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That was putting it mildly.
"Did the others in your Pack come with you?" the Alpha asked. "You are not alone, are you?"
Eli had seen me with Clay, but from the nervous looks he was tossing my way, the others knew nothing of those encounters. Given their carefully polite behavior now, I suspected they wouldn't be happy to hear that he'd tried to run us off "his" territory.
"I'm with my mate."
"Good. You will bring him. Then you will get rid of these werewolves."
"You mean kill them?"
The Alpha met my gaze with an inscrutable look, like the one I'd seen so often from Jeremy. I wondered if it came automatically with Alphahood. I hoped so, because otherwise, I doubted I'd ever develop it.
"If that is what you think best," he said, as if leaving the final call up to me. Not that I had any problem killing Tesler. Hell, I didn't plan to get on a plane out of Alaska until I had. But being commanded to do so wasn't something I took lightly.
I demanded--well, asked for, relatively nicely--an explanation. Getting one wasn't easy. The conversation proceeded slowly as the Alpha searched for the right words. Eli kept sighing and fidgeting, clearly wanting to take over. But in this, the Shifters were like a werewolf Pack. While they made some allowances for his youth, he couldn't speak for the Alpha. When the Alpha is present, he must speak for his pack.
As he'd said, this was one of the main hunting camps for his community, as well as a way station between it and the city, where they went for supplies. While Dennis's cabin had been here for years, he'd never caused any trouble, so the Shifters treated him as a fellow predator--leaving him alone. Tesler and his boys were another matter.
If Dennis was the respected fellow hunter, the Teslers were like the rednecks who rent a cabin for the week just to get drunk and shoot stuff. They'd been running in wolf form not caring whether they were seen or heard, scaring the game for miles and preying on humans, then--worse yet--leaving their kills in the open.
Now, I'd already suspected the mutts of the killings, despite Dan's denials. When I expressed even the slightest skepticism, though, just a gentle "Are you sure it was them?" the Alpha got his back up.
"Yes, we are sure. Miles"--he gestured to Eli's father--"was at the cabin after the first man died. He heard them fighting. One had been seen by a human as he Shifted, so he killed him and the leaders were angry with him for not hiding the body before it was found. They sent him away."
That matched Dan's story. But if the Tesler brothers gave their lackey shit for leaving the corpse, and kicked his ass out because of it, why were two more bodies found later?
And here I discovered that the Shifters lacked a certain sophistication when it came to scheming and subterfuge. That's not to say they were stupid. They just weren't accustomed to the kind of political machinations the Pack dealt with every day. When I pointed out the fallacy of the Alpha's logic, he grew agitated.
"They did kill that man. And that is not the worst. They killed girls. Two of them. Maybe more. We found only two. They buried them, but not with respect. They threw them away. Like..." He waved his hand, searching for words. "Like garbage. They are monsters."
Agreed. And at confirmation of the girls' fate, my determination to kill Tesler only grew. But I noticed he'd shifted my attention from the question of the other two "wolf-killed" men. The Tesler gang hadn't killed them and the Alpha knew it. Another, less comfortable explanation slunk into the back of my mind.
"You say these pack leaders were upset with the body being left out and found," I said slowly. "Very upset. Maybe, if it continued, they'd get upset--and nervous--enough to leave."
"Yes, but they did not."
"Because they knew they weren't responsible and, being clueless about normal wolf behavior, they presumed it was wolves and ignored it. So your plan failed."
The Alpha nodded... then stopped, as he realized what he was admitting to. He blustered then, not denying it, but pointing out that the two men they'd killed were poachers and trappers, stealing animals meant for sustenance and taking only the skins.
"And animals aren't the only thing they kill," Eli muttered.
His father tried to shush him, but halfheartedly, his gaze averted, eyes filled with grief.
"Poachers killed one of you," I said. "In Shifted form. They mistook you--"
"They mistook him for nothing," Eli snarled, spittle flying. "He wasn't Shifted. The guy shot him and tried to hide his body, like he'd killed a deer out of season."
"My other son," Miles said. "Eli's litter mate."
Eli's twin brother, accidentally shot in human form. That would explain the animosity toward us--probably toward werewolves, wolves and humans alike, running them off his territory with all the single-minded rage of a grief-stricken teenage boy. Sure, he'd been trying something else in the grove a little while ago, but that was pure instinct. My scent at work on his teen hormones. Even now, when he slid glances my way, checking me out, contempt warred with attraction.
"But what we did, it was not revenge," the Alpha said.
Not consciously, I'm sure. But subconsciously, it would play a role. While Eli acted out his grief by chasing every predator off his turf, his elders found an excuse to do the same with poachers and trappers, men they would now consider a threat. To them, the killing of those two humans, while regrettable, could be justified by their actions and the necessity of stopping the greater threat: Tesler's mutts. And while I could strenuously argue the logic of this, it made perfect sense to them, and that I couldn't dispute.
But all that still didn't answer one question. There was another way to handle their problem. One that was far more reliable--and ethically justifiable--than framing them for murder.
