Hungry Like a Wolf

Fourteen

Logan woke again, though this time not nearly as pleasantly as last time, when he felt Honor slip from the bed. For a minute he lay still, imagining she had just gone to add more wood to the fire, but he never heard the clunk of wood on wood or the crackle of renewed flames. Instead, he heard a rustle of cloth and the unmistakable click of the cabin door opening. When he heard it shutting, he frowned and threw off the blanket that covered him.

The night air bit at his bare ass as he stood and glanced around the cabin. He knew he had heard her putting on clothes—which was weird, considering they had both entered the building in wolf form and neither had been carrying a duffel bag—but no sweater or conveniently sized pair of jeans appeared for him. Instead, he yanked the door open and stalked outside buck naked. It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself bare assed, and the Goddess knew it wouldn’t be the last. Right now, the important thing was finding out where his mate had run off to.

And why.

It almost surprised him when he spotted her immediately, standing at the edge of the lake, her head tilted back, dark eyes fixed on the heavy, silver orb of the moon. It hung low in the sky, indicating the hours were transitioning from late to early. It was tomorrow now, the day he knew both of them had been dreading.

Stepping up behind Honor, he wrapped his arms around her and lowered his chin to the top of her head. “Looks like it will be morning soon.”

“Sunrise in another hour or two,” she agreed, not turning to look at him. Her eyes remained fixed on the moon.

Logan felt his mouth quirk. “This is the part of the movie where we wax all rhapsodic and romantic in the moonlight, isn’t it?”

Honor snorted. “Right, because there’s so much romance in this situation. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not in a movie. No one is going to yell ‘Cut!’ and tell us to break for lunch. And definitely not during the final climactic battle sequence.”

He tried not to stiffen. “You’re picturing a final climactic battle sequence?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ve been hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

“And I’ve been hoping for a pony and a big brass band. Luckily, I’m used to disappointment.”

Logan leaned back and grasped her shoulders, easing her around to face him. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Honor.”

“You’re not going to have a choice.”

He wanted to shake her, but he retained enough restraint to control himself. They hadn’t been talking for long. “You’re my mate. No matter what happens at tonight’s Howl, I will do whatever it takes to protect you. There’s not even a question about that, so just let it go.”

She sighed deeply. “See, that’s the problem. Well, two of them, really.”

He waited for an explanation.

“I was hoping to persuade you to leave at dawn. I know it sounds kind of melodramatic, but it really would be for the best.”

“Okay, let’s pretend that was ever a remote possibility. Why would you want me to go?”

Honor stepped to the side, and Logan reluctantly released her. He kept his eye on her, though, turning as she moved away from the water and stuffed her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. The motion drew her shoulders up around her ears, and he watched as she forced them back down.

“You know the situation I’m in,” she finally said, stopping in a clear ray of moonlight. “I won’t give up this pack. I won’t give up on this pack, but no one seems real inclined to just step aside and let me claim it as alpha. It’s funny, when I think about it, that if I’d just been born with a dick, none of this would be happening. You”—she glanced at him—“would never have even come here.”

“I also wouldn’t be your mate,” he pointed out dryly.

“True.” She shrugged. “For all it really matters.”

Logan felt a stab of anger, laced with something else, something uneasy. “Are you saying it doesn’t matter to you that we’re mated?”

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter to the pack,” she corrected. “At least, it won’t tonight, and that’s when it counts.”

Logan frowned, letting that phrasing tumble around for a moment. It tugged at something, something tucked away in the back of his mind. Something that took that trace of unease and stretched it into real worry. He watched her while he thought, saw her expression reflect a mix of emotions: worry, anger, resignation, determination. Fear. Disgust.

And it hit him.

Felt like it literally hit him, like a kick to the solar plexus, nearly knocking the wind out of him.

“You think they’re going to call for an Alpha Mating Rite.”

Her mouth twisted. “I’m sure of it.”

Logan struggled for breath. Fury and fear threatened to rip it away again. Other males would try to hurt her, to touch her. To take her from him. And he would be powerless to stop it.

“You think they won’t recognize us as being mated. Why?” His mind raced. “Because you haven’t marked me? Well, fang up, sweetheart, and let’s get this done.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference. Sure, they’ll point to that, but even if I did mark you, it wouldn’t matter. You’re not a member of the pack, and I’m claiming to be alpha. Only a pack member can mate a female alpha; you know that. It keeps rogues from being able to come in and seize control of a pack too easily. You know, because we females are clearly too weak to hold them off.”

She sneered at that. Logan wanted to howl.

He struggled for control, fought to concentrate on the chill in the air, the rustle of the tree branches, the scent of the lake, the sound of pine needles snapping in the woods. Anything that would take his mind off the killing rage that threatened to consume him.

“And because I’m not a member of the pack, I won’t be allowed to join the challenge for you.”

“Of course not. You know the rules. They’d take you down if you tried. Or if they were afraid they couldn’t, they’d just shoot you and save themselves some trouble.”

Logan cursed. “But I suppose you’re just going to walk into that situation, even knowing what’s going to happen. You’re going to walk into that and just let them have at it.”

“What the hell else am I supposed to do?” she demanded, her calm demeanor cracking around the edges. “What choice do I have?”

“How about you can not set yourself up to be raped or killed? Have you thought about that?”

“Of course I have. I’m not an idiot. Trust me when I tell you they’re going to kill me. I’ll make them kill me, because I am dead serious when I say I will die before I’d ever let one of those sleazeballs fuck me.”

The tips of his fingers began to tingle, and Logan had to fight back his need to claw something into shreds. “Are you listening to yourself? Did you hear what I just heard? You are not going to die tonight. I will not allow that to happen.”

“For the Moon’s sake, Logan, you’re the one not listening to me. You. Don’t. Have. A. Choice. This is over. There’s nothing you can do. This is what’s going to happen tonight. The pack will gather, I’ll call the Howl, and one or more of the idiot males in my pack—who, by the way, couldn’t lead a marching band, let alone my pack—will call for an Alpha Mating Rite, and I will kill any one of them who touches me. End of story.”

Logan snarled viciously.

“Hey, maybe neither of us has enough faith, huh? Maybe I’ll win the challenges, and it will be those sick bastards who die, not me.”

He saw the way her lips twisted on that thought, and he knew she realized the truth, just as he did. If there was just one challenger, Honor could defeat him. Maybe even two. But if there were any more than that, or if two or more of them worked together to take her down, thinking they couldn’t fight it out among themselves after she was defeated, Honor was doomed. As fierce as she was, as strong as she was, she was still a female. Nature just hadn’t gifted her with the same musculature. In the end, a male Lupine would always be more powerful.

It took a moment to gain enough control so that he could manage speech. Even so, his jaw was clenched so tight, he couldn’t be sure his lips even moved. Only the breeze blowing in off the lake kept him from spontaneously combusting.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why are you doing this? You have choices, Honor. You can walk away from this. You can leave, and make a life for yourself somewhere else.”

Somewhere like Manhattan, he thought, but he didn’t say it.

She almost smiled at him. “You know that’s not true, and if you don’t, you should. I can’t just walk away. This is my pack. As sick and twisted and screwed up as it’s turning out to be, it’s still my pack. I know I’ve basically just told you that the job you came here to do is irrelevant, but if you’re half as smart as I think you are—as I know you are—then you’ve already realized that there’s no one in this pack who could lead it better than I can. Hell, there’s no one else here who could lead it, not in the long term. If you named one of the males here as alpha, he’d lead the pack straight to hell. Within three years, maybe five if he’s lucky, the White Paw Clan would be dead.”

Of course he knew that. Hadn’t he thought the very same thing himself? “Someone else could take over. I’d find someone.”

“What? You mean you’d bring in an outsider? No way, and if you tried, I’d go after you myself.” She stopped him when he tried to protest, speaking quietly over the rustling of branches. “No, Logan. I won’t let it happen. I’m sure there are packless alphas out there who would be happy to take over our territory, and I’m sure there may even be some who could do it and even strengthen the pack, but they wouldn’t be White Paw. Would some outsider know that the name White Paw comes from the founder of the pack, Stephen Tate, who settled here in 1687? Sure, he could find that stuff out, but would he bother?

“Would a stranger bother to find out that little Evie Stanton isn’t named after her aunt Eva, like everyone assumes, but after her great-grandfather Evelyn Bright, who moved here from England after World War II because he discovered his mate was an American nurse stationed in Dover? More important than that, would he care?”

Logan opened his mouth to answer, but he never got the chance. The words were ripped right out of his mouth. By the force of the bullet that pierced his chest.

Honor screamed.

She couldn’t help it. It was a stupid, dangerous, girly, childish reaction, but it escaped her throat before she realized what was happening. She saw the hideous bloom of red on her mate’s chest and the sound came out completely against her will. It was instinct.

As was her next action, which was to leap forward and carry both her mate and herself to the ground in case the shooter was still out there. Draping herself across Logan’s body, she turned her head into the breeze and inhaled deeply. She smelled pine and snow, lake water and soil, the smoke of the dying fire inside the shack, but she couldn’t scent any enemies. Neither human nor wolf scents drifted to her on the breeze, but that didn’t mean the trees were shooting at them; it just meant that whoever had pulled the trigger knew enough about his quarry that he’d made very sure to stay downwind where Honor and Logan wouldn’t be able to detect him.

And that pointed to another Lupine.

Of course it did, Honor reasoned. Who else would be shooting at them? She ruled out the idea of a misguided hunter immediately. The pack hadn’t been troubled by those in years. The locals knew enough about the “wildlife sanctuary” on Tate land, and about the Tate family’s rigorous enforcement of the hunting ban on their property, that hunters had given up prowling these woods decades ago. Hunters didn’t wander onto pack lands, but pack members roamed it deliberately.

Besides, it wasn’t like Honor didn’t know that certain members of her pack already had plans to get her out of the way, and she didn’t imagine Logan was much more popular with that contingent. If one of the males killed her and then Logan didn’t support the usurper’s claim to the position, he could bring the force of the Silverback Clan into play. Not even the world’s biggest moron would wish that on himself.

No, the shooter had been pack. Honor was certain of it.

Her gaze scanned the tree line, searching for any sign of movement, but she found nothing. She strained her ears, but heard the same. That was when she realized that the occasional rustle and snap of twigs she had heard during her conversation with Logan hadn’t come from branches moving in the breeze, or moles and other nocturnal critters moving in the forest; it had been the shooter making those small noises. The lack of a suspicious scent had lulled both her and Logan into a false sense of security.

As if responding to her thoughts, Logan groaned beneath her, and Honor cursed. Her mate had been shot, and she could smell the rich, metallic scent of his blood mixing with the earth as he lay still on the cold ground. Damn it! She needed to get him to shelter and see how bad the injury was. That meant going into the shack, which meant potentially exposing them to more gunfire.

Honor didn’t have a choice.

She wasted a precious few seconds doing another aural and visual sweep of the surrounding woods. That plus several intense inhalations yielded nothing. If the shooter still lurked out there in the darkness, Honor couldn’t tell. Time to move Logan inside.

Planning every move in her head beforehand let Honor follow through on her thoughts with maximum efficiency. She rolled off his body in the direction of the woods so that when she moved into a crouch, she kept her body between her mate and any lingering danger. It took every ounce of her considerably enhanced Lupine strength to lift the two-hundred-odd pounds of dead weight and maneuver him across the short distance to the shack. She did it at a dead run—well, a dead stagger, really—half laying and half dropping him onto the bed with a grunt. Her ears rang a little from the strain, but she knew she hadn’t heard any further shots from the woods.

Maybe that was a good sign.

It took a second to light the hurricane lamp she kept on the cabinet, and one more to catch her breath, but she did that while she peered down at Logan’s gunshot wound.

The bullet had pierced his chest just below his collarbone, tearing a hole in his shoulder, but missing his heart. Honor almost wept in relief when she realized he was still breathing, but she could see that he’d lost a lot of blood.

The shot had come from behind Honor, meaning the bullet had entered Logan from the front and left a gaping hole, but she’d watched enough television to know that exit wounds were generally more serious than entry wounds. She needed to roll him over and look at his back.

The bullet had left his shoulder almost directly across from where it had entered. She had no idea what that meant forensically with regard to the shooter, but she did know that at least there had been no vital organs, like the heart or lungs, directly in its path. That meant she needed to be most worried about blood vessels and blood loss.

Hands trembling, she pulled the sheet off the mattress and tore it into sections. She immediately folded one section into a thick pad and pressed it to the exit wound. She knelt next to him and used her body weight to apply pressure. That elicited a groan, but Logan didn’t wake.

Honor really wished he would wake up.

Lupines had amazing healing powers. Things like minor cuts and bruises lasted barely more than minutes for them. Uncomplicated broken bones? A few hours. Some of it was probably linked to their freakishly rapid metabolisms. It stood to reason that they burned through fuel so fast because their bodies were constantly repairing and replacing cells. A good dose of magic likely helped the process as well, which was why Honor would be a lot less worried if Logan were conscious.

Something in the shifting process hated injury. An injury sustained in one form could be rapidly improved simply by shifting into another. Honor had always theorized that the magic tried to create a perfect version of the shifter at every change, so when the shifter was injured in one form, the magic tried to erase the injury during the transition to the other. It wasn’t a perfect system. Serious injuries took more changes to heal, and some injuries could be made worse; for instance, a badly broken bone had to be straightened into the correct position, or there was a chance it would heal but remain deformed. Honor had never seen a Lupine heal a bullet wound, but she’d be very glad to see it now.

Until he came back to consciousness, though, Logan would retain his human shape. While shifters could and did occasionally shift in their sleep, unconsciousness caused by injury or illness worked differently. The trauma somehow cut off access to the part of the mind used in the shift, so the unconscious Lupine couldn’t even be triggered by a large group shifting around him, or by a powerful alpha, as could sometimes otherwise happen. The wolf was trapped until the man woke.

Honor kept the pressure on the wound for ten minutes, counting silently in her head to distract herself until it was time to check for bleeding. It had slowed, but it took another ten minutes before it seemed to have stopped completely. She took a deep breath as she set the cloth aside and moved the lamp closer so she could examine the wound.

It looked angry, of course, dark and meaty and just plain wrong. She could see the path carved by the bullet and the inflamed tissue surrounding it. Bits of metal appeared buried amid torn flesh, along with small pale flecks that she realized after a moment must be shards of bone carried along on the bullet’s way through the body. It must not have missed the collarbone as completely as she had thought.

Cursing, Honor rose to grab the first-aid kit out of the cabinet beside the dry sink. Usually, she used it for removing splinters or bandaging up a cut that had gone particularly deep. Once, she’d even used the tape inside to make a splint for a young duckling with a broken wing, but she’d never really imagined she’d need it for a medical emergency. How often did werewolves have those?

She placed it on the bed beside Logan’s hip and popped it open. Inside, she found a ton of useless Band-Aids, some totally inadequate alcohol wipes, and some individual human-dose packages of aspirin. As if that would help even if all he’d done was stub a toe. Thankfully, she also found a small, but unopened, bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a roll of gauze, surgical tape, thick absorbent pads, and a package containing a sterile pair of disposable plastic tweezers.

Honor took a deep breath, tore open the package, and adjusted the lamp once again, turning up the wick for a brighter light. Then she leaned forward and began to meticulously pick debris from her mate’s open wound.

The work was slow and tedious, but necessary. While Lupine immune systems could do amazing things to fight off infection, leaving the metal and bone fragments in the wound would cause them to remain in place after he shifted and the wound closed. Shifter bodies hated foreign objects. The fragments would be pushed slowly to the surface through the healing tissue, both delaying the final healing process and causing pain until they finally broke the surface and could be removed. Better to deal with them now.

The wound had already begun to heal at the surface, necessitating that Honor occasionally dig and reopen an area to get at the shards of bone and bullet. She gritted her teeth every time she did it, praying she wasn’t really hurting her mate. Not that she would mind the occasional moan or curse. The fact that he’d gone completely silent worried her more than if he’d woken up and tried to fight her off. She almost wished he would.

When she had removed all the material she could see, Honor slipped the tweezers back into their package and tossed the whole thing in the trash. She doused the wound in peroxide and used gauze and tape to fashion a bandage which she placed on top of another absorbent pad, just in case there was more bleeding. Then she turned her mate back over, cleaned the entrance wound with peroxide, and bandaged that as well.

By the time she sat back on her heels and stretched to relieve some of the tension and soreness in her back, she realized that the lamp had ceased being necessary a long time ago. Judging by the light pouring into the shack through the single window, it had to be mid-morning at least. With no other trouble since that single gunshot, she imagined the shooter hadn’t stuck around to assess the damage.

On the one hand, the fact that the shooter fled meant there was likely no imminent danger to either herself or Logan. If the shooter had meant to stay and finish them off, he could have done so a hundred times over by now. On the other hand, if he had fled immediately after pulling the trigger, the trail the shooter had left would be cold. Honor could still follow it, of course—with her nose, hiding it would be close to impossible—but the time lapse would make it a bit more challenging.

Her feet itched to move. She wanted nothing more than to spring into action. The urge to head straight into the forest in the direction the bullet had come from made her literally vibrate with suppressed energy, but she couldn’t do it. Just because she suspected the shooter had disappeared didn’t mean she felt anywhere near comfortable leaving Logan alone. Not while he remained unconscious. Until he could shift and begin speeding his own healing process, it was too big a risk for her to go anywhere.

She knew she could summon help if she just threw back her head and howled, but could she take the risk? Her cry would draw the attention of any Lupine within hearing range, but who knew what that would mean? Would the shooter return to finish the job? Would one of the males gunning for Honor’s position in the pack hear and come first? It would be easy out here for them to take advantage of the opportunity to get rid of both her and the wounded Silverback interloper.

Right now, about the only people in the pack that Honor would trust to help her out of this situation were her uncle and Max. Joey would be useless in a crisis situation; she was too girly and squeamish to cope. Uncle Hamish loved her and had supported her from the beginning, and Max was a good kid, loyal to the pack, which to him meant the Tates, Honor included. Too bad there was no way to get to either of them without attracting the wrong kind of attention. Honor couldn’t bring herself to leave Logan even for a few minutes, and it would take longer than that to find Hamish or Max. They could be anywhere in the territory. Logan would be too vulnerable without her.

And she was too vulnerable to keep standing out here in the open.

With a growl, Honor spun around and returned to the shack. Being cooped up inside while her wolf howled for action didn’t exactly top her list of pleasant ways to spend the day, but at least she’d be able to keep a close eye on Logan. Within the cramped confines of the single room, there wasn’t anything else to do.

Honor climbed onto the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb Logan. She wanted him awake, but causing pain wasn’t how she wanted to see that happen. Resting one hand on his uninjured shoulder, she leaned back against the wall of the shack and prepared to wait.