Silver Wolf Clan (13 page)

Well, well. It was possible she liked this wolf-eyed man after all. The enemy of an enemy was a friend, and all. It was the same sentiment for wolf as for man. She lolled her tongue out the side of her mouth in a wolfy grin as the she-wolf cowered under Wolf Eyes’s glare. Raw power emanated from him, which made Morgan’s fur stand straight on end. What a confusing and interesting creature he was turning out to be.

“She needs water,” Wolf Eyes barked as he headed for Morgan’s cage again. “Where do I get it?”

“I don’t know if it is such a good idea for you to get that close to her cage again,” said Scar Face, taking a step toward him.

Wolf Eyes turned around. “I’ll be the only one to feed her until she Changes back. Am I clear?” He clenched his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said in a gentler tone. “This is hard for me. Please try to understand.”

Scar Face nodded and pointed toward a sink at the far end of the room. Wolf Eyes filled a bucket with water and hoisted it to her cage. There was a built-in water bowl in the front corner. He was either very brave or very stupid to get so close to her again, but she stayed in place. Her gift for him terrorizing the ugly she-wolf.

“What happened to her face?” he asked as he finished pouring water.

“She cut it tearing up the mattress, I think,” Scar Face replied.

Wolf Eyes leaned his forehead on an arm draped over the bars of her cage. The corners of his eyes tightened slightly. She cocked her head. What did he want from her? As suddenly as he’d come, he turned and left, followed by the other two men.

She paced the cage as claustrophobia began to settle over her bones again. Paused, she listened for him to come back but was rewarded with hollow silence. A howl of mourning ripped from her as she staggered under a loss she wasn’t equipped to understand.

* * * *

When the howl tore through the barn and filled the night sky, it was all Grey could do to stay upright and not drop to the floor and join her song. His guts were being ripped out. How could she not have recognized him? He tensed every muscle against the pain. He couldn’t lose it in front of Dean and Wade.

“What’s happened? What’s wrong with her?” he asked. “Even during my first Change I knew who I was. Does she blame me? Is that why she tried to attack me?”

They stopped under a huge cottonwood tree off the dirt road leading from the barn to the main house.

“Grey, we need to talk,” Dean said.

Oh, how those few words created such a snaking fear in his gut. Something was wrong.

“Did you see her coloring?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, she was white. I mean, not the dirty blond, but like snow. And her eyes...I’ve never seen eyes like that.” Purple. A pale, unsettling light violet. She was fiercely beautiful. “What does it mean?”

“You’re still young, and haven’t been around many werewolves. White is a natural color for gray wolves out in the wild but not for a werewolf. There are no white werewolves. Well, I guess now there’s one,” Dean corrected himself with a half-smile and a shake of his head. “Legends about a silver wolf clan riddle our history from centuries ago. They describe wolves that looked like Morgan does. She’s special, Grey.”

Okay, so she was special. That much was obvious from the first moment he’d seen her, but what would her coloring mean? How important would it be to other werewolves? To the other packs?

Wade bit his bottom lip and stared off into the dark. “Who do we tell about this? Do we notify the Old Ones or tell the other packs?”

Grey dipped his chin. “Who’re the Old Ones, and why would we need to tell them about Morgan?”

Wade leaned against the trunk of the old tree. “The Old Ones are a council of five older werewolves, chosen by the packs to handle justice and make sure werewolf tradition and secrecy are upheld. They’re the ones who hold Summit every year. What do you think, Dean? Do we need to tell them right away?

Dean frowned. “What if she’s a breeder?”

A loaded look passed between the two men.

Fists clenched against the urge for violence, Grey said, “Breeder. What does that mean? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Grey, don’t talk to anyone about Morgan until we’ve figured things out. I have a library of werewolf lore, legends, and history in my office. We can start there. Try to learn about what is happening to her, but until we figure out what we want to tell people and call a pack meeting, don’t talk to anyone about her. We have to keep her safe. Do you get what we’re saying to you?”

Wolf pushed. He knew about keeping her safe. Nothing would stop him from making that happen. The men wouldn’t give up any more that night no matter how badly he wanted it. That much was obvious from their steady, unflinching gazes. They’d tell him less if he pushed, so he nodded instead.

The first rays of sunlight brushed the horizon as they trudged to the main house. By the time they’d walked through the front door, the house smelled of bacon and biscuits and heaven. Rachel scrambled a huge pan of eggs on the stove. Bacon sizzled in a skillet beside her.

Lana sat on the counter, playing with a spice rack. She wore one of Rachel’s extra aprons. It swallowed her, but the girl didn’t seem to mind. Cartoons danced across the television screen, and Marissa lay snuggled up on the couch with a down blanket.

Grey picked Lana up and tossed her in the air. “How’s my girl this morning, huh?”

She giggled then turned a serious expression on him. “Where’s Morgan?”

“Morgan’s out for a little while, but she’ll be back soon. She’s sick, but already getting better. Everything’s going be okay,” he said, hugging her tightly. If only he felt as confident as he’d sounded.

The rest of the wolves trickled in, attracted to the smell of breakfast. The fastest way to gather a pack was to stick food on a table. As Grey poured orange juice into glasses, Logan cleared his throat behind him. He and Brandon stood in front of the refrigerator, fidgeting, staring at the ground as if the grout between the tiles was the most interesting thing they’d seen in their lives.

“Look, we messed up, man,” Logan said. “We wouldn’t have ever attacked Morgan if we were in our right minds. The blood…we’re sorry.”

Even if the attack were still fresh and infuriating, he of all people knew how impossible pulling away from a potential kill was. “Don’t worry about it. The blame’s with Alexis,” he said.

Lana sat in his lap during breakfast. She probably felt clingy and insecure because Morgan wasn’t around, but that was just fine by him. He needed to be close to her too. As soon as everyone had seated themselves, Brandon asked if Morgan was okay. Grey pursed his lips. Best to let Dean handle this one.

“She’s doing well. She’s already Changed,” Dean said, to the relief and surprise of the group. This news was the best anyone could hope for after the night before. Her options had been death or Change after what Alexis had done. “That being said, no one is to go into the cage room or around the barn. There’re complications, and you’ll see her again when she’s ready. She doesn’t seem like she’s in any hurry to Change back, so she needs space to deal with all of this. That’s an order,” he said firmly, and looked them each in the eyes.

The pack dispersed throughout the day. The danger was over, so they headed back to their own lives outside of pack property. Dean, Wade, and Grey cleaned up and met in the library to start the search for literature on silver wolf legends. They found nothing in the first three hours of scouring every page on every ancient-looking text on werewolves.

Some of the literature echoed true, but most seemed to be myth. Surprisingly, werewolf lore and culture were actually rich, spanning hundreds of years.

“That’s why we keep these old books around,” Dean explained. “Sometimes we get a new wolf who needs to see and read this stuff to understand the life they’ll be living. Most alphas keep copies and original books they’ve collected through the years so they are available to their pack if they need them.”

Wade tried to find information on silver wolf clan legends on the computer, but found a modern group of internet gamers under the same name and little else. After they’d studied every one of the bookshelf literature, Dean moved the shelves aside, revealing a four foot wide metal safe door. He unlocked it and pulled out more ancient looking books, then handed them to Grey and Wade to stack on the huge desk they’d been reading around. “We keep this stuff locked up because if someone came in here and read any of the books on the bookshelf, they’d think,
okay
,
wolf fanatics
. The literature in the safe screams something darker is going on in this house, though.”

The books smelled of age. Even though they looked to be well preserved, the dampness of old pages and aged ink scents lingered on the ancient texts. The first had an ink block drawing of a fearsome wolf-like creature. Its front paw rested on a bloodied human body and it lifted its head to the night sky, howled at the moon.

He ran his fingertips over the cover. If nothing else, it promised to be an interesting read.

Marissa eventually brought lunch in, so they didn’t have to leave. She set a tray of cold cut sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade on the desk and as she walked out, Grey glanced up and thanked her. She nodded and smiled shyly and then left. Dean looked at Grey like he’d grown a third eye.

“What?” he asked, amused at the shock on Dean’s face.

“Oh, nothing. Except, Marissa never talks to anyone, much less big scary sasquatches like yourself,” he said with a half grin. “I’m pretty sure just yesterday you were scaring the crap out of her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m meek as a church mouse,” he said, twirling a pencil absently. “It’s probably because I’m the only other guy around here, besides you two, who isn’t trying to marry the poor kid.”

Dean snorted his agreement and went back to reading. “Okay, here it is. I found something.” He put his half-eaten ham sandwich on his plate. “It says here the silver wolf clan legend hails from seventeenth to early eighteenth century France. The bulk of the stories originate from a family named Dubois. The family ran a huge winery and also a glass making shop. Only family worked there and no visitors were allowed on the property. The population numbered in the hundreds at one point…yada, yada.”

He skimmed, looking for information more relevant to their situation. “Okay, it was said that the Dubois family was actually a huge clan of werewolves unlike anything anyone had seen. The wolves’ coloring varied only slightly, but all of them were white, and the females had light blue or light purple eyes. Legends say these were the only genetic werewolves because the females were sometimes able to breed and bear children. Such an emphasis was placed on breeding, their numbers became too great for the winery to sustain. Because of this, silver wolf clan females branched out and moved away to other packs to breed and bear children with mates they’d chosen. Most of the offspring still carried the Silver Wolf coloring. Each Silver Wolf female is said to have been coveted and respected because of the offspring she could potentially have. Due to the breeding years being lengthened and gestational cycle only being nine weeks like a regular wolf, a Silver Wolf breeder could bear many children, which boosted the population. Sometime around their peak numbers, humans caught wind something unnatural was going on at the winery, and they started watching it. The idea of the werewolf was common in France at the time, and when the humans realized what they had, they attacked the winery, burning and killing most of the silver wolves. Men, Woman, and children, all murdered.”

They were silent for a few minutes then he read on. Eyes wide, he leaned forward. “Listen to this. At the time, vampires—yep, I said freaking vampires—were struggling to assimilate to a changing world and had been watching the silver wolves’ numbers, as the vampire numbers were way down. They couldn’t move on them because they didn’t have enough man power, so when the humans attacked the winery, wiping out most of them, vampires were given the order to find any and all remaining silver wolves and kill them. This included the females who’d moved to other packs and their children. Vampires murdered entire packs to make sure they were rid of every last silver wolf, so they would never have to worry about vampires and werewolves being so unbalanced again. Son of a bitch,” Dean said as he closed the book. He rubbed his eyes.

Grey leaned back in the chair and stretched his long legs out then rubbed his hands through his hair, agitated. “All right, so obviously somehow one of the silver wolves survived. Or it could have been one of their offspring, one of the wolves thought not to have had the gene for the white coloring, but could still pass it on?”

“Yeah, but then how was Morgan human until yesterday?” Dean asked. “She should have been a silver wolf from birth, right?”

Wade stood and stretched then sat on the edge of the desk. “Okay, it’s well known that normal werewolves can’t reproduce, not even with humans, but if this silver wolf clan was able to breed with other werewolves, who’s to say they couldn’t breed with humans too? Maybe that’s how the vampires missed one. Possibly one of them found a human mate and took themselves off the Vamp’s radar. That would at least create a human-werewolf hybrid, and if you breed enough human into the line through the generations, they wouldn’t be able to Change anymore, right?”

The mass of information was overwhelming, but something deep seated clicked into place. “From the moment I smelled Morgan, I noticed something special, something different that called to me. Logan even scented it last night, remember? Underneath all her other scents. Faintly of animal, of wolf. It’s in her blood. She has to be a silver wolf. She has Dubois blood. Why else would she look like she does?”

“We could go even further and wonder if this is why she hasn’t Changed back yet,” Dean said. “Maybe her wolf has been locked away her entire life and she needs time out. She should have Changed back already, but Morgan doesn’t even know what’s happening. She should have been aware of her human side under normal circumstances, or at least been able to figure it out. I don’t think her wolf and her human even know the other exists yet. There’s no telling when she’ll decide to Change back.”