Holy. Fucking. Shit. Was he no better than that evil sonuvabitch Magnum Tao?
“Won’t force you to submit to me. Not ever. Don’t want that. Don’t want you that way.” He picked her up and she slung an arm around his neck for balance. He carried her to the shore, setting her down on the towel he’d brought from the cabin, handing her the clean shirt he’d also grabbed on his way out the door.
She didn’t use it to cover herself, though. Instead, she leaned against him. “You didn’t know.” A statement, not a question. “You didn’t know what you are.”
He shook his head. “Haven’t been around pack for ten years. Living up here, alone, wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t feel it. Wouldn’t recognize it.”
“You are what you are, Brick. An alpha. A strong alpha.”
“When I left Los Lobos, I was just a stupid pup. Couldn’t even drink legally.”
“I saw you when Gee brought you here. Saw the condition you were in. Makes sense now. You tried to challenge your pack leader for dominance, didn’t you?”
Were they doing this? Having a more or less normal conversation with the wolf nearly bursting out of his skin, howling to get laid? He’d kinda missed that, too, though. He’d never talked to anyone—not even Gee—about the night he’d gone all berserker in The Den and ended up banished. A lone wolf. A rogue wolf. Not belonging anywhere.
“Didn’t think it was a dominance play. Didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.”
She turned, sitting next to him and drawing up her knees to mirror his posture, but sidling close enough to embrace him. The sides of their thighs met as she leaned into him. She curved her arm around him, running one hand up and down his back, her touch comforting, soothing. “I think you did.”
“Well…maybe. Not in a conscious way. I just wanted to be rid of that stinking piece of crap.”
“He’s gone now, you know.”
Yeah. He knew. He’d seen Magnum’s death like a movie in his head years before, but never knew when or where it would happen. Gee’d advised him of the monster’s passing, had encouraged him to return to Los Lobos. Recent town gossip from Shady Heart on the other side of the mountain—with the ramped-up rumors flying about Cal Seven getting ready to make a move on the wolves’ territory—carried more confirmation the fucker was gone. Good fuckin’ riddance.
“Drew’s back. He’s the Black Hills Wolves alpha now. Didn’t Gee tell you?”
No, Gee hadn’t fuckin’ told him. Although, scanning a replay of their last few convos, the hints were there, as if Gee had been trying to gauge his reaction, to both warn and advise him with his usual vague Yoda-speak wisdom, to bear-talk him docile. To make sure he didn’t challenge Drew. As. Fucking. If.
Especially not now—if war between the wolves and cats was about to break out—as he suspected.
Brick’s fists clenched and he rose to his feet, stepping closer to the water—and away from Summer—before he inadvertently did something to hurt her. He had no real quarrel with Magnum’s offspring—he’d wished for the prodigal son’s return even before the ill-fated challenge in The Den ten years ago that had seen him Oscar Mayer sausaged and banished from his pack. Well, yeah, sure, maybe he’d nursed a little resentment over junior leaving in the first place, instead of stepping up and seizing control of the pack from his maniac father.
But the idea Summer knew Magnum’s son well enough to “Drew” him, made him want to strangle somebody. Or bear his fangs and take a chunk from the new alpha’s hide.
Summer ignored his fight-or-fight adrenalin-testosterone dump and stood up, drawing beside him again, Band-Aid close. She took his hand and looped his arm around her, then did the same with the other. “I don’t know him,” she whispered, reading him correctly. Once again her sweet, soft voice soothed him like a hot oil massage. “I just heard he’s in charge.”
“Okay.” Brick nodded and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “As it should be.”
“You know he’s mated, right?”
“He was mated ten years ago. Didn’t stop him from leaving his mate and the rest of the pack in the clutches of Magnum and flitting off wherever the fuck he went.” Great examples and role models, those Taos. First the heinous Magnum, then the fleeing son.
She rubbed her body against him and all thoughts of Magnum, Drew, the pack, and everything other than Summer vanished into nonexistence.
“Can we focus on us now?” Her voice soothing, like her touch, her song.
“There’s an ‘us’?” He stood still, turning into a block of uncarved wood, sure even the slightest touch would light him up, a match to kindling.