“Thanks for the ringing endorsement,” Grant said sourly, and Mandy responded with a sunny smile and a wink.
Then she glanced around to make sure there was no one else within earshot. “Oh, one other thing. She was human.”
Grant shook his head in confusion. He’d dated a lot of women over the last few years, but as far as he knew, he’d parted on good terms with all of them. He mostly stuck to werewolf females, although from time to time he’d be seen in public at some nightclub opening with a human female on his arm.
“I have no idea who it could be. What did she look like?”
“About five five, brown hair, kind of Midwestern farm-girl-looking. Freckles. Thick scar on her face. Her name was Celeste. I know because I was in a store where she was shopping a little earlier, and I saw her using her credit card.”
A sharp jolt stabbed through him. For a brief moment there, when he’d heard Mandy’s description, he’d thought it might be Jennifer.
He hadn’t seen or heard from Jennifer in seven years. It would be a crazy coincidence for her to show up here in Colorado. There was no reason that Jennifer would be asking Mandy if Grant had ever hit a woman, but the description sounded like her, and it might explain why his wolf had been so unsettled the last couple of days.
But no. It was a woman with a scar, whose name was Celeste.
They’d started to walk into the bar when Taylor’s cell phone pinged. She pulled it out of her purse, looked at it, and bit out a curse. She waved at Grant and Mandy to follow her back outside.
Standing on the sidewalk, she showed them the news article on her phone. “I set up Google to alert me for any mentions of werewolves in the media,” she said.
“Well, fuck me very much,” Grant groaned when he saw the picture. “This is a capper to a perfect day, and it’s not even noon. Maybe we can top it off with a nice plague of locusts.”
The news article featured a picture of an enormous wolf. It was standing in an alley in downtown New Jersey. The wolf had supposedly chased a bunch of teenagers who were smoking pot in the alley, and one of them had paused to snap a picture of it. “The Wolf-Man Cometh!” the headline blared.
There weren’t even any packs in New Jersey, because the state was too populated. There were a dozen major packs, and an estimated sixty smaller packs scattered across the country, but they were all located in states with low populations and enormous tracts of forest land, so they could escape detection and could safely shift on the full moon.
So that meant that this was yet another lone wolf. Risking the lives of every single werewolf in the world.
Of course, the headline writer thought it was joke. Humans didn’t know about werewolves. But there had been an unacceptable number of near exposures recently, and that was the reason for the emergency national pack meeting at the Mystic Lodge, ten miles outside town. Packs from all across the country had sent pack members and Alphas to meet up and address the situation head on.
Werewolf packs out of necessity lived in small, isolated towns and kept to themselves whenever possible. Because of that, a lot of packs were severely lagging behind humans when it came to technology and communication, some more than others. Grant’s pack had chosen to be in a business that put their family in the public view, so they’d stayed up to date with technology and had members who were experts in social media and computer security. They were here at the meeting to help everyone else get up to speed.
Since time immemorial, there had always been werewolves who didn’t fit in with their packs.
Some of them, instead of finding other packs to take them in, went rogue. Some of them were too feral to fit into any pack. Whenever possible, those wolves were hunted down and killed, but a few escaped. There was also an underground group called The Network, who helped hide lone wolves and smuggle them to safety. Selfish bastards. They were putting every werewolf in the country at risk with their foolish idealism.
And these days, with traffic cameras and cell phone cameras on every corner, there were just too many near exposures.
Normally, packs operated like their own little kingdoms, with their own laws and traditions, ruled by their Alphas and their Elders, who enforced the pack charters.
But the packs were finally accepting that they needed to cooperate with each other. They needed a national database of all pack members, to start with. It would help in numerous ways that went beyond keeping track of rogue wolves. They could also pool resources such as healers, and Truth-Makers, and seers, and they could set up a mating database.
There were a number of packs who still stubbornly clung to the old ways, however, so the atmosphere at the lodge was already heated before the meetings had even begun. And with so many Alphas in one place, the whole damn town was in danger of succumbing to testosterone poisoning. Grant told himself that maybe that was why his wolf was so restless.
The official start date was tomorrow. It was two weeks before the full moon, though, so they had plenty of time – if the stubborn old fossils could ever learn to play nice with others.
Taylor sighed. “I need to call Cliff. You two play nice and don’t bite anybody.” She glanced around quickly as she said that, to make sure she wasn’t overheard. These days, who knew when a human might overhear her and take it the wrong way?
* * * * *
He sat outside at a table in the shadows, pretending to look at his laptop and secretly watching his Beta and his Omega conspire against him.
They stood across the patio, drinking coffee, plotting his death. They were trying to look casual, but he knew what they were up to, and he knew that he didn’t have much time now. They were starting to suspect the nature of his weakness, and they’d be making their move soon.
His Beta glanced his way. He saw it from the corner of his eye, and his hand unconsciously drifted to the pistol concealed in a shoulder holster under his jacket. The pistol had silver-coated bullets – his only protection these days. If his men knew that, he’d be dead within seconds.
The solution was so close, it nearly drove him mad. Close enough to touch.
He’d show them soon. Any day now, the precious substance would be his, and he’d slash a pathway through those who’d dare to plot his overthrow. He’d kill their mates, their cubs, their brothers and sisters…and he’d make the traitors watch, before he killed them. The thought of the screaming and crying and pleading brought a twisted smile to his face as his fingers randomly played across keys on the laptop.
