Deceived By the Others

chapter 11



God, I was bored. The guys had a pack of cards and were playing poker, but wouldn’t let me in on the game. They kept a wary eye on me, staying close, but not bothering or talking to me. Gabe calmed down after a while. The other two, Richard of the near-silent disposition, and Curtis of the Day-Glo Mohawk, had talked him out of his upset, urging him into passing the time with the cards.

All of them had removed their jackets and shoes, prepped for a quick change in loose jeans or sweats and what looked like ratty secondhand T-shirts. None of them seemed to mind the cold on their bare arms or getting mud between their toes, whereas I was freezing my ass off in my damp clothes.

As the minutes, then hours, ticked by, I passed the time bored and annoyed, sitting on my butt staring off into the trees or watching them play. It was eerie how quiet the forest was. The only bird-song I could hear was distant, nowhere close to where we were sitting. No squirrels or rabbits or other small wildlife had come anywhere near us. Guess the wild animals were smart enough to stay away from Weres this close to the full moon, even if they still wore their human countenances.

I hoped Chaz wouldn’t be too much longer. I was bored out of my skull and really had to pee. I wasn’t about to ask the Goof Troop over there to let me hustle off into the bushes. Like it hadn’t been embarrassing enough having been carted off like a sack of grain and then dealing with their snide comments about the scents on me.

I leaned back a little, staring up into the trees. There was one bird up there, a big, scrawny crow. Maybe the same one that had been in the trees the other night. It was staring down at us, watching the little gathering with one bright, beady eye, not making a sound. Probably waiting to see if we’d leave it some food or something.

Abruptly, the four guys lifted their heads in unison, staring back in the direction of the cabins. Chaz, Sean, Nick, Simon, and Dillon were standing in the dappled shadows filtering through the boughs, anger and irritation etched into their features. As soon as they knew they’d been spotted, they came closer, Seth and his men rising to meet them.

I surged up to my feet, intending to run to Chaz’s side. Richard reached out and grabbed my arm before I’d taken two steps. “Not yet,” he growled, his grip tight enough to make me wince.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Seth?” Chaz demanded, looming over the shorter teenager.

“Right of ascension. Dragging you out here was the only way to do it without fighting everyone in the pack for a chance at you.”

Chaz shook his head, his frown lessening and a sly, dark smile curving his lips. “If you wanted me to kick your ass, you didn’t have to resort to trashing my cabin or hurting Shia to get it. I’ll gladly take you on, anytime, anywhere.”

Confusion briefly clouded Seth’s features, soon replaced by anger. “I didn’t touch your cabin.”

“Whatever,” Chaz snarled, his gaze shifting in my direction as he barked out a command at Richard. “You’ve done enough. Let her go. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

Richard’s grip on me loosened marginally, but Seth twisted back and held up a staying hand. “No! You take your orders from me, not him.”

Richard shifted uncomfortably, looking back and forth between Seth and his pack leader. Eventually, he lowered his head, pulling me closer in a silent affirmation of Seth’s seniority. Chaz growled, the sound echoed by the other Weres at his side.

I simplified the problem by bringing my heel down sharply on Richard’s instep, causing him to let go of me to clutch his injured foot. I followed up with an elbow into his face as he folded. Ducking the grasping hands of Gabe and Curtis, I rushed to Chaz’s side, wrapping my arms around his waist as I slid to a stop. He squeezed my hand reassuringly, but pulled away, taking one threatening step closer to Seth.

Richard was on his knees, clutching his bleeding nose and cursing vehemently as he slumped in the mud. Curtis and Gabe didn’t risk getting too close to Chaz’s enforcers, who quickly stepped forward to shield me from them. Unlike the teenagers, these grown men were experienced fighters. Considering that their eyes were glittering with malice and the first signs of the change, daring them to keep coming, I didn’t blame Seth’s people for backing a few hasty steps away, leaving Seth to face Chaz alone.

“Good job, love,” Chaz said, giving me a brief, fierce grin. I returned it in kind, proud of myself for the damage I’d done. I might not have had the belt with me, augmenting my strength, speed, and giving me tips and pointers on how to fight, but the self-defense classes I’d been taking helped keep me from being entirely useless in situations like this.

The bass rumbling in Seth’s chest was unmistakably a threat, and I noted his eyes had shifted from a deep hazel into an amber color similar to my own. Sean and Dillon pulled me back to shield me from him, and I had to stand on tiptoe to see over their shoulders what happened next.

Between one blink and the next, Seth was shifting. He cried out a challenge before his human vocal cords were too changed by the shift to allow for speech, his last words trailing off into a long, drawn-out howl. “You’re dead! You’re all dead, unless you yield to me!”

I watched, fascinated, as Seth’s chest deepened and his arms grew thick with muscle. The crack of bone and sinew adjusting and reforming was sickening, but fortunately didn’t last very long since he’d forced a quick change. The fur that sprang out of his skin was a shade of deep brown a little darker than his hair, covering sleek muscles and a powerful frame that would rival Chaz for size if he had shifted, too. No wonder Seth thought he was badass. Still, size didn’t necessarily mean one had smarts or skill or experience, things Chaz had in abundance.

Seth wasn’t going full wolf either; he was assuming the half-and-half shape that he would be stuck in again tonight—just like the rest of the Weres—once the moon was full. If he survived, that is.

Doing this now was stupid. Despite the benefit of immense size and strength, he’d be weak for a few minutes from the pain of forcing a quick shift, more still as it wasn’t yet nightfall. Chaz took advantage, stepping forward to clamp iron fingers around the wolfman’s windpipe at the peak of his challenging howl, cutting off the sound with a high-pitched “yark!” With inhuman strength, Chaz slowly pulled the snarling, slavering jaws down until the wolf was eye-level, ignoring the claws that reached up and dug deep into his forearms.

“You made a big mistake, buddy. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

Dillon urged me to back up, and I noted Seth’s boys were moving, too, giving the two men room to fight. Seth was scrabbling at Chaz’s arms, fighting for air as his pack leader’s grip tightened on his throat.

“See, this is why you’d never make pack leader. You’re big and tough, sure. But you don’t think things through.”

Chaz shoved Seth back in a move that looked casual, but had enough force behind it to partially uproot the tree he slammed the shifted Were into. The snap of roots was audible under the mud, and the tree listed dangerously to one side, swaying unsteadily as Seth used it to lever himself back up to his feet. Chaz didn’t give him the opportunity to get his balance, one fist lashing out to punch Seth’s jaw hard enough for blood and a few sharp teeth to go flying into the underbrush and mulch.

“Instead of leaning on low tricks and pranks, you could’ve fought your way up the ranks and gained some respect in the process.”

He kicked Seth in the ribs, hard, as he tried to crawl away, whimpering in pain. Even I winced a little in sympathy at the thud of Chaz’s hiking boot connecting with furred flesh, sure to leave a bruise deep enough that it would probably show even when Seth shifted back into his human form. Seth’s buddies were all looking green around the gills, their gazes creeping up to the canopy above instead of watching their friend get the shit beaten out of him.

“Right now, you’re just pathetic. You will continue to be pathetic until you realize that the pack structure is in place for a reason.” It was painful to watch as Chaz tangled his fingers in the fur at the scruff of Seth’s neck, yanking him up to grind the harsh words home, speaking right into one of those triangular, tufted ears. “You don’t f*ck with the structure unless you’re ready to take a higher place in it. You. Are. Not. Ready. You won’t be ready for a long time, not unless you learn some f*cking respect. If you start showing me and your superiors that respect, maybe we’ll teach you how to climb in the hierarchy without getting your ass handed to you.”

With that, Chaz let Seth drop to sprawl gracelessly on the ground, tail tucked between his legs as he curled up on his side. Blood trickled down the side of the Were’s jaw as he voiced low, pained whimpers. Throughout the entire fight, if you could call it that, Chaz hadn’t broken a sweat and had barely ruffled his hair. The only signs he’d even taken part in it were the gouges in his forearms and the slightest spattering of mud around the hem of his jeans.

He brushed his hands off, staring down at the fallen Were for a long moment, and I soon realized he was waiting for something. Seth eventually managed to work himself up to a position where he could reach out and lick at one of Chaz’s hands, keeping crouched low to the ground with his head down, looking like a dog that had just gotten a kick from its master. Chaz reached out and absently ran his hand over the silken fur between Seth’s ears, at once a comforting and a warning gesture.

“Let’s not do this again for a while, hmm?”

Without waiting for any sign of agreement, he turned away from Seth and walked over to me. Dillon and Sean moved aside so he could wrap an arm around my shoulders. Though I was grateful for the warmth and protection he afforded, the casual violence he’d just visited on Seth made it difficult to relax against him.

“Sorry you had to see that, love. They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“No, I’m okay,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder to see Curtis and Gabe moving over to Seth’s side, helping him to stand. At Chaz’s light nudge, I turned my attention back on him, and we started on the path back to the cabins. “What about you? And is Ethan okay? Seth said something about bane… .”

“Don’t worry about Ethan.”

The way he said it made me quiet for a moment, biting my lower lip. The silence stretched uncomfortably, punctuated by the crackling of twigs underfoot.

“That was really something,” I ventured, hesitant. He didn’t look terribly upset, but his eyes were still glowing with agitation. “I didn’t know you could beat up a shifted Were like that.”

“If he’d stayed human, or if I’d shifted too, it might have gotten ugly. He was vulnerable because of forcing the shift so fast, and I took advantage of it.” Chaz shrugged, grimacing as he held up his free arm to look over the deep scratches. “I’m just glad he didn’t hurt you. I might have had to do some real damage if he had.”

Nick laughed, and some of the tension eased from Chaz’s too-tight muscles. “You are such a show-off.”

“Part of what makes him a good pack leader,” Sean said, clapping Chaz lightly on the shoulder as he came up beside us. “You had me worried for a second. I wasn’t sure what you were waiting for when Seth started to change.”

“Timing is everything,” Chaz said, rubbing his hand up and down my arm as I shivered and leaned into his warmth. It was dark between the trees, and I didn’t like the idea of having a bunch of unfriendly werewolves behind us, possibly planning revenge. “I hope he learned enough of a lesson not to push his luck and try me again for a while.”

“He didn’t,” Sean said flatly, ducking a low-hanging branch. “He’ll lick his wounds for a bit, and then figure out some other way to try to get you out of the way. He won’t accept that he lost so badly with grace.”

Simon snorted. Dillon shook his head and rolled his eyes. Chaz remained thoughtful.

“I don’t know. He barely scratched Chaz, and he’s not stupid. He’s got to know that means he’s lost some face, and that no one will follow him now,” I said, glancing at Sean.

“That’s true. Curtis, Gabe, and Richard have to know they aren’t going to be welcome back into the pack without making some amends for snubbing Chaz.” Nick rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, looking back over his shoulder. “Not that they were very welcome to begin with, but they’ll either take the fall back to the lowest of the low with Seth, or they’ll try to save face by ignoring him now.”

“There’s nothing saving them from the fall they’re about to take,” Chaz said, fingers tightening briefly on my shoulder as I stiffened at the mix of anger and fierce satisfaction in his voice. “I was giving this some thought earlier. Alec Royce offered to pay a pretty hefty sum to have a couple of the pack work for him as bodyguards and to possibly act as the occasional donor. It’ll help out the rest of the pack overall, improve relations with the leech, and teach them a lesson in one fell swoop.”

My jaw dropped in shock. It took a second for me to realize I wasn’t the only one shocked speechless. Relations between vamps and Weres just didn’t account for something like this. It just wasn’t done. Chaz would be making inroads to a place that didn’t bode well for anybody; it would either make his pack respected and feared as much as the Moonwalkers, or backfire and result in the Sunstrikers being social pariahs to the other packs.

“That’s pretty harsh,” Dillon muttered, the first to find his voice.

“Yes, but it will be worth it. They’ll be out of my hair, and learn a lesson in the process of doing the whole pack some good.”

“I didn’t take you for a player in politics,” I said, hiding the tremor in my voice with bravado. The fact that he was talking to Royce without my knowledge worried me a great deal, even more so now that he was planning on farming out some of his wayward pack members to the vampires. I knew Chaz could be cold, but I hadn’t thought he could be this ruthless. It bothered me more than I would’ve thought, especially considering what those boys had done. Yes, I wanted them to pay for it, but not necessarily like that. The rest of the pack would be scared shitless that the same might happen to them, I was sure. Not to mention that Royce often had other reasons behind why he did things, reasons you wouldn’t find out about until it was too late and you were in too deep to pull yourself out again.

“Don’t worry,” Chaz said, eyes bright as he looked down to me. “Think of it this way. They’ll never bother you again, and anybody else who might have thought to try something will have to think twice. If they even consider doing anything, they know it’ll mean going back to the vamps. That should be enough to stop anyone in the pack from messing with either of us.”

“Yeah,” I said, not quite meeting his eyes. Yes, it would be an effective deterrent. But at what cost?