Half Wolf (Alpha Underground Book 1) (13 page)

The uber-alpha was lupine in an instant. The hairs on his ruff came menacingly erect and he advanced in absolute silence toward the female trouble twin. Hunter had passed the point of warning, I saw, and was now prepared to deal with the female who had been a thorn in his paw ever since their first introduction.

True to her nickname, Ginger was also ready and willing to meet her opponent on the field of battle. But she’d shifted one too many times that day already and her clenched teeth and strained features made no difference against the simple physics of exhaustion. Instead, she remained clad in thin human skin, no fur and wolf hide forthcoming to protect her from the other shifter’s imminent attack.

I guess that means saving my unruly pack mate’s neck is up to me.

“
Stop!
” I ordered, flinging myself between the two combatants. I didn’t expect my command to do any good against the uber-alpha...especially since Ginger had made a very valid point about his sudden presence at the exact same moment Lia had gone missing. Rationally, I knew that I should be joining the trouble twin in driving the danger out of our clan.

But, irrationally, I trusted Hunter. He wouldn’t have hurt Cinnamon. He wouldn’t have kidnapped Lia. And, now, he wouldn’t tear through me to get to my obstreperous pack mate.

Or so I hoped. Despite my best intentions to stand as tall and brave as Ginger behind me, my whole body quaked when it dawned on me that Hunter’s sharp teeth had ended up inches away from my bare thigh.

The wolf raised one side of his lip in what might have been a snarl...but was, I soon realized, instead the lupine equivalent of a leer. Yes, I
had
just thrown my crotch directly up against my opponent’s nose. All he’d have to do was open his mouth to lick the portion of my anatomy that was feeling distinctly moist....

“This...this....” I lost all grasp of nouns for a moment, but pushed forward nonetheless. “This whatever-it-is can be dealt with later,” I said firmly, alternating glances between the irate trouble twin and the amused uber-alpha. “Right now, we need to get Cinnamon some medical attention and then figure out how we’re going to find Lia. So the two of you can just get over yourselves for the moment. That’s final.”

Fake it ‘til you make it.
My favorite technique, remarkably, seemed to work just as well on a wolf-brain uber-alpha and an incensed pack mate as it did on the world at large. Because Hunter promptly sank into a lupine sit and reached jaws over one shoulder to tease a burr out of his matted fur. Meanwhile, Ginger released the clenched fists that had been resting on her ample hips and crouched back down by her brother’s side. Cat-like, the pair of antagonists was momentarily united in the belief that the best course of action was to pretend they’d never menaced each other in the first place.

Disaster averted.

Or
mostly
averted. “This isn’t over, backstabber,” the trouble twin muttered just low enough that I could pretend not to hear.

I tensed, waiting for Hunter to dive back into the field of battle. But his ears merely flicked forward briefly then away, accepting the verbal sally without comment.

Before Ginger could prick at the uber-alpha’s pride further, Glen and Quill came bounding out of the woods together. To my supreme relief, the scene greeting them looked remarkably like a group of three worried pack mates rather than like enemy armies preparing for battle. And when Glen glanced a quick question at me, I nodded permission for my beta to shift into human form and hoist Cinnamon over one broad shoulder.

“Let’s go,” I ordered before Hunter or Ginger could renew aggressions. And we turned as a unit—albeit a very disjointed one—to head back toward the parking area that we’d left so gleefully behind only an hour earlier.

***

“This is a wolf, not a dog,” the vet said as soon as he walked into the crowded examining room to find a comatose Cinnamon lying atop his examining table.

“Part wolf,” I lied glibly, repeating the commonly used pretense that our animal forms were just big puppy dogs and no danger to the general public. “He’s harmless, I promise. Gentle as a lamb.”

“Uh huh,” Dr. Anderson answered, disbelief evident in his voice. He rolled up both sleeves to display a network of scars running up his forearms. “This and this and this were caused by harmless animals too. And
this
one,” he pointed to yet another pale line welting his skin, “was made by an actual lamb.”

My pack and I stopped breathing as one. Yes, we
could
get back on the road and keep driving until we found a second clinic. But Cinnamon hadn’t so much as opened his eyes since we’d carefully placed him in the car in the first place. Despite our best efforts to stem the flow of blood, our wounded companion was still leaking vital fluids, and every moment we spent seeking assistance felt like a year hacked off the trouble twin’s life expectancy.

I opened my mouth to plead with the human, but he sighed and caved before I could do so. “I’ll treat him, but he needs to be muzzled and restrained,” Dr. Anderson said firmly.

Around me, three male shifters and I all released sighs of relief. But Ginger was less impressed. Instead, the sound emanating from her throat was a full-formed lupine growl, proof of a loss of control she had never before exhibited around non-shifterkind.

Before I could sidetrack her, the female pushed forward into the vet’s face. I held my breath, hoping she’d fall back on her usual weapon of heightened sex appeal in order to solve this problem. But the young woman neither pushed out her breasts nor ran a hand across her full lips. Instead, worry over her brother’s waning health had worn away any semblance of civility.

“He’s not even
conscious
,” the trouble twin said, her words just short of a shriek and her face more reminiscent of a harpy than a Barbie. Ginger pushed both hands hard against Dr. Anderson’s lab-coated chest and knocked him back a step with the force of her blow. “He’s losing blood as we speak. He needs
help
. Just stitch him up.
Please
.”

I was pretty sure that last word had never before come out of my friend’s mouth. But the vet wasn’t swayed. “Look,
ma’am
,” he said, clearly rethinking his willingness to deal with the crazy people who came along with the wild wolf. “Restraints won’t hurt him. They’ll just protect us all from an animal who’s clearly a scrapper.”

As if to illustrate his point, Dr. Anderson motioned at the wounds that covered Cinnamon’s unmoving body. And I had to admit the doctor had a good point. In the animal world, a beast who kept fighting while his hide was being torn to shreds wasn’t the kind of patient any vet would want on his operating table. In fact, we were probably lucky Dr. Anderson hadn’t turned us out of his clinic already.

Little did the man in front of us know that Cinnamon was the most laid-back member of our little band of werewolves. Both his human and his animal natures were inherently gentle 99% of the time. The twin’s mean streak only came out when he was trying to protect a cousin who was more like a kid sister than a distant relation.

A cousin who was probably being driven further and further away from our current location with each moment that we wasted discussing muzzles. Muzzles that Cinnamon wouldn’t care less about even if he were awake.

“Okay,” I agreed for the lot of us, grabbing Ginger’s arm and pulling her out of the vet’s line of sight. Without looking behind me, I gave the redhead a push away from the conversation, and I felt more than saw that Glen immediately pulled the unhappy female into the confinement of a hug. As usual, my second was ready to deal with every problem I threw his way, both literally and figuratively.

“We’ll put any restraints on him that you want,” I added.
Just hurry
, I finished silently.

I could have sworn that Dr. Anderson read the unspoken words in my eyes, which I guess wasn’t so surprising since he was trained to deal with animals who couldn’t speak in words. Whatever the reason, the vet nodded and left through a back door rather than launching into the lecture I was pretty sure we had coming about the dangers of keeping even a half-wolf on a leash.

I’d heard it all before.
Canis lupus
is inherently unpredictable, the vet would tell us. A wolf isn’t a dog, willing to do what you tell him to while looking up at you with soulful eyes and begging for a treat. No, a wolf is always striving for increased power, watching and waiting for the moment he can tear you down and take his rightful place as the leader of your pack.

Despite myself, I met Hunter’s eyes across my friends’ heads and shivered. The vet’s lecture—or the one I imagined Dr. Anderson wanted to make—resonated far too well with our current situation. I hadn’t been lying when I said Cinnamon was as gentle as a lamb, but maybe Ginger had been right about the wolf who I’d recently allowed to wiggle into both my pack and my heart.

But, with only moments to spare before the vet returned, I shook the notion out of my mind and instead got the group moving once again. “We don’t all need to be crowded around here while Dr. Anderson stitches Cinnamon up. Glen, maybe you could call Mrs. Abrams and let her know we won’t be coming today after all? Quill, could you make a spot in your van where Cinnamon will be more comfortable once the vet’s done?”

I cringed as I thought of the way we’d tossed the wounded wolf into the back of our car atop that already bloodstained tent fly during our most recent journey. The repeated visual—first a dead SSS member then a nearly dead pack mate—didn’t escape me. Whether or not Cinnamon would indeed be more comfortable in Quill’s van, I’d definitely feel less guilt-stricken about the arrangement.

“Sure,” Glen agreed, and Quill also offered an easy nod as the two males walked out together.

“Ginger,” I began, trying to think of a task I could set for the trouble twin in order to get her out of our hair while Dr. Anderson operated on her brother. I figured she’d be better off not seeing the extent of Cinnamon’s injuries with fur shaved away, and she clearly had issues with the concept of her twin constrained by a muzzle.

But before I could dream up a suitable assignment, Ginger had turned her anger back in my direction. “I’ll stay right here,” she said. “I’m not leaving Cinnamon’s side while that
traitor
is present. I can’t believe you even let him come in here with us in the first place.”

In my defense, I hadn’t actually
let
Hunter go anywhere. When we’d returned to the small gravel parking lot, we found a shiny new SUV sitting between Quill’s faded VW bus and our old, dented jalopy. Hunter had deftly removed the unfamiliar vehicle’s key from a magnetic hideaway beneath the wheel well, then he’d donned a slick suit that made him look like an entirely different person from the bloodling I’d recently gotten to know.

From the beginning, I’d understood that Hunter was the primary enforcer for the regional shifter Tribunal. But seeing his fancy wheels and the strong semblance of humanity he now wore like a second skin put his presence in an entirely different perspective. It was more than obvious that I had neither the right nor the ability to prevent the uber-alpha from tagging along on our journey.

Not that I’d tried very hard to send him away. Okay, I hadn’t tried at all. Instead, it had soothed my pinched gut to glance in the rear-view mirror and find that Hunter’s SUV remained part of our entourage during the hour-long journey to the nearest veterinary clinic.

Of course, that explanation would definitely set the trouble twin off. So I decided to deal with the elephant in the room instead. “Hunter, maybe you could tell Ginger how you were able to find us this afternoon?” I prodded. Honestly, I wanted to know the answer to this question myself, the uber-alpha’s previous evasion of the issue having niggled at the back of my mind ever since Ginger threw the challenge up in his face back in the woods.

Despite the fact that his wolf was probably lying in wait just beneath the surface, Hunter now looked like an after-hours businessman with his white shirt unbuttoned just far enough to show a little chest hair. And his response to my question was urbane enough to match his new appearance. “Is that something you really want me to share?” he asked smoothly. One eyebrow raised as he directed the question at the trouble twin instead of at me.

Ginger glared back at him, her own efforts at humanity becoming more lackluster by the moment. In fact, I was pretty sure the female’s canines were longer than usual when she opened her mouth to reply. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?” she demanded. “It’s pretty fishy, don’t you think? You buttering up my naive little cousin, then Lia suddenly going missing mere minutes before you show back up in our lives. Are you trying to say that’s all just a coincidence?”

Before Hunter could answer, a thin whine brought all of our attention back around to the wounded wolf lying atop the cold steel examining table. As one, we allowed the argument to drop as we clustered in a little circle surrounding Cinnamon. My relief at finding him awake and alert actually made me a little weak in the knees.

“You’re going to be okay, you big lug,” Ginger said soothingly, stroking her brother’s ears gently and pretending not to notice the blood rubbing off from his fur onto her fingertips. Her previous show of lupine aggression had disappeared as quickly as it came, her body language now both calm and calming. “You’ve just gotta be brave and put on some BDSM ware for the sake of the good doctor,” she added, managing to sound wry instead of annoyed.