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  The road took her through their little hamlet. The automatic streetlights switched off, making Fina start. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and kept driving. The little general store-slash-post office marked the northern boundary of her pack’s lands. Humans lived beyond that and, in the quiet, empty, dawning light, Fina drove past their sleeping homes. She drove past the high school…they’d finished writing their final exams last week. She and Helen were going back to college in the fall. Fina was studying business administration and would come back to work full-time in her family’s business after she graduated—work with her father and older brother and the other members of her pack.

  Fina lacked the ability to question the sanity of her deep-seated denial. She and Helen were best friends even though Helen was human and had no idea she’d lived amongst werewolves her entire life. Fina’s hand was already reaching for her cell phone before she yanked it back. She wanted to go to Helen’s home—knock on the door and collapse in Helen’s mother’s arms and weep and scream and—and Fina kept driving, obeying the speed limit. She rubbed her sore eyes impatiently. Humans and human law enforcement couldn’t help her. She couldn’t send them into a den of rogue werewolves. The death count was too high already.

  Fina exhaled shakily. She was alone, barely out of her teens, and her pack was dead. She had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. She could ask another pack for sanctuary but after the rogues she had no stomach to trust other wolves. She couldn’t be sure of her welcome, despite the fact she was female. Strays were usually weak and useless.

  In their world, power was held by the strongest. Alphas could be challenged for leadership, although it was usually done honorably, one-on-one. Rogues and strays were viewed with distrust and often eliminated but unless the rogues who had killed her pack went after another pack, no werewolf alive would be quick to challenge them. They’d be monitored of course, and nervous, wary eyes would track them. But the cruel truth of it was her pack lands had been taken over and Fina had two choices—bond with the rogues or leave. She’d already made that choice and was about to press down harder on the accelerator when her foot shifted to the brake pedal. She switched on her turn signal and pulled up in front of the local primary school.

  Fina’s wolf eyes spotted something that defied logic. There was a small boy sitting on the curb in front of the locked, dark school, with a backpack beside him and a small electronic game in his hands. He didn’t even look up when she stepped out of her vehicle.

  “Ryan?” Fina said, her voice barely above a whisper. Ryan Upton was the son of her father’s Beta and she’d babysat the loud, exuberant six-year-old often enough to make her consider foregoing the pleasures of motherhood entirely. She kneeled in front of him. Ryan loved his toys, especially his electronic gizmos, but she saw that the game in his hand was simply cycling a Game Over message, even though his small, dirt-crusted fingers were moving randomly over the buttons. She brushed his dark-blond hair off his forehead. Like any werewolf, even as a child, he inhaled, instinctively focusing on her scent before her face. He jerked upright and scooted back from her.

  Fina knew why. She smelled like the rogue wolves.

  Ryan’s brown eyes were frightened and too large for his small face but his shoulders went down when he recognized her.

  “How did you get here, Ryan?” Fina asked as she picked him up. He didn’t protest. Even when she leaned over to pick up his backpack, he sat with disturbing stillness in her arms, his thumbs still pressing buttons. She sat him in the passenger seat.

  “My dad and I, we were going to have a sleep out last night. In the tree house he built.” Ryan Upton continued to focus on the game in his hands and lifted his arms only when Fina fastened the seatbelt around him.

  Fina knew Ryan’s mother would die before letting her only cub wander out alone. Ryan’s father would die before letting rogues take over his pack.

  Ryan continued unemotionally, “Something happened because he told me to climb up into the tree house by myself. He told me to get into my sleeping bag and stay there until he came and got me. I waited and went to sleep but I knew I had school today and I got here early.”

  Fina was astonished that Ryan had obeyed his father and stayed put overnight. The kid only listened to her when she threatened to take away his toys. She shut the passenger-side door, looked around, scented the air deliberately, got back into her vehicle and drove back onto the road. She turned on the air-conditioning, closed the external air vents, checked the rearview mirror and pressed on the accelerator.

  An hour before dusk, Fina opened the motel room door and held Ryan back so she could walk in ahead of him. She was so used to him barging ahead, being loud and annoying, that his acquiescence was eerie. It wasn’t just letting her check out the room before letting him enter either. After she’d picked him up, she’d driven for two hours before stopping for gas and breakfast. She paid with cash. Ryan hadn’t complained when she’d ordered pancakes, fruit and milk without consulting him. He’d just picked up a fork with one hand after she cut his pancakes up into bite-sized pieces, started eating and kept playing with his game with the other hand. Lunch was the same, only they had cheeseburgers. By then, Fina’s brain had stepped out of autopilot. It’d had to. It wasn’t just her anymore. She checked the map in her glove box, drove to the nearest large town and headed for the Wal-Mart. Ryan sat in the cart, his thin legs dangling in the air, his fingers moving randomly over another one of his electronic games—the batteries had died on the first one—while she bought them each two changes of clothes, underwear, socks and a pair of shoes, along with a headphone-jack equipped portable radio. She also picked up a jumbo pack of batteries.

  At the next stop, Ryan walked beside her, holding on to her purse strap with one hand as she entered an electronics store in the same plaza. She bought a laptop, wireless internet service and a new cell phone. The cash wouldn’t hold out if she used it on big-ticket items so she used her credit card…well, her father’s credit card. Fina thought she’d lose it when she signed the receipt but the light pressure on her bag forced her to keep it together. The rogues would have figured out hours ago she’d taken off and was probably not coming back. They weren’t vested in her and although their Alpha would probably knock some heads around for letting their one and only female get away, it would be a lot easier to look for other women to join their pack than to track her down. They had their own land now. Chances were pretty good they’d be able to lure a few young or disenchanted females away from other packs. They wouldn’t look for her, that was, until they realized she’d taken all the pack’s assets—and Fina had a plan to systematically strip every last penny from the pack’s coffers. When the human authorities figured out a massacre had taken place—if they ever did—the rogues would have to vacate the pack’s houses for a while, at least until they came up with a cover story for their presence. Who knew? Maybe they’d figured that part out already. All she knew was they’d be seriously pissed when they realized they were living on land they couldn’t legally claim title to, with businesses they probably had no clue how to run and not a cent in the bank to tide them over until they figured out how.

  She loaded Ryan and their purchases into her vehicle and headed for the largest crossroads in the area. A poster slogan she’d read in some history class had been popping into her head that afternoon, not often but often enough for Fina to latch on to it weirdly.

  Go west, young man.

  If it worked for young men, it would work for her too. Fina reached the crossroads and turned onto the westbound interstate ramp.

  Just after noon the next day, Fina was using a pay phone in a mall maybe forty miles from her home. She’d doubled back in a big circle, paying cash at every stop. The phone was the only one in the mall but the anonymity of it was vital. “May I speak to Percival Dust, please,” she said politely to the woman who answered.

  There was hesitation on the other end of the line. “One moment please,” the woman finally replied an
d put Fina on hold. Canned music echoed through the remarkably busy mall, considering it was a Thursday, but then the high school kids were out of school now and the grade school kids would get out the end of next week. Fina glanced over at the mall’s daycare service. Ryan was inside the fenced-off area, sitting on a colorful square cushion, playing with one of his electronic games. When a little girl came up to him and asked him what he was doing, he showed her. Fina had asked him to be quiet and polite and wait for her. She was still surprised every time he obeyed.

  “Percival Dust here.”

  Fina gripped the top of the pay phone and sighed. Kevin Percival Dust was her pack’s lawyer. Her father had picked him because he wasn’t local, although still in Tennessee. He was good at his job, he worked out of a mall—which meant if one of them had to go in covertly they could pretend they were shopping—and he was happy to indulge his clients’ quirks for a slight markup from his usual fees. One of the Whitesage account’s quirks was a safeword. If they needed an urgent meeting and asked for Percival—Kevin’s middle name—instead of Kevin, he’d introduce himself back as Percival if it was okay to come in. Until now, Fina was pretty sure nobody had had to use the service.

  “I’m downstairs. I need to see you,” she blurted out.

  “Come up,” was the lawyer’s curt and immediate response. Fina deliberately hadn’t watched the motel’s TV and every time the news came on the car radio, she’d changed stations. She didn’t want Ryan to hear news about his family’s death sandwiched between traffic reports and an ad for potato chips. Last night, she’d been too tired and too frightened to turn on the portable radio after Ryan had gone to sleep in the bed beside hers. From Dust’s response, she had to assume there’d been something about her pack on the news.

  Fina glanced over at Ryan once more, scented the air yet again then got onto the escalator that would take her up to the professional offices rimming the second story of the mall.

  On being shown in, she sat down nervously in a leather chair across the lawyer’s desk. She set her purse down by her feet. Kevin Dust was pushing forty and pudgy. Wiped out follicles had left him with only a rim of dark hair around the back of his head. His eyes were a dull dishwater gray but once you looked past the uninspired color you could see the man’s intelligence looking back at you.

  Commented [AL7]: As he’s not actually bald, maybe “mostly bald” or “balding”?

  Fina lifted her chin up. “My name is Fina Whitesage.” She didn’t know if he’d remember her. He held out his hand and it shook only slightly in hers. For reasons Fina hadn’t been made privy to, her father had found it necessary some years back to tell his lawyer that he, his family and his employees were werewolves. Whatever the reasons, Reg Whitesage had bought Kevin Dust’s silence with money and a healthy dose of fear. That fear had diminished over the years as Kevin Dust and his family had been invited to pack get-togethers like communal picnics and softball games. “My family is dead,” she said flatly and this time it was her hand that shook as she pulled out the copy of her father’s will from her handbag.

  Kevin Dust just nodded. “I know. You keep that. I have a copy. And I’m…I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Fina looked out the window, over the parking lot and the roadways in the distance, trying hard not to cry. She turned back to him. “I don’t know if you know what happened, Mr. Dust, but my pack was killed by rogue werewolves. They’re dangerous and operate outside of normal pack laws but the fact of it is they now have control of my pack’s land. There’s nothing that can be done about that.” Fina inhaled sharply. “But that doesn’t entitle them to my pack’s assets.” She pulled out the investment statements and bank account information she’d taken from her father’s safe. “They won’t get their hands on them if I have anything to say about it. The terms of my father’s will put every cent of my pack’s money in my hands…now that I’m the only surviving member.” It was true that Ryan Upton was still alive but he was a minor and Fina’s instincts told her to keep the child hidden and safe at all costs. “I need to have my father’s will probated as soon as possible so I can start hiding the money where they can’t touch it.”

  Kevin Dust exhaled slowly and laced his short, chunky fingers together. “It’s usual to wait until after the funeral, Miss Whitesage.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be much to bury…if anything,” Fina whispered and shuddered before forcing her head back on track. “How much time do you need?” she asked bluntly, cutting to the chase.

  “Two days,” he answered after a moment’s thought.

  Fina stood. “I’ll be back then.”

  Chapter Two

  “Higher, Fina!” Ryan yelled out as he pumped his legs forward and forced the swing to move faster.

  “Here it comes,” Fina warned him with a laugh and pushed the swing harder. She laughed again when Ryan shrieked with joy. There were some moments like this—when Ryan’s exuberance surfaced and Fina’s rose to meet his. There were some moments when they emerged from their pain, anger, loneliness and vapidness. Some but not many.

  They’d been on the road over two weeks now, moving in random patterns and sometimes circling back for a day or two but always, gradually, moving farther and farther west. Something about that direction still pulled at Fina and she’d stopped wondering why.

  “Let’s find a motel early today, Fina,” Ryan begged after he’d tired of the swing. It was just before noon and they’d pulled in to a rustic roadside café to eat. It had a big parking lot—even though it was on a road made almost redundant by a nearby interstate—shaded picnic tables and a large children’s play area. Ryan wove his hands into Fina’s, held on tight and let her lift him and flip him in a complete circle until he landed back on his feet with his arms stretched taut behind him. He leaned forward and squealed happily, trusting his weight to Fina’s slender arms before hopping, letting go and standing up.

  He ran toward the café entrance and the promise of lunch. Fina raced after him, grabbed him, swung him into the air and, when his striped t-shirt lifted up, blew a raspberry kiss into his exposed belly. Ryan giggled wildly and pushed her head away. By now they were both sweating a little and they ran into the restaurant’s air-conditioned foyer.

  “Let’s find one with a pool again and can we stay two nights, can we please, please, Fina?” Ryan pleaded.

  Grinning, Fina opened her mouth to say yes then stood up very straight. The air in the café was full of the delicious smells of fried chicken and baking but beneath that was the unmistakable smell of wolf. Her hand shot out, reaching for Ryan, and she started backing up toward the door. They’d traveled through a few communities with werewolf populations. It would have been almost impossible not to. They hadn’t stopped in any of them and she always made sure the gas tank never got below half-full so they wouldn’t be forced to stop anywhere she wasn’t comfortable. During the past two weeks, Fina’s ability to think rationally had improved from the near catatonia she’d experienced immediately following the death of her pack. She’d rationalized that, as a female about to enter her prime breeding years, she wasn’t likely to be chased off by another pack. Maybe she’d even be invited to join. She couldn’t be absolutely certain of Ryan’s welcome. Even though he was a child, he was male. Packs usually didn’t accept outside males.

  The door behind her swung open and a man walked in. He was big—huge—stood at least six-two and had a chest wide enough to qualify for two zip codes with shoulders to match. The flat stomach and lean hips that sat above and below his thick gunbelt told Fina every impressive inch of him was solid muscle, not flab. He looked to be in his late twenties, wore a dark police uniform and scented like a werewolf with a streak of badass that went bone-deep.

  Fina caught a whiff of urine and one look told her Ryan was staring up at the man in terror and pushing flat against the wall like he was trying to back right through it to get outside. A dark stain spread across the front of his shorts and a thin stream of urine was sliding down
his leg and puddling around his sneaker.

  “Oh poor poppet.”

  Fina’s head spun around to a fifty-something woman walking into the foyer from the café. She was dressed in an unflattering and rather silly-looking alpine-style dress with an apron tied around her generous waist. She clucked her tongue gently, looked down at Ryan with gentle eyes and held out a slightly wrinkled, pudgy hand to him.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, little honey,” the woman cooed gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Fina’s wolf jumped to the fore when the woman stepped between her and Ryan. The wolf in her shoved the woman back and made a grab for Ryan, ready to bowl right through the big cop if she had to get the child outside and safe.

  Sheriff Cutler Powell stared at the slender, auburn-headed madwoman standing in the foyer of the best—and only—café on his pack’s land. She was small, maybe five-four, and had satiny skin turned a pale gold from the sun. The spray of freckles across her pert little nose made his cock twitch…she was just that pretty. The scent coming off her made him harden instantly. It was like breathing in pure lust and there was nothing pure about his reaction to it. The wolf inside him raised its head and in a low, satisfied rumble, spoke one word.

  Mine.

  Only little miss pure lust was currently assaulting a senior, respected, female member of his pack. With a smooth, controlled movement, he stepped forward, laid his hands on the most enthralling woman he’d ever come across and lifted her. The kid came up with her, hauled upward by her hold on his arm. She let go and the kid dropped back down onto his feet and started shaking all over. Holding her beneath her arms, Sheriff Powell pinned her back against the wall with her nose level with his. He had to bite down on his tongue before he did something stupid like shove it into her mouth then ask if she had any plans for the rest of her life.