Silver Kiss (12 page)

“
No way would an adult wolf
hurt a cub,” I said flatly. “It’s just unheard of.”

“
Which isn’t to say it
doesn’t happen.”

I opened my mouth to fire off an angry
retort, but Shannon cut me short. “It’s a matter for the police,
not us.” She squeezed my arm, a warning to behave, and smiled
sweetly at Palmer, which didn’t make me feel better. “We should go.
There’s nothing else we can do here.”

I let her lead me away like a good dog,
fuming inwardly. I wasn’t really sure who I was so angry
with—Palmer or Molly’s unknown assailant. Either way, the urge to
hunt was suddenly strong within me again, my wolf clawing at the
walls of mind like a caged beast desperate for release.

I swallowed the urge, calmed the wolf. Being
a wolf wouldn’t solve anything tonight. I needed to be human for
that.

EIGHT

“So what’s next?” I asked
Shannon once
we were home. It was after midnight and all I really wanted to do
was curl up in bed with her and sleep off the adrenaline rush the
night had sparked in me. But my mind was on overdrive, refusing to
calm down.

Shannon stretched out on the bed, brushing
her hair from her eyes with a sigh. “Nothing,” she said. “Molly’s
been found. Case closed.” She didn’t sound happy.

I lay down next to her, kicking off my boots
with a thud. “But—”

“
Molly’s home. I think that
means my services are surplus to requirements.”

“
Oh.” I rolled onto my back
to stare at the ceiling. The paint needed retouching, I noticed
distractedly. Thin cracks were snaking out from the light fitting.
I gave myself a mental shake. “Tina will pay you though, won’t she?
Even if you didn’t find her?”

“
She’ll pay me for my time,
but it won’t be very much because she doesn’t have much. Back to
insurance fraud for me, I think.”

“
I’m sorry.” I shifted onto
my side so I could look at her. She was staring at the ceiling now,
probably counting the cracks too. Her lovely lips were drawn tight
and thin, her eyes dark. “We should have called you straight
away.”

She closed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. The
important thing is that Molly’s safe.”

“
Yeah, but she’s not, is
she? She’s lying in hospital, starved and battered.”

“
It’s a police matter now,”
she said, sounding a little less sure than she had at the
hospital.

I nestled closer to her, nuzzling her cheek.
“My money’s on Alpha Humans. I don’t see who else it could be.”

“
It could have been
anyone.” Shannon turned her head to look at me, tracing her
fingertips down my cheek and over my lips. “I think Palmer’s right
about that—you can’t rule anything out.”

Her touch sent a bolt of desire through me,
but it was overridden by the indignation her words caused. “No
werewolf would hurt a child like that. Ever. It just wouldn’t
happen.”

“
Why not?” she asked
reasonably, still stroking my face tenderly. “Look how the Pack
treated Tina - hell, look how they treated you for being a
lesbian.”

“
It’s different.” I said,
sitting up. “There’s a whole world of difference between making
someone outcast and kicking the shit out of a fourteen-year-old
girl.”

“
I know that, Ayla.”
Shannon sat up too, putting on her best patient, soothing tone. It
always worked wonders on her clients, but right now it just
aggravated me. “But it’s all part of the same mentality, isn’t it?
“Do as we say, not do as we do.” That’s Pack all over.”

“
That’s bollocks!” I cried.
“We look after our own.”

“
Obviously not, when a
woman and a young child are ostracized the way Tina and Molly
were,” she said, the patience slipping a little. She tossed her
hair from her face, frowning at me. “I’m not criticizing you, Ayla.
I’m not badmouthing your family. I’m just saying Pack life isn’t
all sunshine and roses, is it? Are you really saying it’s
absolutely impossible that another wolf didn’t beat up Molly? That
there are no circumstances in which it could happen?”

“
That’s exactly what I’m
saying,” I snapped, although a worm of doubt crept through me. I
remembered Oscar screaming at Vince, threatening Mel. I could
easily see him, in that state, physically following through on his
threats.

I growled and leapt up, unable to sit still
anymore. I paced our tiny bedroom, the wolf stirred by my stormy
mood. I wanted to rip and bite, exorcise my prickly anger. “It has
to be Alpha Humans,” I said finally. “They’ve got a motive, this is
what they do! They hate us—look at what they did to Adam.”

“
Baby, this isn’t about
Adam.” Shannon rose to embrace me, stroking my hair. “It’s nothing
to do with him and, really, it’s nothing to do with us anymore. The
police will take care of it from here.”

I couldn’t respond to her touch and eased
out of her arms, wincing at the hurt on her face. I hated going to
bed angry with her. When we’d first been together I’d always been
the childish one, running off whenever we had a fight, then
crawling back later with my tail between my legs to apologize.
Almost six years on, I was better at not running off. I just wasn’t
any better at controlling my temper. “You didn’t find her, Shannon.
You didn’t see her—didn’t see how scared she was when she first saw
me. She shrieked when she saw Joel. Scared of her own kind.” I
shook my head. “Someone must really have done a number on her to
mess her up like that.”

“
Scared of her own kind,”
Shannon echoed. “Well, that’s pretty strong evidence that another
wolf was involved, isn’t it?”

I whipped round to glower at her. “Will you
stop—”

She raised her hand. “Why would she be
scared of another wolf if no wolves had ever hurt her?”

Her calm, school-teacher manner was
infuriating. “It’s not your case anymore, remember?”

“
And it was never yours to
begin with,” she countered, folding her arms and staring me
down.

I dug my nails into my palms until I drew
blood. The sharp pain and warm flow called my wolf and I snarled,
baring my teeth at Shannon. “She’s Pack. It matters.”

“
She’s not Pack because the
Pack kicked her and her mum out.”

“
No, they just kicked her
mum out,” I corrected. “Molly is still one of us.”

Shannon sighed and shook her head. “I hate
it when you’re like this. Let’s just go to bed and talk in the
morning, okay?”

“
Like what?” I challenged,
barely hearing her. “When I’m like what?”

“
Stubborn. Werewolfy.” She
began stripping off, keeping her back to me as she peeled off her
top. “Bitchy.” She glanced at me over her shoulder, a deliberately
coy look, all pouting lips and creamy skin. “Drop it and come to
bed.” She was trying to distract my wolf with sex.

And it was working. My anger cooled a little
at the sight of her naked back and slender hips, the dusky rose
satin of her bra. I wet my lips, not sure if I was ready to stop
being angry. “I’m not bitchy.”

“
You are.” She unzipped her
jeans and did a little shimmy for me as she slid them off. “You’re
being bitchy because I insulted your precious Pack. The Pack you
took off from because they were so close-minded and intolerant,
remember?”

Her tone was light,
teasing.
Soothing the savage
beast
, I thought with a flicker of
annoyance. But it worked every time, damn her. My wolf responded to
her even when I wanted to stay mad and argue some more.

Grudgingly, I shucked off my own clothes and
rolled under the duvet, determined not to let her have it all her
own way. She was going to have to work for it.

Shannon slid in beside me, pressing her
naked body to mine with a little wriggle. “Look at me,” she coaxed,
slipping her arms around me. “We’re not going to fall out over
this, are we?”

I turned, keeping my sulky mask in place
while internally my wolf wagged her tail. “Depends…”

She tugged gently at my lip ring. “Bad dog.
No brooding in bed, remember?”

That slight tug sent a shiver through me, as
if she’d touched me far more intimately and a little more of my
anger dripped away. “You’re not playing fair. Why can’t I just be
angry?” I complained.

“
Ayla, you don’t even know
what you’re angry about.” She traced the shape of my lips with her
fingertips. “You just get yourself all worked up and forget why you
started.” She kissed me chastely, sending butterflies fluttering
through me. “Your eyes have gone all wolfy,” she
murmured.

My vision shifted, changing the world to
sepia hues. Shannon’s blonde hair turned to dark honey, her blue
eyes fading to a whitish-yellow. My wolf prowled through me, eager
to claim her mate and I gave in. Shannon was right; I didn’t really
know what I was mad about. Molly was home and safe—surely that was
the most important thing?

That and Shannon’s hands trailing lazy paths
down my body, pooling wet heat between my thighs. I growled again,
aroused this time, and took her mouth with a deep kiss. She
snuggled closer to me, fingers slipping down between my legs. I
closed my wolfy eyes, feeling those butterflies grow bigger as she
teased and toyed with me. I wanted to roll her over and take her,
no games, no waiting. My anger burned away in the heat of my sudden
desire. I writhed and moaned as Shannon whipped me into a frenzy
with her clever fingers and sweet lips.

A breathless, rushing sensation built in me
as she raked her nails over the soft skin of my inner thighs. My
eyes snapped open and the world flashed in and out of color as wolf
and woman battled for domination. It was like seeing stars. When
she flicked her tongue over my clit and slid her fingers inside me,
I let the wolf win, letting out a howl of pleasure. I knotted my
fingers in her hair and pulled her up roughly to capture her lips
again. The usual restraint I treated her with slipped away a little
as I used my superior strength to flip her onto her back, exposing
her perfect breasts. I bit down on one of her nipples hard enough
to draw a cry from her and that pulled me back a little. The world
flashed back to color as the woman pushed away the wolf.

“
Did I hurt you?” I
whispered, nuzzling her cheek.

She responded with a hot, fast kiss.
“Never.”

It was all the encouragement I needed. We
didn’t go to bed angry.

***

Back in the early nineties, a few human writers really latched onto
the idea of werewolves and novels began flooding the bookshops. You
know the type: wolves as angst-ridden, romantic heroes pining for
their
one true love
; wolves fighting demons and vampires to save the world. I’d
always liked those. I’d been secretly disappointed when I realized
demons and vampires probably didn’t really exist. The writers
always had a skewed notion of the Pack structure in their books,
depicting it as an almost feudal system with one alpha dominating
at the top while everyone else scrambled for position
underneath.

The reality was different,
of course. Maybe back in the days of witch-hunts and Inquisitions
we’d lived like that. But in the days of democracy and equal
rights,
alpha
was
an honorary title. Our alphas were older, respected wolves; pillars
of society rather than benevolent dictators. They were the kind of
men and women you see in the same corner of the same pub every
night of the week, telling the same stories about how things were
different in their day.

You didn’t expect to find them on your
doorstep at eight o’ clock on a Saturday morning, which is where I
found Eddie Hughes the next day.

Shannon and I had risen early, spending some
time making sure I really wasn’t mad anymore. Then, hungry from all
the exertion, I’d come downstairs to make a fry-up. It was my day
off and I intended to indulge myself. I was halfway through
poaching myself an egg when the doorbell rang.

I smelled Eddie before I opened the door. He
was a smoker and the acrid scent of tobacco wafted through the thin
wood. I wrinkled my nose as I peered round the door. I was dressed
in an oversized Muse t-shirt that barely covered my thighs. Despite
the notoriously casual werewolf approach to modesty, I just didn’t
feel comfortable half-naked in front of an alpha.

“
Eddie,” I greeted him.
“This is…nice.” I hadn’t seen him since Lupercali, hadn’t expected
to see him again until the next one.

“
Morning, Ayla. Sorry to
disturb you so early. Can I come in?” he asked. “I smell bacon.” He
smiled, his weathered face crinkling. You couldn’t say no to a face
like that. Five minutes later Eddie was tucking into my fry-up
while I stood at the stove pretending I didn’t mind starting my
breakfast all over again.

“
Heard about Molly Brady,”
Eddie said around a mouthful of bacon. “Bad business,
that.”

“
Yeah.” I hid my surprise
at how quickly the news had spread. One of the doctors had probably
called the alphas as soon as Molly came in. Tina would love that.
“Poor kid, she was really in a mess.”

“
You found her, I
understand?”

I nodded, glancing at him over my shoulder.
His salt and pepper hair gleamed in the light of the sun peeking
through the kitchen blinds. His eyes were fixed on me as he poked
at his food, dark and intent. I suddenly felt nervous. Had I done
something wrong, helping an outcast’s child? “Yes,” I said aloud.
“Out in Larkspur Park.”