Nightshade (Wolves of the Wildwood #2)

1. Leo

Leo

San Francisco was . . . well, I’d never willingly admit it to my brothers or Mama, but it was amazing.

Sure, it smelled terrible, and it was noisy and I could constantly feel the vibrations of nearby enormous vehicles in every room, every foot of concrete sidewalk, and even my own bones after a while.

But it was huge, and colorful, and filled with every kind of person and food and thing to purchase I’d ever imagined, and a few million more after that.

A bright purple electric sign in the window across the street from where I stood declared the availability of psychic readings, a business on the corner sold multiple different kinds of gasoline and oil changes in thirty minutes, and I could smell the most delicious thing I could imagine in that moment—a deep, rich broth of some kind, with beef and spices I’d never tasted with beef before.

Was that licorice? I had no idea what such a thing might taste like, but I wanted to know.

I wanted to know everything.

I never would, obviously.

I was a Wildwood wolf. We lived in Idaho, and as soon as this disaster with the Crescent pack was resolved, we would return to Idaho and continue living how we had lived there.

No electricity, no brightly lit shops with every kind of food imaginable open till all hours of the night.

We barely had running water, and only that because of Cash’s genius with building.

I still had no idea how his system worked, even though I’d spent years helping him build it.

It wasn’t that I wanted to complain about my life. Our pack lands were beautiful and peaceful, and I would always want to return to them. It was just that unlike everyone else in the pack, I was excited for this adventure.

I wanted to see the whole city, taste all the food, and learn what every store held inside.

Instead, I was following Grant and his jerks as they wandered through the city, slow and methodical, sniffing as they went. I’d have tried to get ahead of them, except I had no idea what the heck they were looking for, just knew that they were determined, more than I’d ever seen before.

Grant looked pissed, though, and that never boded well.

In my past experience, it had always meant that he would start quietly threatening us to Aleks. After all I’ve done to protect your family, Aleks, and aren’t you grateful for me saving your mommy from Russia, Aleks?

Always “mommy,” like it was an insult for Aleks to love his mother.

And anyone who thought an accusation of loving Ekaterina Ilyina was an insult?

That was no one I could ever respect. Mama had taken me and Viktor in without a moment of hesitation when our own mother had died.

Even though she had no help and two more mouths to feed was a lot, even without those two mouths being teenage boys who ate like bottomless pits.

She hadn’t even stopped to think. She’d just come to Viktor and me in the aftermath of the attack that had killed my mother, put her arms around the two of us, and led us back to where Aleks was waiting.

We’d figured out sleeping arrangements in the tiny, one bedroom shack she and Aleks had lived in, and no one had ever once complained about not being given enough space or food or attention. We had come together as a family.

Perhaps it was different from family in the traditional sense, because even then, I’d seen families splinter and break apart when bad things happened to them.

Mama’s own father hadn’t precisely disowned her when she’d returned from America with Aleks and no husband, but he’d put her in a broken-down shack on the edge of pack territory and never spoken directly to her again.

Funny, I thought being so far from the center of things had saved our lives when the attack that took Viktor happened. Half the pack had died, including Mama’s father.

It didn’t matter, though. What mattered was that Mama taking us had made something stronger than any of the parts before we’d come together.

No one and nothing would ever make me turn my back on any part of my family.

Kick Viktor’s ass, maybe, but never anything more than blowing off steam when my twin was especially exasperating, with all his stoic warrior bullshit.

I followed Grant and his assholes, idly thinking about what family meant, and only paying enough attention to keep them from seeing me.

They weren’t looking for me, though, nor were they especially competent.

It wasn’t a surprise. The kind of man who followed someone like Grant was never competent on his own.

It was the kind of man who knew he was nothing without a strong leader to hide behind.

The kind who looked to a dictator for constant reassurance and praise, which Grant was always happy to give his little ass monkeys.

That was what Evie called them—including her own father—and I’d liked it so much I’d almost collapsed laughing, barely able to breathe through the hilarity of it.

Even Viktor had cracked a smile, and Aleks had ducked his head and turned bright red trying not to laugh, to preserve his .

. . I dunno, alpha-ness? Aleks always tried to be fair and even and all that stuff.

Stuff I didn’t give a damn about.

It felt free, and almost shameful at the same time, because I had more freedom than either of my brothers, to be able to simply act how I felt like acting.

Sure, sometimes I filled silences because they were awkward, and smiled when I didn’t feel particularly happy, but that just seemed like the right thing to do, not something anyone was trying to make me do.

No one made me do anything, and I’d always been somewhere between grateful for it, and ashamed that other people continued to pay my way through life.

The ass monkeys all paused when one said something, his nose turned to the air as though he’d caught the scent of prey. Marcus. Ugh, I’d always hated that guy. Everyone in their right mind hated that guy.

Then they all spontaneously regrouped, jogging toward each other, and then Grant. A moment later, even across the street, I realized what it was they were smelling.

Cash.

They were looking for Cash.

I almost texted my family right away, even though I was supposed to text on a schedule, every half hour, and it had only been about fifteen minutes since I’d last texted them with the update that nothing interesting was happening.

But then I didn’t have time to worry about texting anyone, because the whole lot of them turned and headed in the same direction, all together: toward a dumpy looking motel across the street from where they’d been standing.

The place looked like it had been built before my grandfather had been born, and no one had repaired any part of it in the years since.

The sign that declared it the Paradise Grove Motel was so faded from years in the sun that it looked pastel pink and yellow, rather than the bright red and gold I assumed it had once been, and both the “no” and the “vacancy” parts of the signs below were flickering, not in unison, but separately, one quickly like maybe it was close to shorting out, and the other a slow, steady blink.

Grant’s men congregated below that sign.

Grant himself stood in the center of the circle they made, and started pointing around.

One of them back to the truck, one of them around behind the building, and the rest, he motioned to come with him as he marched through the lot and straight up to one of the doors on the first level of the building.

Why send one behind the place?

He was trying to cut off any escape attempts. Well screw that. Escape attempts were my whole life plan.

I followed behind Barry as he nonchalantly wandered behind the building, hands in his pockets.

I had the sudden urge to bash him in his smug annoying face, even though he hadn’t specifically done anything yet.

He was almost as bad as Marcus with his superiority complex and his inappropriate attention to younger members of the pack, and if he gave me the opportunity to punch him in the mouth, I was not going to turn it down.

As it turned out, I was greatly underestimating just how much opportunity Barry was going to give me.

Halfway down the building, right around the same spot as the door Grant and his assholes had been headed toward on the other side, a screen popped out, followed a moment later by a dark head.

Evie. The window was small and high up, I thought maybe a bathroom window, and she struggled to push her body through it.

The single chuckle Barry gave sent a chill through me.

Evie didn’t seem to notice it, too focused on getting her body out the high window and falling, surprisingly dexterously, to the ground beneath it, where she landed on all fours. She popped up a second later, but before she could choose a direction or start moving, Barry was upon her.

Unfortunately for Barry, I was right behind him.

Before he could even get his hand gripped around her tiny wrist, I’d grabbed his shoulder and given it a shove, hard, with the intention of him landing on his ass on the ground.

He caught himself and didn’t fall, but he did spin around, letting go of Evie and glaring. When he realized it was me, he squinted for a second in confusion but then rolled his shoulders back and lifted his chin, ready for a fight.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

“You’re not supposed to put your hands on people without invitation,” I offered right back.

His eyes narrowed, and even though he was still off balance, I could see the moment he made up his mind. His stance firmed and his fingers flexed, claws growing out from the tips.