Wolfen (10 page)

 
Abruptly, she recalled Balin's comment about her being an alpha female. She'd thought at the time that it was a strange observation for him to make, aside from the fact that she'd never thought of herself as an alpha female. She wasn't a leader. She wasn't even a follower. She knew men tended to fall, roughly, into either the category of alpha or beta, but that was because of their hormones. Women's hormones might effect them that way to a lesser degree, but it wasn't even as evident, to her way of thinking, as it was with the men and
that
paled significantly compared to the male in the wild.

 
What had Balin meant by the comment, she wondered abruptly? She'd been too distracted by everything else at the time to do more than barely register it. Now, it seemed that it must have had some significance just from the way he'd said it.

 
Was she reading something into nothing, she wondered?

 
She shook her head to shake the thought. They just had her completely addled, she thought with disgust. She wasn't used to
any
male attention. Finding herself surrounded by five damned fine looking young men who'd shown a flattering interest in fucking her brains out was enough to shake up even a practical minded woman. Not that she wasn't old enough to know better than to be too flattered that they wanted to get into her pants. They were men after all—young men. Their dicks probably still did most of their thinking for them and there were a lot more men inclined to stick their dicks in any available hole than there were that didn't have that mentality.

 
If she had any sense at all, she'd be deeply suspicious of their supposed interest, not flattered. Maybe if she was young and hot it would be more likely all of them would be interested, though she still found that doubtful—a couple of them, maybe, but not
all
of them.

 
So—setting aside the ridiculous—what could their motives be?

 
A practical joke?

 
She could be wrong, but they didn't seem the malicious type to find that sort of thing amusing. She still didn't think she could dismiss it altogether. She barely knew them and they were a totally unknown entity to her anyway since she'd never been around any men quite like them.

 
To distract her?

 
That seemed plausible, except she couldn't figure out what they might be anxious to distract her from. If they were thugs, and that seemed less likely to her now that she'd been around them a little, Maynard was a damned strange town to set up shop. It was between nowhere and bum-fuck nowhere. If it had been even
close
to a major national highway, maybe.

 
She managed to push the puzzle aside from time to time while she worked, but the thoughts kept swarming back. It wasn't until her stomach started complaining that she realized she'd been out for hours. When she'd dug her watch out of her bag, she discovered it was mid-afternoon.

 
She wasn't going to learn any more from the little she had to work with, she decided. She'd gone up and down the trail for a couple of miles in both directions and she hadn't seen any sign of a lair. All she'd really been able to determine was that the pack had come this way a number of times.

 
It was just as well she hadn't stumbled upon their lair, she thought wryly. She'd been too distracted. The chances were she would've been attacked before she could get her trusty tranq pistol out of her bag. That sobered her, especially in view of the fact that the pack was so big and there'd already been one reported attack on a human.

 
She supposed the sheer size of the pack might account, to a degree, for their brazenness. Their numbers would make them feel stronger.

 
She just wished she could've actually tracked down the man that was supposedly attacked and questioned him. It seemed most likely that he must have accidentally stumbled upon them, rather than that the wolves had either stalked him or otherwise gone out of their way to attack. Unless they were rabid, very few wild animals would hunt humans—bears and cats for certain, although even they tended to go the other way, for the most part, if they caught the scent of a human.

 
The wolves certainly weren't rabid, although the thought had occurred to her as one possible explanation for the attacks. They would've been dead in this length of time, though, not still roaming the countryside terrorizing the locals.

 
She felt a little better after the jaunt into the woods. At least she had something to report. She was going to have to try to discover their lair. Even if she hadn't managed to find the man who'd supposedly been attacked, the wolves had been after livestock. They didn't belong in the area and they were creating problems because they didn't. Game was going to have send people in to either kill or trap the pack and remove them. Some were likely to end up in zoos. The others might be relocated, though, to an area that had the right eco system to support them.

 
They were going to want to know
exactly
how many wolves they had to account for if she could possibly furnish them with that information. If they didn't get them all, the people in the area would have another problem with wolves in a few years.

 
She still couldn't fathom what had brought them so far south of their native habitat. There'd been a particularly bitter winter several years before, but she didn't think the wolves had been in the area that long. Of course, she supposed it was possible they had been and there'd been earlier attacks and they'd just been blamed on something else.

 
She was in the middle of cooking herself a quick meal when she heard the bikers returning. Her heart fluttered uncomfortably in her chest, but she couldn't convince herself it was from dread. The urge to run to the window and peek at them certainly wasn't fear inspired.

 
Annoyed with herself, she firmly tamped the surge of excitement that raced through her. She was still angry with them for their interference, she reminded herself. She didn't know where they got off thinking they could tell her what to do, but she wasn't going to put up with their bullying—whatever their reasons for it!

 
She was relieved when none of them came over. She really was.

 
When she'd finished her solitary meal and cleaned up, she put her laptop on the table in place of her dinner plates and sat down to compose a report that wasn't nine tenths bullshit to make it sound as if she was actually making progress. It would've been easier to get a count of the wolves if she could've tagged them and a hell of a lot easier to find their lair if that damned wolf hadn't gnawed the locator out that she'd implanted in his hip!

 
That hinted at a high level of intelligence—which wasn't necessarily a good thing for them beyond supporting her ‘not completely verified’ report that it was a pack of strong, healthy animals, which
might
make the game people more inclined to save them if they could by trapping them.

 
She couldn't take months to wind this up. Her employers were going to be getting impatient, and if there were more reported attacks that would probably be the end of her investigation right then and there.

 
Aside from that, she didn't want to get so wrapped up in observing that she might end up being even partially responsible for another attack on anyone in the community.

 
And then there was the biker situation. If she hadn't found them so tempting, she wouldn't have worried about it, but she had a bad feeling that close proximity for a prolonged period of time was only going to make her more tempted, not less. She was already arguing the merits of a fling when she should've had better sense than to even contemplate such a thing. Sure they were all consenting adults, free to make their own choices—she certainly was, but just because there was no reason
not
to didn't make it a good idea.

 
It was, in fact, probably one of the worst she'd ever had, spawned by a side of herself she wasn't even passingly acquainted with—a little voice in her head that kept saying ‘Hey! Live a little! When are you going to get around to letting yourself have a little fun out of life? You're over thirty. Before you can turn around you'll be over forty and then it'll
really
be too late.'

 
Mid-life crisis, she wondered? She thought she was a little young for that. But then she'd always been an early bloomer, she thought wryly, and there was no set age when a person suddenly woke up and realized life was passing them by while they were trudging along with their head down and their nose to the grindstone.

 
She supposed it might be more in the nature of ‘reliving her childhood', or just living it. She'd been too serious minded, and too out of the loop, truth to tell, to actually enjoy what was for most people their wild teen years. She'd never fit in to anything but the misfits crowd, and unfortunately they never had any real fun. They were too busy trying to defend themselves from ‘the tormentors', the children who seemed to think they'd been designated by some higher power to make life a living hell for anybody that didn't fit in.

 
She'd had boobs and pimples before anybody else—glasses, braces, and a four zero grade point average later to destroy any possibility of a social life. Being chunky hadn't helped either, but, thankfully, she'd managed to overcome that when she'd taken up hiking.

 
Regardless of what she'd missed, though, she'd missed it. She wasn't a teenager anymore. She couldn't be behaving with the wild thoughtlessness of irresponsible youth.

 
She might want to, but she couldn't, and she wasn't going to!

 
She didn't know what kind wild hair she'd gotten up her butt anyway, she thought crossly. She'd always preferred older men, at least five or ten years older than she was, mature, experienced, serious minded men that were strong and capable and decisive.

 
[Back to Table of Contents]

 
Chapter Five

Discovering he couldn't get a decent internet connection, Balin got on the phone and contacted the head of the council to outline the situation and make arrangements to get what they needed.

 
"I don't like it,” Dorian muttered angrily when he'd finished.

 
Balin's expression tightened with annoyance. “If you've got a better suggestion, we're wide open."

 
Silence greeted that remark. “You say the rogues have infected half the town?"

 
"Actually, I didn't. From what we can see
more
than half the town is infected. It's impossible to determine whether the rogue pack did it all or if they only got the ball rolling by infecting the first. My guess is, given the extent of it, they set out to convert the entire town."

 
"What the hell would they do that for?” Dorian demanded.

 
"Your guess is as good as mine,” Balin said wryly. “We've only been here a few days. We haven't been able, so far, to run down but two of the wolfen and they were disinclined to talk."

 
"I still don't like it. There isn't going to be any way to keep something like this quiet."

 
"I don't like it any better than you do,” Balin growled impatiently. “This is a whole different ballgame than what we expected when we were sent here, though. We expected to deal with the rogue pack and possibly a few
weres
who'd made the mistake of crossing their paths. This was systematic. It's sure as hell no accident that they've infected so many. I couldn't begin to speculate on what the pack leader was thinking, but there's no doubt he has some kind of agenda beyond staking out new territory for himself."

 
Dorian was silent again, obviously thinking the situation over. Balin waited with what patience he could muster. “Fine,” he responded finally. “I'll talk to the council, explain the situation, and we'll get you what you need. I can't help but think you need reinforcements if it's as widespread as you say."