Authors: Christine Warren
67
Christine Warren
This just was not going to work. She knew that. It didn’t matter that the man made her heart race and her blood heat and her body clench. It didn’t matter that he left her with rapid breath and damp panties. She couldn’t have a mate right now. End of story.
The really inconvenient part, though, was that she didn’t think Logan had read that memo. He seemed determined to take what he wanted, when he wanted it and damn the consequences. It was a pretty predictable Lupine response, especially coming from a man as dominant as Logan Hunter, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with, given the present circumstances. Honor had a hard enough time keeping her own raging hormones under control, without having to deal with the source of those hormones doing his damnedest to incite further raging. It just wasn’t going to work.
Yeah, and if she kept telling that to herself often enough, she just mind end up brain-damaged enough to believe it.
Swearing, Honor flipped her calendar open and began leafing through the pages once more. Time to stop brooding and concentrate on some real work. She got as far as opening to the proper page before a loud knock on her door called her attention. She snarled. “Come in.”
She looked up to see a tousled brown head poking through the slightly open door. It wore Max’s puppy dog expression and just below it dangled a bag containing the local bakery’s chocolate frosted donuts. “Is it safe?” Honor checked the side of her mouth for drool. “It will be if you throw those donuts in first.” Theobromide be damned. She wanted those chocolate donuts.
Besides, the amount of chocolate an adult werewolf would have to eat to get a bellyache from the toxic chemical defied comprehension. It defied Honor’s comprehension, at least.
She caught the bag as it sailed toward her head and had swallowed half of the first donut before Max even managed to park his butt in the chair in front of 68
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her desk. She’d skipped lunch again to avoid running into Logan and skipping meals was
not
a good idea for a Lupine.
“So,” Max said, lounging back in his chair, one ankle crossed negligently over the other knee, “what’s up with the Silverback dude?” Honor bit into donut number two and felt her eyes narrow. She barely forced herself to chew before she replied. “What do you mean, ‘What’s up’? He’s here because his alpha sent him here.”
“Well, duh. It doesn’t exactly strike me that he’s vacationing. But why did he come? What’s he trying to find out? And don’t tell me this is some sort of courtesy visit, because he’s asking way too many questions for courtesy.” The younger werewolf met Honor’s gaze with raised eyebrows, his foot bouncing up and down where it dangled off the edge of his knee. At twenty, Max had energy to burn and yet fell in that awkward stage between adult, when he would be assigned pack chores, and child, when he could run around the territory free of responsibilities. She would need to find a constructive way to use all that energy, but right now, other priorities preoccupied her mind.
“Asking questions? Asking who? And what does he want to know?”
“It’s not polite to answer a question with a question.”
“It isn’t when you do it. I’m the Alpha. I get to.”
“That is so not fair.”
“Deal.” She snagged a third donut and used it to punctuate her point. “Now tell me. Where is the Silverback poking his nose, and what has he been asking people about?”
“Everywhere and lots of things.” The sneakered foot bounced and Honor chewed. “He’s talked to a good sampling of the present pack. Elders, males, females. He even visited Molly Stevens’ day care and talked to some of the little ones. Whatever he wants to know, he wants a pretty diverse perspective on it.” 69
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“Have you
asked
any of the people he talked to what he wanted?”
“Well. No.”
“So, in other words, you have no idea about what I’m asking you.”
“You could say that.”
“I just did.”
“True. But you could also say that you just didn’t ask the right question.” Honor growled. “Max…”
“Hey, all I’m saying is, I don’t know exactly what he’s been asking people about, but I do know that there are some rumors flying around that something big is going to be happening at the howl this weekend.” He leaned forward in his chair, blue eyes glowing. “Something bigger than an alpha declaration and a challenge or two.”
That made Honor pause. “What does that mean? What’s bigger?”
“If I knew that, I’d know what he was asking people about.”
“Don’t be smart with me, Maxwell.”
He held up his hands. “I’m not being smart, Honor. I promise. I mean, I’m just as curious as you are. If something big is going down, it would sure be nice to be prepared for it.”
She scowled and leaned back in her chair, mumbling, “You’re telling me.”
“Then I guess it would be pretty useless for me to ask if
you
had any theories about what that all means?”
She just looked at him.
“Right. That’s what I thought.”
Max opened his mouth to speak, but before he got the chance to utter a single additional syllable, the door to Honor’s office slammed open and a clearly belligerent man shoved his way inside. He flew to Honor’s desk, slapped his meaty hands down on the surface and inhaled deeply.
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“It’s true, you little slut.” His growl was deep and menacing and Honor didn’t even blink. “I can smell him all over you. You let a stranger paw you like a bitch in heat. You let him touch what’s mine.” One eyebrow arched up, and when she spoke, Honor could have recreated the polar ice cap with her tone of voice. “Yours? There is nothing in this room that belongs to you, Darin Major. And the next time you call me a bitch, I will lunch on your liver. Now would you care to rephrase?”
“You heard me fine the first time, and I meant what I said. You let that Silverback cur rub his scent all over you. You reek of him. And now I’m going to smell it every time I look at you. When the call to mate the alpha comes, you’re going to be mine, but I’ll still be able to smell him on you.” Honor raised her left hand, curled into a fist with the back of her hand facing Max and Darin. Coolly and very quietly she ticked off her points on her fingers as she replied. “One, let me repeat nothing in this room can be called yours, least of all me. Two, what I do and with whom I do it is not, and never shall be, any of your goddamned business. Three, there will be no alpha mating at the next howl because I do not chose to mate right now.” She ignored the protest between her legs and continued. “And four, remove your hands from my desk before I remove them from you. Understand?”
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Silence fell between them, brief, tense and marked by the meeting of two gazes, one brown and chill, one green and maddened. But it ended abruptly when the door to the office opened again and another male voice rang out in the now-crowded room.
“If I were you, I would do what the lady says, Major. Somehow I doubt she’s joking.”
Honor never broke her stare with Darin, but her jaw shifted and clenched.
“The next one to walk into my office without knocking will find himself decorating the floor in front of my fireplace.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Logan’s lip twitching. “That sounds kind of nasty, Darin. I think I’d back off if I were you.”
“That promise wasn’t made exclusively to Darin.”
“Maybe not, but he’s the one who’s going to have to defend himself from both sides in about thirty seconds if he doesn’t back off.” What started in a reasonable and slightly amused voice had become decidedly serious by the end of that statement. Honor clenched her teeth to keep herself from screaming. If she’d been human, she probably would have screamed a split second later when Darin obeyed orders by removing his hands from her desk, but then ruined the moment of sanity by swinging around and launching himself straight for Logan’s throat.
The force of Darin’s attack forced Logan back through the door to the office and down the front steps of the small cabin that housed it. The two figures landed on the ground in the bare front yard, teeth snapping and hands clawing as Darin made the stupidest decision of his life and challenged a man who was 72
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not only stronger and faster than him, but also a hell of a lot smarter. As evidenced by the very attack itself.
Instead of screaming, Honor roared and leapt up out of her chair and over her desk to launch herself after the two combatants. By the time she found herself in the yard with them, she could already see blood, though she couldn’t be sure whose it was, and the sounds of vicious growls and snarls seemed to echo in the air around them. If she’d had a water hose, she’d have turned it on the two of them, but as it was, all she could do was stand on the sidelines and recite every curse she’d ever heard and a few new ones she had just made up herself. Necessity being the mother of invention and all.
She heard the sound of Max thundering outside right behind her and braced herself for impact just before he skidded to a halt beside her.
“Holy shit! They’re totally throwing down. Right here!”
“This is not WWE, Max.” She figured if she clenched her jaw any harder it would shatter, but hey, she could still get the words out. “And I’m going to kill one of them if they don’t cut this out in the next ten seconds.”
“Gotcha. One. Two. Three—”
Honor howled then, not a happy sound, and leapt for the struggling figures.
She landed on top of Darin’s back and tried to yank the two men apart. When she couldn’t do that, she sank her teeth deep into Darin’s side and tugged. That at least got his attention. He snarled something obscene but mostly unintelligible and backhanded her across the face with casual force. A human might have been killed by the force of the blow snapping her fragile little neck, but Honor was neither human nor fragile. All the smack did to her was to piss her off. Royally.
Rearing back, she let the reins of her beast slip just a little and felt the razor-sharp claws springing from the tips of her fingers. Sturdy as metal and sharp as glass, they ripped through Darin’s muscular flesh like a jackhammer through tissue paper, leaving deep, bloody furrows behind them. Darin jerked and 73
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screamed in pain, momentarily losing his concentration and giving Logan the advantage. The Silverback didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed Darin by the throat, lifted him off the ground and threw him into a tree forty feet away from where he stood.
She turned on him with a growl. “
My
fight.
Mine
.” Logan’s hand shot out, wrapping around Honor’s neck this time. But instead of squeezing and lifting, it curled around the back of her neck and yanked her forward until her breasts flattened against his chest and he growled possessively.
“Mine.”
Logan saw the way his possessive statement made her temper flare, but he really didn’t give a shit. This was his mate, and every hour that passed brought her closer and closer to the peak of her heat and to ovulation. The changes in her scent maddened him, and after searching for her—unsuccessfully—all day, he didn’t intend to let her go.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the lanky young man who’d rushed out of Honor’s office behind them hurrying to the now unconscious Darin. If he’d looked to be tending the fallen challenger, Logan would have stopped him, but all the young man did was grab the moron by the ankles and begin dragging him away from the small cabin out of which Honor ran her father’s business.
Dismissing them from his mind, he shifted the struggling burden in his arms and growled in pleasure at the way her squirming rubbed all her softest parts against his most appreciative ones.
“Let. Me. Go!” Honor herself sounded less appreciative. “Hands off, Fang.”
“No.” He ignored her fighting, except that he grabbed her flailing hands in one of his and pinned them behind her back. Then he began backing her up toward the cabin they’d just left, his hips bumping against hers as they walked.
“Told you. Mine.”
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She snarled. “Told
you!
No!”
He didn’t intend to take that for an answer. He could smell the heat rolling off her in heady waves, making his heart race and his cock stand at attention. If he didn’t have her soon, he’d explode. In more ways than one.
Ignoring her demands, he continued backing her to the cabin, one step at a time. He almost had here there, too, and was already imagining the things he would do to her once her had her bent over her daddy’s desk when she got sneaky. Going suddenly limp, as in falling completely boneless in his arms like dead weight, she forced him to hesitate and look down at her to see what happened. That split second of inattention nearly cost him all his grand plans for fathering cubs with this woman. As soon as his hold loosened a fraction, she brought her knee up hard between his legs. She might have damaged him permanently if he hadn’t been quite so fast. As it was, he ended up with a baseball-sized bruise high on his thigh and a howling bundle of rage and frustration in his arms.
She yanked so hard at the arms he had pinned behind her that he started to fear she’d break her own wrist struggling to get away from him. He shifted his grip to take one hand in each of his, and she fought even harder. She threw herself bodily against him, disrupting his balance until the two of them went crashing to the ground not three feet from the cabin steps. Snarling like a she-wolf guarding her den, Honor launched another attack, surprising Logan who had thought she must be nearly done. She went for his eyes with her curving claws, but she got shoulder instead, tearing several wide strips through his thick hide. She threw herself forward, trying to get her teeth around his throat, but found herself flat on her back instead.
Logan pinned her carefully, making sure not to use too much of his weight and strength against her, but she made his gentlemanly behavior nearly impossible. She fought like a cornered badger, only meaner. She was going for 75