The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry (Accidentally Paranormal Novel) (25 page)

Mara’s hands shook. If what Nina said was true, and someone had Jeff, they had him because he’d been in the lab that night. The same person who’d anonymously called Keegan. But why? God, she was tired of asking why. “I don’t understand why someone would want to harm Jeff? Just to use his phone and keep him from telling Harry about it?”

“Maybe this person thought Jeff knew about the serum? You sure you never let a word about that crazy shit slip, Short-Shot?”

Oh, there was no doubt in her mind. “Absolutely sure. All my notes were in my head. I have a photographic memory. So as I wrote them down—on paper, not an electronic device—I memorized them, and burned the notes afterward. Also something to note, I didn’t do it because I thought enough to worry about someone getting their hands on the serum and wreaking havoc. I did it because I didn’t want anyone to know pathetic Mara couldn’t find a mate to create a family with.”

Harry pulled her hand into his. “It isn’t pathetic to want to find the right person to mate . . . spend your life with. I’m damn tired of hearing you say that. You might not have seen how many men were interested in you, but everyone else damn well did. You were just being discriminatory. There’s a difference. So knock it off.”

Carl groaned from the other room, prompting Nina to snap her fingers. “You two heathens get dressed, and we’ll figure out where the fuck to go from here. I call we go back to Jeff’s and poke around some more. If he’s in Vegas, I’m America’s Next Top Model.” She stomped off to tend to Carl while Mara huddled into the throw.

“How’d you sleep?” he whispered into the top of her head, the scent of his sweater comforting against her nose.

Mara closed her eyes and savored Harry, his arms, the beat of his heart, for one more brief moment. “Well, I know I did a good job refinishing the floors. They’re as hard as floors should be,” she teased.

Harry reached around her to find his jeans, dropping hers in her lap. “They’re definitely hard. What say we do this on your bed next time?”

Slipping her jeans on and recovering her sweater, she let her eyes fall to the bottom of the couch and gulped. There would be no tomorrow. But Harry didn’t know that. “Bed it is.”

Harry rose, holding his hand out to her. He smiled down, warm and sweet, his teeth perfect and white. “If we can do, you know,
that
again, I’ll even put all those frilly pillows back on the bed afterward.”

Mara took the offer of his hand, allowing him to sweep her upward in his embrace. She laughed, forcing herself to ignore the numbers on her microwave’s clock and focus on the visual of Harry, his clumsy fingers trying to arrange her pillows the way she liked them. “I think it’s only fair. I put out. You pick up,” she teased, squeezing him one last time, refusing to linger too long in his embrace, before making her way to the kitchen to brew a fresh pot of coffee.

But Harry grabbed her hand and took the lead. “I’ll make coffee. You grab a shower first. I’d join you, but you know, Carl. Impressionable zombie and all . . .” he added with a wiggle of his eyebrows, his husky voice full of suggestion.

As the microwave’s clock struck one, she realized this Harry, the one not overcome with testosterone, was sweet and accommodating; this Harry was considerate.

But she didn’t have time for a shower, and she wouldn’t be able to help Nina scope out Jeff’s house.

When the doorbell rang, Nina whooshed by in a blurry vision of arms and legs, her eyes bright and aware, her words protective. “I got this. You two stay put. Harry? Just in case this isn’t the motherfucker kidnapping people right out from under our noses, brush your hair. You look like you used a hand blender on it.”

Harry’s hand self-consciously went to his hair. He licked his fingers and smoothed it down with a cheesy grin in Mara’s direction.

It was adorable and so Harry it hurt her heart. That was exactly as she wanted to remember him.

Squaring her shoulders, Mara sucked in a breath when Nina popped open the door.

The face on the other side of it was stoic, reserved, maybe even a little remorseful against the backdrop of the gloomy sky. Cooper Beaman held his hat respectfully in his hands.

Nina grinned, acknowledging one of many she’d defeated at Pack’s annual touch football game. “Cooper? How the fuck are you, dude? You here for a little rematch? How many times I gotta kick your ass before you accept I’m a chick and I rule the field, buddy? Go home and iron your pom-poms.” She slapped him on the back good-naturedly.

Mara watched Cooper, his eyes looking past Nina’s shoulder. Usually, Cooper was all about a good ribbing, especially when it came to his rivalry with Nina. But not today. He cleared his throat. “I’m here for Mara, Nina. Official business.”

Harry was instantly at her side, pushing her behind him before she had the chance to object. “What official business?” he demanded.

Mara let her forehead rest against his broad back for only a moment before she said, “It’s okay, Harry. I knew Cooper was coming.”

Harry whipped around, his eyes searching hers. “
For what?
”

Nina’s face went from playful to angry in an instant. “What the fuck’s goin’ on, Coop? What official business, dude? Spit it out, or you’re gonna find out what it feels like to be annihilated by a chick, ass sniffer!”

“Pack business,” Cooper said, straightening his spine before pulling a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

“Hold on a minute, Cooper, is it?” Harry stepped between Nina and Cooper, his hand on the man’s chest. “What the hell is this about?”

“Harry!” Mara grabbed his arm, scenting his anger. “It’s okay. Cooper’s here for me. I knew he’d be here. The council gave me twenty-four hours to get my personal affairs in order as consolation for turning myself in. I said I’d go peacefully, and I will.”

Stepping around Harry, Mara held her wrists out. “I’m ready, Cooper.” While she forced her voice to calm, her stomach threatened to empty itself.

“Hold the hell on!” Harry roared, pushing her hands away from Cooper, his eyes angry, his jaw tight. “The hell you’re taking her anywhere. Take your hands off her, or I’ll put mine on you!”

Mara’s heart swelled, hitting her ribs with a hard knock. Her hands shook when she took the handcuffs away from Cooper and slapped them on herself.

“Cooper, I’m gonna beat your ass bloody, motherfucker!” Nina yelled in his face.

“Nina, Harry! Both of you stop!” Mara shouted. “Please stop making this harder than it has to be. I thought you’d both be gone. I didn’t think that Harry and I . . .” she shook her head, fighting back tears. “I didn’t think you’d be here, Harry. I turned myself in the other day. There’s just no other way. Eventually, the pack would have found out you’re not a human anymore. How would you explain that? Should you lie for me? I had to take responsibility before you were considered a conspirator. Add in that someone’s bound to mention Jeff’s been gone from the lab. The Vegas story isn’t going to work a week from now when Jeff’s used up all his vacation time. To make everything so much worse, what if someone in Jeff’s family, or maybe a friend we don’t know about, begins to wonder where Jeff is and contacts the police? You said it yourself, Nina, human interference is always a problem. We can’t keep running behind this broken story, gluing the fallen pieces of it back together only to find more of it has chipped away. The pack will know how to handle both Jeff’s disappearance and the police. But I have to take responsibility for Harry’s turning. It doesn’t matter that it was an accident. It happened and it happened at my hands. Period. The council has to investigate in order to protect everyone. You included, Harry. So, please,
please
, just let me go with Cooper.”

Nina’s fists clenched and unclenched before her barely contained rage exploded. “Fuck you and your stupid goddamn pack, Cooper!” She flipped up both middle fingers. “You and all your fucking rules and bullshit. Mark my words, Cooper, and tell all your freakishly, old-ass comrades in crap, too, I’m comin’ for her. And when I do, you damn well better hope you’re not in the way,” she snarled down at poor Cooper, making his ruddy face go white.

“It’s my job, Nina.”

“Fuck you and your job! That you’re even a part of enforcing this kind of middle-age shit makes you a sissy-ass follower, collecting a paycheck at the expense of someone else’s life. Fuck. You.”

Aw. Nina really liked her. She’d linger on that revelation a little longer, but the color orange was in the distance, calling her name. “Nina,” Mara soothed, brushing her cheek on Nina’s shoulder. “I offered myself up, to keep Harry from having to lie and make up some wild story, and to keep us all free of guilt. Now let him take me, and let him take me peacefully. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Nina hissed in Cooper’s face, flashing her fangs in protest, but she didn’t try to stop him from taking her.

Harry put a hand on Cooper’s shoulder to thwart him. He loomed over Cooper, almost twice his size and bulk. “Just give me one minute, okay?”

Cooper nodded moving toward the opening of the door. “One minute. That’s it.”

Harry pulled her to his chest, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll come get you. Swear it. No way am I letting you take the fall for this, Mara. I’ll lie. I’ll tell them I drank the serum on purpose because I wanted to know what it was like to be a werewolf. They’ll believe it because I’m King of Geeks. Whatever it takes. But the hell I’m letting you go to werewolf jail. Hear me?” His breath shuddered from his lungs, making the width of his chest brush against her cheek.

She shook her head hard. “Don’t you dare do that, Harry! Stay with the kids. Hear me? They need you so much right now. Please,” she begged before pulling away, more tears threatening to escape. She rose on tiptoe and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “No matter what, they need you to be there. Don’t let them down,” she whispered before pushing her way past everyone and flying out the door toward Cooper’s waiting car.

The last thing her sharp ears picked up was the sound of poor Carl, wailing his discontent at Mara’s departure while Nina and Harry tried to soothe him.

CHAPTER

17

“Fuck!” Harry roared in impatience, making an already on-edge Carl jump.

Marty’s mouth was a thin line, her eyes rimmed with red as she, Wanda, and Nina gathered in the small cottage to formulate a plan to help Mara. “Keegan’s meeting with the council tonight. He’d better find a way to talk them out of this, or I’m going into full-on assault mode and storming the castle!”

Wanda squeezed Marty’s shoulder, her elegant face full of sympathy. She wiped a fresh batch of tears from Marty’s cheeks. “They’re really going to put her on trial?”

“Ain’t that some shit? Kid makes an honest mistake, one even Harry will tell them was without malicious intent, and still they have to try her in front of a jury of her peers. Some goddamn bunch of jackasses you got in your corner, blondie,” Nina growled.

Marty nodded her head. “You know what, Elvira? Today? Today I won’t disagree with you, and if I knew there was a way to take my family and get away from this ridiculous rule the council’s set forth, don’t think for a minute I wouldn’t!”

Mara had been gone for ten hours. Ten long, painful hours they’d waited to hear what the council’s intent was regarding Mara’s arrest.

Ten long hours wherein Harry kicked himself for not seeing the signs, the hidden messages she’d left him like a trail of breadcrumbs. She knew damn well he’d have found a way to try and stop her from handing herself over like she was guilty.

Wanda came up behind him. Grabbing his hand, she pulled it to her chest, as though she were trying to absorb some of his pain. Her voice was raw when she whispered, “Promise you, we’ll figure this out, Harry. No matter what it takes, we’ll find a way. Please believe.”

Nina clapped him on the back. “Goddamn right, we will. Don’t you worry, nerd. I’ll get her out of there if I have to chew my way through the motherfucking doors.”

He’d done all the believing he was capable of. Now he just wanted everyone to get the fuck out of his path while he got to Mara.

At that moment, Keegan walked through the door, his face grim, his eyes lined from exhaustion.

Marty didn’t rush to his side the way she normally did whenever her husband entered the room. She lifted her eyes to meet his, and Harry knew as the look passed between them it wasn’t good.

Harry stiffened and growled, stunning even himself with the level of his anger.

Wanda gripped him harder, holding him in place. On tiptoe, she whispered in his ear, “Harry, I’m begging you, think of the kids.
Please
. They need you so much. They adore you. I know you can’t feel that sometimes because they’ve struggled, but I’ve been with them almost every night since this happened, and they cling to your memory. Please, don’t be rash. We’ll help you. We’ll help the kids. Archibald’s fallen in love with them. Don’t deny him the chance to fall in love with you, too, because you did something stupid.”

He breathed deeply, forcing down the urge to break free of Wanda’s iron grip and bust Mara out. Nothing was more important than the kids, but Mara had taken a spot right alongside them. “Okay.” He cleared his throat, and his murderous thoughts. Turning to Keegan, he asked, “So what happens next? Tell me what we do?”

Keegan ran a hand through his dark hair, his eyes finding Harry’s. “She goes to trial in front of a jury of her peers. It goes the same way it does with humans.”

“How can she go to jail for an accident? This was a goddamn accident!” How the fuck was this happening?

Keegan’s head shook, slow and weary. “We have no precedent for this, Harry. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to see her punished. The problem is she has, in that mighty brain of hers, the wherewithal to create a formula that makes werewolves. That’s dangerous to the pack. It’s dangerous to everyone concerned. She created you. If she can do it, and she gets away with it, who’s to say someone else won’t do it and think they can get away with it?”

Harry’s jaw grew tight. “So they think if they lock her up it’ll keep some other lunatic from creating a serum just like it? Did it stop serial killers when they jailed Jeffrey Dahmer? That’s ludicrous!”

Keegan pulled off his knit cap, pinching the space between his eyebrows. “It sends a message, Harry. It’s a deterrent of sorts. Just like prosecuting anyone who’s broken a law. Mara knew what she was doing was an iffy proposition. She knew it could lead to trouble if she got caught.” Keegan held up a hand to keep Harry from protesting. “But don’t think I don’t understand your point. I do. I made it myself to the council. Still, they’ve decided to allow Mara’s peers to vote whether she can be trusted to never reveal the ingredients of that serum. She has a solid reputation in the community, mad scientist that she is. That’ll go a long way in keeping the council from believing she would sell this serum to someone.” He shook his head, sorrow streaking his eyes. “If she could have just waited, I would have found a way—something,” he murmured, worry lining his face.

Harry looked down at the floor, his gut in a knot. No way was he going to sit around while Mara was in jail. “She hated the lying. She knew it was only a matter of time before her scent on me wouldn’t fly anymore. She also knew she had to keep your alpha position safe. She didn’t want you to be accused of favoritism.”

Keegan approached him with clear hesitation. “In all this, I’ve forgotten to ask how you are. Marty tells me you want out no matter how you find it.”

“What if I find a way to do that? Will this council arrest me, too?” He was provoking unnecessarily, and while it was rude, Harry couldn’t stop himself.

“He’s not the fucking enemy, dude. Step off,” Nina said with a warning.

“What can the pack do to help you adjust, Harry? At least until you figure this out.” Keegan persisted, obviously not put off by his angry words.

Harry took in another deep breath. “My apologies. I’m taking this out on you when it’s not your fault. Just tell me what this proceeding is like. Can I be there?”

Keegan nodded. “You have no choice. They’ll call you as a witness. You just tell the truth and relay what happened the night you were turned.”

Harry scoffed without even realizing it. “Will it even matter? Will they take into account my testimony? They don’t seem to care much that I, the alleged victim, am just damn fine with the idea of being a werewolf. If I don’t want to press charges, there shouldn’t damn well be any.” It was all he could do not to break something, hit someone.

And he’d just admitted, out loud, he’d come to terms with being a werewolf.

It meant he could be with Mara. For as long as she’d have him.
If
she’d have him. He’d decided last night when she’d given him the speech about her age and all the kooky bits of information about werewolf-ing. He wanted Mara. Period. If that meant baying at the moon and living forever, he’d find a way to figure it out where the kids were concerned.

In this precarious situation, one he was told he could never change, he’d rather have Mara and the kids together than have them without her. He didn’t ever want to think about a time when the kids weren’t a part of his world. However, the cards he’d been dealt left him little choice but to accept what fate had handed him.

But he had to make one thing clear to Mara. If there ever came a time when he could reverse this, he would. Not because he hated the idea, but because Mimi and Fletcher were the most important things in his life, and to watch them leave this earth before him was unthinkable.

He ran a hand over his grainy eyes. “How can I make these council members understand?”

Keegan cleared his throat. “I’d like to think they will, Harry—if they hear it from you. They didn’t love Marty and me at first either. I was meant to mate with someone else entirely.”

Harry held a hand up. “Hold up. This pack chooses your mate? The hell I’ll be told who to spend my life with,” he grumbled. “Do they even know what century we live in? Next you’ll tell me dowries and goat exchanges are involved.”

Keegan barked a harsh laugh. “You know, there was a time . . . Never mind. The point is they adjusted. They’re not unreasonable. They’re just from another era, one where humans and werewolves don’t mix under any circumstances. So yes, I’d like to think they’ll find a way to understand how this happened.”

“Think
they will, Keegan?” Marty erupted in a yelp, disbelief riddling her question. “You have some pull, Keegan! Use it, damn it. I’m not going to sit back and let Mara go to prison because the council thinks she’s a crazy, werewolf-creating little Frankenstein. You know that’s not true! Surely her good reputation within the pack lets them see she’d never hurt a soul? What’s being a good girl for, if not for it to work in your favor? Jesus Christ!” Marty yelled up at him, her face contorted in fear and misery, her fists clenched at her side.

But Keegan didn’t shoot back like one would expect. Instead he pulled Marty to his chest and let her cry into it, releasing her ragged sobs of frustration.

Her raw, agonizing wail made his chest uncomfortably tight. Harry gripped the back of Mara’s couch.

The very couch he’d made the most incredible love with her on. And he was determined, despite their enormous differences, to have the chance to do that again.

Nina knocked his shoulder with hers and hitched her jaw toward the small hallway dividing Mara’s bedroom and the bathroom.

He followed without question. “Say something good, Nina. Say something that’ll keep me from blowing this whole thing for Mara by doing something unreasonable.”

Nina held up her phone, tapping it with a short nail. “Your favorite lame-ass witch doctor Guido just left me a voice mail. I think we got a lead on who snatched the damn kids and Carl. Listen.” She held her phone up to his ear.

Harry grabbed the phone, his eyes going wide as he heard what Guido had to say.

* * *

A
S
she entered the council courtroom, rich with miles of crown molding and an imposing judge’s bench that appeared a mile high, Mara lifted her chin, refusing to be ashamed of her prison garb. This might be, by far, one of the least flattering outfits she’d ever worn, but Marty’s words, as crazy a time as it was to actually remember them, still rang clear. “Even if it’s the worst fashion faux pas of your life, wear that bitch like you intended it, honey.”

Okay, so that had been in reference to the ugly oversized tie-dyed T-shirt she’d worn with a pair of red leggings and yellow ballet slippers, which Nina had promptly banned, but her jailhouse jumpsuit was sort of on the same level. She just wasn’t a free woman making the choice to wear something so ugly.

Clinking her way to her seat, along with what felt like an endless aisle of pack member after pack member in the crowd, she passed Marty and Keegan. Marty, threats of no contact to the prisoner be damned, reached out and grabbed her hand just before one of the council’s prison guards tried to prevent it, her eyes irate and sad at the same time.

Nina was up and out of her seat in a flash, almost making Mara smile. Except she was on her way to being tried for werewolf-making, and maybe a life sentence. That wasn’t cause for smiling.

Nina lifted her sunglasses and growled at the guard. “Touch a bitch, and I kill you, weasel. You got that?” She leered at him; despite his size, he had to clearly fight to keep his ground. “You’re draggin’ her around like you just caught Charlie Manson the Second. Take it down a notch, brother. You didn’t train at Quantico, and she ain’t some mass murderer. So step off. You do not want to see my vampire rage, poser.”

Mara, after a long sleepless night next to a snoring fellow werewolf inmate doing time for killing a neighboring farm’s cows, almost giggled. It had to be from lack of sleep and maybe a touch of delirium, but somehow Nina ignoring the long arm of the law was a million shades of awesome. “Nina,” she whispered, remembering where she was. “It’s okay. Sit down before they give me extra time for friends behaving badly.”

Nina turned to her, putting her hand up in the guard’s face before he could protest. “You okay, Short-Shot? Anybody bother you in the big house? You say it, I’ll kill it.”

Mara nodded on a gulp. She’d never doubted Nina was a marshmallow on the inside. When her favor shone upon you, it was like Mother Teresa herself had taken your hand and told you everything was going to be just fine.

“I’m fine. Swear,” she assured like she’d spent the night glamping instead of lying on a hard cot, in a cold, sterile cell, beneath a woman whose snoring rivaled ten grown men with deviated septums. “Are the kids okay?”

Harry, big, handsome and, even in her predicament, still stealing her breath with his handsomeness, rose and stood up behind Nina. And then he tripped over something, probably his big feet, almost falling into the vampire and the others seated beside them.

Someone reached up to offer assistance, but Harry held up his hand. “I’ve got this!” he whisper-yelled, gripping the back of the wooden pews set up in the courtroom to steady himself. When he looked at Mara, his eyes were warm. “The kids are fine. They’re with Arch while we’re all here.”

Mara glanced over past Harry and Nina to find Wanda, Ying, Leah, and Astrid all in solidaric attendance. Astrid and Ying raised fists of support while Leah dug in her purse.