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Benny watched Jessie as she directed her two helpers to strip Titus. She’d found a towel of sorts and was using that to clean the man up some. Titus was protesting, and finally, with some exasperation, she ordered, “Shift, damn it. You need to heal!”
And there was a wolf standing there on wobbly legs staring at her balefully.
Benny stilled. He looked at Ryder who had the same shocked look on his face. Had she just commanded the Okanogan pack Second to shift? And he’d done it? True, he was ill. But still....
“Good job,” Benny said, quieting the murmurs among the men. Jessie paid no one any mind, she just used the towel to wipe down the wolf. The wolf accepted her touch. Benny frowned thoughtfully as he watched.
“Meat?” Jessie asked.
“On its way,” Ryder replied. He rummaged in his pack. “Here. It’s jerky. But he should eat it.”
Jessie accepted it from him, and then carefully offered it to the wolf. Ryder tensed, and Benny was already on the move, worried the wolf would bite her. Hell, he could take her whole hand, he thought with alarm. But Titus-wolf just accepted the jerky and chewed on it. Jessie gave him a pat, as if he was a damned dog, and he took that too. Benny shook his head, coming to a stop at a distance. He didn’t want to make Titus feel challenged in any way. Ryder stayed back too.
Two wolves came over the top of the hill dragging a deer carcass. “We got a knife to skin that thing?” Benny murmured. There was a day when he would never have been out here without one, but his was in his pack, along with a small pistol. There was a day when he never would have had that at all. Once he would have thought of the knife as a tool. Now he thought of it as a weapon and packed it accordingly. Shifters had changed; he didn’t think it was for the better.
Ryder just shrugged and nodded toward his men who were already moving in on the kill.
“They’ve got it handled,” he said. “This isn’t our first rodeo, Benny.”
True, Benny thought, and again he felt the relief that came with not being responsible. He grabbed his pack from the back of his bike and pulled off the sleeping bag. Propping up the pack against a large rock for a backrest, he sat on the roll, and leaned back, with nothing to do but watch.
There was something satisfying about being back out at a campsite, watching the men set up. They had a fire going now, and it looked like they were planning to grill some of that deer meat. He could smell the smoke — a bit of that sage scent lingered in it. That had been a nice white-tailed buck. Good eating and enough meat for the lot of them —for lunch anyway. A 175-pound deer like that would gain them about 90 pounds of meat, and Titus was going to plow through a lot of that, it looked like.
Good. Titus needed it to fuel his wolf’s healing.
Benny watched as Ryder talked to some of the men. They nodded, and headed out, also as wolves. Ah. More meat for supper.
They could all shift and go on a hunt, he supposed. That actually sounded good, maybe he’d suggest it. But he didn’t feel like getting up and talking to Ryder about it. It was nice to just sit here and watch.
When was the last time he’d been able to do that? Before Abby called the pack, that was for sure. For a moment he thought wistfully of his days as a fitness coach and yoga instructor. That had been fun.
Fun for him, he thought painfully then. Not so fun for the women they’d coached. They’d been made into shifters without their consent. And that might be forgivable — the serum Stefan had created would save thousands of girls’ lives. Maybe there was a better way, but Benny had yet to come up with one.
It was handing the women over to Jedediah Jones that was unforgivable. And that was Benny’s fault. Stefan had defended the agreement with Jones, because Wolf Harbor didn’t have the resources it took to teach the women how to be shifters, and women needed pack. Wolf Harbor Resort was a bunch of lone wolves. Oh, Stefan had all kinds of reasons, Benny thought bitterly. But truth was, they could have set up a facility, if they’d wanted to. Abby did it, didn’t she? And she was under fire from all sides at the time.
Hecould have done it. He didn’t even speak up. If he’d lent his support to Cujo when Cujo went ballistic?
He sighed. Water under the bridge. Some damned bloody water.
Benny watched Jessie encourage Titus to walk around, and he was getting less wobbly. She fed him more meat. She had it under control. Ryder squatted down beside him. “What the hell was that?” Ryder asked quietly.
Benny shook his head. “She’s stronger than she knows,” he murmured, not taking his eyes from the old wolf. He was still in a lot of pain, and that made a wolf unpredictable. And Titus, like the rest of the Okanogan pack, had been unpredictable on a good day.
“But Titus?” Ryder asked. “Could you order him to shift?”
Benny shrugged. “Yes,” he said. He grinned. “And on a good day, catching Titus off-guard when he’s been beaten up, I might even get him to do it.”
Ryder laughed, and relaxed a bit. The two of them just watched as the men worked around the camp. “Need to post a guard,” Benny said.
Ryder nodded. “They’ll come,” he agreed. “They have to know that it was someone from Okanogan. Wouldn’t take much effort to know we were through there. But really, where else would anyone take him, but south to the pack? So they’ll come. Be interesting to see who comes, though, won’t it?”
Benny nodded. “And when,” he said thoughtfully. It had been a couple of hours now. He was surprised they weren’t already here. “Since they aren’t already on top of us, they must be planning a major initiative. Maybe use it as the opportunity to invade Okanogan territory.”
Ryder considered that. “It is surprising,” he agreed. “But the Alpha is a shit-for-brains planner. If we got Titus back to the Okanogan, the pack would be furious. It would be all we could do to hold them back from wiping out the Penticton pack altogether.”
“I’m not sure I’m against that,” Benny said grimly.
“Want to explain 500 dead bodies to human authorities?” Ryder asked, tipping his head to one side as he looked at him.
