Fox Dish (Madison Wolves #6) (28 page)

"Yes. If they do that again, I am going to freak out."

"Well, you're right. Two months is light. Daniel realized as soon as he said it I wasn't happy, and that's when he added the rest."

"How long did you want?"

"Six months. And fifty hours of pack service is hopelessly inadequate. I would have given you four times that. You easily do twenty-five hours of pack service a month already, so all we gained from this is the inconvenience of having to record it."

"If you don't agree, why don't you add to it?"

"If I do, then I am telling everyone Daniel let you off lightly, and they'll wonder whether you should have been judged guilty on more of the charges. I would undermine the entire process, which would add to the political difficulties."

"Do you hope I slip to give you an excuse?"

"Hope? No. But I will no
t be lenient, either. If you give me the slightest excuse, I am adding to your sentence."

She was still washing my hair. It felt nice. "Why are we having this conversation in the shower?"

"For one thing, no one else can hear us," she explained. "For another, I need to touch you, and you need to be touched. But the conversation can't wait. We can't afford for you to get your back up. I know you're upset, and I don't blame you."

"Can you explain the subterfuge?"

"No, but can't you figure it out for yourself?"

"I know there are politics involved. I don't know why Christopher West is still alive."

She stopped washing my hair.

"Did you leave him for me to deal with, Lara?"

She began washing again.

"You can't kill him the fox way, Michaela," she said quietly.

"You won't stop me if I do it the wolf way?"

"No, I won't."

I brushed the soap from my eyes then opened them and looked at her. "Was David the first wolf you killed?"

"No."

"Why are you letting me do this instead of doing it yourself?"

"Hmm." She paused, but her hands
continued to shampoo my hair. It felt nice, and I closed my eyes again. "If you want me to do it, I will," she said. "If you think it is better for me to do it than you, I will."

"But as protective of me that you are, you're letting me do it?" I opened my eyes. "Aren't you feeling well?"

"Physically?" she asked. "Never better." She smiled. "Close your eyes."

I closed them and moaned as her hands massaged my scalp.

"You trust me to do it. You trust me that much. He's on the council. He must be fierce."

"Don't you think you can handle him?"

"I kicked the ass of Greg's best wolf," I said. "Damned right I can handle him!"

"Do you need help with the politics involved?"

"No." I paused "And Albert Stein?"

"No
, not him."

"Anyone else?"

"No. Move on."

"The charges." I thought about it. "You needed to throw the book at me, and you trusted me to fox my way out of the worst of it. And then you had to add more to give Daniel plenty to convict me of while letting me talk my way out of the worst."

She didn't answer.

"Did he find me innocent of charges he shouldn't have?"

"At least the lesser charges of dereliction of duty," Lara said. "I would have convicted you of those. I can't be detached enough to decide how many charges or whether any of them would have been aggravated dereliction."

"Are you upset he declared me innocent of those?"

"No. I think if he couldn't convict you of the worst charge, he felt he had to let you out of all of them."

"The subterfuge." I moved closer to her. "That hurt."

"I know."

"That almost ruined it."

"You were supposed to trust us."

"I would have if I hadn't been blind-sided like that. I don't understand."

"Figure it out."

"Politics."

"Do you need more explanation than that?"

I thought about it. "I don't know."

"Do you believe any of us wanted to do it that way?"

"I thought you all wanted me dead."

"You should have trusted us."

"You heard what I told Serena. I knew I was going to go too far. I believed I had."

"I know. And now?"

I pressed against her and wrapped my arms around her.

"I am going to say one more thing, Michaela," Lara told me. "You are going to accept your punishment stoically and with a great deal of humility. If the enforcers issue an order, you will do it. If they demand your throat, you will give it meekly, and you will remain meek. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Alpha."

"Do you understand why?"

"Politics."

"I need you back on the council. I need the majority of the council to agree you have served your sentence and learned your lesson. I need to go in there and confidently say, 'She'll never do it again' and have most of them believe me."

"Yes, Alpha," I said. I buried my face in her neck. "Will I be alpha again?"

"Yes. We're clear? Never again, and you will accept every bit of your punishment without complaint. If Gia or Rory take your throat and then order you to abase yourself, you will do it."

"Yes, Lara," I said humbly.

She'd been washing my hair for a long time.

"I really need you on the council, Michaela," she said quietly.

"I'll be a model prisoner, Lara, but you know that many wolves at my throat-"

"I know. They won't do that again, not all at once. But-"

"I know," I said.

"Even
Gia and Angel," Lara said.

"Angel won't push it. And
Gia was gentle."

"I'll be ordering Angel to push it, Michaela."

"Not all of them at once, Lara," I said. "Please. You can't make me terrified of them then tell me I must accept their protection. I will run, and it will be your fault."

"
You're right. It won't be like that again."

"I'll be meek." Lara kissed my forehead and continued to mass
age my scalp for a few minutes. "Lara, I will not accept any orders to remain a victim."

"I know," she said. "But you need to come to me, Michaela."

"Like I did last fall?"

She sighed. "We both have things to learn from this."

"Am I clear?" I asked.

"You will come to me. You must not publicly defy me."

"And when I do?"

"We'll figure it out together."

I leaned against her. "Okay. May I see our babies, Lara?"

"Let's get you rinsed off."

"I still stink."

"No, honey, you don't. You smell fine." But she pulled me into her arms, and I went willingly.

We held each other for a while. I tried not to cry. Lara rinsed us both and turned off the water. It felt nice to let her dry me. She had pajamas and a robe waiting for me in the bedroom, and I let her dress me. I sat on the bed and watched her dress. Lara held her hand out to me, and I rose from the bed and took it. She led me downstairs.

I heard Francesca in the kitchen. Serena and Elisabeth were in the living room, waiting for us. "Call Angel," Lara said before we were even at the bottom of the stairs. Elisabeth pulled out her phone and said only, "Bring them."

"Michaela," Lara said. "Come sit on the sofa." She pulled me after her, and we sat down, Lara on the end, me in the middle. I leaned against her but watched the door anxiously. Elisabeth stepped outside, and it was only a minute later before the door opened again.

Lara held me
to the sofa, and so I was still sitting when Scarlett stood in front of me, holding Rebecca so she could see me.

"There's Mommy Fox, Rebecca," Scarlett told her. "Do you want to go to Mommy Fox?"

Rebecca squealed and held out her hands for me. Scarlett twirled my baby around like a little baby airplane, landing her right into my arms.

I started crying immediately. "Oh baby," I said. "Oh honey." I pulled her to me, crying.

Rebecca gurgled happily, wrapping her fingers in my wet hair and tugging on it.

Angel was holding Celeste, and then I had one baby in one arm, one baby in the other.

"I missed you both so much," I told them. "Mommy Fox had to make you safe, but I'm home now." I cuddled, kissed and caressed them both for a long time, oblivious to everything else going on around me.

They started to fuss, but I wasn't ready to give them to Lara yet for feeding.

But then Angel was there. "Michaela, if you give one to Lara, I have a bottle for the other one."

"Bottle?" I asked. "No, Lara feeds them."

"We transitioned them to formula," Lara said gently. "That was the delay. That's why Greg gave you that job." We had planned to breast feed them until six months, and they weren't six months yet.

I looked over at Lara. "Oh honey," I said. "I'm so sorry."

"Shhh," she said. She was holding a bottle. "Give me one and you can feed the other one."

My arms were full, but I nodded, and she reached forward, taking Rebecca from me. I adjusted Celeste, and then Angel was holding a bottle out for me.

"I already checked the temperature," she said.

I offered Celeste the nipple, and she immediately latched onto it. Her eyes stayed on mine as she began to suck from the bottle.

I was filled with a sense of wonder and joy, staring into my little baby's eyes. Finally I tore my eyes away and looked over at Rebecca. Lara had positioned her so I could see her face. She was staring at Lara, slurping away at her bottle.

I looked up. "Serena!"

"Do not take that tone with me, Michaela," she replied immediately, stepping around the couch to look down at me.

"I made the world safer for my babies, Serena," I told her.

"Yes, Michaela," she said, kneeling down in front of me and caressing Celeste's head. "You did."

I looked down at Celeste and over at Rebecca, then looked at Serena again. I looked her straight in the eye. "If there remains a price I am to pay so that I may continue to keep my babies safe, I will pay it."

Serena smiled. "I know you will, Michaela. Are you going to make me proud?"

"Yes."

I sat in the living room, watching the clock, watching the minutes tick down. I had fifteen minutes to go when Angel opened the door.

"Angel," she said, announcing herself. Because people come and go in my house at all hours, I had long ago required everyone entering the house to announce herself. Doing so kept me from worrying who was in the house.

She stepped across the threshold,
then I heard Scarlett announce her name.

Angel stepped past Serena and Rory, my guards for the day, and stared at me.

"Michaela!" she said. "Shift to fox and give me your throat!"

"I am not allowed to shift to fox for another-" I glanced at the clock. "Fourteen minutes. If you wish to contest my understanding of my sentence, you may bring it to the attention to the alpha."

"Damn it," she said. "Come on, Michaela, no one here is going to tattle on you."

"No way," I said. "If Lara walks in here and sees me in fur even ten seconds early, she'll give me another month. No way. These two months have sucked!"

Serena chuckled but didn't interfere.

"Fine," Angel said. She stuck out a booted foot. "Kiss my foot."

I laughed and bent down and kissed the top of her boot. At least it was clean.

"Oh, knock it off," she said. "I'm here to run with you."

I stood up and looked into her face. "You've been sweet. Unlike some people-" I glared at Rory.

"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime," Rory said.

I had worked off my fifty hours of pack service as quickly as I was able, finishing all fifty hours even before my first month of house arrest was over. Lara told Francesca and all the enforcers to assign me any tasks they wanted as long as they didn't interfere with my teaching duties. I had cooked, cleaned, washed cars, read to two elderly pack members with failing eyesight, run errands for both of them and three other elderly pack members and produced public service announcements for the pack website.

The alphas had enjoyed that one immensely.

I thought it was ridiculous to send me running errands with my protection entourage, but I did what I was assigned.

But I had also been treated with a great deal of respect. Everyone knew what I had done and why I had done it. I received quiet comments praising me for what I had done as well as how well I was taking the resulting punishment for doing it.
I thanked people for the support but also told them I'd been wrong to defy the alpha.

Other than that first day, the enforcers had been gentle, although some had made a game of it. However, I mouthed off to Serena one day after a difficult
day at school, and she'd had me lying on my back faster than I would have expected. I was already saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," on the way down, but she had drawn blood, and my whimpers until she released me had been real.

Lara had noted the exact time we had returned
to the house in Madison. "We arrived home at 4:46 PM," she had said. "I will credit you with one week of incarceration at the Lima compound." She had consulted a calendar and declared my sentence over at exactly 4:46 PM this afternoon.

At 4:40, I turned to Serena. "Please, find out where Lara is."

"She is on her way," Serena said.

"Please, Serena," I said. "I don't dare shift until she gets here."

"Honey," Serena said. "Do you really think she'd make you wait?"

"Michaela," Scarlett said. "I need your help."

I turned to her immediately. "What's wrong?"

"It's school," she said. "It's math. I just don't get it."

"You don't get math?"

"Well, just this one problem. Will you help me?"

I glanced at the clock. "Of course, honey," I said. "Did you bring it with you?"

"Yes," she said. She unslung her book bag. She and Angel had probably come straight from school. The three of us moved to the dining room table, Scarlett and I sitting down next to each other, and Scarlett spread her books out, finding her calculus book. "I know how to do it, but it doesn't make sense. You know what I mean?"

"All right," I said. "Show me."

She opened the book, found the proper page, and pointed at one of the problems in the problem set. "It's this stuff with E," she said. "I just can't envision the formula in my head, so I can't envision whether I'm doing the problem correctly. I think I am, but I need to see it."

"Oh," I said. "Sure. You'll want to get used to E. It gets used a lot." I paused. "Well, in some sciences. I don't know so much about engineering and architecture."

Scarlett and I began discussing the problem. She showed me how to solve it, and she did it perfectly. "But I don't see it," she said.

So we talked about that. And then there was a crunch of car tires on gravel, and twenty seconds later, Lara, Karen and Elisabeth entered the house, announcing themselves. Five seconds after that, Scarlett said, "Ohh, now I get it."

I kissed her on the cheek and whispered quietly, "Thank you for the distraction. I knew that's what it was, but it still helped."

"We can run now?" Scarlett asked.

I glanced at the clock while getting up. "Two minutes." I turned to Lara. "Cutting it close."

"Sorry," she said. "Traffic."

I crossed the room to her and let her pull me into her arms. I looked around, and we were missing enforcers. "What? The rest didn't want one last opportunity to order me around?"

"I'm thinking of making that rule permanent," Lara said.

"Yes, we all know how good an idea that would be," I replied.

"Where are the girls?" Lara asked.

"Michele Lassiter took them," I said. "After I made them wolves."

Lara frowned.

"She was fox for a few seconds each only," Serena said. "She shifted back as quickly as we took a pup away."

"If it's any consolation, I outright refused Angel's order to turn fox early."

"Angel..." Lara said in a low voice.

"Hey!" Angel said. "She's not telling you everything!" She stuck her tongue out at me.

"Oh, that was mature," I said to her. Then I returned the gesture.

My phone went off, playing a portion of the William Tell Overture.

I ran to the front door and pulled it open, then stood at the threshold.

"Lara?" I asked.

"How long was she a fox, Serena?"

"Less than a minute total," Serena responded.

"Come on, Lara," I said. "
Kaylee asked if they could be wolves, and Michele commented on how cute they were, and Serena said it was okay. And no way was it a full minute. It's not like I went anywhere."

"One extra minute per second she spent as fox without my permission," Lara said.

I turned around to see if she was serious. She was.

I didn't bother arguing with her. "How long, Serena?" I asked.

Serena actually went through the motions. "Maybe, I don't know. Fifteen seconds each."

It had probably been longer than that, but not egregiously longer.

"You know, Alpha, I wasn't trying to cheat. Thanks for accusing me of it. I'll be in my room." I slowly climbed the stairs, hoping the entire way Lara would tell me she was kidding.

She never said a word, and the room was quiet behind me. Serena followed me up the stairs.

I turned to face her. "Seriously?"

"Sorry," she said.

"Fine."

I stomped to my room. Serena stepped ahead of me at the last moment and did a quick scan before letting me enter.

Once I had closed the door I turned to her. "Was she being petty?"

"I don't know," Serena replied.

"Please invite Angel and Scarlett and ask them to bring a deck of cards."

She pulled out
her phone and hit a speed dial. A minute later, Angel knocked at the door then entered, Scarlett behind her.

"Lock it," I said.
"A game of hearts okay?"

"Not poker?" Angel asked immediately.

I shook my head. Angel and Scarlett pulled up seats, and soon we were engrossed in the game.

"I still think we should play for something," Angel said.

"All right," I said. "The three losers have to tell an embarrassing story about themselves."

"Oh god," said Serena. "Fine."

We were all giggling upstairs for far longer than the extra thirty minutes Lara had tacked onto my sentence. I hugged everyone and thanked her for distracting me.

When we descended, the house was full. I'd been listening to people arrive, and I figured out that's why Lara had made me wait. I walked straight up to her. "You could have just said more people were coming."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry. I was feeling playful."

Part of me wanted to remain angry, but
I slipped into her arms and kissed her quickly, accepting her apology. "So, warden," I said to Lara, "have I paid my debt to society?"

"Yes, Little Fox, you have."

"Serena!" I yelled. "I am going for a ten minute run. When I get back, I expect someone to have fetched fresh tennis balls."

* * * *

I let Lara find my tennis ball. The hardest part was making it look like I had done my best to hide it.

* * * *

"Lara?" I said.

"Yes, Little Fox?"

"Do you think they heard me in Chicago?"

"You were kind of loud."

"I think I heard a picture fall off the wall downstairs."

"Are you sure that wasn't Angel snorting?"

"It may have been."

* * * *

"Lara?"

"Go to sleep, Little Fox."

"Alpha?"

Lara sat up. "Michaela?"

"Am I alpha again?"

"Yes."

I snuggled closer. "I hate to conduct business in bed, but I would like you to call a meeting of the pack council at the soonest convenience. It is not an emergency, but I do not care to wait until the next quarterly meeting."

"Is Saturday before the picnic okay?"

I smiled and kissed her neck. "Pack play night isn't for two more weeks."

"I moved it up," she said. "I hope you don't mind."

"Saturday is perfect. Please make sure Christopher West is here."

"Are you going to do anything I won't approve?"

"Not during the council meeting."

She pulled me tighter, but she didn't say anything further.

* * * *

"Lara?"

"Go to sleep!"

"I can't. Can we go for another run?"

"Is that what you really want, or are you negotiating?"

"You could let me be on top."

"What did you really want, Michaela?"

"Just hold me and tell me you'll always love me."

"Oh, Little Fox." She pulled me tighter. "I will certainly always love you."

* * * *

"Lara?"

"Oh for crying out loud."

"Do I snore?"

"No."

"Well, one of us was snoring, and if it wasn't me, it was someone other than me."

She chuckled. "Sorry."

"I like it. But if you spoon me instead, you don't snore."

"You woke me up because I was snoring?"

"No. I woke you because I wanted you to spoon me."

* * * *

I spent a significant amount of time before Saturday as fox. I'd spent two months on two feet, and I had really, really missed my fox.

I had no trouble finding people to run with me.

Saturday arrived. Lara asked me how long I needed for the council meeting. "Five minutes," I told her. "Unless there is discussion."

"We'll meet at three. If we finish early, we can start the party early."

"I will be throwing my weight around."

"All thirty pounds?"

"Yep. Will you back me up?"

"Yes."

"You're not even going to ask me about it?"

"Are you playing politics?"

"Yes."

"You're not very good at it."

"I know."

"I'll back you up."

I kissed her.

At two-forty I told Serena, "I want a full security detail on me tonight until I tell you otherwise."

"Are you expecting trouble?"

"I am making a statement. I know it's an imposition, but I want Emanuel and you. I don't care who the other two are. Leave Elisabeth free."

"It's fine."

"I'm sorry, I should have told you yesterday."

"It's fine," she said. "Let me get Emanuel here."

"I need to change," I said. I paused. "You will not interfere in what I do tonight, and you will know when I need you to back off. That's part of the statement I am making."