Seer: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 8) (9 page)

“That sounds like Alpha,” Arnold said.

Leo finally looked at him. His expression was perfectly neutral. Perfectly
perfect
. Everything on his face was exactly where it should have been, except for his nose, which Kinzy was idly squeezing as she nodded off.

“Well, give that some thought.” Sheldon patted the papers atop his desk into a pile and tapped their bottom edges against his desktop. “Me and Mary’ll look into the custody issue and see if we can call off the news hounds. They’d probably get bored on their own soon enough, but let’s see what we can do to nip the sensationalism in the bud now.”

“I’ll call you when I have more information,” Mary said. “I won’t keep you waiting long. I understand the situation is urgent, and that you’d like to resolve it as soon as possible.”

“I do.” Leo pushed her chair back a bit, stood, and held out her arms for Kinzy.

Arnold’s sideways look might have warned a less entitled woman off, but Kinzy was Leo’s, and Leo needed her. She needed her baby in her arms to squeeze and fuss over so she didn’t have to think, and so she didn’t have to have any important conversations with Arnold just yet. She was afraid to hear what he had to say.

He handed Kinzy up to her and stood, too.

Then he shook Sheldon’s hand and reached for Mary’s.

Leo left before she could see him touch her.

The wolf inside her was all worked up, and she had much stronger feelings about Arnold’s proximity to the Amazon than Leo-the-Lady was letting on.

The wolf thought Arnold deserved a bite to the rear end, but Leo-the-Lady thought—
hoped
—he was just a friendly man with decent public manners.

She kept telling herself that as she passed through the outer office and stepped outside onto the sidewalk.

Never in her life had she been so unsettled and agitated.

Over a man?

She scoffed and started a brisk trot down to the bakery. She needed a bear claw pastry or an éclair, and
soon
, or she wouldn’t be able to control what came out of her mouth next.

What the heck is wrong with me?

Arnold’s job tended to be pretty quiet, given his nighttime shift. Surprisingly, most Vikings liked to turn in long before eleven. Norseton was quiet in the evenings, save for the occasional hare darting across his path, or planes passing overhead.

He walked a slow square around the executive mansion’s grounds, checking to make sure all the secondary doors were locked and that nothing seemed out of place. His routine was to repeat that once every hour, and then spend the rest of his time at the security desk watching the live camera feeds for trespassers and other threats. He was responsible for half the cameras, and whoever was at the gatehouse was watching the other half.

“Should probably see who’s there tonight,” he mused quietly.

Back at the security desk, he picked up the phone receiver and punched the extension for the gatehouse.

“Everything all right?” Jim answered on the first ring.

Arnold didn’t know Jim very well. He spent most of his time away from the compound, assessing outside threats to the Afótama, but he seemed to be a friendly enough guy from what little Arnold had seen of him.

“Yeah, everything’s all right,” Arnold said. “I was just seeing who was working on the other end tonight.”

“I haven’t been on gatehouse duty in forever. Lonely as fuck up here in the dark. I know better than to wish for a little action, but after a while, you start hearing things.”

Arnold chuckled and checked the time. They were barely an hour into their respective shifts. Jim was going to be hearing things for a long while to come.

“Well, if you start seeing things, too,” Arnold said, “give me a call, and I’ll give you a reality check.”

“Since you’re here, maybe you can give me one right now.”

“About what?” Arnold glanced at each little video image on his two monitors, paying especially close attention to the feeds from areas that abutted Jim’s.

“I heard a rumor that you have visions.”

Arnold snorted and leaned back in his rolling chair. “Yeah? Who’d you hear that from?”

“Pretty reliable source, in my opinion. Your own sister.”

“You shouldn’t trust anything that comes out of her mouth when she’s smiling. Was she smiling?”

“No. She was eating a cheeseburger at the time.”

“Where did you get to see my sister eating a cheeseburger?”

“At the diner earlier. You know how it goes. I was stalking a certain lady wolf and she happened to be sitting with your sister.”

“Leticia, you mean.”

“You know the one, then.”

“What’s the holdup with that, anyway? She’s over eighteen. If you wait much longer to make a move, Colt’s gonna start up another one of his betting pools and let folks guess when you’ll finally get your shit together.”

“He probably already has. I’m not waiting on any particular thing.”

“So…”

Jim didn’t respond, and Arnold wasn’t going to goad the guy. Arnold wasn’t exactly an expert on werewolf relationships, as evidenced by his own difficulties securing a particular one.

He’d never heard of a wolf who
had
a mate but whom he wasn’t with. Apparently, though, that was what Leo was used to. Arnold didn’t like it.

“You were asking about my visions,” Arnold said.

“Yeah. How do they work? Do you get to pick what you see?”

“Nah. I suppose I see whatever the wolf goddess thinks is important at any given time. Mrs. Carbone says I’m an oracle, whatever that means. There was no word for what I can do back in my old pack. My mother got visions, too, and so did my grandfather. They were outsiders, kinda. Folks more or less left them alone.”

“We didn’t have anything like that in my old pack, either,” Jim said. “But there wasn’t a lot of magic flowing around there in general—not like here.”

“Why’d you get kicked out?”

“Same reasons as every other guy here, I guess. I was a threat to the alpha. Only difference from most is that the alpha was my father.”

“Oh,
shit
, man.”

“Yeah, well. Can’t change the past. He actually tried to send me away sooner, but my mother wouldn’t let him. She could only intercede for so long.”

Arnold whistled low. “I guess everything turned out okay in the end though, right?”

“We’ll see.” On that inscrutable note, Jim clucked his tongue and then grunted. “Back to work I go. There’s a truck coming. Looks like the nightly grocery delivery. I’ll hit the patrol buzzer if it’s not.”

“Understood.” Arnold disconnected. He checked all his feeds again, and then allotted himself exactly one minute of thumb-twiddling before he started fixating on shit.

Mate shit, mostly.

Fifteen seconds into idly circling his thumbs, he growled and picked up his cell phone.

11:46.

He called her, anyway.

“Hello?” Leo answered sleepily.

“What time do you work tomorrow?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“What time do you work?”

“Arnold?”

“You don’t recognize my voice? I would have thought the wolves here would have been easier to tell apart, but I guess I can’t fault you for your inexperience.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that you haven’t spent much time on the phone with men, right?”

“I haven’t.”

Digging a hole here
.

He wasn’t even sure why he’d called, only that he’d
had
to. His inner wolf was getting impatient, and Arnold didn’t want to risk the beast running the show when he was still in his human form. His animal half had a knack for making enemies when he didn’t get his way. That might have been all well and good back when Arnold and Petra had been unaffiliated, but they’d gained a pack and he wanted to fit in.

Arnold took a breath to clear his head and tore a fresh, innocent sticky note into rough strips. “Let me try this again. Sorry for calling you so late, but I can’t stand being so unsettled all the time.”

“Me neither.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, maybe I don’t show that I’m off-center. I’m a mess even on the best of days, but more so now in particular. The girls tell me it’s normal.”

“What is?”

“That if you spend too much time away from your mate, you get…
cranky
.”

“Cranky?” The word seemed too mild a term for what Arnold was actually feeling. He felt
vicious
, and the only reason he wasn’t acting out his aggression was because he was drawing heavily on his human half. He doubted he’d have the same control if he’d been a full-blooded wolf. Apparently, there were a few advantages to mixed genetics.

“I didn’t want a mate,” Leo said.

Arnold clamped his teeth and pressed his lips tightly together. Nothing he could have said at the moment would have moved the conversation forward in a positive way.

“And I think that’s the wedge between us right now. I never wanted one, but then I got one I didn’t want, and then another who doesn’t even remember biting me.”

Again, he kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t going to tell her that he wished he hadn’t bitten her, even if that was what she wanted to hear. He’d never been a liar.

“I always dreamed I’d spend my life on my own, with no one interfering with my…
ugh
.” She yawned. “With my day-to-day routines, or having a say in what my plans were. I imagined that I’d wake up every morning energized and ready to do my own thing. I was gonna challenge myself to do something new every day, just because I could.”

Arnold zoomed in on the camera image of Second Street and watched a refrigerated truck reverse into the grocery store’s back lot. He knew the truck was safe—Jim had already checked the compartments at the gate. Arnold was just fascinated by how anyone could back a vehicle of that size so precisely into a spot. “And?”

“And then I grew up, I guess. Or was made to. I became some guy’s wife and then had a baby. I wouldn’t give up the baby now, but I could have done without the man. Hard not to look at Kinzy and think about him. I think about him less every day, though.”

“I hope that you’ll get to a point where you don’t think about him at all,” he said, and scrolled to an image of Main Street. There was always someone at the park, either making out in the gazebo or stargazing. Norseton was a perfect place for stargazing. There was so little light pollution.

“You’re not gonna recant that, huh?” she asked.

“No, Leo, I don’t see the point. Like any wolf, I have more than my fair share of pride. I’d rather think that my mate is pondering a future with me than regretting what she did with the man who came before me.”

“I guess that’s reasonable.” She yawned again, and Arnold wanted to kick himself for calling her. She probably didn’t get much sleep. Kinzy was so young that she probably still woke a lot, and he’d gone and stirred Leo from what might have been actual REM sleep.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he said softly.

“Make what up to me?”

“I woke you up. I’ll watch Kinzy when I’m off so you can get some sleep.”

When she didn’t respond, he thought she
had
fallen asleep. He was going to disconnect the call, but then her tired voice came through clear as day. “Okay. Maybe tomorrow? I’m still thinking about what Mary and Sheldon said. Maybe we could talk about things tomorrow before I go to bed.”

He didn’t know which part of the discussion she was referring to, but he wasn’t going to press her. His intuition said to let her sleep. They could talk later. They’d made a little progress, in his opinion, and any progress was better than none.

“Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

The best Leo could do when the doorbell chimed and she was up to her elbows in baby funk was shout toward the door. “It’s open!”

She cringed, and then added, “I think.”

Very rarely could she change a diaper without some small disaster occurring. The phone would ring while she was reaching for a wipe, or she’d hear a pot bubbling on the stove. She was still working on mastering the multitasking-mommy thing.

The doorknob jiggled, and heavy footsteps sounded through the foyer soon after. “Keep your doors locked, Leonora,” Arnold called to the back of the house.

“Yeah, yeah.” She sighed and grabbed another flannel wipe out of the bin the very industrious wolf Christina had given her. Christina made the softest wipes out of the men’s old shirts. Apparently, she didn’t ask the men for their cast-offs. She just took their holiest ones off the clotheslines with their wives’ permission and cut them up before the men could tell her no.

“I’m used to keeping it open,” Leo said over her shoulder the moment she sensed the wolf’s energy in the nursery doorway. She didn’t dare take a longer look at him. She had firm intentions of getting truly restful sleep, and there was no way in heck that would be possible if a certain pretty male was lounging across her imagination like a werewolf Fabio on a chaise.

“You let folks access your house in Wolverton as they saw fit?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like there were ever that many people visiting. Mostly just my mother and sisters, and a few friends who weren’t afraid to be seen with me.”

“Why would anyone be afraid to be seen with you?”

Leo slipped a diaper under Kinzy’s bottom, and shrugged. “Oh, you can guess. ‘Leo runs her mouth too much,’ and, ‘Leo’s gonna get you in trouble if you’re not careful.’ The usual crap. Makes you wonder why anyone would have condoned me being paired off with any guy in the first place.”

She got Kinzy’s onesie snapped closed, scooped up the baby, and then held her out to Arnold—still managing not to look at him by crossing her eyes slightly. “Hold her while I wash my hands, will ya?”

“Sure.”

She probably needn’t have asked, but old habits were hard to break. Most men didn’t like having needy babies thrust at them.

She gathered up the dirty diaper and wipes and carried them to the bathroom with her. “Make yourself at home, if you like,” she called down the hall. “My sofa’s pretty comfortable. If Kinzy tries to nod off, give her a little tickle. I need to feed her. Maybe the spoiled little thing will actually sleep for more than three hours. She used to sleep so much better before I moved her to the crib.”

“So, you’re doing it for real now? How long ago did you decide?”

Leo washed and dried her hands, then squinted at her reflection in the mirror. “
Bleh
.” To Arnold, she called out, “I decided a few days ago, but have been trying to do it in unenthusiastic fits and starts. I figured I should just buck up and do what needed to be done. Christina said it’d take a while for Kinzy to get used to the new routine, but I’m not feeling so confident right now.”

Leo tried to pinch a bit of color into her cheeks, but all that did was make her look ill and spotty. “Ugh. I used to be cute,” she muttered.

She fluffed up her hair a bit in the front and tried the best she could to disguise where it was falling out in clumps. She’d expected there to be some shedding—something about postpartum hormones tapering off. The rest of the clumps coming out were most definitely attributable to stress. Contributing to her flat-lining self-esteem was the knowledge that her mother never looked anything but immaculate.

The obvious immediate solution to Leo’s distress was to turn off the bathroom light, which she did. She also pondered covering all the mirrors in the house, but that sounded even to her like overkill.

Arnold had his feet up on the coffee table, his legs crossed at the ankles, and Kinzy sitting forward on his lap attempting to gnaw on one of the feet of her onesie.

She wished she’d remembered her vow not to look at him, because apparently, he’d decided to go and mutilate himself. “Um, Arnold?” She pointed accusingly at him. “Where’s your hair?”

“My hair?” Brow furrowed, he raked a hand through what was left. He’d kept a little length on the top, but the sides were nearly bald. “Oh, yeah. I forgot you hadn’t seen me since I got a cut. I was overdue for one.”

She stood still, lamely silent for probably a minute with her lower lip quivering and tears building up at the corners of her eyes. “You cut your
hair
.”

He shrugged. “It always grows back.”

“Your
beautiful
hair. Why would you do that? You should have come to me first. I would have talked you out of it. And you went to that barber who only knows the one cut? Too many of the local Vikings have that cut, and I don’t like it on them, either.”

He had the temerity to laugh at her, and she growled. Her inner wolf had opinions about that hair, too. She’d wanted to play in it and he hadn’t given her a chance.

“It’s gone,” she whispered, pouting again.

“Leo, are you all right?”

“Uh-huh. Sure,” Leo said as she fumed her way into the kitchen. She yanked open the refrigerator door and fixed her gaze on the shelves within. She ground her teeth.

I wish I still had chocolate frosting left over so I could properly grieve.

She sighed.

He’s still pretty, though.

She drummed her fingers on the top of the fridge door, took a deep breath, and imagined that she was blowing away her hormonal silliness on an exhalation.

That seemed to help clear her head.
Thank goodness.
“Hey, do you want anything?”

“What’s good?” he asked.

“Nothing, really. Frosting’s gone.” She sputtered her lips. “My routine is still pretty scattered. I’d like to get to a point where I can adapt to my schedule changes a little better, but I haven’t had a chance to cook anything this week. I can make you a sandwich or something, though, if you want one.”

“Nah. That’d be too ironic.”

“What do you mean?”

“You making me a sandwich.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“I guess you were more or less out of the pop culture loop in Wolverton, huh?”

She got out meat and cheese and condiments, anyway. Maybe he didn’t want a sandwich, but she did, and that deli meat wasn’t going to good for much longer, regardless. “I must have missed that particular reference,” she said.

“I guess it’s become something of a running gag on the Internet and on television. If a person—usually a male person—wants to demean another, he’ll tell them to go make him a sandwich. It implies that the other person’s place is in the kitchen and not out where big, important people are talking.”

“Ugh.” Leo slathered some mayo onto whole wheat bread. Some Viking lady in the community had made the bread. She maintained a little bakery on Main, and also owned a larger factory that made bread for distribution throughout the Southwest. Leo loved knowing where her food came from—probably a holdover from having grown up on a farm. “Turkey okay?” she asked him. “Whenever I go into the grocery store, I get so overwhelmed by the options since I’m just feeding me. I always feel stupid buying a quarter-pound of this and a quarter-pound of that.”

“I doubt the folks behind the counter care.”

She shrugged and tore some lettuce leaves off the head. “They don’t seem like they do, but I’m used to folks acting one way, yet thinking another.”

“From what I’ve witnessed about the Afótama, they’re generally lacking in the pretense department.”

“That’s what everyone says.” She dropped what was left of the meat onto Arnold’s sandwich and tossed the empty wrap into the trash. “Hard getting used to that, too.”

“But you
want
to get used to it, right? You want to stay?”

“I like this place. Kinzy would have a happy childhood here, and I want to see what the town looks like as it grows.” She chuckled and rooted a long knife out of the utensil drawer to cut the sandwiches. “I want to see how this little wolf utopia expands in the coming years, too. I know I’ve just barely gotten here myself, but I’m eager to see who’ll come next and what they’ll be like.”

She stacked the sandwiches on one plate, grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry, and bottles of water from the fridge.

“I’ve heard rumbles,” Arnold said.

Kinzy had progressed to gnawing on her
other
foot, and seemed to be getting a youthful introduction to feminine multitasking, too, because she was also staring intently at Arnold’s face.

Better her than me
.

Leo set the plate on the table and handed a water bottle to Arnold. “What kind of rumbles?”

“I heard Alpha and his missus chatting with their niece—Esther—and Queen Tess this morning.”

“Where?” She settled onto the sofa cushion beside him and set the plate between the two of them. “And why Queen Tess? She’s super busy.”

“She is busy, but she’s a creative thinker, and she happens to like when the wolf ladies call her for stuff. I think she’s used to Afótama folks thinking she’s unapproachable.”

“But because the wolves aren’t looped unto their weird psychic network, we don’t read her the same way her own clan does.”

“Exactly.”

“What were they talking about?” She handed him a sandwich half, and somehow managed to suppress a yelp when his fingertips skimmed hers. The man had seen her nude and had bitten her, and yet the tiniest little touch made her come apart at her seams.

He chuckled and turned the sandwich around to point a corner toward his mouth. “I wasn’t technically supposed to be listening.”

“But you were.”

“Well, they were right there.”

“Where?”

“Coffee shop. Central meeting spot, and all. Seems there’s always at least one wolf there nowadays.” He took a bite. Chewed.

She drummed her foot impatiently, waiting for more info. She hated being left in suspense. Maybe Arnold had visited to give her a chance to rest, but she wanted to
talk
. She wanted to gossip and know everything she’d been missing out on when she’d been fretting about her not-husband and massaging the blisters out of her poor feet after work every day.

He was about to take another bite, and she growled at him and gave his shoulder a poke. “Stop that!”

He threw up a hand. “Stop
what
? You gave me a sandwich, and now you expect me not to eat it?”

“Multitask. Talk with food in your mouth. I won’t mind.”

“You’re that curious?”

“Duh. Tell me stuff.”

He chuckled and took another sandwich bite, somehow navigating the morsel around Kinzy’s questing fingers. She didn’t have teeth, but that didn’t stop her from trying to get her hands on “real” food.

Crap. Still gotta nurse her
.

Leo shoved more food into her mouth and waved Arnold on. “Come on. Tell me,” she said through all that meat and bread.

He nodded, and then swallowed. “Okay, you know how Esther and Anton sneaked their family and the rest of their kind of wolf out of their Jersey pack?”

“Uh-huh?” Leo had been pretty busy, but she’d caught the gist. Alpha and his family were descended from a different subspecies of werewolf than most of the folks in the pack. The few remaining families of that species were scattered across the country, not fully integrated in their packs. Other wolves were wary of them because they
didn’t
have to shift for the full moon like everyone else.

“Well, Arnold said, “they’re looking to find whoever’s left and bring them here. After centuries in this country, they would all be in one pack again.”

“Where are they gonna put them all?”

Arnold chuckled and wrapped an index finger around one of Kinzy’s. She was still trying to get at his sandwich.

Too soon for you to be setting your sights on solid foods, baby girl. Stay little a while longer.

“The more pressing concern right now is finding them all,” Arnold said. “Except for the packs we’re already aware of—like where Darius and Colt came from, and of course the Carbones and Denises—the rest are scattered. Esther thinks she knows where a few might be. Queen Tess has promised that if we get them here, they won’t be homeless for long. They’re already parceling off tracts for more housing out here.”

“That’d make for an interesting pack, that’s for sure.”

Arnold grunted and popped the remnants of his sandwich half into his mouth.

Leo wouldn’t have bet money on it, but she thought she heard Kinzy heaving her very first sigh.

Well, the kid is a wolf
.

Leo set down her sandwich and held out her arms. “Hand her over. I think I’ve just about mastered the art of feeding her and myself at the same time.”

“You sure?”

“Sure that I can do it, or sure that I want to take her?”

His smile could have melted the heart of even the sourest old crone. His was a sexy, teasing smile that always made Leo wonder if he knew all the secrets of the world, and was keeping them all to himself for leverage. Like one of those gods Leo had read about on the back of the kids’ menu at the diner—Loki. The trickster.

She narrowed her eyes at Arnold. “You’re not trying to play tricks on me, are you?”

“No. No tricks. No trick questions, either. I’m just asking if you want to finish your sandwich before you take her.”

“Oh.” Leo pulled her gaze away from his intense one and slid an arm under Kinzy’s back. “Um. I’ll manage. She’s used to having crumbs fall on her. Sometimes, she’ll even ignore them.”

As Leo got Kinzy latched on, Arnold gave Leo a sideways look while toying with the remaining half of his sandwich.

“What?” she asked.

Leo’s chest was more or less covered, but given Kinzy’s propensity to play with her food, Leo didn’t think that would last long. Wolves didn’t tend to have hang-ups over naked bodies in general because of their shapeshifting imperatives, but Leo’s pack apparently hadn’t been like most others. The pack had segregated runs on full moon nights. Ladies went one way. Gents went another. Most of the wolves in the Norseton pack had probably become desensitized to flesh, but being looked at was a new thing for Leo.