“He’s got Chelo.”
Zach gripped Darnell and jerked her back and down behind the rock as glass exploded outward and shards flew through the air. Rube leapt over the railing with Chelo over his shoulder, but she was struggling, throwing him off balance.
Darnell pulled free of Zach’s grip, stepped into Rube’s path, raised the gun, and shouted, “Stop!”
Rube stopped, but he threw Chelo roughly to the ground and reached for Darnell. She spun out of his grasp, raised the pistol in both hands again, and fired.
The blast deafened her. Rube stopped and shook his head at the noise. How the hell could she miss this close?
Lunging forward, he grabbed the gun out of her hands as Chelo scrambled out of his way. Cursing, Darnell slipped beneath Rube’s hands just as Zach launched himself from behind the rock. He tackled Rube around the knees at the same moment Evan flew off the deck and grabbed Rube around the shoulders. The three men tumbled to the ground.
Darnell ran to Chelo. She was still on the ground, holding her head, obviously stunned by the fall. “Are you okay? I can’t believe I don’t see any blood.” She reached up and picked a large splinter of glass out of Chelo’s hair. “That’s got to be good, right?”
Chelo cursed and tried to sit. Darnell helped her sit upright while Evan and Zach wrestled with Rube. The fight rolled closer and Darnell practically lifted Chelo to her feet. They backed out of the way. Rube was thickly muscled and fighting like a crazed berserker, with both Evan and Zach struggling to hang onto him.
His face began to change, his canines growing.
Darnell shouted, “He’s shifting! Evan, he’s turning into a wolf!”
Evan didn’t hesitate. He wrapped his forearm around Rube’s head and jerked. The loud crack turned Darnell’s stomach. She’d never heard that sound before, but there was no doubt what Evan had done. Rube went limp. Evan lowered his body to the ground, Rube’s head lolling at an unnatural angle.
Zach was on his knees, head down, gasping for breath. Evan straightened slowly, but he didn’t even look in Darnell’s direction. Instead, he held his hand out to the other man. Zach glanced at Evan’s hand and took hold. Evan pulled him to his feet. They both stared at Rube’s body for a long moment, and then Zach shook his head, a short, sharp jerk as if shaking off the fight. “Thank you.” He raised his head and looked at Evan. “That guy’s the strongest sonofabitch I’ve ever disagreed with. If you hadn’t shown up, I think he would have had me way too easily.”
“We’ll never know.” Evan stared at the body. “I should feel badly.” He looked at Zach again. “I’ve never killed before. Came close, but…” His words sort of faded out and he turned as Trak leapt over the railing and went straight to Chelo. Unlike Evan, who was still gloriously naked, Trak had found a pair of sweatpants. He didn’t say a word, just gathered Chelo up in his arms and held her close. She didn’t cry, but Darnell noticed she was still trembling.
For that matter, so was Darnell. She wasn’t sure what to do. She wished Evan was holding her the way Trak held Chelo, but he still hadn’t even looked at her. She wanted to go to him, but she didn’t know what to say. Instead, she picked up the handgun that Rube had taken away from her, opened the chamber, and removed the bullets. She stared at them a moment and would have laughed, but they’d all think she was crazy.
Carefully she replaced the shells.
Meg came running down the stairs and straight into Zach’s arms. “I didn’t even know you were here. The guys said you were keeping Darnell safe at the bar. Are you okay?”
“I am.” He glanced at Rube lying on the ground. “He’s not.” Pulling Meg into his arms and turning her away from the body, he kissed her. “Do you mind calling off the party? I want to take you back to the cabin and just hold you all night long. This was a little more excitement than I ever want to be in the middle of again.”
Meg laughed, but it was a pretty watery laugh from what Darnell could tell. She tried to smile at Meg but couldn’t manage more than a grimace. “Let’s try some makeup and hair ideas tomorrow. Is that okay with you, Meg?”
Meg sniffed and raised her head from Zach’s chest. There was a soggy spot with smeared mascara on his shirt. She used the hem of his shirt to wipe the tears from her eyes—and further smeared the mascara. “Yeah. I don’t think makeup would work right now.”
Zach kissed the top of her head, but he kept his arm around her. “If you folks don’t mind, I’m taking my woman to bed. Trak, do you need anything from me?”
Trak slowly stood and Zach held out his hand. Trak took it in his. “I need to thank you. You and Evan and Darnell. He had to die. We couldn’t let him live, knowing he’d never give up trying to take Chelo. I owe you. All of you.” He smiled at Darnell and then focused on Zach again. “Yes. Take your woman home to bed. We can figure out the details tomorrow.”
Cherry walked down the steps and over to the small group standing around Rube’s body. She handed a pair of sweatpants to Evan. “You look cold,” she said. “Cover the dangly bits, Evan. We don’t want anything to get hurt.”
He smiled at her. He still hadn’t even looked at Darnell. “Thanks, Cherry. What’s with the three inside?”
“The wolf shifted and apologized. The other two are sitting at the table having coffee and spilling their guts. It appears that Rube, here, is … was the pack bully. He’s got something over each one of them, enough to force them into this trip. I promised them that Rube won’t be going back. Obviously I was right.” She kissed Evan on the cheek. “As I usually am. I think we should just let them go.”
Trak nodded. Then he turned to Darnell, who sat by herself, though closer to Chelo than to Evan. He held out his hand. “Gun, please?”
She nodded and handed it to him, but she wouldn’t look at him.
“That was a good move on your part, Darnell. How’d you find this thing?”
Shrugging, she stared at her toes. “Like I told Zach, I’ve never once been in a bar that didn’t have a handgun under the counter. I looked and found it, saw it was loaded.” She finally raised her head and glared at him. “I did not, however, expect blanks.”
Smiling, Trak merely shrugged. “A good loud noise is usually pretty effective with werewolves. We’ve got really sensitive ears.” He glanced at Evan. So did Darnell, and he looked so miserable it made her feel even worse. “For what it’s worth, Darnell, Evan had orders not to tell you about us. If you want to blame anyone, blame me. In a werewolf pack, there’s only one leader, and that’s me. I’m the pack’s alpha and it was my decision that he not tell you anything, but there are good reasons for not saying who and what we are. In this case, because this jackass was after Chelo and we had an idea he’d be trying something at some point we weren’t willing to take the risk with your safety. Evan can explain it to you since it appears this particular cat’s out of the bag.” He turned to Evan. “Or wolf, as the case might be.”
Darnell stared at the body lying on the ground. She’d been so angry at Rube when he was carrying Chelo and coming at her and Zach. Angry and frustrated, and sad that Evan had kept such a huge secret. And now Trak was telling her not to blame Evan, that he was only following orders. “Then it’s okay now? He can tell me about you guys? About himself?”
She chanced a quick look at Evan. He was staring at her as if she held his life in her hands, like maybe she hated him, but that wasn’t it at all. She’d been shocked when they all stripped out of their clothes and shifted, though it explained a lot of things she’d wondered about.
“He can tell you whatever he wants, and that’s whether you choose to stay or go. We don’t usually tell anyone about us. It’s frightening to think about what would happen to our simple lives should our secret get out, but you’ve proved that you have what it takes to join the pack if you choose, and I think we can trust you should you choose not to. It’s all up to you, Darnell. Talk to Evan. Let him tell you our story and we’ll see you in the morning. Find out what you’ve decided.”
She actually smiled at Trak. “I’m amazed you can call your lives simple and actually say that with a straight face, Mr. Jakes.” Then she focused on Evan.
He held out his hand. She placed hers in his, thinking just how right it felt.
“What do you want to do, Nellie?”
“I think I want to go into the lodge and pour a pitcher full of that punch Meg put together and maybe carry it back to your cabin. And then I want to crawl into bed with you and hear all about what you’ve been hiding from me.”
“You do, eh?” He nodded. “I think we can manage that.” He tugged and she turned to follow just as the three men who’d come with Rube walked down the stairs. They had an old blanket and some rope. Darnell had a feeling she knew what they planned to do with it, but she wanted to see what they had to say.
The largest of the three stepped up to Trak and bowed his head. “We’ve come to apologize for defiling your land and scaring your women.” He glanced at the men on either side. “What we did was wrong and we hope you’ll forgive us for something none of us wanted any part of. We also ask for permission to take our fallen one home. Our alpha will want to be assured he’s finally gone.”
“Granted.” Trak had folded his arms over his chest and he kept his eyes focused on the three men. None of them appeared able to meet his steady gaze.
“We want to thank you, too.” The spokesman glanced at the body between them. “He was an evil man. We’d hoped that when his brother died someone would finally take it into their head to kill Rube as well. None of us had the balls to try, but we all wanted him dead. Chelo? We owe you even more of an apology. None of us wanted any part of this, but we were afraid to cross him. Or his brother. Please forgive us.”
Chelo merely nodded. Darnell tugged Evan’s hand. She’d heard enough from them. She really wanted to hear what Evan had to say. It still hadn’t sunk in, not entirely. All these people she’d grown so fond of, every single one of them except for Meg and Zach, were werewolves.
Never in her wildest dreams. And then another thought struck. Cherry and Elle? Darian, Jules, Christa, and Steph? All of them … were they wolves, too? She and Evan stepped into the lodge and Darnell headed straight for the punch bowl. She spotted Brad in the kitchen. “Have you got a large pitcher I can borrow?”
She heard laughter, and Cain stepped out of the kitchen with a big half-gallon Mason jar with a screw-top lid, filled to the brim with punch. He handed it to Evan and then leaned over and kissed Darnell. “Don’t say we never think of your well-being, Darnell. Have a good evening.”
She glanced at the jar in Evan’s hands. “I fully intend to. Trust me on that.”
They were all laughing when Darnell spotted Trak and Chelo coming up the steps to the lodge.
* * *
Trak really wanted to take Chelo home, but he needed to speak with the members of his pack, all of whom were still hanging around the dining hall. Tonight’s event had been unsettling, but he had a feeling they were more concerned with Cain’s role in what happened than the danger they’d faced.
A few of them knew that Cain was an alpha, though the man did his best to hide his nature, but Trak didn’t think any of them had any idea just how powerful Cain was. Trak had needed Cain’s help tonight or he never would have asked him to reveal himself so publicly.
There would be questions.
First, there was Chelo. He stopped outside of the door into the dining room and dropped a light kiss on her forehead. “I need to speak with them. They’re going to be concerned about Cain’s part in tonight’s attack. Even more important, I want to tell them about us.”
She nodded. “Good. Because I am very proud of the fact that we are an ‘us.’ I love you, Traker Jakes. I love you so much, it fills me up.”
This time his kiss found her mouth. It was much more satisfying.
Chelo blinked away a nicely dazed expression on her lovely face. “Okay. Now, please stop interrupting me. I would like to speak with the pack as well. Your people have been so welcoming. They’ve all done whatever they could to protect me. I was not one of them, merely a stranger who disrupted their lives and brought danger to their homes. I’m not proud of my role in this, but I am so proud of your pack. There aren’t enough words to thank them all, but I need to try.”
He took her hand and they walked into the lodge together. He paused long enough to set the revolver on the mantel over the fireplace, then glanced around the room. Everyone was still here. Even Darnell and Evan, who were holding hands and laughing about something. He imagined it had something to do with the big jar Evan was holding, filled with what looked like punch from Meg’s punch bowl. He’d heard Brad laughing about the quantity of Long Island Iced Teas he was mixing up for the ladies’ evening, and they all knew Darnell’s history with that particular drink.
Tonight he wouldn’t mind one of those for himself.
Their gender-separate celebrations certainly hadn’t turned out the way any of them had planned, but thank goodness the danger was over, Rube was no longer a threat, and—most important—Chelo and his pack were safe.
The laughter and chatter died down the moment everyone realized he and Chelo had entered, so Trak led her to the spot near the buffet table where he generally held court. He grabbed a chair for Chelo from the closest table and seated her next to him, but he stood beside her, holding her hand. “Chelo’s sitting because, while she hasn’t said anything, I know that she’s a little the worse for wear after getting shoved through a plate-glass window and then tossed on the ground. I wanted to announce to all of you that Chelo and I mated last night. She is a strong alpha in her own right, and I am proud to call her mine.”
The applause was loud, the whistles and cheers—and a few lewd comments—louder, much as he’d expected. But he was proud of his pack, too. They welcomed Chelo as if she were already one of them. When Trak looked down and saw the tears in her eyes, he squeezed her hand. “I’m going to give Chelo a chance to speak to you, but first I have a few things to say that are probably even more important than me and the fact I have finally found the perfect mate.” Gazing at her, he chuckled softly. “You have to realize, they’d all essentially given up on me. Now they can rest assured that I’m not an entirely hopeless case.”
He raised his head and focused on them, the ones who’d been his family for so many years. His voice was thick with emotions he had no need to hide. These people knew him, in some ways, probably better than he knew himself. They had likely already sensed the depth of his feelings. He took time to think about this moment, the feelings filling him, spilling over, and making his eyes burn and his throat ache.
Taking a deep breath, he slowly let it out and said, “I am so fucking proud of this pack. This is the first time we’ve faced a serious threat to the safety of any one of us, much less a threat against our women from an outside force.” He looked at each of them in turn, men he’d thought of as brothers over the years, and realized that yes, he really was choking up.
He cleared his throat before continuing, well aware of the strength in this room. The love. “You can’t possibly imagine how much you guys mean to me, how much I love every single one of you and the women you’ve brought into our pack. We are a powerhouse, by virtue of our connection, each to the other. There was never any doubt in my mind that we would win tonight, but that’s because I’ve always known that, if we faced adversity, you were going to be there, every damned one of you, ready and willing to help.”
He shook his head and focused on Cain. “I was right. You always come through. But there’s one in here, and you know who I’m talking about, who deserves a very special thanks from me, and a public apology that’s long overdue. I owe Cain a lot more than any of you might realize, and not just because he saved my life this summer, but also because my guilt for acting like a horse’s ass for the past, oh, almost seventy years is something I will always regret.”
He waited for the soft laughter to stop. Took another deep breath and realized he was holding onto Chelo’s hand for dear life. Why was this so fucking hard to do? But he knew. It was never easy for an alpha to apologize. It really wasn’t part of their nature, but it should be. Especially now. “When Cain first came to me in 1948, he was a soldier fresh out of the army, back in the States after a long and distinguished tour of duty in Europe during World War II. Cain never told me this, but I did some research and learned that he was a recipient of a Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry in the face of enemy fire. All of us know we have never had cause to doubt his bravery or his loyalty to this pack, but at the time he was looking for a pack to call home. He was young and cocky, a trained soldier with attitude and brains, but the thing that scared me the most was that I knew immediately he was an alpha.”
Trak glanced at Chelo, another alpha, and possibly stronger than he was as well. “The thing is, he wasn’t just any alpha. You might have noticed tonight that Cain’s a lot stronger than I am. I took him on as a member of the pack with his sworn promise not to challenge me for control. He didn’t have to make that promise, in fact, he could have challenged me then, but he didn’t. He promised and then offered to take on the position of pack enforcer, a role that needs a strong alpha.”
Manny glanced at Cain and grinned. “Why the secrecy? I think all of us figured out that Cain was alpha years ago, but it never seemed important.”
“Good question, and all my fault. I didn’t trust him, because I didn’t trust myself. When I broke away from my original pack to move west, I honestly didn’t know if I had it in me to manage a pack of shifters. Remember, I never challenged my alpha, so I didn’t know if I would have been strong enough to win in a traditional challenge fight. I still don’t, and that’s probably not something I should admit. But then? I was still learning my way when Cain first came to me. I knew if he challenged me the odds were he would win. He was smart, strong, and battle-hardened by war, and I didn’t trust him because I was afraid.”
He shrugged when he looked at Cain. “I’m sorry for that, Cain. You’ve always been trustworthy, but it was my own lack of confidence, the fact I built this pack when I was very young and not entirely sure of my strength. It’s a huge responsibility and I was scared shitless a lot of the time. I handle the pack’s money, our investments, and all that keeps us solvent. I’m making decisions that have long-range implications for the health and strength of the pack, and I’m doing it without a guidebook. Along comes a sharp, powerful young alpha, one obviously stronger than me who wants to join and, ‘oh, by the way, I won’t challenge you.’ Yeah. Right.”
He bit back his own laughter when everyone else was chuckling. “Cain’s rarely had to do any enforcing with this pack. In fact, I can’t recall a single instance where any of you have created a problem, but he’s been called on by the alphas of other packs and he’s handled some pretty dangerous situations. By doing so, he’s built a strong reputation for both himself and this pack. And for me.”
This time he did laugh. “The other alphas see how strong Cain is and figure I’ve got to be like the Mad Max alpha on steroids. I don’t do anything to dissuade them. And please, I’d prefer that you not pass that information out beyond these walls.”
Cain stepped forward. “What Trak didn’t say is that the reason I joined the army was due to the fact I was a rogue. We all know what it’s like to be a wolf without a pack, and I didn’t handle it well, but after I’d challenged my pack leader back in Idaho and had my ass handed to me on a platter, the army was the closest thing I could think of to fill the place of a pack. When I got out, I hung around a couple of packs in Colorado and Utah, just watching them, but the vibe wasn’t right. I finally caught wind of a pack in Northern California that was still fairly new. This was my last hope. I knew as an alpha I was probably going to have to fight for a spot no matter where I went, but I have never wanted the responsibility of a pack of my own. Trak offered me exactly what I wanted—a home without bloodshed.”
He pulled Cherry close, wrapped his arm around Brad’s neck, and hugged him. “These two. Wow … yeah, these two give me what I need. It really doesn’t get any better. So, Trak? No need to apologize. It’s all good, and I’m happy for you. Chelo, welcome to the pack. Now if you folks don’t mind, I’m going to take my mates upstairs. It’s been a pretty wild night.”
“Not yet you don’t.” Chelo stood and she was looking at Cain. “Not before I thank you for keeping Trak safe. I want to thank everyone here for accepting me and for dealing with all the trouble I’ve brought, for protecting me at great risk to yourselves. I promise to do my best to keep your alpha happy. I know all of you will keep him safe. Good night, Cain. Good night, everyone. Please, Trak? I’m exhausted.”
Trak tugged Chelo to her feet. “Drew? Can you or Manny make sure Growl is locked up?” He grabbed the revolver off the mantel. “You know where this goes.”
Manny took it. “We’ll take care of this. Get some sleep. Chelo? You said the flowers for the wedding are coming in tomorrow. Do you want us to pick them up for you?”
“Thank you, but no. I need to go in and go over the order, make sure everything’s right. And then I have a wedding to prepare for, and arrangements to make for Sunday services.”
* * *
Evan watched while the group broke up, everyone going their separate ways. Darnell had been quiet during all the talk, and he wondered how much she really understood about Cain’s situation. She had no idea about their long life spans, but she had to be wondering. He leaned close and whispered, “Let’s lock this place up, okay? Cain and his crew went straight up to their rooms, but I want to check everything first.”
He took her hand and they checked to make sure the stove was off, the doors closed. No point in locking them with the front window blown out. That had to be repaired before the wedding.
So did his relationship with Nellie.
“Let’s go,” he said. Then he grabbed her Mason jar of punch and, still holding on to Nell, walked out of the lodge and down the trail to his cabin.