Homecoming (3 page)

Then she was gone, refusing all offers to play or hang around, leaving Cal at the table with his mouth watering. Tony was his Alpha, and would be until one of them died, but Sula was something powerful the likes of which Cal had never met.

He glanced over at Daniel, hoping the man wasn't jealous. Not that Daniel was ever jealous, really, not the way Cal could be, since Daniel was blessed with a bedrock of self–confidence that Cal only dreamed of. But right then, Daniel looked genuinely rattled. They stared at each other in surprise, knowing and smelling how they felt, realizing that they had the same reaction: Sula was raw power, raw sex, and raw need—and they both wanted her.

Tony noticed it too, giving them a small shake of his head. It was his way of telling them to back off of Sula, that he was not comfortable with them going after her. It hurt to stay seated while Sula danced like a primal goddess on the floor, her thick hips and round ass swaying to the music while Cal's cock tried to beat its way out of his pants. Even Daniel started looking a little green from the pressure before Lisbeth stood up and announced that it was time to play.

Then they were outside, stuffed into the car and heading up toward Lisbeth's place, or “the cabin” as she called it. It looked more like a run–down old house than a cabin, but it was secluded and buried deep in the woods. It smelled heavenly.

They all undressed with the casual ease of a pack on the verge of shifting, without self–consciousness or modesty. Lisbeth dropped and became the most gorgeous wolf Cal had ever seen. She was long, lean and vicious, her coat a deep auburn color that even the washed out light of the moon could not hide. Tony was off after her, his patchwork of gray and brown and white a blur into the woods. Cal followed with Daniel at his heels.

Lisbeth stayed clear of Cal and Daniel for the most part as they all raced each other around. She was angling for Tony, and Cal knew better than to test that. He didn't want her anyway, and what he was sniffing out of the wind and the dirt was a woman who wasn't there. There wasn't even a trace of Sula around the cabin where she lived, which confused Cal as he paced back and forth, his head swinging as he air–sniffed for her. It was inconceivable to him that anyone would live in the middle of the woods and never, ever go play in it.

Daniel sat on his haunches after a while, giving up on what Cal refused to believe was true: Sula never shifted. Whatever she was, it was not something she left a trace of anywhere. Daniel put out a few watered down howls to offset the music of romance and sex that Tony and Lisbeth had going a few miles over.

It all made Cal itchy and nervous. A shifter who never shifted was just unnatural. Whining, he circled the house again, coming back around to the front to find Daniel getting dressed.

“Neither of us is really in the mood to run. Change back. We'll wait for her on the porch.”

Cal didn't want to change. Sula worried him, and Tony was out trying to start a family in unclaimed territory, and Daniel had shifted back to human. Cal knocked his head against Daniel's leg as Daniel buttoned up his shirt.

“I know, I'm rattled too. You want to stay that way for a while? I'll scratch you.”

Cal fell over and waved his feet in the air in total submission. Daniel laughed, crouching down to run his fingers through Cal's fur. It only lasted for a couple of blissful minutes before Daniel stood up, slapping at Cal's hip.

“Change. I'll be on the porch.”

Grumbling and growling, Cal walked over to where he left his clothes, nosing at them to make sure they had not changed like everything else seemed to be doing. Satisfied, he lay down on the ground and let his nature move and twist through him, reshaping his bones and his mind and his blood until he was human enough to put jeans on again. Getting dressed was always such a disappointment after the change.

They settled on the porch, but it wasn't long before Sula's jeep pulled up. She knew they were there. Daniel actually stepped back a little, allowing Cal to take the lead. He was not sure why Daniel would do that, except perhaps he was trying to get a bead on how Sula would read it.

Things didn't get interesting until Cal got in her face about being Lisbeth's second, and then everything skidded sideways straight into Hell. If Daniel hadn't grabbed hold of him, chances were good Cal would have flown off the porch in a flight of panic, which was not exactly his style. Sula threw him, hard…because she was a fucking
bear
, and she could.

When she stormed inside, locking the door for no sensible reason (because who in their right mind would break into a bear's den?), Cal and Daniel moved down off the steps in tandem until they were several yards from the house, next to Tony's car.

“I had no idea. No suspicion at all.” Daniel sounded awestruck.

“They're dead. That one that got killed in Oklahoma, it was the last of 'em—” Cal shook himself, trying to get rid of the heebie jeebies. His nerves were too much on edge though, and the scent of her, the overpowering and mind–numbing odor of her, still filled his nostrils.

“There have been some reports, out of China. Siberia. Nothing concrete.”

“Yeah well you can see the fuck why. Jesus. She's…she's, I don't know.”

“Powerful,” Daniel whispered wistfully. Cal turned on him with narrow eyes.

“Would you?”

Daniel smiled back at him affectionately, reaching out to hold his chin. “Not without you, Cal. You've got no more reason to be jealous than I do.”

Cal jerked his head in a half–hearted nod. It was true, and he knew it, but it was impossible not to be unseated and uncertain with a
bear
just a few yards away. “Tony won't like it.”

Daniel shrugged. “Who would? After all: a bear? In his potential territory, living with his chosen mate? Most definitely unregistered, as well. It adds the kind of complications the Borgia's would envy.”

Cal knew about the Borgias because Tony talked about them a lot, not with envy but warily, as if the story of the werewolf clan who ruled the Church and most of Italy but whose dynasty destroyed itself through their own greedy machinations was a personal warning to him. Cal didn't ask about that, but it at least gave him a good history lesson. What it told him right then, though, was that Sula was going to make things difficult for everyone. If they lived through it.

“A
bear
,” Cal repeated, feeling a little awestruck himself. “She's amazing.”

Daniel nodded in agreement, for once beyond words.

They huddled together for warmth inside the car, waiting for Tony and Lisbeth to get back and tell them what to do.

S
he woke up the morning after the showdown on the porch and looked in on Lisbeth, who, predictably enough, had Tony wrapped around her.
He was beautiful in a lazy way, sleek and trim and strong. Not a beautiful man, but stately in the classical sense, and not at all the overly masculine type that Lisbeth usually brought home. Sula watched them, worry gnawing at her bones. This was something new; she could see it in the way they nuzzled in their sleep and from the smell of the room when she reached her senses out to taste. Not sex, or not
just
sex, but chemicals borne of strong emotions. Lisbeth was sweating out a need Sula had never smelled off of her before.

Downstairs, she was not surprised to find the other two sprawled out on the futon couch–bed. She did not mind, as Lisbeth had the right to invite them in, and Tony probably would not have stayed without them. What did surprise her was that they were naked and reeked of sex, wound up together as closely as Tony was with Lisbeth. From what little Sula knew of the wolves, they were not in general gay or even bisexual, but this pack was obviously different. Cal's casual reaction to her attempted insult now made sense, because if the smells in the house were any indication, this whole pack was very, very wrapped up in each other in a very, very non–traditional way. And not one of them could produce puppies.

Lisbeth would take to that, Sula knew, because more than anything Lisbeth loved the rebels. Especially good looking and sexy rebels.

Sula shook her head, wondering when being a werewolf was not rebellion enough in the world.

She padded into the kitchen to make coffee, not bothering to be quiet about it. They were not
her
guests but it was her house, and she hated mornings in principle anyway. She pulled out the frozen blueberries to add to her breakfast fruit shake and started putting up dishes left out to dry the night before.

“So you do eat berries.” The amused tone had a soft note to it.

She turned to find Daniel watching her, standing at a distance, just outside the kitchen. He was only wearing his jeans and had not cleaned up at all. She wrinkled her nose and looked away.

“You're offended?” His voice went cold.

“Only because you're dirty. I don't care about who you sleep with. Not my business.” She moved the blender and poured in the apple juice. “And yes, of course I like berries. And fish. So make all the jokes you want, dog boy, it's not anything new.”

She heard him moving closer, stepping slowly into the kitchen. She knew he could have done it quietly, that he was making noise on purpose because he was scared of spooking her. She tried not to grin as she focused on her breakfast, dribbling berries into the mix.

“Normals still talk about us like we're myths; that's how we talk about
you
.”

She turned to look at him. He was studying her, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his bare chest. He was alluring, but he was not trying to sell her on it. He was frankly interested in what she was, curious but wary, obviously unused to being intimidated by any unnatural who was not his Alpha.

“Well, here I am. Berries and all.” She flipped the switch of the blender before he could answer. She turned it off and poured it into a glass and turned to face him. He was smiling.

“Guess I can die now, I've seen everything.”

She laughed, trying not to choke on her drink. “Not even. You're just seeing me here in the kitchen. You haven't really seen anything.”

“I suppose so.” He unfolded his arms and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking intently at the floor, pushing the jeans to ride low on his lean, muscular hips. He glanced up at her, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “We're staying tonight. Come out.”

She lowered her drink, the dark magic of Bracelet swirling up her arm as her stomach sank. He shifted uneasily under her gaze. “I don't. So don't ask.” Turning her back on him, she finished her drink and went to clean up. The coffee was ready, so she focused on that and did not listen to him leave the room.

When she emerged to walk through the living room, both men were partially dressed and pushing the futon back into a couch.

“Don't bother. If you're staying the night, you'll just end up back on it.” She waved her mug at them as she headed for the back porch.

“Hey!” Cal called after her.

“What?”

“Got someplace we can clean up?”

“Bath is upstairs. If Lisbeth isn't in it you can use it. Towels in the hall closet, one each or you're doing the laundry. Hope you got your own toothbrushes, though.” She walked out.

The world outside was in late morning, the sun well up but not at noon. There was the distant hum of the interstate through the mountains, but otherwise most of the noise was nature in congress: birds chirping, animals rustling, wind blowing. Even the new werewolves had not stopped the world around the cabin much. Shifters were more normal to animals and bugs than humans, and if not on the hunt were considered part and parcel of the surroundings. The deer probably found the house stranger than the people in it, she mused, sipping her coffee as she lounged in the cool morning air. Fall was heading in sharp and quick, and she looked forward to it even if it meant fewer mornings enjoying the outdoors like this. Bracelet rested easy on her wrist, almost as inert as a normal piece of jewelry. Sula figured it was just lying in wait.

“Mornin'.” Lisbeth drawled behind her. “Coffee.”

“You're welcome.” Sula smiled. Lisbeth walked over and leaned against the railing, looking out. “They bother you?”

“Nah. They aren't much as pests go.”

“Mmmhhh.” Lisbeth slurped the coffee. “You mind if they stay the night?”

“Don't mind if they stay the week, long as they keep to their manners.”

Lisbeth smiled. “Thanks.”

“This one, Tony. You know he's looking for a pack mate?”

She nodded. “He mentioned it.”

Sula let that sit a moment, and realized that Lisbeth was not giving her usual disclaimer. “Don't tell me you're thinking about it.”

“No harm in thinking, is there?” Lisbeth tensed up.

“No, but…well if that's what you're looking for… .” Sula trailed off, not really wanting to tell Lisbeth to go home to her kin.

“This is different. My family wanted a political alliance. I just want to be happy.” Lisbeth pursed her lips and stared at the coffee cup.

“Yeah, sure, okay. Whatever makes you happy. Just don't rush into it. Next thing you'll be registering.”