“I told you.” I used the male wolf’s broad shoulders to brace myself as I got to my feet. His fur was thick and soft and he smelled like he’d been rolling in leaves. Twigs and leaf bits stuck in his fur and I began to brush them out with my fingers.
Murphy and Vaughn rushed over to us. Murphy looked ready to explode and Vaughn wasn’t far behind.
“This is bullshit,” declared Murphy as the wolf wagged his tail at us all. His tongue lolled out of the side of his half-open mouth. By wolf standards he was smiling. He made a chuffing sound, almost like a sneeze—the lupine equivalent of a laugh.
“Now you’re making fun of us. Bad wolf,” I lectured, but I couldn’t help my smile. I patted his head and he gave a happy yip before he trotted off toward the clothesline.
“I’m glad one of us is amused because I’m about ready to kick his ass.” Murphy’s dark eyes glinted dangerously. Vaughn did not look remotely amused.
The screen door banged open and we swung around to confront a petite woman with long chestnut hair and huge brown eyes. She wore a green-and-white floral print sundress and her feet were bare. A small black wolf’s head was tattooed on her left shin. I’d been with her when she’d gotten it at a Regional Gathering when she was sixteen and I was fifteen. She’d dared me to get one too but I was too chickenshit my father would find out and kill me.
A baby who looked about a year old balanced on her right hip. She clutched at her mother’s arm with one chubby hand. The other was curled around a small stuffed bunny.
The woman’s gaze traveled over all of us and registered several emotions from happiness to wariness. When she fully focused on Vaughn, her face froze.
“Hey, Jossie.” He raised a hand in greeting.
Jossie Wilbanks bit her lip and, for a moment, I didn’t think she would reply. Just as she opened her mouth, Nate Carver walked from behind the clothesline where he’d shifted back into human form.
“Sorry about that, we didn’t expect you until later this afternoon.” He’d dressed in a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt that smelled of the fresh spring breeze.
I’d forgotten what a giant of a man Nate was—at least six six, probably taller.
His light blond hair was buzz cut close to his scalp. Brown eyes fringed with thick lashes were his best feature. He was not handsome, but he had something that attracted people to him. He was open and friendly, charismatic, with a sense of humor. He’d shown that to us in wolf form.
“He was looking for Bethany.” Jossie rushed into speech. “In fact, the whole pack is going to shift tomorrow and scour these woods if that’s all right with you?”
I was a little surprised she asked our permission, but then I remembered we were Advisors to the Great Council and, even though we were not Alphas, we had power. It was an interesting thought.
“I think that’s a good idea.” Murphy’s eyes were appreciative as he gazed at her. Pack men were drawn to Alpha females with babies. Somehow the sight of a nursing mother made them both protective and aroused. She smiled at him, but held the baby like a shield between her and the world.
“Stanzie, it is so good to see you!” Jossie turned her gaze to me and the spring breeze carried a hint of her scent to me. Lavender soap and the faint tang of citrus shampoo. No perfume.
“Have you really been in Boston for the past two years? Is what I’m hearing from Councilor Manning true?”
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you let anybody know you were so close? After I found out Riverglow cast you out I called your parents to see if they had any contact information and they said they didn’t. I know you were exiled, but only by Riverglow. The Councils cleared you. Why didn’t you want your friends around you? I would have gone crazy alone if I’d been you.”
I didn’t answer because I had no answer.
Jossie, astute at reading expressions, frowned, and her eyebrows slanted together ominously. “They lied, didn’t they? They knew all along where you were.”
Her words hung there in the space between us.
“We don’t really talk much anymore, Joss,” I whispered. I thought of the monthly calls I’d made when I had been exiled. The messages I’d left they’d never returned. Then there were the three messages I’d left in the past three months since Murphy, Vaughn and I had taken up residence in Boston. None of those calls had been returned either.
“Nobody falls faster or harder in a pack than the child of a founding family.” Nate was the one to break the uncomfortable silence. “You’re what, fourteenth generation?
“Fifteenth,” I said.
“And you threw it all away to join Riverglow?” Nate gave a low whistle. Vaughn’s mouth got small but he didn’t say anything. Riverglow wasn’t his pack anymore.
“I’m fourth generation. Doesn’t mean shit to most packs, but I still get the pressure to keep the pack going. You’re Mac Tire now, right?” Nate was relentless. “If that doesn’t impress your family, nothing will. This your bond mate?”
I introduced them. Murphy’s hello was not very warm but Nate didn’t seem to notice.
“Mac Tire your birth pack?”
Murphy allowed as it was.
“So what generation are you?”
After a moment’s thought, Murphy said, “Thirty-one.”
Nate burst into laughter. “Well, that makes me and Stanzie look just plain silly, doesn’t it? Thirty-one. Jesus. You descended from a founding family?”
“No way.” It was Murphy’s turn to laugh and not very politely. “The founding families left are on the fiftieth generation at least.”
That put the pack’s inception more than twelve hundred years ago.
“We don’t have packs anywhere near that old here in the States,” said Nate after a moment’s respectful silence as he absorbed the history.
I was flabbergasted myself. I’d known Mac Tire was old and I’d known it was Murphy’s birth pack, but I’d never known it was that old, nor did I realize that Murphy’s family had been in the pack for centuries.
“Mayflower’s the second-oldest in the country, Stanzie?” Nate looked to me for confirmation.
“Third,” I said. “The Jamestown pack is older by a couple decades and then there’s Spiritwolf.”
“Now there’s a pack that’s old. You’d think there’d be more Native American packs, wouldn’t you, but there’s not.”
“Because our ancestors came from Europe and did to their packs what the Other Europeans did the Native American tribes. Conquer and divide. Take their territory.” Vaughn’s tone was derisive.
“Hey, if you can’t protect your land, you don’t deserve to have it.” Nate walked to the porch steps. “Get your luggage and come on in. Joss, looks like we need two spare rooms made up instead of the one. Unless you three are a triad now?”
He turned back to look at us appraisingly.
Vaughn flushed. “Nah, we’re not a triad.” For some reason he wouldn’t look at any of us, especially Jossie.
* * * *
Dusk settled around the eaves of the old farmhouse a little bit at a time. Incremental shadows crept across the dirt drive and the flagstone path that led to the porch where we all sat with glasses of wine.
Jossie rocked her daughter in one of the wooden rocking chairs while I snapped the ends off a bowl of green beans that had been grown in the back garden last summer and frozen until just today.
Murphy and I sat