She saw his skin ripple as the magic of the change moved through him, saw his muscles tense and clench as he fought to hold on to his human form. She saw him grimace and watched his canine teeth lengthen and sharpen into vicious fangs. She saw fur begin to sprout from his cheeks and throat, and saw the minute he lost the battle against his wolf.
His head jerked to the side, golden wolf’s eyes pinning her to her seat, and the warning ripped from his throat even as his face began to stretch toward the shape of a muzzle.
“This isn’t over,” he growled, the words barely intelligible as he lost the ability to speak as a man. As he surrendered his manhood to the magic in his blood. “You … mine. Mate. Ever.”
Then the Logan shape was gone and a huge, dark wolf snarled at her once, spun toward the door, and disappeared into the woods, the tip of his tail flying behind him.
Honor had no idea how long she sat there, staring out the door, waiting for the blood from her heart to puddle on the floor beneath her chair. Of course, it never did, because all of her wounds were internal, metaphorical, the kind that couldn’t kill her, that could only make her wish she were dead.
She wasn’t, though. Honor Tate still lived, still ran the White Paw Clan, and still had to deal with the fact that no matter what her heart or her mind or her gut wanted for her future, the only future she had was the same one she’d been staring in the face for the last week: she would rule, she would lead, and she would lock her protesting psyche away behind a wall of solid steel so thick, not even a werewolf could make a dent in it.
She would go on.
Soon. Just as soon as she could find the will for it.
And so she sat in her chair and stared out into the woods where Logan had disappeared. She didn’t notice the time passing, or the afternoon shadows lengthening. She didn’t notice her stomach rumbling with hunger when she missed her second meal of the day, and she didn’t notice the cold that invaded the cabin through the open door, not even when her breath swirled around her head in a visible cloud of steam. She didn’t notice any of it until two figures stepped into the doorway and cut off her sight line.
Honor blinked. It took a moment for the change to register, for her sluggish mind to claw its way out of the numbing hole of depression and start working again. She didn’t want to think; there was too great a chance that thoughts would lead to more feelings, and more feelings only meant more pain.
She frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“At the moment? Freezing our tails off, same as you.” Her uncle Hamish stepped into the cabin, followed by another of the pack elders. Barney Andrews drew the door closed behind them. “Pete’s sake, Honor, if you want to just give money to the electric company, wouldn’t it be easier to write a damned check? Be a hell of a lot more comfortable. It’s so damned cold in here, I don’t even want to take my jacket off.”
“Maybe she was trying to let in some fresh air.” Barney took a deep breath and eyed Honor with speculation. “I’d say she definitely let in something.”
Honor turned to glare at the old man, baring her teeth.
“Down, girl,” Hamish advised, settling into a chair facing her desk and leaning back to study her. “Doesn’t do you any good to snap at a man for pointing out the obvious. We’re all pack here. It’s not like you can hide the smell of a new mating.”
“If that’s what you came here to talk about, you can turn around and walk right out the door again.”
Her uncle ignored the snarl. “It’s not, but it does have a thing or two to say to the matter.”
“Exactly what matter is that?”
“The one you can’t afford to not be thinking about, missy. You know, a little matter about how there’s a Howl scheduled for the day after tomorrow, one that could just decide not only whether you continue to lead this pack, but whether or not you continue to live. Ring any bells?”
Her mouth tightened, but she kept silent. It was that or say something she would likely regret. She’d done enough of that for a while now.
“It’s a serious matter,” Barney threw in, taking the other chair and fixing Honor with a gaze she felt certain he meant to be sobering. She found it more irritating. “One that was complicated enough before you threw caution to the wind and decided to mate with a wolf who isn’t even a member of this pack.”
That made Honor want to laugh. Yeah, as if she had “decided” anything about this fiasco. The only decision she could remember making since the day her father died was what it would take for her to be able to look herself in the mirror when she dragged her ass out of bed every morning. And just look at how well that one had worked out for her.
“Now’s not the time for casting blame.” Hamish frowned at the other man, and Barney subsided. Elder he might be, but Barney had always ranked below Hamish in the pack; he knew when to shut up.
“Oh, why the hell not?” Honor asked with a snort. “Sounds like just what I need to top off my day.”
“It’s not the time for self-pity, either. We’ve got plans to make, and important things to consider before the pack gathers.”
Honor sighed. “What’s to consider, Uncle Hamish? The pack will meet. I’ll claim the title of alpha. One or more of the stupider males in the pack will challenge me. Either I’ll win, or I’ll die. The pack will hunt together, and life will go on. You know, for everyone who’s not dead. I don’t see much room for negotiation there, unless you’ve thought of a way to force the Silverback to decide in my favor once I’ve won the challenges.”
“It’s not the challenges that I think you need to be worried about, sweetheart. There’re some stories flying around the pack this afternoon that say those males who were thinking of challenging you have changed their minds.”
“Well, isn’t that good news?” Honor asked, ignoring the uneasy feeling gathering at the base of her spine. “No challenges means my place as alpha is uncontested. That will have to count for something with the Silverback. It shows the pack has confidence in me.”
Barney snorted. “They aren’t giving up on the challenges because they’re behind you, little girl. They just think it would be more fun to fuck you than to kill you.”
Hamish’s big hand flew before Honor could blink, catching the other man square on the jaw. “I told you that as an elder, you had a right to consult with the alpha on the matter, Andrews, not that you could flap your damned jaw like the idiot you are.”
Barney winced and cradled his bruised chin, but he kept his mouth shut. He also lowered his gaze at the other man’s rumbled warning.
Honor didn’t intervene, but she did hold up a hand and fix her relative with a hard stare. “What is he talking about, Uncle Ham?”
Hamish sighed. “I might not like the way he blurted it out, Honor, but I can’t pretend that his words weren’t the truth. The males who’ve been planning to give you trouble at the Howl haven’t backed down from their plans, they’ve just shifted gears. Instead of challenging you for your place as alpha, they think they’re going to call for an Alpha Mating Rite.”
“What the hell is an Alpha Mating Rite?” Her mind went blank for a moment, and Honor had to search her memory to make sense of what she was hearing. It didn’t register at first, so it took a few seconds to dredge up a vague recollection of an obscure point of Lupine tradition. When she made the connection, she felt her heart stutter in shock. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Isn’t that when—”
She broke off, unable to complete the thought.
“It’s when an unmated female tries to take her place as alpha of the pack,” Hamish declared flatly. “Any males who question her ability to lead can call for either an Alpha Challenge, or an Alpha Mating Rite. If it’s the first option, the female has to fight her male challengers to the death; if she loses, the male who defeats her takes her place as alpha. If it’s the second, she has to fight until either the males are dead, or she loses; and if she loses, the winner gets to mate her and then he takes his place at her side as a second alpha. Now you have a female stuck spending her life with a male who already tried to kill her once and doesn’t have much of a reason to treat her as anything other than a whipping post, plus you have a pack with two alphas. History tells us that lasts just long enough to break the pack apart, but not so long that one of the alphas doesn’t end up dead after all.”
Honor swallowed against rising bile. “But that no longer applies to me,” she reasoned, fists clenching. “I have a mate. You know that. You scented the bond as soon as you walked in here.”
Her uncle shook his head. “What I scented was that a male had put his mark on you. The Silverback male.
