Weremones (31 page)

“Ummm. Look, I know you want me to be your girlfriend.”

“Mate.” The sound of his voice vibrated through her. “Wolven mate for life. I want you for my mate.”

“Like regular wolves.”

He made a sound that thrummed through his chest, lulling her.

Do not become derailed by the sexy guy proposing. Focus. Did she really want to go through the whole marriage thing again? Diana pushed away from the comforting circle of his arms.

“I’m just not ready for m … ma … commitment.” She was so pathetic she couldn’t even say the word. “I was burned so badly last time. I’m just not ready. Maybe never.”

Yeah. An excuse. At least Richard was good for something.

The intense stare never wavered, making her search for something else to say.

Excuses, excuses, excuses
, her conscience taunted.
Chicken.

“I mean, I only started dating again. And look how that turned out.”

“I told you ….” Adam was eerily patient. He reached to pull her into his embrace.

She stopped him, pushing against his chest. She couldn’t help but feel how nice it was under her hands.

Slut!
Her conscience screamed.
Every man in the house was not fair game.

Yes they are!
Her hormones rallied.

“No. Keep your hands to yourself. You didn’t want me to date anyone.”

“No, not anyone. Just me.”

She huffed a breath and told her hormones to shut up. She’d been stabbed. She didn’t need to roll around on the mattress.

“You are so aggravating. Why me? I don’t want to be involved. Why not find a nice wolven girl to bother?”

Adam tried to process what Diana was saying. He wanted her trust so that she’d agree to do the mate’s bond. She probably wouldn’t appreciate him doing Richard Ridley bodily harm, or rapping some sense into that kid of hers either.

It was getting idiotic to claim that neither she nor Mack were pack. Or Karen. The boys worshipped the ground the Ridley females walked on. And whether she admitted it or not, Diana doted on the boys. She loved them. Adam saw and felt that plainly though the pack bond.

Adam rubbed at his breastbone with the heel of one hand. He sucked in a breath of the thinning air in the room.

Trust. It all came down to trust. There was so little in his pack, he was falling victim to the effects. He hardened his resolve. Adam J. Weis was no victim.

“Adam?” Diana’s soft question brought him back to the present.

Adam looked down and studied her pretty face for a moment. She had so much love to give. Selfish him, he wanted it all. He gave her a half smile before wiping his damp hands on his jeans.

“I haven’t given you a chance. I’ve bullied and pushed at you to get what I want. Just as you haven’t given me one.”

He waved at her to let him finish, his nervous steps taking him back and forth across the room. He was going out on a limb, like he’d never done before.

“Hear me out. All right?” He took a breath.

“I came here last year, looking for my fiancée, Amanda. Garrick and his pack killed her.” He held up a hand before she could interrupt. “Before you get upset, let me tell you that most wolven matings are arranged. It was all worked out long before Amanda and I met.”

He looked at her for reassurance that she hadn’t completely closed from him.

Diana nodded again.

“Anyway, Garrick was a sick bastard. He did … bad things to the pack, to the boys.”

“I know. Don’t explain,
please
.” Her voice held a combination of anger and sorrow.

“Someone here tipped off my pack in Tarrant. So I came to find her.”

He stopped to look out the window, hands shoved in his back pockets.

“I did, eventually. Her skin was nailed to a wall, in his basement, the scent of violence and sex still on her fur.”

Diana shuddered. So much of their short relationship involved violence.

There was a mix of anger, grief, and guilt that churned in him.

“They raped and killed your fiancée. What did you do?”

“I didn’t love her. It was all arranged.” He recovered old ground. Guilt swamped him, then anger. “I killed them. I was supposed to report back. But I killed them because they touched what was mine. And because I found out what was happening to the boys.”

To Brandon, but he didn’t want to go into that story. He’d pretended to be a stray so that Garrick would allow him close enough to snoop. He’d snooped all right and found both Amanda’s pelt and the violated child in the same basement.

After that Garrick and the pack wardens were as good as dead. They just didn’t know it. The sick bastards were supposed to be protecting the pack from harm, not causing it.

“Reporting back to Paul, my Pater Canis, was a technicality. I knew Paul would give the okay to clear them out. “

He looked back at the bed to gauge her reaction.

“Only he didn’t. He called it a duel for ascendancy and wouldn’t let me come back. Someone else was moved to the beta spot.”

His half-brother Dom, the lawyer, got the beta spot. Adam’s laugh was dry, humorless. Dom, who Adam had challenged and beat for the position, was back at Paul’s side.

“A moving truck arrived a week later with my stuff.”

“I knew from the first that you were an alpha.”

“No.” Adam shook his head. “I was Paul’s beta warden. I protected the pack.”

Diana smiled at the lost tone. He didn’t realize how hurt he was that his old pack leader wouldn’t let him go home.

“I think you are confusing rank with personal power. I’d bet that you were already an alpha at heart when you showed up here. You were more than ready to be on your own and your old leader knew it.”

Adam considered her insight. A heaviness in his chest lightened. Maybe Paul had tossed him from the nest, so to speak, in the only way he knew how. Paul Sheppard was a sink or swim kind of guy.

“I thought that after I cleared out Garrick and his ilk, I’d take the boys back with me.”

“Instead, he worked out a way so that you were obligated to stay here. I think your title fits you, Father Wolf. I’d bet he thought so, too.”

“He’s my father.”

Her surprise prompted him to explain.

“He didn’t raise me. My mother married a man, a psychic, named William Weis. Will’s my dad. Paul Sheppard is …” Adam made a loopy gesture with one hand.

He crossed back to the bed and sat on the edge. If he didn’t finish this he’d go insane.

“As proposals go, I’m sure this one sucks.” He took her hand.

“Listen before you say no again. You give us something that is missing. Hope, I think. The boys need someone who cares enough to make birthday cakes and cookies. To fuss at them when their clothes are wrinkled.”

He was right, the proposal sucked.

“You want me to be den mother to your pack? To ride herd on a bunch of teenage werewolves? That’s why you’re proposing?”

She pulled her hand free. Not that she’d have said yes anyway. But, well…it sucked big time. A girl wanted to know that her man wanted, needed her for himself.

“Hello? I don’t get furry. And I’m not likely to either any time soon. You might try
negotiating
for another of your kind.”

“You’re angry,” he said.

Damn skippy she was angry. Diana narrowed her eyes. She kept her jaw locked before she told him what to do with his proposal. She did not want to marry him. Den mother indeed.

Adam sighed. He gave up trying to retake her hand and straddled her lap, one arm on each side of her legs, to capture her gaze.

“What you don’t understand is that you
are
a part of the pack, Diana. You, and Karen, and Mack. Close your eyes.”

He reached up and brushed his hand over her eyes, forcing her to close them. He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Reach out. You have the pack alpha’s awareness.”

“I’m an empath. I’m aware of a lot of things.”

“No. It’s more than that. Close your eyes.”

Adam placed his hand over her eyes. The warmth seeped into her skin.

“Close them. You are a part of the magic that weaves the pack together. Feel where everyone is, how they are. You can dispense comfort or pain as you choose.”

Diana reached out with her senses to the fabric that made up the wolf pack. She felt the individual threads that made up each one. Knew the identity of each. They were hers. If she chose, she could follow each thread to its owner to find out what he was feeling.

She could communicate if she wished, not with words, but she could express a need or simple command. One strand, heavier than all the rest, glittered with power. She followed the thread back to the source. She opened her eyes, meeting his.

“Yes. I feel it.”

Adam nodded.

“Even without choosing me as your mate, you are the Matra Canis.” She didn’t know what to make of his smile. “You are the Pack Mother of
their
choice.”

Adam shook his head.

“It’s not supposed to be that way. I don’t know how the boys managed it. From that first night in the woods, when they brought you to me, they had made their choice. But I think that they needed to be able to choose. They need you to choose them back.”

I need you to choose me
. He didn’t say the words. He was tired of begging for scraps of affection from his pack. She’d either choose them,
him
, or not.

“One more thing.”

Okay, he wasn’t quite through. He couldn’t have her cutting all ties and walking away.

“Brandon doesn’t defend himself, much less anyone else. Garrick damaged him so badly. But for you, he
changed
. He protected you from that man. He was running and afraid. He came back to make sure you would make it.”

He sat back and watched her shoulders sag. Guilt was a wonderful motivator.

“I don’t know. I need to think.”

She did look tired. Wiped out. He’d laid a lot of responsibility at her feet and demanded she take it. He felt a tiny bit bad for her, but not so much that he wouldn’t do everything in his power to keep her near. Not for the boys sake, for his own.

He got up and pulled the covers up.

“Get some sleep.” He bent and rubbed his cheek along the sweet softness of hers while she was too tired to resist. “I’ll hold them off as long as possible, but before long everyone will filter up here to keep you company.”

Adam paused in the doorway to watch her drift off to sleep. Her short straight hair stood up in spikes against her pillow. He ached to uncover all the full womanly curves that taunted him under that nightgown.

“Have just a little more courage, for you. And faith, in me.”

He quietly closed the door. There was more exhausting pack business waiting downstairs.

Adam stood for a moment in the opening to the living room. Inside, everyone sat in a loose huddle. It amazed at him how comfortable the humans were.

His mother had never been so comfortable around wolven gatherings. That was why she moved halfway across the country, away from Paul Sheppard, to non-pack area, and married a man as human as she.

How human were psychics?

Mack laughed and play wrestled with Mark, knuckling the boy’s blond chili bowl haircut, while Karen sat secure in her boyfriend’s lap. Bradley’s arms circled around the teenage girl.

She giggled and cringed when he buried his face in her neck. The rest of his pack, Tank and Chase included, chatted among themselves.

“There is a lot to do before tonight’s hunt.”

He walked to the center of the group and crouched in front of Karen. She met his stare with her own, unafraid, a touch uncertain for being singled out.

She was always in and around the boys, especially Bradley, so Adam had never singled her scent out before.

He’d been slow to realize that the boys had made Karen a part before his arrival.

If she carried pack scent for another reason then the close association with the boys would hide that. Still, there were things he had to be sure of.

“You’re a very pretty girl, Karen. It’s no surprise that Bradley has taken to you.”

Adam gestured at the teenagers, together, as a couple.

“But, I have to wonder. What happens when it’s time for college? I know I’m going to insist on it for Bradley. You know how young men are on the college scene.”

Karen stared at him, her brow furrowed and her hands gripped at her boyfriend’s until her knuckles whitened.

“No. I don’t think I do,” she lied.

“Adam.”

He silenced Bradley’s protest with a cut of his eyes. The weight of censure from the pack bored into his back.

“College is a happening place. Lots of other pretty girls. A guy’s hormones are going to be playing hell. He’s gonna slip up.” Karen’s face paled, as white as her knuckles. Adam went in for the kill.

“It makes me wonder. What’s going to happen when he does slip up? He may get it on with another female.”

Adam shrugged off Bradley’s warning growl. The pup’s uncomfortable noises didn’t bother him.

“You know, at some point he’s going to screw up big time. What are you going to do?”

Karen’s white face pinked with anger. She struggled out of Bradley’s grip and stood up with her hands on her hips looking down on Adam.

“You think I’m going to betray them?
Me?
”

She sputtered for a moment, obviously trying to find vile enough words without resorting to foul language. She looked so much like her mother that Adam had to suppress his smile under a scowl.

“Betray you? Let’s get a few facts straight. I’ve been around far a lot longer than a year.” She raised a little hand and started to tick off her fingers.

“I’ve helped hide the little boys from Garrick and his so-called warden scum. I’ve bandaged burns, learned enough first aid by the time I was eight to splint arms and legs. I’ve lied. And once drove the getaway car!”

By the time she finished her arms were waving wild enough for a plane to land by. Bradley grasped the hem of her tee shirt and tugged gently.

“Karen.”

Off to the side, Brandon made a series of cutting motions across his neck for her to stop. Adam figured the rest of the boys were making similar cease and desist motions the girl did not heed.