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Was that McKenzie’s intent? To further destabilize the pack? Maybe? Although Benny couldn’t see the point of it. Especially if McKenzie wanted to take over the pack.
Or maybe McKenzie wanted hisfatherto feel the injuries to his Second and come home. But again, McKenzie couldn’t possibly think he’d defeat Benny’s father in a challenge fight.
But if McKenzie knew where his father was, he could send assassins, Benny thought suddenly. If you looked beyond McKenzie’s ambitions to take over the entire Okanogan/Okanagan region, there were several people on the global stage who might give a pretty penny to know where his father was. Benny swore under his breath. When he started looking at the larger picture, this was a fucking disaster.
Ryder was leading now, with Jessie tucked in closely behind him. Benny smiled. He liked the — what to call it, theenergy signature? dominance signature? —he was getting from the two of them. He just hoped they were emotionally stable enough to make it work.
Who was he to talk about emotional stability, anyway?
Not that either of them had indicated they were thinking of trying. You’re a romantic, now? Benny jeered at himself. But that was a very powerful energy signature on that bike up there. Two people, very similar in dominance, forming a mate bond? At least he thought it was a mate bond, not just interest. There was something....
This was exactly what Cujo had described with his sister and her husband, he realized. Cujo had been impressed with their combined dominance. Just the fact that his sister and brother-in-law could do that was astounding. Benny had never heard of it before.
Well, add it to his growing list of bonds and links he hadn’t heard of before.
Ryder slowed way down to take a narrow dirt path that traversed the hillside. The bikes growled as the riders shifted down for the climb. These were road bikes, not dirt bikes, after all.
Benny heard Titus mumble something, but he couldn’t make it out. The old man held on though. Good enough.
Titus Black had been with his father since that first night when his father howled at the moon and called a pack. Actually he’d been around before that. As far back as Benny could remember, Titus Black had been there in the hills of the Okanogan. He’d had a cabin out at the end of a dirt road that had signs all over the place to deter anyone from coming up there. His Dad had ignored them all, and Benny had just tagged along. Dad wanted to build a cabin himself, and he thought it would be a fine idea to buy some land from Titus Black to build it on. They’d spent the day talking about nothing much, and then after darkness fell, the three of them had gone for a run as wolves. They’d come back in the early morning hours, and Titus Black agreed to sell his Dad the land.
It had been a fair trip to get down to the road to catch the school bus, but Benny hadn’t cared. The peace and silence of the cabins at the end of the road had been necessary — not just for his Dad, but for him too. It had taken him a long time to realize that he too had come out of Southeast Asia with issues. He ended up under the bed by instinct more than one night during hunting season — they weren’t supposed to be shooting at night, but they did, the drunken fools. There were a lot of vets —human and shifter —out in these hills, and they all had PTSD issues. Every damn one of them. Hunters — like fireworks — set them all off.
That Benny had survived his transition to America, and to an American high school, he attributed in great part to Ryder’s mother.
He probably should give her credit for his father’s sanity too. His father hadn’t come out of Southeast Asia any better than he had. He never talked about what he’d been doing. And like any self-absorbed teenager, Benny hadn’t really questioned it. He’d been somewhat resentful that his father had pulled him out of Chang Mai in the first place. He’d liked Chang Mai. He’d been treated with respect for his abilities to get in and out of places others couldn’t. He’d run information, weapons, drugs —whatever the pack needed moved, he could do it. And he was accorded adult status. Not pack status. He hadn’t sought that. He had still been Cambodian pack, holding the Cambodian pack memories, and for all that he was practically feral, he honored that.
And then he’d felt them die.
His eyes burned as he remembered. It had almost taken him with them. Pol Pot had a fine sense of who might stand against him, and the members of the pack had an inner strength he resented, even if he didn’t know where it came from. So he killed them. Every man, woman and child.
Well he’d killed a lot of others too. Every educated person. Every person with a job that wasn’t in agriculture.... Benny took a deep breath and blew it out.
It had only been since the Hat Island pack had formed that he’d been getting hints that his father had something to do with Pol Pot’s fall, and that Tom Garrison was renowned among the human intelligence community —a historic figure. Who knew?
Everyone but him, apparently.
But Benny had been there the night in the Okanogan Tom Garrison got fed up with the lawlessness of human and shifter alike and howled at the moon. The wolves had howled back —including Benny —and the howls had echoed through the hills.
It had been quite the topic of conversation the next day at school — about all the wolves in the hills, he remembered with amusement. But there was a new shifter pack, and Benny had been a part of one again, swept up in his father’s call. It had felt good to belong.
Huh, he thought with sudden insight. Banished by his father at 25 hadn’t been the first time he’d lost his pack. He hadn’t thought of it like that. Bemused, he considered that factoid, and then added it to his bins. He grinned. Looked like that was going to be a permanent visualization for him and his wolf.
But this man clinging to his back had stepped up that first night to guard the new Alpha’s back. Titus Black had stood at the Alpha’s left hand, and Benny had been at his father’s right. And they’d brought order and law — Alpha’s law— to the hills.
Now all of that was coming undone.
Someone had brutalized this man. They would pay, Benny thought grimly. They would pay dearly.
When Benny finally maneuvered his bike into the campsite on the hill, Ryder was already directing his wolves in setting up camp. Two men came to help Titus off the bike. Jessie was with them. Benny nodded his thanks. “Go with them,” he murmured to her. “Titus is not completely in touch with reality. He may fight them —male wolves — but accept your touch. Try to get him cleaned up and see if he’ll shift.”
She nodded.
“We need red meat,” Jessie said. “I didn’t see a whole lot of supplies coming in with us.”
Benny grimaced. “Ryder!” he called. “Send a couple of wolves out for a deer?”
Ryder nodded, and gestured to two of his men, who stripped and shifted. Benny noticed Jessie carefully avoided the sight of the naked men. He winced. That wasn’t normal — wolves got used to the casual nudity of shifting. More evidence that she had healing to do. And instead she was out here with a small pack of unstable wolves? His jaw muscles clenched. Well, he’d just have to see that she didn’t incur more wounds to heal.
