The Alpha's Daughter (15 page)

Jazz slapped her hand over
her mouth to keep her tea from spurting all over Miz Mary's pretty
tea cloth. When she could finally swallow and breathe again, she
could only say, "Excuse me?"

"Bumpin' uglies," Mary giggled like a girl
and waved her hand. "Read it someplace. Thought it was funny. What
do you call it?"

"Ah, having sex?" This was not what she
expected tea with the Mate to be like.

Miz Mary reared back her
head and gave Jazz a look that made her tell the truth.

"Okay, fucking." In spite of her usually raw
vocabulary, Jazz felt funny using the word to the Mate.

The Mate wrinkled her
nose. "I don't like that word," she declared, "Doesn't make me
smile. Every time I hear someone use it I think something like
'Gotta get my bumpin' ugly car to the shop so they can fix that
bumpin' ugly carburetor'."

Jazz laughed.

"See? Now that makes you
smile. Where were we? Oh," she said, folding her hands primly in
her lap, "Don't know what other Mates call it, but Leonard's mother
named it the Call. Now mind you, Mama Coburn wasn't real clear on
it either. In them days folks didn't talk much about sex, just
glossed it over like it never happened and pups popped right up
outta the cabbage patch. But this is the here and now and you need
to know.

"When an unmated Alpha
touches you, you're gonna feel something wonderful inside, like
fireworks on the Fourth of July. You're gonna feel so good you're
gonna wonder how you lived your whole life without it. Like honey
to a bear, it just lights you up beyond imagining and it stays,
child. It stays with you and him your whole life long. It's like
magic."

Jazz thought of the look that passed between
Mary and Leonard the first time she saw them. That was what she
saw. It was like some kind of magic shared between them. Then she
thought of her father and Margie and her smile died.

"You were lucky. It's not always like that.
Sometimes it's like a trap you can't get out of no matter how much
you want to. It's like a drug. You need it even when you know it's
killing you."

Mary's smiled died, too. "Sounds like you
know more about the Call than I do," she said quietly.

Jazz shook her head. "I
didn't know what it was, but now that I do, I'm more convinced than
ever that I don't want it. I don't want to be an Alpha's Mate. I
don't want to mate, period. It's why I ran, Miz Mary. My father
gave me everything I wanted as long as I stayed out of his sight. I
wasn't the boy he wanted and needed. He never had much use for me,"
she confessed and the pain of that statement bubbled up into
tears.

"He never wanted me until
he found some likely candidates to take over as Alpha someday. He
thought he could force me to mate the strongest of the lot. They
were going to fight over me like a piece of goddamned meat and not
one of them cared enough to meet me before they won me. I was a
prize; nothing more than a quarter will buy you from a fucking
bubblegum machine." Jazz put her fingers to her lips. Maybe Griz
was right. She really did need to clean up her mouth. "Oops,
sorry."

"I said I didn't like the
word. I didn't say it isn't useful sometimes," Miz Mary said
placidly as she passed Jazz a napkin. She patted the seat beside
her. "Come. Dry your eyes and sit here next to me."

Jazz wasn't used to
accepting sympathy. She couldn't remember ever being offered any.
Yet twice in two days, someone in Gilead had held out their hand.
Miz Mary's offer was hard to turn down.

"You can't tell anyone,
Miz Mary. Please don't tell anyone. If they knew, they'd always be
watching me, speculating."

"They already are watching you," Mary laughed
gently, "In a place this small someone will always be watching you
and watching over you, too. But don't you worry about what I'll
tell and what I won't. It's part of the Mate's burden to carry the
secrets of her pack. I think I've done it pretty well."

"Like Edna and Edith and Dear Ernest?" Jazz
sniffed.

"Exactly," the Mate said as she slowly
nodded. "That one goes to my grave. So will yours if that's the way
you want it."

She rubbed Jazz's back and Jazz was reminded
of what a mother's comfort felt like. It had been a very long time
since someone offered it to her.

"I got a story to tell and
I want you to listen." Miz Mary began to reminisce in that lulling
drawl of the hills that made words sound like water bubbling over
rocks in a stream.

"When I first met Leonard
I was just a girl, though I would have argued it if you'd told me
that back then. I was raised just over the ridge, you know. We was
poor, o'course everybody we knew was poor and always had been. We
was so poor, we all wondered what that Depression was that we heard
so much about on the radio." Miz Mary laughed at the
image.

"Then that Hitler feller started causing
trouble over there in Europe and folks started to talk about war.
My brothers joined up. They wanted to see the world and they made
it pretty clear they weren't comin' back one way or t'other. Mama'd
been dead two years by then and Daddy said it was a waste of good
money, him and me alone in that big house, so he sold up and moved
us to town to live with his brother.

"Now, I'd been keeping
house for Daddy and the boys for two years already and moving into
that house, well," the Mate shook her head, "Two women in one
kitchen rarely sets well and I was already fifteen and knew so much
more than my aunt." The old woman laughed again. "I hated that town
with all the noise and the smells and the lights. I commenced to
walking in the early morning, just to get away from my aunt and
that house and find a bit of peace during that quietest time of
day.

"One day I'm walking down
the sidewalk past a delivery van and this young fella steps out and
let me tell you, he stopped me in my tracks. He was the handsomest
thing I ever seen. A big strapping fella he was and he stared at me
like I was something else. He said hello and I said hello back and
we started talking and we kept talking every day the weather was
fine enough for me to walk.

"Sometimes he carried a
bit of a limp and sometimes he looked a bit bruised like he'd been
a-fightin', but I never asked because I thought he might be one of
them 4F fellas and some folks wouldn't take kindly to a fella big
as Leonard claiming he couldn't serve even if it was true. It
didn't make no matter to me, but men are funny about things like
that and I didn't want to embarrass him. Little did I know, his
limps and bruising was from fighting his own war. His Daddy had
recently passed and he was fighting to keep his pack."

Miz Mary lifted the teapot
and raised her eyes to Jazz.

"No thank you, ma'am."
Jazz shook her head. It was hard to picture someone as old as Miz
Mary being that young. "Did you know what you were, what he
was?"

"Oh, good heavens no. I
had no idea. I talked to that man for weeks and he never once
touched me." She laughed and confided, "I was beginning to wonder
what was wrong with him. Or me for that matter. I'd been kissed
once or twice before and it never took them weeks to get around to
it. I told myself it was because Leonard was a man and not a boy,
him being ten years older than me, and all.

"Well, we got to know each
other real well and I'll tell you now what I wouldn't then. I cried
every day it rained I missed him so bad. Now and again, he'd take
me out for supper and didn't I hear it from my aunt who said all
kinds of unkind things about me and my new companion. She didn't
like that he was from the hills even though that was where her own
man come from. Daddy and Uncle Brewer were working double shifts at
the mill, so it was just me and her most days and things were
getting worse at the house. Right or wrong, Daddy always took her
side and said we were beholdin' and that didn't set real well with
me. We had words and he told me iffen I didn't like it, I could get
out and find my own way in the world.

"And of course, I told
Leonard about it. I told him everything." She giggled again like a
young girl. "Everything but how I felt about him, but he knew and
he knew what I was. He told me his people were different and
because of that difference, some folks might see them as evil. He
told me I was different, too, and that made me special to him and
his people.

"I knew his people
couldn't be evil. Leonard was the kindest, gentlest man I ever met,
though looking back, I'm sure being so handsome had something to do
with me thinking that way. He said he wanted me for his mate. Would
I come away with him and live my life in the hills?

"Well, this was my secret
dream come true, but I hesitated just for a second and mostly
because I thought a girl shouldn't seem too eager… and then he
touched my hand."

Miz Mary closed her eyes,
placed her hand on her chest and took a deep breath. "Whoo-whee! If
that man could do that just by touching my hand, I could only
imagine what his kiss was gonna do. I said yes and then he kissed
me and I didn't have to imagine anymore." She opened her eyes and
smiled at Jazz. "That was seventy-two years ago and I remember it
like yesterday. Did I ever regret coming to live up here with these
wolvers? I imagine there were days when I did. Roses don't bloom
all year long, you know, and they got some thorns, so you're bound
to get your finger pricked now and again. Mostly though, I remember
that first kiss."

"We've had our hard times,
Leonard and me, and not just being Alpha and Mate. We've had our
arguments and more than our share of grief. We lost our two boys
one winter falling through the ice up at White Owl Pond. Didn't
think I was going to live through that. Leonard didn't either, but
we weathered that storm the same way we did the others, by hanging
on to each other for dear life."

"Oh, Miz Mary, I'm so
sorry." Jazz told her sincerely. Now she was the one doing the back
rub.

"I thank you kindly for
your sympathy, but it was a long, long time ago and all these years
later, I take comfort in they're going together, one trying to save
the other. They were good boys and would have grown into good men
and the Good Lord knows that. He's keeping them safe until Leonard
and I come home that final time.

"My point in telling you
that story wasn't for your sympathy. My life is not to be pitied.
There are plenty of folks out there who've suffered worse. My point
is that what Leonard and I have together has nothing to do with him
being the Alpha or me being the Mate. I loved that man before he
ever touched me and he made sure he loved me. That's what you need
to look for, the man, not the Alpha. Don't go making choices for
your life based on the one your Daddy showed you.

"I'll keep your secret,
but you should know no one here's going to force you into anything.
That's not the way it's done here. Never has been and I surely hope
never will be. I know you're planning to move on, but you should
take your time and look around. You might find you like it here.
All in all, they're a good lot and you're a good woman, though I
wish you'd wash some of that makeup off your face. A little bit
works just fine and makes a woman feel pretty, but you use it like
a mask, hiding underneath it. You're a pretty thing with a pretty
heart and Gilead is as safe a place as any to let folks see
it."

"It's a pain in the ass to put on anyway,"
Jazz admitted. She was tired of squinching her face into that tiny
mirror.

"There, you see?" Miz Mary
laughed. "You just take most of that bumping ugly stuff and throw
it right out the bumping ugly window."

Jazz didn't find it
strange that Roger Wilson was putting on his coat in the hallway
when she was leaving.

"I've had a meeting with
the Alpha," he said, "An important meeting. A man in my position
has to keep his finger on the pulse of the community."

According to Ellie and
Donna, and in spite of the old man's impatience with him, Roger
Wilson was judged to be the most likely candidate for the role of
Alpha once the old man passed. Her new friends didn't like
him.

"We'll be the first wolver
pack run by a jackass," was how Donna put it, but they couldn't see
anyone else volunteering for the job. "Harvey would make a good
Alpha," she went on, "But that would mean setting me aside for a
Mate and there'll be a springtime in Hell before I let that
happen," she declared.

Jazz believed her.

Knowing what she did, it made perfect sense
that he would meet with the Alpha. What Jazz found surprising was
his attitude toward her. He smiled when he said hello and held the
door for her. He asked if he might walk with her since they were
headed in the same direction. He was friendly and congenial,
totally different from the man she'd seen before. He even offered
to help find her a place to stay if living at Doc's wasn't to her
liking.

"The man's one step away from a hermit," he
told her. "A hermit, I say. He wants nothing to do with the social
aspect of the pack. Keeps to himself."

"And keeps you all healthy," Jazz reminded
him. "Doc cares about your pack."

"I'm sure he does. He does, I'm sure, but he
doesn't have what it takes to lead. You must be bored to death
living in that house."

"I won't be there long enough to be bored,"
she told him, "But thanks for the offer. I'll keep it in mind."

So far, she hadn't been bored at all. There
was always something to do and plenty more to be done. Roger was
right about one thing, though. It was time for the grizzly to come
out of his den. He spent too much time alone.