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Stormwinder hooked me up with a hotel room, a credit card, and a rental car. “How much should I spend?” I’d asked, still expecting my boss to turn off the charm at any moment and take me to task for leaving half of his pack temporarily stranded in the woods. (Yes, I’d been forced to freeze several more potential combatants on the way back to the clan’s home base.)
But the older shifter never so much as raised an eyebrow at my activities. Instead, he remained cordial and fatherly, almost appearing to appreciate my ability to best half of his warriors with a single word.
“I doubt you’re going to break the bank,” he’d replied to my financial question. “If you run too wild, I’ll let you know.”
At the time, I’d thought he was overly trusting...especially once I discovered that my new credit line lay well within the realm of six figures. But by day two of my life as a kept wolf, I realized that Stormwinder knew me far better than I knew myself. I’d run out of things to spend the free money on already and was instead thoroughly bored.
So when I woke to a whiff of wolf and the sight of a manila envelope lying just inside my door, I was thrilled. Finally, something to sink my teeth into.
Perhaps even literally.
Stormwinder’s pack and my nearby accommodations were located in central Virginia, not too far from the North Carolina border. But the paperwork informed me that my first mission lay halfway up the state in the remote recesses of the Appalachian mountains. Over several years, the Price and Gray clans had fallen into a Hatfield and McCoy style of retaliatory raids—or so their dossier suggested—and the Tribunal had decided it was time to shut the shenanigans down.
Friday being the most common raiding day meant tonight was the perfect time for the guillotine to fall. And I’d been chosen as the preferred blade.
Fun, fun, fun.
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm didn’t carry me all the way from hotel room to destination. By the time I pulled off the interstate at dusk, I was starting to second guess my own actions. What would be required to prevent the clans in question from simply picking right back up where they’d left off once I was out of sight? And was I qualified to apply that level of pressure to wolves unaffiliated with Stormwinder’s own pack?
“Talk to me,” my not-quite-boss answered after the first ring.
“I’m nearly there,” I began, then halted my own rambling before it had more than barely begun. Inhaling deeply through my nose, I skipped the small talk humans would have expected and got straight to the point. “What are my marching orders?”
I thought I caught the faintest huff of laughter in reply. But when Stormwinder spoke again, his voice was just as sedate as ever. “The file isn’t self-explanatory?”
“Well, yes.” I didn’t like to backpedal, so I forced my spine to stiffen as if I were speaking to my commanding officer in the Navy. “Yes, sir, the goal is very self-explanatory,” I continued. “But not the level of force mandated to achieve said goal.”
I paused and let the repercussions of my sentence stretch out to fill the silence. Over the last eight years, there had been few gray areas in my life, and I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the one I’d stepped into now. It felt like dog shit—smelly and oozy and difficult to scrape off the bottom of my shoe. If Stormwinder wanted me to use lethal force with these hooligans, he was going to have to say so.
And he did. This time around, in fact, I didn’t even need to use my imagination to hear the chuckle preceding my boss’s words. “By the time a problem reaches the Tribunal, son, we’re done pussyfooting around. If your chosen resolution turns into a bloodbath, I’ll back you up. I trust you to use your own common sense.”
My stomach turned over as a confusing combination of emotions spiraled through me. I understood folks in the rural South used the word “son” all the time when speaking to an unrelated, younger male. Still, the three-letter word did something to my belly I couldn’t quite explain.
At best, being called “son” eased my worries that I’d lost Stormwinder’s respect earlier that week when I hung his real offspring out to dry. At worst, the seemingly innocuous word might have woken an urge I’d thought long since repressed and that I didn’t particularly want to analyze while focused on a mission.
I was so intent upon ferreting out the meaning of Stormwinder’s chosen honorific, though, that I lost my chance to question the more troublesome term—bloodbath. Instead, my boss was already signing off before I could draw him out further.
“Is that everything you needed to discuss?” The older shifter was all business now, and I could almost feel the threads of pack drawing him back into the minutiae of his own daily life.
In the face of Stormwinder’s much greater responsibilities, it felt rude to ask for further clarification. Plus, when it came right down to it, I wanted to live up to the older shifter’s complimentary judgment of my abilities.
So I merely “yes, sir”ed him and hit the end button. Then I rolled the windows back up to shut out the scent of freshly mown hay and turned on the AC.
Time to work on keeping my cool.
***
A LUPINE NOSE MADE it easy to sniff out the path that the young pups were accustomed to taking between the neighboring clan homes. And the raiders in question were all young pups, as best I could tell. Males old enough to shift but not yet old enough to settle down. Males full of testosterone and the urge to run.
Males an awful lot like me.
Slipping between the strands of barbed wire so I could enter the nearest pasture, I was surprised to find the napping cattle unspooked by my night-time appearance. Instead of running from my predatory nature, in fact, they drifted closer as if in search of a handout.
No wonder if they’re used to being herded by werewolves.
I shifted, ignoring my nudity, and held out a hand for a half-grown calf to nose into. Dog-like, it licked my palm, sandpaper tongue slipping out above enormous teeth.
According to Stormwinder’s file, these livestock were the usual recipients of the warring clans’ aggressions. Honestly, the whole kerfuffle appeared pretty harmless. Kill your neighbor’s cow when you’re hungry, then they reap revenge by slaughtering your prize steer for their own dinner. Nobody gets hurt and both sides end up eating well, so what’s the big deal?
Daughters, that’s what.
I heard her before I saw her, a high-pitched shriek announcing the young woman’s presence from half a mile distant. “No!” she cried. “Get your hands off me!”
Her white nightgown flapped in the breeze and almost appeared to glow beneath the dim starlight. Then I growled as the raiders came into view on a hilltop a quarter of a mile distant.
The laughing males were tossing their prize from shoulder to shoulder as they ran two-legged in my general direction. The girl wasn’t being injured, but there was no way she’d be able to escape on her own either.
Then, further off in the distance, the howling of wolves proved that the female’s kin had discovered her absence and were racing to the rescue. The raid I was hunting had already begun.
I was lupine with grin gaping and tongue lolling in seconds. This was what I’d signed on for—a way to vent my aggressions in a world that was entirely black and white.
Because if a girl was being kidnapped, it was easy to separate the angels from the demons.
