Shiftless (9 page)

"He's ready, Wolfie," one complained, but Wolfie just watched silently before turning back to me.

"They'll give him an example today," the alpha told me, his words loud enough to carry across the room.  "Then we'll work on you and let Keith shift another day."

I felt like an over-protective mother when the guys shifted in tandem and my nephew's only response was a crowing "Wicked cool!"  But I didn't have much time to obsess over the issue, because Wolfie was already changing gears.

"So, about that date..." he began.  Then, before I could argue, Wolfie continued.  "Keith will be just fine here for a few hours."  And despite my mother-hen instincts, I knew the alpha was right.

I had assumed a date would mean dinner and perhaps a movie, but I should have realized that nothing was conventional around Wolfie.  Instead, he herded me out into the atrium, where bushy fig trees and ceiling-high tomato vines were thriving despite the autumnal chill.

"Hey, boss," called a tanned beauty about my age from the other side of a garden bed, and I was embarrassed to feel my wolf wake up and growl nearly audibly.  I thought I had smothered the sound, but Wolfie's cheek quirked up into a lop-sided smile.

"Galena," he called back.  "This is Terra from across the mountain."  The woman waved a welcome, and then another female werewolf popped up in front of us, surprising a gasp out of me.  Just as beautiful as Galena, but with a buzz haircut that showed off her slender neck, this second werewolf swooped in to give Wolfie a deep kiss on the mouth, and this time I wasn't able to stifle my wolf's complaint.

"I'd be jealous if I had the slightest notion you swung that way, Quetzalli" Galena called across the garden beds, and it took me a minute to realize she was talking to the swooping kisser.

"I'm Galena's partner," the second woman explained to me with a smirk, breaking the kiss but continuing to tease me by trailing a finger over Wolfie's chest.  The alpha leaned into the woman's touch, and to my chagrin my wolf growled more loudly, prompting Wolfie and Quetzalli both to laugh at my reaction.

Again, it was Galena who pointed out that I was being played.  Walking around the garden bed to join us at last, she slapped the alpha lightly on the chest, right where her partner's fingers had been just moments before.  "Play nice, Wolfie," she admonished, her voice light and with no hint of the jealousy my wolf was feeling.  She didn't bother to chastise her partner, merely taking the other woman's hand and dimpling as she offered up her own mouth to be kissed.

"Just seeing if Terra likes me," the alpha rumbled in reply, but he lowered his head in submission to the tiny werewolf.  Despite my wolf's reaction to Quetzalli's game, I couldn't help smiling to see such a massive alpha letting the minuscule woman boss him around, and my mood mellowed further at the real show of affection between Quetzalli and Galena.

"You can walk her through our suite if she wants to see what it's like," Galena continued, letting her partner go with a smile and heading back around the raised bed so she could heft a bundle of weeds into a wheelbarrow.  Just glancing around, I could tell the greenhouse was a serious effort of space-saving food production, and this duo seemed to be the wolves in charge.  So far, I liked what I saw...especially once it became clear that these bronzed beauties weren't really interested in the alpha.

"Do you?" Wolfie asked, raising that sexy eyebrow at me, and it took a second for me to realize he was asking if I wanted to see their suite.

"If you're sure they won't mind?" I answered, and Wolfie led the way across cobblestones and through sliding glass doors into the couple's quarters.

It was hard to tell that the suite was half of a single-wide trailer since the space had been completely gutted and rebuilt, one room turned into a bedroom and the other into a private studio, sitting room, and seed-starting zone.  Wolfie waved a hand at a row of sticks poking out of pots by the windows.  "If the green thumbs were here, they would tell you those are grape cuttings."  He went on to explain that the seedlings were kale, tatsoi, and tokyo bekana, ready to go into outside beds, and I was surprised that an alpha cared enough to learn the specifics of his wolves' trades.  We walked back through the atrium and into the suite opposite, which was full of another surprise—banks of computer equipment.

"What's all this?" I asked, startled.  Werewolves tended to stick to the past—I knew a lot of adult werewolves who never learned to drive, preferring horses and buggies.  Similarly, cell phones, computers, and other modern gadgets were generally ignored, but Wolfie's pack seemed to be high-tech, even by non-werewolf standards.

"This," Wolfie said, gesturing at the rows of monitors, "is how we pay the bills.  We provide computer security for big companies.  Chase and I do a lot of the heavy lifting, but even the yahoos you saw changing in front of Keith put in a few hours a week on the simple stuff."

I was starting to relax, since this date looked like more of a pack tour than a social outing, but Wolfie liked to keep me on my toes.  "And this," he added, "is where I give you the kiss your wolf keeps asking for."  He tilted my head up to meet his lips, and if I'd been a werecat instead of a werewolf, I would have purred.

***

"Are you ready for your next lesson?" the alpha whispered in my ear as he pulled back out of our kiss.  I had no clue what kind of lesson Wolfie was talking about, but I was wobbly enough from the lip lock that I just nodded and allowed him to pull me out the door on the opposite side of the computer lab and into the outdoors.

"It's your choice whether you'd feel more comfortable working on your shift outside or inside," the alpha said, bursting my blissful bubble.  "My room is over here," he added, pointing away from the common area to a door on the far corner of the compound.  "Or we can head back up onto the mountain if you want even more privacy."

I tensed up immediately.  This wasn't the kind of lesson I was interested in at the moment, and my wolf agreed.  The two of us had finally come to the conclusion that Wolfie was a good guy, and we were interested in seeing more of his bare skin,
not
in working on changing forms.  I hadn't allowed myself to have sex with anything that didn't plug into the wall since leaving Haven, and now that Wolfie had woken up my sexual side with a kiss, I was having trouble putting it back to sleep.

To my annoyance, Wolfie laughed at me.  "You should see the look on your face," he explained.  "At least you're
talking
to your wolf now.  What does
she
want?"  My face turned bright red and Wolfie laughed even harder.

"Isn't this supposed to be a date?" I countered to cover my embarrassment.  "Yes, I agree, I need to figure out how to get my shift back under control so I can help Keith, but that's work, and dates are supposed to be fun."

Wolfie shook his head at me sadly.  "That's where you're wrong, Terra.  Shifting
is
fun.  It's a roller coaster and sexy as hell.  How could you forget that?"

"Maybe shifts are like that for a bloodling," I said, then regretted the words immediately when Wolfie's head bowed down, his boyish enthusiasm gone.

"Is that how you think of me?" he asked.  "Am I just a wolf to you?"

This was a tough question, and one I didn't particularly care to answer.  Having met Wolfie in wolf form, it felt natural to think of his wolf first and the man second.  And the wolf
did
seem to be looking out of the man's eyes a lot of the time, even when Wolfie was in human form.  In fact, it was Wolfie's strong canine presence that made me feel a little better about reclaiming my own wolf.  On the other hand, I definitely didn't have a fur fetish, and I thought Wolfie was unbelievably hot, so, no, I didn't just see his wolf.

Oops, had I said that last bit out loud?  This seemed to be the day for me to practice my blushing and for the sexy alpha to laugh at me, but it was better than seeing his head bowed down in pain.

"We'll get to that," Wolfie promised, tweaking my nose, which just annoyed me even more.  "But it sounds like I now owe you a real, human date."

***

"First dates are supposed to be awkward, right?" Wolfie asked after we were seated in a booth at the only restaurant in town—a Mexican joint with flashy sombreros lining the walls.

"Why?  Do you
feel
awkward?" I asked.  Wolfie never looked like he felt awkward, although he certainly seemed to prompt that emotion in the people around him.  Just a few minutes earlier, the alpha had stared into the eyes of the man who held the door open for me until the guy let go of the handle and nearly crushed me with the closing door.  I gathered the glare was due to Wolfie feeling possessive, because after the guy fled, my date had just smiled contentedly.  The werewolf across from me hadn't felt awkward about that faux pas though, and he certainly didn't seem to be feeling awkward now either, so I was stumped by his question.

"Nope," Wolfie replied, carefully easing the wrapper back onto his straw so he could shoot it across the room...again.  "I just wanted to make sure you were getting the human-date experience."

I had to laugh...and to put my hand over the straw to prevent him from firing round two.  "I think this part of the date is where we're supposed to get to know one another," I explained, feeling like I was twenty years older than the guy across from me.

"Oh, right," Wolfie said agreeably, pulling a printout from his pocket.  He read over the page, mumbling to himself.  "Who's my best friend?  You know that already.  Do you have a nickname?  Terra the Terror—pretty good.  How about this—what was your family like growing up?"  The alpha turned his gaze back on me and it was all I could do to restrain myself from reaching across the table and kissing him again.  He was boyfully mischievous...and irresistible.

"Okay, you're right, this is stupid," I agreed.  "What do
you
want to do on our date?"

***

We parked at an overlook, the valley spreading out below us and the first stars starting to blink to life in the indigo sky.  Wolfie had selected a battered pickup truck from the three vehicles parked in front of the pack's compound when we first left, and I'd initially thought that was a bit of a strange date ride.  But now I realized that Wolfie had planned from the beginning to take me here, and hadn't wanted a center console to stand in his way.

The alpha unbuckled his own seatbelt, then reached around to unsnap mine as well.  As he pulled the straps away from my body, they grazed my belly, and I shivered in anticipation.  "Are you still scared of me?" Wolfie asked, pausing as he misdiagnosed my tremor.

I shook my head.  "No, that was a different kind of shiver," I answered, my voice husky with emotion.

The wolf in my date's eyes seemed even brighter as Wolfie smiled down at me.  "Okay, so this is the lesson I had planned earlier," he rumbled, his voice deepening as he scooted closer along the seat.  "Your wolf and you share the same body," he breathed in my ear, running one finger very gently down the side of my neck.  "I want you to feel what she feels when I touch you here...and here...."

For a second, I tensed up again, but then I remembered how easily Wolfie had subdued my darker half up on the mountaintop.  Even if I accidentally let her all the way out, the alpha would have no trouble taking control of the situation.  And there was no one present at the moment but us, so even in the very unlikely scenario where I shifted to wolf form and escaped the alpha, I wouldn't do any damage.

When I was first learning to control my wolf, it helped to visualize locking her away in her cage when things got difficult, so now I used the same visualization in reverse.  My human self walked down the imaginary stairs in my mind, turned a key in her iron-barred door, and stood back to let her walk out.

As the canine stepped out of her dark cell, I mused that I hadn't remembered my wolf being so beautiful.  Could Wolfie somehow be making me see her through his eyes?  Her fur gleamed and her eyes were bright with anticipation.  She didn't try to push past me the way I thought she would, either, but instead nudged her head up under my hand, and we walked together back up toward the surface.

"I can see her in your eyes," Wolfie hummed happily, running one finger over my lips.  If I'd thought his caresses felt good before, they were sublime now with my wolf's emotions strengthening my own.  It felt like the difference between hot chocolate from a cut-rate powder and the homemade version concocted from whole milk, cocoa, and dark honey.  When Wolfie kissed me the second time, my wolf and I seemed to merge into one breathless, happy whole.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was also far too soon, Wolfie leaned back.  "And that was lesson two," he concluded, once again tweaking my nose.

"I still don't get why I can't just hurry up and shift," Keith complained a week later when we were once again hanging out at the werewolf compound.  Despite his words, my nephew was ecstatic, surrounded by the pack's nurturing acceptance.  He and the yahoos (as Wolfie liked to call them) were playing poker in the living area while the alpha and I cooked lunch in the kitchen annex off to one side.  From the amount of hooting and hollering going on out there, I had a feeling the card game used clothing removal for scoring.

Fen—the young woman who had first spoken to Keith a week ago and who was a bit of an honorary yahoo—was right in the middle of the action, and I know a human parental figure would have been shocked.  Even as a werewolf, and despite knowing that Fen could take care of herself, I couldn't resist drifting into the open archway between our two rooms as I heard her voice chime in to respond to Keith's complaint.

"Because, kid, you're still learning control," the young woman said snottily, poking my nephew in his bare chest.

I had a feeling Keith had lost more games than he really needed to in order to display his physique in front of Fen...even though the gawky youngster didn't have much to show off.  The only clothing the teenager had left was his pants, presumably his underwear, and a lone sock, but Fen seemed entirely uninterested in the view.  When you live among werewolves, strip poker just doesn't have the same explosive impact. 

"Once you can pull up your wolf partway and send him back down every time," she continued, "Then you can go full-on wolf."

"
And
once your Aunt Terra is ready, then you can shift," Wolfie called over my head.  The alpha didn't even need to put any command into his voice to make the statement stick—despite their rowdiness, the yahoos were some of the most obedient young werewolves I'd ever met.  I smiled up at the man who had made the last seven days a whirlwind of excitement.  In human parlance, we still hadn't made it past second base—Wolfie refused to go further until I felt 100% comfortable about the partnership with my wolf.  But boy did second base feel good....

"I think I need the kind of personal lessons Aunt Terra is getting," Keith said, leering at Fen, who rolled her eyes and responded: "In your dreams, kid."

***

"Why the big smile?" Wolfie asked as we left the younger set to their cards and retreated back to the stove to finish prepping a pot of chili.

I couldn't resist smiling even wider as the alpha lightly traced one finger down my bare arm.  I hadn't noticed until this morning that the slowly fading packless ache was completely gone, along with the bone-deep gnawing of my wolf, and the realization had left me feeling even lighter on my feet.  And why should any pain linger when I was surrounded by two nurturing packs every day?  Each evening, Keith and I headed home to eat dinner with Dale, who was his usual caring self, if completely oblivious to the werewolfery going on around him.  Then we'd get up the next morning and spend the day with Wolfie's pack, helping around the kitchen and garden, or just hanging out with wolves who were starting to feel like old friends.  With the easy familiarity of youth, Keith had already become bosom buddies with Blaze, the youngest of the yahoos, and Galena and I were taking the slightly slower, adult path to the same place.  Even Quetzalli and I had reached a sort of truce—I ignored her and she didn't yank my chain...too often.

No reason to tell Wolfie all that, though, because his wolf could sense exactly how I felt.  "You alphas always think it's all about you," I teased him, but couldn't help adding, "I'm just happy because of your pack.  It feels so good to be around werewolves again without having to put up with my father's old-fashioned bullshit."

"It can be your pack too," Wolfie offered, his rampant wolf making the alpha up-front about his intentions, as usual.  "There's an empty suite next door to my room...."

Despite my good mood, Wolfie's overt suggestion took a bit of the bounce out of my steps.  I wasn't ready to go
there
yet.  Yes, Wolfie's pack seemed perfect on the outside, but I'd seen too much pack awfulness to jump right back onto that horse.  Plus: "We have to figure out what we're going to do about Keith and my father first," I responded, the smile suddenly absent from my face.  I'd been putting off thinking about that thorny issue, content to live in the moment for the last week, but I wouldn't be surprised if my father had scouts with telephoto lenses keeping an eye on me from the surrounding hills.  If I didn't make progress soon, I might be in for another visit from cousin Milo.

"That seems simple," Wolfie said comfortably.  And to a wolf-dominated alpha, the issue of another wolf trying to take what he considered his property probably did appear simple.  I could even guess at Wolfie's solution before the words came out of his mouth.  "I'll confront the old man and he'll leave you alone."

"Wolfie, you don't understand how a pack like Haven works," I countered.  "You can't just walk in the door and challenge my father to some kind of wolf fight to the death.  The Chief would send out a half dozen goons like Milo and you'd never make it off the main road."  Plus, as much as I wasn't willing to say it out loud, the Chief was my father, and I no more wanted him to get hurt than I ever wanted to see him again.  This was one of the reasons I had refrained from thinking about the metaphorical sword hanging over my head—Wolfie and I didn't see eye to eye on the issue at all.

"Okay," Wolfie agreed easily.  "How about I mate with you and offer to merge packs?  Keith can be the heir for both of us."

That idea startled a humorless laugh out of me.  My father wouldn't dream of allying his century-old pack with Wolfie's upstart band of misfits, never mind the fact that mating with Wolfie was twice as big of a commitment as moving in with his pack would have been.  "Seriously, Wolfie?  Do you know anything about my father?" I asked him, just as Keith draped himself across the archway and interrupted our conversation.

"The guys and I were thinking of heading home to check out my gaming system," my nephew said, a wheedle in his voice.  "Is that okay?"

I was glad to have the troublesome topic tabled, and I couldn't resist wondering whether an afternoon alone with Wolfie might tempt the alpha to relax his standards and allow hands below the waist.  And, personal feelings aside, Keith's charm made the request hard to turn down, especially since I knew the yahoos would keep an eye on the kid.  "Sure," I agreed, tossing the youngster my car keys without further thought.  "Just call if you need anything.  And Wade drives."

"And
you
practice partial shifts every time a game ends," Wolfie added, a slight growl entering his voice to ensure that his orders, at least, would be obeyed.

"Sure thing, Uncle Wolfie," Keith said jokingly and shot out the door before the alpha could belt him with a dish towel.

***

Chase had joined us in the kitchen to hunt down a midmorning snack when intruders came pounding on the compound door.  Wolfie smelled trouble a moment before the racket began and I noticed his shoulders tensing, so I was prepared for the way his wolf took command behind the alpha's eyes.

"Go out the back way and over the mountain to Keith," he ordered Chase, then the alpha hit a red button on the wall that set off barely audible alarms ringing throughout the compound.  In response, adult werewolves converged on the common area nearly as quickly as Wolfie and I made it out of the kitchen.

Quetzalli and Galena were the first to arrive, dirt still on their fingers from the garden but all softness gone from their eyes.  The human Acacia had her daughter Lantana latched onto one breast, her werewolf husband Berndt hovering protectively over them.  Tia was bleary-eyed, as if she'd just woken up from a nap, leaving only Wolfie's uncle Oscar unaccounted for.  Except for the yahoos, Keith, and Chase, of course, who I hoped would all be together soon, safely on the other side of the mountain.

"Berndt, take Acacia and Lantana to the safe room," Wolfie ordered, jerking his head toward the left side of the compound, and the father seemed glad to obey.  I expected Wolfie to send the rest of the women packing too, even though that would have left him with only the missing Oscar for backup, but Wolfie continued to overturn my preconceived notions of alpha behavior.  He motioned for Tia, Quetzalli, and Galena to form a protective arc behind us as he and I walked together toward the door.

It's only been ten days
, I told myself. 
Father wouldn't show up before the month is over
.  But I didn't believe my own lie.  I'd been expecting Chief Wilder to arrive on our doorstep ever since Wolfie sent my cousin packing a week before, and it almost felt like a relief to be able to stop looking over my shoulder.  Almost.

The pounding stopped abruptly when Wolfie wrenched open the door, leaving one of my cousins to catch his balance as he lowered his fist mid-pound.  The cousin sidled away down the steps, giving us a clear view of Chief Wilder leaning against a huge black SUV and flanked by four more male cousins.  A fifth cousin restrained Oscar, the older werewolf's hands tied together behind his back with a zip tie while a bruise rose on one cheek.  For the first time ever, I heard a low growl rise out of usually gentle Tia's throat as she took in the view.

After spending time around Wolfie's bulk, my father appeared smaller and older, but no less dangerous.  In fact, if we'd been in wolf form, I would have expected the Chief to circle around behind our pack and jump on Wolfie from the rear, taking down the stronger alpha through pure cunning.  Not that my father needed to use trickery since he currently made up for anything he lacked in personal strength due to the presence of hefty enforcers strewn across our front yard.  We were clearly outclassed.

But Wolfie would never let another alpha show him up.  "Crazy Wilder," Wolfie greeted the Chief with the nickname I'd never heard anyone say to the old man's face.  "Welcome to my humble abode."

I waited for the scene to descend into bedlam, but after a moment, my father merely began to laugh.  "Bloodling Wolf," he responded in kind.  "Aren't alphas supposed to protect their women and children instead of vice versa?"  The older alpha nodded at one of my cousins, who sent Oscar stumbling toward the front door.  "Here, have your mother's bleeding-heart brother back.  It looks like your pack is a little short on testosterone."  As if to highlight his words, my father leered at the women behind me, and I could feel Quetzalli clenching her hands into fists in response.

We parted to let Oscar inside and Tia drew him out of my father's line of sight to worry at the zip ties around his wrists.  But my attention remained riveted on the two alphas.  Although I found it hard to believe, Wolfie seemed bored by the exchange, smothering a yawn as he stared down my father, whose face darkened at the affront.  Turning his eyes to easier prey, Chief Wilder addressed me.

"Little Terra," he continued.  "I had expected to see more progress after all this time.  Why hasn't my grandson been introduced to his wolf?"  When the words of a reply stuck in my throat, a wide smile strained my father's cheeks, although his eyes remained cold.  "So the reports are true—my daughter is a shiftless wolf.  As useless as her brother."

I stumbled backwards as if I'd been struck.  Like the term "meat," "shiftless" was an awful slur to apply to a werewolf.  But my father was right.  Despite all of Wolfie's hard work to bring my wolf and me together, the last time I'd locked myself into my basement room and attempted to shift, I hadn't felt a single hint of the change.  I'd have to learn to embrace the term. 
Shiftless
.  My head bowed, and I was no longer able to look into my father's eyes.

Wolfie had been quiet, giving me the chance to respond on my own, but when I seemed struck dumb, the younger alpha angled his body to hide me from view.  "What do you want, old man?" Wolfie demanded, his tone as cold as my father's had been.

"Well, I certainly don't want
her
anymore," my father replied cheerfully, as if he and Wolfie were two farmers leaning over a fence to talk horse flesh.  "I looked into your claim, by the way," he added, "and Keith is no more your heir than Brooke was your mate.  I've taken what I wanted."

With those parting words, my father and cousins slid back into their gleaming SUV.  Doors banged, and the huge vehicle rolled down the driveway and out of our sight.

***

Wolfie understood what had happened before I did.  I'd never heard such a stream of invective flow out of the alpha's mouth as I did when he grabbed his keys and leaped into his truck, the rest of us still gaping in the doorway.  But before Wolfie could start the engine, Chase bounded up in wolf form.  Alone.

Understanding dawned on all of us at once, and I sank down to sit on the steps as Wolfie's head dropped onto the steering wheel.  His beta shifted back to two-footed humanity quickly and moved closer to the truck before he reported.

"The yahoos are okay," Chase told his pack leader quietly.  "But Keith is gone."