“Let me make this perfectly clear, Lucy,” she said, her voice firm despite her inner unease. “The fact that I’m not Lupine has not escaped anyone. Not me and certainly not Graham. If he doesn’t mind that I’m human, then it damned sure isn’t any of your business. Do you understand?”
“It’s my business when he parades you in front of the pack like an equal,” the Lupine snarled. “It’s my business when you set yourself up as alpha female despite the fact that you couldn’t win a tug-of-war with a newborn pup. You’re weak, and in our world, a weak leader is a dead leader.”
“But I don’t have to be as strong as you.” Missy held herself tall and steady and dared any one of the women in the room to challenge her, Lucy included. They might be able to kick her butt, but that didn’t mean she had any intention of cowering in front of them. “I am the alpha’s mate. That makes me alpha whether you like it or not. I don’t care if I can’t fight you and win, because if you lay one single hand on me, Graham will rip out your intestines and feast on them. So tell me again how I don’t deserve to be alpha.”
Lucy met her steady gaze for one heartbeat. Two. Three. Then she visibly swallowed a very bitter pill and looked away. Missy felt her knees almost buckle with relief.
“Very good,” she nodded, pretending to be confident and self-assured and powerful and a hundred other things she’d never been in her life. “I’m glad to have met you, Lucy. Now get out of my living room before I forget to be a gracious winner.” The other woman stalked out the door like she had a hot poker jammed up her rear, but at least she left. When the door closed behind her, Missy took a very deep breath and let it out on a sigh.
“Well,” she said, turning to face Samantha. “That was fun. Why don’t you introduce me to everyone else?”
* * * * *
Spending an entire afternoon with a room full of unmated female werewolves turned out to be one of the most educational experiences of Missy’s life. In between some of the most blood curdling and frankly terrifying descriptions of sex she’d ever heard, she managed to piece together the story of Lupine mating, matehunts and being alpha in a much more coherent manner than Graham had been able to manage.
“So he was really serious about that,” she said, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the empty pizza boxes. It was now around dusk and she’d been “chatting with the girls” for most of the afternoon. “If Graham hadn’t taken a mate, his cousin could honestly force him to step down from being alpha? Just because he didn’t have a mate and pups? Isn’t that a little insane?”
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
85
Annie, the woman who had formed the other half of her Lupine shield against Lucy, shrugged. “It’s tradition. That’s just sort of the way things work.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it less insane.”
“Well, you’ve got to realize that things weren’t always so easy for Lupines as they are now,” Samantha explained. “Now we’re integrated into the rest of the world, even if we’re still a great big secret. But a few hundred years ago, people used to burn us at the stake for being disciples of Satan.”
“I thought stake burning was for witches.”
“A fallacy, actually, since most witches were hung. Werewolves got burned. Or beheaded. Or shot with silver bullets, once gunpowder made its debut.”
“Yay.” Missy grimaced.
“Exactly,” Annie nodded. “So you can see how making sure that each pack would have a successive generation to keep us from dying out became a pretty high priority.
We might really be just legends, if it hadn’t been for Breeder’s Rights.” Missy guessed that was true, but she wasn’t quite sure why it still applied in the twenty-first century. And she
really
wasn’t sure why it applied to a human. She swirled her glass of soda and watched the ice cubes circle like racers on a NASCAR track. “Do Breeder’s Rights apply in this case?” she asked as she raised her head to meet Samantha’s eyes. “I mean, no matter what Graham may say about me being his mate, it can’t really be true. Can it?”
Annie looked slightly aghast. “Of course it’s true! Lupines don’t lie about mating.
The bond is sacred.”
“I didn’t mean I thought Graham was lying,” Missy soothed. “Just that he might be a little…confused. I mean, he’s Lupine, but I’m not. I’m human. I don’t even know if we’re…compatible that way. Are Lupines and humans the same species? Can we even
have
babies together?”
“Of course,” Annie said. “Lupines and Humans are related in much the same way as wolves and domestic dogs. They are biologically a different species, however they share such a large statistical percentage of mitochondrial DNA that they can and do mate and produce reproductively viable offspring. In fact, empirical evidence would seem to support the hypothesis that the offspring of a Lupine-human union may even have a more vigorous reproductive system than either of its respective parents, due to the introduction of new and varied forms of DNA into the genetic pool.” Missy blinked. “Oh.”
Samantha leaned forward to murmur an explanation. “Annie is a biology professor at NYU. Genetic research.”
Missy repeated. “Oh.” Sure she was. Why not? Why put limits on the surrealism that was fast coming to encompass Missy’s life? “Then you’re saying that Graham could get me pregnant?”
Annie shrugged. “Sure.”
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
86
“Has that happened before? I mean, are there lots of little Hu-pines running around?”
Samantha grinned. “Not so much. I think Anne was giving you the theoretical data, not a case study. There are stories about it happening in the past, but I’ve never met anyone who was mated to a human. It’s supposed to be a trip, though. The stories say the some of the pup’s talents can leak into the mother. She can sort of borrow the quicker reflexes and better night vision thing while she’s pregnant. Isn’t that wild?” Missy’s eyes widened. “Yeah, wild.”
“Mind you, it’s just conjecture,” Annie said, “but due to the physical connection between mother and pup, it does make a sort of logical sense.” The repetitive use of the word “pup” leached the color out of Missy’s face faster than the flu. “Would I have…puppies?”
Anne saw Samantha’s grin and raised her a chuckle. “No, so you can calm down.
Lupine pups look just like human babies. Shifting is something we have to learn how to do. Some precocious pups learn it as early as seven or eight, but most come into their abilities around puberty.”
Relief made Missy sag against the legs of the armchair she’d been leaning on.
“Okay. That’s slightly less terrifying. Mind you, only slightly, because, hello? Horny teenagers not hard enough to deal with, but horny teenager who can turn him or herself into a werewolf?” She shuddered. “But I’ll take what I can get.” Samantha looked at her as if Missy had just handed her the key to the city. “So you’re okay with it then? You don’t mind being Graham’s mate? You don’t mind having babies and staying with the pack?”
When she put it that way, the speech made Missy shift uncomfortably, so she hedged. “Well, I’m not running away screaming, am I?”
“I think there’s a bit of middle ground between running away screaming and living happily ever after with our alpha.” Annie gave Missy a stern glance.
Missy squirmed. “Give me a break here. This is a lot to adjust to, you know. Before last night, I didn’t even know Graham wanted to take me out to dinner, let alone that he was going to pull this mate thing on me. I need some time to get used to this.”
“You’ve got about three hours.” Samantha glanced at the clock and back at Missy.
“You might want to hurry it up.”
The reminder of the time and the hunt that would take place later that evening made the knots in Missy’s stomach pull tight. “Yeah, right. The matehunt. About that…”
Samantha crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Missy. “What about it?” Fidgets overcame her, and Missy sighed. How was she supposed to explain to someone who had grown up with Lupine culture that the idea of being chased through the dark of Central Park by a pack of aroused werewolves didn’t exactly get her juices flowing? In fact it froze them as solid as a glacial crust. “Look, I know this is a tradition Christine Warren
Fur Factor
87
for Lupines, but it’s really not something I can even conceive of. I mean the whole idea is…terrifying.”
Annie nodded. “I’m sure it is, for a human. I mean, you’re a woman to begin with, which makes you by definition weaker than a male, and then when you add the fact that you’re human to the equation and our men are easily ten or twenty times stronger than a non-Lupine—“
Missy groaned and buried her face in her hands.
“Annie,” Samantha snapped. “You are not helping.” The scientist blushed like a teenager. “Oops. Sorry.”
“Luna, you have nothing to be afraid of. Our Alpha will protect you. You’ll never be in danger. There is no chance of one of the other males catching you. Graham would kill them before they touched you.”
Somehow, Missy’s nerves demanded a little more soothing than the other woman’s hand patting her knee. “And what if something goes wrong? What if Graham gets hurt or distracted? What happens then?”
“It won’t happen,” Samantha repeated. “The Alpha will not allow it.” Missy‘s laugh strangled on her frustration. “I don’t think fate particularly cares what Graham will ‘allow.’ Luck isn’t something that’s going to show its belly just because Graham plays big, bad wolf.”
Samantha blinked at that. Her brows furrowed, and she looked over at Annie, confusion plainly written on her face. Missy just shook her head to realize that these women honestly couldn’t fathom the idea of a person, a being or an idea that wouldn’t bow its head before the Silverback Alpha.
Annie shrugged, as if to indicate she didn’t know what the Luna was yammering on about either, and turned back to Missy. “But Luna,” she explained, with the slow deliberation math teachers used when dealing with dense seven-year-olds, “the Alpha will protect you. You just have to trust him.” Trust a man whose sanity she was beginning to doubt?
“Sure,” Missy muttered. “Right. No problem.”
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
88
Missy hurried across the street and kept her ass to the wall until Graham put a hand at her back to push her forward.
“Come on,” he growled. “We’re running late. The hunt will start any minute.”
“Well, excuse me for trying not to flash the whole island,” she muttered, letting him herd her down the empty path into the quiet park. “This outfit you gave me to wear is ridiculous.”
“It offers ease of movement. Did you want to be running from the pack in heels and a miniskirt?”
“How much worse could that be than skintight spandex and biker boots?” Missy griped. “I feel like a cross between a Hell’s Angel and a go-go dancer. What’s wrong with jeans and a good pair of sneakers?”
“They don’t give me nearly as good a view of your ass.” He punctuated his comment with a theatrical leer and a light smack to her bottom.
It wasn’t enough to make her flinch, but when his hand lingered to cup and squeeze, she did shoot him a dirty look. “Why am I not surprised that’s the real answer?” Graham grinned and continued to lead them deeper into the park while Missy tried to ignore the nervous fluttering in her stomach. She would have called it butterflies except that the damned things were breeding like rabbits, and no matter what clever, pop psychology technique she used to try and calm them down, nothing worked. In the end, she just had to grit her teeth and bear it. After a few minutes, Graham led the way off the path altogether and pulled her through the trees into a thickly wooded area.
About the only thing she could see in the pitch-blackness was the glowing light of his eyes, and those didn’t quite cast enough of a glare to light her path. She had to resort to clinging to Graham’s side and stepping very carefully to avoid tripping over roots and rocks. For his part, Graham steadied her when she needed it, but he pushed her relentlessly forward all the while. She felt a little like the helpless blonde in a B-movie, which didn’t do much for her mood.
“Where the heck does this hunt happen?” she demanded after another ten minutes of scrambling over boulders and between tree trunks. She hadn’t known there were this many trees on Manhattan, let alone that Graham would expect her to climb over them all. “We must be practically in Albany by now.”
“Sh! Look.”
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
89
Mr. Monosyllabic pointed through the next stretch of trees and urged Missy in that direction. At first she thought it was another werewolf thing, but after a couple of blinks and some furious staring, she thought she could make out a cluster of orange firelights in the distance.
“Is that it?”
Graham nodded and nudged her forward. “And they’re almost ready to start.
Hurry.”
She decided not to mention she’d been hurrying for the last hour, ever since Graham pounded on the door to the bathroom where she’d been dressing and told her to move her sexy ass. Those were his words, not hers, and they’d been the only things to stop her from slamming the door on his toes. He did seem rather fond of her behind, after all, and Missy could appreciate a man with good taste.
As they strode forward and the trees began to thin in preparation for a clearing, Missy could make out the glow of some sort of lamps and a big ol’ bonfire about thirty feet ahead of them. It was a wonder the FDNY hadn’t swarmed all over the Lupines like bees at a flower show. When they got close to the tree line, Graham tugged her to a halt.
“Remember what we talked about?” he asked, he eyes green and glowing in his serious face.
“Of course.” How could she have forgotten? Her “mate” had lectured her on the finer points of her behavior tonight for at least forty-five minutes. “I stay close to you and keep Samantha and Annie nearby just in case. I keep still until the hunt starts and don’t stare directly into anyone’s eyes, but don’t look down, either or they’ll think I’m submissive. Don’t crowd anyone too close, and don’t get offended if someone tries to sniff me. Remember that the wolves are people too, and I should keep my mouth shut unless I have something of earth-shattering importance to relate. Oh, and when the hunt starts, I should run like hell directly north.” She finished the litany with her hands crossed primly in front of her and her eyebrows hovering somewhere around her hairline. Graham stared at her for a few seconds, then gave a curt nod.