Werewolf Wedding (7 page)

“
Mom
,” Jake sighed for the eighth time, “you know what I’m talking about.”

“Your brother is part of this family and part of this pack. Even if he did kind of... make some poor decisions.”

Jake scoffed. “Poor decisions? Really? He abandoned us and then just showed back up when it was time to collect inheritance. And all you can say is that he made a poor decision?”

Frowning deeply, Jake kept stirring the macaroni, and also turned his attention to shaking a sauté pan full of onions, garlic, and bell peppers. She tried to get his attention with a tap on the arm, but Jake just stared at the popping vegetables and grimaced. “He’s a piece of shit, er, sorry, what I mean is he’s no good.”

“I’ve heard profanity before,” Greta said. “But what I haven’t is you being quite this angry before. You were made alpha because you were so even handed and calm.”

“Right,” Jake said, with a laugh. “It had nothing to do with Dane running away. Nothing at all.”

Greta frowned and took the spatula from Jake, who was doing a very bad job at keeping the macaroni from sticking. “What’s bothering you? You never used to worry about this sort of thing so much. Who cares if he’s coming to dinner? Either way you should be happy – you never wanted to be alpha anyway, right? So what’s the problem?”

“Five years of growing up and realizing what I had to do, that’s the problem.” Jake looked back over his shoulder. “Is he really coming here tonight? Is that... I mean, why does he have to suddenly be a part of everything we do again?”

“Put down the spatula and stop nervously shaking the peppers.” Greta took her son’s hand and looked him straight in the eye, which took a pretty good angle on her neck. “He’s your brother. It doesn’t matter what kind of business he was involved in, as long as he can leave it at the door, he’s welcome to come to dinner. Get it?”

Jake was shaking his head. “That’s... yeah, I’m sure he’s going to put aside his mate challenge, and just forget about threatening to ruin everything if I didn’t play along on some idiot game – which by the way, I’m going to win – and... yeah, I’m sure he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

Greta looked at him a little sideways. “What did you do, Jacob?”

“What do you mean?”

She smiled a quirky, lupine smile. “You got a girl? Did she leave you after the first date again?”

“What the hell do you mean ‘again’?” Jake grimaced, tried to look angry, but just couldn’t. After all, it wasn’t like she was wrong. “I... uh... well, no, she didn’t leave.”

“Oh very good,” Greta said. “So what’s the problem? The only thing that’s going to happen is that your jackass brother will look like a fool. He’s had no issue doing that very well.”

“She didn’t leave because we were at
her
house,” Jake said, choosing to ignore going any further down the dark path that was discussing his brother. Or at least
that
brother. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it was one date. And I’m not even really sure it was a date.”

He looked up at his mom, feeling a little flustered at all the weirdness he’d just splattered at her. “What? You’re staring at me and grinning. What did I do?”

“Do?” she asked. “I don’t know why it has to be that. Jacob, you’ve found a girl. You’ve found a girl that you both like, and who didn’t run off. And you’re scared that your brother is going to once again ruin it for you.”

“There’s a difference this time,” he said.

“And so you’re flustered. You always get flustered when you’re close to something you want. Remember that one time you caught a catfish bigger than your fathers? And you didn’t even have to throw anything remotely explosive into Lake St. Francis? You got so excited and flummoxed that you couldn’t spell your own name for a week or so.”

Jake flushed deeply, hoping that whatever extended family was milling around in the living room hadn’t heard that bit. “It’s not that, ma—”

She cut him off again. “It’s cute, dear. You never wanted to run the business, I know that. You never much cared to run the pack, I know that too. But in the five years you had, did you realize that intra-pack violence is down eighty-three percent?”

Jake quirked an eyebrow. “Really? That’s pretty good.”

“Yes, dear, it is. And it’s all because you took a stand against us killing each other. Your father never did that, and lord knows your brother wouldn’t have. Dane was always a hothead. You were always... not.”

Still, he was absolutely certain that when he spilled all the beans – that Delilah wasn’t even a wolf from their pack, much less a wolf at all – that would be an abrupt end to the whole business of how cute it was that he was wiggly-eyed over a woman.

“Remember those poems you used to write in school? I have one over here, laminated, let me get—”

“No!” he raised his hands in submission. “There is absolutely no need to invoke my high school poetry. No, no, no, we don’t need to do that. It’d destroy whatever is left of my feelings of masculinity. And if anyone else heard?”

Greta pursed her lips. “Spartans were quite manly, you know, and they valued poetry.”

“Right,” Jake said with a sardonic grin. “And they also oiled each other up and gave one another rubdowns before fights. I think whatever anyone can say about me, at least I don’t braid my beard.”

A terrible noise – a crashing sound, and then something that sounded like a door being slammed so hard the jamb broke – interrupted their conversation. Greta looked downward at the floor and shook her head. “Sometimes I wish we had a little more gentleness in our family. I don’t understand the constant need for shouting and fighting. I really hope your uncle Elbert didn’t just break my curio cabinet, because if he did I’m going to be very irritated.”

Jake sat down and reached for the oversized mug of coffee he’d forgotten he made. “There’s something else,” he said, his voice low and shamed. “I need to tell you before anyone else does.”

Without a shred of hesitation, Greta took over the stirring of the macaroni, and a moment later, poured it into a casserole and added the panko that Jake apparently forgot, since he left the entire handful in a pile on the countertop. She scooped that on to the creamy, steaming mass, and reminded him in the most motherly voice imaginable that he could tell her anything.

“He challenged me.” Jake said, gritting his teeth and taking a long pull on the coffee. “He came to the office the other day and challenged me to a mating.”

“Oh,” Greta said, trying to sound unconcerned but failing. “Oh, dear.”

For a moment she busied herself with the oven. She removed three pot roasts before sticking the four gallon casserole in and adjusting the heat. “Well,” she finally said, “you have your girlfriend. That’s a good start. And what does he have? Certainly he isn’t going to simply force someone to mate?”

“He’s after
my
girl,” Jake said, still gritting his teeth. “At least I think he is. She mentioned him the other night right after we... well anyway, she mentioned him. And this wouldn’t be the first time he tried something like this.”

That
got Greta’s attention. She wadded her apron up in a balled fist, and made a long, drawn-out humming sound. It was her thinking noise. She made it whenever something was working its way through her considerably cunning, though completely unassuming, self.

“You could always trap him,” she offered.

When she started in with the cunning plots, her grandmotherly appearance took on a much darker tone. She was, really, a wolf in grandma’s knit sweater, but she was usually the most passive, sweetest wolf you could ever hope to meet. But when someone messed with one of her cubs? That’s when the teeth came out.

“Trap him? I don’t even know how to begin trapping him. He’s got the support of part of the pack, you know that. If I just sneak into winning this mating challenge, they’ll never back me.”

“He has the support of the part of the pack that wants to freely kill people and eat humans whenever the urge strikes. That’s not the population anyone
wants
backing them.”

She hadn’t ever been soft when it came to Dane. Even when their father was alive, she frequently refused to let him in the house when he’d get in a rage, or when he’d start throwing things around. Partly it was because she wasn’t Dane’s natural mother – that surely had something to do with it, although she selflessly raised him like he was – but partly it was because she just hated the violence.

“Those wolves,” she continued, “are going to be the death of us. We’re strong, certainly, and we can always cause some havoc – but the thing they don’t consider is that as far as population goes? I’m fairly sure humans outnumber werewolves... what, ten million to one? More, maybe? We start up with that medieval business of hunting people in the alleys and terrifying cities, like your silly brother wants? We’re the ones that’ll be hunted down. We’ll be killed to a wolf, don’t you doubt it.”

She was getting worked up, and Jake knew better than to try and get a word in edgewise.

“This isn’t a fairytale we’re living. This is the twenty-first century, Jacob. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but if your brother takes over the pack? He’s going to kill every single one of us to satisfy his idiotic, teenage bloodlust. And I doubt it’ll stop just with our pack. Once people find out about us, and realize that we are exactly as terrible as the Grimm tales have us? They won’t stop until there isn’t a single breathing werewolf left on the planet.”

After sitting for a moment longer, she crossed her fingers in her lap, patted her thighs and stood up. “Rutabaga pie is done. Didn’t you say there was something else you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh,” he said, still reeling from the monster of an info-dump his mom had just put in his lap. Even though none of that was news – he’d known how dangerous it would be for wolves to be outed. After all, that’s why they worked so hard to keep secret. That’s why they kept to themselves and only their most trusted advisers – like George – were privy to the unbelievable reality that there were actually werewolves. And, Greta was exactly right. Dane’s unbelievable rage and his utterly childlike glee in killing humans and forcing them into... whatever it is he forced them into? That wasn’t going to go unnoticed. He also knew that if Dane were willing to go to such extremes to satisfy his own stupid urges, there was no telling what he’d do to win this challenge and take over the pack.

A mixture of rage, confusion, and an almost helpless feeling settled into Jake’s stomach. He hated violence, hated the fighting and all that... but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to have the luxury of pacifism if he was going to stop his brother.

“Jacob?” she asked. “There was something else? Maybe about your sweet little girlfriend?”

Greta was up and flouncing around the kitchen again, smiling her sweet smile. Jake’s guts were a mess. A sweaty, roiling, gurgling mess. “Nah,” he said. “It can wait, it wasn’t anything important.”

Nothing important. Like, you know, the girl I’m currently an idiot for isn’t a werewolf. Ugh. When was the last time that even happened? The 1800s?
He shook his head as another couple of shouts from the living room resulted in at least two people leaving the house, probably to have a little slugfest.

“I better go calm the tempers,” he said with a sigh. “Don’t want them breaking your curio cabinet.”

“Yes dear, that’s true,” Greta said, as sweetly as she could.

As soon as Jake was up and out of the kitchen, she balled up her fist and slammed it on the countertop, sending the remains of the panko pile flying.

*

“U
ncle Elbert!” Jake shouted, grabbing his rather elderly, and fully drunk, uncle by the collar. “You can
not
start a fight with someone because you think they said something fifteen years ago.”

“He
did
say it!” Elbert insisted. His fermented breath was upsetting, but not as much as the fact that Jake had gotten to the front room just in time to find the curio cabinet face down. Thankfully the glass had only cracked, and the door would need new hinges. He made a note to ask Dilly about fixing the glass next time he saw her, which immediately put a little flutter in his stomach.

“And it was thirteen years! That’s nothing to a wolf!” Elbert’s squawking brought him back to reality. At least they were all out front now, so there wasn’t much more damage that could occur, except to the rosebushes, which had survived things a lot worse than two skinny, old, drunk werewolves falling into them.

Jake sighed heavily. “Okay, okay. Fine. Would an apology work?”

“You’re a lunatic if you think I’m apologizing that that old jackass!” It was, Jake realized with disappointment, apparently his
other
old, drunk uncle’s turn to start in. “I only called him what’s true. He
did
try to steal my mate, so I called him a flipper!” Jeffry was livid. He was also slurring pretty heavily, and having to work rather hard to stay on his feet.

“Okay, fine,” Jake said. “Flipper is a pretty bad thing to call someone, a grave insult even,” he was playing up the drama pretty heavily. “But then again, mate stealing is a pretty nasty thing to do. Even if it doesn’t work.”

“It would have!” Elbert piped up. “She said he couldn’t satisfy her in the way a man is supposed to! Except he shot me, and she ran off!”

And sometimes
, Jake thought,
it’s best to pick your battles.

“You know what? You two are so drunk I doubt you could hurt a rabbit. If this is really what you want, then just get it over with. Don’t mess up the rose bushes, I spent a lot of time on them.”

Elbert lunged at Jeffry who responded by swinging an arm wildly, and falling flat on the ground. The two of them tussled for about eight seconds, and then were either snuggling, or making up. Jake wasn’t paying much attention, because as soon as the flailing began, a sound that he recognized – and a sound that made his guts churn – met his ears.

“Still trying to keep wolves from being wolves, brother?”

Dane’s voice is about the only thing in the world that can make me see red this quick
.