Two weeks. I’ll be something different in two weeks.I won’t be me anymore.
Cliff turned to face Taylor and put his hands on her shoulders, looking down into her face. For the first time since she’d known him, he looked rattled. “I wanted to make you feel like you’re part of the family, so you’d want to stay, but I can see it totally backfired.”
She wanted to stay angry with him, but it was hard when he was being so damn charming and concerned about her feelings. And he was upset about something that wasn’t his fault. Jerrold was the one who’d done his best to ruin their dinner. Also, the touch of his hands felt really, really good on her shoulders, and she never wanted him to let go.
She smiled up at him. “Oh, I don’t know, family dinners would never be boring here. And I absolutely love Serafina and Dax and Roger. Where are their parents?”
He managed a rueful smile. “Their parents… Their dad had the Dominus Gene. That can be a blessing or a curse, as you’ve seen with Jerrold. All that power coursing through your veins…if it’s not channeled properly, it can make you crazy and wild and hungry for sensation. Their father was a real thrill-seeker, and he chose a mate who was just like him. They were terrible for each other. Always running off and leaving the kids behind to chase excitement. Parasailing over volcanoes, base jumping... About a year ago, they decided to spend the full moon outside of pack lands. Strictly forbidden, because of the risk of exposure. They’d have been executed if they’d been caught. Instead, they were shot to death by a hunter.”
“I thought only silver bullets killed a werewolf,” Taylor said. “Or is that a myth?”
“No, it’s true that silver is extremely toxic to werewolves. And we do generally heal super fast from all other injuries. However, if we’re shot with a powerful enough rifle, right through a vital area like the spine or the heart or head, it’s fatal. They were shot with .700 Nitro Express cartridges, which could stop an elephant. Just their bad luck that they ran into a macho nutjob hunter…but if they hadn’t run into him, they’d have found some other way to kill themselves. It was only a matter of time..”
“Speaking of killing things…will you be able to stop Jerrold from abusing his wife?” she asked. Her stomach churned at the memory of Leota’s downcast eyes and frightened expression. “Because in all honesty, if you can’t say yes, there’s a good chance I’ll attack him some time soon, no matter what the consequences are.”
A pained grimace twisted his handsome face. He took his hands from her shoulders and shoved them in his pockets, staring off to the distant horizon. “I’m right there with you on that. All we have to do is wait until the end of the Alpha Trials, and he’ll be a dead man. We can’t do anything to him beforehand. It would violate the pack charter.”
He’d explained a little about the Alpha Trials, but not enough. At her questioning look, he nodded. “Right. I keep forgetting that you didn’t grow up in a pack. Okay, the pack charter is a set of rules that governs us, like the Constitution. Every pack has its own charter. Sometimes I envy newer packs that formed recently; they can make rules that reflect the twenty-first century. Ours was created in the sixteen hundreds, shortly after our people arrived here from England to escape werewolf hunters.”
Taylor shook her head in confusion. “But why would the pack charter prevent you from saving Leota from abuse?”
“It’s not specifically that. The charter says I can’t challenge Jerrold right now. Once the Elders call for the Alpha Trials, no one is allowed to challenge any of the competitors – with a very few exceptions, like if the competitor attacks someone else’s mate. We men hold our mates sacred here, and an attack on someone else’s mate is asking to have your insides rearranged so they’re on the outside. But I can’t do anything to challenge Jerrold before the trials, because it would potentially disqualify me, depending on how the Elders voted. In other words, if I try to help Leota now? It could end up backfiring and mean she’s stuck with the bastard forever. But don’t worry. At the end of the trials, there’s the physical combat portion. Every participant has the right to tap out, to surrender. Jerrold won’t tap out, and I’ll kill him.” His eyes gleamed with menace.
A sudden horrible thought seized her. “Wait. Does that mean that in theory he could kill you in a fight?”
Cliff smiled grimly, and the expression in his eyes – feral, deadly – was truly frightening. “In theory.”
Taylor began meandering aimlessly down the garden path, feeling unsettled and frustrated. She’d have to accept their rules and wait until the end of the trials. She just hated it.
Cliff followed her. “I hate the way he’s treating Leota,” he told her. “But once the trials are over, I will offer sanctuary to all the decent members of Jerrold’s pack, and the remainder will have to form a new, fucked-up, dysfunctional pack and stay out of our way or die.”
Taylor still didn’t like it. “Why do those old people get to vote on anything? I thought the Alpha was the boss.”
“The Pack Elders are like your congress and senate. Checks and balances. It’s required of all werewolf packs, because if you have an Alpha who goes off the rails, someone needs to be able to reel him in or we all risk exposure. So the oldest seven members of each pack are the Pack Elders, and they listen to a lot of minor pack disputes and enforce the charter.”
“Some of them seem to actually side with him.”
His brow furrowed. “Yes, unfortunately, Elders can be very tradition-bound. Some of them see Jerrold’s bullying and abusiveness as strength. Three of them – Minnie, Phineas and Sylvester – are squarely in his quarter. Herbert, Maurice and Juliet are with me. And Oswald is undecided.”
“So can they challenge the results of the Alpha Trials?”
“Only if there were a tie, or a draw, or some reason to question the results. Then the vote of the Elders could select the Alpha. And that would be bad. If the Elders voted in Jerrold’s favor, the pack might feel obligated to support them. If the pack defied the Elders, that would mean we’d be cut off from all other packs. We wouldn’t be able to ask for help from another pack, or mate outside our pack. So that’s why it’s vital that we don’t do anything that might disqualify me before the trials.” He kicked viciously at a rock in the dirt. “And yes, it makes me sick to let Jerrold get away with abusing Leota. But it’s not for much longer.”
A thought occurred to her. “What about Jerrold’s Elders? Can’t they keep him under control?”
He shook his head. “They’re all his family members, so unfortunately anything goes in that pack. Several Elders who weren’t his family members mysteriously died over the years.”
She frowned in thought. “So much new information. I feel like I’m cramming for final exams.”
“Ask me anything. I’m all yours.” He flashed her a roguish grin when he said that, and she felt a swarm of butterflies take flight in her tummy.
“You won’t let anything happen to Serafina and the kids, will you? Even if Jerrold somehow, against all odds, wins?”
“He won’t win,” Cliff said firmly. “And no. Austin is very close to them, and he’s not a man to be messed with. He’d take them and hide them, if necessary. Austin does security work, of a kind that I don’t even want to know about, but I suspect he’s involved with the Network.”
At her questioning glance, he said, “They work with lone wolves who aren’t members of any pack. Sometimes they smuggle them to places of safety. Or take out lone wolves who are posing a threat to us all.”
“Yikes. Speaking of Austin, why is he competing to be Alpha if he hates this pack so much?”
