"Oh, don't do that!" Tamika laughed, a bright, sparkling sound that made Faith smile too. These wolves were certainly blessed with infectious laughter. "Honey, if you manage to stab yourself I will be in so much trouble! I better give you the sheath, too."
Tamika did just that, and showed her how to strap it onto her belt, then showed her a few ways to use it that would do significant enough damage to an attacking wolf or vampire to buy enough time to escape.
"I hope like hell that I don't need to use this," Faith said after running through everything with her comb in place of the knife.
"Me, too, sugar. I like you, and Kaylee is a riot! You sure you don’t know what sort of troublemaker her dad was?“ Tamika laughed.
"Lord. We never were completely sure who her father was. Crissy had a stretch of slightly wild bar hopping, but he's never been in the picture. Marc wondered this morning if he was a werewolf, though,“ Faith shrugged and sat back down on the bed. “Apparently Kaylee smells wolfy.”
“She does, a bit. Well, that would be one explanation for some of this. Wolves can be pretty protective of our kids. If some wolf found out he had a secret baby, he'd be pretty pissed, even if it was his own damn fault he didn't know about it."
Faith giggled. "Secret baby? This isn't some kind of romance novel, you know."
Tamika laughed. "As far as I'm aware the only romance novels in this house are Aldric's vampire romances. He thinks we don't know about them, though, so don't tell."
Faith giggled. "He lent me a few. Pretty sure none of them had secret babies, though."
"That man," Tamika laughed. "I've worked with that guy for my whole adult life, keeping this clan safe. I've seen him in fights and I've seen him intimidate the hell out of some lowlife that was making trouble. He's terrifying when he's pissed off, but all I have to do is remember his worst-kept-secret romance novel stash and I feel better.” Tamika giggled again.
"They're pretty amazing, to be honest," Faith grinned. "This one is about a vampire rescuing a dragon shifter from some kind of wizard who's hunting her. It's amazing. And so, so wrong about vampires in just about every way I can tell. I actually laughed myself to sleep last night. Before all the howling, anyway."
Tamika grimaced. "Yeah. I'm shocked that those rogues would try to even get close to the clan house. It's not like we're unprotected here. And then to assault our chief enforcer? Even if they did get the jump on him, that's practically suicide." She glanced over at Faith and tipped a smile at her. "You did a solid job cleaning his dumb ass up last night. Thanks."
"If he's going to go out there and get clawed up keeping me and Kaylee safe, it was the least I could do."
"You're good people, Faith. I like you," Tamika said. She patted Faith's knee before standing again and heading toward the door. "Dinner'll be ready soon. Better think about washing up. I'm going to go knock on Aldric's office, see if he's still too grumpy to be civilized."
16
The morning after Detective Lincoln’s abrupt visit, Aldric sat back and glared at his cousin's face on his laptop screen.
"Hey, it's not my fault, cuz," Leo grimaced. "The Goldfang Stalkers have gotten to be more than a little cracked. Greg Honeyford broke away from the pack itself– by necessity I think. I get the feeling that the pack alpha believes in exactly one correct way of life, and that Greg doesn't, if you catch my meaning. I don't have any proof of it, but it's a strong hunch, and even if I'm completely wrong this guy doesn't exactly exude the sort of toxic masculinity Alpha Molin seems to encourage. The guy's got a degree in early childhood teaching and works at a preschool for pete's sake. There's no way the Goldfang alpha would approve of this guy's lifestyle choices." Leo's voice dripped with irritation at the end.
Aldric scrubbed his hands over his face and glared at the photograph Leo had pulled up onto his screen showing a slim, well-dressed young man in jeans and a pale yellow button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Just as Kaylee had said, his shortish hair was a rainbow of sparkly colors spiked up seemingly at random. He was smiling at a child who was pointing to something on a small table, and seemed to be in the middle of explaining something.
"No, I imagine not. That alpha has done more to drive a pack into the ground than any other alpha I have heard of. He and his cronies are people I have thankfully avoided until now," Aldric sighed.
"I know. I'm sorry, man. Anyhow, Greg here is clearly not living anywhere near the Goldfang pack lands, even if he hasn't officially renounced his pack affiliation. Maybe. These guys don't exactly keep digital records of that, so I can't tell you," Leo rolled his eyes. For an eighty-six year old man, he certainly seemed to have a very modern opinion on appropriate record-keeping. "Anyhow, whatever his pack status, he's clearly still in touch with his older brother."
A new photograph popped up onto Aldric's screen, replacing the pleasant preschool scene. In this one, a man leered at a group of women at a bar. Aldric couldn't imagine why, but the women seemed to be smiling back. This man was exactly what he imagined the Goldfang standard was: tall, broad, and even under his leather jacket his muscles seemed to be on display. He had, it seemed, skipped shaving altogether, and had his dark hair cut so short it was almost a buzz. Something about him irritated Aldric.
"That is certainly one of the men in the surveillance photograph Detective Lincoln showed us," Aldric said leaning forward to peer at the image, as if
