Winter’s Wolf (28 page)

Her eyes widened. “You’re really serious about the danger?”

“Totally.”

“Okay. Come on, Buster.” She started gathering the dog’s food and supplies. “How will I know what to do?”

“We’ll contact you when it’s safe.”

She stepped up to Jason and gave him a hug. “Please be careful.”

“I will. I promise.”

Winter carried the two bags to the door. “Let’s go.” Winter opened the door slowly and sniffed.
Nobody. Good.
He led the way and Jason followed, with Rita and the dog bringing up the rear. They walked her to her car and got the dog inside.

As she pulled away, Jason looked at Winter. “What’s really going on?”

Winter gazed at Mr. Partridge. “What I told you is true.”

“But there’s more, right?”

“Yes, sir. A lot more. Come with me.” He walked the block to Matt’s car with Jason beside him. He radiated the same kind of curiosity and intelligence his son possessed.

As they got to the car, Jason paused. “If you have this car, what did Matt drive?”

“Get in, please, sir.”

Jason frowned but walked to the passenger side and opened the door. He jumped back. “What the hell?”

“Sorry. Should have warned you about my dog.”

“That’s—that’s no dog. It’s a wolf.”

“Sir, we need to get away from here. Then I promise, we’ll explain everything.”

“We?”

“Me and Matt.”

“Okay. I don’t know why the fuck I should trust you, but I do.”

“I’ll explain that too.”

D
AMON
LAY
on the couch and stared at the wall. He needed to move, but which way? Pack politics might as well be Washington DC or the fucking UN. What to do about it was the question.

He took a deep breath and sprang up from the couch in one motion.
Wolves coming! Wait, Winter and wolf and—what? Who?

By the time he opened the door, Winter was crawling out of a strange car, dressed in odd clothing, with a brown wolf and a human—no, maybe not human—male. “Hi. What the hell?”

“Hi, Damon. We need to come in, do some fast explaining, and then get the hell out of here. There are bad guys on our tail.”

“Shit. Who?”

“Let us get in first.”

The brown wolf padded through the door. Damon stared, then looked up at Winter with his mouth open. “But I thought—”

Winter gestured to the older man. “Damon Thane, this is Jason Partridge, Matt Partridge’s father.”

Damon slowly closed his mouth and stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Jason.”

“Likewise.” Jason followed the wolf into the tiny living area.

Winter closed the door and waved to the couch and chair. “Sit for a minute. We need to get out of here, but first there’s some critical facts to be imparted.”

Jason sat in the chair, and the brown wolf lay at his feet with his paws crossed in front of his nose. Jason leaned down and stroked the thick, ruddy fur. “If the holdup is that you need to tell me that this wolf is my son, don’t waste time. I got that.”

Damon sputtered, Winter laughed, and Jason joined in.

Jason dug into the fur, and Matt the wolf licked his hand. “As soon as I saw you, Winter, I realized that all my dreams and ideas weren’t as damned crazy as I thought. So if Matt’s one, then I must be too, right? A wolf, I mean.”

“Yes, sir. You are.”

“How’d you get him furry?”

“I fed him my blood.”

“You did that to me, too, that night you spent at our place, right?”

“Yes, but I gave you a tiny bit to strengthen your heart. Matt took as much as he needed to shift. Unfortunately, I’ve never done this before, so I have no idea how long it will take to wear off.”

“It won’t be permanent?”

“No. If it doesn’t wear off on its own, I’ll work with Matt to focus and allow the shift energy to change him back. But no time now.” He looked up at Damon. “Freedman is the head of the drug ring. He captured Matt and told me he’d kill him if I didn’t give myself up to him. He had us locked in a cellar. I helped Matt change so we could get out, but Freedman knows by now that we’re gone. He doesn’t know that Matt is a werewolf, however.”

“We’re ready for him.”

“No, actually we’re not. You see, Freedman is the power behind the dissenters in the pack. I think he plans to use them all as pawns of the drug cartel when he takes over. These wolves hate the alliance and all things related to it. They also hate the fact that Lindsey is half human. They figure the cardinal rule had to be broken for a half human to have happened.”

“So I’ve heard.” Damon frowned.

“But this guy Betz is working the dissenters up into a frenzy. Freedman’s been maintaining some balance, but now I expect he’ll turn them loose as a way to get rid of me and Matt. He’ll sic them on everybody they think is against werewolf law. I expect that means the gay wolves and those who might have broken the cardinal rule. Cole, Paris, and Lindsey times two.”

Damon leaped to his feet. “And Elizabeth!”

“Yes, you need to warn Lindsey. They could be after both of them, and there are about one hundred or more. Not all of them will participate if it gets violent, but some will.”

Jason frowned. “What’s this cardinal rule thing?”

Damon glanced down. “No werewolf tells a human or lets them know in any way that werewolves exist, on penalty of death for the human, and often the werewolf as well.”

“Tough rules you got. Sounds like somebody in my family must have broken it back there a generation or two.”

Damon grabbed a jacket from the chair. “I expect it gets broken more than we know, but right now, the focus is on my son and his mother, the woman I love. Nobody’s going to hurt them while I draw breath.”

Jason looked at Winter. “I thought
he
was your son.”

“Lindsey is his half brother.”

Winter stood. “Let me get some clothes, and I’ll come with you as soon as I find a safe place for Matt and Jason.”

Jason got up slowly, and so did the brown wolf. Jason shrugged. “Sounds like me and my boy have a lot in common with these folks. I think we should be going with you.”

Damon shook his head. Time was wasting. “No, the irony is that Elizabeth doesn’t know that Lindsey’s a werewolf. No way you and Matt can come with us without her and her father-in-law finding out.”

Winter put a hand on Damon’s arm. “I don’t know how you can protect them and still keep them in the dark. Their ignorance could be more dangerous than breaking the cardinal rule.”

Shit.
“Maybe true, but Lindsey could fight us tooth and nail, literally.”

“Let’s go slow. But it’s easier to bring Jason and Matt with us. I don’t want to leave them. We’ll keep Matt hidden until he shifts back.”

“Okay. Let’s just get the fuck over there.”

Winter ran into his room and emerged with jeans, sweater, boots, and a gun.

Damon nodded. “Good idea.” He grabbed his handgun from the back of the chest where he’d taped it.

Jason smiled tightly. “Got another for me? I was pretty handy with weapons before my illness. Law enforcement, like my son.”

Damon gave him a half smile. “I don’t, but Lindsey will. Good to have you on board.”

D
AMON
DROVE
like a demon with Jason beside him in the passenger seat egging him on. You would have thought they were related. Winter sat with the brown wolf in the back. He held the furry head and gazed into Matt’s green eyes. “You’re beautiful, my wolf, but time to become my beautiful guy again, okay? I want you to remember the way the shift energy felt. Hot, like acid, burning in your veins. Remember how it seemed to flow in from the sky? Okay, open up and let it in again.”

The wolf’s eyes closed, he whimpered, and then they popped open again. If a wolf could look frustrated, this one did.

“Don’t worry about it. It takes getting used to. Enjoy being a wolf.” Winter kissed the fuzzy muzzle.

Damon pulled onto the long drive to the Vanessens’s, barely slowing his speed. Instead of stopping in front, he took a side path and curved around the mansion.

Jason looked out the window. “Damn, that’s quite a house.”

“It may have to be a fortress.” He braked, turned off the car, and was out on the flagstone drive before the engine stopped turning over. Winter leaped out beside him. “Wait, Dad. Think. How are you going to do this?”

He took a breath. “Yeah, I guess I need a plan—” The side door to the Vanessens’s opened, and Lindsey emerged with his adopted brother beside him. Both frowned. Not a good beginning. Damon exhaled. “Too late.”

He walked around the car as Lindsey hurried toward him. “What the hell are you doing here? Shit, Damon, is that a wolf in your car?”

“Yes, but we’ll keep him out here.” Winter walked up beside him.

Lindsey’s delicate beauty looked full-on lethal. “You sure as hell will. Winter, what’s going on?”

“There’s a lot of shit hitting fans.”

“Of your defecation?”

“Only partly. The main thing you need to know is that the dissenting side of the pack has got a dangerous, violent element. They’ve been stirred up by Fred Betz, with Ben Freedman behind him as the real power. They’ve got ulterior motives I’ll tell you about later, but right now they could be after you since you embody a lot of the things they hate.”

He frowned. “Nothing new about that, darling.”

“Yeah, well, now they may come with guns. They maintain that there’s no way you could have been born without the cardinal rule being broken.”

“They’re wrong.”

“You want to be the one to reassure them?”

Young Jazz crossed his arms. “I’ll reassure them with a semiautomatic if they come anywhere near my family.”

Damon smiled. “I see you’ve been training your brother in your pacifist ways.”

Lindsey nodded toward the car. “Why in hell would you bring a wolf here?”

Winter faced Lindsey squarely. “The wolf is Matt Partridge.”

Lindsey opened his mouth and nothing came out. He looked at Jazz, who seemed to speak for him. “You’re saying that Agent Partridge is a were?”

“Yes. Only about one-eighth, as best I can tell. Not enough to shift on his own, but I gave him a lot of my blood so we could escape from the cellar where they were holding us and—”

Lindsey fanned himself with his lavender neck scarf. “Dear heaven, darling, stop. My head’s swimming.”

“The other person in the car is his father. They’re in danger too. Matt’s got evidence against Freedman, so the marshal can’t let him live.”

Damon nodded. “He’s after Winter too.”

Lindsey glared at Damon. “So why don’t you just pack up your trouble and leave, and I’ll take care of my family.”

“There could be a hundred of them, Lindsey. The alphas have made it clear to me that they aren’t prepared to take on the whole bunch. It wouldn’t be politically expedient.” He smiled gently. “I’m sorry, but I have to protect
my
family.”

Lindsey stared back.

The rear door to the house opened, and Elizabeth and her father-in-law stepped out. “Hello, Damon. Hello, Winter. Lindsey, Jazz, why are you keeping our guests in the driveway? Is anything wrong?” She looked up at the car. “Who’s in the car?” She frowned. “What’s going on?”

Lindsey stared at Damon and widened his eyes. “They were just leaving, Mother.”

Casper Vanessen stepped down from the doorway. “Why doesn’t everyone come inside, including the occupants of the car? I’m sure I want to know what’s going on as well.”

Lindsey gritted his teeth at Damon and Winter but crossed to the sedan and opened the door. “Hello, Mr. Partridge, I’m Lindsey Vanessen. My mother and grandfather would like you and your
dog
to come in the house.” He looked back toward his mother. “He’s a very big dog. Perhaps you’d rather he stay in the kennels, Mother?”

Winter would have laughed if it hadn’t been so fucking life threatening.
Keep the FBI agent werewolf in the kennels.

Casper Vanessen crossed to the car as Jason Partridge got out. “Hello. Partridge, is it? Any relation to Matt Partridge?”

Jason stepped aside and let the brown wolf climb out beside him. “Yes, I’m Matt’s father.”

“Well, delighted to meet you. Quite an animal you have there.”

“Yes. He’s been a great companion.”

“What’s his name?”

“Uh, Buster.”

Mr. Vanessen patted the wolf’s head and glanced up at Damon with a deadpan expression. Not much got by that captain of industry. He wasn’t
one of America’s richest men by accident. “Let’s go inside where we’re—
” He looked at the surrounding trees. “—less exposed. Bring Buster.”

Interesting choice of words.

Lindsey looked frantic, but they all followed Elizabeth and Mr. Vanessen inside and to a comfortable sitting room with floral-patterned chairs and deep-cushioned couches. Damon looked at the seat beside Elizabeth longingly, but Lindsey and Jazz had flanked their mother on one of the couches. Casper took a chair, as did Jason, with the wolf at his feet. That left the other couch for him and Winter.