Wolf's Lady (After the Crash Book 6.5) (13 page)

“I know. They’ll come to the den soon and then we’ll all be together.” He lowered his voice and leaned down to speak directly into her ear. “When I came to Omaha, all I wanted was to go back home. I thought a city would have nothing I wanted and I would hate it here. I never thought I’d find my mate, and now I’m bringing you back with me.”

She loved feeling the warmth of his chest against her back. “I wasn’t sure I would ever find the right man to marry. Then you came along.”

He put his arms around her waist and pulled her more tightly against him. “You said you would marry me if I gave you a certain present. You married me even though I haven’t given you anything.”

Amanda wrapped her arms over her husband’s. “You’re wrong. You gave me exactly what I wanted.”

She could almost feel his confusion. “But I haven’t given you anything.”

“You love me.”

“Yes.”

“I’m the most important thing in the world to you.”

“Yes!”

She leaned her head back against his shoulder. “Then you gave me the one thing I had to have from the man I married.”

His breath gusted out, stirring the hair over her ear. His lips brushed over her temple so tenderly she knew he was silently telling her he loved her.

The train jerked, then crept forward. Her father, one arm around Sara, raised a hand. Amanda smiled for him until the platform was left behind and she couldn’t see him anymore, and then she collapsed in her seat, fighting tears.

“Well, this is stupid,” she said, trying to make her voice cheery while she dug in her bag for a handkerchief. “I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.”

Sand took her hankie and wiped her eyes. “Nothing wrong with crying. I sure like the way your eyes look when you cry. They’re bluer than the sky.”

She gave him a tiny frown.

“And your skin gets kind of pink when you cry. It’s real pretty.”

She snorted and took the hankie back to blow her nose. “I’m fine now.”

The warmth of his arm around her shoulders was comforting. “You know, I heard what you said to your father.”

She sniffed and looked up at him. “You did? About what?”

“Uh-huh. You said that you didn’t have to worry anymore about how you should act or what you should wear or what you should say to make a man happy. And that’s right. I know that a lot of your appointments wanted you to dress up a certain way, like maybe a little girl, and pretend to be that while you were with them.” He gazed down into her face with a solemn smile. “I don’t love you because of what you wear. You don’t need to pretend to be anything for me. I love
you,
Amanda Irene Felts Nelson Wolfe, and you can dress whatever way you want as long as you keep loving me.”

Damn it, that started the tears again. She dug her hankie back out. “I’ll always love you. And I know you love me. Anyone can say the words, but it’s actions that prove love. You gave up your revenge on Terry Askup for me.”

For a fraction of a second the shoulder she leaned her head against stiffened. It relaxed immediately. “Taking you home with me is more important. Sky will take care of Askup.”

When she put the handkerchief back in her bag her knuckles brushed over the two letters there. The one from Sara was fat, and so was the one in her suitcase, the one Sara gave her a week ago at supper. The one from Sky was thin, probably only one page. Poor Sara, pouring her heart out to a man who barely responded. Poor Rose, getting a letter that probably covered no more than half a sheet of paper.

It was easy to feel sympathy for those two women because while they languished without their husbands, she had hers sitting right beside her. She lifted her hand to one of his long, thick braids and slid her hand down it.

“I love you, Caleb Running in Sand Wolfe.”

She tried to pronounce his name in Lakota, which she had learned at their wedding, and was sure she had butchered it. But a happy glow lit his eyes. His kiss was tender.

“I can’t wait to show you off to my Clan,” he told her. “They will love you.”

With every whoosh of the train rolling over the tracks, Omaha fell further and further behind her. Her old life was over; a new one was beginning. She settled into her seat faced forward to meet that new life head on. Sand’s hand clasping her own reminded her she wouldn’t be walking into a new life alone. The man to whom she was the most important thing in the world would walk beside her.

THE END

Maddy Barone has held many jobs in her life, including medic in the US Army, sales clerk in a craft store, and financial examiner for Medicare, but her favorite job is that of writer. For fun she knits, spins, and sews historical costumes for her alter ego in the SCA, a historical organization that recreates the best parts of the Middle Ages. She lives in North Dakota with her three rescue cats, and a percentage of her royalties go to a local no kill cat shelter called CATS Cradle. For exclusive excerpts and deleted scenes from the After the Crash series, sign up for Maddy’s newsletter at
http://eepurl.com/g64uU
and visit her website at
www.MaddyBarone.com
.

Turn the page to read an unedited excerpt from Sky and Rose’s story, Wolf’s Princess, coming late spring, 2015.

The Den outside

Kearney, Nebraska

September, 2072

Chapter One

Rose Turner wiped her sweaty hands on her pants and raised one hand to knock on the nursery door. Her fist paused in the air while she debated. Maybe she should talk to him later. Taye might not be in this room. He could be in the room he shared with Carla, his mate, next door. She blew out a breath, looking up and down the long, narrow corridor of the den to be sure no one could see her standing out here.

Why was she so nervous? The Alpha of the Pack might be feared by everybody for hundreds of miles, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Most people outside the Pack trembled when he growled. She knew for a fact he had killed men to protect and avenge women under his protection. But she had no reason to be nervous. No one in his Pack had ever treated her badly. In fact, they all acted like she was a kid sister they had to tease, protect, and pamper. She drew in her breath and let it out in a controlled sigh. What she wanted to ask would probably tick him off. Wavering, she dropped her hand and turned from the door.

No! She had put this off long enough. Chin high, she swung back and rapped.

“Come in, Rose,” Taye called.

With his wolf’s excellent sense of smell, he probably knew exactly when she arrived in front of his door and how long she had argued with herself before knocking. Rose swallowed and opened the door.

Taye Wolfe, the fierce Alpha wolf who inspired fear everywhere he went, held his two week old son against his chest and patted his small back with a gentle, rhythmic hand. The boy obligingly burped and then spit up a good portion of his breakfast all over his father’s bare shoulder. Using a square of thick cotton, Taye deftly wiped the mess from his shoulder, and turned his baby son into the cradle of his elbow to dab the little face clean. Rose was sure the fond, half-awed expression on Taye’s face was one no one outside the Pack had ever seen. Or would ever see.

He looked up at Rose. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

Yearning strengthened Rose’s resolve as she stared at Little Feather. The baby’s silky tuft of hair was brown like his mother’s, not the Native American black of his father, but his eyes were as dark as Taye’s. He was tiny and precious, and Rose ached to have one of her own. She looked around the room that held two small beds, one for Taye’s elder son Colby and the other for his daughter Patia, and saw a three-legged stool pushed under the child-sized desk. She pulled it closer to where Taye sat in the rocking chair and perched on it like a long-legged frog.

“Is Carla sleeping?” she asked, noticing the door connecting the children’s room to Alpha couple’s room was closed. “I didn’t see her at breakfast.”

“Yeah, the baby kept her up most of the night. She just finished feeding him and now she’s resting.” Love warmed the Alpha’s deep tone. “I’ll look after the kids for a couple of hours. So, what can I do for you?”

“I’m twenty-four years old now,” she began, and stalled.

Little Feather kicked his feet into his father’s side with infant vigor which made Taye chuckle. “We should have named you Little Mule,” he told his son proudly. His smile still lingered when he glanced back at Rose. “I know how old you are. We had the party just last week.”

Yeah, the party had been well attended by the Pack, and many of the members of the Lakota Wolf Clan had traveled to the den to celebrate with her. The Clan was nomadic like their Native American ancestors had been, and the Pack was an offshoot from the Clan that had settled outside Kearney, Nebraska. Their name wasn’t mere symbolism. Rose remembered the dizzy shock zipping through her the first time she saw a member of a Wolf Clan change from man to wolf. Now it was so common she barely noticed. Just as she barely noticed the Pack habitually wore as little clothing as possible. Taye had only a ratty pair of denim shorts on now, which was probably more than he liked to wear. He and the other men pointed out how much it cut down on laundry. It was an unconvincing excuse for going nearly naked, considering the Pack had given her several new outfits for her birthday.

Her fingers tightened on a fold in the cotton of her pants at her knee, one of her birthday gifts designed by Lisa Madison. “I know. What I mean is… I want…” She swallowed, trying to find the right words. “When Ellie was twenty years old, she was a mother. She and Quill have four kids now, including Connor and Tommy. Lisa and Eddie have four. You and Carla have three. Tracker and Tammy have three. Shadow and Glory have five! Sand and Amanda, and Stag and Sherry, and Des and Connie, Marissa and Red Wing, and Renee and Hawk, they
all
have kids. Everyone has kids!”

              Taye nodded at the door connecting this room to the one Carla was sleeping in, a warning to her to keep her voice down. “Yeah,” he said softly. “The Packs are growing.”

“I want kids too,” she said baldly.

              Taye waited politely for her to go on, rubbing his son’s head in soothing circles.

              Rose steeled herself. “I want kids, but to have kids I need to have a husband.”

              “You have a mate,” Taye said. His hand kept moving gently over his son’s head, but he gaze was sharper now. “Blue Sky At Midday.”

Sky. Taye’s cousin had claimed her as his mate when he was seventeen. She had only just turned sixteen, so Carla had forbidden him to court her until she was eighteen. As the Pack’s Lupa, even budding Alphas like Sky obeyed her. “Taye, it’s been eight years since I’ve seen Sky.”

“Nah, it hasn’t been that long.”

“Fine. Seven years, ten months, and two weeks.”

Taye arched one of his eyebrows in an expression of doubt.

“Yes, almost eight years,” she insisted. “I got on the plane on October 29, 2014. The plane crashed on the same date in 2064. I’m not likely to forget that date, you know.”

She couldn’t forget it. The memory of the plane falling in the sky wasn’t as vivid eight years later, but the feeling of shock and terror in the memory would never entirely go away. Nor would she forget the sick feeling in her stomach when she was convinced she and the other crash survivors had actually jumped forward to a time fifty years after the plane’s take off. Everyone she loved was dead. Her mother in St. Paul, Minnesota, her father in San Francisco, California, her uncles and aunts, her cousins, her classmates, her friends, were all gone. Even if they survived the nuclear war and the plagues the terrorists created, she couldn’t possibly find them. The loss of life was so immense there was no one to keep up with technology. Without the internet or cell phones or even a reliable postal service there was no way to track anyone down. Even if any of them still lived, they’d be fifty years older while she was still young.

She focused her gaze steadily on Taye. “And it was only a few days later that Sky claimed me for his mate.”

That brought more memories flashing through her. Her fingers clenched on the fold of cotton at her knee. The crash survivors had been found and brought to the camp of the Lakota Wolf Clan. One of the Lakota men made Rose feel slimy. He stared at her and followed her around until she couldn’t bear it and ran into the healing tent where she knew others would keep her safe, and there she first set eyes on Sky. Even now, all these years later, she could picture his long black braids falling over a bare chest with amazingly developed musculature for a boy of seventeen. She remembered the vividness of his eyes, so blue in his dark Native American face that even in the dimness of the tent they glowed. She remembered more, in a jumble of confusion and horror, like the way he stared at her, so protectively that she wanted to hide behind him and so domineering that she wanted to punch him.

“You sent him away,” Taye remarked.

She remembered to keep her voice down. “No, I didn’t! He left on his own!”

“Because you rejected him.”

She felt color rise to her cheeks, the curse of being a blonde with very fair skin. “He practically attacked me!”

From a vantage point of several lonely years, she wondered if she could have handled it better. Her emotions in the weeks after the crash were nothing short of a train wreck. Who wouldn’t be upset to find herself thrown into a world where women were commodities made valuable by their rareness? She had gone from a life where her old-fashioned mom wouldn’t let her date until she was sixteen, to acquiring a bossy, jealous, would-be husband in a blink of an eye. She tried refusing Sky, and she avoided him as much as possible, but one day he leaped on her, shoved her against the wall and kissed her savagely.

“He scared me.”

Taye nodded. “I know. I had a talk with him. He was upset because you flirted with that man from Kearney.”

Outrage nearly sent her to her feet, but she clenched her hands on the edge of the stool’s seat instead. “I did not flirt. Sky overreacted. As usual.”

“Well, he was young.” Taye shrugged, careful not to jostle the baby in the crook of his arm. “He’s probably better now.”

Rose took a deep breath. “Taye, he was supposed to come back in a year or two. It’s been eigh— seven years and ten months, and he’s never left Omaha. I write him letters every month. He sends maybe two or three letters a year. If I’m lucky a letter might be a whole page long.” She took another breath and blurted, “I’m done waiting for him.”

Taye’s long mouth set in an expression of disapproval, but whether it was at her, or at Sky for staying away so long she wasn’t sure. “Rose, I’ve talked to Quill and Paint, and they’ve told me he has good reasons to stay in Omaha for a while longer.”

She shook her head slowly. “Not good enough. I wrote him a letter in July telling him he had until my birthday to come back, but he didn’t come, and he didn’t even send a letter.”

Taye frowned a little at that.

She steeled herself. “Taye, I repudiate Sky’s claim.” There. Her heart thundered in her ears, but it was out. “If this was the Times Before, being unmarried at twenty-four would be normal. I’d probably be working on my doctorate or working on passing the bar. But I can’t do that here.” She blinked tears back and gestured at the sleeping baby. “Back then I didn’t expect to start my family until I was thirty or so, but here I’m the only woman my age who doesn’t have kids. I’ve never even—” She choked words back. Taye knew she’d never had sex; he and the Pack made sure she was never alone. “I want to hold a baby of my own. I want a family. Sky isn’t here. I don’t think he ever will be. I want to find a husband now.”

Taye’s brows dove down over his nose. “Did you have anyone in mind?”

A blush set fire to her cheeks again. “Well, uh, Jasper Packard is nice, and he has a good business breaking and training horses.”

Taye’s voice was very soft, but not because of the baby sleeping in his arm. It was the tone that made ice slide down the backs of men confronted by an enraged Alpha. “Has he done anything to—”

“Of course not!”

Little Feather jerked in his father’s arm, letting out a thin wail. He settled again with a fretful whimper under his father’s gentle hand.

“Sorry,” Rose said, lowering her voice. “Sorry. No, Jasper has barely spoken to me. Probably because the Pack won’t let him within ten feet of me! Do you know anything bad about Jasper?”

The Alpha didn’t look very happy about it, but he shook his head. “He’s a good man, from what I can tell. Raises some of the best horses around, and treats them well too.”

Rose let out a relieved breath. “All I ask is that you tell the Pack to back off. Let me have a little time with Jasper so we can get to know each other. Maybe we’ll hit it off. Maybe we won’t. I can’t tell if I don’t get to know him, right?”

“What if Packard doesn’t want you?”

Rose gave him the incredulous look that remark deserved. There were so few women nowadays that men fought for them. Any single man would jump at the chance to court a woman. “If we don’t hit it off, there’s Doug Grey or Johnny Sommers.”

Taye shifted the baby to his other arm, looking dissatisfied. “Grey is too old for you.”

“He’s thirty-five, only a few years older than you. He comes from a big family, so I’d have plenty of people to help me with housework.  And his cousin is Ellie, so he already has ties to the Pack.” She lifted a gaze that she forced any hint of pleading from. “Will you tell the Pack to back off?”

Still looking sour, Taye nodded. “Alright. You can talk to men in public places. But you can’t be alone with them.”

“No, I won’t.” Rose nodded back, long ago having accepted the dangerous position of women in this crazy future world and the lengths the Pack would go to in order to keep their women safe. She couldn’t imagine anyone stupid enough to try to steal her. Everyone in a hundred miles knew she was under the protection of a pack of wolf shifters. Still, women were stolen from time to time, and she didn’t want Taye or any of his men to have to kill someone just because he was an idiot. She knew perfectly well that if anyone bothered her in even the slightest way, the Pack would kill him.

“Thank you, Taye.”

He pointed a finger at her. “But I’m writing one more time to Sky. If we don’t hear from him by Halloween you can be formally courted.”

“But I can at least talk to men? Get to know them?”