Hungry Like a Wolf

the almost magical wash of energy.

Honor’s lip curled in a snarl, revealing long, white canine fangs that looked more than capable of rearranging her pack mate’s vocal chords. From the inside out. “Would you care to repeat that, William?”

The force of an alpha’s authority began to press down on the atmosphere in the clearing, making both Bill and Dave fidget in distress. Logan could feel it like a weight in the air, but he withstood it easily, maybe because Honor wasn’t his alpha, and maybe because she just wasn’t alpha enough. Wasn’t that what he’d come here to decide?

Bill, though, had started to look uncomfortable. His mouth tightened and his chin dipped, and he broke his gaze away from Honor’s, fixing it instead on the ground near her feet. Dave had already stepped back and dropped to one knee. Bill stood his ground, but he said nothing.

Honor moved in a blur of aggressive intensity. One moment she stood just in front of Logan, and when his lids rose from a blink she had reached her challenger and wrapped a dainty, clawed hand around her pack mate’s throat.

“If you have something to say to me, say it,” she snarled, pressing close until Logan was sure Bill felt the heat of her breath on his face. Thin rivulets of blood trickled down the sides of the White Paw’s throat where her claws bit into his skin. “If you question my authority to lead this pack, then challenge me. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and your muzzle out of things that don’t concern you.”

She punctuated the question with a rough shake of the throat she continued to grip. The rest of the man’s body followed along like the hand of a metronome. He had gone limp in her grasp, finally surrendering. His head dropped to the side, his gaze fixed firmly on the ground, and he bared his throat in submission to his alpha.

Honor accepted the victory with something less than enthusiasm in evidence. Logan could see her fingers flex in the flesh of her subordinate, could see new drops of blood well around her claws, and could hear the tenor of her rumbling growl. She sounded not satisfied but angry. Frustrated. As if she wanted to exact retribution from the Lupine who had defied her. Logan couldn’t let that happen. A cruel alpha would be just as unacceptable to the Silverbacks as a weak one. An alpha had to lead a pack with power and strength, mental as well as physical. A leader who ruled with fear could only foster instability in the pack, which was exactly what he’d come here to prevent.

An instant before he stepped forward, Honor released her grip and sent her erstwhile challenger crumpling to the ground at her feet.

“Get back to working fences,” she spat, clenching her fists at her sides and taking a measured step backward. “Next time you hear something you think concerns the security of the pack, you check with me. Understand?”

Both men nodded and scrambled hastily to their feet.

“Go.”

The men went.

Logan watched while the female alpha struggled to tamp down the wild aggression surging through her. Her entire body vibrated with that feral energy, and he was curious to see her contain it. The mark of an alpha often showed itself not in how he or she controlled others, but in how they controlled themselves.

She took a long, deep breath, and when she blew it out, her body had stilled. Well, all except for her hands. Her fingers still betrayed a fine tremor; at least until she clenched her fists and turned to face him. The golden light of the wolf still shone in her dark eyes, but her face was a mask of hard, cool marble.

“Enjoy the show?” she demanded.

He brushed aside the note of challenge in her tone, chalking it up to the aftermath of adrenaline. “That’s not quite the word I’d use, but it was interesting. I’ll say that.”

Her lip curled at the edge. “I’m surprised you didn’t take notes so you could report back to your boss on my obvious incompetence.”

“I’ve got a pretty good memory.”

“I’m less worried about your memory than your powers of deductive reasoning. You might be stupid enough to figure that one idiot with too much testosterone and not enough work to do constitutes evidence of my incompetence.”

“I never called you incompetent.”

“Then you’re admitting I can run this pack perfectly well without the interference of the Silverback alpha.”

“Nice try, but you’re not getting rid of me before this weekend. I won’t be making any final determinations before then.”

He saw the flash of annoyance flicker across her expression, but then, she didn’t exactly do much to disguise it. He figured she didn’t care if he knew he was pissing her off. She’d certainly told him enough times already.

“Whatever,” she growled, reaching for the shovel she had dropped when Bill and Dave had decided to ask for their asskicking. “At this point, I couldn’t give a shit. Like I said, it doesn’t make much difference what you decide. This is my pack, and the Silverback will put someone else in charge of it over my dead body.”

Logan’s wolf snarled at the idea of this woman lying in a pool of her own blood, a victim of her own stubbornness and another wolf’s teeth. “That is what I’m here to prevent. No one wants this to end with your death, Honor, least of all me or Graham.”

She snorted, but didn’t even bother to contradict him. Instead, she resumed her work on the huge fire pit, using the shovel to lever stones back into position along the edges and her hands to restack the ones that had fallen. The barrier they comprised was necessary to contain the flames of the enormous bonfire customary during a rural Howl. The Manhattan pack had long since been forced to abandon the tradition. Fires that size weren’t just illegal in Central Park; they were also pretty hard to miss and tended to attract the attention of humans at the most inopportune moments.

“Honor, look—”

She cut him off, straightening to glare at him and burying the blade of the shovel into the packed earth with an angry thrust. “No. You know what? I’ve already looked, and I sure as hell don’t like what I see. We’ve each laid our cards on the table. I have no intention of surrendering my pack to anyone, least of all someone appointed to the job by a wolf who can’t even be bothered to pay us a visit himself. That’s my hand. And you? You’re wedded to your little role of judge and jury and alpha’s errand boy, and you have no intention of doing the right thing and running back to your boss to tell him that the White Paw Clan is doing just fine without him. That’s your hand.”

He opened his mouth, but the little she wolf refused to let him get a word in edgewise. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had taken that tone with him, all bossy and pissy and arrogant. Not even Graham did such a good job of goading his wolf as this bundle of anger and oncoming heat. His eyes narrowed as her emotions intensified her scent.

“So, fine. We both know where we stand, and as far as I can see, continuing to bitch at each other isn’t likely to change either of our minds. Why waste the energy? Especially when I’ve got a thousand and one more important things to do in order to keep this pack running. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m getting back to work. I wish like hell that you’d get your ass out of my territory, but since I don’t see that happening any time before Sunday, I’m not going to bother worrying about it. All I ask is that you stay out of my way. Go do what you have to do, talk to whatever members of the pack you want to talk to, watch whatever you want to watch, but just stay the hell out of my way. All right?”

She skewered him with one last glare, wrenched the shovel out of the dirt, and turned her back to him. She actually turned her back. It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, only red was the color he pictured turning her ass, and the bull was the wolf inside him who figured spanking her could wait until he’d pinned her down and mated her a time or two. Or twenty.

His nostrils flared and he inhaled deeply. With every breath he took, he could feel the full moon drawing closer and smell her heat building. The fragrance filled his head like a mist, making his thoughts foggy and his dick hard. Goddess help them both.

“No.”

He barely understood himself. The denial came out as more of a growl than a word, a rumble pulled from a throat more inclined to form Lupine howls than human words. His wolf wanted out, and only the force of his will kept his change at bay. He liked to think that if he had been a weaker male, he’d already be sprouting fur. That