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There was no answer on the tip of my tongue, so it’s a good thing the door behind me slammed open. I hadn’t heard the scratch of a key in the lock first. Still, I had to hope this was rescue....
I spun to see who had kicked my door down. A mistake, I realized, the instant Rowan’s hand clamped down on the back of my neck.
His gesture wasn’t reassuring. Instead, it screamed ownership. Threat. Fingers squeezed my spine as if my bones were sticks ready for cracking....
And the person who’d kicked open my door materialized into...not Tank. Instead, it was a woman who ignored me while speaking to Rowan over my head.
“Chief McCallister. I thought we had a deal. We protect your pack from the node. You provide every requested assistance. Which, primarily, means staying out of our way.”
The woman’s hand slid toward the bulge holstered under her arm, and I recognized her at last. Lupe. Tank’s temporary boss. The one who’d tried to hire me.
The one who, I was pretty sure, had a day job as a cop.
“I’ve left your affairs alone,” Rowan growled. “I recommend you return the favor.”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about—other than me—until my ears popped. Then I heard it. The snarls of wolves in the stairwell were quiet enough not to wake the neighbors. But scritches of fast-moving toenails were more ominous for the muted nature of the resultant thuds.
No wonder Rowan’s fingers pinched down harder. It was all I could do to prevent my shoulders from hunching upwards. This, I’d learned, was a fact of life around alpha werewolves. They took out their aggressions on those under their thumbs.
Literally in my case.
Lupe took a step closer, which didn’t help matters. She was goading him, whether she meant to or not. Rowan’s body twisted behind me, and now there were two hands around my throat. Two hands squeezing, cutting off my oxygen....
And instinct took over. My head morphed before my body. Wolf teeth bit into Rowan’s forearm even as the rest of me became a dead weight dangling from his grip.
“Shit!”
He flung me against the wall, the electricity of his impending shift prickling against my nostrils. I scrambled to four feet, trying to work my way out of the baggy sweats Tank had lent me. My wounded ankle throbbed.
Okay, that wasn’t working. Giving up on shedding clothes, I gathered my haunches under me anyway even though my right hind leg felt like I’d slammed it in a door.
Then Lupe was between me and Rowan. She hadn’t drawn her gun and her body was still fully human, but the air oozed with near-shift tension. “Athena is one of mine for the next week and a half.”
Rowan, to my surprise, reined in his feral impulses. There was fur on the outside of his throat, but his speech was fully human. “Is this true, Athena? You’re a Samhain Shifter? You chose to give up your lone-wolf status to someone other than me?”
He’d smell a lie. It was one of many downsides of hanging out with werewolves.
So I made my answer truthful. Accepted Lupe’s offer, belatedly and in my head only.
Then I nodded. Barked out a soft yet audible reply.
Rowan’s cheek twitched. He was annoyed but holding onto his anger.
“Alright then.” He spoke to Lupe, not to me. “She’s your problem until Samhain. Come November, though, Athena will be mine to command.”
***
THAT WAS BAD...BUT a problem for the future. Because Rowan left, muted growls from the stairwell cutting off the moment he passed out of sight beyond my shattered door frame. Seconds later, two wolves entered my apartment, shimmering upward into Tank and—I assumed based on his tattoos—Ryder. Both were naked, but I had eyes for only one.
Tall. Broad. Magnificent. I took a step forward without meaning to and....
“Pack your stuff,” Lupe demanded, drawing me away from my perusal of masculine perfection even as she tossed Ryder and Tank clothes I hadn’t noticed her carrying. “Bring whatever you need for the next five days.”
Her words slapped me with the need to obey. An alpha imperative, even if she wasn’t an official pack leader. I winced, realizing that my stint as a Samhain Shifter was going to suck.
Because it wasn’t any more palatable having my legs forced into motion by a female alpha than by a male alpha. Muscles struggled against themselves. Behind Lupe, Ryder smirked as he yanked up his jeans.
He clearly wasn’t impressed by my addition as team mate. And, having survived middle school, I knew what it meant when one of the cool kids had it in for you.
The solution was to prove you were stronger than they were. Browbeat the bullies until they left you alone.
Among werewolves, power equated to alpha commands like the ones Lupe and Rowan tossed around—something I was incapable of. Instead, I aimed for the next best thing. A snappy shift.
Unfortunately, exhaustion dragged me down like glue on my paws. I scrabbled my way to humanity rather than bursting out of my fur.
A show of weakness. Ryder rolled his eyes and turned his back.
Not because I was naked either. Because I wasn’t, not really. My human tongue untangled itself while I struggled to get my arms back into the top that had twisted around my neck.
“I took the job, but that doesn’t mean I have to leave my apartment.” My voice, I was glad to hear, was firm. “My sister and her friend are coming here tomorrow for fall break. I won’t let them down.”
Although I’d be letting Harper down for sure in a week, unless something miraculous happened. Rowan wanted me in his pack, and I intended to refuse him. Which meant I’d be explaining to Harper why I couldn’t come see her. Why the alpha whose territory encompassed her boarding school was refusing me access.
Our impending separation made spending her upcoming vacation together even more important. So I stood firm, even in the face of an alpha unlikely to appreciate that stance.
Annoyance rolled off Lupe, but she wasn’t the one who answered. “Bring them along.” Tank’s face was hidden as he tapped into his cell phone. His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d spent more time focusing on the device in his hand than on dressing. “Kira’s close to their age. She said she’d keep your girls company and out of trouble.”
Lupe huffed deep and low in her throat, then turned her reaction into words. “Kira isn’t the one who makes that decision. You’ll have to wait until morning to see what Mai has to say about that.”
Another round of thumb typing. Another answer without glancing in my direction. “Mai’s awake too. She says it’s not a problem. She wouldn’t mind a brief vacation from parenting a teen.”
Mai? Kira? Mate and daughter? My clothing mishap was now sorted so I shouldn’t have felt so cold.
Ryder’s annoyed interjection was almost welcome. “We’re babysitting?” He turned back around, arms crossed. “I thought we had a single goal until Samhain. Fae. Not puppies. This is bullshit.”
Lupe pressed a finger to her lips and Ryder’s complaint petered off. Not a pack leader, huh? She certainly acted like one.
Whatever Lupe’s role, all three of us waited out her silence as she considered the two males, then me swathed in Tank’s baggy clothing. She hummed noncommittally then addressed Tank.
“You’ll deal with it?”
It, I gathered, was me. Harper. Clara. Babysitting duty.
Any attraction I’d felt toward Tank vanished as he nodded. “I’ll deal with it,” he agreed, as if I was twelve bags of groceries waiting to be unloaded out of the car.