Werewolf Wedding (22 page)

He eyed me sideways, narrowing his eyes to slits. “What do you care about tradition, girl? You’re not one of us, what the hell does it matter to you?”

I knew that I was treading a dangerous line. I knew that if I screwed up, I’d lose all the headway I’d made, and the plan would fall straight through into the toilet. And if that happened, I’m certain time was too short to come up with anything else.

“Because they
should
,” I said, stalling for time. “I’m going to be the vita of the pack, right? The life and all that? I’m supposed to know things like traditions and lore and I’m supposed to care.”

I stepped closer to him, my heart thudding in my chest. “That
is
right, isn’t it? You need a good, loyal vita don’t you?”

Draping my hands over his neck, I almost choked as I sat down on his lap, draping my legs across his. I hoped I could convince him, but if I
had
to, I was ready to do whatever he wanted to keep him convinced.

A haunting smile crept across Dane’s full lips. “I do,” he said. “But I also know what I want. I should have what I want, shouldn’t I? I’m the alpha, after all. Why should I have to wait?”

I thought for another short second. “Because if
you
don’t respect the traditions, then your brother doesn’t have to honor them either. And as far as me and him goes, that was before I knew about any of this.”
Not that it would have changed anything
, I wanted to add, but somehow restrained myself.

That gave him pause. A finger curled into my hair. The little tug at my scalp sent a wave of goosebumps down the side of my face and underneath my shirt. “How would anyone know?” he kissed me under the chin. I was about to vomit. “It’s just us in here, isn’t it? You gonna go telling someone what we do in our spare time?”

At that point, I started considering options. There was a gun somewhere in the house, but that wouldn’t help much. There was an umbrella by the front door, and then a little toolkit under the sink. I couldn’t hurt this idiot if I had a car and a machine gun. A toolkit and a half-broken umbrella weren’t going to do a damn bit of good.

I curled my fingertips against his cheek, letting my nails rasp across his stubble. If I couldn’t think of something, and fast, then...

“
I
would know,” I said. Of all the long shots, this was the king. I was assuming he had any kind of feelings at all for me, and would concern himself in any way with that. “It would bother me. I’ve never done anything right in my life, Dane,” I kissed his cheek, hoping to woo him with a mixture of my sad tale and gentle touching.

“And this
is
?”

“It didn’t start that way,” I said. “But now that we’re doing this, I want to make the most of it, you know? I want to do everything right and be the best vita I can be. It’s important to me that I jump into this whole werewolf thing without screwing it up. You can wait a couple days to give me all that rough, hard loving you want to give me, right? I’ll owe you.”

I bit my lip, trying to look as innocent and helpless as possible. From the way he’d stopped groping at me, I thought it was working.

“You being for real?” he asked. “I don’t get why you’d care this much, but...”

I kissed him again, tenderly on the lips. “Thank you,” I whispered, and crawled off his lap before he had time to reconsider. My soul heaved a heavy sigh of relief as I left his heat behind, and stood. “I know you want this, I know you
need
it. But just trust me. I... I mean it. I really appreciate you letting me have this right.”

“Yeah,” he said dismissively. “So when do we make this statue?” A laugh escaped Dane’s lips. “I can’t wait to see the look on that idiot’s face when he sees this.”

Something just occurred to me. “Dane, why
is
Jake going to be at the marking? Don’t you think that’s just inviting trouble?”

“We can start tomorrow,” he announced. “Early. About noon. As for him being there, how else is he going to officially renounce his title and give up his claim? This is how it goes, babe. You like all these traditions, you’ll like this. You know what happens to an alpha who renounces his authority, right?”

The smile that came across Dane’s lips told me everything, but it still made my blood run cold. “Exile?” I guessed, hopefully. I still wasn’t sure this plan was going to work, not at all, so I’d been telling myself that absolute worst-case, Jake would just be packed off somewhere to live out his life as a grocery clerk or something.

“He dies,” Dane said, relishing both the words, and apparently, the way I reacted. “You like wolf traditions; this is a good place to start. We mark each other, he kneels, and then... I take his head.”

I swallowed, choking down the bile that bubbled up inside me. “Oh,” I said weakly. “Well, um... what if he tries to start trouble?” My voice cracked as I spoke.

“Seriously?” he asked with a smile. “I
love
trouble.”

––––––––

“G
et up!” Dane was shouting, carrying on. I opened my eyes and pushed the blanket off my head. I liked to hide in the corner of the bed and wrap myself in one of my favorite blankets – a white fuzzy one – to help convince myself that I was somehow safe from him. “Wake up!”

“Huhn?” I blinked in the darkness. For a second, I wasn’t sure where I was. A whole list of fantasies rolled through my mind before I felt his heavy, hot hand on my shoulder, shaking me out of my imaginary security. “What is it?”

“I said get up, you get up.”

“Okay,” I said, shaking my head. “Okay, all right. I’m just half asleep. Do you need something?”

Dane shifted positions on the bed, so that his back was against my thigh where I was sitting on the edge of the bed. “My shoulder,” he said. “Right along my neck. I need you to rub it. It’s sore.”

“I, uh...”

“
Now
,” he growled. “Rub.”

I blinked again and yawned loudly. Without saying another word, I squeezed the massive trapezius muscle, running my hands long the line that separated it from the next muscle. He was groaning, moaning, and making all kinds of awful noises. As I rubbed and massaged and squeezed, the only thing I could think was how good it would feel to put this guy in his place. To give him what was coming to him.

It would feel so good to see him make a complete fool of himself and get thrown out of his own pack once and for all.

That is, if the plan worked.

Otherwise... I shuddered as I remembered the relish Dane had when he said
“then I take his head”
and a cold chill shot through me. Morning could not possibly come soon enough.

When the giant wolf started snoring, I slid out from underneath him and covered his body up so hopefully he’d keep right on snoozing. I wondered what Barney and Jeannie were doing... what Jake and George were doing.

“Sleeping, I’m sure,” I whispered. Just the sound of a voice that wasn’t Dane’s gave me a little comfort.

Of course, as tightly wound as I was, as panicky as I felt, I wasn’t the one who was going to die in four... three days now. I decided right then and there to stop doubting our crazy plan. If there’s only one chance for something to work, then... well, it just
has
to work.

*

“T
his is it?” Dane said, chuffing a laugh. “I thought you said you had a business, not a shack in a warehouse district. You’ll be taken care of. You won’t need to pretend to know how to run a business. Don’t worry.”

His graceful, uncaring misogyny had stopped being surprising, but it still pissed me off. I bit my lip to keep from saying anything that’d give away exactly how tenuous his grasp on me was.
The plan’s going to work
, I kept repeating inside my own head.
It’s going to work and everything will be fine
.

“This, yeah, Dane, this is it,” I said, turning the key in my old lock and taking a deep breath of the aroma of old plaster, paints, and dust from a thousand different kinds of stone that welcomed me home. That the lock turned far more easily than it normally did wasn’t lost on me. “This is where I made my living. Although, I guess that I won’t be doing much of that anymore.”

He didn’t catch the sadness in my voice, if he was even capable of catching sadness, or capable of anything resembling human emotion. “Nah,” was all he said, and then, “not any need for that. Pack money is big money,” a moment later.

“Anyway, back here is my stuff,” I grabbed his hand, leading him back to the studio part. I cast a longing gaze at Jeannie’s desk, remembering her easy jokes, her snarky sweetness and her undying loyalty. That, of course, made me think about the reason for all this – Jake and his damn brother.

In that flicker of a moment, I saw something that wasn’t supposed to be there.
A letter
? “Weird,” I said, reaching for it. “Must be a bill.”

Of course it wasn’t. And of course, I also knew without even looking, who it was from. But how had he gotten in? And why take the risk? He was well aware that I’d be bringing Dane here. Maybe he realized Dane would be so bloated with pride that he wouldn’t give the first shit about anything but himself.

The only response from my fiancé was a grunt and a laugh.
I can’t wait to be rid of this jackass
.

“Come on back, I’ll look at this later.” I slipped the note into the inside pocket on my jacket. The crinkle of the soft envelope thrilling against my skin, I took a deep breath. I could almost smell his sweat and his musk. I could almost feel his kiss on my neck, his fingers on my skin. But I had to put that feeling away. I had to bury the good feelings and embrace the bad ones.

I had to pretend, just for a little while longer, I told myself – just a couple days. That’s nothing to trade for a lifetime, right? That’s what I told myself anyway, and for a time at least it worked. I swallowed my pride, swallowed my emotions, and watched Dane strut – actually strut, in a way I haven’t seen outside professional wrestling shows – back to the studio.

On his way he kicked over some piled up magazines, and snatched a flowerpot that I’d made a few weeks before. “What a waste of space,” he said as he tossed it to the ground and watched it shatter. “All this crap built up everywhere. Humans are so ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” I said, giving no clue as to what it was, I thought, that was the waste of space. “We certainly are.”

The trip back to my studio was short and thankfully uncommented upon by Dane’s wit. As soon as I opened the door – which had been repaired; it used to stick when you slid it – I was surprised, but not really, to see that all of my makeshift tools had been replaced.

Holy shit
, I had to force myself to keep quiet.
A Roto-Mate 2000. I’ve wanted one of these lathes forever.
And the fancy lathe was far from all. All of my chisels were new, there was a new chainsaw hanging from the back for my ice sculptures, and all my brushes, aprons, and smocks had been replaced.

And on top of that, all my old stuff was still there, stacked neatly in boxes beside my shower. Which was now a full, tiled, glass-door shower.
This is a guy who gets me. I might love the new hotness but damn if I can’t get attached to some old junky tools
. It was hard – really hard – to keep my cool. I couldn’t believe this stuff. It was all brand new, all properly assembled, and all... from Jake. Absently, I placed a hand on the letter in my pocket.

“You must have some bills from all this new shit,” Dane said dismissively. “Guess you must make decent money off this stupid junk.” He prodded a half-finished commission, a model of a little kid sitting on a bench in half-size, with the toe of his boot. “How much does something like this cost?”

The one he was prodding was about two grand in materials and six in labor. But I’d done it for cost plus a thousand. I was a sucker for the cute old woman who wanted it. The statue was of one of her grandkids, she was giving it to him as a keepsake and I couldn’t bear to turn her away with charging too much.

“I probably don’t charge as much as I should,” I said, noticing my voice was a little hollow in my throat. “I could probably get ten for that.”

“And how long would it take?”

I shrugged. “I work on a lot of them at once, I just finish when I finish. If I sat down and just went at it, probably a couple of weeks if I was really on top of things.”

He laughed. Of course he did. Every single cruel chuckle, every obnoxious warble of his voice made me hate him more. If I needed any more convincing that I was doing the right thing, by the end of our first session, all questions were gone.

To his credit, Dane sat mostly still for the majority of our first few hours, long enough for me to get a good part of the clay model done. Luckily I only had to do a little bit of reconfiguring on the face. Somehow that arm had stuck where I’d glued it. Small blessings count for a lot when you don’t have any big ones.

By the early evening, he was getting antsy. He kept getting up for a drink or for a snack, or to grab at me, or make some ugly joke about my life, or his mother, or Jake. He was just the distilled essence of obnoxious male posturing. If this plan was going to work on anything, it was going to work on him.

About the time the sun went down, I couldn’t take anymore. “If you want, you can just leave me here and I’ll work for a while longer. If I’m gonna get this thing done in time, I’ll need to work some late nights.”

“Don’t you need me to model... or whatever? I mean, seems like you’d need me here to be awesome so you could see how awesome to make the statue.”

“Er,” I had to bite my tongue for about the thousandth time. “I think I have enough awesome. It’s all modeled, which is really all I need you for. See? I’ll call when I’m done?”

He was already up and heading towards the door. “Call a cab,” he said, throwing a few twenties on the floor. “I want this thing done. I’m gonna make my brother look like such a damn idiot when this is all said and done. Stay all night if you have to, sleep here, it doesn’t matter.”