Authors: Christine Warren
But with an illness like cancer, it was damned difficult. Most Lupines could smell the taint of the disease and would have known immediately. He wondered how the old alpha had done it? Tate had been a tough old bird, but hiding cancer…
That took balls.
“So no one guessed at all? Not even his beta?”
“That’s probably one of the things that helped him fool everyone.” Graham nodded to the letter in Logan’s hand. “The email I got is from his beta, who was also his daughter. She probably didn’t want to think her father was ill, so she denied it, thus making it even easier for him to deceive everyone else.” Again, Logan perked up in interest. Female alphas weren’t unheard of in the Lupine world, but they were unusual enough to stir considerable interest. “Do you think she can hold the pack?”
Graham shrugged. “I have no idea. I haven’t visited the White Paw since I first took the reins from my dad. Since they’re one of the clans under the Silverback protection, I paid a courtesy visit. But she couldn’t have been more than nine or ten at the time. I’m sure she was introduced, since she was Tate’s daughter, but I didn’t pay her much mind.”
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“All right. So what’s the situation right now?”
“Tate was supposed to be buried this morning, and according to the daughter, there were already two male pack members making noises about a challenge.”
Logan growled a little at the thought of the males calling a young female beta to an alpha challenge. There were just some things a Lupine didn’t do. “You want me to take care of the challengers?”
Graham shook his head. “Not necessarily. What I need you to do is go up to the clan center and assess the situation. If the girl can’t hold her pack, I need to know so I can oversee the open challenge. That’s what would have to happen.”
“Is that what the girl asked for?”
“Not exactly.” Graham paused. “She asked for me to formally acknowledge her succession to alpha.”
Logan couldn’t help the eyebrow that shot up at that. “If she wants the burden, why not let her take it?”
“Do you want to see a female in alpha challenge? It hasn’t happened in thirty years for a damned good reason. The last woman who took a challenge ended up gang raped and under nursing care for nearly a month.” The snarl that passed over Graham’s face at that thought would have scared most people half to death.
It just reminded Logan of why he considered this man his brother. “Besides, Tate’s daughter can’t be more than twenty-four or so. She’d be like a rabbit in the wolf’s pen. If I can keep that from happening, I will. Or rather, you will.”
“Damn right.” Logan growled again and finally glanced down at the printed email in his hand. “So you also want me to make sure the girl doesn’t get into trouble while I scope out who’s likely to take Tate’s place.”
“Yeah. And I want you keeping an eye on it until it’s settled.” 11
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Something about Graham’s tone made Logan look up and meet the other man’s gaze. He felt his mouth quirk in a reluctant smile. “What you want is to get me the hell out of your hair until I calm down, brother.”
“Well, there is that.” Graham’s expression turned rueful. “I don’t know what’s been eating you, brother, but I’m hoping a week or two in the country will settle your damned nerves or something. ‘Cause you’re starting to get on mine.”
Logan clenched his teeth, drew a deep breath and blew it out threw his nose.
“Hell, I’m starting to get on my
own
nerves. I don’t blame you for making me go stand in the corner.”
“It’s not like that. You’re the one I want handling this for me. Period. That would be true even if you were acting perfectly normal.”
“But I’m not.”
Graham didn’t answer, and Logan flipped him an obscene gesture on his way out the door. Just because Graham was right, didn’t mean Logan couldn’t call him a dick.
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Honor Tate bolted through the front door of her home and straight into the bathroom where she proceeded to throw up her breakfast, lunch and several of her internal organs. It didn’t help. The taste of blood in her mouth was strong and metallic. It should have been familiar. Instead, it was sickening, sweet and sticky and coating her tongue in thick, persistent layers.
She clutched the rim of the toilet bowl and heaved again, so violently she almost missed the sound of footsteps echoing across the wooden floor of the big cabin’s great room.
“Honor? Honor, are you okay?”
She bit back a moan, her fingers clenching as another dizzy wave of nausea swept through her. Her cousin’s voice sounded as soft and concerned as always and it was next to the last thing she felt like dealing with right now. She spit into the toilet, trying to rid herself of the taste of blood and bile.
“I’m fine, Joey.” As fine as a Lupine could be after chewing off the hand of one of her oldest friends and pretending to enjoy it. “I just wanted to wash off some of this grime.”
She heard a pause, then a soft question. “Why don’t you go upstairs, then?
Take a proper shower? I can make you some dinner and bring you up a tray.” The word dinner set her stomach racing toward the back of her throat, and she quickly shoved on the faucet full blast to mask the sound of more retching.
Trembling violently, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and forced her voice to sound steady as a rock and calm as Sunday church. “Well, I was going to finish up delivering this week’s wood to the cabins on the lumber road…”
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She let her voice trail off and crossed her fingers that her tenderhearted cousin Josephine would reply in form.
“Don’t be silly. You’ve done enough today.” Joey’s voice sounded firm and soothing, and made Honor’s shoulders sag in relief. “Michael can finish the deliveries. You should take a shower and relax this evening. Or if you have to, work on the books. But stay in and get some rest. It’s been…a difficult few days.” Honor stifled a laugh and flushed the toilet, grabbing a neatly folded towel from the bar beside the sink. A difficult few days? Why? Just because her previously healthy, arrogant, indestructible father had died, she had inherited his position as alpha over the White Paw Lupine pack, and had fought three alpha challenges in the same number of days? Pshaw.
She cupped her hand to her mouth and rinsed away the last taste of bile.
Then she wet one end of the towel and used it to wipe her pale, chalky face.
Damn it, she looked like hell, and that was not the sort of face she could let anyone in the pack see. Not even Joey. If Honor was going to assume the title of Alpha, she would need to act like an alpha at all times. Even when she felt more like crying.
Stuffing down those very dangerous thoughts, she draped the towel around her neck and used one hand to hold it to her face as if she were cleaning up, then reached for the doorknob with the other. One deep breath later, she stepped out into the great room with a false smile and the towel half concealing her face.
Joey stood just beside the door, her hands clasped nervously together, her brow wrinkled in concern. “I’m sorry it was Paul,” she said in that soft, come-down-from-the-ledge voice of hers. “I know how close you two always were.”
“Don’t be.” Honor forced her voice to come out casually as she turned and headed for the stairway. “If it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else.
That’s just the way it goes.” As soon as she had her back to Joey, she let the towel drop and reached for the banister instead. She made it a point to barely touch it 14
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rather than clutching as she wanted to as she walked up to the second floor. “Go ahead and tell Michael to finish the wood deliveries. I’m going to go take that shower. Send up a tray whenever it’s ready.” Her steps remained brisk and measured all the way down the hall to the master suite and did not vary until the door closed securely behind her. Then she leaned back against it, squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself not to cry.
Pallor she could handle with a little make up, but red, puffy, bloodshot eyes would take a lot more effort to conceal than she felt capable of just now.
“Damn you, Dad.”
The curse had somehow become her mantra over the past three days. Damn him for dying, damn him for leaving her his business, his pack and his problems all in one fell swoop, and damn him again just on general principles. The bastard deserved every extra second he spent in whatever passed for hell these days.
Pushing away from the door, Honor paused for a few seconds, swaying gently with the rush of fatigue and nerves that seemed to plague her constantly now. She could barely remember what it felt like to relax. And to think the fun of leading the pack was just beginning. Wheeeeeeeeee!
She padded across the floor toward the bathroom, thinking that a shower sounded better than sex or chocolate. Or sex involving chocolate. The smell of blood and sweat and soil lingered on her skin and clothes, and she felt pretty sure she carried enough small twigs and dried leaves in her hair for a decent fire.
She doubted the ability of soap and hot water to make her feel clean, but at least it could get rid of the surface detritus.
Ignoring the cavernous room, looking even bigger now that it had been stripped of all her father’s personal possessions and the stamp of his decidedly masculine tastes, she pushed into the bath and flipped on the lights. She turned on the shower and let the water heat while she stripped. Her clothes landed in 15
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the wastebasket rather than the hamper. She’d never be able to bring herself to wear them again, so why bother scrubbing out the stains?
When she stepped under the stinging spray, she hissed at the scalding heat and felt her skin immediately pinken to a rosy glow. She kept her eyes squeezed shut as the water sluiced off the worst of the blood and dirt, not wanting to see the water turn as pink as her skin as it circled down the drain. The steel fence she had erected to cage in the memories of this afternoon still had a few weak spots, and she couldn’t afford to encourage any escaping thoughts.
She lingered in the shower, scrubbing herself from head to toe with a loofah three times before she could stand the feel of her own skin. That’s when she opened her eyes and reached for the conditioner. She applied it liberally to the mess of knots and debris that passed for her hair and let the thick liquid ease everything free. When she couldn’t feel any more pieces of bark or clumps of mud, she rinsed and applied a generous handful of shampoo. She lathered, rinsed and even repeated twice before she could make herself stop. Then she conditioned again and turned off the water.
Hesitating for a long moment on the bathmat, dripping water onto the porous rectangle, she contemplated grabbing a towel, but found herself heading for the bathtub instead. She still didn’t feel really clean, but the shower had done the best it could. Time to give the big Jacuzzi and her favorite scented bath salts a shot.
She set the tub to fill, grateful for her father’s ridiculously large water heater, and wrapped a towel around her hair before dumping two huge handfuls of spicy-floral salts into the tub and turning on the jets. She slipped in before the tub was full, leaning back against its sloped side and left the water running until she was submerged up to her chin. Then she used her foot to turn off the water and let the rumble of the jets lull her into a half-trance.
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That was her first big mistake. As soon as her body began to relax from the pounding streams of water around her, her mind began to wander. And, of course, it went directly to the places she didn’t want it to go.
Damn Paul Clarke, anyway. Why had he needed to play the big man with her? Why now? They’d been friends since they were whelped, for God’s sake.
They’d spent their childhoods playing fetch and chase together, their teen years learning to hunt side by side. They’d even brought their first deer down together.
She’d considered him a friend. So why then hell had he chosen now to challenge her? What the hell had he been thinking?
That he could win
.
The thought echoed in her head, mocking her with the simple fact that it was completely true. That was exactly why Paul had challenged her now, when stress clouded her thinking and grief slowed her reaction times. As the beta, second in command of her father’s pack and a young Lupine in her prime, Honor had been too much for him to take on. But as an unprepared and insecure new alpha, she had been ripe for a challenge. Three of them as a matter of fact, so the one coming from Paul never should have surprised her.
But it did. It shocked her to her toes. She hadn’t known what to do at first.
Not until it became clear that even if she didn’t want to take the challenge seriously, that’s exactly how he had meant it. Deadly serious. He had gone for her throat, and as tough and strong as Honor was, she couldn’t underestimate a male Lupine who outweighed her by a good fifty pounds and had several inches on her in reach. Her father had taught her that every challenge needed to be dealt with swiftly and decisively, and he had made sure she knew enough to make her moves count. If she couldn’t compete with strength and size, she could use speed and treachery and use them well. Her father had pounded that into her until it became instinct. He had preferred the traditional end to a challenge—death—
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something Honor hadn’t been able to do. She had held back at the last minute and taken Paul’s hand instead.
She hadn’t wanted to. She’d tried stopping at a pin, as she had with the first challenger, but as soon as she let up, Paul had attacked again. So she’d hamstringed him, thinking if he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t fight. But he had still come for her, launching himself toward her throat with his good hind leg and suddenly there hadn’t been any other choice. It was his hand or his throat, and Honor had chosen his hand. He wouldn’t thank her for it, but her conscience did.