8. Eight
Eight
A s he approached the border of wolf territory, Ryker felt exactly like his nine-year-old self knocking on the door of the dilapidated structure that now lived in his memory as the “Marshals House.” He wouldn’t disregard Leslie’s instructions, of course. But he remained half-inclined to march up to the alpha’s house and knock, just to see what would happen, to see what wolves were like on their own land, where they didn’t have to turn their gaze away or whatever the heck they did to keep humans from running away screaming. Which was the alpha’s house anyway? Maybe one of the two visible from the intersection, sitting on opposite sides of the red-dirt road. Did the alpha live in one of these as a sort of sentry, or was his property farther back?
Then Ryker took another step, and he forgot all his questions.
Run away. Right now.
Stay and fight. Prove vampires sat at the top of the apex world and always would.
What? The top of the apex world? What was he thinking? Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, only reacting to the scent of a dozen wolves within a mile of his proximity. He tried to stop grinding his teeth.
“You okay?” Leslie whispered, as though the wolves might overhear them.
“Fine,” he gritted out. “I just…want…to beat them.”
“Beat them up?” Her eyes widened in the night.
“No, beat them. You know, win at something. I’m good at chess; I could beat any of them at chess.” Wow, his thoughts were getting more ridiculous by the second.
Leslie gave a low chuckle. “Okay then.”
He shook his head, and the motion helped clear some of his aggression. “My brain’s been in competition mode since I was two years old. You can ask my mom. But you said yourself you want to fight them when you get near their territory.”
“It’s not a contest in my head. It’s a weird rage-y aggression that’s totally out of character for me.”
Her courage was a visible thing, broadcast by the tension of her facial muscles. She was probably braver than he was, because to be truly brave, you had to be a little scared. Ryker had never had much sense when it came to things that were rightfully scary. Or so his mom said.
His thoughts broke off again. His senses took over. Wolf. Headed this way fast. Really fast.
He hissed. Leslie set her hand on his arm, and Ryker gritted his teeth and tuned his ears, but the incoming wolf didn’t crash through brush the way Ryker assumed he would. In fact, the wolf’s ability for stealth nearly rivaled his own.
“That’s disturbing,” he muttered.
“What is?” Leslie said.
He shot a warning look at her.
She shrugged. “He can already hear us, Ryker. He’s a wolf.”
Curse it all. He’d never needed to know the precise hearing range of a wolf. He had to learn about them—really learn the facts after a lifetime of casually nibbling the legends.
From the nearest house came a woman’s low, sleepy voice. “Jeremy? What’s wrong?”
A low growl responded, and Ryker nearly cracked a tooth as his jaw spasmed tight.
“Vampires,” a wolf growled from inside. “Two of them at the head of the Lane.”
“Just standing there?”
“Yeah.”
“Should we alert the pack?”
“Not necessary. That scent’s got every wolf on the Lane awake and growling.”
Ryker looped his arm through Leslie’s and tugged her closer to his body for protection. “We’re leaving.”
“We can’t now,” she said. “We woke up the whole pack. We’ve got to explain ourselves. Shoot, I didn’t realize our scent would wake them up. I’d have stayed out of range.”
“What’s their scent range?”
“Farther than ours.”
Crap. Crap. Crap.
When the charging wolf emerged from the overgrown brush along the side of the road, Ryker’s skin crawled. Leslie grabbed hold of Ryker’s hand and squeezed tightly, and he squeezed back, hoping she understood his promise. If this wolf came anywhere near her, Ryker would rip his throat out.
The wolf stopped ten feet back, keeping to his own territory despite his fighter’s stance: slightly bent knees, slightly fisted hands, heart pounding with such strength and adrenaline that Ryker could faintly hear the thumping. The wolf’s breaths were measured and slow, yet a little tight. He was riled, all right.
“Leslie Snow,” he said. “And a friend.”
“That’s right,” Ryker said. No volunteering information, not even his name.
“We were just walking,” Leslie said. “We didn’t mean any harm.”
“Just walking. At three-forty-five in the morning.”
“We don’t sleep much.”
This was out of hand. Ryker allowed himself a full-on glare that held nearly as much aggression as his teeth, though not quite. “Why do you get to interrogate us, anyway? We’re not on your land.”
“You’re ten feet from our land,” the wolf growled.
“Don’t tell me—you’re the alpha wolf.”
A deep growl rumbled in the wolf’s chest. “I’m beta.”
“Then please,” Leslie said, “on behalf of your pack, accept our apology.”
How was she talking to this wolf so calmly while her fingernails nearly gouged holes in the back of Ryker’s hand?
The wolf from inside the nearest house stepped onto the porch and joined his pack brother—wasn’t that what they called themselves?—in the road, their burly frames effectively blocking the way onto their land. He was taller than the first wolf, his curly hair a riot of bed-head, wearing nothing but pajama pants. The first wolf, on the other hand, was barely over six feet, compact where his fellow wolf was simply big. He wore a T-shirt and slick active-wear pants. The buzz cut along the sides of his head hinted at the military, though the top was grown out a bit.
“Go back inside, Jeremy,” the beta wolf growled.
“Let me think about that for a minute,” Jeremy said. “No.”
Ryker stepped in front of Leslie as his heart gave a single, hard beat that almost hurt. He must not bear his teeth. He must not escalate this. Think. Stay calm. But every instinct in his body was in screaming overdrive.
“No, Ryker.” Leslie stepped out from behind him with her palms up toward the wolves. “Jeremy, we’re really sorry. We’ll go now. Right now.”
“Probably best,” Jeremy said. “Leslie, right? You’re the artist Ezra and Nathan talk about.”
She nodded.
“Look, we don’t mean to be aggressive any more than you do. But you just woke up a lot of wolves, and your scent on our doorstep is going to make everybody edgy. It’s not personal.”
Ryker blinked. A conciliatory wolf?
“I know it’s not,” Leslie said. “We react to y’all’s scent too.”
“There you go.” Jeremy spread his hands. Then he turned to the second wolf, whose posture hadn’t eased. “Rhett, it’s fine. Let them go.”
Let them go? Ryker would show this wolf exactly how—
A new scent hit Ryker so hard it nearly knocked him down. He coughed once as it registered in his mouth as well as his nose. What was that? Musk and…ginger?
This wolf approached with less stealth than Rhett had. He was a tower, over six-and-a-half feet and layered with so much muscle he looked like a sculpture, not a living man—until his glowing amber eyes rested on Ryker. Fight fight fight fight fight!
“No,” Leslie said. Her nails gouged his wrist. “No, Ryker.”
Fight fight fight fight fight!
“Ryker!”
Leslie’s other hand was on his chest, palm flat, pushing hard although Ryker was standing perfectly statue still. Why…? Oh. He had bared his teeth at…the alpha wolf. This was the alpha. Ryker’s entire body felt like a deep freeze, icicles piercing his skin. He had never felt this kind of wild rage before. His eyeballs felt frozen solid with the depth of vampire rage that tried to take over his body.
Then his thoughts returned to the here and now, where the alpha wolf was standing beside the beta. He too wore only pajama pants, and his bare torso sported multiple obvious bullet scars. Eight of them. This wolf had been critically wounded at some point in his life. Had he attacked someone? Maybe in his feral form?
The curiosity tingling in Ryker’s thoughts proved he was emerging from the rage. The alpha wolf did not move, did not show his teeth, simply stood there in all his power while his eyes burned like fire and he waited…waited. For Ryker to make a move. Or for Ryker to control himself.
“Okay,” he said, and the velvet in his voice wasn’t something he could help right now. As long as he wasn’t allowing his body to attack, its other dominance strategies would kick in. “It’s okay, Leslie.”
The beta wolf, Rhett, growled low in his throat, and his chest heaved once. The alpha’s broad hand settled onto Rhett’s shoulder and stayed there, and he seemed to breathe easier after a moment. Something more was going on with Rhett. Something more than Ryker would ever be privy to.
“Leslie,” the alpha wolf said. His voice was like sandpaper in Ryker’s ears.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. We really didn’t mean any harm. We were just on a walk.”
“I know that.”
“Ryker hasn’t known wolves, hasn’t lived near y’all. He doesn’t know how not to fight you. I apologize on his behalf.”
“You’ve done no harm,” the alpha said. “You’re free to go.”
“Thank you,” Leslie said.
“Wait,” Ryker said. “I can speak for myself.”
The alpha nodded.
“Can I know your name?”
“Malachi,” the alpha said.
“If I’ve caused offense, Malachi, I’m sorry. We didn’t come here for that.”
The alpha wolf nodded. “Apology accepted.”
Turning his back on the wolves was one of the most physically difficult things Ryker had ever done. Leslie looped one arm around his waist as they retreated toward town. When they’d made half a mile of distance, the wolves at the head of the road turned toward their homes, and Ryker’s body began to relax.
Leslie tugged Ryker’s hand and broke into a jog. They made another quarter-mile of distance before she stopped.
“I’m not sure of their exact sensory range,” she said. “Generally speaking, our hearing is slightly better than theirs, and their sense of smell is slightly better than ours. But we’re definitely out of range now.”
“Thanks for intervening for me.” He had to say this first, though it rankled that she’d had to step in on his behalf even for a moment. His control was better than that. Or it ought to be.
“I can’t believe you asked his name.” She shuddered.
“Why? Is it some guarded secret?”
“No, but under the circumstances…”
“He knew mine. I had the right to ask his.”
She shook her head. “You’re too brave, Ryker.”
“No. I was mad, not scared. Do you know what happened to him?”
“The scars, you mean?” She looked back the way they’d come as if she might catch another glimpse from here. “I have no idea. All I know is he scares me. The other wolves don’t—well, sometimes Rhett can be unsettling.”
“If we’d trespassed, the alpha might have killed us.” Ryker knew this all the way to his bones. In fairness, though… “But I don’t think he’d kill us for no reason.”
“No, he wouldn’t. I’ve talked a lot to Ezra, and he’s clear that the wolves live by a moral code.”
He cocked his head, trying to parse her contradictions. “Yet you’re scared of the alpha?”
“He’s beyond massive. His authority is so thick I can taste it. Plus I now know he survived eight gunshot wounds sometime in his past. So I probably wouldn’t be able to kill him if I had to.” She gave another shudder. “Gosh, I hate talking like this. They’re my neighbors. I don’t want to wonder if I could kill them to defend myself. I want to be at peace with them.”
“That’s admirable,” Ryker said.
Leslie rolled her eyes.
“No, I mean it, Leslie. I’d like to be more of a peacemaker, but I’m not. It’s a profound trait to have. Profoundly good, I mean.”
“Well…thanks,” she said quietly.
“So, tour guide…anywhere else you want me to see while the humans are sleeping?”