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Stormwinder requested an in-person debriefing, and I was elated enough by my success that I was glad to comply. I’d righted a wrong without spilling any blood and had managed my inner monster in the process without feeling a twinge of rebellion. This was the meaning I’d been looking for. This was the partnership I’d sought with my wolf. For the first time in a long time, I’d been thoroughly challenged and hadn’t come up short.
But my passion cooled as I drove further south. The part of the country I passed through was much more rife with werewolves than the coastal location where I’d spent most of my adulthood, so I stumbled across more than a few shifters when I stopped to pump gas and fill my belly. Some were weak outpack drifters intent upon scraping by without getting jumped, while others were strong clan-affiliated males who I would have expected to challenge me with a glare as soon as I set foot out of my rental car.
None of them made a move to confront me, though. Instead, werewolves both large and small flinched away as soon as they set eyes upon my face.
By the third such encounter, I’d had enough. Clapping my hand onto the shoulder of a male whose biceps were every bit as bulging as my own, I swung him back around to face me before he could jump into his pickup truck and spin gravel in his haste to escape.
My plan involved questioning the burly male, but the instant stench of terror instead made me scrunch up my nose in distaste. Must evade the monster, my companion’s posture proclaimed. His body shrank away beneath my hand and I released him as quickly as if I’d grabbed hold of a hot skillet.
His reaction made no sense since, up until recently, males had been falling all over themselves in their attempts to take me down. Or, at least, it made no sense until my companion mumbled his greeting into the ground: “Enforcer.”
Apparently word had traveled much faster than I gave it credit for. And I also seemed to have been mistaken about the combined cleverness and leniency of my recent actions.
My plan on Friday night had been to hit the raiding males where it hurt...without, you know, literally hitting them where it hurt. I’d considered it a major win to enforce the Tribunal’s rules without breaking bones and had been gratified to be able to free a kidnapped pack princess in the process.
Unfortunately, my newfound infamy suggested my outside-the-box solution had gone considerably beyond the pale. Once again, unspoken shifter rules had tripped me up and cast me out of the good graces of those who shared my part-lupine DNA.
As I mulled over my newfound scare factor, a visible sheen of sweat broke out on the other male’s forehead. He trembled like a willow in a gale, his eyes scrunching shut so he wouldn’t run any slight risk of meeting my gaze.
It was pitiful.
“Go home,” I told him, then regretted my words when the other male jumped into his truck and made a three-point turn to return from whence he’d come. He’d evidently been heading in to work or to his girlfriend’s house initially—definitely his vehicle had originally been pointed in the opposite direction.
“I didn’t even compel him,” I growled under my breath, slamming the door of my own vehicle so hard the hinges complained. Only after I was half a mile further down the road did I realize I still hadn’t managed to pump any gas into my car.
***
I FED THE CAR COURTESY of a pay-at-the-pump station with no werewolf in sight. Then I parked by the side of the road and took to the woods for a full twenty-four hours, hunting rabbits to fill my growling belly so I wouldn’t be forced to watch fear enter the eyes of yet another shifter at a roadside McDonald’s.
And as I relaxed into my wolf, I accepted the disappointment I harbored for myself. When I’d left the raiding field Friday, I was so certain that Stormwinder would greet me as a returning hero, that his unlined face would crinkle up on either side of his eyes as he praised me for my restraint. In contrast, I now felt more like a teenager after a drunken smashup, anxiously searching for any alternative to sneaking back home with my tail between my legs.
But like that hypothetical teenager, I had nowhere else to go. So, at long last, I pulled back down the winding drive that led to my boss’s clan home. The overarching oaks and stately homes on either side of the gravel road looked no different now from when I’d left a few days earlier, but the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was entirely new.
My plan was to hunt down the head of the household and take my lumps as quickly and quietly as possible. Then I’d rent a hotel room and wait for my next assignment in peace. Unfortunately, most of Stormwinder’s pack stood between me and my goal, the entire community having assembled on the alpha’s lawn in order to enjoy the cooling breeze at the end of a long summer day.
Children played tag or tripped up their elders. Males old enough to know better were engaged in a sneaky spitting contest with the apparent goal of sticking a watermelon seed into the hair of every pretty girl present. And the targeted females, not to be outdone, were fighting back with everything from one-squirt water pistols to machine-gun-sized super soakers.
I parked at a distance, not wanting to impinge upon the tranquility of the scene laid out before my eyes. For an instant, that same spot in my gut that had twinged when Stormwinder called me “son” was back at work, and I felt a strange yearning to beg a slice of watermelon off some friendly matron so I could join in the playful battle. Perhaps Blue-eyes would soak me to the skin in retaliation and I could forget my monstrous nature for thirty seconds at a time.
Showdowns could never be so innocent for a wolf of my stature, though. So I squashed the unaccustomed urges and instead skirted the far edge of the festivities while hunting Stormwinder with nose alert and eyes peeled.
I couldn’t pick out my boss from my carefully selected position well beyond the edges of the crowd, though. Which was a good thing, I told myself. If Stormwinder had chosen bookkeeping over the enthusiasm of his extended family, then his seclusion would make it even easier for me to report in private without riling up the masses.
By this point, I wasn’t all that far away from Stormwinder’s front door. Perhaps a couple of a hundred meters tops. But each of those meters led directly through the heart of the jubilant pack picnic and my feet refused to take the first step in such a treacherous direction.
Instead, I headed into the trees and out of sight, planning to avoid the crowd and enter the clan headquarters from the rear. I wasn’t being a coward, I told myself, lying through my teeth. It was simply safer this way.
