Chapter 12

Or, rather, I attempted to leap into the fray. But before I could take more than a single step, a hard hand came around from behind and knocked the sword out of my grasp to clatter uselessly against the nearest wall.

Meanwhile, and far too belatedly, I smelled a second werewolf. His scent was vaguely familiar as his arm clamped itself around my neck just tightly enough to restrain without cutting off all access to air. But I didn’t have the time or space to analyze his identify further at the present moment.

“Call off your dog,” my assailant whispered into my ear, forcibly turning my entire body so I stood between him and my armed human partner. Using me as a shield was a smart move, I had to admit, because Robert’s eyes were wide and his breathing echoed loudly off the rounded walls. Just as my captor must have surmised, my friend was a hair’s breadth away from shooting to kill without worrying which werewolf was within his sights.

Robert wasn’t mine to call off, but I found myself abruptly relaxing against my captor’s chest anyway. Because I now knew who this was and I was pretty sure he didn’t want me dead.

I hadn’t managed to catch a single glimpse of either opponent’s face, but my inner wolf had been busy putting two and two together even as my human brain frantically attempted to think up a way out of the thorny situation we found ourselves in. And the wolf had been more efficient than the human, coming up with an answer much more palatable than the one I’d initially suspected.

If our olfactory memory served, the shifter restraining me with a firm yet gentle chokehold was one of two alphas from our region’s All-Pack that I’d met previously. Not Stormwinder, of course—I would have recognized the head honcho’s scent immediately. In contrast, this male’s aroma took some digging to track down, our one and only meeting having occurred at the height of the summer when my much smaller pack and I had returned his dead son’s body to his clan’s unwelcoming gates.

“Slate Franklin,” I guessed, my voice warmer than I meant for it to be. The alpha hadn’t been particularly friendly in the past, but his status within shifter society did make one thing clear—he hadn’t violently murdered a one-body in outpack territory either.

And whether he was willing to admit it or not, Franklin owed me one. So I wasn’t surprised when the alpha allowed me to shrug my way out of his enfolding arms so I could step up beside my gun-happy partner.

“I’m okay,” I told Robert, even though I still hadn’t managed to identify the much larger shifter whose body continued to hide in the enveloping shadows. I’d simply have to assume that whoever Franklin chose to bring along on this ambush had similar reasons to keep me alive and kicking. “It’d probably be a good idea if you gave us some space though,” I added.

Predictably, my partner snorted. “No way. I’ll call in backup.”

I cringed even as two male shifters growled in tandem, their ire so intense that the walls of the tunnel seemed to vibrate around us. The tremble shook a water droplet loose from the ceiling in the process and it fell directly into my hair, the sudden chill making me jump. So much for acting brave and unaffected by current events.

“Not a good idea,” I said quickly, pushing Robert’s gun hand down so the barrel pointed at the gravel-lined ground rather than at a living, breathing shifter. “I’ve already called the only backup we’ll need. This isn’t human business.”

For the first time, the shadowy figure appeared both intensely interested and mildly shaken by current events. “The one-body knows about us?” he asked, stepping forward out of the shadows at last so he could peer into Robert’s rigid face.

The stranger’s move finally gave me a glimpse that went beyond a menacing silhouette in the distance. And while I had to admit that his size was even more daunting up close, the proximity also allowed me to guess who I was talking to.

The massive shifter was black—the only African-American werewolf I’d ever met. Which meant....

“Bill Byrd,” I greeted him, piecing together bits and pieces of data that I’d crammed into my brain in recent weeks to prep for All-Pack. Unlike Franklin, I’d never set eyes on this particular alpha before. But while one pack leader was unlikely to break the law, two together were almost certain to keep their noses clean. Why let your enemy know the easiest way to metaphorically stab you in the back?

Relaxing, I graced Byrd with a welcoming smile even as his broad shoulders relaxed ever so slightly at the greeting. In fact, I got the distinct impression that the large male had been hovering in the background out of a chivalrous urge not to scare me away.

Now that I’d correctly surmised Byrd’s identity, though, he scooped up Wolfie’s sword in one massive fist while holding out the other hand for me to shake. “I’d be honored,” he offered, “if you’d call me Little Bill.”

***

“Little Bill? Seriously?” I asked half an hour later once the four of us were settled into a booth in Sterling Point’s one and only restaurant. My feeble joke was an attempt at breaking the ice. I just hoped the resulting splinters didn’t drive themselves into my skin and draw blood.

Because, despite the lowering of my guard previously, the air still hummed with antagonism. The discord just happened to focus on a different person this time around—Robert.

As soon as I understood who I was facing, I’d done my best to send my human partner packing with reassurances that Hunter was on his way to pick me up. Unfortunately, Robert had adamantly refused to abandon me to the tender mercies of two unknown shifters.

And I could understand his reasoning. He was being a good guy, as usual, his inherent chivalry rebelling against the notion of leaving me alone with two unknowns. Unfortunately, the FBI agent’s male posturing had also set off Franklin’s need to dominate everyone within his vicinity.

In the end, Little Bill and I seemed to be the only rational people present. So I figured I’d turn the conversation around in the former’s direction in hopes of defusing the FBI/shifter pissing contest before we were once again inches away from an Old West style gun battle.

“My father’s Big Bill,” Byrd rumbled by way of reply, his tone gentler than either of our other companions’ had been. In fact, Bill’s southern twang gave his voice a melodic cadence that I could have sat and listened to all day.

Plus, the large male wasn’t glaring at anyone, which was a major relief to my frazzled nerves.

“But you lead your own pack now,” I countered, dredging up some of the information I’d carefully collated so I wouldn’t end up treading water entirely in the dark when I met up with the other alphas in four days’ time. “Surely that makes you old enough to drop the ‘Little.’ Exactly how big is your father?”

For the first time since I’d met him, Franklin’s mask of alpha competence cracked as he chuckled. “Big Bill’s about yeah high,” he offered, holding his hand up around the level of the table top. I sincerely doubted Bill Byrd senior was only three feet tall, but I got the picture.

Little Bill merely shrugged at my raised eyebrows, then he focused his attention on what must have been the tenth packet of sugar he’d meticulously poured into his glass of iced tea. Apparently when you’re from the Deep South, sweet tea was meant to be sweet.

“Big Bill couldn’t come along today, but I speak for both of our clans,” the younger Byrd continued, attempting to stir the additional crystals into his drink with a long-handled spoon. Since he’d exceeded the saturation point about two packets back, though, the sugar merely settled into a sludge at the bottom of the glass. Smiling, he took a sip of a concoction that surely should have been undrinkable then sighed with pleasure.

“Which means this table represents half of the full weight of All-Pack,” I said, hoping I was on the right track and that Franklin was willing to let his beef with Robert slide at long last now that we were nibbling around the edges of the point. Because Franklin and Byrd had gone to a lot of time and effort in order to track down Wolf Landing’s supposed leader. Surely, after several rounds of intimidation and pleasantries, we were finally ready to embark upon the subject at hand.

“Not quite half,” Franklin disagreed. His voice was terse, but he did seem willing to ignore the FBI agent and deal with me at last. “We represent three of the seven clans—your Wolf Wharf doesn’t have an official voice and won’t unless four alphas vote in your favor.”

I opened my mouth to correct the naming error, then decided against it. I had a feeling the older male was merely trying to get a rise out of me, and I didn’t see any reason to give him that satisfaction. So, instead, I picked up a French fry and dredged it through the ketchup on the edge of my plate before popping it into my mouth. “Hmmm,” I said noncommittally. You’re the one who wanted to talk to me, I added grimly inside my own head alone. So talk.

I got the impression that Franklin was oblivious to my impatience, but a faint smile flickered across Little Bill’s face. He’d hung back from talking business previously, presenting the illusion that the balance of power tilted in the other alpha’s favor. But I had a sneaking suspicion that Byrd rather than Franklin possessed the upper hand when the rubber hit the road.

My hunch was confirmed when the older male’s eyes flicked ever so briefly in his companion’s direction prior to continuing. “Before we can talk about your territorial rights, though,” Franklin said after a moment, warily checking out the other diners rather than focusing on my face, “we have to discuss Stormwinder. The male is a problem.”

“In what way?” I asked innocently. Because, sure, Hunter’s former mentor was a pain in my ass—particularly at the present moment when he seemed bound and determined to bring my mate back into the enforcer fold regardless of Hunter’s feelings in the matter. But I didn’t know enough about the region’s inter-pack politics to guess why Franklin might have taken offense at the absent string-puller.

“It doesn’t matter why,” Franklin responded, brushing aside my question as if it was irrelevant. But the older male’s scent suggested that Stormwinder did indeed matter very much to the alphas who had gone to such lengths to track me down. Even Little Bill had leaned in slightly at the change of topic. “What matters is that Stormwinder is our representative at the Tribunal, which gives him far more power than he should have over the other packs in our region.”

Now it was my turn to wince as Franklin spilled shifter information that I hadn’t previously seen fit to divulge to the human sitting by my side. Robert was silently tucking into his burger, his appetite in no way affected by the huge quantity of chocolate-chip cookies he’d consumed only a short time earlier. But I knew my partner well enough to understand that he was also soaking up every word to be jotted down in his field journal later. I’d just have to hope that my instincts had been correct and that it was safe to entrust critical shifter data to an FBI agent who had no official connection to my pack.

Later, I promised myself. I could only deal with one set of problems at a time, and the pack leaders in front of me were the obvious issue to be contended with first.

“Let me guess,” I said aloud, trying not to let my discomfort at speaking so plainly in front of my partner show. “You want me to help vote Stormwinder out of office in exchange for you voting Wolf Landing in. Quid pro quo.”

“You got your quo before your quid,” Little Bill said, deigning to talk business at last as a sparkle entered his dark eyes. “But, yes—if you can rustle up the final vote needed to remove Stormwinder from office, then we’ll make sure the tide turns in your favor when your own territorial rights come up for debate.”