Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6) (4 page)

“Wolves need packs,” Nixon said, his curious amber gaze pinned on Esther’s face when she made the mistake of looking forward again. “After a while, they feel the urge to go home. I haven’t had one in a long time.”

“Everyone should have a home,” she said quietly.

“The home itself ain’t good enough. Need more than that.”

“What more is there?”

“How ’bout safety? Is that important?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On
whose
.”

“Everyone’s, honey.”

“That’s not the way things work,” she said. “The alpha does everything in his power to keep the pack protected from outsiders. He does what he must to preserve the status quo.”

“That’s important, but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about individual safety.”

“An alpha doesn’t care about individuals unless they can do something for him.”

“I guess you don’t know your uncle very well, then. I’d bet you a stack of pancakes he’s more alpha than your alpha, Madeira, ever was. Adam cares approximately equally about every single person in the pack.”

“Approximately?”

“Gotta cut the guy some slack. Obviously, he’s gonna have a special place in heart for his family. But Adam tries to do right by everyone. He doesn’t let the sh—” Nixon clamped his lips and looked at Kevin, then Darla, both of whom were watching him intently. “Uh. Stuff. He doesn’t let that
stuff
that goes on in the old packs fly in Norseton. Different kind of pack there. Doesn’t have a choice, really.”

“Why not?”

The waitress slipped plates in front of the kids.

Esther assumed Nixon would give up his line of questioning, but when the waitress left to get the rest of the plates, he said, “You’ll find out when you get there. You’ll see for yourself.”

She’d been about to mouth off about being unable to take men’s words for things, but apparently the goddess interceded and slapped Esther’s verbal filter into place before she could speak.

Nixon had been unbelievably tolerant up to that point, but she didn’t doubt for one moment that he’d snap just like all the others when he’d had enough.

His hand came up, and she flinched before realizing he’d just held his phone out to her.

“It’s all right, honey,” he whispered. “I ain’t that kind of wolf.”

She swallowed, and rolled her gaze down to the silver-toned device.

“Tell her their sizes, okay? I’m not so good at guessing that kind of stuff, and she keeps asking.”

She blinked and slowly, gingerly took the phone, being very careful not to graze his fingers. Her husband may have been gone, but old habits would take time to break. She couldn’t let a man who wasn’t her husband touch her. Wolves were serious about their scandals and vendettas.

She set the phone on the placemat in front of her and scrolled up to the beginning of the thread, read her aunt’s words, and saw the little avatar attached to her name.

Instinctively, Esther tapped the picture because she had to see—had to be sure the woman was as familiar to Esther as Esther was to her.

Her throat constricted and a whine squeezed through it unbidden. She couldn’t blink fast enough to push back her tears.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Darla asked.

“Nothing’s wrong, honey.” Nixon leaned back and let the waitress deposit his meal in front of him. “She’s just feelin’ a little silly right now from being so tired. Your momma needs a nap.”

Esther swiped her tears away and moved the phone so the waitress could set down the bowl of soup.

“Do you need a nap, Mommy?”

“Yes, baby, I need a nap.”

She tapped in the clothing sizes for Aunt Lilith and slid the phone across the table to its owner. “Thank you.”

“No sweat. Maybe she’ll stop fretting for a little while, but I doubt it. Lil frets about everything. Nonstop.”

Esther broke a saltine into her soup and picked up her spoon. “Who—whose babies are those she’s holding? In the picture, I mean. I didn’t mean to snoop, but—”

“Don’t worry. Photo was right there, right? Not like you went digging. And I don’t know which one’s which ’cause they’re about the same age, and they look so damned much alike. One’s Adam and the other’s Cecily. Adam is Vic’s son. Cecily’s Anton’s daughter.”

“Anton had a baby?”

“You didn’t hear, I take it?”

Esther’s eyes started to burn again, and she didn’t bother trying to stem off the flow of tears. She had to believe that anyone would have been overwhelmed. Her brother had a
baby
and she hadn’t heard.

But then again, he probably hasn’t heard much about me, either.

“Your sandwich looks good,” Nixon said.

“Pardon?” Esther swiped the sleeve of her sweater across her eyes.

Nixon grunted and pointed with a potato chip toward her BLT. “Lot of bacon on that plate.”

She
finally
looked down at the sandwich. There had to be at least six half strips of bacon between the lettuce and tomato. “Here.” She slid the plate across the table toward him.

“I don’t want your sandwich.”

“I thought—”

“No. I was just admiring your bacon. If I want another sandwich, I’ll order one.”

“That’s not what I’m used to.”

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ that. I’d tell you to just be cool and pretend that everything’s normal, but you don’t know what that means, do you?”

“I don’t know how any wolf can.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Like I told you, you’ll see when you get to Norseton.” He took a bite of his cheeseburger and waggled his eyebrows comically at Darla, who wouldn’t stop giggling.

Esther couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her baby girl giggle.

Such a
normal
sound for a three-year-old, and Esther couldn’t pinpoint when she’d last heard it.

Further, a man had made the girl laugh.
A wolf male
. Wolf men distanced themselves from the children in their packs as a matter of principle. And yet there was a man sitting across from her who was not only being tolerant of Esther’s children, but
kind
to them.

No wonder he got booted from his pack. He’s an aberration. Just like Anton and Vic and Uncle Adam.

She had no idea what that meant, but she was going to try to be optimistic for a change.
At least for a little while
. She had no way of knowing what would happen when everyone found out how Michael had died, though. They might not want her around, and if they sent her away, she’d have no place to go but back to Jersey. If she were lucky, her old alpha would accept her back into the fold without punishing her for having left.

Kindness, though? She knew better than to expect that.

Nixon didn’t force conversation during the drive through the stark desert landscape toward Norseton. No matter how badly he wanted to hear Esther talk—wanted to ask her questions about herself and what she’d been through—she was already agitated enough. He couldn’t blame her for her skittishness, given what she’d likely been through, and the fact she was that way at all made him so fucking angry.

She leaned as far away from him as he could—right up against the damned door—as if she were somehow invading his space from all the way on the other side of the F250, when in truth, he wouldn’t have minded if she got a little closer. Even if she did smell like she’d had some other wolf’s bite.

The kids slept, mouths open and snoring softly.

Esther struggled to keep her eyes open. She kept startling herself awake and pulling Nixon’s gaze away from the road with each jerk and gasp.

He wanted to tell her to go on and sleep, but he knew she wouldn’t. Not when she had her kids to watch. While Nixon might have considered himself to be on Team Good Guys, she didn’t know him from a hole in the wall, and he sure as shit didn’t fault her for being cautious. She was doing what any decent mother would do, and he suspected she was a little more than just decent.

He kept his words at bay, and turned the radio volume high enough to discourage casual conversation, but low enough not to wake the kids, feeling an unusual emptiness the rest of the drive. Not saying anything didn’t feel natural. He wanted to talk—to
connect
. He’d never felt that way before. Chitchatting wasn’t one of his hobbies.

He carefully checked the GPS readout on his phone and let out a quiet grunt upon seeing that he’d lost any sort of data connection. He had no way of knowing when the feed had shut off. The phone was giving him its best possible guess as to their location based on the last time it’d been able to pull data. If he was lucky, he hadn’t missed any turns.

“How the hell does anyone get a cellular signal out here?” he muttered.

“They have to somehow,” Esther said quietly. “Maybe they use a different carrier.”

“Could be. Can’t imagine who’d have towers out here in the middle of nowhere, though.”

The phone must not have been too far off in its five-minute-from-arrival projection, though, as they zipped past a sign on the right reading
Norseton, 2 mi
.

“The place isn’t even on the damn GPS.”

“Maybe it’s not really incorporated. You don’t need to be incorporated to have a zip code.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

He caught her shaking her head in his periphery.

“Just a guess,” she said. “I haven’t done much traveling, so I’m not the right person to ask about this sort of stuff. I’d never left New Jersey before this week. I just—read a lot.”

“About what?” Nixon kept his gaze on the road, scanning ahead for the turnoff. The landscape was flat enough that he should have been able to see an intersection coming from at least a mile away.

“Um. Local histories, mostly. Small towns that don’t exist anymore.”

“How’d you get interested in those?”

“Because no one would give me the answers I needed when I asked questions.”

“You were asking about defunct small towns?”

“No, about where all the wolves went when they came to this country. Everyone’s always so coy about where the others packs are, and I’ve never understood why.”

“Wolves are territorial. Most alphas would prefer folks didn’t know specifically where their packs are based.”

“But, our wolves—I mean,
my
kind of wolf, we weren’t really like that. When we came here, there were so few of us.”

“Ten families is the lore I heard.”

“Right. Ten. We got split up early on. Some ended up in New Jersey. Some in—the mountains of Georgia?”

“Yeah. I think that’s where Darius came from. Not sure about Colt.”

Nixon could barely see the small adobe structure through the dust kicked up by the wind—there was a storm coming for sure—but he slowed the truck in time to make a right turn onto a gated road.

He pulled up next to the gatehouse and motored down his window as one of the rejected devils—
Colt
—walked out of the building.

Colt put a cell phone to his ear and leaned against the windowsill. “Hey, Alpha. Nixon’s here. Want to let the missus know?”

Nixon glanced rightward and caught Esther wringing her hands and staring down at her shaking knees.

“Hey, it’s all right. They’re not gonna let nothin’ happen to you.”

“I don’t think they would. It’s just—”

Colt pulled the phone away from the ear and scanned into the truck’s backseat. “Out cold?”

“Been asleep pretty much since we left Albuquerque,” Nixon said.

Colt bobbed his blond brows and drummed softly on the side of the door. “There’s a betting pool on when they’ll wake up. It wasn’t supposed to start until they got situated, though. Chances are very slim they’re going to get out of this truck without assistance.”

Esther tightened her fingers over her knees, which had started shaking harder.

Nixon reached over to give her shoulder a squeeze, but thought better of doing so at the last second. He’d learned as a kid that touching live wires was hazardous to his health.

“He doesn’t mean anything by the joke,” he said. “You’ve been around different kinds of wolves for so long, you probably don’t know all the stuff your own kind does. Y’all are damn near comatose when you’re recuperating. Your little sprouts probably haven’t fallen into that kind of sleep before now.”

“They’re only half Eurasian wolf.”

“Our species is dominant,” Colt said softly. “If they’re anything like Adam and Cecily, anyway.”

She cut her gaze slightly toward Colt. “Their mothers aren’t—”

“Nah. You and Mrs. Carbone are the outliers.”

“Oh.” She furrowed her brow and stared through the windshield.

“Anton wanted to be at the gatehouse when you got here, but Alpha thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to have you both in the same place at once until you’re settled in.”

“What happened?” Nixon asked.

“Alpha’s just being proactive. With all the shit that went down with Vic and the Madeiras, Alpha just wanted to be sure Ashley’s father wasn’t gonna to try to use Esther as some kind of homing pigeon and follow her out here.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot that Ashley came out of that Jersey pack and that her daddy’s the alpha.” Nixon cringed.

“They didn’t know where I was going,” Esther said, obviously indignant enough to look the man in the eye.

Colt wasn’t fazed, but he probably wouldn’t have been. He likely got far worse glares from his wife. “They could guess. Even if they don’t all know our precise location, besides the fact we’re somewhere in New Mexico, he knows that Ashley is here and that she’s married to Vic. Just because Vic paid them off doesn’t mean they’re going to stop hassling him.”

“Vic
paid—
”

Colt put up his hands. “Get Ashley or Vic to tell you the story. I don’t know all the details. Suffice it to say Vic would do whatever was necessary to keep Ashley safe. Any of us would for our mates, even if we have to spend every last penny we have left, or worse.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Most wolves would just give up the woman because we’re not worth the cost.”

“Let some asshole tell me my daughter’s not worth it.”

“Oh, you and Lisa found out your baby’s gender?” Nixon asked. Every man in the pack, practically, had a kid or else had one on the way. “I thought you were going to wait until delivery.”

Colt shrugged. “Ultrasound tech had a slip of the tongue. Lisa’s folks are hoping to get to see the baby somehow, but we don’t know how to arrange that. They’re pretty much on lockdown in their pack. Anyway, did you notice anyone tailing you?”

“Nah, there was barely a car on the road the whole way here. Was a damn good thing I filled up the gas tank before we left Albuquerque.”

“I’m sure someone would have driven out to find you if you were taking too long and ended up stalled on a roadside somewhere. Here, let me get you a map. To get to the wolf area, you’ve got to follow the road all the way around town and out toward the desert.”

“What town?”

“You’ll see the commercial district once you pass the fence and go around those boulders. I keep forgetting you haven’t actually been out here yet.” Colt pushed away from the door and strode into the gatehouse, adjusting the firearm holstered at his back as he went.

“What exactly is his job?” Esther whispered.

“Most of the wolf men work in security around the executive mansion or in other parts of the compound.”

“Executive mansion?”

Nixon rubbed his temples. “Shit, that’s right. No one’s explained this to you.” He dropped his hands as Colt passed a map through the open window. “I’m sure after you’re all rested up, Anton and them will tell you all the details. Long story short, though, this place—Norseton—is populated by some kind of witches.”

“Viking witches,” Colt said jovially.

“They know that—”

“That we’re wolves?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, they know. We keep each other’s secrets just fine. I’m sure you’ll meet the clan queen soon enough. She tends to make her way around to say hi whenever we have a newcomer.”

“A queen?”

“Yeah. The Afótama—the witchy ones—their leadership structure is a little unusual. Their women tend to have more magic, so it makes sense that they’d be the ultimate decision makers. Got a few fairies here, too, but you can’t really tell any of them apart for what they are. They look plain-old human for the most part.”

Esther pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and stared through the windshield some more.

If she’d been Nixon’s mate, he might have been able to psychically read some agitation off of her or some anxiety, but all he had at the moment was the benefit of his eyes and nose. She
looked
stressed with her flushed cheeks and fidgeting hands. Smelled stressed, too. Her adrenaline was surging, and he didn’t really understand why. There was no safer place she could be than at Norseton.

But I haven’t been in a pack in forever. Maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like for a lady to be in one.

He cut his gaze to Colt, who gave his head a slight shake—a
don’t stress
shake.

Colt tossed his phone from one hand to the next and then leaned into the gatehouse.

The yellow and black arm blocking the roadway cranked up and Colt waved them on.

“Ask Alpha about phones as soon as you get in,” Colt called out.

“Yep.” Nixon motored his window up and inched the truck through the barrel and around the aforementioned boulders.

As he crested the small hill, the town came into view. When Colt had said there’d be a town there, Nixon had pictured a charming little Main Street with some shops and some sweet little houses. He hadn’t expected several rows of blocks, a substantial town square, and little neighborhoods flanking the business area.

“What in the
actual
hell? There’s a freakin’ town in the middle of the desert, and practically off the grid.”

He glanced down at his map to see if he should turn down Main—and in the process, get a better look at the place—but Colt’s instructions had been to arc around the outside.

“Is that a bookstore?” Esther asked in her typically quiet way.

“Looks like one. Think I saw a coffee shop and a bakery, too. Maybe you won’t have to give up too many of your familiar luxuries.”

“You forget I didn’t have any luxuries.”

He grunted. “Shit. Sorry. I’m sure Anton will show you around later, or Lil, once the kids wake from their sleep of the dead. Whenever that’ll be.”

“I have no way of knowing. I’ve never seen them sleep like this, and I’ve never had a rest quite like it, either.”

“Huh. Have you ever shifted to heal a wound?” He curved around the backside of the large adobe structure that was apparently the executive mansion and pointed the truck toward a small outcropping of single-story homes about a mile away.

“No. I try to avoid shifting as much as I can.”

“That’s right. ’Cause you don’t have to for the full moon. Nice little evolutionary advantage for you.”

“I don’t know how much of an advantage being nearly comatose from exhaustion is.”

“But that’s rare, though. I’ve got to shift every month, whether I want to or not. Full moon is tomorrow, but I’m gonna have to shift tonight just to get the ache out of my bones.”
In private
, he hoped. Shapeshifting wasn’t going to make his left foot and the lower part of his leg come back. The bone had lengthened some in the three years since the accident, but since he’d been in his human form and not his wolf during the crash, he’d never heal a hundred percent. He hoped to have a talk with Adam about his accident before anyone saw what
wasn’t
there. He didn’t want anyone to think he’d been keeping secrets.

“Before my husband, I—”

Nixon cut a look rightward to find Esther looking out the window beside her and wringing her hands.

“When he was alive, he tended to leave me alone when I shifted. Eurasian wolves are supposed to be so feral and so terrible, I guess. He didn’t want me to shift at all. I guess he thought I’d overpower him. I don’t know if I could have, but I didn’t want to shift, anyway. I preferred being on two legs. At home, with the kids. I can’t remember the last time I was in my wolf form. I think the kids have only seen me furry a few times in their whole lives.”

“You’re gonna have to. In order to get good rest, I mean. You’re gonna have to shift.”

She let out a quiet scoff, and then sighed. “The fact that I might actually be safe enough to shift in peace blows my mind.”

Nixon slowed as the road wound past a cluster of single-story houses situated around what looked like a courtyard. He figured he’d just keep going until he saw Adam’s old van—if he still had it—or saw the alpha waving from the driveway or something. He couldn’t exactly call, seeing as how his phone had no cellular service.

By the time Nixon had driven half the loop, a few familiar faces appeared in the courtyard. Waving wolves.