Sherry's Wolf (10 page)

She paused in scrubbing the frying pan. Maybe she
had
to trust him, if she wanted a chance to build a home where she was loved. Dixie had told her once that trust was sometimes a scary leap of faith that time alone could prove the success of. Sherry wasn’t sure she had the courage to take that leap. Yet Stag’s words about love struck her as blindingly brilliant. Being
in
love was a feeling. If Stag was right, then loving was doing, not feeling.

She had been in love with LeRoi. A good, strong marriage might begin with the husband and wife being madly in love, but it endured and grew when both partners loved each other with their actions, not just words. She wondered how many marriages foundered when the partners fell out of love and never progressed to the next stage?

A lot, she decided. Just look at the divorce rate. Marriage was work, with lots of open communication and putting the other person first. Dixie had told her that during one of their counseling sessions. Sherry thought a lot of people found it easier to give up than work things out.

Not that every marriage could be saved. Sherry put the frying pan away with an angry clang. As a battered wife, she knew that some things couldn’t be fixed even by putting the other person first. In fact, an abuser should never be put first. A woman had a responsibility to protect herself and her children from a person who abused them, whether it was physical abuse, sexual abuse or emotional abuse. Dixie had taught her that. Bits and pieces from her counseling sessions were coming together in her mind, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle to make a perfect picture.

Stag wasn’t an abuser. He was persistent, over-protective and bossy, but he’d never hurt her. Maybe she wasn’t in love with him, but did she love him? She remembered how lost and hurt she felt when she thought he had gone back to the Clan without saying goodbye. She would miss him horribly if he gave up trying to win her. Her hands stopped drying the dishes as she thought about that. She would miss him. If he relinquished his claim on her, she could have fifty husbands to choose from. At that thought, breakfast congealed in her stomach. She didn’t want any of them. She wanted Stag.

After spending a watery hour cleaning the kitchen, Sherry girded her loins to go find Stag. She had one more hurdle to get over, and that was a gray-furred, four-legged one.

* * *

Stag pulled off the pants he’d put on for bed last night and let his wolf out. His mate was inside crying and he didn’t know why. She’d told him to leave, so he couldn‘t even try to comfort her. The wolf didn’t understand why they couldn’t go in and put their head on her lap and whine in sympathy. Stag tried to project soothing thoughts and the freedom of a run in the snow. The wolf was reluctant until Stag imagined that they wouldn’t be running just for fun, but to ensure that no enemies were near to try to steal their mate. Roused to a welcome duty, the wolf settled into a lope.

A half hour of steady running brought the scent of a friend. Another wolf came out of a band of trees and turned into Snake, one of Taye’s Pack. Stag pushed his wolf back so he could change too. The two men greeted each other with hearty fists thumped into each other’s backs.

“I really doubt she wants me to do that,” Stag said grimly. Then he shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know why she’s crying. I thought we were having a nice conversation. I told her that I loved her. She tried to hide it, but she was starting to cry. What did I do?”

Taye bumped shoulders with Stag in sympathy. “Women are like that, sometimes. For some reason that no man will ever understand, they just need to cry every now and then. It tortures our wolves, but it’s best to just let ‘em do it. With Carla, I’ve learned to either go away until she’s done, or just let her cry on me. She doesn’t usually need me to say much, but there’s times when she just wants me to listen. The hard part is knowing when she wants me to go and when she wants me to stay. I ask, but,” Taye shrugged, “I don’t think she knows which she wants, either, most of the time.”

Stag sighed. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. A faint call lifted his head. The other two men also heard it. Their faces sharpened when they heard a distant voice calling Stag’s name.

“Sherry!” he gasped.

“She’s not screaming,” Taye soothed him.

But she was calling for him. Stag let his wolf out to run back to the cabin. The wolf was faster, and, goaded by fear for Sherry, he fairly flew over the snow. Taye and Snake followed, also in wolf form. Sherry was standing by the door, bundled in her coat, looked around and calling his name. Her face was startled when she saw three wolves running for her. She visibly had to steel herself to stand still instead of running back into the cabin. Pride welled in Stag. She had come a long way in three months.

He let his wolf sniff at her, and once he was assured that Sherry was neither hurt nor frightened, the wolf faded back. In man form, Stag grabbed her arms.

“Are you okay?”

Her beautiful dark eyes were still swollen with tears. They opened wide when she saw Snake and Taye change. She jerked her eyes back to his face. “Yes, I’m fine. I wanted to talk … I mean we didn’t finish our talk about your wolf. I, um, didn’t know we had company.”

Taye smiled. “We’re not staying. Me and Snake were running patrol when we saw Stag. While we were talking, we heard you call. We just wanted to be sure you were alright.”

Snake and Taye let their wolves back out and trotted away. Sherry waved uncertainly at their furry backs before she opened the cabin door. “Are you coming in, Stag?”

“Sure. I’ll put my pants on. Be there in a second.”

Even a wolf would shiver when pulling snowy pants over his sensitive bits. Stag growled at himself for forgetting to put the pants somewhere out of the snow and followed his mate back into the cabin. Sherry had hung her coat up and was standing nervously at the table. Stag grabbed both chairs and put them in front of the fire.

“It’s warmer over here, Sherry. Come sit down.” He waited until she had settled herself. “I’m sorry I made you cry,” he apologized tentatively. “I never meant to.”

She sat. “I know, Stag,” she said softly, staring into the yellow flames wavering in the grate. “It wasn’t really you. It was …” She trailed off, slim straight brows pulled together in thought. “It was what you said and how it made me feel.” She flicked a hesitant half-smile his way. “Jodi and Dixie have been trying to teach me to pay attention to my feelings. Have you ever wanted something all your life, wanted it so bad that you would do anything to have it? But every time you grabbed for it, it turned out to be a fake and bit you on the ass? And then, one day, someone held it out for you to take. But you were afraid to take it because it was too easy. You thought it would turn and bite you too.”

He thought he understood what she was trying to say. His mate. He had always wanted a mate. But he wasn’t afraid of it, only of losing her. “What if it doesn’t bite you? What if this time it truly is the one thing you want? Isn’t that worth taking a risk for?

After a quiet minute she nodded. “Maybe it is. But leaps of faith are scary.”

Stag dared to take one of her slender hands into his and squeezed it gently. “I’ll catch you,” he promised fervently. “My wolf will never let me to fail you.”

Her delicate jaw tightened. For a minute her hand was limp in his. Then she grasped his hand in a firm grip.

“Yeah, that’s the next thing on the agenda. We need to talk about your wolf, Stag.” She was silent a second, gathering her thoughts. “Where I come from we don’t have wolves like you. And you know what bugs me the most about it?” She jerked her hand free and her voice sharpened. “It’s this mystical mumbo-jumbo Bam!-you-are-my-one-true-mate-and-neither-of-us-has-a-choice crap. That sucks, alright? I don’t believe in magic. And it’s totally not fair that I don’t have a choice.”

He waited to be sure she was finished. “Sherry, you
do
have a choice. I’m the one that doesn’t have a choice. For me, it’s you or no one. My wolf won’t let me have anyone else. But you can tell me no.”

“Can I?” She stared into the fire, arms wrapped around herself. “Doesn’t seem like it, especially considering you kidnapped me to force me to stay here with you for a week.”

Oh. He forced down the urge to squirm. She had a point. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think of it that way.” It was a good thing Taye had left or he might have punched him. But he couldn’t blame Taye. It was his own fault that he let his impatience get the better of him. “I thought it was a good idea for us to be alone so we could talk and get to know one another.”

She surprised him by saying, “It was a good idea. I just wish we had talked about it first so I could have agreed. Not that I would have,” she admitted reluctantly. “But I’ve learned a ton about you in just the short time we’ve been here.” She’d been picking at her thumbnail, but now she looked at him. “I need to meet your wolf. Will you change for me?”

Inside, Stag’s wolf sat up with excitement. Stag forced his own excitement down. “Are you sure?”

She half turned in her chair. “Yeah. Can you tell him –or think at him, or whatever— to not jump on me? That might be a little scary.”

He almost wanted to laugh, but she sounded so nervous he didn’t dare. “Yeah, I can do that.”

He stood up and pushed his pants down, kicking them away as he called his wolf.
You heard her
, he muttered inwardly,
no jumping
. In his mind, he projected an image of the wolf sitting like a well trained poodle beside her chair. He swore he felt the wolf chuckle as he faded back to let the wolf out.

From the distant place in the back of the wolf’s mind he was always relegated to when his wolf was out, Stag felt the wolf go to Sherry, nails clicking on the wood floor. He sat primly and lifted one paw for her to shake. The wolf seemed confused when she didn’t take it. The wolf had seen pet dogs do that and it always made people smile. Stag tried to see Sherry’s face through the wolf’s eyes. Her face was frozen, eyes almost circular, as she cowered back with one hand clutching at her throat. The wolf could taste her fear in the quick, shallow breaths she panted. He whined and leaned away from Sherry, trying to look harmless.

Throat working convulsively, Sherry reached a shaking hand to the wolf’s head.

“Oh, God,” she breathed, “please, don’t bite me. Can you understand me? Do you know what I’m saying?”

Stag should have told her the wolf didn’t understand words. But he understood actions. Sherry was touching his head with a hand that trembled and her scent screamed fear. The wolf didn’t want her to fear him. He leaned his considerable weight against her and laid his head in her lap. If he’d been a cat, he would have been purring.

***

Sherry looked down at the monster head that took up nearly all of her lap. The wolf was just as big as she remembered from that first day at the plane. His fur was thick and rough under her fingers, but he didn’t move as she hesitantly stroked her hand along his head and neck. His eyes were closed in what looked like canine bliss.

“Did you know that when I first came to America my father had a big, mean German Shepherd mix dog?” she whispered. “I never was very big, and when I was six years old, I was tiny. That dog was twice my size. My brother Antoine sicced him on me the second day I was there. Scared me to death. Antoine laughed and laughed.”

Even now that memory hurt. The tears from earlier bloomed again.

“I don’t know why Antoine was so mean to me. I was practically a baby, and it wasn’t my fault that his dad got my mom pregnant. He was only nine, and my father said boys will be boys, but he never did grow out of his meanness. Probably got it from his mother. She was a real witch.”

The wolf whined, turning his head sideways on her knee to look up at her with eerie pale blue eyes nothing like Stag’s. But he still didn’t move, so Sherry dared to keep petting him. She could feel the leather cord of the small buckskin bag buried in the fur, the one Stag always wore. This really was Stag.

”I guess you’re not so scary. Not like Duke was. Maybe it was the way you jumped at me that day at the plane. I was sitting on the ground, so you looked even bigger than you are. It must have reminded me of all the times Duke lunged at me when I was a little girl. You won’t growl at me or lunge at me, will you?”

Tears dripped off her face when she remembered the helpless child she had been, taken away from what was familiar and put into a place where she didn’t speak the language and no one looked out for her. Not only was she unloved, she was tortured by her half-siblings and terrorized by their dog. Sherry wept for that child now, drowning in the pain of abandonment and isolation that child had felt but couldn’t comprehend.