Brick stared hard at the enforcer, his rage palpable. But Summer stroked soothing patterns up and down his arm, calming him, silently urging him to back down from another fight, another challenge.
“No,” she said, her face crimson. He squeezed his eyes closed. She’d tell them. At the risk of embarrassing herself. To his worthless hide. To save him once again. “We had to pick something up at the pharmacy.” She paused, as if waiting to see if that explanation would be enough. But the wolf leader and his enforcer both wore identically grim expressions, their eyes cold, not giving an inch. “Condoms,” she blurted.
“Condoms? The fuck for? You’re a wolf. You don’t need no stinkin’ condoms. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”
No. No one ever had. Not Magnum. Not anyone else while he was growing up, not anyone after he’d been banished. Not even Gee. No wonder Cal’s whores snickered when he’d used protection, the foil packets stamped with the Graymarket logo. Summer’s face burned brighter. But Brick had had enough. He gripped her hand and turned to leave. “We’re done here.”
“Wait.” Gee spoke up from his place near the bar. And only Gee could have stopped him from turning his back on them and heading out the door. The werebear looked at Drew “You need all your wolves, together and united.”
The alpha nodded, his expression that of a man steeling himself for the inevitable. “Guess it’s time.”
“You ready?” Gee focused on Brick, an eyebrow raised in question.
“Me?” He wrapped his arm around Summer’s shoulders, pulling her closer. “For what? I’ve got no skin in this game.”
A sound of disgust, all spit and snarl, issued from the werebear’s mouth. “To accept your place in your pack. That’s why you’re here, right? At long last?”
Brick started. No. He’d come to Los Lobos to protect his mate. He couldn’t leave her in Shady Heart. He couldn’t give her to the cats. He glanced around The Den. Different from his last visit to the place. The volume in his brain now seemed perma-set to “mute.” No rival voices turned his skull into a killing field, no strident tones bombarded him. He could sort out the muffled sounds, make sense of them.
Because of Summer.
The clarity of her song cut through the all the static. The purity of her soul, the way she’d touched his, soothed and calmed his psyche. He’d tuned into her frequency completely.
He glanced at Drew. No vision of death. No gore of war. Instead, he saw the alpha seated at the head of a polished table, flanked by Ryker and his seconds. Cal Seven sat at the other end of the conference table, his cats at his back, lieutenants on each side of him. And somewhere in the middle…Summer. Her fingers threaded through his. Bringing the wolves and cats together.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m in.”
Chapter Seven
The negotiations opened with rancor and mistrust. The cats initially tried to keep Brick and Summer separated but she wouldn’t tolerate that. And neither would her wolf.
“We’re together,” Brick growled at Cal. “Get used to it.”
She slipped an arm around his waist, her fingers stroking up and down his back in soothing circles until the fierce rigidity left his jaw.
“It all starts here,” she told her uncle.
Eventually, the rival factions stopped arguing over the shape of the table and who sat where. As time went by, they deigned to share coffee and doughnuts with each other. Then pizza and Chinese take-out. Minutes lengthened to hours, hours to days. Weeks flipped by. Calendar pages turned.
“Get me out of here,” she whispered to Brick one afternoon.
She sensed his edginess, the increasingly agitated pacing of his beast. The cats and wolves had talked late into the evening until everyone slumped and wilted, wrung out and drained. Except Brick. Energy charged her wolf, until he practically vibrated beside her. As if he were the only one at the table who sensed the rising of the full moon. Strange. She knew that couldn’t be; that the other wolves had to be affected. But she also knew that, no matter how much he’d accepted his pack and been accepted back, she didn’t want him running with them tonight. She wanted him all to herself when he shifted.
He stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the coffee cup in front of him as he snatched her hand.
“If you’ll excuse us?” He shrugged. “And even if you won’t. We’re gone.”
They fled to the cabin, the sky darkening above them.
Brick leaped from the truck. She followed, taking her lead from him in this. The moon glowed high over their heads, full and round, silver tinged with gold. He dragged her to him, his mouth closing over hers, hot, hard and hungry. Thrilling her. Fierce zips of desire shot straight to her core. She caught his excitement.
“Ready, sweetheart?”