When it eased open, a man with salt-and-pepper hair appeared in the doorway. He scratched his scruffy beard and looked him over. Lorenzo could sense he was the alpha, and Ivan looked like a rough man who had lived a long life.
“You must be Church,” he said in a Southern drawl. His voice was as rough as he looked. “I didn’t know you were an injun.”
Lorenzo bristled at the racist word. How peculiar for a man who had mated with one and had a daughter of mixed descent.
“Well, well.” Ivan assessed Lorenzo from head to foot. “Come inside before your nose falls off. Damn cold this winter. Makes me glad for central heating,” he said with a cackle. “I can remember the days when we spent mornings chopping wood and shoveling snow.”
Lorenzo closed the door behind him and felt the immediate warmth of the house. It had a Southern flair and seemed unusually quiet for a pack den.
“Just about everyone’s in town. I cleared ’em out so I wouldn’t have suspicious eyes looking over my new guest. Come with me,” he said, leading Lorenzo into a smaller room.
Musty books with weathered and torn spines filled the bookshelves. On some of the shelves along the wall were curious artifacts, such as a tarantula in a glass orb, a small skull, rocks, coins, and spurs. Antlers from various animals were mounted on the wooden walls as trophies. Lorenzo lifted a realistic-looking scorpion and touched the tip of its tail.
“I had it preserved,” Ivan said, taking a seat in a red chair with a small table beside it. He began packing a pipe. “Damn thing killed one of the pups in my pack. I let that be a reminder to the women to keep an eye on their children. You don’t say much, do you? Sit down.”
Lorenzo took a seat in one of two chairs facing him and watched Ivan strike a match.
After a few puffs, Ivan sat back and tapped one of his boot heels on the hard floor. “So tell me how it is that Cole lost my daughter and you came to find her.”
“A man named Fox was hunting her. She tells me he was your second-in-command.”
Ivan growled and scratched his bristly jaw. “If you see him, feel free to send him my regards with a bullet to the head.”
Lorenzo chose his words carefully. “I can easily deliver that message for my own reasons. Perhaps mine trump yours.”
Ivan narrowed his cloudy eyes, taking a few puffs from his pipe. “Injuns are sly like the devil. I once saw a native lure a rabbit out of a hole by singing. Damndest thing I ever saw. I’ll tell you my issue with Fox because it’s no secret around here. I found him digging in my drawers and going through my computer files. I didn’t tell my men where I sent Ivy when I traded her off a year ago, and Fox seemed to be the only man who couldn’t rest easy with my decision. That’s when I knew.”
“Knew what?”
After a long inhale, Ivan looked Lorenzo square in the eyes. “That he was the one who turned my daughter into a whore.”
Lorenzo leaned forward, nostrils flaring. “He what?”
Ivan closed off a little and averted his eyes. “That’s why I had to send Poison Ivy away. I wasn’t about to have my own daughter become the pack whore. She deceived me, and while I can’t turn my back on her, I don’t think I can forgive her for the embarrassment she put me through.”
Lorenzo clenched his fists, biting back his rage.
“So you see, once I found out who had betrayed me, I threw him out like scraps to the dogs. He’s lucky I didn’t string him up from a tree and skin him alive. Doing that to my second-in-command would have stirred up the pack, and I’m sure I would have lost a few men. So instead, I kicked him out. Oh, Fox wasn’t happy about it one bit. He got real comfortable with his rank in this pack—maybe too much. I kept his damn sports car though,” Ivan said with a dark chuckle. “Now that thing I plan to skin alive. Once he gets settled, I’m going to mail him one part at a time. Maybe if he’s handy enough, he’ll figure out how to put it back together.” Ivan rocked with laughter and ended it with a snarly snort.
“It seems Fox has gathered up a band of rogues and formed his own pack.”
“Yeah, he talked my third in rank into stupidly going with him. That’s why I’m looking outside my pack for another second-in-command to replace him. No one in this pack is fit to hold that position. I’ve been around long enough to know that if you bring in too many strong men with the intention of always having a backup in case your top dogs defect, you’ll end up with a bunch of wolves fighting each other for rank. I don’t mind bringing in new blood to fill the position; there are plenty of qualified candidates in the area, and it’s about time I shook things up around here. Maybe he’ll get some of these sorry asses to look for a job.”
“Are you not concerned that Fox is now in our territory and hunting your daughter?”