Wolf’s Glory (24 page)

“I guess you"re a celebrity,” she remarked to Jill.

Jill took her arm to lean on it, puffing just slightly. “I"m the oldest person for hundreds of miles, and the oldest woman in five hundred miles. Everybody has heard of me.”

Glory was pretty sure the men would have liked to come closer but the wolves growling and showing their teeth dissuaded them. Marissa was looking particularly pretty this morning, her face glowing with anticipation, and the men were appreciative. Glory knew she got some attention too, and even Renee, with her face beginning to heal from the crash, got her share of looks. The attention triggered the wolves" aggression. No man would dare to try to come close enough to speak to them.

They went first to the place the other women were living. It looked like it must have been an old, old apartment building once. Glory guessed it was a twelve-plex, made of dark brick, and it had a new chain-link fence around it, with a gate with two men on guard there, and two others walking around the inside of the yard. The Flock stopped by the gate, and Taye went forward to talk to the guards in a quiet voice. In a minute he came back and smiled at Marissa encouragingly.

“Faron Paulson is out, but he"ll be back soon. We can go inside to wait.”

Marissa"s anxious face fell. “Okay.”

All those in wolf form and half the men waited outside. Only five men, Taye and one to guard each woman, went into the building. Glory"s guard was the brown-haired guy, Quill.

He had seemed kinda sweet, but now his mouth was firm and hard, and his green eyes were watchful behind the fall of brown curls. The apartment building looked dismally dreary. The scanty furniture was obviously very old and clearly secondhand. The walls were badly in need of paint, the floors sagged slightly in some places, and some of the doors were missing.

But the woodwork was really cool, in the arts and crafts style. Like many old apartment buildings—and this one would have been maybe a century old in 2014—it had a foyer with a once-cool tile mosaic floor where the mailboxes would have been. It needed some work, but it could be a really great place.

Stag greeted them in the building foyer. Connie Mondale, the co-pilot who had taken charge of the women, invited them to wait in her apartment. There were six three-bedroom apartments in the place, and six two-bedroom apartments, plus two small one-bedroom apartments in the basement where Faron and Stag were staying. That meant that each apartment held two or three women. Glory wondered where Stag was actually sleeping. She wouldn"t be surprised if he stretched out in front of Sherry"s door at night. The bathroom consisted of an outhouse in the backyard and buckets for water to be fetched in. Glory felt a surge of gratitude for the Pack"s facilities, even if most of her showers would be cold. A flushing toilet was a wonderful thing. With this many women living in one place together, with limited facilities, Glory wondered how long before the screaming matches began. With the two skinhead women and Heather, it shouldn"t be too long. Stupid Heather made the mistake of smoothing a hand over Taye"s bare shoulder. Glory didn"t bother to hide her enjoyment when he bared his teeth in a snarl that made HHHeather back off with more haste than grace.

Connie and one of her roommates, Katie McCain, were talking enthusiastically about their renovation plans. Not only were they going to spruce the place up, they were also going to open a restaurant. Kathy Graves had been a restaurant manager in St. Paul in the Times Before, and she thought they could support themselves by serving home-cooked meals to the men here. Good luck with that, Glory thought cynically. Katie went on to say that with all the men here, and so few women, their restaurant should be a success even if they sucked as cooks.

Jane came in to say hi to Glory. It probably wasn"t surprising they hadn"t spent much time together since their walk for help. They didn"t really have much in common, and they had both been working hard to help the injured. But they chatted a little bit now, mostly about Jane"s concerns for some of the women. Some of them had been traveling with their husbands, who hadn"t survived the crash, and a lot of them had left husbands and families at home when they"d boarded the plane. Although Connie, Kathy, JaNae, and Katie seemed to be dealing well with their new circumstances, others were sunk in despair and sleeping twenty hours a day. Jane didn"t know anything about restaurant cooking, but Dixie and Jodi, who had been counselors in the Twin Cities, thought it would be something that could be used to drag the women out of their depression. Glory didn"t know Dixie or Jodi or anything about depression therapy, but it sounded right.

As they talked, Faron Paulson knocked on the door. He wasn"t very tall, but he was built solidly. Glory looked from him to Marissa and saw no family resemblance. His face was weathered, his neck red, his sandy brown hair dead straight and graying, obviously cut by the barber inverting a bowl on his client"s head and cutting evenly around it. He was polite when Marissa asked him in a choked voice who his parents were and where he was from. His politeness changed to something more confused as he watched her speak. When he had answered her questions, she shocked him by bursting into tears.

“Fary? It"s you!”

He stepped back, eyes wide with alarm.

“It"s me! Your mother!

When she threw herself at him he tried to take another step back. Glory felt hysterical laughter build in her chest at the look on the guy"s face. The man, old enough to be Marissa"s father, was flabbergasted. Nice word, Glory decided. Flabbergasted fit this situation perfectly.

Faron started to cry. He rushed off down the stairs and came back in a few minutes with a faded photo in a frame of a seated Marissa smiling with a blond toddler standing at her side, one arm slung around her neck, beaming a big baby grin at the camera. The wolves all looked at the picture, then at Faron and Marissa. Their hard faces melted into wonder for a few moments before becoming stoic once more. Taye said they would leave Marissa here for a few hours so she could visit while the rest of them went shopping.

“Wow,” said Glory, when The Flock was back on the street minus Marissa and her

werewolf guard. “Mommy and son, age reversed. Was that weird or what?”

Jill looked sideways at her. “Weirder than me and you?”

“Yeah, I didn"t give birth to you.”

Glory"s guard looked at her quickly, green eyes wide in the midst of his golden brown hair, and then away. They were coming to an area that looked like it could be downtown.

Maybe. The street was tidy, with no cracks in it or grass growing over it, and there were a few people on the street. Every one of them moved to get out of their way. Of course, what sane person wouldn"t get out of the way of two dozen people moving as a unit, especially when most of them were bloodthirsty wolves?

Shopping was not what Glory expected. Instead of a department store with a women"s department in a mall, they went to a one-room shop called Nathan Martin"s Trading Place that sold everything from farming stuff to sacks of flour and sugar to hand-sewn jeans and shirts. Taye met the owner and listed the things they needed, namely women"s clothing, fabric, and wood-burning stoves. Nathan Martin was probably not much older than thirty, and pretty hot for a guy wearing suspenders, Glory thought. When he heard that they were looking for women"s clothes he turned toward the back and hollered, “Hannah, we got some ladies needing gear!”

A young pretty woman with a blond toddler clinging to her pants came out with a shy smile. Her eyes widened when she first saw Taye, and then opened wider when she saw Jill.

”How can I help you, ladies?”

There was not a lot of selection for a woman Glory"s size. But once they had gone behind a curtain at the back of the store without the men (the wolf guards prowled around the outside of the building and hovered near the curtain to the women"s section of the store) where they could try things on, Hannah showed some loose skirts to her. Glory wasn"t a skirt girl, but Hannah took her measurements and said she could make some pants within a few days, so Glory took one skirt, two pairs of heavy socks, a few pairs of the granny panties, and two large men"s shirts. She wondered what Shadow would think of her new clothes. The other women picked out similar things for themselves and chose some for Marissa. Taye called from the front of the store, asking them to choose a skirt and blouse for his mate also.

These items were not fashionable, but they were new, which meant clean and not torn, a step up from what they had been wearing. Besides, Glory had always made her own fashion. What she needed now was a warm winter coat. Jill told her that the Pack had leather workers who would make them winter coats. An ankle-length black coat would be cool. Or warm. Maybe she could ask for one?

As they were getting ready to go Glory saw something that she wanted. Along one wall in the front of the store were a stack of stretched blank art canvases, and a large sketchbook.

She went over to them and stared with longing. She wasn"t any kind of professional artist, but in high school and even after college she had sketched and painted for fun. Her hands twitched with the need to hold the colored pencils and the oil paints. Jill ordered Taye to buy the art supplies for her.

On the way home Glory figured out why Taye had brought so many men along. He

loaded four of them up with bolts of fabric and assorted other bags and parcels, including the art canvases, although each woman carried her own purchases. Glory couldn"t see what he had used to pay for the art supplies, but when she tried to offer to reimburse him Jill hushed her up. Just as well. What did she have to pay him with? Her debit card? Credit card?

They left as a unit, and as they passed a nearby building whose fancy carving identified it as the public library, a bouncing teen girl came out with a young man in tow. She stopped when she saw them and smiled hugely.

“Cousin Taye!” she shouted happily, cutting through The Flock to throw herself at the Alpha wolf.

The hard-eyed look melted from Taye"s face. “Ellie!” he said with warm affection, giving her a careful hug.

He"d better be careful. The girl was as thin as a toothpick, and about as tall. Glory doubted she was more than five feet tall even in shoes. She was slender, but nicely rounded, exactly the kind of girl who made Glory feel like an elephant, only less dainty. The young man with her had the same brown hair, but hers was all the way down her back, and the man"s was cut just above his shoulders. Another man came behind them, a handsome blond kid who looked like a high-school quarterback. He put an arm around Ellie"s waist. A low growl came from the wolf who was Glory"s guard. The quarterback hesitated and shot a quick, nervous glance at the wolf. Who could blame him? Glory stared at the way her guard"s eyes glowed green behind his brown curls. He appeared to be glaring at the blond.

“Quill,” said Taye quietly, but with a whiplash of authority.

The growl stopped, and Quill tipped his head forward to let his hair cover his eyes again.

But Glory was watching him, and she could tell he was still staring at the young man. After a few minutes of talking to the girl, Taye kissed her cheek, gave the men a curt nod, and the flock started off again. Glory thought her guard had transferred his gaze from the blond man to the teen girl, and the heat in his eyes changed. Hm. Did he have a crush on the girl? She was pretty in an angelically fragile sort of way.

As they got close to the plane women"s house a couple more men came up to them,

pulling a large wagon by hand. In the wagon bed were four Ben Franklin-style stoves. Glory was delighted by the hope of warmth. The stoves must weigh a ton and those guys must be wolves to be able to pull that much weight.

At the women"s apartment they found another survivor who had walked for help. Lisa Anton had been one of those stunningly beautiful models seen on the covers of popular magazines featuring swimsuit editions. Glory wanted to dislike her just because she was slender and drop-dead gorgeous. Even now, with no makeup on, her hair in a casual ponytail, and wearing a plain shirt dress she was flawless. Exactly the type of woman Glory despised.

But, dammit, she was nice. She gave Glory a sincere hug and said she was so glad Glory had been able to find help for everyone. Since they were exactly the same height, Glory didn"t feel like a giant. A cow, maybe, but not a giant. Lisa was warmly friendly to all the women, but aside from a brief word she ignored Taye and the other men. Maybe because standing right beside her was a man who was as handsome as she was beautiful. His face was perfection, cheekbones and jaw straight and carved from pale gold, with soft full lips and hair of darker gold. Glory would never trade Shadow for this guy, but he sure was hot, in a pretty-boy way. So maybe it wasn"t a surprise that Lisa barely noticed the other guys. But Heather sure noticed him. Glory smirked at the way he ignored her blatant come-ons. Heather was striking out all over these days. Pity. Not.

There was a brief argument about where Marissa would live. Faron insisted that his mother stay with him. Taye countered that Red Wing expected his mate to stay safe with the Pack until he returned from Omaha. Then Marissa had to explain that Red Wing was a man from the Clan whose wolf had chosen her for his mate, and she had sent him to Omaha to find out what had happened to her son. What Faron thought of a stepfather thirty years younger than he was, Glory couldn"t tell. But Taye won the argument. After hugs all around and promises that the mated women would visit again, The Flock headed back to the den.

Glory was tired by the time they arrived back at the den. She would have laid down for a nap, except that it was suppertime and strange men were in her room, setting her new stove up. A month ago she would have shuddered at the idea of relying on a wood-burning stove to keep her warm. Now she was really looking forward to it.

But later that night she lay in bed with the warmth of the stove casting its glow over her, and cried because it wasn"t Shadow.

Glory and the other women settled into a routine. They cleaned and cooked and practiced some hobby like knitting or reading or sketching. Taye had an extensive collection of antique paperbacks that had been published in the last few years of the Times Before, which he generously lent to the women. Glory couldn"t quite picture Taye reading the romances, but maybe they were his mother"s? The westerns seemed more his style. They went into town to visit the plane women a couple times a week. It drove Taye half crazy because he was so concerned about their safety. But his Pack welcomed the opportunity to escort them into Kearney. None of them had spent much time with women, and they were happy to have new cousins to dote on. The majority of Taye"s Pack was twenty-five years old or younger, and in the den they played around like kids. But they were still fierce, overprotective wolves, and when they left the den they looked it. They agreed with Taye. No woman set foot outside the den without a sizable escort. Glory and the others got used to going places feeling like they were the focus of a Secret Service detail.