Little Wolf (6 page)

Tim narrowed his eyes and made like he wasn’t blushing. “You should get some sleep.” He took a breath and gestured at the door. “Go home.” He made himself stare at the pages of the book and felt like he had forgotten everything he’d just learned. Then he twitched and squeaked, because he had told the sheriff what to do.
Holy shit.
He raised his head and swallowed. “Eat first, I mean, but go to bed. If you want to, is what I meant to add there and didn’t for some reason. I am not challenging you.”

Nathaniel’s eyes seemed bright next to the shadows under his eyes. His mouth stayed soft and slightly open. “Okay,” he answered quietly.

“What?” Tim demanded, stupefied. He wasn’t even holding the book, and he still almost knocked it to the floor in total surprise. “You can’t just say ‘okay.’ You’re…
you
.” Leaders of packs, like most Type A personalities, did not take orders from others without at least some kind of fight about who was in charge. Not according to Tim’s uncle, who was the A-est of Type A’s, the most alpha of alpha weres.

“I’m ready to crash,” the sheriff explained, watching Tim’s freak-out with his head tilted to one side.

Luca would have had something to say about Tim giving him orders, even orders for things he’d been planning to do, but suddenly Tim wasn’t sure if it was Nathaniel or Luca who was the odd wolf out. There was a real chance that Ray and Nathaniel were normal and Luca was just an asshole. For half a second, Tim wondered what Nathaniel would think of his uncle, if he would be awed and then stare at Tim as if trying to imagine where he had come from, but then he pushed the thought away while he watched the sheriff stretch. His body made cracking sounds as though he needed a massage or a good night’s sleep or both. Tim got distracted imagining himself participating in either activity.

Tim wasn’t sure how to classify the panicked, then calm feeling he got at the idea of watching Nathaniel sleep, except that it made him breathe a little harder. And yeah, the sheriff noticed. He stared at Tim with his lips parted, giving Tim a glimpse of his tongue.

“Thank you,” Tim told Nathaniel breathlessly and then jerked himself out of reach, which really meant keeping Nathaniel out of
his
reach before he did something else stupid. “Why aren’t you home right now?” Tim asked him. He’d spent a whole night devoted to thoughts of the sheriff, but apparently his body wasn’t satisfied. He wasn’t tired anymore. He was going to start pacing soon just to do something that wasn’t pouncing.
Pouncing
. On
the sheriff
. It was such a bad idea.

“I had things to see to before I could rest.” The sheriff’s voice was getting quieter, Tim would swear to it, almost like a low rumble tuned to were ears. He said it like Tim was one of those things. Tim’s body chose to interpret that sexually. Of course it did. The moon was still full and fat, but Tim was pretty sure Nathaniel would get him aroused any day of the month.

“I hate you,” Tim muttered. It was directed more at his dick than the sheriff, but the sheriff lifted his head.

His eyes narrowed and something in his expression made Tim swallow. “Is this in regard to those
ideas
of yours that we’ve never talked about?”

Nathaniel was holding back a growl; Tim knew the signs now. He’d had plenty of time to learn them since their first meeting, when Tim had looked up to see this epic werewolf and felt a frightening response echo from deep within him. He had successfully banished the feeling by yelling, “Back off, asshole! Just because you’re a big alpha wolf doesn’t mean you can push me around! You can find some other wolf to maim or mount!”

Yeah, Tim had ideas about other weres, ideas that he was less and less certain about, but he wasn’t going to talk to Nathaniel—the sheriff, about them. “No. Nope, this is not about that.” Tim felt like he’d put his foot in it every time he thought about accusing the sheriff of wanting to hurt him or, er, have his way with him. “No, I have work to do. Stuff….” He waved around. Nathaniel narrowed his eyes and let the silence drag on. Tim held his breath, sure without knowing why that this time Nathaniel—the sheriff—was finally going to ask why Tim was so afraid of him and everyone else.

Then the sheriff stepped back. “Yeah, this much nothing won’t do itself.”

Tim was so startled at the humor he didn’t know what to do. “Is this what you’re like when you’re tired? You get smiley and make jokes like a real person?” He caught a glimpse of the unhappy line of the sheriff’s mouth, and then Carl said, “Boy,” in a warning tone, as if Tim had done something else wrong. Tim opened his mouth to taste the bruised scent in the air and turned a confused look on the sheriff. But for once the sheriff didn’t seem to feel like explaining.

Maybe, Tim thought quickly, maybe he wasn’t supposed to crack jokes to the wolf who ran the town. There was a mayor and a town council with a fairy and some humans on it, but everyone knew that wasn’t how weres worked, and it wasn’t who they would answer to, ultimately. Maybe this was like those old medieval laws banning jokes at the king’s expense.

But the air didn’t taste like a stung ego, and if wounded pride had a look it wasn’t how the sheriff stood away from the counter. He had been leaning against it, sleepy and at ease.

Tim looked from the sheriff to Carl. “I have a big mouth,” he whispered, not even sure why he said it, because obviously he couldn’t shut up when he should. It was his defining trait, aside from his size. “I talk too much, but you….” It seemed wrong to imply that the sheriff had gotten his feelings hurt and was hiding it, and yet Carl was staring at Tim like Tim could vaguely recall his mother looking at him when he’d been six and had accidentally knocked over a human child and sent the poor kid flying into the pavement.

“If you’re talking like that, you must be fine now. The food did its job.” The sheriff ignored what Tim was trying to say, and Tim scowled. The sheriff continued on, all of a sudden as talkative as Tim usually was. “Hopefully those books will convince you to take part in our festivals. You will be busy in here, but you should have time to have fun too. The Full Moon Festival in August… you should stick around to see that. But the Spring Thaw is more traditional. You should go with someone.”

“Okay,” Tim agreed, still trying to figure out where the relaxed sheriff from a few minutes ago had gone. He hadn’t thought the man’s shoulders could get any straighter.

“That’s good.” The sheriff unbent enough to glance at Carl again, who was an unabashed voyeur, and then gave Tim a nod. “Tim….” He paused. “Remember, if you have any questions, you can always ask me.”

Carl snorted but quickly looked at his newspaper when Tim and the sheriff both shot him a glare.

“Okay,” Tim said again a second later, though his own personal alpha sheriff tour guide through a sex-crazed town might actual kill him from the loss of blood to his brain.

At his answer, Nathaniel inhaled, then turned on his heels with no warning to go over to grab his lunch from Robin’s Egg. It was to-go, so he’d been telling the truth about being on his way home, but he had to stop on his way out to talk to someone Tim didn’t know. He put one hand on the door to hold it open and then moved it to the other person’s shoulder as they were talking.

They were talking about parking tickets. Tim eavesdropped and didn’t pretend otherwise. After listening for a while—without agreeing to do anything to get rid of the tickets, Tim noticed—the sheriff left, heading toward the station and probably his truck. He sighed as he left, a slow, tired sound, and didn’t look back.

Tim watched him until he was gone and then collapsed onto the stool and stared at his book without seeing a single word.

“Tired?” Carl asked innocently.

Tim flipped him off without looking up, then frowned and nodded.

“Yeah, actually,” he admitted, and Carl snorted again. Tim considered him for a good long while. “Since you have all the answers,” Tim said, then sighed at him after he’d had enough considering, and asked, “how pathetic am I?”

“Want an honest answer?” Carl waggled his eyebrows.

Tim gave him his best fierce stare, then jumped in shock when Carl broke eye contact first to mess with his newspaper.

Tim watched him, thinking about the reports of wolf antics that had to be in there, and then wondering again why the moon should do such things to weres. But he didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer, and Carl seemed nervous. Tim didn’t want to know about things that would make a tough old guy like Carl nervous, so he slumped over the counter and stared out the window.

T
HE
GIFT
shop was blissfully quiet, if boring, for the rest of his shift. Everyone kept telling Tim he’d earn his keep soon enough, but between all the meals and his slow eight-hour shifts, Tim knew he was a drain on the café’s profits. He felt so guilty about another day of no work that when Robin’s Egg tried to feed him before he left, he decided to buy himself dinner somewhere else.

He should have been starving, but the heavy exhaustion was back in his limbs, and nothing in the cool air smelled appealing. Tim looked over the various restaurants down Wolf’s Paw’s wide Main Street—touristy places and local favorites—then tramped to the corner store and bought a bag of chips and a steak. The cold meat wasn’t nearly as appetizing as it had been yesterday with the full moon, but he was too tired to bother with even warming it up, and ate it as he walked home.

All the weres who had been out the night before must have turned in early tonight, because the streets were quiet even though it wasn’t fully dark yet. He glanced toward the sheriff’s station. There was a familiar truck out front with the rest of the official sheriff’s department vehicles, making Tim viciously crunch his chips.

But he steered clear of the station and finished his dinner by the time he got to his boardinghouse. He wished his landlady good night before heading upstairs. He didn’t feel like watching whatever the other tenants were watching in the living room; he wanted to sleep. Or more likely, lie in bed while thinking about Nathaniel. Tim had to stop thinking of him as Nathaniel, or sooner or later he was going to say it, and saying it might be followed by something even more embarrassing, like jumping up to try to kiss him, or wondering if Nathaniel would be willing to show Tim around their stupid Spring Thaw.

Tim sighed at the idea, then shivered and stopped dead at the top of the stairs, every hair on his body standing on end. He didn’t turn, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe as he took in the apparently undisturbed door to his room. Magic had been there, Seeking magic, distending the flimsy wards he’d put up.

He had felt the sensation before, in the city before he’d run to Los Cerros, and a few times before then. He must have made some mistake, something that had led whoever his uncle or Luca had hired to find this place, this room, this town, or his uncle had started hiring someone better. Tim wasn’t sure which it was, but in the end it didn’t really matter.

He had to go and he had to go
now
, before his uncle sent Luca to get him.

He shut his mouth hard and unlocked his door with shaky hands. He clutched at the charms on his neck as the sensation of a spell nearly broken hit him like shattered glass. He pushed away the phantom pain of it as he threw his clothes into one of his two bags and then filled the other bag with the few things he’d collected in his life. Not much—an old picture of his mom, a library book or two he’d never returned.

There wouldn’t be any buses this late, but Tim couldn’t stay in this room another second in case the witch or wizard they’d hired did another Seeking spell with a narrowed focus. That left the woods, which would have had Tim quaking with fear any other time. He gathered up all his money and then hefted his bags out of the window and watched them fall to the alley below. It sucked to be skipping out without paying another full month, but he was going to need his cash until he got another job, and it wasn’t like he could hunt for food in those woods. Squirrels had more survival skills than Tim did, at least in nature. Put him in a city, and Tim could always find work somewhere they were willing to pay him under the table.

He was going to have to walk for days to get to another town. That wasn’t much of a head start if Luca and his uncle were still in Los Cerros.

Tim might not have felt the magic searching for him at the time, but he’d known his uncle and Luca had come to Los Cerros because they had tracked him down, not for any business deal. Uncle Silas would be grateful that Tim was using an alias, so Tim wasn’t shaming the Dirus name any more than he already did by existing. But Luca, Luca would find Tim because his uncle had told him to, but what he would do once he found Tim was entirely for himself.

Tim started to shake at the memory of Luca, and the possibilities of what Luca would do. He took a long, deep breath, then went downstairs, past everyone in the living room.

“Still hungry,” Tim explained himself with a smile he knew was twitchy, and moved faster once he was out of their sight. He crept around the building to get his bags and then hurried forward with his nose in the air, trying to scent out anything that said Luca might be near.

The magic always came first, but Tim wanted to be prepared. He’d see Uncle Silas’s lieutenant before he’d see his uncle.

Luca’s scent, what Tim could remember of it, wasn’t on the breeze, only the town itself: people and mountain air, wolves, gravy, garbage, food. The woods were all around him, the bus station to the west. Tim started moving, very aware of the sound of his heart beating in the quiet night and of the people out, closing up shops, heading to the few bars, how many of them knew him, or knew of him. If Luca sent other weres or investigators, the witnesses could tell them what direction Tim had gone.

Tim changed direction, following the scent of pine. For the first time in his life, that scent might lead to safety. He forced himself to slow down and not attract attention. He’d gotten soft, first by staying in Los Cerros for almost a year and then by being here, where he’d mooned and lusted and generally acted fifteen again instead of saving up and planning his escape routes. All this time he’d threatened to leave, but he had stayed, just because… just because….