Loner (Norseton Wolves #2) (4 page)

Stephanie was reasonably sure she was still alive, but the last time she made an assumption about something, she’d ended up driving the wrong way and onto a highway exit ramp.

The last things she remembered were a fuckload of searing pain, and that dark, dark gaze locked onto her. Her mate’s gaze.

Did I shift?

She was on her side now, curled into a ball on a soft surface. She gave her fingers experimental wiggles, and then her toes. They felt normal enough—
human
enough. She opened first one eye, then the other, and her gaze focused on the masculine lump on the bed beside her. He lay back against the headboard, a knee propped up as he stared at the muted television on the dresser.

“What time is it?” Her voice was hoarse, but recognizable. She sounded like Stephanie, and not a wolf. Words, not
woofs
.

He reached for the remote, but she grabbed his wrist.

“Leave it on for the light,” she said.

“Okay. It’s around four.”

“How long have we been in here?”
In his bedroom.
She rolled onto her back and scanned what she could of it from her supine position. There wasn’t much to see beyond the bed and dresser. He was probably still getting around to buying stuff, just like in the living room. The emptiness actually soothed her confused inner wolf. She could put her mark on the house—her new den. It was home now, a place of belonging, if she dared let it be.
A silver lining
.

“About an hour,” he said.

Closing her eyes, she swatted her hair back from her face. “Why is my hair still wet?”

“Washed it again. I put you in the shower when we got back.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Memory’ll get better.”

“I hope so.” She rolled onto her side and, suddenly cold, realized her nakedness. She took a moment to get under the covers. Decent sheets, surprisingly. Soft.

“You cold?”

“No,” she said. “I’m actually quite hot.”

He furrowed his brow. “Covers won’t help that.”

Don’t get distracted.
Before she’d started shifting, she’d intended to talk to him. Or talk at him, rather, given his unwillingness to speak. “I think we need to set some ground rules.”

“About what?”

“For one thing, about how we’re going to run day-to-day stuff in the household.”

His brow wrinkled even more. “Okay. Like what?”

“For one thing, I’m not your cook, or your maid.”

“I’ve been doing fine without either.”

“I had to say it. I grew up outside of a pack, mostly. My sense of fairness is probably calibrated differently from most wolves.” She waited for the rebuttal, but none came. His gaze fell to his hands. Strong and busy. They always seemed to be moving.
Is he nervous?
She’d never known a nervous wolf.

What does that mean?
She compartmentalized the question to ponder later.

“Um, second, keep work discussions outside.” Wherever male wolves gathered, bad behavior tended to follow, and that included taunting, leering, and criticizing.

He turned slowly back to the television screen, and she finally took a look at what he was watching. It was some documentary about a museum tracing the provenance of a piece of art. She’d seen it before. It wasn’t entertaining, per se, but interesting. At least, in her opinion.

“I keep missing the tail end of it,” he said. “Sorry if I seem distracted.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Most of it. Something always happens to pull me away at the end. No work in the house. Got it. Guys don’t come here much, anyway.”

“Why?”

“I like quiet. Hard to get, sometimes.”

“Is my being here bothering you for more reasons besides your revulsion of my appearance?”

“No. Your energy is more or less psychically neutral. Doesn’t take up a lot of space. I don’t feel crowded with you here.” He dropped the remote and swiveled to face her. “And
what?
”

“You don’t have to say anything to placate me. I get it. You were expecting a certain kind of woman, and you didn’t get that. Unfortunately, I am what I am, and I try to be confident in spite of it. That’s hard sometimes.”

“Is this about you being half-wolf? I’ve never heard of that being a problem.”

“It’s more a problem than you would think in some packs, but this isn’t about that. It’s about me looking like I’d bring up the rear in a pack race.”

“You seem to be in good enough shape, and your wolf is…well, she’s…incredible. She’s so pretty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wolf with such red fur.”

Incredible?
The wolves in her father’s pack would have probably threatened to burn her at the stake for being a furry, red aberration. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not. The…the goddess is said to have had red fur in her wolf form.”

She did?

Stephanie gnawed on her lips, considering it. She had never heard that, but most of what she’d learned about the goddess had been through the veil of dreams. Everything else was in scraps here and there from her mother, and Mom was certainly no expert.

She looked at him and found him staring at his hands again.

“You’re missing your show.”

“It’s not important. Tell me why you’re angry at me. I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

“That’s part of the problem. You don’t even know you’re doing it.”

“What
am
I doing?”

“You looked at me like I was garbage.”

“When?”

“In the living room, when I took off my shirt. Your gaze went right to my doughy bits.”

“What ‘doughy bits?’”

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Really. Show me what I was looking at.”

She pointed to the television. “Commercial’s over. It’s getting to the good part.”

His jaw flapped silently for a few beats, and his gaze flitted between the television and her face.

“You
actually
want to see that?”

“It’ll repeat.”

“Eventually.”

He growled and turned off the television. “Tell me what I did wrong.”

“When I was on my back on the sofa, you closed your eyes when you saw me. You looked away.”

“You were naked.”

“Yep.”

“And I was hard.”

“And…”

“I think one thing is related to the other.”

“In my experience, most men can get it up in spite of what they’re looking at if they try hard enough. Once they get inside, it all feels the same.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Why?” Her voice cracked in that way it always did when she argued with her father. It didn’t matter that she was right, usually. He had a knack for making her feel like everything she said was wrong—like everything was her fault. “Because I called you out on it?”

“You
asked
me to—”

“I know what I asked you to do. I was desperate. I shouldn’t have expected tenderness.”

Gaping, he scraped a hand through his hair and fixed that intense, dark stare on her. So familiar, and yet she couldn’t put a finger on why. “We’re supposed to get married in a few hours, and you already hate me.”

“Other way around.”

“Whatever you think I did, tell me what it was now, so I can call you a liar.”

“You were repulsed.”

“No!” He shook his head and gave his hair a quick yank. His energy flared, electrifying the room before he closed his eyes and snapped it back in.

She rubbed the prickling hairs on her arms and pulled in a deep inhalation.
Oh my god
. He may not have been an alpha in title, but he certainly had the energy of one. It was unmistakable. He wasn’t some run-of-the-mill wolf.

Does anyone else know? Does the pack know what he is?

“Why did you think that?” His plaintive voice that made her feel like the biggest bitch on the face of the Earth.

Fuck
. She ground her palms against her gravely eyes and blew out a breath. “It was a logical conclusion.”

“Based on what?”

“Life experience.”

“I—”

Whatever he thought to say, he let fall off. Maybe he didn’t know what to say either, and for the moment, that suited her fine, because neither did she.

She burrowed her face against the fluffy pillow. “Finish your show.”

He didn’t move at first, but after a few seconds, turned the television back on, this time with the sound on low.

She peeked out from under the pillow to watch his face as he stared at the screen. Now that she’d felt his frustration and tasted his lick of power, he was a bit easier to read. That undercurrent of anxiety she’d stoked in him was still there. He may have looked calm, but her new wolf sense of smell caught the remnants of his testosterone spike…and of her lingering hormones, as well. Unpracticed though she was, she pulled her energy in as tight as she could and watched his body gradually relax.

He let out a slow, relieved exhalation and focused on the television screen.

“Yes!” Darius whispered and gave his fist a pump in the air.

That was the end of the show. The paining was a legitimate early work of a well-known artist, and had been a commissioned gift to some practically forgotten princess.

Stephanie pushed up onto her elbows and looked over her shoulder to see the credits rolling. “I love a good mystery.”

“Yeah.” His smoldering gaze flitted to her and quickly back to the screen. His anxiety had all but dissipated.

He sucked at eye contact, at least with her. She’d never known a werewolf to have that problem, but again, it seemed there was very little about him that was typical.

He turned off the television and slid the remote onto the nightstand. “Should I sleep on the sofa?”

“Why?”

“I just thought—”

“It’s your bed, Darius. Get in. I don’t bite.”

“Actually, you do.”

She cringed and let her head hit the pillow. Her verbal “bites” had probably been worse than the ones with teeth. She was ashamed about them now. In the same way everyone in her father’s pack unfairly judged her, shed done the same to him. She hadn’t even given him a chance. She should have trusted the goddess. Her dreams had told her that things would get better, not worse. Stephanie was obviously self-sabotaging. It was almost as if she was afraid of happiness because it’d been so long since she’d felt it.

Whether she was a ravening beast or not, he got in, and settled onto his belly.

Fix this
.

She hoped Darius could forgive and forget, and that he wanted to go through with the next step. There was still a chance he was that wolf the goddess thought Stephanie needed. She forced a swallow down her tight throat. “What time’s the ceremony?”

“Early. Maybe six or seven.”

“Why so early? Are you all afraid we’ll change our minds and run off before we put our signatures on the marriage licenses?” She tried to put a bit of tease in her voice, but given the nervous break in it, likely didn’t quite manage to.

He furrowed his brow again. “I didn’t set the time. Mrs. Carbone arranged it.”

“That was a joke. A bad one, but still.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He drew his energy in more tightly around him as if he feared it was in her way. The opposite was true. Her inner wolf was doing the psychic equivalent of rolling around in it—nesting in it as if it were a comfortable, familiar blanket.

Give it back to me, wolf.

She gave his hard bicep a little poke and settled back beneath the covers. “Where will the ceremony be?”

He rubbed his arm and pulled the shyest grin, but his energy opened back up. It wasn’t the flood of power it had been before, but a casual sort of draping over the two of them that made her inner wolf feel quite at home. “Over at the Norseton mansion.”

“And that’s what this community is called? I was asleep when we arrived, so I missed the drive through.”

“Mm-hmm. You should go explore tomorrow. Can get most everything you need in town.”

“And you work for them at the mansion?”

He grunted. “We provide security services to the Afótama. That’s what they’re called.”

She’d never heard of them and had no idea what they were, and her taciturn mate didn’t seem willing to elaborate. She was going to squeeze the words out of him anyway, though. She refused to be kept in the dark. If she was going to be a Pack member, she wasn’t going to be some wolf on the fringes who was ignored until some man saw fit to yell at her about what she was or wasn’t.

She knew all that already, and she didn’t choose to be only half wolf.
Why did they act like I did?

Darius’s warm hand molded against her forehead and slipped down to her cheek. Her lungs tightened then, and her breath caught.

She tilted her chin up for the stroke of his callused fingers. His touch was tender, but what made it all the more surprising was that it was voluntary. She hadn’t asked for it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“You smell…
stressed
, I guess. Like prey.”

“I’m not stressed, just—”
Just what? Pitiful?
She shook her head and let out a long breath.
Time for a subject change.
“So, it’s just you five? You, Alpha, and?”
What were the names?

“Yeah. Me, Alpha, Anton, Vic, and Colt. That’s all for the moment. Working on hiring more for the security crew, but that’s hard. People have to have the right qualifications.”

“Such as?”

“Helps if they know about our world, and can be quiet about it.”

“Oh.”
Duh.
Stephanie was used to holding her tongue in that regard. She’d known about shifters all her life, even if she hadn’t grown up with them. They were something she understood intrinsically not to discuss with outsiders, even when she so badly wanted to. There weren’t many people she could confide in besides her mother, and she tried to keep her mother’s head clear of Pack business. She didn’t want to traumatize the woman, telling her all about the world she was partitioned from. “How long have you been working for them?”

“Not long. Since winter.”

Six months or so, then.
She waited on him to elaborate, but as usual, he didn’t.

Maybe I should let him sleep
.

But she couldn’t, not until the glut of anxiety in her belly unfurled. It was of her own making, of course. She’d gotten herself indignant and self-righteous over a misconception, and now he probably thought she was a dingbat, though she wasn’t. She didn’t want him to think that, so she had to fix it. She had to keep talking and make her wolf talk, too. “So, what’s your job in the pack?”