themselves useful, or they didn’t live to see another winter. To humans it sounded brutal; to Lupines it was the way things worked. They didn’t make the rules out of cruelty. They simply knew that the survival of the pack was more important than the survival of any one pack member, and a hell of a lot more important than manners.
Given the three challenges Honor had had, Logan wondered why Major hadn’t followed—or even preceded —any of them with a challenge of his own. He clearly thought he would make a better alpha than a female, no matter how wrong he might be, so what was he waiting for? Did he think the others would wear her down and make her more vulnerable, or did he have some other sort of scheme in mind? Logan’s curiosity had been piqued.
He made no effort to silence his footsteps as he strode toward the stone yard, and he wasn’t surprised to break through the tree line into the clearing to find Honor and two teenaged males staring at him.
Honor thrust the tip of her shovel into the dirt at her feet and pointed toward the west. “Town is that way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He smiled pleasantly and walked toward her and the fire pit she and the teens looked to be repairing. “For when I’m ready to leave.”
“You’re ready now.”
“Not true. You’re ready for me to leave, but me? I prefer to stay a while.” He turned toward the two boys who watched the interplay avidly. “You guys might want to go now.”
Both boys turned to look at Honor, who scowled but nodded curtly. “Go. Head up to the offices and tell Mike I want you to go along when he looks at that pipe work we want to replace in cabin twelve. I can finish here.”
This time the boys nodded and moved off, heading back along the same path Logan had used. At least the young ones knew enough to take orders only from their alpha. But teenaged boys were one thing. He still wasn’t sure about her qualifications for leading the entire pack. Just because the one challenger he’d met was a puffed-up windbag didn’t mean every adult male in the pack would be the same. There could still be a serious claimant to the title waiting in the background.
As soon as the sound of the boys’ footsteps had faded from their sharp ears, Honor turned on Logan with a snarl. “What the hell are you still doing on my land? I thought I made myself pretty damned clear last night. I want you gone.”
“Oh, you were clear. And so was I.” He met her gaze squarely, not bowing to anyone else’s alpha. “I’m not leaving until I finish the job I was sent to do. That means I’m not leaving until I see for myself whether or not you have what it takes to run this pack.”
She threw down her shovel and planted her hands on her hips. “Who the hell are you to tell me if I have what it takes? I grew up in this pack, and I’ve been its beta since I was fifteen years old. I know the way things work around here a hell of a lot better than you do, so who the hell do you think you are to give me orders?”
“I’m the man who intends to see them carried out.”
She laughed at him. Literally threw her head back and laughed, but when her eyes met his again, the look in them had very little to do with humor. “You go right on thinking that, city boy, and I’ll tell you what my father told me. ‘A White Paw leads the White Paw, and everyone else can go fuck themselves.’ You can make any damned decision you want, and you can go carry your news to your boss back in New York. But I am telling you right now, what you two think won’t make one bit of difference to this pack. We do things the way we do them, and to hell with you both.”
Logan smiled, which was the only way he could think of to keep from snarling. Not that he disagreed with what she was saying, because it made sense—although in the end it wouldn’t make any difference to his decision or Graham’s—but he did have to exercise every iota of self-control he possessed not to jump her where she stood. In the heat of her anger, her scent had intensified. It trailed across the space between them and teased his senses. The spicy note seemed even stronger today, confirmation of how close she was to her heat. He wanted to lick that fragrance from her skin and nibble his way up the insides of her thighs until he could feast on her, unimpeded.
Shit. Why the hell had he decided to wear button-fly jeans?
Dragging his mind off his crotch for a good five seconds, he imagined his feet nailed to the ground beneath him. And if that didn’t work, he’d have to try real nails. “I understand your feelings, Honor, but they don’t change the fact that I am not leaving until my job here is done.”
“Just what sort of job do you think you get to do on our land, city boy?”
The crunch of snow underfoot had both Honor and Logan turning instinctively toward the path to the main house even before the first words were spoken. Out of the corner of his eye, Logan could see the annoyance that tightened Honor’s features, but he kept most of his attention centered on the two men who entered the stone yard.
The one who had spoken stood an inch or two less than six feet tall, but he had the stocky, beefy look of a brawler and wore an expression just short of challenging on his bearded face. His clean-shaven friend was a little taller, but less muscular, and his face wore an impassive mask belied by the way his pale eyes darted around the clearing, cataloging every detail. Logan didn’t even bother to stiffen at their insulting entrance, but neither did he take his eyes off them. He hadn’t gotten to be beta without watching his back.
“Bill. Dave. I thought you two were working on fences today.” Honor’s tight tone and rigid expression made the male Lupines glance her way, but their gazes turned just as quickly back to Logan. The low rumble in her chest indicated the female alpha didn’t like that much.
“We are,” the burly one drawled, hooking his thumbs in the front pockets of his blue jeans. “But just before we headed out, we ran into Darin, and he told us there was some stranger come sniffing around the pack. We hadn’t heard nothing about it from you, so me and Dave figured we might come take a look.”
Huh. Major worked fast. And appeared not to be the only male in this pack with more testosterone than brains.
“Really. You figured.”
Logan might not have known Honor Tate for very long, but even he knew enough to recognize that her total lack of inflection boded ill for her pack mates. The question was, how would she handle them?
He stood his ground, his hands hanging loose at his sides. If Honor couldn’t deal with the situation, Logan had no doubt that he could. He had even less doubt that if he felt it necessary to step in, the female would make him pay, one way or another.
But she wouldn’t be doing it as alpha of the White Paw clan. An alpha that weak couldn’t be allowed to stand.
“What’s your name, city?” the burly one asked, jerking his chin up and narrowing his eyes at Logan.
And that was about as close to a challenge as Logan had ever let slip past him, but before he could express his generosity, Honor shouldered him aside and planted herself in front of her obnoxious pack mates.
“His name is none of your business, Billy. And neither is what he might be doing here. So you ‘figured’ wrong.”
Her voice had deepened to a growling register that tightened Logan’s pants, not that she was paying any attention to him or his fly. Or would have appreciated the gesture if she had been. Her dark eyes had begun to glint with feral flecks of gold, and he could almost see her alpha energy seeping from her pores. He doubted the other men had missed it, either, but they weren’t backing down, not just yet. That wasn’t a good sign for Honor’s desire to keep her spot at the top of the pack.
“You know as well as we do that we got a right to defend our territory when a strange wolf come into it —”
“You don’t know shit, William Petrey. That right belongs to the alpha, and last time I looked, you were nowhere near being the alpha of this pack.”
Bill’s eyes narrowed, and he crossed his thick arms over his chest, mumbling, “Female ain’t all that near it, either.”
Uh-oh. Those were fighting words.
Under Logan’s watchful eye, Honor shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet and began to stretch. Or rather, her body began to stretch, growing a couple of inches taller, muscles beginning to thicken and layer on top of each other. It wasn’t quite a change, since her features remained human, and she didn’t seem to be sprouting any fur that he could see, but her wolf was definitely rising to the surface, and he could feel the air thicken with
