Pack and Coven (2 page)

“I wish you hadn't said that.” Bianca vibrated with an intensity that let him know how grim his situation was. Harry had no doubt about her meaning. Because he wasn't part of a pack, he was no match for pack wolves physically.

Mentally, he hoped, was another story.

“This is a free country, Bianca. Join the century. You can't make people do whatever you want.” Good God, he hated conservative wolves. They thought they could ignore anything that conflicted with pack law, including free will. No way in hairy hell was he going to join the Millington pack, much less be its alpha.

“Can I not?” Her eyes flashed pale blue with anger, with the onset of her alpha strength.

Harry shrugged, fury building in his own chest. Other packs had pressured him to join, but nobody had threatened to shanghai him. He just wanted to fix cars, eat steaks and make love to pretty women. Why couldn't they accept he was different?

“I guess we have until tonight to change your mind,” Bianca said.

“Find another guest of honor.” If they weren't a bunch of damn crooks, they wouldn't have this problem. Harry's sympathy was nonexistent, and he was angry enough that Bianca's alpha side didn't influence him.

“You're the one we want. We voted.”

While the touch of democracy in the pack surprised him, it didn't sway him.

“Import somebody.” A wolf had to carry the alpha gene in order to serve, but that didn't mean candidates were so impossible to find that any pack would have to resort to him. There were plenty of alpha wannabes willing to jump ship. They were probably panting at the gates if news of Bert's arrest had circulated.

As long it wasn't one of the degenerates from the pack where Harry had been born, Bianca could hardly do worse than Bert Macabee.

She shook her head. “I'm not interested. The current crop is all idiots.”

“Like Bert isn't.” Harry tried not to growl. Not a good time for his primitive side to claw its way to the surface. Humans dealt with testosterone too, but when they got pissed, they didn't sprout fur and fangs. “Make a few calls up north. You can't throw a stick up there without hitting some guy who, uh, likes to party. You don't want me.”

“Yes, we do,” Bianca insisted.

“Why?” He might have the right DNA, but there was nothing else right about him.

Her lips tightened. “We voted.”

“As a United States citizen, I have a vote too. It's no. If you don't mind, I prefer to eat alone,” he lied. Wolves could handle many things alone, but they rarely preferred it.

“We've got time. We'll wait.”

Harry had several choices. He could make a break for it, but he'd never escape the pack under his own steam. Fighting was also out. They'd wipe the floor with him. Plus, he didn't want to subject the people in the tea room to a wolf-style throwdown.

Failing that—and it would fail—he could involve the police. They might not issue a restraining order against three hot chicks who wanted him to party, but Harry could contrive to get himself thrown in jail. Punch a cop or something. He didn't particularly want a criminal record, so he'd save that as his last resort.

For independents like Harry, human laws and shifter wits were their only recourse if they squabbled with a pack. It happened. Packs existed everywhere, under various guises. Some packs were worse than others when it came to trampling a wolf's right to independence, and there was no appeals committee. The packs couldn't cooperate long enough to agree on anything except Humans Must Not Find Out. Revealing the secret was the only thing a wolf would be punished for by the shifter world at large.

They certainly weren't punished for abusing those who were weaker, not if their alphas ignored it. Or did it themselves. Packs worked together to cover up their secrets…by any means necessary.

Harry's best choice seemed to be humoring Bianca long enough to locate a small vehicle with a large engine. Maybe that Porsche he'd almost finished. If he remained in pack territory, they could find him as easily as Bianca had today.

Discretion, valor, cowardice—who cared as long as it worked and nobody got hurt?

“So are we settled?” Her tone had a tinge of sympathy. “You had to know you couldn't avoid our party forever.”

“I don't see why not,” he answered in a low voice he knew she could still hear. “There's no rule that says everyone has to come to these parties.”

“There should be. It would save time.”

Packers and indies rarely saw the appeal of the other's lifestyle. Too bad packers were the majority. Too bad indies had nowhere to go that was free of some pack's influence. “You're disturbing the other diners. I'll be at my shop by three. Meet me there.”

“I don't think so.”

He contemplated his empty glass and wondered how long he'd last if he got into a spoon-and-doily fight with three adult pack members. Ten, fifteen seconds. Twenty if he upended the table and they yelled at him for spilling food on their boots. How the hell was he going to get out of this?

He raised his hands, palms up. “What's the matter? You don't trust me?”

“Would you trust me if the situations were reversed?”

A small hand belonging to a small woman landed on his shoulder. He recognized the scent—his friend Sandie. Where had she come from?

“Are you harassing one of my customers, Mrs. Macabee?”

His rescuer was five feet tall and old as the hills, but her intervention flooded Harry with reassurance. It was one thing for packers to strut around in black leather, ride through town on choppers, harass people in tea rooms, vandalize public property, evade taxes and traffic in stolen goods. Humans did those things too.

Humans were less inclined to drag grown men out of tea rooms because they wanted to “party.” Bianca's strategy had just become conspicuous.

“I'm extending a polite invitation,” she said to Sandie in a sharper voice than her normal purr. Unless Harry was mistaken, anger had constricted her vocal cords with the beginning of a shift. The trick was not allowing it to go further than that. “Don't get your drawers in a wad.”

Hot-tempered Violet looked equally angry. He didn't see any sprouts of hair, which was good. Susan seemed as impassive as always.

“Let the poor man eat.” Sandie plonked a heavy plate on the table. Steam rose from the eggs in fragrant clouds, and he had not one but two big, fat croissants full of ham. “If he says he'll meet you at three, he'll meet you at three. Not a minute sooner.”

Harry hid a smirk. The person he trusted most in this world had his back. And his eggs. It might not cow Bianca, but it sure gave him a laugh.

Too bad Bianca wasn't impressed. “I don't think you know who you're talking to, old woman.”

Harry quit grinning. Bianca wouldn't dare wolf out, but hearing the threat in her voice directed at Sandie angered him in a different way. Nobody bullied his friends without going through him. Which he knew Bianca would be happy to do.

Sandie, though, wasn't impressed either. She had an answer for everything, which was especially handy if your internet was down.

“I don't think you know who
you're
talking to, dear.” She wriggled her fingers in the steam rising from the eggs. Though she had age spots, her fingers were straight and agile. Parsley sprinkled from her hand onto Harry's food. “This is my restaurant. If you don't leave my customers alone, I'll call the police.”

Then she dusted her hands dismissively, flicking parsley onto Bianca's side of the small table.

Pressure built in Harry's ears as if he were driving up a mountain in a fast car. When Sandie bumped his arm with her hip, his ears popped.

Bianca pointed at him with a daggerlike fingernail. “If you aren't waiting for me at three, I'll find you. My friends are keeping an eye out, watching the roads to make sure you get to the party tonight.”

Which meant she'd assigned sentries to shut down the territory.

“I'm not going anywhere.”
Damn.
His best plan of escape, shredded like a bag of cheese. Had she gone as far as a regional lockdown? Resentment churned inside him, twisting his nerve endings until he was afraid his hair might stand on end.

To Harry, there was no worse fate than joining a pack. Not one.

“If I can't find you…” Her voice trailed off ominously as she rose, and the women sauntered out the door. They'd doubtless lie in wait, unwilling to give him a chance to slip through their fingers. He could only linger for so long before his own behavior became conspicuous.

Sandie clucked her tongue. “Girls today, I swan. They have no manners.”

“I have to agree,” said Donna from the next table. “That's pure low-class. A girl shouldn't have to chase a man to catch him.”

Sandie smiled at the woman. “I can recall a few times you might have chased Timothy.”

She'd chased Harry too. He kept his mouth zipped shut.

“That was different.” Donna flushed, and the other two women at the table laughed. “Oh, hush, all of you!”

As the lunch companions began arguing what constituted chasing, Sandie returned her attention to Harry. “If you want to leave out the back, that's fine with me.”

Her hand patted his hair, combing through it as if he had tangles, which he didn't because it was too short. Sandie wasn't huggy, and he appreciated the gesture. Some of his anxiety eased. As a shifter, he liked a lot of contact, particularly from people in his inner circle.

“Thanks.” She never let customers in her kitchen, something about recipe espionage. “I'm sorry they barged in here like that. I don't know them well. I just work on their vehicles. I have zero interest in their party.”

For a moment Sandie didn't answer. It would suck rocks if she cold-shouldered him because of Bianca. Not that Sandie was judgmental, but it would bother him if she thought poorly of him. In addition to that, the grannies, as Violet had called them, were his primary social network. No werewolf, not even indies, handled complete isolation without consequences.

And, really, he adored the grannies. He watched his language for the grannies. The day he'd slipped into Miss Sandie's Tea Room eight years ago had been like coming to a home he hadn't known he had. Sandie had plunked herself down at his table to ask how he liked his sandwich, and that had been that. He'd been a goner. His relationship with her and her friends was more fulfilling than the indies he'd palled around with in New York. Tastier too. He'd never been happier and less inclined to travel—which didn't mean he wanted the option of travel taken away by a pack bond.

Once a wolf bonded with a pack, he or she was stuck as a packer, usually for life.

And pack life wouldn't include, couldn't include, Sandie and the grannies.

Finally she patted his shoulder and sighed. “I've been telling you to find a nice girl and settle down, haven't I? Then ones like that won't hunt you down.”

Harry reached out and snugged the old lady to his side. He knew she had a larger personal space than he did, but sometimes he couldn't help himself. “How could I? You're the only woman I want.”

“Nonsense.” She smacked his hand away, but when he glanced at her face, she was blushing. She had bright blue eyes, a snippy nose and hair like white cotton candy. She must have been remarkably pretty in her day. “I'm old enough to be your grandmother.”

“Haven't you heard of May-December romances?” he teased. He loved her scent—cake and fruit tea.

“Player.” She extracted herself from his grasp. “Are we still on for tonight?”

“I may have to miss this week.” Several of them drove to the closest town with a theater once a month for popcorn and cinema. Or cinema criticism, which is what it turned into.

“If you change your mind,” Sandie said, “I can pick you up at seven.”

“I'll let you know.” Harry was pretty sure he could find a way out of Bianca's trap, but it wasn't something he could discuss with Sandie. He suddenly wished he could, wished he could tell her everything so she could help him fix it.

But no. She was human, he was shifter, and they could only take a friendship so far.

She watched him for a minute as if she were reading his mind. “Is something the matter?”

“Nah. I'm just too popular for my own good.” He shoved food into his mouth to end the conversation. If he couldn't figure this thing with Bianca out, what was he going to tell Sandie?

Goodbye?

Instead he said, “Good eggs.”

“Don't talk with your mouth full, Mr. Popular.”

“Mmf,” he responded, not watching when she left.

No reason to think about goodbyes until he considered his situation from all angles. The pack's traditional ways were confining. Prehistoric. Bert hadn't encouraged male alphas of any stripe to hang around. He didn't want a challenge. Harry had been an exception. Now Bert was gone, and if the pack couldn't find somebody fast they were in trouble.

Not Harry's problem. After seeing his mother humiliated and abused during his pack upbringing, he'd vowed never to be a packer. He fulfilled his shifter drive for interaction in other ways. Like tea rooms. And bunco. And movie night, dammit.

In fact, he had no idea why anyone would choose pack over independence. Why commit to one group, one set of faces, one geographic location, when there was a whole world to see and billions of people in it? He wasn't a mutant—he liked a stable home base—but he could travel. Only last summer, he, Sandie, Annette and her husband, Pete, had rented a condo at the beach for two weeks and helped a conservation group flag sea-turtle nests. Packers couldn't do that unless they lived at the beach already.

His inclinations, his will, were the only things he had to heed. Pack bonds compelled you to obey your alphas. No way was Harry tying himself to that kind of existence. He'd promised his mother before she'd died, and he'd promised himself.