Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Louis
Werewolves, like a lot of other group dwelling creatures, owned a huge section of land on the outskirts of the city.
Most of the pack lived there, except some of the single weres like me, but we all went to the pack house for Saturday lunch, regardless of whether we lived on pack land or in the city.
It was time to be among family and friends, to reconnect with the pack and soothe the beast in your soul.
There was no place like the pack house on a Saturday.
Kids were screaming as they ran around and wrestled on the lawn, either getting their good clothes or their fur smeared with grass stains.
Some of the older teens were tasked with watching the littler pups because it taught them responsibility, and probably kept them from increasing the pup population for a few more years.
Nothing influenced making good choices like a three-year-old who’d eaten too much grass and puked on your shoes.
There was a hierarchy to the pack, but it was never shoved in anyone’s face.
If anything, it was innate, and you’d find the alpha just as likely juggling someone’s baby, cooking steaks, or mowing the lawn as you would see him lording it over the rest of us.
The alpha provided, and in return, we communicated to create a healthy, respectful pack that was free of the posturing bullshit that plagued other packs.
I’d brought a salad with me, so I was excused from prep duty. I sat on the deck with a bunch of the other single wolves who lived in the city. Sometimes we’d meet up in town, especially if one of us was struggling. There were few ailments that a little snuggle on a park bench couldn’t cure.
Rafe, who was working in Southside, nudged my shoulder. “There’s a waitress downtown that smells like your rank ass. Got something to tell the class, Louie?”
Despite myself, I flushed, making them giggle. “What is this, high school?” I punched his arm. “She’s just a girl we picked up on a clan sickness case. Hailey.”
“Sweet little thing,” Alfie murmured. “Stood her ground the other day despite some human getting all up in her face. We still had to step in though,” he said, disgusted.
The weres had adapted the most readily to human society.
We were comfortable in most forms, and generations of us had already been operating in the human world for a long time when the creatures announced their existence.
We’d already had friends, businesses, and connections among the human population.
The one thing we could never understand or condone, though, was how humans treated the weak and vulnerable. In the pack, they were protected, insulated from things that could harm them.
In the human world, anything that was weaker than you was fair game. Sometimes I wondered why the weres were the ones considered beasts.
“Yeah, that guy followed her home and threatened to rape her. Syke had to go collect her.”
There were growls around our group. Hailey had obviously made an impression on my pack brothers. “Is the fucker dead?”
I looked over at Rory, who worked on the police force. I smirked at him, and he plugged his ears. It wouldn’t help, but plausible deniability and all that. I didn’t want Syke to get in trouble either, so the less people who knew about him being ashed, the better.
I shrugged. “Apparently he was all about scaring vulnerable human women, but when faced with a demon, he took off. She’s staying at the Creature Crisis Center for now until either the guy forgets about her, or she gets sick of us.”
Rafe growled again. “I can make that fucker forget her a lot faster. I’ll make him forget his own name.”
Rory plugged his fingers back in his ears. “La-la-la!”
I laughed at their antics. Rory and Rafe were brothers, not that you’d know it by looking at them. Rafe had dark, shaggy hair that he refused to cut until it became a nuisance, and Rory had styled, blond hair with short sides, looking like the poster boy for creatures on the force.
“I’m sure the guy will find something new to obsess about when Hailey doesn’t turn up for his stalking ass.” Or met Satan himself in the pits of hell. “I forgot you were building that apartment complex in Southside. How is it?”
“Someone tried to steal the excavator the other day in broad daylight. The kid was off his face. A human, poor little fuck.” Alfie shook his head.
“If I were you, I’d keep the waitress from ever going back there.
The Southside is a powder keg just waiting for one bad batch of meth to completely implode. ”
Rory grunted his agreement, and then we moved onto other subjects—the price of gas, Alfie’s little sister’s upcoming wedding, and all the shit you talk about with family.
We helped gather the kids and make sure everyone was accounted for and had food in front of them.
I sat midway down the table. We didn’t sit by dominance, and I didn’t know for sure where I stood in the pack’s dominance hierarchy, but it was close to the top—less than the alpha and his right-hands, but higher than most. I currently sat between Ellanor’s son, Simon, and my great uncle Gunter, and never in the same place twice.
It was so we all had time together to foster closeness.
The alpha, Puck, was across the table from me, feeding one of the toddlers from his plate. The kid was chewing on a lamb chop like he had more than two teeth. “I heard the gargoyles are bringing in fresh blood from Europe. Is Ilyas getting roped into the formalities?” he asked me lightly.
The pack knew my team. Many of them had been here to the pack house and eaten with my family. My pack thought my job was noble, and there was always an open invitation for my team to attend.
By comparison, a gargoyle flight was as closed off as you could get in the modern world.
They believed they were better than everyone and everything, and they thought they were nobility in a civilization of rats.
Not Ilyas, of course, but definitely his key, their version of an alpha. That guy was a prick.
“He’s using Hailey and her orc mate, Eric, as an excuse not to go.”
“Hailey?” Puck asked.
I hesitated, but I didn’t keep secrets from my alpha if I could help it. “A human from Southside. She called in about an orc with clan sickness. Turns out he’s the son of the orc king.” There. That was basically the truth, and no one could get in trouble for it.
Puck screwed up his nose at the mention of the orc king. “No matter how bad the clan sickness is, I don’t blame him for wanting to be out of that cesspool of violence that the so-called king calls a clan.” He frowned. “Wait, Eric you say?”
I nodded, and Puck smiled. “He sat in on a few meetings. Quite a clever lawyer. It was nice to talk to someone in their political delegation who didn’t take every word as a reason to fight.
” Puck spooned mashed potatoes into the toddler’s mouth, though the pup missed and got most of it on his cheeks.
“Again, I’m glad he’s out of that clan. He was different. ”
That was an understatement. “His clan sickness is some of the worst we’ve seen. We couldn’t get a surrogate clan down, so the team and I stepped in while we waited. He’s a good guy.”
“And Hailey is beautiful,” Alfie called from down the table. Puck raised an eyebrow, and I found myself explaining the whole thing over again, including the guy from the diner and why they were secluded at the center.
Puck just raised an eyebrow, and I dropped my gaze. He saw too much, he always had. That was why he was a great alpha despite only being a decade or so older than me.
I flushed as I admitted, “She smells nice.”
He smirked at me. “Indeed. Well, both Hailey and Eric are welcome here next week. Perhaps being among the pack will help with Eric’s clan sickness.”
I loved my family. “Thank you, Alpha.”
Puck nodded and went back to talking to the toddler.
When I waved goodbye to everyone later, I couldn’t get the image of Hailey and Eric here among my family out of my mind.
Maybe they weren’t the only ones longing for a clan of their own.