To Catch a Wolf (BBW Werewolf Shifter Romance) Page 3

  “End?” I said. Looking up at him, I drank Erik in as he pushed away and his muscles shrank from totally inhuman to simply mostly unbelievable. His hard hairs receded, and his teeth went back to being perfect examples of dentistry. “But... you don’t mean us do you?”

  He cocked his eyebrow. “No?”

  “Oh,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “I thought you meant...”

  “No, no, no. I promised you I was going to figure out some way to convince the pack that there’s no reason I can’t claim you as my actual, official mate.”

  I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Then, what he said hit me. “I guess I just don’t understand,” I said. “They all seem to like me okay, right? So what’s the big deal?”

  Erik squinted a little bit. “It’s complicated,” he replied. “There are a lot of rules and regulations and quid-pro-quos about what we can and can’t do. And, ever since you graduated from being my secretary to being my... er...”

  “Assistant?”

  He grunted a laugh. “Yeah, assistant. There was some tension about having a pureblood human involved in pack business.”

  That took me a little by surprise. “There... was? Why is this the first I’m hearing of it? And if they didn’t want a human here, why am I here?”

  Erik raised his hands defensively. “I said at first. It was my idea, to bring a pure blood in. To be honest with you, I’m a little tired of how insular and prickly this community’s gotten and I thought it’d do some good to have a little bit of a different perspective kicking around. And so far, I’ve been right.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If that’s true, then what’s the big deal? They didn’t like me at first, then they got used to me being around the courtroom and confidential town business, but I can’t be the alpha’s girlfriend? What kind of ridiculous—”

  “Like I said, it’s complicated.” Erik let out a sigh.

  But I wasn’t finished.

  “What I don’t get is why you don’t just do what you say you’re going to do and to hell with the rest. I mean, you are the alpha. You run the town. Right?”

  “Well...”

  “Am I right or not?” I unashamedly crossed my living room and put my hands on my hips, still naked from the waist down. “You’re the alpha, right?”

  “That’s true,” he said. “Listen, I’m not entirely sure I like the way this is going. I was trying to be nice, you know? Give you a little bit of a romantic segue to the next part of the day?”

  I pursed my lips. “This is getting old,” I said.

  “What is?” He put his hands up defensively. “The mind blowing sex? The day-long escapades into the mountains that generally end up including mind blowing sex? What exactly is getting old, Izzy?”

  I was quiet for a second, considering my words. “Not knowing. Not knowing if you’re serious about what you’re telling me, or if you’re just stringing me along. I’ve had my share of men string me along, you know. I don’t want any part of that. Not anymore, not from you.”

  “Hey,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me close. His arm went instantly around my waist, and when he held me tight, I felt his manhood thicken in his just-zipped jeans. “When’s the last time I lied to you?”

  I looked down and ran my hand along the muscles in his side and copped a little feel. “Never, I guess,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. Not once. Right?”

  I stroked my hand along his hardening cock. Already I wanted him again, I was so ready for him... I had no idea how he did this to me, even two years on, I had no idea. We just couldn’t get enough of each other.

  I nodded and bit my lip. “Can we...?”

  That got a half-grin to crawl across Erik’s perfect face. That damn dimple poked out and made my knees go stupid. “I wish,” was all he said.

  Groaning, and so full of desire I was about to burst, I finally figured out what he’d done.

  Somehow, some way, Erik coming here and stoking the fire between my legs himself had me pumped full of more residual excitement than just some phone sex.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said, laughing a little.

  “Town council meeting,” Erik said, bending down to kiss me and run his hands underneath my ass. “I love these curves,” he groaned. “But... city business. I’ll drive?”

  “Erik?” I said as he turned to the door and I pulled my very wet shorts up, then back off, realizing I needed to change to something less dripping.

  “Hmm?”

  “I hate you,” I said. “So, so much.” I couldn’t help but grin as I zipped my jeans.

  -3-

  “What do you mean he came back? He’s... dead. Unless that old witchdoctor is playing some kind of a terrible joke, how could Atlas be back?”

  I watched Erik run his hands through his hair and then lock his fingers behind his head. He always tried feigning relaxation when he was anything but. At his most nervous, he acted almost drunk.

  Tapping away at my keyboard, the reactions from the other councilmembers were as entertaining, and as hard to record, as ever.

  The nearly-narcoleptic Duggan puffed up, looking just about like he was going to roll into a ball and hiss at someone. He shook his head then his spines, and very quickly went from cute, oversized hedgehog to cranky historian. “When did Jenga stop raising zombies? There’s one in the newspaper every other week causing some sort of trouble. Doesn’t anyone read anymore?” His voice was high pitched, but obviously irritated.

  “No,” Erik and Jamie Ampton, a tall woman with very pointy teeth, answered in unison. Jamie was upside down, hanging from the rafter of the building, wrapped in her wings. She sneezed softly, and then she and Erik exchanged a short glance.

  “I’m sure you think that’s clever,” Duggan said. “I’m sure you do.”

  “Duggan, can we please keep the irritable professor act to a minimum until we figure out what’s going on?” That time it was Clay Tomkins, one of only two hyena-shifters in town, who spoke. Shortly after, he took a drink from a cold can of soup. “We’ve got a real problem here that has nothing at all to do with adult literacy. If these reports are true, then this is the first time in our present memory that there have been two Alphas of Jamesburg, and that just won’t do!”

  A murmur spread through the room, everyone looking at everyone else. Erik gulped twice on his steaming cup of coffee, and Jamie, his partner in quipping, stuck a pencil in her inky black hair then sneezed again. For a second, the two of them stayed silent and let everyone else do the chattering.

  Two wolves, the most sensible of the bears, and a cheetah looked at each other, then groaned incoherently. They’d been napping in their animal forms, as I’ve learned the people here tend to enjoy, especially during meetings.

  “Izzy,” Erik whispered, turning in my direction. “What do you think of all this?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “I don’t even really understand what they’re talking about. There are two alphas? Or I guess one regular alpha and also a zombie alpha? Doesn’t that kind of go against the idea of a... you know, alpha?”

  He looked back and forth, but when he noticed that the rest of the twelve council members were either playing on their phones, in the case of Jamie, or trying really hard to keep from screaming at each other, he eased up a little.

  “The short version,” he said, “is that this werebear, Atlas Parsons – and yeah, I can tell from your face you are wondering if that’s really his name, it is – spent a lot of time in charge of Jamesburg. He went nuts and then jumped off a building. Real messy. Wait, you’ve heard this before, haven’t you?”

  “Duggan told me about him. Or I read it, or something. But that’s not what’s confusing me – what’s got me is how blasé you’re being about it all.”

  “That kind of thing is more common than you’d think, especially with the bears. Part of being a shifter is containing your animal instincts. Not all of us manage to do it quite so elegantly as yours truly,” he grinned. “But the bears have the hardest time.
That’s why most of them stay off in the woods by themselves and only come to town when they have to. Ruben there is one of the only ones who can keep a lid on it, really.” He tilted his head to the left, indicating the half-transformed, half-sleeping councilmember.

  When I first came here, it struck me just how wildly different all the people were. Each group had their own ways, and somehow they managed to come together and not murder each other.

  Mostly.

  I tapped my fingers lightly on the tops of my keyboard keys, not typing, just tapping. “But... a zombie? That’s a little much.”

  Erik shrugged. It wasn’t in his nervous way where he pretends nothing bothers him. He seemed genuinely unexcited about the possibility of a rival alpha coming back to town.

  “Thing is, even if he does come back, he’s ancient by now. Over a hundred, maybe a hundred and ten. How much of a threat could a geriatric bear be?” He gave me an easy shrug and a mischievous grin. “Probably isn’t even continent anymore. And anyway, I’ve been spoiling for a real fight. Never hurts to get some exercise.”

  “Most people think of exercise as doing some squats or going for a run, not fighting some undead and obviously dangerous werebear, Erik.” I shook my head slowly while staring at him, trying to read the look on his face.

  Sometimes – rarely, if I’m being honest – I wish he’d tune down the alpha intensity a little. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need another hedgehog historian, but I have the feeling that caution is a lot less likely to get someone killed.

  He laughed, I didn’t. “Erik, he might be old, but from what they’re saying, he’s more of a threat than you’re letting on. Or is this just you playing cool?”

  Duggan shuffled up to where Erik sat, and addressed him. “I worry that Jenga might finally have lost his last nut, Erik. If he really has pulled our old alpha up from the ground, what on earth could he be doing it for?”

  At that, Jamie stood up and stretched her arms wide, spreading her fingers. That’s the thing about bats – those long bones in their wings are just fingers with skin between them, so Jamie’s got a whole lot of finger to stretch.

  “You’re talking crazy,” she said. “I saw him myself. Am I missing something, or is everyone who remembers him going nuts, and jumping off a building onto a bunch of rebar that went right through him forgetting the most important part of all that? Meaning – he was quite a mess. That wouldn’t make a very stable zombie.”

  Clay shook his head. His eyes darted back and forth like he was thinking, but like he was also about to do something sneaky. He wasn’t, of course, but that’s just kind of what hyena eyes do.

  “Jenga’s been working.” Clay’s voice was halting and quick, just like his glances. “Coulda patched him up, got him running good again.”

  Erik raised an eyebrow. “I don’t... is that possible? To make a corpse better?”

  Clay nodded. “I don’t see why not, I mean practice makes perfect, right? Surely after all these years trying, that crazy old coot might’ve got it right?”

  Erik shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, Jenga’s zombies, even the ones that work correctly, er, so to speak, aren’t exactly stalwart. He uses them to pick fruits around his house, to turn his generator and things. I’m having trouble imagining a scenario where he’s re-animated a ten-year old corpse and has some grand plans with it past, I dunno, having it show up in a drive-through for a prank.”

  “Dinna mean he couldna figured out some other way to do it,” one of the less-vocal councilmembers said. I couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he was wearing blue coveralls and was chewing a cigar. “Or maybe he just got better, know what I mean?”

  “Not really, Fergus,” Erik said. “Maybe give me a little something more to work with?”

  Fergus McDonald – he’s a Scotsman who farms outside of town and a member of the panther troupe. That always entertained me because I can’t think of a single thing less Scottish than a panther.

  As he interrogated the old farmer, Erik gave me one hell of a hungry look. I pinched up my lips and shook my head ‘no’, but I’m sure he just took that as a challenge instead of a rebuttal. Sometimes the brash smugness has its advantages. Somehow, even though the tightness between my legs was just as unrelenting as Erik’s naughty mind, I managed to keep my thoughts on the things I was typing instead of the thing in his jeans.

  “Ach, what I mean is, well, think of it this way – Frankenstein dinna get the monster right on the first try did he? Imhotep dinna get the first pyramid just so, aye?”

  Erik took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh that stretched to the moon. “You’re telling me that old witchdoctor – what – that he fixed up Atlas with spare parts? You... this can’t be serious.”

  Fergus twitched his eyebrows which were bushy, unreasonably wild caterpillars that almost joined at the tail. He still had two of them no matter how hard they were trying to become one. “Aye, that’s exactly what I’m meaning.”

  The old panther moved his cigar to the other side of his mouth and gnawed as he scratched underneath his chin.

  Erik recoiled slightly in disbelief. “Okay then. Well, so, where did the rumors about this even start? And how did it not come to my attention until just now? This isn’t one of Crazy Mary’s stories that got taken too far, is it?”

  Crazy Mary – an honest-to-God witch of the woods – was notorious for starting really whacked out rumors and then forgetting all about them when someone caught her in her bullshit. She was so old that her skin was leathery and brown, and not a whole lot different than the bark of the tree where she lived. People say that she’s been alive so long she can’t keep the centuries straight, and so her bizarre stories aren’t exactly lies, they’re just her getting mixed up on the year.

  It was Duggan who replied. “No, no, it wasn’t Mary. When we came up to unlock the courthouse this morning – which, by the way is traditionally the alpha’s job,” he said pointedly, shooting a nasty glare at Erik, “someone was waiting by the door and told me they saw him. Said they saw him last night.”

  “Who was it?” Erik asked. “Some of the shifters around Jamesburg aren’t exactly mentally competent, you know. Wait a minute,” he rolled his eyes, “it wasn’t Leon, was it? He’s only sane about a quarter of the time, and most of that time he spends plastered.”

  “Well,” Duggan began, then trailed off.

  “It was!” Erik stood up, balled his fists and leaned heavily on them. “It was that old drunk, wasn’t it? You’re trying to get me all excited over a zombie sighting made by the town drunk. Very good Duggan, that’s excellent. So now that’s taken care of, can we adjourn this meeting? I’ve got something I want to do.”

  He punctuated that with an under-table squeeze on my knee. The insatiable wolf man was seriously threatening to wear out my endurance.

  “No, no, wait a second.” Duggan stood up, insistent. “He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even hung over, which I understand is a minor miracle where Leon is involved, but he was perfectly clear-headed.”

  “He is insane, Duggan,” Erik was almost shouting. “You’re worried over the ramblings of an insane lizard!”

  The historian puffed out his cheeks and frowned. “Salamander, but that doesn’t matter. I think it’s not a bad idea to have a plan anyway,” he said quietly. “What could that hurt? Being cautious? We’ve got evacuation plans for storms and floods, why not for—”

  “Zombies?” Erik threw back his head, laughing. I didn’t like the way he was treating Duggan. His normal werewolf brashness had somehow morphed into pure, main-lined hubris. “A zombie invasion. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? The town witchdoctor is going to go from using a handful of corpses to run his computer to invading the town with undead? Good lord, Duggan.”

  I swear that Duggan was about to punch Erik in the mouth. He was so red-faced and angry that I wouldn’t have been surprised one bit. And to be totally fair, Erik was getting so intense he probably deserved a sock i
n the jaw.

  “Cool off, Erik,” Jamie said, interrupting the exchange. “You both have your different ways of dealing with threats. Yours has worked pretty well so far, but—”

  “And what is it you mean when you say ‘my way’, Jamie?”

  Jamie lifted her shoulders, popping about eight vertebrae in her neck. “Well, I suppose that I mean your method of waiting for a bomb to drop and then punching it until it dies, hoping that you manage to kill it before it hits the ground. There’s a reason we change alphas every so often and—”

  Erik laughed again, cold and cruel. I stared at him to try and read some clue to his behavior, but all I saw was arrogance. I guessed that he’d finally been pushed so far that he had to start believing all his posturing to keep up the act. “Fine,” he said. “That’s just fine. And in the decade since I started this job, how many crises have we had?”

  “None,” Jamie admitted. “Of course, we had about thirteen close calls. Ten if you don’t count the ones that fizzled out before you did anything, like when Crazy Mary summoned that golem that overturned a schoolbus.”

  “All right, all right,” Erik said. “Fine, okay so you’re right. Wolves are brash, I am brash. I’m probably the most brazen of the entire pack, it’s kind of our thing, you know. But what you’re suggesting is that we... and listen carefully here... we take seriously the idea of a zombie invasion.”

  Jamie shrugged. “All I’m saying is that I don’t see any reason to not use the same caution we would for anything else. Like Duggan said, we do have plans for all other kinds of disasters, so why not this one?”

  Listening to them go around and around, I couldn’t help but laugh. My last part time job before I graduated back in Ohio – the other world, it seems like – was to stock shelves at the local small-chain grocery store. When you consider a zombie outbreak, errant witches summoning golems, a necromancer with a hair up his ass getting a skeleton army together to stage a sit-in at the courthouse over a zoning dispute... it makes price changes at midnight a little less exhilarating.