“Turn on your phone. Your parents have been calling all night,” Jeremy said, depositing a mound of flattened boxes, rolls of Bubble Wrap, and fat rolls of packing tape on the kitchen floor. “I’ll pack while you talk to them.”
“You’re lycan,” Luke said with a glare. “Are you positive you won’t break my stuff?”
“I’m physically human.” Jeremy tapped a temple with one finger. “It’s only here,” he said and shifted his finger to his chest, “and here I’m lycan.” He crossed his heart, his crooked grin infuriatingly familiar to Luke. “I’ve been living as a human since I caught up with you two years ago. I’m not apathetic about human fripperies. I won’t be reckless, absentminded, or as easily distracted as they are. I swear I won’t drop anything.”
Luke jumped at the crash of shattering glass. Behind him, Nate frowned at shards and broken pieces mercifully contained within Luke’s sink. Judging by the cabinet Nate stood before, one of Luke’s juice tumblers had bitten the dust.
Nate flashed a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”
“We aren’t at the pack house yet.” Anger spiked through Luke. “You aren’t even shifting.”
“I can’t help it. His scent is distracting,” Nate snarled.
“It is?” Jeremy asked on a husky drawl, cocking one hip to the side.
Stare ping-ponging from Nate to Jeremy, and then back to Nate again, Luke felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. “This cannot be happening.”
“’Fraid so,” Jeremy said, his voice a delighted purr. “You aren’t the only stray who can stir a lycan into a mating heat. He wants me. I can smell it on him.”
When Luke turned to stare at Nate, the lycan frowned over Luke’s shoulder at Jeremy. “You said you were physically human,” Luke pointed out. “Humans can’t scent mating lust.”
“Fine. I lied about some of my physical attributes.” Jeremy lifted a careless shoulder. “I managed to pass for human under your nose for years, though. I’m perfectly capable of packing without breaking your shit.” His stare dripped with disdain when it landed on Nate. “Unlike some.”
Nate’s brows beetled. “Hey!”
“You, call your father,” Jeremy said, stabbing a firm finger at Luke. “And you, lycan, can start shoving Luke’s linens into trash bags.” His mouth formed a provocative smile. “Try not to tear them with your claws.”
Luke left them squabbling—and potentially posturing to mate—for the relative privacy of his living room. He sank into his comfy, overstuffed couch and grabbed the phone he’d left charging yesterday. Disconnecting the cord, he noted twenty-two new texts and eight missed calls. The texts would be from his brothers. His parents distrusted technology so much Luke wasn’t sure they knew how to text.
The phone vibrated as Luke vacillated between scanning his texts and listening to voicemails. He winced at the picture of his father filling the screen of his phone. Might as well get it over with, though.
He swiped the screen to answer. “Please tell me you didn’t know Uncle Ty sent a bodyguard to keep an eye on me,” he said as his opening salvo. Better to get his dad on the defensive than leave him free to dig into what Luke wasn’t ready to examine too closely yet.
“Of course, I did,” his father said with a surprised growl. “Ty suggested it, and we were grateful. He loves you. We all do. We’ll do whatever is necessary to keep you safe. That pack in New York could’ve killed you.”
Gut churning, Luke fought the wave of longing washing over him. As stubbornly as he had insisted on finding his own place in the world, Luke missed his family, including his gruff lycan father. Especially him. Al Warren hadn’t quite known how to act with a human son who couldn’t fight with tooth and claw, whose senses were blind compared to lycans’ and therefore more likely to land him in a heap of trouble, but his dad had never made Luke feel inferior. His mother’s influence, no doubt.
“I’ve been taking care of myself for over a decade.” Luke shoved down bitter disappointment at his family’s lack of faith in him. “I handled Neil.”
“You shot Neil,” his dad said, “and only after a year of him and his family beating the snot out of you. Maybe longer.”
Two years. Luke hadn’t given up and escaped his destructive relationship for two terrible years. “I left and he never searched for me. It’s over.” His shoulders slumped. “I made a mistake.”
“You aren’t now?”
Luke bristled. “Dean isn’t like Neil. He would never hit me.”
“According to Jeremy, the Yeager pack hasn’t allied with humans. Dean has permitted none in his pack. He says Dean barely tolerates doing business with them.” His father sighed. “We worry. Situations like this are exactly why Ty agreed to sending someone to keep an eye on you. After last time—”
“Dean wouldn’t allow his family to hurt me, either. This isn’t a repeat of New York. I learned my lesson.” The hard way, but he had learned it. “I watched them. Studied how the pack interacted with each other and with the locals. I didn’t jump into anything. I made sure I would be safe this time.”
Then Luke had spurred to life a mating heat with the pack’s leader... who despised humans.
“Jeremy reported you’re mating one of them,” his dad said, voice accusing.
Luke flinched. “It’s not like I planned it. I have no more control over those instincts than he does. With my human side dominant, I probably have less chance at suppressing the drive to mate because I can’t recognize or sense the urges pushing me to him.” As a lycan, his dad would understand that much. “Mating complicates the situation, but it doesn’t mean I was wrong about this pack or I’m not safe.”
His mother’s soft, high soprano filtered from the background. “Who is it?”
“Which one of them are you mating, son?”
Defeat slammed through Luke. He closed his eyes. “Dad, it’s okay. I promise I’m all right.”
“Leanne, give me another minute. Then you can talk to him,” his dad said, voice muffled, but his words were every bit as steely when his attention returned to Luke. “Who?”
Luke licked suddenly dry lips. “Dean Yeager.”
His mother’s squeal of excitement almost drowned out his father’s growl. “I knew it,” she caroled gleefully. “I knew it, I knew it—Give me the phone.”
“The one who hates humans,” his dad said on a throaty snarl. “The one whose entire birth family was massacred by humans?”
“Yes, yes, yes, that’s the one,” his mother said, her melodic voice gaining volume as she drew closer to the phone’s speaker. “Hand over the phone, Al.”
“It’s too dangerous. His heat will break if we put you on a plane—”
“Run? Like there was any hiding place too remote when you were in your heat?” Luke’s mother snorted. “Running would trigger the boy to chase. Give me the phone. Now.” His dad snarled his mother’s name in warning, but she just laughed. “Who is the expert on humans in this relationship? Who best understands the perils and pitfalls for humans during mating heats? How to lessen, if not completely avoid, those dangers?”
Luke curved his lips, despite the anxious roiling in his belly. Leanne Yeager had never let anything stop her, least of all the physical disadvantages and vulnerabilities of being fully human in a lycan pack. Not mixed like Luke. His mom didn’t have a drop of lycan blood in her short, svelte body. She had still managed to charm the whole Warren family, seduce Al Warren, and wrap her lycan mate around her human finger.
God, he missed her.
“I always defer to you in any lycan business,” she argued, ignoring both Luke’s dismayed grunt and his dad’s disbelieving huff. “I try,” she averred. “Not this time. Luke is human, like me. He needs his mother.”
Luke’s dad handing over the phone with a muttered, “We haven’t finished talking about this” to Luke was a stark indicator of how much respect his parents held for each of their distinct heritages. Luke still shook, though, because of the two, he preferred dealing with his father. Despite the snarls, his dad was a marshmallow. Mom wouldn’t be easy at all.
“So,” she chirped happily. “What’s he like?”
Luke dug the toe of his shoe into the carpet, wondering if he had any chance of keeping his family out of his business.
His shoulders slumped at a crash of splintering glass resounding from his kitchen and Jeremy popping around the corner to assure him, “You didn’t like the blue mug anyway.” With the babysitter his uncle had sent to guard him, Luke figured he had zero odds of holding his family at bay for long.
“Luke,” his mother said, voice suddenly stern.
“Horny, Mom.” Luke sighed. “He’s horny.”
“He’s begun his heat. Naturally he’ll be quite lusty.” She chortled. “You aren’t having trouble keeping up with his appetites already, are you?”
Luke scrubbed a hand over his face. “I am not discussing my sex life with my mother.”
“Whyever not? I’m the closest thing to a human advisor you have. Who else will warn you to properly stretch and lubricate to avoid chafing?” She harrumphed. “That’s no joke, by the way. A vagina is self-lubricating if your mate is fucking you right, but mating heats are such a sexual frenzy, I needed extra slick through your father’s first mating cycle myself. Which says nothing of vaginas being wonderfully elastic.”
Jesus on a pogo stick, his mother was talking about her vagina. Luke wished for a comet to zing from the sky to strike him dead, but no such luck. “Please,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “I’m begging you. Stop.”
“Of course, asses need to be stretched to avoid pain and tearing. You should keep yours ready and open for your mate for the next couple of weeks while his passions are high—you truly won’t be able to resist him. Where, when, in front of whom won’t matter.”
“Mom,” Luke protested.
“The first heat is the most intense, but God knows plenty of other heats will follow. You’ve caught your father and I rutting more than once over the years.”
“My therapy bills prove it.” He struggled to smile at Nate as he lugged a trash bag from his kitchen, probably stuffed with Luke’s oven mitts, washcloths, and dishtowels.
Nate snorted amusement on his way out the door to the truck.
His mother snickered. “Oh, posh. You always did let your human instincts wreck your fun,” she said, voice scoffing. “Now tell me the truth and don’t lie. I’ll know if you lie. A mother always knows.”
Anxiety and screaming discomfort swirled inside him. “Oh, God.”
“Do you have toys? You’re young and until now, single. You must have a dildo or two. A butt plug’s better.”
Luke wheezed out an appalled breath. Painfully. He couldn’t have mustered the air to answer her even if he wanted to, and he so didn’t want to. Ever. “Ack,” he croaked.
“You should have toys. Never mind, your momma will take care of it for you. Gifts aren’t expected until the couple has pair-bonded, but this is worth breaking out my credit card.”
“I have toys,” he shouted helplessly into the phone. “Lots. An army of butt plugs. And a vibrator.”
Jeremy emerged from the kitchen, gaze shining with interest. “You do?” He beamed a feral grin. “We should share.”
Luke gawped at him. “Ew.”
Jeremy rolled his too-human green eyes. “Not share share,” he said, lifting a hand in a dismissive wave, “like maybe trade.” He snapped his fingers. “I have a leather harness, for example, that’s too big for me. It pinches.”
Luke felt the blood drain from his head in a horrified rush. His ears rang. Since when was his neighbor and friend kinky? “An hour ago, you were straight.”
Tipping his head back, Jeremy roared with laughter. “Luke, my mother had me by C-section.” He sauntered into the living room, hips swaying. “I’m double gold star gay—never been in or out of a pussy.”
Snapping his eyes shut, Luke hung his head low. “We are not talking about vaginas again. I mean it.”
“Ooh, you should listen to him,” Luke’s mother said eagerly. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“Gotta go, Ma, love you, bye,” he said in a rush and disconnected the call before his balls crept so far into his body to hide that he never saw them again. With one nightmare ended, if not resolved, Luke concentrated on the other disaster winking provocatively in his living room. “You dated women,” he couldn’t forgo pointing out, a little desperately.
“I love women. I enjoy spending time with them seeing a show, dancing, or checking out new restaurants.” He lifted a silencing palm when Luke opened his mouth to object. “We had fun, and I never led any of them on. A few knew I was gay.” His brows furrowed. “I never told any of them I’m lycan, but the ones I saw more than a couple of times were fully aware I’m attracted to men.”
Nate stomped through the front door, phone once again glued to his ear. He glared at Luke and Jeremy both. “Get a move on, boys. This place needs packed, pronto. Dean is restless.”
Jeremy grabbed Luke and pulled him from his chair, despite Nate’s quelling scowl. “C’mon,” he said, guiding a flummoxed Luke back to his kitchen. “The rest of the pack can haul and carry most of your stuff. You don’t have as much crap as most humans, thank God. But you don’t want lycans handling your glassware.”
“You’re lycan.” Luke woodenly accepted the box Jeremy shoved into his arms.
“Only in part.” Jeremy brightened, grinning. “Hey, so are you.” He shooed Luke to a cabinet. “My bet is he gives us an hour before he calls you home and tasks his family with moving the rest of your things. Ninety minutes, tops. Let’s make them count.”
Jeremy was too charitable.
The truck bounced down the road to the pack house a half hour later, a box of wine glasses resting on Luke’s lap. He hadn’t dared put it in the bed of the truck with the few things he, Nate, and Jeremy had scrambled to throw into bags and boxes. Nate had steadily worked at bagging his clothes and linens, which partially cushioned the jumble of his possessions, but Luke didn’t want to consider how long his stemware had to live in a home filled with shifting lycans who cared little for such things to start with.
Pacing on the front porch, Dean waited while Nate parked. Before the cooling engine began ticking, Dean rocketed down the steps and pulled Luke’s door open. “Glass,” Luke said, chin indicating the box, but Nate reached for it. Eyes gleaming, Dean tugged Luke from the cab of the truck and slammed him against the shutting door as his head lowered.
Luke wanted to believe being around lycans and in a pack again could spawn the overwhelming sense of relief crashing through him, but more than relief prodded him to lift his mouth to meet Dean’s kiss. Bewildering arousal raced through him at the pressure of Dean’s lips, and he moaned at the skillful dance of Dean’s tongue. Luke’s arms threading around Dean’s neck aligned his trembling body more fully against Dean’s larger, harder one. Dean swallowed his cry when the press of Dean’s rigid dick at Luke’s groin disintegrated whatever control Luke might have mustered.
If Luke had hoped Dean would fuck him against the truck in the front yard, he was doomed to disappointment. Dean lifted his mouth from Luke’s as Jeremy’s dull gray Nissan Sentra parked too, the backseat and trunk filled with the few possessions important to Jeremy. Unlike Luke, who wouldn’t part with a single stick of furniture, Jeremy hadn’t wanted to keep a lot, swearing instead his profound desire to embrace his lycan heritage, whatever that meant.
“This the chaperone?” Dean asked Nate, who rounded the hood of the truck, Luke’s box of breakables in his arms. “The one who kicked off your mating heat with him?”
“Yeah.” Nate arched an eyebrow, watching Jeremy climb from the car. “The uncle said any pack fostering or bonding with a Cartwright would be powerfully allied in the west.” Nate glanced at Luke. “But we could already be developing strong ties there.”
Dean grunted. “For now, he’s a guest,” he said, nodding at Jeremy. “Get him settled, show him our territory lines, and make sure he stays out of trouble.” His mouth thinned at Jeremy’s jaunty strut as he joined them.
Nate’s hungry stare swept Jeremy from his shoes to his fair tousled head.
“Successful mating heats aren’t just about sex, Nate. Convincing a potential bondmate—especially a wary, confused, or distrustful part-human bondmate—to consider anything beyond a two- or three-week heat means occasionally reining in your lust and his to find common ground for a future together. Try to remember that.” Exhaling a long breath, Dean stepped a few scant inches from Luke and grabbed Luke’s hand. “Keep the chaperone out of my hair long enough to give Luke a tour.” Pivoting, he tugged Luke around the far corner of the house, to a side yard separated from the back by a windbreak of tall skinny firs. Columns of solar panels dotted the space, angled to best absorb autumn’s dwindling sunlight. Luke’s birth pack had invested in solar energy as well—most lycans had in the past several years. Lycans heartily welcomed any measure decreasing reliance on human utilities and services, including packs strong with human allies, but lycans also shared an affinity with nature. Non-polluting, renewable energy ranked as a top priority.
“In the summer, these meet and exceed our energy needs. We don’t get enough sun to sustain the homestead in winter, but we’re considering turbines on the ridge.” Dean waved. “With wind power, we’ll be self-sufficient year-round.”
Impressed, Luke studied the solar array. “Why didn’t you install these on the roof? Don’t your whelps climb on them?” he asked, because the panels looked like they’d make a fantastic jungle gym if he were a grade schooler.
“Nick and Sam, our teenagers, herd the younger kids when Trish and Gene bring them to the pack house. The panels keep their PlayStation running. No power, no Skyrim.” Dean’s gaze rose to the top of the house. “Besides, we collect and store rainwater in insulated tanks up there, which cuts the energy costs of heating it. The rest of our water needs come from the river. We divert it for farm use too.”
“I saw the fields you planted last growing season.” Curious now, Luke no longer required Dean’s grip to tow him along. He followed Dean beyond the solar panels and a small shed probably housing the battery array storing the pack’s solar energy. “My birth pack had greenhouses. We raised vegetables to feed our pack and still had plenty to sell to stores when I was a kid.”
“We sell to humans too. Organic foods are in high demand.” Dean smiled over his shoulder at Luke as they continued into fields now barren of crops for the coming winter. He waved at trees edging the garden. “I managed to save a few fruit trees, apple and cherry. The homestead had more once, plus grapes and berries as fat as the tip of your thumb, but a flood wiped out the orchard and a barn near the river a year after the attack. Come on,” he said, turning toward a collection of buildings on the other side of the field. “We converted sheds built higher up, which stood back then.”
Squinting to try to identify fruit trees that had survived, Luke stumbled behind him and hurried to catch up. Dean slowed in front of a trio of... Describing the structures as shacks would be too kind. The gray and splintering wood of one convinced Luke it must have been built when God wore short pants, but the squat buildings flanking it on either side weren’t as weathered. Plastic winterized mismatched windows, probably salvaged from demolition projects. A scrap of plywood patched the middle door, but tin roofs glinted overhead, shiny and new.
“Nate, Vince, and a few others bunk in the main house. Trish and Gene have a trailer farther into the woods, where their whelps have room away from humans to run and play. Fosterlings, visitors, and pack members who need more freedom stay out here.” Dean rested a hand on a doorknob.
“Jeremy is going to sleep in there,” Luke said dubiously. Lycan or human, the man had a memory foam mattress and an espresso machine. “Good luck.”
“You knew him as a human, and he couldn’t afford to give you reason to suspect him. I’ve reports he’s more lycan than he seems.” Dean laughed. “If he isn’t, Nate will likely want your friend in his bed.”
Remembering his anger, Luke clenched his teeth. “He isn’t my friend.”
Dean cupped Luke’s jaw. “He is whatever you want him to be.”
Luke arched an eyebrow. “If I want him gone?”
Shrugging a broad shoulder, Dean grinned. “I’ll run him off.”
Luke figured Nate would have something to say about it, but he let Dean lead him past the guest quarters, which must be cold as the arctic tundra in the winter regardless of higher lycan body temperatures. Luke spotted a woodstove vent pipe poking from the wall of the middle shed, but only the middle one. Lycans staying out here must huddle together in their animal forms for warmth.
He gasped in surprise behind the three hovels, at chicken wire fencing surrounding a cluster of waist-high hutches. “You raise rabbits?” he asked needlessly, since lop-eared bunnies hopped from a hutch into a crudely attached play yard cage.
“Chinchillas,” Dean said, unthreading a stick from a latch to open one of the hutches. “Lycans need extra protein and there are a lot of us now. We have to be careful about overhunting our territory. Rabbits mature quickly and provide a lot of meat. We stock cook pots in the kitchen to feed us in our human forms and sell the furs, but we also wild-release rabbits to hunt during moon runs.” He scooped a rabbit against his chest, supporting its hindquarters with his bent arm. “Rabbits aren’t as fun as bringing down deer, but they don’t demand the attention and resources other livestock would.”
“Huh.” Luke lifted a hand to touch the fidgeting bunny.
Brow furrowing, Dean inched away. “They’re food. Not pets.”
“I was raised on a working farm, you know,” Luke said on a chuckle as Dean returned the rabbit to its hutch. “My family even had a chicken coop.”
“Mean birds.” Dean shuddered. “Vile, evil creatures.”
“You have them too?”
“Eggs provide another steady source of protein, and the meat gives our diet variety.” Dean nodded glumly. “But we hate the fuckers.”
Luke laughed.
“What I want to show you next will be a hike, over the next hill. They don’t usually draw close to the house or near humans, including lycans in human form. I should introduce you, though, just in case.” Turning, Dean walked deeper into the woods.
Eyeballing the mouth-watering fit of worn denim hugging Dean’s ass, Luke trudged into the woods. He judged the brisk tour of the homestead a good sign. However temporarily, Dean had accepted him—a human—into his pack. If Luke’s lycan heritage had been dominant, the trek would’ve included a thorough exploration of Yeager land on four legs rather than two. Little would be more important than identifying property boundaries that delineated safety from the dangerous world of humans to new members of the family. That locals didn’t organize against lycans these days didn’t mean neighboring property owners wouldn’t shoot any wolf foolish enough to wander where he didn’t belong.
Still, Dean’s voice had warmed with pride as he’d showed off his home. He should be proud. As Luke’s muscles stretched with exertion to keep up with Dean’s longer stride, Luke could hardly believe all Dean and his pack had achieved, though he’d spied many of those accomplishments through his binoculars more than once. Luke had poured through dusty microfiche at the library for news report of the murders, and the grainy photos included with the accounts had horrified Luke. One of the pictures had focused on the mass grave human authorities had dug for the dead wolves, their lifeless corpses piled at the bottom of a crude earthen pit. The main structure of the house stood in the background, no additions yet expanding the space or rooftop cisterns in evidence. No solar array had cluttered the side yard either. Dean had added the trailer he’d mentioned housing his breeding pair and their young in recent years too.
Twelve years.
He’d managed it all in a dozen years, remarkable considering he’d started as a grieving seventeen-year-old orphan. Dean could’ve walked the path of too many survivors of past hunts, forced to sell their family property or starve. Kicked out. Cursed to become a rogue wolf, a loner.
The same lycans Dean had invited to come to Yeager land.
Luke blinked.
Wait.
He’d focused on Dean’s history, the murders. His loss.
All the lycans in this family had been strays, probably having suffered similar fates.
Luke’s stomach lurched.
“Never wander out here alone,” Dean told him as they traced a meandering stream down the other side of the hill. “My scent is all over you, but...” Dean sighed. “Humans terrify them.”
“Terrify who?” He halted, loafers digging into the wet earth, when he spotted the shifted lycans across the gurgling water. There were two—no, four, Luke corrected, spying dark fur hiding inside spiny brambles and another black shape trying to blend into the shadow of a fallen tree.
Something was wrong, though. These wolves were smaller, almost skinny. Not starved. Narrowing his eyes, Luke didn’t see ribs protruding against the mottled gray fur of either of the beasts closest to him, but they were more lean than muscular. Not bulky.
“We don’t know their names.” Dean waved a helpless hand at the pair. “They recognize the gray on the left as their leader. He’s younger than the other three, but he’s the only one who alerts when I talk to them. I’m positive it’s because the others don’t understand English—they respond to crude attempts at Spanish, but nothing else. The gray submits to my limits on territory lines and game management for hunting when I keep my English simple, though, and the others heed him.” His mouth thinned to a hard line. “Vince has been trying to improve his Spanish by practicing with a concrete inspector in town to better facilitate communication, but the human speaks a pidgin mix with a limited vocabulary. It’s slow going.”
“Ferals?” Astonishment washed through Luke in waves, forcing him a step forward. He froze when the shifted lycan pair on the other side of the stream retreated several nervous feet in response to his approach. “You gave sanctuary to a pack of ferals.” After two years of cautious study, how did Luke never notice this?
“It’s not their fault,” Dean said, voice gruff as he shoved both hands into the front pockets of his blue jeans. “They aren’t vicious or undisciplined. The red wolf hiding by the tree guided us to Nate when he broke both legs last year, and after, they started joining us for full moon runs. Excellent pack hunters, despite the language barrier.” His shoulders jerked in an awkward shrug. “They don’t mean anyone harm, lycan or human.”
When Luke squinted, the tawny undertones of fur along the belly of the wolf cowering at the fallen tree were barely discernible under a layer of dust and mud. “Red. Are you sure?” He frowned. “They’ve traveled a long way from Mississippi.”
“We believe they originated in Florida. More Spanish speakers there.” He blew out a weary breath. “They can’t or won’t shift, and our Spanish is poor at best. We’ll probably never know.”
Luke had never bothered with more than the high-school foreign language credits required to get him into a four-year college. He hadn’t spoken a word of it since, and truthfully, he’d been a bad student, focusing his attention instead on the math and technology classes that made up the core of his career path. He scrambled to drag some Spanish from his memory, though.
“¿Hablas español?” he asked, stupidly because he didn’t anymore. The pair of wolves alerted, though, heads high, ears perked. The tail of the wolf on the right wagged. “Uh...se encuentran de la florida. Maybe. I think.”
The red wolf skulking farthest from them climbed to his feet, head cocking to a curious angle as he stared at Luke.
Whipping around to face Luke, Dean gawped. His spine snapped straight. “You know Spanish?” he asked, his husky timbre hopeful.
“Not fluently.” Luke wrinkled his nose. “A few words and phrases. Not passably anymore,” he said with more honesty.
“You’re human,” Dean said on an accusing snarl. “Humans learn such things in their schools.”
“I’m only part human, which makes me a mutt by anybody’s standards,” Luke said. “And my parents had to take me out of public school in the second grade.”
“Why?” Brows beetled, Dean glared at him. “You’re human enough.”
Luke’s smile warbled. “Not according to the parents and teachers of Riverdale Grade School.” His shoulders slumped. “Or Stephenson Elementary. No matter what anti-discrimination laws are on the books to protect human dominants, Markham Elementary wouldn’t accept a mongrel like me either. I give my parents credit for trying—Mom hid my pack association by registering me under her maiden name. Locals always found out, though. Mom homeschooled me with my brothers after my last trip to the ER.” He flashed a travesty of a smile. “Fewer broken bones and I don’t heal as quickly as you do.”
“They hurt you?” Dean gaped at him. “But you’re human.”
Irritation coiled inside Luke. “So you’ve said.” Obviously, Dean didn’t know a damn thing about humans, especially paranoia about the stingiest traces of lycan blood polluting so-called pure gene pools. “Listen, my folks hired a Spanish tutor so I could attend the University of Oregon instead of community college. The drive was two hours every day, one way, but nobody recognized me as a member of the Warren pack so the inconvenience and expense of a bigger school was worth the trouble.” He nodded to the feral lycans who watched them with disconcertingly inquisitive stares. “After more than fifteen years, I just don’t remember much Spanish.”
Dean pursed his lips. “You know some,” he said, dropping the supremely uncomfortable subject of Luke’s difficult youth. His gaze shifted to his ferals. “You can talk to them.”
“Very little.” Luke lifted both palms. “And this presumes they want to communicate.” Most ferals didn’t, having abandoned their human forms to live wholly as wolves.
Scowling, Dean paced. “I told you. They aren’t dangerous.”
Luke snorted. “You warned me not to come here by myself, Dean.”
“Because even the human forms of fellow lycans petrify them.” Dean growled. “You’ll scare them away, and then where will they be? They’ve already been run off by packs up and down the Eastern Seaboard, or they wouldn’t have roamed this far north. What’s next for them? Canada?”
Shock pinned Luke in place. His jaw dropped. “You’re trying to save them.”
“From what?” Dean glanced up as though appealing to his higher power, his mouth tightening. “They hunt their food and built their own den. They play and socialize with each other and with us during our moon runs. They enjoy everything a wolf needs. They’re happy, exactly as they are.” He grimaced. “It’s not their fault they learned to distrust humans so much they let go of their human forms.” Dean’s wary glare indicated Dean didn’t blame them, although Dean had to understand the difficulties and additional risks a lycan locked in a single form faced.
“You were missing. After the attack,” Luke muttered under his breath. “The townspeople believed you’d been killed too at first, thought you might have crawled into the woods and died from your injuries when they didn’t find your corpse. With all of you in shifted form, even identifying who was missing stretched the patience of the human police at the time.” Stomach flipping, Luke studied his mate. “You went feral, didn’t you? You shifted to fight, and after escaping the attack, you couldn’t shift back to your human form. Not right away.”
“These lycans aren’t mindless or wild. They aren’t broken.” Dean sneered. “They just hate humans.”
“No, they don’t.” Luke shook his head. “These lycans are scared of humans, probably justifiably, but they don’t hate humans.” Luke didn’t say it, but his silent not like you do echoed around them and pierced Luke like a silver bullet. He might not have as much lycan blood in him as Dean and the rest of Dean’s family, but cursed silver could poison Luke too—as venomous to him as his mate’s bitter loathing.
Dean hadn’t run the ferals off his land. If he only protected them because he had also briefly gone feral once, the pack leader had proven his determination to protect the vulnerable from predation. Lycan vulnerable, at any rate. Had Nate been orphaned from his family? The teenagers. Vince. The breeding pair insulating their young from human harm deep in the woods. They all had come to Yeager land after word spread of the massacre because they had nowhere else to go. Dean had accepted every last one of them.
The trick would be convincing Dean that Luke had lycan in him too and, human dominant or not, his lycan heritage made him equally vulnerable.
“You frightened them away,” Dean said.
Tearing his attention from the thoughts spiraling inside his head, Luke glanced around. Only dry leaves rustled in the breeze on the other side of the streambed. The ferals had sneaked off.
“Our arguing scared them.” And Dean’s anger. Nothing shied off a lycan faster than a patriarch’s ratcheting temper. “Your disapproval would spook anybody.”
“Maybe,” Dean allowed. “Not you, though.”
“Yes, me.” One corner of Luke’s mouth kicked up. “Especially me.” He nodded to the woods into which the ferals had vanished. “They’re family. You’re required to like them.”
Flummoxed, Dean blinked at him. “I like you all right.”
“You like fucking me.” He smirked, though his guts twisted with the anxiety Dean must scent wafting from him. “You don’t know me enough to like or dislike me.”
Luke jumped when Dean lifted an arm toward him and sheer determination held him in place while the pack leader, narrowing his eyes, slowly settled his palm at Luke’s nape. Heart thundering, Luke forced his body to still. His panic deflated as soon as Dean squeezed.
Dean wouldn’t hit Luke. To hell with his human instincts being stronger than his lycan ones, Luke knew Dean would never mistreat him. Regardless of Dean’s hostility toward humans. The worst Dean would do to Luke was make him leave.
Neil and the abuse Luke had endured in New York cast a long shadow, though. Luke wondered if he’d ever escape it.
“The ferals have met you at least. They won’t be rattled if they catch your scent near the house or on one of us now. Maybe once they get over the shock, they’ll be willing to answer a few questions about what happened to them. How they knew to head for Yeager land, if they looked for us as Nate believes.”
Dean squeezed again, the comforting caress so sweet Luke melted under his touch. “Oh, I can answer that. No interpreter needed.” He shivered at Dean’s dubious stare, dark lycan eyes glinting. “I don’t know where they came from or what drove them from their home,” he admitted, “but they definitely came straight to you.”
When Dean’s thumb stroked the sensitive skin of Luke’s neck and Luke gasped, Dean hummed in satisfaction. “Why would they?” he asked.
“Same reason I’m here, I imagine.” Swallowing his nerves, Luke answered him. “They heard you take in strays.”