Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6) (3 page)

Fuck this leg.

Adam didn’t know yet. Nixon hoped that when he found out what Nixon had let happen to himself, he wouldn’t send him away. Not too many wolf alphas had much use for three-legged lieutenants.

Esther and the kids squeezed into one side of the diner booth and Nixon sat on the other, his starkly masculine features pulling into a grimace as he settled onto the hard seat.

“You okay?” she asked.

The waitress dropped some menus in front of them and muttered some assurances that she’d return.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’ve got an old injury that acts up sometimes. So,” he gave the top of his menu percussive thumps, “order what you like, and don’t feel you have to rush eating. We’re not going to get to Norseton before dark no matter how fast I drive, so you may as well get something substantial into you.”

Before she could even start to count money in her head, he added, “My treat.”

“That’s really not necessary. I can pay for ours.”

“Sure you can, but I’m offering to.”

“You’re treading in dangerous waters.”

“Why? Have the rules changed since I got expelled from my pack?”

Esther whipped her head around and scanned the diner patrons nearby. The closest ones were two tables away. Still close enough that they could hear—if they were wolves. But they weren’t wolves. She would have been able to smell them if they were. They were plain-old humans.

She hadn’t been around many of those.

“No one’s paying us any attention,” he whispered, smiling like a viper. Then he leaned back, adjusted the tilt of his cowboy hat, and raised his menu. “Last I heard, buying a lady and her kids a meal didn’t qualify as an act of war.”

“Some wolves make up the rules as they go along. You should know that.”

“Yeah?” He didn’t lower his menu.

She couldn’t see his face, and was happy those startlingly amber eyes were obscured at the moment. Most werewolves looked perfectly human in their two-legged forms, but Nixon had a certain animalistic quality about him that should have made anyone recognize him as being far from mundane. She’d never seen a wolf like him before.

“I’m not worried about
some wolves
right now,” he said. “There’s only one pack in this state, and we’re heading toward it. If there are any stragglers hanging around who are gonna go run and tell your old alpha you got spotted with some unfamiliar a-hole, more power to ’em.”

“I’m—kind of between alphas at the moment.”

“Oh yeah?” He set down his menu and raised one dark eyebrow at her. “How’s that possible?”

Interesting-looking man.
Handsome, really. She didn’t know how to behave around handsome men. Her Jersey pack hadn’t exactly been thick with them, and her late husband had been average enough. Most alphas preferred that the men in their packs were lesser in every way, looks included.

Esther swallowed and fussed over Darla’s menu, chiding her to pick something from the kids’ column that wasn’t all bread.

“I’ve never heard of a lady getting expelled from a pack. Women are commodities.”

She cleared her throat. Licked her lips.

“What happened to your husband?”

Not answering that here.

“He fell,” Darla said.

Damn it.
Esther squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d tried so hard to shield the kids from the event, but there was only so much damage control she could do. She’d kept them close, but she was sure they’d heard some rumors—maybe even that she’d been responsible for the event.

“What do you mean he fell, honey?”

“He died,” Kevin said.

So now they want to talk.

She gave Kevin’s little thigh a discreet pinch under the table.

“Ow!”

She cut him the
look
.

He slumped a little lower on the bench and went back to scanning his menu.

She didn’t really understand why the kids were saying anything to Nixon at all. They’d been pretty well trained not to speak unbidden to male wolves. They’d witnessed the consequences for other children who were careless with their tongues, and the treatment their mothers got for allowing the behavior.

“Did your alpha
let
you leave, or did you run?” Nixon asked. “Just trying to figure out how much over the speed limit I need to be driving on the way into Norseton. Normally a lady who loses a husband would have been automatically given to some single guy in the pack. That’s pretty universal throughout the continent.”

“Yes, that’s usually the case.”

“So, what are you telling me? Don’t beat around the proverbial bush. I need information so I know how vigilant I need to be.”

He would have to wait to concern himself with vigilance, because the waitress returned with her order pad poised and looked around the table.

“Anyone ready?” she asked.

“Go on,” Nixon said to Esther.

Ether had barely looked at the menu. All those words and pictures hadn’t been much more than colorful blurs on the page. She was hungry, but too agitated to eat. Her stomach was in knots, but she had to try to get some sustenance. She needed to stay awake. “Um. Soups—what are the soups today?”

“Vegetable beef and crazy corn chowder.”

“I’ll take the vegetable beef with a BLT on the side, I guess.”

Darla tugged at her sleeve and then pointed to some item far down the menu. “What’s that say?”

It said,
Personal Pan Pizza
, but more important, in Esther’s opinion, was that it said ten dollars.

The waitress peered around the menu and grunted. “Oh, don’t eat that. That’s shaken out of a box and cooked from frozen.” She tapped higher up on the menu. “That’s real good for little hands. Meat and cheese and crackers. Stack ’em up and make little sandwiches.”

Six bucks.

Still more than Esther was used to forking over per kid during their rare meal outings, but her baby girl had had a long couple of days. If Darla had picked out a steak with gold flakes sprinkled on top, Esther probably would have given the item at least a little bit of thought before saying no.

“Okay,” Esther said.

“I want a cheeseburger,” Kevin piped up. “With fries and stuff.”

“Good choice,” the waitress said. She turned to Nixon and dipped her chin to her chest in that,
Come on, bub
kind of way.

Obviously, his numerous charms were lost on her. She looked fresh out of give-a-damn.

Or maybe he’s only alluring to wolves.

She had no idea how natural wolf attraction was supposed to work. Her marriage hadn’t been a love match. She’d been taken to her late husband when she’d turned eighteen. He’d bitten her and, though his bite, added the enzymes to her body that made her able to shapeshift. She was a born wolf—everyone in her family was, going back hundreds of years—but female wolves couldn’t shapeshift until they’d received their mates’ bites. There was some evolutionary explanation of it that had always eluded her, but she did know that because of his bite, she’d be wearing the man’s scent for the rest of her life. She was used goods.

“I think a cheeseburger sounds good, too,” Nixon said, “but make mine a double. Swap out the fries for chips, would ya? And bring us a pot of coffee, and milk for the kids, please.”

Please. He said please.

“Yep.” The waitress sidled away, taking the menus with her.

Esther dug in her purse looking for something—
anything
—that would keep the kids engaged while their meals were being prepared. She found some scraps of paper and a nearly dry blue pen for Darla, and slid her phone over to Kevin. There were a couple of games on it he could play.

Then she stared at her placemat, trying her damnedest not to meet Nixon’s too-curious stare. She could feel his gaze boring into the top of her head. She was used to that—of looking away and always having her head down. Eye contact was a dangerous prospect.

“Did you run?” Nixon whispered. “Or were you allowed to leave?”

“Allowed to.”

“You don’t think your alpha’ll change his mind?”

“He’s been known to be fickle, but—I can’t say. I didn’t tell anyone except my mother where in particular I was heading.”

Her mother knew everything. She knew Esther had facilitated Michael’s fall. She knew how he got violent when he was drunk, and sometimes even when he wasn’t. Esther had tried to love him—
really
tried, for the sake of the kids—but Michael was too much a product of his upbringing. He would have never changed. His behavior was typical of men in the pack, and was celebrated for its normalcy.

Idly, she raised a hand to the scar runnels on her chest and ground her teeth.

“So, you left before your alpha could change his mind and find a new household to put you in.”

She nodded.

“Pretty sure Adam will get you set up in your own place. No roommates, unless you want one.” Nixon chuckled, but Esther was strung too tight to laugh.

She wished she could laugh.

“What kind of wolf are you?” Kevin asked.

Esther pinched the bridge of her nose again. She risked a look up and found Nixon grinning.

“Bit of this and that. No particular kind. Not like your ma and uncle.”

“I’ve never met Uncle Anton. Grandma misses him a whole lot, though.”

Nixon nodded. “I bet she does. I’m sure my ma misses me a little, too.”

“Daddy was different.” Kevin stuck the tip of his tongue out of the side of his pressed lips and tapped away on his phone screen.

“Different?”

“Not the same kind of wolf.”

“Oh. That’s ’cause your old pack took in a bunch of wolves like your ma a long time ago.”

And then kicked out all our strong boys.

She’d missed her brother terribly growing up. She worried about him. Expelled wolves didn’t tend to last long on their own, but Anton had Uncle Adam with him and Aunt Lilith. They, of anyone, would have cared for him as if he were their own. In the end, he’d probably been better off than she’d been.

“Daddy said we were little mutts.”

Gods, Kevin.
Esther didn’t bother giving him a pinch that time, because Kevin seemed to be intent on running his mouth to the stranger across from him no matter what she did, and she was too damned curious about how Nixon would react.

“Nothing wrong with being a mutt.” Nixon’s voice was more growl than bass. Annoyed, but not at Kevin.

He was looking at Esther as if he were expecting her to say something in rebuttal.

She had no words, and no desire to rebut, because she agreed with him. There was nothing wrong with the way her children were. She and Michael had fought numerous times over that very issue, and a couple of times, she’d actually gotten pissed enough to win. Normally, she might have gotten punished good for daring to lay a hand on her husband, but Michael had likely been too ashamed to report her to the alpha. He’d picked fights and lost them to an angry,
shrieking
woman.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything because the waitress returned with their drinks and pulled Nixon’s intimidating stare away from Esther.

“Brought you some water, too. Just in case.”

“Thank you,” Esther said quietly. “I underestimated how dry the air would be here. I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

“I’m sure that’s not the only reason you have one,” Nixon said.

“Too many reasons to count.”

The waitress padded away again, greeting some probably familiar patrons at the door.

Nixon pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket pointed the camera at her. “You mind?”

“You already took my picture.”

“Not yours. Although your aunt told me to buzz off for a little while, now she’s telling me that she wants me to send her pictures of the kids, as well as—” He squinted at the screen and worked the pad of his thumb across the bottom. “Oh. Needs to know their sizes. I think she’s rounding up stuff.”

Esther let out a dry laugh and tore the paper cover off Darla’s water straw. “I don’t remember her being so efficient, but I guess I was too young when she and Uncle Adam left.”

“Every time I’ve seen her, I always thought she was the one holding the whole crew together. Adam might be the alpha, but Lil’s the thinker.”

“Sounds like you know my family better than I do.”

He shrugged. Snapped a picture of Darla, then Kevin, and then grunted and mumbled something about bad focus. “Adam tried to adopt me into his bunch a few times throughout the years. Every time he ran into me someplace, he’d ask me if I was sure I didn’t want to join up. He’d started with just the two, right? Vic and Anton. He picked up Darius after he got thrown out of his pack because D’s momma gave Adam the heads-up that he was out in the wild somewhere. Took a while for Adam and them to catch up to him. They call Darius ‘Loner’ for a reason. He’s hard to find once he gets outside.”

“
Darius
,” she whispered. She was going to have to remember those new names, and fast, so she didn’t offend them. Vic and Anton she knew, of course, but the others… They were wildcards.

“Yep. And then there was Colt. Just the six of them for all those years they were on the road. They’ve picked up a few more strays since then—now that they’ve settled down.”

“Who are the others?”

“You’ll have plenty of time to meet them. Every one of them except Jim has a mate now, so you’ll have lots of new wolves to meet.”

Jim?
And all those mates.

So many people, but there were women in Norseton, which meant people for her to take refuge with if she needed to.

“How come you didn’t want to go with them?” Kevin asked.

Esther nudged his knee under the table, and the kid furrowed his brow and scowled at her. “What?”

“That’s a good question,” Nixon said. “Couple of reasons. For one thing, I was a little older than the other guys. I’m not sure who’s older—Anton or Vic—but I’ve got both by a couple—okay, quite a
few
years. I was already in a different place, lifestyle-wise, when Adam caught up to me the first time. I was lucky. I was always able to find a job of some kind. Worked on oilrigs and ranches. Mostly ranches. Easier to live in a place like that when you have to shift for the full moon and run off to where folks can’t see you.”

“How come you’re going to Adam now?” Kevin asked.

Esther fixed her gaze on the ceiling and pleaded for the goddess to intervene regarding Kevin’s loose lips.