Seer: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 8) (7 page)

Alpha retook his seat, forcing out a harsh exhalation in the process.

Leticia stepped back into the dining room doorway and made a
well?
gesture at Leo. Then she mouthed,
Never mind
, obviously seeing that Arnold held Leo in a bit of a quagmire. Not that she wanted to move.

She
should
have moved. She hadn’t been raised to sit on strange men’s laps, but he’d been the one to put her there and, again, he smelled nice.

Wait…

She turned a bit and tried to look at him. “Don’t I stink of my mate to you? Isn’t me being this close to you hard on your wolfy nose?”

Arnold rolled his eyes and let out a ragged breath. “No.”

“Why not?”

Leticia heaved a dramatic sigh from the doorway. “We might have had a little chat about that if you’d come and nuked your omelet in the kitchen like you were going to.”

“Well, tell me now. I hate feeling so behind the curve.”

Leticia rolled back her upper lip and groaned. “With Arnold sitting there, maybe you should— Actually, you know what? I’m gonna go make another pot of coffee.” She zipped away.

“Coward!” Leo called after her.

“Yep.”

Leo craned her neck around and looked at Arnold again. “What happened last night?”

His lips were so close, and he had the nicest pair of lips she’d ever seen on a man. The top was a perfectly formed archer’s bow with a dip in the middle, sized just right for the press of a fingertip.
Her
fingertip, to be precise. The bottom lip wasn’t too bad, either. It looked pillow-soft and sweet enough to lick.

“But I won’t, because I’m holding a baby and that’d be weird,” she said.

“Pardon?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“You said you won’t do something because you’re holding a baby. Won’t do
what
?”

Derp.

She cleared her throat and scrambled away from him. “You’re hearing things.” Fortunately, he let go of her, sparing her another awkward plop onto his lap.

“Pretty sure I heard you too,” Alpha said, “but that doesn’t matter. Let’s clear some things up. First things first, you left your husband?”

Leo gave Kinzy’s diaper a testing squeeze, hoping she’d soaked herself and gave her mother a good reason to flee from the room.

Dang it. Dry as a bone.

Leo groaned, and her shoulders fell with resignation. “Okay, first of all, I don’t consider myself to be his wife. That dishonor goes to the first lady who got saddled with him.” She added in a mutter, “The poor wretch.”

Alpha snorted. “Duly noted.”

“And, yes, I left him. Or really, I left the home he put me up in. He wasn’t there at the time. Contrary to what you might think, he didn’t have us all in the same house. We were really spread out, and he’d hop around from one wife’s little shack to the next one.”

Arnold made some noise that was either a supremely disgusted scoff or a very controlled sneeze.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head and made a
go on
gesture.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “
What
?”

“Forgive me for taking umbrage.”

“He can’t help it,” Alpha said.

Leo pulled her gaze back to him. Before she could spit out the obvious follow-up question, he said, “So you learned his wife schedule?”

“Well, sort of.” She shrugged. “I figured he’d have one, because that would make sense. That way, all the broodmares are equally miserable, right? But the best I could tell, he went to whoever’s house he felt like at any given time. He might stay a few nights at one lady’s, go to another, and then go back to the first one. Totally unpredictable.”

“How did you know when to run?”

She cleared her throat, and glanced back at Arnold, who was toying with the point of a steak knife and grinding his teeth. “What?” she demanded.

“You gonna tell me you ran right after he left your house one day, aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t gonna tell
you
.” She gestured toward Alpha. “I was gonna tell
him
. He asked.”

“So did I.”

“No need getting cranky about it.”

“The least thing I am is cranky.”

On that inscrutable note, a small woman with long dark hair and a profile that looked remarkably like that of the scowling wolf beside Leo poked her head into the room. “Oh. There you are.”

“No bloodshed yet,” Alpha said with a chuckle.

“I guess that’d be hard to manage with her holding a baby. Arnold, you don’t need me here, do you?”

“Nope. Why?”

“That consulting doctor is in town to run some tests on me. They want to rule out epilepsy as a diagnosis.”

“Petra, you never
told
me epilepsy was one of the options.”

Petra. Ah. The twin.

She was pretty, but Leo shouldn’t have been surprised at that. It would have been a travesty if Arnold had gotten all the looks.

Petra shrugged. “You weren’t here. You were out mate-snatching, I guess.”

“Snatch mate say
what
now?” Leo balked.

“He bit you, by the way,” Petra said, wriggling her dark eyebrows. “Bit you when you were on four legs. I witnessed the event. Ask him if you stink to him.”

“
Petra
,” Arnold said in a scolding voice.

“I already asked him that!” Leo exclaimed.

“What’d he tell you?” Petra asked.

“Said I didn’t stink.”

“Well, there you go. Now, you stink of
him
. I can’t say if that’s an improvement, though. He’s my twin, and I can’t smell his hormones one way or another. He smells neutral to me. But, anyway.” She gave Arnold a little finger wave. “I’ll be either at the hospital or at Paul’s for the next couple of days. I figured I’d do you the courtesy you didn’t do for me, and keep you informed of where I was.”

“You bit me?” Leo asked Arnold.

Arnold didn’t respond. He was too busy giving his sister a death glare and pinching the bridge of his nose.

Petra’s grin widened and she waved once more. “See ya later.”

Alpha put his head in his hands atop the dining room table. His palms covering his mouth may have muffled the sound of his ensuing chuckle almost completely, but he couldn’t hide the shaking of his shoulders from his barely-restrained laughter.

The last time Leo’d had an alpha laugh at her had been the day she’d recklessly suggested to her old one that perhaps he should pick another blonde to be Samuel’s next mate, seeing as how they were all pretty much interchangeable.

Her alpha hadn’t been laughing because what she’d said was so funny, but because she’d
dared
to think she had a say in where she went—that she’d dared to think that she had ownership over herself.

She didn’t think Adam was laughing for the same reason, though. She didn’t get that megalomaniacal energy off of him. He was just
amused
by his pack members, and she wasn’t used to that.

She turned slowly toward Arnold. “You bit me.”

He shrugged and set down the knife. “Apparently, I did. I don’t have memory of the event, however. I was too tired when I got here last night. Just like you, I don’t remember my run, but I don’t believe anyone here would lie that I bit you if I hadn’t.” He ground his teeth for a few beats, and then added in a mumble, “There were supposedly several witnesses beyond Petra.”

“And I have your scent.”

“Apparently.”

“I
let
you bite me?”

He shrugged again.

Leo pulled out a chair beside him and flopped onto the seat. “Gods! This is like one of those books where people wake up married in Las Vegas, but instead of getting plastered last night, we got wolfy.”

“The question now is what do you want to do about it?” Alpha asked.

“She stays with me,” Arnold said.

At the exact same time, Leo declared, “Let me think about that.”

Arnold leaned his elbows onto the table and pinned an unforgiving stare on her.

She gave her head a hard shake. “Nuh-uh. No,
sir
, don’t make me think I have an option and then yank it right away. Don’t joke with me like that. I can’t take that mess. And I don’t like you squinting at me like that.” She reached over and gave his shoulder a hard poke. “You were nicer yesterday. Go back to being that way.”

“I hadn’t bitten you yesterday.”

“Isn’t that weird? One would think you’d be nicer now that you have, but I guess wolves don’t make a hell of a lot of sense in general. Samuel was nicer before he bit me, too, but I guess that isn’t saying much.”

“Do
not
compare me to him.”

“Why not? You’re doing the exact same thing he did—asserting your will on me and taking away my ability to make choices.”

“Woman, I’m not taking away your ability to choose. I told you in the truck that if you got here and decided that you want to go, no one would keep you in Norseton. That hasn’t changed. I just think giving this thing a shot for a while is a reasonable request.”

“What thing?”

“I bit you. You’re my mate.”

“I’m
Samuel
’s mate.”

Arnold scoffed. “Bogus. Looks to me like you had his baby and then ran, so do you really think that’s what you are? And you don’t smell like you’re his anymore. You smell like you’re
mine
. Maybe I don’t remember biting you, but I don’t regret that I did. I think that’s why I was sent the vision to fetch you in the first place. You’re supposed to be mine.”

“Always
someone’s
. Why can’t I be
no
one’s?” Her voice came out in a pathetic whisper she hardly recognized as her own, but she wouldn’t take the words back. She’d meant every one.

She took a deep breath, and pressed Kinzy tight against her chest. Kinzy was the most sure, solid thing in Leo’s life. Holding her was almost like medicine at times, even when Leo was so tired and uncertain. Kinzy made her want to persevere—to be better, because
Kinzy
deserved better.

“I’m a person,” Leo said. “I have feelings and opinions, and I’m so tired of not being allowed to express them. I’m tired of people not caring.”

“We care,” Alpha said.

“Do you really?”

“Of course we do. That’s the entire purpose of this pack, Leo. We’re scratching out a life for ourselves here, far away from where any of us were born, because we want to do things a different way. We want to be free to do what wolves naturally do, without having some alpha’s perverted drive for power and money and whatever else spoiling things. Everybody should have a chance to be happy, right? Not just the one or two fools closest to the top of the power pyramid.”

“Sounds wonderful, but that’s fairytale stuff.”

“That’s real life here,” Arnold said. “And that’s the life I want. Don’t you?”

Of course I do.

She wanted that life more than she wanted the next breath she had to breathe. She didn’t want for her little girl to grow up only to be told that choice was a luxury afforded to a few, and that she’d never get to be one of those lucky ones. But Leo was practical. Had to be, because survival demanded such of her.

“Wanting is one thing,” she said quietly. “Possibility is another.”

No one said anything, either because they knew Leo had told the truth, or because she was flat-out wrong and they didn’t know how to break the news to her.

As always, the silence gnawed at her, but instead of saying more immediately, she stood again, fixed Kinzy more comfortably in her arms, and looked from Arnold’s handsomely neutral expression to her new alpha’s.

“I’m going to give this place a shot,” she said after a minute of quiet. “If you’ll allow me to stay, I’ll find some way to contribute, and I’ll do all I can to not lure anyone here looking for me. I won’t mess things up for you. But can I ask you for a promise, too?”

Alpha’s nod came slowly. Maybe he knew as well as she did that the promise wouldn’t be for him, but for one of the wolves under his jurisdiction. The
other
man in the room.

“Let me decide to stay first,” she said. “Before you ask me to do anything else, let me decide that.
Please
.”

She didn’t dare turn around to look and Arnold. She didn’t want to be swayed by the look on his face, or see the defensiveness in his body language. As thrilled as she was to know that a wolf like him had staked a claim on her, she needed to consider Kinzy’s future. Kinzy’s best chance would only come from them starting with a blank slate. No attachments.

Adam kept his gaze locked on Leo, and nodded again. “All right. Welcome home.”

“Thank you, Alpha.”

She started moving and didn’t look back. Was afraid to. She didn’t stop moving until she’d reached the kitchen, where Graciella was leaning against the counter sipping coffee. Then, Leo finally let herself really breathe.

“Show me around?” she asked, voice shaking, but convincing enough.

Graciella set down her mug, and straightened her posture. “You decided to stick around, huh? Cool. Well, okay, then. Let’s go.”

“If you’re about to open your mouth to tell me I’m looking rough around the edges,” Arnold said to his approaching sister, “I’d prefer for you to do me a favor and keep your mouth shut.”

He set down the gun he’d been cleaning and leaned his forearms back onto the blanket he’d been sprawled out on. Sunshine and fresh air hadn’t exactly been luxuries for him in the past few years, but there was something so magical and sublime about being outside with no external forces pushing him to run, and then run some more.

Except for his alpha.

Arnold’s probationary period for guard duty required a five-kilometer run three times per week, but he didn’t mind. The running distracted him from the thoughts that made him snarl and growl.

Petra knelt beside the blanket and draped her fingers over her knees. “I didn’t come all the way out here to tell you that, actually, but I may as well. You look like shit.”

“Fuck you, too.”

“You need to take better care of yourself.”

“Perhaps you have some suggestions as to how I should do that when I can’t even
sleep
without thinking about that woman—without the wolf in me trying to subvert even the smallest plans of mine because his instinct is to be near his mate. I’ve been purposely putting at least fifty feet between her and me for the entirety of the two months since I brought her here. I can’t deal.”

Petra sputtered her lips and raked a hand through her messy hair. She always looked something like a wild woman with her uncombed hair, just like their mother always had. Looking at her sometimes made his heart ache. Their mother would have loved Norseton—she would have loved the freedom and the opportunities. If she’d lived, they could have thrived there together.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t afford sentiment, not when the wolf inside him was already so short-tempered.

“Hey. I understand how you feel a little,” she said. “I don’t like being far from Paul, either. I’m about to go have lunch with him now and came here to see if you wanted to come along.”

“No thanks. Watching my sister make kissy-face with her husband when I’m trying to eat isn’t my idea of a good time.”

She shrugged. “Figured I’d ask. Haven’t spent much time with you in a while. We never hang out anymore.”

“Things change.”

“Yeah. That doesn’t mean you have to isolate yourself.”

“I’m not isolating myself. I’m giving her space.” He sat up and started to put his gun back together. “
Choices
. That’s what I’m giving her.”

“Well, the way you’re going about this looks a lot like mate abandonment to me.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“I’d say it is. I thought you didn’t want to be like Dad.”

“Don’t go there. Don’t
even
go there. Actually, you know what? This conversation isn’t going anywhere, anyway, so leave. Enjoy your lunch.”

“No.” Petra collapsed onto the blanket next to him. “Come on. I’ve never known you to be the type who’d give up.”

“
Think
, P. I wasn’t all that invested in the first place, right? I get some stupid vision telling me to go snatch a lady and her kid from the woods. So I go get her and bring her back to this place where I’d barely been living in for a week myself. Come to find out she’s some nut job polygamist’s seventh wife or something, and has been on such a short leash all her life that she won’t even entertain the idea of letting a man get close, much less the wolf who bit her.”

Petra plucked at a bit of desert weed growing beside the blanket’s edge and stared at him.

“Don’t give me that stare. You know damn well I’m right.”

“No. You’re not.”

“Okay, fine.” He shrugged. “Whatever.”

“You want to know what I think?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway,” she said. “Just like when you gave me unsolicited opinions about my medical condition, I’m going to give you one about your relationship.”

“That’s hardly the same thing, and you know it.”

“Doesn’t matter. This is what Ma brought us up to do, right? Be so annoyingly enmeshed in each other’s personal business that we’re not sure if we love each other or if we each want to dig a grave to roll the other into.”

“Me worrying about you having blackout seizures is a reasonable sort of nosiness. You insisting that I should harass a lady who’s just not that into me is unreasonable. Do you see the difference?”

Petra reached over and plucked the side of his forehead.

“Ow!”

“You’re stupid, Arnold. I told you that you didn’t need to concern yourself with my health because Paul is monitoring me.”

“So I should give up any and all responsibility for you now, right?”

“You were never responsible for me. In case you forgot, I left our old pack voluntarily. I didn’t need you to be my protector. I left because we were better off together than separate. But we’re not in a place anymore where nobody cares about us. And you think I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m on to you. Don’t try to change the subject and distract me. This conversation is about you and what you’re
not
doing to get your mate.”

“I thought that discussion ended when I informed you that she wasn’t into me.”

Petra closed her eyes, forced out a sharp exhalation through her nose, and clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “You know,” she said quietly. “I started taking up meditation a couple of weeks ago. Helps me sort through the overflowing psychic crap that bleeds over from Paul.” She opened one dark eye and fixed it on him. “The practice was his mother’s idea. She doesn’t really understand wolves at all, but she comes up with ideas, anyway.” Petra opened her other eye so both orbs were focused on her brother. “Sometimes, her ideas aren’t so bad, and that’s why I don’t dismiss them out of hand. She’s just trying to help as an outsider to the relationship who can
maybe
propose different things because she’s not as caught up in all the noise as Paul and I are.”

“What are you telling me, Petra?”

“I’m saying this not as your sister, but as an outsider looking in. Most of the wolves here didn’t know what functional relationships looked like until they had a chance to form some with people they actually liked. You and me, we’re no different from them. Our parents didn’t stick it out, and so we think, why would anyone? But the thing is, we’re biologically coded to be faithful, and to stick around when we’ve found the right person. I’ve never been surer of that.” She gestured toward the houses around the wolf courtyard. “They’re not just playing around. This isn’t an experiment for them. You had an inside edge, Arnold. You were sent to fetch the person you’re supposed to be with, and yet you’re sitting here screwing around with a gun instead of trying to ingratiate yourself with her a little bit. Two freakin’ months you’ve avoided her, Arnold?
Really?
”

“She was clear that she wanted to be left alone.”

Petra rolled her eyes, muttered something incoherent under her breath, and then stood. “Let’s go. Now.”

“Where are we going?”

“Lunch. Put your crap away and let’s go. This pack only has room for one loner wolf, and Darius already has that title.”

She jutted her hand down toward him. The stubborn crease between her eyes suggested that she wasn’t going to give him any room for negotiation.

Fortunately for her, he was too tired to argue. He hoped that if he did what she said, he could
finally
get some sleep.

___

Arnold twisted the corner of his paper napkin into a crude shape and ground his teeth, giving his sister the same evil glower across the diner table that she was giving him.

“That was dirty as hell, and you know it,” he said.

Paul, seated beside Petra and opposite Arnold in the booth, scoffed and dumped sugar into his black coffee. “Of course she knows. You’ve known her for twenty-five years. You should be aware by now that she doesn’t play by the rules.”

“And yet you married her.”

Paul shrugged and sipped. “There’s someone for everyone.”

“You didn’t tell me Leo works here.”

Petra picked up her menu, thereby blocking his view of her face and the eye-roll she was probably performing. “You didn’t ask.”

Leo walked over, smiling and wearing her hair pulled high in a bouncy ponytail, and a sweatshirt that looked straight out of the eighties. Strawberry Shortcake and all her delicious friends danced across the front.

“How are you liking the job?” Paul asked before Arnold could think up a suitably benign thing to say to his mate besides “Hi.”

“I like it a lot, actually. I get to meet everyone in the community, the restaurant is an easy walk from my house, and the tips aren’t bad.” She beamed.

Arnold just bet the oh-so-generous males in the Viking clientele were more than willing to open their wallets to make a pretty waitress’s day.

“Where’s Kinzy?” he asked flatly.

Petra gave his shin a hard kick under the table.

He glowered at her. Perhaps his delivery had come across sounding a bit hostile, but that wasn’t his fault. The wolf living in his head was in a shitty mood, and some of its impulsivity was leaching over to the man part of Arnold.

Leo tucked a loose swath of hair behind her ear and wriggled her order pad out of her apron pocket. “Babysitting co-op. A bunch of the young moms in the community take part. That way, we get to keep more of our take-home pay. We trade off watching each other’s kids.”

“I would have watched her. I work nights.”

“I—” Leo shifted her weight and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.

Say something.

“Leo!” one of the other waitresses called from behind the counter. “You’re up again.”

Arnold thought the lady had just been reminding Leo to get an order out to a table, but Leo had turned and was staring up at the television mounted in the corner at the end of the counter. The words written at the bottom of the screen read:
MISSING INFANT
. The picture behind them was of Kinzy, not long after birth. She still had on her hospital bracelet.

The next image was of Leo, and the words overlaid on her picture were:
LAST SEEN WITH HER MOTHER
.

Some dipshit was offering a reward. The news program had even interviewed Leo’s mother, who very tersely explained that she didn’t know anything, but that she just wanted her daughter and granddaughter back. She looked uncomfortable on the screen, but Arnold imagined she had to be, if a certain man had put her up to speaking.

“Damn,” Petra whispered. “National coverage for a couple of missing people from a small town in Wyoming? That doesn’t make sense.”

Leo turned, sighed, and wrested a pen out of her pocket. “Samuel’s got a lot of money. He’s probably throwing it at whoever he can. He looks at this like he’s losing out on an investment. Costs a lot of money keep a wife, you know. Not that I ever saw any of it. What are you having?”

Seriously?

Arnold pushed his menu aside and put his back against the window. “Who could eat? Also, why doesn’t him putting out an APB on you bother you more?”

“Because that same segment has been running for three days, and everyone here knows the score. No one’s gonna rat me out for that pittance he’s offering as a reward.”

“No one
here
,” Paul said, “but what if you ever need to leave the community?”

“I haven’t had to in two months. Besides, in a little while, this’ll all blow over and folks will forget about me. Kinzy’s picture is already outdated, and, as far as I go, one blonde looks pretty much like another, right?”

Is she fucking serious?

She blinked at him. “
What
?”

“You don’t get how this scenario could be dangerous for you?”

“Of course I do. I’m the one who ran away from him, remember?”

“You can’t just sweep this under the rug and hope nothing happens. You’ve got to be proactive.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay. So, what do you propose I do? Hitch a ride up to Wolverton and wait for Samuel to show up? Explain to him that I’m all right, and apologize for the inconvenience?”

“Call the news. Tell them you’re fine and that you left on purpose, and that you don’t want your location known.”

“That’d be all well and good if this mess were only about me, but Kinzy is all caught up in the chaos, too. Samuel may not be able to get on television and publicly state that I’m his wife —”

“You’re not,” Arnold muttered.

Leo drummed the end of her pen against her order pad and gave him a quelling stare.

He put up his hands. “Fine. I’ll shut up.”

“As I was saying, he can’t go on television and say I’m his wife, but he can still raise a stink about Kinzy. As her father, he’s got rights.”

“Utter bullshit,” Paul said. “I really suggest you consult a lawyer.”

“To what end?”

“You need someone to work on your behalf who can keep your whereabouts discreet,” Petra said. “Someone who can present your case to a judge without revealing that they’re dealing with a scenario involving folks who aren’t quite human. If folks knew what women in most packs endured, they’d never expect you to take Kinzy back to Samuel.”

“But we can’t tell people that we exist,” Leo said.

“No, but you can still make a case. There are plenty of other reasons for you to not want to go back there.”

“You might be able to get him to back off with the mere threat of you filing the paperwork,” Paul said. “If he’s smart, he’s not going to risk anyone going up there to investigate. If polygamy is rampant in the pack up there—”

“Packs,” Leo corrected. “Wolverton doesn’t have one unified pack. There are loose collections of large families located around Wolverton. The alpha is the mayor, and for the most part, senior male wolves maintain order in their own family groups. My father wasn’t interested in taking more than one wife, but he didn’t have a problem with giving me and my sisters up to those losers.”

“Okay,” Arnold said. “So, we’ll be careful.”

“You’re going to help me?”

“Why do you sound so surprised? I told you I’d give you a chance to choose. As far as I’m concerned, this is just an extension of that promise. If you want to live life however you see fit, then you shouldn’t have to do it confined to this small community. You should be able to come and go as you please, not just for your sake, but Kinzy’s, too. She deserves to get out into the world. The world is much larger than most wolves ever get to know.”