Little Wolf (54 page)

“Tim.” Nathaniel called Tim away from his thoughts. “They are beginning to set up for the festival.” He had Tim’s hand, which was exactly the kind of innocent thing that could trip Tim up like nothing else. “If things calm down by the end of the week, we could go take a look at the progress. You could get a better sense of it. You might want to attend the real thing then.”

Tim pursed his lips. “Are you leading up to asking me to go to the festival thing with you?”
Provided we aren’t in danger
or dead or captured and locked up in my uncle’s house
went unsaid, mostly because Tim’s throat was tight. “As your date? As if the whole town doesn’t know we’re fucking!”

“Is that a yes?” Nathaniel remained unbothered by Tim’s volume or his choice of words.

“You’re wearing my mark!” Exasperation made Tim louder, but it was only for a second and then he was distracted again, buzzing to think of Nathaniel walking around while marked from Tim’s mouth. He thought of Nathaniel at the horniest of horny wolf festivals, still decorated with Tim’s hickeys. Tim scowled, although he liked the thought. “I don’t know how to do that kind of thing. Hand-holding and eating cotton candy and whatever people do at those.”

Nathaniel glanced down, where of course their hands were still linked. Nothing about the gesture was alarming or hard to master. It was probably equally easy to stroll around, eating fried things or whatever, and listening to music, and glaring at tourists who got too close. And if it wasn’t easy, Tim knew what Nathaniel would have to say about it.

Tim twitched. “Yeah, okay. Yes. Obviously. Who wouldn’t go out with you to your sexy love festival?” A stupid festival should not be making Tim’s heart rate triple. “But only if things aren’t so, you know. If I’m still here.”

He wasn’t prepared for Nathaniel’s hand tightening over his or for Nathaniel pulling away. “If you’re still here,” Nathaniel repeated. He released Tim and looked around, finally nodding toward the café and the counter as if that was as good a direction as any. “I’ll go order.”

“Wait!” Tim frowned after him but fell quiet when Zoe stepped in front of him, cutting off his line of sight to Nathaniel. She had her hands at her sides. Her expression wasn’t threatening, exactly.

“I didn’t tell him what I want,” Tim complained while trying to peer around her. Zoe stepped closer to the counter and crossed her arms. If she was trying to be intimidating, it was working, but Tim was hardly going to let that bother him now. “What?”

“Your name is not Littlewolf.” Her tone was flat.

Tim glanced toward Nathaniel one last time. “He told you? He said he was going to wait for me to—”

“He thought I should know the level of trouble we were in for, considering I share a house with you.” Zoe could not have been more pointed.

Tim opened his mouth, then reconsidered his words. “He thinks things out like that. He thinks about other people like that.” The admission made Tim want to smile. Zoe’s continued coolness did not. “I don’t.” Silas would have lost it to see Tim apologizing this much. “But I should have.” Tim swallowed before meeting her stare. “My name is Dirus.” She already knew, but sometimes the words had to be said aloud. It worked for spells too.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see someone turning at the name, but he kept his attention on Zoe. For a few tense moments her expression didn’t change. Then she let her shoulders drop a bit. “He told me. Explains a lot about you, to be honest.”

He couldn’t deny that. Tim twisted his mouth into a grimace anyway. “What a failure I am?”

Zoe blinked rapidly. “What a pain in the ass you are, is what I was going to say. Most old bloods are, to mutts like me, except for the Greenleafs, probably because the white humans killed most of them, so they’re determined to stick together.”

Albert was not far behind Tim. He had undoubtedly heard everything. “My name is Timothy Dirus,” Tim said again, angling his head down to let Albert know this was for him. “I had reasons for lying, even if everyone knew I was lying and the only secret was my real name.”

More people were going to hear. If his uncle had agents in town, Tim could expect a reaction soon. If not, he still shouldn’t have long to wait. According to Nathaniel there had been rumors about Tim, about the Dirus heir, among the werewolf communities for years now. This news was going to get a response. Tim had to stop himself from staring out the window in the direction of the bus station, and made himself look around the room instead.

Carl was at his table and couldn’t hear any of this. Getting kidnapped by Luca might be a relief. It meant Tim wouldn’t have to explain this to the old guy.

Zoe continued to stare at him. “And what? You’re going to lie to us, use us for protection, and then, when things die down, leave?”

“The Dirus are supposed to be fighters,” Albert remarked softly, stating a fact Tim was well aware of. Tim twisted to give Albert a glare, since he didn’t see Albert fighting for Graham; Albert didn’t even seem sure that he wanted Graham. Glaring at Albert did no good. Albert knew things. Tim had kissed him, for fuck’s sake.

“Well, I’m the exception. The freak embarrassment to the name.” Tim made himself shrug. Silas had never said those words, but he hadn’t needed to. Tim’s very existence had been shameful to him.

“When I lived with humans, I was the tallest girl in my class for three years running and the only one without parents.” Zoe fell back a step. “Freak? Really?”

Tim was the one staring now. “Sorry. I’m an asshole who doesn’t know basic things. I was never around other weres growing up,” he mumbled at last. “They….” He found it harder to say this than it had been to give his real name. “That was on purpose. My uncle kept me away from others.”

Something warmer flickered through Zoe’s expression. She glanced over Tim’s shoulder at Albert. “Nathaniel knows that?”

Tim nodded and discreetly checked on Nathaniel. Nathaniel was at the counter, but he wasn’t ordering. Tim wondered if he was listening, then dismissed the thought, because Nathaniel had no reason that he could think of to be eavesdropping on this conversation.

He brought his attention back to Zoe. “Don’t worry. He was suitably pissed about it and made me aware once again of how fucked-up I really am. You don’t need to say anything.”

“And you’re letting them take you?” He didn’t think Zoe’s eyebrows could get any higher.

“No. Hell no.” Tim shook his head but felt a quiver in his stomach. “Maybe. If they take me, there isn’t much I can do about it but wait and try to escape again. That’s it. I’d never take either of them in a fight. No. I’ll run if—I’ll run when they find me. If I have to. It’d be stupid to risk more. I mean, you don’t know what they’ve already done to this town.”

“I have questions now,” Albert interjected quietly. “So many questions.”

Zoe swooped in to press her hands against the counter. Tim jumped. She ignored it. “What do you think is going to happen when you leave?”

“What do you mean?” Tim looked between the two of them. “What would happen? Nothing.” Across the café, Nathaniel’s back was stiff. “Nothing dramatic, I mean. I’m a visitor here. I don’t actually matter much to anyone except…. Zoe,” Tim continued in a quick hush, “you have to keep the council off his back. They aren’t all that scary. If he didn’t feel so responsible for everything, they wouldn’t get to him so much.”

Zoe tightened her mouth and stood up to her full height. “I’m going to go keep an eye on the exits while you enjoy your lunch.” She spared a nod for Albert. “Greenleaf.” She stepped into the crowd and then made her way to the counter and chose a stool where, true to her word, she could keep an eye on both doors. She still found time to shoot Tim one final glare.

Tim turned from her to Nathaniel. Nathaniel was talking to Robin’s Egg, or rather, he was listening to Robin’s Egg, as she patted his hand. Tim huffed and, from behind him, he heard Albert let out his own small puff of breath.

“You were my
first
,” Albert hissed,
embarrassment
all over him. “Of course what happens to you matters to me.” Tim tensed, but Albert didn’t give him a chance to respond. He continued his lecture in a whisper that indicated he also thought Nathaniel might be listening. “You’d mark him and then you’d leave him?” Albert’s disapproval was almost worse than Carl’s.

If Tim had possessed any sense he would have left long before this. But then he remembered that the last time he’d tried to leave, he’d ended up moving in with Nathaniel, which seemed like something he should have paid more attention to as it had been happening. His rational mind thought Tim should run. His every instinct told him to stay. Of course, Tim’s instinct also told him to leap into Nathaniel’s arms every time he saw him. That probably wasn’t normal.

“Do you ever want to jump into Graham’s arms?” Tim asked idly, noting Albert’s shocked exclamation and twitchy, nervous movements away from him. “I did mark him, didn’t I? So publicly it might as well have been in the paper. Why do you think he let me do that?” Tim wasn’t going to fool himself into thinking every tourist would back off because skinny little Tim had sucked on Nathaniel’s neck for a while. “I think he believes I mean so much to Luca that seeing the two of us wearing each other’s marks will send Luca into a rage. He wants the target to be him, not me. Stupid.” Tim tapped the display and considered Zoe and then Nathaniel again. “Stupid,” he repeated, louder than before.

“So that’s why you’d leave?” Albert’s voice was strangled. “To protect him from someone?” In Albert’s place, Tim would have been much more obnoxious about all his questions. Albert had remarkable restraint for someone so confused.

Tim let out a breath. “I’m kind of new to this whole love thing, Albert, but I really don’t like the idea of Nathaniel in danger.”

Nathaniel turned around and looked right at Tim. He was the worst eavesdropper in the world. His list of imperfections was growing, and it only made him better. It made him manageable, or it would have, if Nathaniel could find someone willing to manage him.

Tim glanced at Albert. “Can you watch the counter alone for a while?” He was already moving from behind the display before Albert gave his hurried nod. “I’ll explain everything later,” Tim promised him without turning.

Nathaniel watched Tim come up. Despite the people clearly longing to talk to him, or at least enjoying their unimpeded view of him, the stool at the counter next to him was empty.

“Food’s on its way.” Nathaniel spoke before Tim could.

“You’re pissed about something,” Tim answered, although Nathaniel was more upset than angry. A fluctuating mix of stressed scents indicated tension. Some, like worry, Tim was familiar with. Others were new and shockingly cold to his system, like touching rubbing alcohol. He scrubbed at his nose.

The day they’d met they’d been in this café, almost like this, except Nathaniel had been standing too, studying Tim with wide, glowing eyes and blasting heat like a furnace. Tim had thought he’d been angry then as well, but now he couldn’t imagine a reason why Nathaniel would have been shaking with pent-up frustration.

“Most people here do what I say,” Nathaniel remarked, out of nowhere as far as Tim could tell until he spoke again. “I got used to that, took it for granted. Then you came.” He directed his gaze at Tim’s feet and then slowly brought it up until he was once again looking into Tim’s eyes. “You are perfect.” Nathaniel was serious. But Tim didn’t get a chance to protest. “Not perfect. You’re too real for that. You’re perfect
for me
, exactly as you should be.” Nathaniel made a low sound. “When I imagined this when I was younger, I didn’t realize what that would mean.”

Tim didn’t understand a word, and he knew his bemusement was on his face as well as in the air. Nathaniel nodded in acknowledgment. He took a breath and squared his shoulders before he spoke again. “There is absolutely nothing I can do to stop you from leaving if you decide to go,” he offered quietly. His eyes were much the same now as they had been when they’d met.

Tim met his stare and flinched as he had then. “I don’t want to go.”

Nathaniel didn’t look away. “But you don’t trust us enough to stay.”

“I love you, you goddamn asshole!” Tim surprised himself by shouting. Shouting was what he did when his thoughts were moving too fast and his heart felt crushed. “Am I supposed to stay even if I think it will make things worse?”

A few people around them scattered. One knocked over a chair. Tim put his hands to his face, then shook his head and put his hands on Nathaniel instead. The touch immediately became soft as his fingertips trailed over Nathaniel’s throat. The rapidly darkening marks looked pretty on him. “These aren’t really going to protect you, you know,” Tim reminded him, lowering his voice. “If anything, those will make you a target.”

Nathaniel took hold of Tim’s wrist. For once his grip wasn’t gentle. “You need to stop worrying about bogeymen and remember that you are one.”

“We aren’t monsters!” Tim whispered furiously.

Nathaniel showed his teeth. “But we are fearsome beasts, even those of us who aren’t Dirus.”

There was more scattering. Not even Robin’s Egg was coming any closer to the two of them.

Tim narrowed his eyes. “What do you expect me to do? Tell him off?”

“I did.” Nathaniel
was
an asshole. Tim didn’t care how hurt he smelled, how the distress seemed to transfer from him to Tim through touch alone.

“And lived to tell the tale!” Tim snarled quietly. “But I’m not you.”

Nathaniel yanked him forward. “No, you’re different. You’re so different it’s incredible.” His hand was light against Tim’s cheek. Tim tried to look away and couldn’t. He thought of what he’d said to Zoe and almost agreed with Nathaniel. Tim was different all right. But he didn’t think Nathaniel would like it if Tim called himself a freak. Nathaniel was gently insistent. “Do you know how I could stand up to him? I knew I wasn’t alone. You aren’t either.”

“Town runs to defend your puny boyfriend?” Tim guessed the headline and shivered. “I’m not that much of a bastard to make them do that. If it looks like it would help you if I left, I’ll leave.” Nathaniel had to feel Tim’s heart racing, but Tim wasn’t lying. “I don’t want to.” Tim dropped his voice even more. “You know that.”