Wolves of War: Third in the Tobias Finch Series Page 2

  His nostrils flare, tale lifting as he steps closer to me, golden eyes glinting with indulgent amusement. The look only serves to rile my wolf.

  You think to challenge me? he asks.

  There is no aggression in the words. Not even the hint of irritation. No, it’s like the wolf is laughing.

  My wolf bares a tooth, narrowing her eyes at the male.

  Jason is right, I tell him, planting my paws firmly on the ground in front of him. We can’t attack the Clear Creek pack. It’s wrong.

  Because it’s not just his family there. It’s my family. It’s Anton. It’s every wolf I’ve grown up with. The elders and the pups. The families, asleep and unsuspecting in their dens.

  The golden wolf tilts his head to one side, studying me.

  Wrong?

  The word comes across as a question. Like the animal has never even considered morality before. Like the word isn’t part of the beast’s vocabulary.

  Yah, wrong. You can’t attack innocent people in their sleep.

  The wolf chuffs, stepping forward until he’s practically towering over me, enveloping me in that delicious sage, pine and chocolate scent that is uniquely Tobias Finch. My idiot wolf softens, her anger fading as she takes in that familiar scent, a warm longing building in its place.

  Would it make you happy? the insane animal asks. If I do as you say?

  I blink at him, confused. It’s not about making me happy. It’s about not being a complete psychopath.

  Um, yah, I tell him.

  Okay, he replies.

  He trails his nose along my neck, rumbling as he presses his neck against my own. I want to snap at him. But my wolf leans in, closing her eyes in pleasure at his warmth.

  Traitor, I hiss at her.

  She ignores me.

  I’m suddenly reminded of when Tobias came to the Clear Creek territory a couple months ago, trying to blackmail me into going to the school dance with him. His wolf had been in control then. Just like now.

  Afterwards, it had almost seemed funny.

  Now?

  Now the stakes are higher. The wolf isn’t here to ask me out. He’s here to deal out death. My wolf might be willing to overlook that, but I’m not.

  Okay? I ask, trying to make sense of his reply.

  In answer, the golden wolf tilts his head at me, then turns, silently ordering the pack to return home.

  Chapter 3

  Tobias Finch

  Two full days pass before my wolf gives up control. Two sleepless days and nights of tirelessly prowling our territory. Watching the borders. Checking for intruders.

  Keep our mate safe, my wolf reminds me. Protect the pack.

  Occasionally, I see grandpa in the woods too, eyes closed, chin resting on his paws as he lays beside the freshly-turned mound of earth near Jamison’s den. I would worry about him, but I know he goes home to grandma each evening, so at least he’s warm and fed.

  You need to shift back.

  Orrin’s voice comes across the pack bond on the dawn of the third day. I can feel the weight of his concern pressing against me with the words, relentless as the morning sun.

  Keep watch, my wolf tells him. Danger. Protect pack.

  More and more I’m thinking in image and scent and feel instead of words. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to form sentences.

  Your pack needs you, Orrin insists. They need you. Tobias. Not the wolf.

  But Tobias didn’t keep Jamison safe. Tobias didn’t protect the borders. Tobias let danger come with silver bullets and death.

  The wolf can keep them safe though. With tooth and claw and power.

  This isn’t going to bring him back. And he wouldn’t have wanted this for you.

  I can smell the bear now, the earthy scent of honey and berries. I curl my lips in a snarl. My wolf doesn’t want company.

  The bear huffs, shaking his shaggy head as he digs at the ground, presumably to unearth whatever grubs or roots he’s found there.

  I could order him to leave. Order him to give me my space, to stop pestering me. And he’d obey. He’d have to obey.

  You’re going to lose her, Orrin warns, voice rumbling low and gentle across the pack bond. If you don’t shift back and fix things, you’re going to lose her.

  Even in my wolf-driven state, I know who he means.

  Lucy.

  The image and scent of the she-wolf momentarily fills my mind, pushing out the Jamison thoughts of grief and anger and hate and guilt.

  In its place is the lilting sound of Lucy’s voice as she spoke to Tania and Summer in their trailer last night. The feel of her soft skin beneath my fingertips as she pressed against me in that sandstone gully back in Southern Utah. The taste of her lips on my own. The feel of her power and bravery as she faced me down and defended Jason.

  Shame seeps in at that recollection, darkening the light-filled remembrances.

  I should never have attacked Jason like that. Loyal, brave Jason, who left his pack to save Summer and Lucy.

  He disobeyed us, my wolf argues.

  But I feel the way the wolf’s muscles tense with discomfort and note the way his claws dig into the earth. Even the psychopathic animal knows what he did was wrong. He just doesn’t want to admit it.

  Good. He should feel guilty.

  Give me back control, I tell the wolf.

  The animal resists, tightening his iron-clad grip on my mind. Caging me in.

  After days trapped in this form, I know there is no point in trying to fight him. The wolf is stronger than I am. Much stronger. If he wants to take control, he will.

  Reasoning also doesn’t seem to work.

  So, I change tack. I imagine Lucy. Recall what it feels like to hold her close to me. The warmth of her body pressed against mine, her soft curves moulding to my hard planes. I imagine what it would be like to lay with her for hours, to talk to her and listen to her and explore her. I imagine the sorts of things we would say to each other. I imagine how her laughter would sound with her lips brushing against my neck, the way her fingertips would feel trailing across my skin.

  I imagine all the things that require a human form. I let my longing for them fill every part of my body, until my hunger becomes the wolf’s hunger.

  Let me shift back, I urge the wolf, when the hunger becomes a dizzying fever-pitch. Let me shift back and I’ll go to Lucy.

  Even as I think the words, my stomach lurches with anxiety at the thought of ever speaking to Lucy again. Quickly, I tamp those thoughts down. I don’t want the wolf to sense a trap. To sense that I’m tricking him.

  Eventually. I’ll speak to Lucy eventually. It’s not a lie.

  There is a long pause, and finally I feel the wolf release his hold on me. The relief is instant and palpable, if a little painful. Like unhooking the animal’s claws from my skin.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Orrin says, shifting into his human form, a smile creasing his cheeks.

  His eyes look sad though. Sad, and tired. I frown up at him.

  “Hey.”

  The word catches in my throat, raw from so many days of disuse.

  “Come on, pup. Let’s get you fed and rested. Things always look better with a full belly and twelve hours of sleep.”

  I give a disbelieving huff, but follow him anyway. Eating and sleeping won’t keep my pack safe. It sure as shit won’t bring Jamison back.

  “I can see you don’t believe me, but trust me on this.” Orrin forces a smile. “Once we get a full-cooked breakfast in you, it’ll be a lot easier to handle.”

  Bitterness churns at those words, twisting and cutting. It’s almost been a full year since my mother’s death at the hands of Huxley Black and I still wake up thinking she’s still alive and I’m back with my parents in New York, only to have the memory of that loss crash down on me when sleep lifts.

  No, I don’t think any amount of eggs and bacon will make Jamison’s death easier to handle.

  Enough of my feelings must come through the pack bond, or else Orrin is just good at reading expressions, because he lets out a sigh, drawing one rough hand over his bearded face.

  “I’m not downplaying your loss here, okay. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. Because it won’t be. All I’m saying is you got to keep moving forward through the pain. And you need food and sleep to do that.”

  “What would you know?” The words grate along my vocal cords and I pause, rubbing at my throat. “You’re just an old mechanic who hibernates at least four months each year. What do you know about anything?”

  Orrin’s expression hardens, eyes flashing yellow as his scars go vivid, stark reminders of battles fought and won. A low rumble reverberates in his chest as he turns to face me, his movements slow but with a grace that belies his size.

  “What do I know?” he asks. “Pup, are you really so ignorant as to think that I’ve never known loss in my fifty years on this earth? Do you think someone like me lives alone by choice? That in all these years, I’ve never had a mate? Never had a cub? Never been more than the male you see before you?”

  He throws his arms wide as he says this, the gesture somewhat disconcerting given he’s completely naked. I can’t even think about that though, because my mind is lingering on his words. On the unspoken truths.

  A mate. A cub.

  Where are they now? I want to ask, but even I’m not that insensitive. My mind flits back to that moment above the gulch, with the Clear Creek pack and their guns. The way Orrin had reacted, that had been more than just a normal shifter abhorrence for firearms. It had spoken of deep-seated anger. The kind of anger that comes with loss.

  I swallow hard, squeezing my eyes shut. I want to shove the words back in my mouth. I want to tell him I’m sorry, even if I don’t know what I’m sorry
for, exactly.

  “Look, I’m not going to pretend I’ve got all the answers,” he says. “All I’m saying is that you have to keep going. Day by day. Because you’re here. You’re alive. Right now, that might seem like a curse. It might seem like a curse for a long time to come. But I can promise you, eventually you’ll wake up and see that life has its blessings too.”

  I grit my teeth, feeling the unwelcome burn of tears pricking behind my eyes. Because it’s not just Jamison’s loss that I feel. It’s the loss of everything else. Mom, dad, my old life in New York. Like losing Jamison has brought all that old pain back to the forefront, just when I thought I was doing okay.

  Orrin grasps me by the shoulders, grip firm as he lowers his forehead to my own.

  “You’re going to hurt. Sometimes, you’re going to cry. That doesn’t make you less of a man. Less of an alpha. You got that?”

  I nod, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “And you’re not alone in this, okay? You’ve got a pack now. You’ve got me. You’ve got all of us.”

  I nod again, and Orrin pulls away.

  “Good. Now let’s get you something to eat.”

  Lucy Stone

  “Tobias has shifted back.”

  Summer announces this with complete nonchalance, like she doesn’t know what Tobias is to me. Like she hasn’t been avidly watching our every interaction – or lack thereof – since we got back from Southern Utah.

  Honestly, I’m surprised she hasn’t busted out the popcorn already.

  “So what?” I shrug, standing up from my little bed in the main living room of the RV I share with Tania and Summer. So that I can transform it into the bench seat for our dining table.

  Summer eyes the sad little bench pityingly.

  “You know, you could sleep in the room with us. The bed is massive. There’s plenty of space.”

  I scrunch my nose, giving her a look of unmasked disgust.

  “No thanks.”

  Sure, I like Summer. She’s probably my best friend. And Tania is about as unobtrusive as someone can possibly be. Still, being crammed in an RV with them is a little much. Sharing a bed with them? Yah. Not going to happen.

  “Anyway, Tobias is having breakfast in that horrible monstrosity they call the lodge,” Summer continues. “With a bunch of the guys. He looks like crap. Like he hasn’t eaten or slept in days. Honestly, I don’t think he has. I guess he’s going to sleep and then we’re going to have some sort of a meeting tomorrow.”

  “What about?” I ask, like that’s all I care about. Like my heart doesn’t ache at the thought of Tobias going without food or sleep for days.

  I shouldn’t care. I mean, it was his own choice.

  “No idea.” She shrugs. “I think it’s about lots of things. Pack structure. The construction. Security.”

  I nod. Standard pack stuff then.

  “Cool.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Summer raises a brow knowingly, a mischievous smile playing across her lips.

  “Stop it,” I hiss.

  She just laughs.

  “Have you decided what to do about Aires?” I ask her smugly. Because I know she hasn’t, and it’s a sore point for her.

  She waives one hand dismissively, then turns to start the coffee maker, leaning one hip against the kitchen counter.

  “I’m not doing anything about Aires. If he wants to be my creepy stalker, that’s his choice. Once Tobias gets himself together, no doubt he’ll make Aires a member of the pack, and then he’ll just be Aires my pack mate, nothing more.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, mirroring the tone she used with me moments before.

  She narrows her eyes and points a finger at me.

  “I know what you’re doing. And it’s not going to work, okay. We all heard Tobias call you his mate. We were there, you know. He wasn’t exactly subtle about it.”

  I shrug.

  “And you guys were all touchy-feely the whole way back from Southern Utah. Like, you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. It was kinda gross, actually. Well, in an awkwardly cute sort of way.”

  Summer smiles at me expectantly, but I feel my expression shutter. Those hours tucked next to him in the car feel like they were a lifetime away. Like they belong to some other girl. Someone filled with warmth and excitement and hope for a new life.

  Now they just remind me of the hollow feeling in my chest.

  “Summer, she doesn’t want to talk about it,” Tania chides, her voice gentle as she pads soundlessly from the bedroom.

  She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt which I strongly suspect belongs to Samson, since it falls to her knees and smells vaguely of cat. The sleeves go to her elbows, giving her an almost child-like pixie sort of look, though she is starting to look less emaciated than she did when I first saw her a few months ago. Her curves are more pronounced, her face fuller.

  “Yah, well maybe it’s good to talk about things, you know,” Summer retorts. “It’s not healthy to bottle things up.”

  Tania flinches. I give Summer a pointed look and shake my head.

  To talk to Tania, you’d think she’s always lived with the Liberty pack, that is how little she mentions her past. Even to me, who has seen her covered in bruises and helped her escape.

  Summer blushes, grimacing apologetically.

  “She’ll talk about things when she’s ready,” Tania replies steadily, her voice low and musical as she fills two mugs with some of the freshly brewed coffee, then pours herself a bowl of cereal. She keeps her eyes fixed on her breakfast, even when she slides into the seat across from me and passes me the second cup of coffee.

  “And if that is never, that’s okay too.”

  I sigh, then take a long drink of coffee. I don’t know much about what happened to Tania, but I’m pretty sure my situation is nothing like hers.

  “Guys, it’s not that big of a deal. Tobias is my mate. I just found out a few days ago. We got a little bit excited about things at the start, and now we’re just giving each other some space.”

  “You mean Tobias wolfed out for a few days,” Summer says with a knowing nod. “Yah, I can see how that would be annoying.”

  “I’m not annoyed.”

  And it’s the truth. I wasn’t expecting to be the centre of Tobias’ attention when his uncle had just been shot. That isn’t what bothers me.

  It’s the harsh words Tobias spoke. The way he implied I should have foreseen the attack. Like I had failed somehow. Like I was only as good as my gift, and he had found me wanting. And then his uncontrolled rage, the way he attacked Jason, his own friend. The omega.

  All of it reminds me so much of dad that I feel sick.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Chapter 4

  Tobias Finch

  It’s dark when I finally wake, blinking dazedly into the dim interior of my RV. Danny’s incessant snores drone like a saw, the noise occasionally punctuated by whimpering and scratching as Jason’s wolf hunts phantom prey in his sleep.

  Soundlessly, I slide out from under my covers, letting my bare feet rest on the cold floor as I get my bearings.

  I’m back at Liberty pack. Free from my wolf form. Jamison is dead. I’m the alpha. I have to be okay. Lucy is here.

  Lucy.

  I blink into the darkness, letting the blankets slip to the floor as I rise to my feet. In the light of day, the thought of facing Lucy was terrifying. Now, ensconced in darkness, the need to check on her thrusts itself forward.

  I’ll just go past her RV, make sure she’s okay. Like I’ve done at least twice every night in my wolf form since we got back to Liberty pack territory. She won’t even know I’m there.

  Crisp night air greets me when I step outside, filling my nostrils with the welcome scents of pine and earth and pack. I pause for a long moment, drinking it in. Feeling the threads connecting me to my pack, relishing the knowledge that they are all close.

  Well, all except Cody. And Huxley Black. Though I don’t think of Huxley as pack, even if the bond runs between us, weak though it is.

  In the distance, two owls call to each other as they hunt above the pines. I know from the sound of their cries that it’s Arlo and Theo, out murdering the helpless wildlife. Mainly mice and rats. Which, if you think about it too much, is kind of gross.