work we do in the community.”

“Oh. Right. I seem to remember Arnold saying something about them, but so much of yesterday was a blur.”

“What
do
you remember?”

“Being so tired, but that’s nothing new. I’ve been tired since Kinzy was born. Oh,
darn it
.” Leo snapped her fingers, suddenly remembering she’d never made her follow-up appointment with her obstetrician. She was supposed to have gotten checked at six weeks, but when the doctor had told her to schedule the visit during her final prenatal check, Leo had simply nodded and pulled her panties up. Healing wasn’t supposed to be a problem for werewolves.

“Why
am
I so tired?” she muttered. “I need to get checked.”

“There’s a midwife-nurse practitioner in Norseton who all the ladies here see. I’ll give you the number to the clinic after breakfast. What else do you remember, though?”

“Well, I remember the drive, of course. And then I remember arriving, and Arnold going all furry.”

“And then you went all furry, too.”

“Right. I don’t remember anything after that. That’s funny, though, because I remember my run from the night before last. I haven’t been able to shift for very long, but I thought I was getting better. Last night seemed like a step backward.”

“
Hmm
.” Leticia tickled the top of Kinzy’s head and clucked her tongue. “I don’t know what that means. Maybe one of the other ladies would. I wasn’t out there, and I didn’t see what happened. Heard things, though.”

“Heard what?” Leo set down her fork and leaned in. “That I wasn’t in my own head?”

Whatever Leticia was going to say got preempted by an alpha werewolf jangling a set of keys.

Leo had to blink several times before grasping that he was holding them out to
her
.

“They’re for you,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

He shrugged. “We’re a little short on housing here right now, but Jim gave the okay for us to move his things into one of the apartments in town where the non-wolf guards live. That house should be all right for the time being.”

“I still don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“You need someplace to stay, don’t you?”

“Well…” Leo broke Kinzy’s latch and tugged her shirt down over her belly. “I hadn’t given any thought to staying. All I’ve had time to think about today was getting the desert dust and cactus prickles from last night cleaned off of me. I didn’t expect to be here. I didn’t expect to be
anywhere
.”

He walked around the side of the table, picked up her hand, dropped the keys into her palm, and then closed her fingers over them. “For until you decide to go, then. Might as well have a roof over your head and a door that locks, right?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because niceness isn’t profitable. I’m pretty sure that’s one of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.”

Alpha pushed up both of his bushy, gray-streaked eyebrows.

Leticia snickered behind Leo.

“What?” Leo asked.

“Ferengi?” Leticia snickered again.

Leo shrugged. “We got three channels at my parents’ house. One was PBS, the second only seemed to work at night when infomercials came on, and the third played
Star Trek
reruns all day. I’ve seen them all, probably three or four times each.
Enterprise
would have been my favorite of the franchises if it weren’t for how abruptly the series ended.
Voyager
wins out because of that. Love me some Chakotay, even though they rarely gave the guy a decent hook-up opportunity until the end.” She pinned her gaze on Vic. “What was up with that, anyway? Even Harry Kim got more alien tail than he should have.”

He nodded. “Harry Kim. Right.”

She waved a dismissive hand at him. “Oh, you’ll see what I mean. Get the DVDs.”

“I’ll put that on my to-do list. Right after—” He leaned around, ostensibly to see Leticia. “What’s that other thing you girls keep telling us to watch?”

Leticia cleared her throat. “Never mind. We changed our mind because they killed off the heroine. I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Still too mad.”

He nodded again, and then looked to his father. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ve got an overnight trip. Call me if you need me back urgently.”

“Vic, I don’t think that’ll be an issue. Don’t feel like you need to hurry back for anyone except your wife and kid.”

“All the same. Don’t wait to call if anything happens.” Vic waved goodbye to them all, and left the spacious dining room. No sooner had he passed through the doorway did Arnold step in with his hair wet and his face freshly-shaven. She hadn’t thought he could get any prettier, but obviously, she’d been wrong.

She made some sound that was half whimper and half sigh and pulled her gaze down to her cold omelet.
Great googly-moogly.

“Did you have plans for me today?” he asked Alpha.

“Nope. Can’t do anything with you until you’ve been through the HR song and dance. Go see Nixon, and he’ll get you squared away.”

“Where are you working?” Leo asked.

Arnold looked at her as if she hadn’t spoken English.

But then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to speak at all. Yet again, she’d butted into a conversation she had no business being in. Her sense of self-preservation had always been lower than average for a full-blooded wolf.

She looked away from his dark brown eyes, to anything she could stare at that wouldn’t make her seem like she was just heeling. She was far too contrary for that.

At the electric prickle down her side that made her toes curl, she looked back and found him looming behind her. He had his arms out and was wearing a smile, of all damned things.

“Can I hold her?” he asked. “I think we bonded a little bit yesterday.”

“The baby?”

His grin broadened. “Well, I didn’t mean Leticia.”

“No, you sure didn’t,” Leticia said in an undertone.

Leo craned her neck to look at the muttering brunette. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was gonna tell you, but, well…” she shrugged. “That dude walked in.”

“What’s him walking in have to do anything?”

Leticia pushed her seat back from the table and picked up her empty plate. “Oh, you know how stuff goes. One thing that’s the same in this pack as with all the others is the ladies like to do their gossiping out of earshot of the men.” She gave her head the slightest nod in Arnold’s direction.

“Yeah, I’d prefer if you’d talk about me where I can’t hear you,” he said dryly. He put his butt against the edge of the table and extended his arms. “Come on. Give me the girl. You eat the eggs.”

Leo looked to Leticia, who was rounding the table, for a clue.

Leticia darted her gaze toward the door and pointed at it discreetly.

Oh
.

Leo transferred Kinzy to Arnold and waited until he’d sat and settled her into the crook of one arm.

No whimper from the baby. Not even a hiccup or a coo.

“Weirdo,” she said.

Alpha chuckled and shook the contents of a couple of sweetener packets into his coffee mug. “Some folks are just naturals.”

“Not male folks.” She picked up her plate and stood. “I’d venture to guess that wolf babies are biologically encoded to repel the attentions of the male of the species. That’s the only explanation I can devise for how poorly they seem to bond with them.”

“Nah,” Alpha said. “That’s just the culture.”

“Really?” Leo said from the doorway. “Because Kinzy didn’t seem to care for her father very much. She probably couldn’t even see him clearly, and she didn’t like him. She got so upset that she spat up all over him the first two times he held her. Made that last family portrait very interesting.”

Alpha’s friendly smile drooped.

Creases formed in Arnold’s brow, and he gripped the chair’s armrest tightly with his free hand.

There I go talking too much again.

She stood very still waiting for the fallout, and that was hard for her. Silence was always hard, and she usually found herself backpedaling—trying to recant what she’d said before people decided to act.

“I mean, I didn’t
ask
him to hold her,” she said. “He was like that in all the portraits. With the other wives, I mean. Always held the newest baby.”

At the sound of Alpha’s chair creaking backward, she stepped more into the hallway.

Talking too much.
Just go.

But she couldn’t go. Arnold had Kinzy.

Get Kinzy, then go.

Swallowing hard, she took a wide arc around Alpha, set down her plate, and held out her arms for the baby. “I’ll take her.”

Arnold handed her over without a word, but the furrow between his eyes deepened.

Time to go.

She managed to get one foot away before Arnold’s firm grip on the waistband of her jeans tugged her back.

“Stay put, woman.”

She gulped again, and risked a glance at Alpha, who stood at the end of the table with his arms folded across his chest. Usually, she did an okay job at reading the mood in a room, but her thrashing heart and involuntarily quick breaths had her nerves far more frazzled than they should have been. Her gut clenched and brain may as well have been wolf chow given its poor performance.

“I—”

Can’t read them.

“You said
wives
,” Alpha said.

Leo closed her eyes and suppressed a cringe. That word might have come out of her mouth somewhere in that stream of garbage she’d spewed, but she couldn’t remember for sure.

“I’m just trying to make sure I heard you right,” he said. “We don’t know very much about you, Leonora, and I’m wondering if we need to take certain safeguards.”

“I could leave.”

Arnold tugged her back more, until her calf bumped the leg of his chair.

She opened her eyes in time to see Alpha shaking his head and dancing his thumbs over his phone screen.

“I didn’t ask you to leave. I need to know where you’re from—whether you’re from one of those places me and the boys always did our best to steer clear of.”

“Uh, Wolverton wasn’t much different than any other one-stoplight town.” She nudged a bit of lint on the carpet with the toe of her shoe, and added in a mumble, “Except for the polygamy thing.”

Arnold’s next yank had her on his lap, clutching Kinzy for dear life.

“Are you freakin’ kidding me? That’s what you meant by ‘depends on who you ask’ when I asked you how many times your husband has been married?”

The growly quality of his voice seemed to penetrate her like a Wyoming wind through a cheap coat.

She winced, and then gulped again.

He was too close for her to think, and he smelled too good—like a newly opened Cracker Jack box or something.

Biteable.

She rolled her eyes at the silly wolf in her head. The beast would have probably had Leo gnawing on him like a chew toy if she weren’t vigilant.

Concentrate on the baby.

Kinzy seemed entirely unaffected by the goings-on around her—a benefit of her extreme youth. Leo’s mother said Leo had been able to sleep through Armageddon at the same age. A little commotion probably wasn’t likely to startle Kinzy.

Arnold gave Leo’s left arm a squeeze. “Answer me.”

“Dang it.
Ugh
, maybe I disagreed with his tally, is all.”

“In what way?”

“That it was too high by one.”

“That
one
being you?” Alpha asked.

She nodded. “Not gonna lie or try to hash my words, I guess. I think everybody knew I wasn’t cut out for the job, but he got his hooks into me before I could get away.”

“No one knew you were thinking of leaving?” Alpha asked.

“I just bided my time. Went through the song and dance. The stupid little so-called wedding ceremony, because what choice did I have, right? And then came the so-called wedding night, and two weeks later, I found out I was stuck.”

“
Stuck
,” Arnold whispered. “You mean you were pregnant?”

“Yeah. I didn’t think running was a good idea then, which is dumb, I guess. Running would have been easier then when I was a little pregnant compared to after I’d had Kinzy and the jerk had bitten me.”