lunged, kicking him in the ribs and knocking him onto his back. “Who are you?”
“I’m a little hurt that you didn’t notice the resemblance,” he spat, dribbling blood onto the tile floor of the office. “Everybody in my pack told me I looked just like my dad. Of course, you and your brother killed those people.”
I stared down at him, analyzing the sandy hair, the light brown eyes. When I’d seen that mouth, it had been twisted into a feral snarl. The eyes had been sharp and too bright, burning with hate and desperation. I felt my arms drop to my sides, the shock leeching all of the energy out of my limbs.
I was a dumb-ass.
“You’re Jonas’s son?”
“His one and only heir,” Clay said, pushing to his feet. “Your time here is over. I’ve seen enough to know that you’re not strong enough to hold on to the valley. It’s time for a new pack, a stronger pack, to take over. You have three days to clear your ragged excuse for a family out of our new home. Otherwise, people will start getting hurt.”
“People are already getting hurt.” I grunted.
He smiled, his teeth tinged an awful red. “No, this is minor damage. I mean, really, truly hurt. Throats ripped out. Paws missing. How’d you like to walk out of your cozy little house to find your mother, your grandfather, one of those little brats, dead and cold on your doorstep?”
“Why are you trying to provoke me?” I demanded, shoving at his shoulders. “You are not this guy.”
“You don’t know what I am!” he shouted, shoving me back.
“Look, I can’t change what happened—” When he looked vaguely bored, I slammed his head against the wall. He snarled, and I grabbed his chin, forcing him to look me in the eye. “Listen to me. I am sorry for what was done to your pack, but you will not threaten my fucking family and make it sound like a Sunday picnic, do you hear?”
He leered at me and threw one last upper cut to my chin. I stumbled over the wreckage of my office furniture and nearly landed on my ass. Fine, I landed on my ass, but after that whooping, I needed a rest.
“Three days, Maggie. And then I bring the rest of my pack home, whether you’re here or not. It’s Old Home Week, and we plan on throwing a hell of a party.”
Clay disappeared, so quickly I didn’t even have time to reply, and Samson came running. I assumed that Matt had managed to call him as soon as I hung up on him. It was nice to know Matt could operate his phone when he was in a jam . . . or that someone else had dialed for him.
“Where is he? What hurts?” Samson demanded. “Do we need Doc Moder?”
“Clay’s gone.” I sighed, sitting up slowly. “I don’t want anyone chasing after him. Who knows how many he’s got in his ‘pack’?” My ears rang as Samson helped me into a sitting position. He kept checking me over for wounds until I had to slap his hands away. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” I moaned, clutching my head in my hands. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a new skull. Look, I don’t want to explain this more than once, so could you round everybody up and bring them to Mom’s? I’ll meet you there.”
“Sure,” he said, gently pulling me to my feet. “Are you sure you’re OK to walk?”
I nodded, and he sprinted for the door. “Hey, Samson?” He stopped and poked his head back through the doorway. “You’re an awesome second. I don’t care what anybody says.”
He winked at me. “Try not to get your ass kicked on the walk home.”
He ducked out the door before he could see the rude gesture I was making.
I CHOSE TO LIMP HOME quietly, using buildings and vehicles as cover. Not to protect my dignity but to keep the pack from suffering another blow. OK, it was to protect my dignity.
How could this have happened? How could I have been so blind? They knew so much about Billie, about our pack. I kept calling Matt to check them out, but he never returned my calls, and after a certain amount of time, when Alicia and Clay hadn’t killed us all in our sleep, I just sort of took for granted that they were legit. And sure, maybe I trusted them a little more because they had the boys with them, and I like to think that a mother to two toddlers couldn’t be completely evil. I was new to being alpha. I was kind of overwhelmed. I appreciated all the help I could get.
Ugh, that was a bunch of rationalization crap. I’d dropped my guard, and now I was paying for it.
Billie had tried to tell me that she didn’t know them, that I’d let strangers into her house. But I’d chalked it up to her illness. Had she had moments of lucidity? Had she woken up in her own home, frightened, surrounded by strangers? I didn’t think I’d ever forgive myself for that.
Mom found me lying on the couch in one of Nick’s old Star Wars sweatshirts with a steak pressed to my face. She hadn’t seen me this bloody for a couple of years, so it sent her into a bit of a panic. I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds, and the next thing I knew, Nick was there, looking stricken and pushing my hair away from my battered, healing face.
“Maggie, baby, you’re scaring me. Please, wake up, talk to me,” he begged. His shirt was smeared with my blood, as if he’d gathered me to his chest while I was out. “Just let me know you’re OK.”
I nodded, wincing when the action made my head spin. I closed my eyes again and awoke to more people, simultaneously trying to hug me and demand answers from me. Who hurt me? Where were they now? And on and on and on until“Quiet!” I bellowed, just so they would shut up enough to let me sit up and get a word in. My ears rang with the volume of my own voice, and I had to close my eyes to keep from throwing up. Nick pulled me up, gingerly pressing my back against his side. I winced, knowing that even with werewolf healing abilities, I was going to be bruised all to hell. Mo brought me a mug of Mom’s special herbal tea, which I accepted with no intention of actually drinking it.
“Clay did this,” I said, using the towel Mom handed me to dab at my healing lip. “He’s long gone by now. And so, I would imagine, are Alicia and the boys.”
“Why in the hell would Clay do this?” Cooper demanded.
“I’m still confused about that myself. I thought he was OK with you mating with Nick,” Samson said, his lips pressed into a tight little grimace.
“I’d say my not dating him probably ranks lower on my list of offenses than, say, Cooper and I killing his whole damned family. Clay is Jonas’s son, all grown up.”
Cooper sat down heavily on the couch, looking stunned.
“Wait, so that means Alicia . . .” I heard Samson curse and throw a chair across the room, apparently just now realizing that the girl he considered a possible mate was also a possible homicidal maniac. I made a mental note to feel bad for him as soon as my brain unscrambled.
“All this time, I knew there was something familiar about him, something that made me uneasy,” Cooper said, his face paper-white. “I just thought it was the typical big-brother reaction to your first boyfriend. I can’t believe I let that psycho get so close and not even recognize him for what he was.”
“Well, he’s a well-informed psycho,” I muttered. “I don’t know how he got his background information on the pack, but he knew just enough about us to make his story plausible. I’m assuming that he’s behind the truck brakes and my office and shooting Samson. Because when I think back on those days, I don’t ever remember seeing Clay near the valley, which seems odd.”
Cooper wondered, “If he was going to try to stage a coup, why would he wait such a long time? None of this makes any sense.”
“Because all coups follow a rigid code of conduct.” I snorted, groaning when that made my skin, lip, and nose burn. “I think at first, Clay just wanted to gather information on us. And then, after sticking around for a while, I don’t know, maybe they started to like us. Alicia became fond of Billie, and Clay said he hoped that I’d choose him as a mate, and we could skip the whole dramatic-takeover thing. And when it became clear that I was becoming interested in Nick, I think Clay started playing all those tricks to make me think I needed someone like him around, someone like me. Instead, I just leaned on Nick. Now that they’ve been discovered, they have no choice but to go on the offensive.” I pressed the compress to my face and moaned. “I should have seen this. I feel so stupid.”
Cooper shrugged but didn’t disagree.
Nick glared at him. “Like you handled your first attempted coup any better.”
“I handled it OK,” Cooper mumbled defensively. “It was the aftermath that sucked.”
“Territorial disputes are not all that uncommon in the animal kingdom,” Nick told me, in that “hot for teacher”
