Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 1) (8 page)

“
M
ake it a shot
,” Ian said.

His gaze tracked Devon as he came into the room. Devon circled the table, pulled out a chair, and sat in it. “Did I miss the meeting?” he asked.

This was not good, Ian thought. The last time he’d seen Devon, Devon had been telling him—like everyone else, it seemed—to get the hell out of town.
You’re either with the pack or you’re against us,
Devon had said.
We rule here. If you’re against us, get out.

This was typical Devon reasoning. Heath may claim to have been Charlie’s favorite bastard son, but Devon was by far the most loyal. His mother had never left Charlie the way Ian’s mother had; she’d stuck around Shifter Falls until she’d died young. That left Devon in Charlie’s hands, so it was believable he’d grown up warped. Charlie had used him as muscle, a low-level henchman sent out to growl threats and break heads when needed, but he hadn’t promoted Devon within the pack.

In fact, Devon was so loyal to their father the alpha that Ian had wondered more than once whether Devon’s attempt to kill him years ago had been his own idea—or whether it had been ordered.

Today was not the day he felt like finding out.

“Are you going to play nice?” Heath asked from behind the bar, his eyes on Devon as he poured two shots. “We’re just talking. And drinking, of course. There’s no need for violence. Plus, we have a guest.”

Ian watched as Devon’s gaze flicked to Anna. No doubt he already scented Ian’s shirt on her. To his amazement, Anna broke the thick tension in the room by smiling at Devon and holding out her hand across the table. “Hi,” she said warmly. “My name is Anna Gold.”

Heath choked in surprise from behind the bar as Devon reached his big hand across the table and shook with Anna. “Devon Donovan,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Okay, then. Devon was going to be civilized. Ian and Heath shared a look.

“I’ll play nice,” Devon said as he dropped Anna’s hand. He grinned at Heath, who was circling the table to bring Ian his shot. “I’m in a good mood. I heard your bar got demolished by a couple of bears last night.”

“Laugh it up,” Heath said dryly. “I know I am.”

“Come on, Heath,” Devon said. “What the hell made you think you could run a bar?”

“One of us has to do something,” Heath said. “You should think about it, Devon. You need a new job now that the old man is dead.”

“You want to hire me as a bouncer?” Devon asked.

Heath rolled his eyes. “The idea of a bar is to have customers actually come inside,” he said, “not get chased off by your shitty personality. Did you just come here to gloat?”

Devon shrugged. “That, and I heard that Ian got out of prison. I wanted to find out what you knew about it.” He turned his gaze on Ian, assessing. “Are we going to have a problem?”

Ian picked up his shot and tossed it back. It didn’t hit him; wolves were almost impervious to alcohol, and it would take a tank full to get him drunk. “I want nothing to do with you, Devon,” he said, “the same as always. I know you find that hard to believe.”

“If you don’t want anything to do with us,” Devon said, staring Ian down, “then you should just go live somewhere else.”

“Make me,” Ian growled, staring back.

“Can I ask a question?” Anna asked.

They all looked at her.

She didn’t even look ruffled. She had a real backbone, this woman, and she seemed immune to the testosterone levels in the room. “No one has explained to me how Charlie Donovan died,” she said.

It was Heath who answered. He smiled at her. “He died in his bed, if you can believe it,” he said. “After a life like his, with all of the people who hated his guts—he just went to bed one night and never woke up. No one got the chance to kill him.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Ian couldn’t help but add.

“He was our father,” Devon protested, “and our alpha. Show respect.”

“Oh, please,” Heath said. “You’re just as happy he’s dead as we are, Devon. You just don’t want to admit it.”

The scent hit Ian’s nose just before the door swung open, and he looked up to see another wolf come in the room. Of course. This would make his morning complete, wouldn’t it? Might as well get it over with.

Brody Donovan wore a baseball cap, a blue plaid flannel shirt over a white t-shirt, and worn jeans. He was the only one of them who didn’t wear a beard—he was clean-shaven, his dark brown hair grown just long enough to curl beneath the rim of the hat, his dark brown eyes looking out at all of them with their usual closed-off expression.

“What the fuck, you guys?” he said, annoyed. He walked into the room and went straight behind the bar. “I’ve been trying to talk to you boneheads forever, and everyone told me to fuck off. Now I find you all sitting in Heath’s bar, having tea.” He pulled a beer from the fridge beneath the bar. “Heath, I’m drinking your fucking beer.”

“Morning, Brody,” Heath said. “Help yourself. Which you’re already doing.”

“Hi there,” Brody said politely to Anna. He was probably the most human of all of them, Ian had to admit. “I’m Brody. Would you like a beer?”

“No thanks,” Anna said, as if werewolves offered her beer at ten o’clock in the morning every day. “It’s nice of you to offer. I’m Anna.”

“I heard. From the Tucker brothers out front. They’ve almost got the door fixed.” He shook his head. “Bears shouldn’t drink.”

“Anna is studying us,” Heath said to Brody. “More accurately, Anna is studying Ian.”

“I’m studying anyone who will talk to me,” Anna said.

Still standing behind the bar, Brody swigged his beer and looked at her. “Welcome to Shifter Falls,” he said.

“Thanks,” Anna replied. “I like it here.”

Brody barked a laugh. “Then you’re nuts.” He looked at the back of Devon’s head, since Devon was sitting with his back to him. “Devon, I don’t see any blood in here. Did you take your meds today?”

“Fuck off, Brody,” Devon said without turning around.

“I have another question,” Anna broke in.

They all looked at her, quiet again.

Anna looked around at them. “Why is it that ever since I came to Shifter Falls, I haven’t seen anyone use a cell phone? I mean, you all seem to go to a lot of trouble to talk face to face.”

It was a fair question; Ian remembered that humans were attached to their technology. “Shifters hate cell phones,” he explained to Anna. “The signals are irritating to our senses. The signal isn’t very good out here, anyway.”

“Face to face was good enough for thousands of years,” Devon added in a grumble. “You need to talk to someone, you go find him.”

“And try to rip his throat out,” Ian added, glaring at Devon. “And fail.”

Heath leaned back in his chair. “Also, Anna, you may have noticed that our objective is actually to avoid each other. Cell phones are the opposite of that.”

“Well, I for one wouldn’t mind a few goddamn cell phones,” Brody said, slamming his beer down on the bar. “I keep trying to tell you guys, we need to talk.”

“About what?” Heath asked.

“John Marcus and his son, Crazy Ronnie,” Brody said. “That grizzly bear fight wasn’t the only thing that happened last night. Gus Wallace was found in the basement of the old Titan’s warehouse this morning, torn to pieces. Someone killed him. And since Gus was high up in our father’s pack, I think we know who it was.” He looked around at them. “If it was John Marcus or Ronnie, we have no choice, shitheads. We have to hunt them down.”

A
nna felt
Ian go tense next to her. It wasn’t fear, but anger, and agitation. She didn’t think it had to do with his brothers, but with something they’d said.

“Gus Wallace,” Heath said. “One of Charlie’s old-timers. I had no idea he was still around.”

“He was still around,” Devon said. His brows were lowered. “I didn’t hear that Gus was killed. Someone would have told me.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re not as connected as you thought,” Brody said. “The body was found a few hours ago, but it was cold, so he was killed sometime last night. I just talked to Chief Oliver about it. Face to face, instead of on a fucking cell phone.”

Ian spoke, and his voice was low with fury, so intense the other wolves went still. “If you think I’m going to avenge Gus Wallace, think again,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s overdue.”

Brody frowned at him. “Well, Gus wasn’t exactly a graduate of charm school, but—”

“No.” Ian put his hand on the table, flat, palm down. “He was a piece of garbage. He was Charlie’s drug dealer, or have you forgotten?”

Anna held her breath. She remembered what Ian had told her during the drive here—that his mother had died of an overdose. No wonder he had no interest in avenging a drug dealer.

“It isn’t about who Gus was,” Brody insisted. “It’s about the fact that someone—most likely John Marcus—ripped him to pieces and got away with it. We need law and order in Shifter Falls. The cops sure as hell don’t provide it. Charlie was an evil piece of shit, but at least he kept the violence under control.”

“He kept people like John Marcus under control because he was worse than them,” Ian said. “He controlled them with fear, just like he controlled everyone with fear. And he kept the drug dealers under control because he was their kingpin, the biggest dealer of all.” He looked around. “No one avenged my mother when Gus Wallace sold her enough heroin to kill someone five times her body weight. A deal good old Charlie, with all his law and order, approved.” He looked at his brothers one by one, and Anna could see how painfully controlled he was, how he was keeping his anger leashed beneath his muscles and his skin. “So no, I don’t care who ripped up Wallace. I’m glad he’s dead, and I hope to fuck it hurt.”

There was a beat of silence. Heath dropped his gaze to the table. Brody shifted his weight.
Someone say something,
Anna thought.

But it was Devon who opened his mouth. “Maybe we guessed it wrong,” he said, giving Ian a level stare. “Maybe it was our ex-con here who killed Wallace. He sure as hell had a motive.”

Anger came off of Ian in waves. “And if I did,” he growled at Devon, “what the fuck are you going to do about it?”

He didn’t do it,
Anna wanted to shout at them.
He couldn’t have. He was with me last night.
But she knew the interruption wouldn’t be welcome. The brothers were working something out here.

All it needed was just one word. Just one word, from any of them, saying they didn’t believe Ian had done it. But there was only silence.

Ian pushed back his chair and stood. He looked down at Anna and touched her arm briefly. “Good luck with all your bullshit, you guys,” he said. “We’ll see you later.”

“Ian,” Brody said.

But Ian didn’t answer. He strode from the room on his long, strong legs, and Anna quickly followed him. She wanted to touch him, to put a hand on his shoulder or his arm, but she couldn’t quite get up the courage.

Only when they were out on the street did Ian turn to her. His green eyes held a mix of anger and concern. “Sorry about that,” he said, touching her again, just a brief brush of his fingertips against her upper arm. The touch seemed to reassure him as much as it reassured her, and she felt it through her like an electric shock. “I warned you about my brothers.”

“They’re a little insensitive,” Anna agreed.

“Yeah, well, it runs in the family.”

He turned and walked down the sidewalk, moving slow enough this time that she could follow. “Are you okay?” she asked him.

He was quiet for a minute as they walked, as if he was thinking over the question. “I’m actually pretty good,” he said. “I’ve wished Gus Wallace would die horribly for a long time.”

“They don’t know that you found her, do they?” Anna asked, taking a guess based on his anger, the tension in his big body. “Your mother. When she overdosed. They don’t know that you’re the one who found her.”

“No,” he said quietly.

Anna thought about her own mother, tucked away in a library, studying medieval manuscripts. How in the world would she feel if she’d found her mother dead? How would she feel toward the man who had sold her the drugs that killed her? Anna had been raised to live, let live, and forgive, but she’d never been tested the way Ian had been. It was a side of life she’d never been exposed to, and she found herself trying to understand. “But you never took revenge,” she said.

Ian glanced at her, and she saw reflected in his eyes the knowledge that he couldn’t have committed the murder, because he was home in his apartment with her. “I’m not a killer,” he said. “Not of humans, anyway. Deer and rabbits, okay. But I don’t get off on violence.” He turned a corner and led them down a side street that seemed to be a dead end, with the woods beyond. “I’ll admit I fantasized about it. But hell, I fantasize about a lot of things.”

“Really?” she asked, provoking him. “Like what?”

That made him laugh, which it was intended to do. “Oh, no. I’m not telling you that, Anna. That’s not part of the study.”

It could be,
she thought wildly. She really, really wanted to know what Ian Donovan fantasized about. Women? What kind of women? One woman in particular? He’d already told her he didn’t have a girlfriend, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a woman he liked. One he fantasized about.

“Where are we going?” she asked him, to change the subject. The street they were on ended at a chain-link fence, and Ian swung over it easily, his body moving with quick grace. Beyond the fence the ground sloped upward, crusted with thin snow, and disappeared into the trees.

“I need to run,” Ian explained, holding out a hand. “I’m tense, and I can’t think.”

Anna climbed the fence, then gripped his big, warm hand as she swung her legs over the top and climbed down the other side. “Why are you taking me with you?”

“Because it’s safer,” he said. “I don’t plan to hunt, just shift and run. Fifteen, twenty minutes, that’s all I need.”

“Changing for so short a time makes a difference?” she asked him as they started up the slope toward the trees. The air had a clear, crisp bite to it, cold but pleasant. Anna loved the air in Colorado; it was like a drug in her lungs.

“It does,” Ian answered her. “I’m always better after I’ve been in touch with my wolf. He centers me, clears my head.” He tapped his temple. “A wise shifter learns early to listen to his wolf, because the wolf is the best part of you. Your wolf is always the one who knows the answers. It’s the man who tends to think too much and tie himself in knots.”

“And what do you need answers for?” she asked him, trying not to think of the possibility that she was about to see him naked again.
Be cool, Anna.

“What the hell I’m going to do next,” Ian said. “That’s what I have to figure out.”