Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) (7 page)

To shift or not to shift?
That was the question.

I was still just as intent on protecting Celia as I had been before Lambert made his declaration. Still, I wouldn’t be able to help my mother from behind bars.

Meanwhile, the notion of being confined to a locked cell with one-body video cameras and nosy guards preventing me from stretching out into lupine form sent shivers running up and down my spine.

Before I could make a rational decision—or, let’s face it, could do something stupid—aid came from an unexpected source. “If you mean the young lady who went to investigate the bomb threat,” my mother said, her voice so loud and clear that I almost thought she was speaking for my benefit as much as to the cops, “then I can promise you she’s not the guilty party.”

“You know her?” the older policeman asked, his voice sharpening with interest.

“No,” Celia started, only to be interrupted by her admirer.

“I know TV shows make it seem like most violent perps are men,” Officer Lambert lectured. “But this sort of action—leaving a dead animal on your doorstep, calling in a bomb threat when there’s no bomb—suggests the criminal holds a grudge but isn’t brave enough to face you directly. It’s weak and cowardly behavior and the woman we have in custody fits that profile to a T.”

“Are you calling women cowards, Officer Lambert?” Celia asked, her voice abruptly as frigid as mine would have been under similar circumstances. I started to stifle my giggle, then realized none of the one-bodies could hear me with their less than sensitive ears. So I gave in and laughed out loud. Despite her lady-like demeanor, my mother could be a badass when she wanted to be.

“No, I...”

“Better stop while you’re ahead, Paul,” Lambert’s partner interrupted, and I could hear amusement in the older cop’s voice that matched my own. Then the unnamed officer resurrected the occasion’s previous solemnity as he returned his attention to the witness, my mother. “You don’t know the woman in question, yet you’re positive she’s not responsible for the threats. Care to elaborate?”

The summer air hung heavy, even the children in the backyard having gone oddly quiet. Off in the distance, a tractor trailer rumbled down the not-too-distant interstate while an airplane too high to be heard left a stark white trail across the otherwise clear sky.

The whole world felt different now that I was alone in human territory. Harder-edged, louder, more constrained. I couldn’t say I liked the sensation.

Still, my mother’s next words made tears well up in my eyes...and they weren’t tears of anger or frustration either. “I know she’s not responsible for the awfulness,” Celia answered, “because that girl is my daughter. And Fen would never do anything to cause me harm.”

***

Paul was pissed, his partner was wary, but Celia had apparently grown a spine during the last dozen years. Somehow she’d managed to recognize me on the other side of the crowded room during our shared moment of terror an hour earlier. And now she wouldn’t take no for an answer after demanding that the cops release me into her loving arms.

It wouldn’t have flown in a big city. But here in Arborville, where Officer Lambert wanted to get into my mother’s pants and Officer No-Name was almost certainly a family man old enough to have adult kids of his own, a real-estate agent really was able to spring a potential hoodlum from prison without bothering to call in a lawyer.

She was able to have me released from custody, but not to take me off law enforcement’s radar entirely.

“I’ll be watching you,” Paul murmured into my ear as he unlocked my cuffs a little more forcefully than was really necessary. But I was used to brawls in lupine form, so the twinge of pain running up my left arm barely registered. Instead, my eyes locked with Celia’s and held.

Twelve years.
It had been one hundred and forty four months since I’d last looked upon my mother’s face. Four thousand days filled with werewolves and danger and camaraderie and pack dynamics. It was hard to tell where this estranged one-body would fit into that fully formed world.

Or whether I wanted her to.

“Fen?” she said, the word a question far too profound to answer here and now.

The cops had stepped aside to give our reunion a little space, but I could smell their attentiveness. Neither man would leave the area until I gave them proof that I wasn’t a threat...a fact that actually made me glad. After all, I’d opted to spend some extra time here in Arborville for the exact same reason, to protect my mother from harm. It was good to have backup, even if the cops weren’t shifters and
did
think we were working at cross purposes.

My wolf was uninterested in the males, though.
Mommy
, she whispered inside our shared mind and I winced at the childish term of endearment. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the same yearning to be close to the mother who had tossed me aside like moldy takeout a decade earlier.

Celia seemed cordial and interested in me now, but I didn’t trust the evidence of my own eyes. So instead of running into her arms as my wolf wished, I walked forward warily as if the one-body was a stray dog who was as likely to snap a sharp-toothed warning as to return my affection.

Slowly, gently, I eased my way into my mother’s personal space. I ached to be enfolded in the kind of parental hug I could only barely remember. I wanted her to kiss me on the brow and promise we’d never be separated again. I wanted us to be a family.

No, that was the wolf and her pack mentality at play. Shaking my head to clear it, I still let myself reach out one pinky finger to trail ever so lightly across my mother’s palm. “Celia,” I answered.

“Will you be in town long?” Her words were as stilted as if we were strangers meeting for the first time.

Which, face it, we basically were.

But my mother didn’t jerk away from my tentative touch. And that lack of repulsion was enough to settle my wolf and let my human half completely take the reins.

I cleared my throat, wanting to tell her:
I’ll be here until I know you’re safe.
That was too much too soon, though. So instead I stuck to one-body reasoning. “I’m substitute teaching about half an hour down the road. It’s summer school, so a few weeks max. But, yeah, I’ll be around that long.”

“You’ll stay with me,” Celia offered. No, demanded in her polite one-body fashion where steel was nearly invisible beneath soft skin and gentle smiles.

I started to shake my head, but then the region’s month-long dry spell abruptly broke. Squeals of excited children, a crash of thunder, huge droplets of water erratically plummeting from the darkening sky. We weren’t saturated yet, but my knowledge of southern weather promised we’d be soaked to the skin in approximately sixty seconds or less.

“I want to check over your car before you drive it again,” Officer Lambert spoke up, stepping into the middle of our abruptly truncated reunion. “Just to be on the safe side.”

The one-body glared at me through menacing, squinty eyes, but I could smell his acceptance of my innocuousness beneath the posturing. He was just being a cop now—like he said, better safe than sorry.

“I’ll drive my mother home,” I offered, shepherding Celia toward my rental just as the sky opened up to disgorge its laden bounty. The locks beeped open from a distance and the two of us made a mad dash for the car, falling into our seats at the same moment as if we’d been racing for a prize. Our doors slammed in unison, shutting out the larger world and encircling us in our own little island of dryness and safety from the storm.

I settled into my seat, then froze as I caught a glimpse of Celia out of the corner of my eye. For the first time in living memory, the one-body was laughing. Her perfectly coiffed hair had fallen down into curling tendrils that caught on her cheekbones while her breast heaved with the same exhilaration mine showed after racing against the weather. I could see why Officer Lambert was moonstruck—my mother was beautiful, vibrant, full of life.

She was nothing like the Celia I remembered.

Maybe we could stay longer
, my wolf whispered.
Build a family.
The beast yearned to steal back my body, to don fur and curl up in our mother’s lap. What kind of bliss would that be—to be taken care of rather than always being the one in charge of protecting someone else?

You shift and she’ll run
, I warned my wolf, slipping the key into the ignition and preparing to drive. I couldn’t get too attached. Not to a one-body who had ditched me once and who would ditch me again at a moments’ notice once she recalled my tendency toward fur and fang.

But it was so tempting to trust my wolf and let down my guard. Until, that is, my mother reached down beneath her butt in an effort to dislodge the items I’d strewn across the passenger seat earlier that day.

Too late, I remembered tossing everything I wanted to have readily available onto the open space beside me. The bloodling’s file, a water bottle...the sharp sword that my previous alpha had given me when the time came to fight my way through outpack territory at the head of a young pack.

The weapon wasn’t appropriate everyday ornamentation in one-body society. But I hadn’t been able to resist leaving it out where I could run a finger across the sheathed blade at intervals. Its presence reminded me that there were still shifters in this world who trusted my judgment even if Hunter had ditched me for reasons of his own.

Okay, yes, I’ll admit that I used the sword as a security blanket. So sue me.

“I think I’m sitting on something,” my mother said now, wriggling from side to side as she attempted to dislodge the item in question without disembarking back out into the rain.

“Wait...” I started.

But before I could do more than reach out one hand in the universal gesture used by humans who knew they had no ability to slow down stampeding elephants, Celia had already pulled the sword out from beneath her bum. My vision narrowed and a buzzing took up residence in my ears as I realized how my beloved weapon would appear through human eyes.

This isn’t going to end well.

I’d polished the metal until it gleamed, so the bit of blade poking out between leather and hilt surely didn’t give away any secrets. And the battered scabbard seemed innocuous enough...until the viewer realized that the extensive wear and tear came from regular use as a weapon rather than as a mantle-piece adornment.

It was the speck of dried blood embedded in the corded grip, though, that proved I’d killed with this weapon. A one-body would never be able to understand my reasons why.

Rain poured over the car in rivulets and the insides of the windows fogged up at approximately the same pace as worry scrambled the contents of my brain. No one could see into the vehicle, so if Celia wanted help she was going to have to open the door and make a dash for it.

Predictably, my companion’s eyes widened with alarm as she took in the weapon she held in her manicured hands. I tensed, waiting for the one-body to leap back out of the vehicle and run away through the storm toward the dubious protection of her cop bodyguards.

It won’t be the first time she retreated from my predatory side
, I reminded myself. I was older now. The rejection wouldn’t hurt as much.

But, instead of fleeing, the one-body just met my gaze with her own clear blue eyes. “Are you in trouble, Fen?” she asked.

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. There was a lump in my throat approximately the size of a grapefruit and my mouth felt so dry I was tempted to open the car door and tilt my head skyward to ease my parched esophagus beneath the deluge of falling water.

I wasn’t sure whether I was elated or terrified that Celia hadn’t run away from my show of inhumanity. Because if she was going to be the brave one, what role did that leave for me to fill?

But at last I swallowed and answered. “No more than you are,” I forced out of my scratchy human throat.

Okay, so, yes. My mate had left me. I was currently trying to track down an erratic bloodling all on my lonesome. And Robert appeared to be stalking me and possibly threatening my mother as well.

For a shifter, though, those problems were all par for the course. Especially when an estranged parent chose to accept me into her life despite my rough edges and rocky past.

“Well, I guess we’d better head home then,” Celia decided, reaching over her shoulder to tuck the sword into the wheel well of the back seat before fastening her safety belt. “When you get to the bottom of the driveway, take a left....”

We didn’t speak much during the ride back to Celia’s house. There was simply too much to say, too many questions to ask and to answer. I had no clue where to start, and apparently my mother didn’t either.

So instead, I focused on a road that was barely visible between fast-moving wiper blades. And when we pulled up in front of what appeared to be a nice but not-too-flashy home on the outskirts of town, my mother accepted my request that she stay in the car with doors locked while I checked out the house and yard.

After all, Celia had been threatened twice that day and the cops had questioned us long enough that it was now nearly dark. I couldn’t stomach the thought of my one-body mother walking into danger with neither blade nor fangs to protect her.

“Do you want to take your sword?” she asked as I opened my door a crack. The rain had finally slacked off, but rivulets were still running from overwhelmed gutters to paved drive. I was going to get wet.

That wasn’t why I hesitated though. I’d planned to call upon my wolf so we could check the place over thoroughly, but now I remembered how even the hint of predator in her daughter’s eyes had sent Celia scurrying for cover twelve years earlier. This was just the kind of dicey decision I didn’t want to have to make. Bow to Celia’s one-body sensibilities or protect her weak human skin?

I waited too long and understanding sparked in my mother’s eyes. “Oh.” It was more emotion-turned-sound than word and I winced.

“I’ll take the sword,” I said hastily, reaching toward the sheathed katana that had been my chosen protection for the first month I’d spent outside established pack boundaries. I’d considered my wolf too weak to call upon then and had figured the sword was a suitable substitute. How ironic was it that I’d finally come to terms with my animal half just in time to scare away my long-lost mother with my newfound lack of humanity?

“No, shift. It’s safer.”

I glanced across the center console to take in the one-body’s rigid spine and her pinched lips. Celia was just as uncomfortable with the idea that I was a werewolf as she had been years earlier, but she wasn’t rejecting me this time around. Instead, my mother was doing her best to embrace the woman I’d become.

Still, I had to give the human an out now that she’d had time to remember why she left me in the first place. “I don’t have to stay here overnight. I can check the place over and make sure it’s safe then find a hotel. We’ll have lunch one day over the weekend, see if we even want to get to know one another better....”

“Fen Hallowell, you
will
sleep under my roof at least one time before making any decisions we’ll both regret.” Celia’s eyes flashed and, despite myself, I smiled. She sounded like an actual—if irate—mother.

Her voice in that moment of anger also reminded me a bit of my own.

“It’s actually Fen Young now,” I muttered, ashamed to tell her that I’d changed my last name in a spate of anger when I was twelve years old. Something about pre-teen hormones and budding breasts meant I was more pissed about being abandoned than I had been three years earlier when Harbor and Celia had actually done the deed. So I’d opted to take my alpha’s surname as a replacement for the one my estranged parents had left behind.

Of course, I can admit now that my decision had also been influenced by the overwhelming, girlhood crush I’d nurtured on said alpha at that moment in time. Taking Wolfie’s last name felt like the first step toward becoming his mate.

My lips quirked upward into a self-deprecating smile as I remembered the dumb teenager I’d been in the not-so-distant past and the much more fitting life partner I’d discovered after growing into my own skin.
So maybe all of those stumbles were for the best after all.

“It seems we have a lot to talk about,” Celia replied calmly, as if I hadn’t just slapped her in the face with my juvenile rejection to her abandonment. The smile that went with her words was tentative but real. And when her hand reached out to cover mine, contact with her cool flesh seemed to warm my damp body from the inside out. “Be careful out there.”

“Lock the doors behind me,” I answered. Then I dashed for the porch so I could shed clothes somewhere other than beneath my mother’s astute eyes before calling upon my wolf for the second time that day.

***

Recent rain had washed away the intruder’s scent trail, but the dead critter wasn’t all that difficult to hunt down. The stench of putrefying meat pulled me to a bank on the far side of the property where a lazy gardener had tossed what turned out to be a raccoon carcass rather than burying it the way he ought.

I’ll come back with a shovel later
, I promised myself. My mother wouldn’t be able to smell the rot from inside her home, but I could. And it appeared I planned to stay for a while to ensure small woodland critters were the only beings who ended up dead on my mother’s doorstep in the near future.

An extended lap around the perimeter turned up no recent signs of life (or death), though. So I returned to the rental car relieved and ready to rest. My head was throbbing, my feet were sore, and the last sixteen hours felt less like a day and more like an eternity. I could hardly wait to collect Celia and fall into a dry bed for ten hours straight.

But my mother was absent. My car was empty. The windows were no longer steamed up and there was no sign of life inside.

“Shit!” I emerged from my shift barefoot and naked, spikes of agony pushing through my skull. I’d hastened the transformation due to fear over Celia’s absence, and now I realized I should have stayed wolf a little longer to sniff out the scene of the crime. Because Occam’s razor said that if my mother was threatened morning and afternoon then disappeared in the evening, the cause had to be foul play.

Footprints
, my wolf murmured. She didn’t seem nearly as terrified as I’d expected, especially in light of her strange urges to call Celia “Mommy” and to crawl into the one-body’s lap. Which suggested the wolf had noticed something I’d missed.

Not hard to accomplish given my current state of mind.

Taking a deep breath, I forcibly calmed my erratic thoughts. Then, gazing down past my own mud-splattered calves, I carefully parsed the indentations in the soft earth at the edge of the driveway. There were a series of lupine footprints—mine. A couple of human footprints—small, high-heeled, almost certainly Celia’s. And no one else’s.

Raising my head, I saw now that the house looked far more welcoming than it had when we first arrived. The porch light glowed warmly from its ornate sconce and a fluffy pink towel was draped across the chair where I’d disrobed half an hour earlier.

I distinctly remembered dropping my clothing into a heap on the floorboards in my haste to scope out potential dangers, only taking the time to kick discarded jeans atop throwing knives that I didn’t particularly want to catch Celia’s eye. But now each piece of worn fabric was carefully folded and set up off the ground with the weapons lying atop the heap.

Kidnappers, as far as I could tell, didn’t fold undies or leave behind tools of destruction. Which meant Celia was safe...and my mother had been going through my things.

Picking my way across sharp gravel that jabbed at my rain-softened soles, I silently slipped up onto the porch. I was truly in human territory now, and I felt more awkward than I had when scoping out the shotgun-wielding drug dealer earlier that day. Should I wipe down with the brand new towel that would never be the same after it touched my muddy skin? Or should I enter what was bound to be a perfectly scrubbed house with filthy shifter feet?

The real question was—which option would thrust my lupine nature into my mother’s face the least?

Rain barrel
, my wolf offered. She was a helpful one tonight, and I gave the animal a mental pat on the head in thanks. Yep, sure enough, my mother had installed a big wooden tub beneath one gutter, the spout on the bottom of said barrel offering clean water to erase evidence of my four-legged jaunt around the property boundaries. There was even a bar of soap in a covered ceramic dish off to one side, as if Celia preferred washing up outside after sinking her fingers into the dirt of the flower garden that lined the entire front side of the house.

Sunflowers, zinnias, nasturtiums. The petals were rain-soaked but cheerful, and something about their bright colors eased my aching head.

Or maybe the relief came from simply knowing—as I carefully pulled out the lightly scented bar of soap that still showed indentations in the shape of my mother’s fingers—that I’d finally made the right choice. The
human
choice.

Still, I cleansed my skin far more slowly than was really necessary as the last rays of light faded from the cloudy sky.
I don’t really have to go inside
, I mused as I washed. I could protect my mother just as well, maybe better, by lurking in lupine form around her property’s boundaries. There was no need to dredge up the past when I could maintain my secrets and still keep Celia safe from a distance.

Coward
, my wolf challenged. She was right and I was willing to own the personality flaw...as long as the self-flagellation prevented me from looking into Celia’s face while her eyes slid down my body in search of those wicked-bladed throwing knives. After her seeming acceptance of my shifter nature earlier, I knew it would hurt twice as badly if my mother asked me to leave now.

And, as I dilly dallied and delayed, the hairs on the back of my neck abruptly rose once again. Something was out there in the descending darkness. Something watched me as I crouched naked beside my mother’s flower garden.

A human would have run for her clothes, or at least for the supposed safety of the house. But, instead, I lifted my nose to the air and sniffed.

Nothing.
Still, I could sense the danger watching, waiting.

Despite my exhaustion, I was invigorated, ready to hunt down this enemy that had dared to set my mother within its sights. I growled out lupine excitement between human lips.

And then Celia was leaning against the porch railing, craning her neck to look out through the gloom with simple human eyes. “Fen?” she called hesitantly.

Darn it. There went that last pretense of humanity.
Straightening, I turned away from Celia in what I hoped looked like a display of human modesty. My true purpose, of course, was to scan the yard for signs of predators...and to evade my mother’s eyes.

Flee now
, I told my legs. But they rebelled. Whether from inner lupine pressure to stay with Celia, from unwillingness to leave behind Hunter’s gifted knives, or from pure exhaustion, it made no difference. I wasn’t going anywhere tonight.

Instead, I swiveled back around to face the music. My one-body mother had padded halfway down the steps as I scanned the yard, and she now stood holding a fluffy towel outstretched, eyes slightly averted in an effort to appease my nonexistent modesty. “Please don’t go,” she said quietly.

“How did you know...?” I began before snapping my mouth shut.
Too much too soon.
Celia wasn’t reading my mind and realizing I’d planned to flee. She was just....

My thoughts trailed off into the muddy lassitude of fatigue. I was unable to find another realistic explanation for my mother’s request, and my limited brainpower figured analyzing her words was far less important than getting us both out of danger as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Except, my first guess appeared to be correct after all. Because Celia stepped onto the wet grass with socked feet that I was sure were instantly saturated by leftover rainwater. Ignoring the damp, the one-body approached me just as slowly as I’d eased toward her an hour earlier.

Eyes still averted, she reached up to wrap the towel snugly around my torso. Our height difference made the motherly gesture more awkward than it really needed to be, but the brush of her fingers against my skin still kindled a spark of something unnameable within my belly.

“I know because you’re half me,” Celia answered quietly, stepping away and keeping her gaze on the ground. The gesture would have looked like submission...if she were a werewolf. “And my first impulse is
always
to run away.”