The Alpha's Choice (24 page)

They were halfway down the hall before Buddy
laughed. "Doghouse! That was a good one, Kitty Kat."

* * *

Kat carried a tray loaded with sandwiches and
beer upstairs. The others were congregated in the kitchen arguing
about the night's events. Charles, Ryker and Hyatt were still with
Jo. Kat tapped softly on the door with the toe of her shoe and
eased past Hyatt when he opened and held the door. Ryker, strong,
stone cold Ryker, lay on the bed, his long muscular body molded to
Jo's tucked beneath the covers. One arm cradled her head and the
other was wrapped protectively around her.

Charles sat, slumped in the chair by the
window, his head held in his hands. He looked up at her entrance
and then back down.

Kat had seen what the healing magic cost him
in energy and each time he shifted it cost him more. The man must
be exhausted.

She placed her tray on the nightstand and
nodded to Ryker, who hadn't moved but watched her with narrowed and
focused eyes. Jo's face was pale and she didn't open her eyes.

"How is she?" Kat asked Ryker in a
whisper.

"She'll live," Jo said through barely moving
lips. "Can you all just go away now?"

"Sure, honey. Sorry," Kat apologized.

Ryker started to rise.

"Not you," Jo mumbled, "You get your warm ass
right back where it was."

"That wasn't my ass," Ryker deadpanned,
settling back down.

"I know and if these people would leave I
have other places that need to be warmed by the part that's not
your ass." Jo opened one eye. "Go away," she said to the
others.

Hyatt looked worriedly from his sister to
Kat. "I don't think…"

"That's right, Hyatt. You don't think.
Otherwise you'd be thinking I'm about to throw your ass out of
here," Ryker growled. "Now go and take him with you." He pointed
his chin at Charles.

It was obvious that Jo was fine and didn't
need anyone but Ryker. It was kind of sweet and Kat looked to
Charles to share a smile.

He didn't look up. His head was still bowed
and now she noticed the tremor in his hands as they gripped the
sides of his head.

"Charles?" Kat went to her knees in front of
him. This was more than exhaustion. "The others are in the kitchen,
Hyatt. I'll take care of the Alpha."

Thankfully, Hyatt didn't argue.

She laid her hand on Charles' knee and he
finally looked up. His eyes, always so bright and glittering with
fire, were dull, a green so dark they were almost black. They were
filled with a painful knowledge she hadn't seen in them before.

"Do you need…?" Ryker started to rise.

"No! We're fine." She didn't mean to snap,
but she didn't apologize. Whatever was wrong, she knew Charles
didn't want it shared.

"He's tired is all."

She maneuvered her shoulder under his arm and
he rose with her. His weight almost buckled her knees, but somehow
she managed to get him out of one bedroom and into the next. She
eased him onto the bed where he resumed his position of hands
gripping head.

"Oh God," he moaned, "Make it stop. Make it
stop. They're all in my head."

"Who's in your head?" She'd no sooner asked
than the answer dawned and she understood.

There was no question now as to who was the
rightful Alpha of the Wolf's Head Pack. The mantle had fallen on
Charles' shoulders and it had fallen hard.

As gently as possible she undressed him and
forced him to lie down under the covers. Then she undressed and
climbed in beside him and held him and rocked him and stroked his
hair and offered what comfort she could, her own headache ignored
and forgotten.

She heard the others pass their door on their
way to their rooms and finally, with the house silent and asleep,
Charles slept, too.

Kat tried to sleep as well, but her dreams
were haunted by the dark green eyes so filled with pain and it was
as if she could feel it, too. Was it only his pain, the pain of the
adjustment to the terrible weight he now carried? Or was it the
pain of his pack, unsettled and unhappy with his leadership?

Chapter 23

Kat awoke to the faint light of daybreak, the
lump on her head a mere sore spot, her headache gone and Charles
sleeping peacefully beside her. She stretched a bit, carefully so
as not to awaken Charles and snuggled back under the covers. They'd
had a long night and there was no reason not to catch a few hours
more sleep. Then she remembered. The children were coming
today!

There was so much to do. Bedrooms would need
to be rearranged. She wanted the children settled and quickly, no
shifting of bedrooms from here to there as the adults moved out.
This was to be their home and she wanted them to see they were
planned for and wanted. These children would need more than a
teacher. They needed someone to love them as well.

They would no doubt feel lost and alone and
frightened just as she'd felt when her father left her with a
grandmother she barely knew. Grams' hugs and kisses had meant a lot
to that nine year old girl. Poor as she was, she'd made sure Kat
had a bed with a new and pretty pink coverlet to welcome her into
her new home and that small gesture had made Kat feel wanted and
welcome.

She carefully rolled to her side to slip from
the bed, but Charles rolled with her and captured her waist,
hauling her back, nuzzling her neck and hair.

"Go back to sleep," she whispered. "It's
early and you need your rest. You've had a rough time of it. I'll
send Buddy up with some breakfast later. You'll be starving after
last night." She started to pull away and Charles tightened his
grip. "Come on, Big Bad, I don't have time. The children will be
here soon and they'll need me," she said quietly and tried again to
pull away.

"I need you," he grumbled, pulling her
closer. The hand at her waist began to roam. "Last night I thought
I couldn't survive it, the crushing weight of it. That's what
happens to an alpha who's not strong enough to carry it, you know,
and I wasn't meant to carry it. My father knew that."

Kat relaxed back onto the bed and stared at
the ceiling. They suffered from the same thing, she and Charles.
She'd spent her whole life wondering why she wasn't good enough for
her father's love. Why couldn't he stop drinking for Kat as he had
for her mother? She remembered their quiet conversations. It was
part of the code she hadn't been able to break as a child.

"You can do this, John. One day at a time,"
her mother would whisper when her father was in one of his sad and
miserable moods. "Do this for me. One day at a time. I believe in
you, darling."

John Bennett would cling to his wife like a
drowning man. "I'd be lost without you, sweetheart," he'd say to
her. "You are the Master of my fate, the Captain of my soul. You
keep my sails to the wind. You light my way. You keep me from
floundering in the shoals."

Her father always was one for flowery speech.
Kat didn't understand what the words meant until she was much older
and once she did, she worked hard had to create the life she
thought her parents had, believing that someday, maybe, her father
would come home.

Charles had spent his life afraid of not
living up to his father's expectations. He was incapable of being
the Alpha his father wanted him to be.

Who were these men who continued to rule
their lives; one from the bottom of a bottle, one from the bottom
of a grave? She was tired of it and it was time to put an end to
it.

"Your father was a goddamned ass. Welcome to
the club," she whispered fiercely.

Charles chuckled softly at her ferocity. "He
wasn't, you know. He was a great Alpha. My brother Marshall…"

"Is nothing like him either," she snapped
though her voice never rose above a whisper. She rolled in his arms
until they were nose to nose and placed her hand on his cheek.
"Your father stuck to the old ways. He couldn't change and his pack
suffered for it. He's probably rolling over in his grave at what
Marshall has done to his precious domain. You told me that
yourself. Marshall wanted to keep the old and found ways to take it
in a new direction. You want new and modern, but need to blend in
the old ways necessary for your pack's survival. Two different
roads leading to the same destination; what's best for the pack,
your pack, not your father's. Wes Goodman wanted to create a
mini-me. Well tough shit, he didn't get one. What Wolf's Head got
is something a whole helluva lot better. They got you, Charles
Goodman, and you're going to be the best damn Alpha the Wolver
world has ever seen." Kat punched his shoulder for emphasis.

"Hey! Shhh, don't cry." Charles ran his thumb
over her cheek.

"I'm not crying," she protested even as he
kissed the tears from the corners of her eyes.

"Good," he said between kisses, "Because I'd
like to finish what I started to say about last night." He rolled
her over him and into the middle of the bed where he straddled her
hips to keep her in place and rested his weight on his elbows to
either side of her head. He toyed with her short, unruly curls
while he spoke.

"I was being crushed under the weight of it
all and then you touched me. You held me and I felt your touch run
through me. Not like this," he said, chuckling as one of his hands
left her curls to roam over her breasts and down the center of her
body to her mound, leaving behind its trail of magic. The chuckle
turned into a laugh when, without thinking, Kat inched her body up
until his hand was firmly between her legs.

"This is good," he told her as his fingers
danced and played in a new nest of curls, "But what I felt last
night through your touch was different. For the first time since I
was a pup, I felt like I wasn't alone. I didn't have to pretend to
be someone I wasn't or to guess what a real Alpha would do. I felt
your belief in me. It was your touch that gave me the strength to
bear the mantle. I am the Alpha of Wolf's Head Pack."

"I never doubted it, but" Kat whispered
against his lips as she moved against his fingers down below, "For
now, can you just be my Big Bad Wolf?"

Charles cocked his head to the side for a
moment, listening, frowned in concentration and then brought his
attention back to her and smiled.

"With pleasure," he said right before his
lips covered hers with a kiss that was filled with the Alpha's
magic.

* * *

As it turned out, there wasn't that much to
do to get ready for the children's arrival. Mrs. Martin,
housekeeper extraordinaire, had everything under control and Kat
was beginning to suspect there was something magical about her,
too. She never seemed to hurry, but never seemed to fall behind.
She was grateful for any help she received but didn't seem to need
it. When Kat entered the kitchen, the woman was ironing pillow
cases, something Kat found extraordinary in itself. Did anyone
still iron pillowcases?

"Good morning. Everyone else still in bed?"
Kat asked as she poured a cup of coffee, ready with her pad and
pencil to make her list of things to do.

"Hmph. Them that's still here," Tilda
grumbled. "Mr. High and Mighty took half of them off last night
back to the city."

"Alex?" A plate of cinnamon rolls sat on the
counter, still warm from the oven. Kat debated for half a second
before taking one. Nature walks would be good for the children and
for the calories she was sure were settling about her hips.

"None other." Tilda neatly folded the
finished case and snapped another straight before placing it on the
board. "Said they had a business to run and playtime was over as if
what happened last night was a game." If the pillowcase had been
alive, she would have killed it the way she was slamming the iron
along the board.

"What did happen last night?" Kat never did
get the whole of it.

"I thought the Alpha would have told you."
Tilda looked at her suspiciously.

"We were… ah… both pretty tired."

"Hmph." Tilda finished the case and set it
with the others. "Likely wasn't something he cared to talk
about."

"Why?"

"They got their butts whupped, that's why.
Guess you already know there was wolvers out there. With humans. I
never saw the like, never heard of it before. They knew the pack
was coming, waited until the Alpha brought them home so they could
act as men and that's when they attacked, both man and wolver. The
pack wasn't ready and Ryker tried to hold them together while the
Alpha flashed them back, but they panicked and they were lucky no
one got killed." She slammed another case onto the board. "And all
Mr. Alex Prissy Pants said was what do you expect? You can't put a
group of civilized men up against rogues."

Kat suddenly remembered the line of wolves
walking along the edge of the trees on her first night here.
Charles had said she was mistaken because he'd known none of his
pack had arrived. He hadn't known about the others.

Rogues, Kat knew, were single, mostly male
wolvers who had left their packs for various reasons, either by
choice or because they had been shunned and called Outcast for some
serious offense against the pack. Like many of the outcasts from
human society, they formed a criminal element in the wolver
world.

While they might band together in smaller
groups, they could not form a true pack. They had no Alpha. They
could not mate and so their small band couldn't grow except by the
addition of more rogues.

Kat wondered, but didn't ask, if anyone had
noticed the similarities between a band of rogues and the original
Wolf's Head pack.

"Does the Alpha know?"

"I suppose he does." Tilda looked at her
meaningfully. "Now."

"You know?" Kat asked.

The slow blink of her eyes and slight nod of
her head said she did. "They all know."