“It wasn’t our most constructive pack meeting,” he muttered.
“You met with them tonight?” Scarlett asked, raising her eyebrows quizzically. “On New Year’s Eve?”
Will shrugged, wincing at the movement. “You saw how things have been; it couldn’t wait. The bar started clearing out a little after midnight, so I just put out the Closed sign and told the pack to meet in the woods.” He tilted his head in the direction of the national park that met his backyard. “There’s a clearing about a mile in, which we consider the beginning of the pack’s territory in the park. That’s where we start to run on full moon nights.”
“Why not just meet here at the house?” Scarlett asked.
Will hesitated, searching for words. “We don’t . . . we try not to have too much conflict here, partly because the house is a place of peace, and partly so if someone loses their shit, they’ll be far away from humans. If it seems like there’s going to be some kind of big argument, we go out in the woods.”
“What happened at the meeting?” Jesse asked.
“There was a lot of tension,” Will admitted. “I tried to explain that Eli was unavailable without going into too much detail. Some of them believed me, I think, or just didn’t care either way. Eli’s made calls to them, but Ana’s got them all stirred up that he’s being forced to lie or something. She’s got half of them convinced about this cure, and we kept arguing, getting nowhere. Finally she challenged me to a fight for alpha.”
Jesse’s jaw dropped, and he saw Scarlett looking just as incredulous. “But . . . ,” Scarlett began. “I mean, Ana’s not a delicate flower or anything, but did she actually think she could win?”
“No,” Will said flatly. “Ana’s not stupid. Even if I wasn’t the alpha, I could take her. This wasn’t about winning, though. She knew I wouldn’t kill her, so she put me in a position to look bad. If I refused the challenge, I was weak. If I fought her, I was beating up on a weakling.”
“That’s kind of brilliant,” Jesse observed.
“Yes, it is,” Will said matter-of-factly. “So I told her I would fight, but the rest of the pack had to stay human, so they couldn’t interfere. And as soon as we changed I moved the fight away from them.” He shrugged. “I was going to just let her tire herself out, and then change back and try to have a serious conversation with her. But she went after you.”
“Why?” Scarlett asked. “I thought you guys didn’t usually attack humans. I mean, Jesse hadn’t, like, cornered her.”
“No,” Will agreed. “I suspect it was a calculation. She figured she’d either distract me enough for her to really hurt me, or she’d kill Jesse, which would hurt you.”
“Oh,” Scarlett said in a small voice. Without looking at him she reached over and grabbed his good hand again. Jesse wasn’t sure she even knew she’d done it. He squeezed her hand briefly and didn’t let go.
“Things are getting worse,” Jesse said quietly.
“Yes,” the alpha agreed. “And it’s only going to get worse the closer we are to the full moon.”
“What happens then?” Jesse asked, alarmed. His stomach was already churning from the adrenaline and soda, and the anxiety wasn’t helping.
“The nova will have to change again,” Will explained. “We all will.”
And he’ll attack more women, Jesse realized.
Will was looking back and forth between the two of them. “I take it the stakeout was unsuccessful.”
“Yeah,” Jesse acknowledged. “It was a long shot anyway.”
“What else have you come up with?” Will asked tiredly. “I noticed Terrence Whittaker was limping badly tonight. Do you know anything about that?”
“Uh . . . yeah . . . ,” Jesse said uneasily. “About that.”
Chapter 23
Will wasn’t thrilled with Jesse’s decision to shoot Terrence Whittaker. Jesse couldn’t really blame him. When the werewolf finally calmed down and they had filled him in on the rest of the investigation, Jesse noticed Scarlett’s eyes drooping and proclaimed that they needed to go get some sleep. He dropped Scarlett off at her van and headed back to his apartment.
It was after three in the morning, but when Jesse climbed into his bed he found himself staring at the ceiling, his brain churning as fast as his stomach. He was still jittery from all the caffeine and adrenaline, not to mention the pain in his wrenched arm. Jesse got out of bed and went over to the kitchenette, where he swallowed three Advil and a liter of water, before making himself a couple of sandwiches. Then he sat down at the little card table that served as his dining area to think about the case.
They needed to make progress before things got any worse for the werewolves—not to mention before the nova wolf had time to change again and kill anyone else. There had to be some sort of logic to the nova’s choice in victims, Jesse reasoned. There had to be. Will had said that the nova would try to create a mate first. And you wouldn’t just go to the Grove, point at a woman, and say, there’s my mate for life, right?
But how would you pick a mate? Or more importantly, how would a man who’d just been turned into a werewolf pick a mate?