Wolf and Soul

“Hello, Wolf. Are you from Oklahoma? Because you smell like it.”

Grady jolted when the she-wolf approached him with a flirtatious look in her faintly slanted eyes. She was black… well, technically bi-racial since her father was an Alaskan native, but she was darker than any girl, wolf or human, who’d approached Grady before. She sported a huge, barely contained Afro that stood in a bold, prominent puff on top of her head. But there was no mistaking who she was: the youngest princess in the Alaska royal family and the same princess who’d been flirting with his brother for most of the evening.

So why was she here with him?

He glanced at his younger brother, Luke, a tall, lanky version of himself, one that was approachable and cool, like if Brad Pitt and Chris Martin had a baby. Totally different from the silent brick wall that was Grady.

Luke was spinning records on the other side of the ballroom, doing the job he’d been hired to do. Grady wasn’t fooled. Only minutes before, Luke had been flirting heavily with the Alaska princess. The two of them had, in fact, been going at it since the princess walked into the pre-dinner cocktail party an hour or so earlier. Luke had even put on a few Michael Jackson tracks per her request. Grady knew all of this because of the angry texts he’d received from Rafe, the Alpha Prince of Colorado and his almost-boss, who’d left the party earlier. Grady immediately texted his brother with a not-so-friendly reminder that the prince was the one paying Luke to deejay, not some princess he’d just met. So he needed to stick to Rafe’s playlist. Clearly the text had worked. Luke was keeping his eyes on his turntable and the youngest Alaska princess was out on the prowl. Probably hoping to jealous Luke back into her orbit.

“Me. Luke. Brothers,” he signed. Then he waited for the inevitable response.

Grady supposed he was handsome enough. He hadn’t thought so growing up in his Oklahoma kingdom town where the local she-wolves rarely flirted with him and almost always avoided him. But when he was accepted into the Denver University football program, he learned firsthand how much human women liked a big, blond wolf—especially when said wolf was on the starting line of the school’s Division I football team.

In college he’d had more attention from human women than he’d known what to do with, but college was over now and he was back in a kingdom town. Thankfully not the one he’d grown up in, but Wolf Springs, the Colorado kingdom town Rafe would soon be overseeing as king.

Upon arrival in Wolf Springs, Grady was promptly reminded that she-wolves were not like human women. Grady might be an up-and-coming beta to the up-and-coming king, but that didn’t impress the local ladies. They didn’t find his disabilities noble or attractive. Grady’s particular brand of rugged handsomeness might be enough to grab their attention, but as soon as they found out he was dependent on lip-reading and signing to communicate—well, they’d suddenly see someone they knew off in the distance or remember an urgent call they had to make. Or sometimes they’d just back away with a look that was two parts pity and one part abject fear, like they’d accidentally stumbled upon someone with an extremely contagious disease—one that might render them deaf and dumb, too.

So when Grady signed that he and Luke were brothers, he wasn’t at all shocked when the princess’s mouth fell open in an “oh” of surprise. He waited to see how fast she’d walk away. Based on what he knew of her older sister, Janelle, she’d probably come up with a genteel excuse before politely taking her leave.

But the youngest Alaska princess didn’t run or make up any excuses for leaving. She signed back.

“You and L-U-K-E brothers?” She lifted her eyebrows to indicate this was a question. “L sign plus ‘thin’ sign…” she let a few ticks go by to indicate equals, before finishing with “Luke name sign?”

Grady’s mind stuttered. The last thing he had expected was for her to actually sign back with a question. He tentatively raised his hands, not able to believe he was actually about to ask a she-wolf a question in sign language. “You sign?”

She grimaced and bounced her hand up and down in the knocking sound for yes. “Not good. Teach me to sign in the past with book and internet. But alone. Don’t know deaf wolves or deaf humans.” She finished with an exaggerated frown and a shrug.

So she’d taught herself to sign. She wasn’t bad. A little slow, like she was thinking hard before every sign, but not bad at all considering she’d never signed with a live person before. He also liked the way she used sign by itself, without talking along out loud. Bold, like she didn’t need the safety net of him reading her lips to make herself understood.

“Why you learn?” he asked her.

Another shrug. “From Alaska. Alaska very boring.”

An unfamiliar feeling bubbled up inside of him and it took him a moment or two to realize it was laughter. It must have shown on his face, even if he didn’t make a sound, because she laughed, too, and signed, “I also know bad Russian, bad Spanish, bad French, tiny bit bad Chinese, and good Alaska pack—” she bounced her right hand for a little bit, before giving up and spelling out “d-i-a-l-e-c-t.”

And now the laughter wasn’t just a feeling, it was an actual thing happening inside of him.

“You have good nose,” he said.

“No, I have GREAT nose,” she signed back. “Super nose. Can smell where you come from. Also… you and Luke have different mothers.”

He nodded, impressed. He had a superior nose, too, but that was simply how he compensated for his lack of hearing. However, this she-wolf clearly had a talent… or talents. He told her as much.

“You very interesting. This good talk. Thought you only come over here because you want make Luke jealous,” he admitted to her.

“No,” she answered, looking neither offended nor surprised by his assumption. “I bored. See you. You very cute. H-O-T. I come talk.”

Grady didn’t know whether he should be impressed or put off by her matter-of-factness. But he wasn’t lying when he signed. “Happy you come talk me.” Then he told her, “I also teach myself ASL.”

She frowned. “You not deaf?” She actually looked disappointed to hear this.

Grady had to work hard to keep his heart inside his chest. This girl was nearly a foot shorter than him—probably even more so when she took off her heels—but it was like she had picked him up and turned him upside down.

“No,” he signed back. “I deaf and don’t talk. Can never talk. But can hear until age ten. Think, maybe, because puberty. Wolf and human don’t play nice.”

She clapped her hands together as if he’d just thrilled the hell out of her with this information.

“Good!” she signed. “I no name sign. You give?” She rubbed her splayed palm over the chunky turquoise necklace that sat above the heart-shaped neckline of her yellow evening gown. “Please.”

The “please” hadn’t been necessary. Grady already knew he’d give this she-wolf anything she asked for. “What’s your name?”

“Long,” she warned. Then held up her hands as if to say, “Brace yourself” before signing, “T-U-U-L-U-U-W-A-G.” She rolled her eyes and explained. “Sisters have easy name. But I youngest daughter. Father want son. Black mother say sorry to Eskimo father. Give me Eskimo name.” She peeped up at him. “Understand?”

Surprisingly he did, in more ways than one. “My father also sad. I first born but brother will be king here.”

Tu’s forehead wrinkled. “Not…” her hand bounced and she spelled out, “F-A-I-R.”

Now he shrugged. “Don’t care.”

“You should care,” she signed back. “You king. Not Luke.”

“No,” he answered. “Want beta job.”

She repeated the last two signs he made—the number two plus a wolf sign. “Sign for B-E-T-A?”

“Yes. But I make up. Don’t know real sign,” he admitted. One of the troubles with ASL was it was a human language, so some of the words most used by wolves couldn’t be perfectly translated, which meant he had to make up signs when necessary.

“In year. Will become Colorado Beta for Rafe.” Then realizing she probably didn’t know his best friend’s name sign, he spelled out, “R-A-F-E.”

“Beta job dangerous,” she signed.

“You worry about me?” he signed with a smile.

“Yes,” she signed back with no answering smile whatsoever.

“Because I deaf mute?”

“Because beta job DANGEROUS.” She emphasized the dangerous sign this time.

“Don’t worry. I very good beta.”

“Beta king.” She ran the signs for “two,”“beta,” and “king” together. “There, I give you name sign.”

He shook his head. “No, you not deaf. Can’t give me name sign.”

She lifted up her chin. “I princess. I give you name sign if I want.” Before he could argue any further, she said. “People call me T-U only.” She then mouthed her nickname. “Tu.”

From the way her lips formed around the “u” sound, he could see the last part of her shortened name was actually pronounced with an “ooh.” And her name sign immediately came to him.

“You Tu,” he informed her, making the number two and tapping it over his heart.

The name sign seemed to delight her. “Me Tu,” she said, tapping her own heart with her first two fingers. “Like you and me share same sign in our names.” Then she made the sign for “beta king” again, the one she’d just made up despite being a hearing wolf, this time emphasizing the “two.”

It should have annoyed the hell out of him. But it didn’t. And suddenly the party, which he’d been assigned to guard as unobtrusively as possible, completely disappeared from his awareness.

“You think I’m hot.”

He made the correct sign for the colloquial version of “hot,” and she smiled before knocking her hand back, with a saucy look that made the sign come off as “Oh, yeah” as opposed to a simple “yes.”

“You should know…” He hesitated, thinking of the simplest signs, so he wouldn’t have to spell any of this out for her. “You right. Luke and me have different mother. Father werewolf. Mother human. Accident. Both dad-mom M-E-T-H-H-E-A-D-S”

Understanding lit up in her eyes and she nodded. It wasn’t technically forbidden to get a human pregnant, but in these modern times it was frowned upon because the products of such unions didn’t always turn out well. Both human and werewolf gestations were complicated to begin with—but put them together and, well, sometimes you ended up with wolves who had, for lack of a better word, defects. Wolf society prided itself on the superior abilities that came with being werewolves: super strength, an acute sense of smell, the ability to hear things most humans couldn’t. So a half-breed wolf who couldn’t hear—it was off-putting, to say the least, and for most she-wolves, a total deal breaker.

He was doing Tu a courtesy by giving her this information, allowing her to back down from her original bold stance.

And it worked, somewhat.

“What…” She paused in a way that let Grady know she was searching for the right sign. “Where your mother?”

“Same Luke mom. Die.” He spelled it out, because he doubted she’d know the sign for what had happened. “O-V-E-R-D-O-S-E.”

There she had it, the whole ugly story. Yeah, he was a real catch. The son of two drug addicts, deaf, mute, and only half werewolf.

But the side of her mouth hitched up and she signed, “Sad story, Wolf. But. You STILL HOT.” She emphasized the still and really emphasized the sign he’d taught her for hot.

At that point, he had to sniff at her, wondering if she was drunk or on something. He could smell a little alcohol, but not much.

“How many drink you have tonight?”

She held up a single index finger.

“Drugs?”

“Not tonight,” she answered. Then she asked. “You have drugs?”

Did she just ask him if he was carrying?

“I sheriff next year.”

She nodded with faux somberness.

“Understand. My last fun year, too. So you should do same me. Have a LOT fun THIS year.” She then had the nerve to wink at him, like she was so much more experienced and knew exactly what she was talking about. “My P-H-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-Y.”

He was just about to ask why this would be her last fun year, when a black man came up to Tu and started talking with her. He was a big guy, not as big as Grady, but big enough. And the way he carried himself… Grady could tell he was destined to become somebody’s beta. Might even be descended from one.

Grady could smell that he and Tu were from the same place and related somehow. Cousins maybe? Rafe had mentioned something about a cousin staying in the main house, since the Alaska royals were currently occupying all three bedrooms of the kingdom guest house.

The maybe cousin and Tu seemed to be having some kind of light argument, one Grady couldn’t lip read, because they were turned sideways.

“What’s wrong?” he asked Tu.

“Must go. Mother says leave at ten. C-U-R-F-E-W. My cousin come. Say have go guest house.” She then indicated the guy standing beside her. “This Vince.”

Vince waved at him, looking a little nervous about all the signing. “Hey, man,” he said out loud.

“Vince my best friend always,” Tu signed. “But also babysitter. So…” she couldn’t think of the sign but rolled her eyes and spelled it out, “R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S.”

And just like that, the bubble burst. Suddenly they were back in the Colorado kingdom house ballroom with couples dancing in the background as his brother spun music Grady couldn’t hear on the turntable.

Grady morphed back into that guy in the tux, not because he was an honored guest, like his friend, Mag, who had just become King of Wyoming a few weeks ago, but because he was covertly working security. Rafe had thrown this party in Mag’s honor, ostensibly to celebrate him winning two challenge fights in his bid to become King of Wyoming, but really, so Mag could meet up with the King of Alaska to see about pledging Janelle Atenaq, Tu’s oldest sister. Janelle was twenty-five, the same age as Grady, Mag, and Rafe. Which made him wonder how old that made her youngest sister, especially if her parents thought she needed a babysitter.

Grady’s eyes narrowed. “You how old?”

“2-0.” Tu rolled her eyes. “Mother, father, too P-R-O-T-E-C-T-I-V-E.”

And he got the answer to the question he hadn’t been able to ask. She’d be turning twenty-one next year, the official pledge age for upper class she-wolves. That’s why she was so interested in having fun. Because next year she’d be put on the market, pledged to some wolf befitting her station, and the fun would definitely be over.

A stab of relief soared through him. Twenty wasn’t too bad. Not old enough to be offered up for official pledge, but only five years younger than him which meant he didn’t have to feel like a perv for being attracted to her. Although the truth was, considering his status as a half-breed, deaf-mute, almost-beta from a mange state, he had no business talking to a princess, much less enjoying her company so much that he didn’t want her to leave.

She peeped up at him again, mischief dancing across her heart-shaped face.

“Tell him you walk me home. You S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y. He let you do his work.” Then she met his gaze, her brown eyes dark with seduction. “You kiss… in past… she-wolf?”

Her syntax wasn’t great, but his body perfectly understood what she was asking. He felt himself become stiff at just the thought of…

“No,” he signed, answering both her and the question his body was asking.

“Awesome!” she signed, her eyes twinkling with merry delight. “Me kiss you number one if you tell cousin you walk with me home. I promise.”

She would give him his first she-wolf kiss if he got her cousin to agree to let him walk her home. This girl…

Grady inwardly shook his head. She might be young and small, but she was fucking dangerous. Too dangerous. He should tell her goodbye and go back to circling the party. Do his job just like he’d texted his younger brother to do his.

But in the end, he pulled out his smart phone and opened up the note pad app he used to could communicate with people who didn’t sign. He typed and turned it to face Vince. It read, “I’m head of security for this party. I’ll walk her home.”

Grady really had no business walking Tu Ataneq to Rafe’s guest house. She was a guest of his best friend and soon-to-be employer. The only reason she was here was because her oldest sister might possibly be pledged to his other best friend. She was the princess of a wealthy state with all the potential in the world. In one year, when her parents put her up to pledge, they’d probably get flooded with offers. And he was a defective beta from a mange state who was lucky Rafe had taken pity on him and given him a respectable job. He had no business talking to Tu, much less walking her home.

Yet… he wanted to hold her hand. Could feel the urge like an itch, one that wasn’t remotely satisfied when he scratched his palm instead of taking a hold of hers.

And then they were at the guest house. At two stories with a standing beam metal roof and expansive windows facing out over the main road, the modern looking three-bedroom log cabin was just as nice, if not nicer, than most of the homes in Wolf Springs.

Grady could still remember coming home with Rafe for fall break after they first met playing ball on opposite sides of the line for Denver U. He’d heard the Colorado crown had a lot more money than the Oklahoma royal family, but he hadn’t really understood how much more until Rafe brought him and Mag to a house that was three times the size of the two-bedroom farm house Grady sort of called home. Imagine his surprise when he realized it wasn’t even the main house, but simply a guest house for visitors. Now, coming to a stop in front of the familiar stone steps that led up to the front door, the house served as yet another reminder of why Grady had no business spending time with the youngest Alaska princess.

“Thank you,” she signed.

“You’re welcome,” he signed back. This was where they said goodbye. He should go now. He should definitely go.

But he didn’t. Instead, he lingered, waiting for her to say something else.

She lifted her hands and signed, “You ready kiss?”

He shook his head. “You don’t have to kiss me.”

She pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. “I promise you at party. I lie sometimes—don’t care. But I ALWAYS keep promise.”

“You don’t have to keep promise,” he signed back, though it was hard to concentrate on his hand movements with his wolf tingling down his lower back, threatening to take over. Grady quickly turned off his emotions and tried to focus on the image of a concrete wall in order to tune out what had come to hard life below his belt.

And then she signed. “I don’t have to keep promise, but I want keep promise. I want kiss you.”

Now his beast was howling. He shoved his hands into his pockets to cover the shaking. She needed to understand while he may be defective as far as wolves were concerned, human women didn’t care so much about all that. Especially not when it came to guys on the college football team. So he didn’t need her pity kiss, because he’d kissed plenty of women. And that wasn’t all he’d done.

But you haven’t kissed her, the beast growled inside of him.

Tu took his lack of response as an invitation to take matters into her own hands. She stood on her tiptoes and puckered her lips for what he instinctively knew would be one of those sloppy kisses drunk sorority girls used to try to give him, the ones his sense of right and wrong never allowed him to accept. In Tu’s case, though, he might have let her do it, let her kiss him however she wanted. But at the last second, his hands came out of his pockets and landed on her arms.

“Wait,” he mouthed. If he was going to let her do this, if this was really going to happen, then he wanted it to be better than the clumsy kiss she was about to offer him. He wanted it to be the best it could be, something they’d both remember for a long, long time.

He repositioned her so she stood on the first step, putting their faces at almost the same height. Then she started to dip her head towards his, quick and clumsy, but he leaned back before anything could happen. He wanted to look at her, take a mental snapshot of this moment, before… he smoothed the back of his knuckles over her cheek, and waited until her confused brown eyes raised to meet his. Then he finally took the kiss she’d been trying to give him, his mouth moving over hers, slow and unhurried. She tasted like champagne and he let his tongue delve further into her mouth like an explorer opening the doors to an ancient treasury.

Grady didn’t want to just kiss Tu, he wanted to know her. Know her lips, know the feel of her tongue against his. The erection inside his pants pulsated, and he pressed it against Tu’s stomach, telling her without words how much he wanted to know her and in more ways than one.

Tu must have felt it, too, because a shiver went through her body before she leaned back and signed, “Can’t” with an apologetic look on her face.

Grady tapped his fingers against his temple. “Know.”

Even if sleeping with an unheated she-wolf wasn’t strictly forbidden, he’d never want to rush Tu. His lower back had stopped tingling the moment their lips met, signaling that both his wolf and his human were in agreement on this. They wanted to savor her.

And maybe Tu felt the same way, because when he bent down to kiss her again, she didn’t just take his kiss, she kissed him back. Slow, sensual like he’d suddenly transformed from a novelty experiment in her mind to… to… something else.

She moved in closer, wrapping her arms tight around his shoulders, and this time her pelvis grazed against the part of him that wanted. A hot pulse of need sizzled up his shaft, causing his body to involuntarily jerk within her light hold.

She didn’t let him go, but he felt her hand stroke the back of his short hair, and she murmured something against his lips that felt like “sorry,” before readjusting her stance, so their lower bodies were no longer touching, and deepening the kiss.

For a while that was enough, but then the beast—the fucking beast inside of him. It turned on him again. Started agitating. Breathing in Tu’s scent, in a way that sent his erection into painful territory. Grady’s lower back started tingling again, which told him even clearer than the flashing LED lights on his alarm clock for the deaf, that it was time for this dream to come to an end. That if he didn’t stop the kiss soon, no matter how good his intentions toward Tu, he’d lose control of his beast—

Tu abruptly pulled away from him, her head turning toward the copse of trees that lay between the guest house and the kingdom mansion. His senses came back on line and he smelled what she’d obviously heard: her sisters were headed this way.

Tu signed “go,” and he started to leave, not wanting to but knowing he should for Tu’s sake. She came from a place where reputations were still a thing. But then she tapped him on the shoulder.

“Fun,” she signed when he turned back around, her eyes twinkling with amusement under the front house lights.

“Me too,” he signed back, before running to take cover in the copse of trees. He got there just as her sisters came around the corner.

Getting behind a tree, he watched Tu greet her sisters as if she’d been waiting for them all this time on the front steps, innocent and alone. He thought about the way she’d looked when she’d smiled at him, making sure he knew before he left how much she’d liked their kiss.

He’d think about that moment many times over the next few years. He’d thought when she signed fun, she’d meant, “I had fun kissing you.” However, that illusion was shattered just a few hours later when he came home to the house Rafe was letting him live in, rent free, while he trained with the current beta sheriff to take over his job next year.

He’d spent the rest of the night chauffeuring party goers too drunk to walk the small distance to the residential section of Wolf Springs to their respective homes, making sure they got inside, and then doing the same for the current beta, who’d felt free to party to his liver’s content, knowing his “deputy apprentice” would handle all the not-so-glamorous bits of working security at a party filled with rich people. When Grady finally walked through his own door at three in the morning feeling like Barney Fife in a penguin suit, all he wanted was to fall into bed and dream about the kiss he’d shared with Tu.

But the first thing that greeted him was the overwhelming stench of his brother’s weed. The pungent smoke was so strong that Grady would not have been surprised if the neighbors a few miles down the road could smell it.

Leave it to his brother to use illegal substances in a law enforcement officer’s house. Fucking Luke. And after Grady had gone out of his way to get him the deejay gig at Rafe’s party! He banged on the door and pushed it open, prepared to give his younger brother a piece of his…

Tu was sitting cross-legged on the guest room bed, facing Luke. Still in her yellow evening gown, they looked like the perfect couple… an interracial version of the closing scene from Sixteen Candles, except they were on a bed, not a table. And getting high. And drinking from a bottle of Scotch Grady recognized as being from Rafe’s personal collection.

Tu grinned up at him like an old friend had entered the room.

“Hey!” she said, holding up her joint. “It’s the beta king! Want to join us?”

Luke yanked her hand down and shook his head at Tu. He was laughing and turned sideways, so it was impossible for Grady to lip-read what he was saying to her. But from the way Tu’s shoulders hunched and her lips tilted downwards like she was trying not to laugh as she quickly slipped the joint under her knee, he guessed Luke had pointed out that as an officer of the law, Grady probably wouldn’t be too interested in taking a hit with them.

Grady signed furiously, looking at Luke, although he knew the effort was wasted on his brother. And he was right. Luke just shook his head at his lame older brother.

“Man, you know I don’t understand all that shit you do with your hands.”

Tu’s eyes widened at Luke, and Grady guessed she was giving him a hard time about not knowing sign language. Luke just shook his head, ever the incorrigible stoner in the easy breezy movie that was his life. Grady didn’t have to read his lips to know what he was saying to Tu.

“Dude, that shit’s too hard to learn!”

Tu shook her head at him and said something back, her eyes wide with faux disappointment, even though she was still laughing. They looked like the lead actors in some sort of stoner rom-com: Baked: A Love Story.

And fuck if Grady didn’t feel that old tingle go down his lower back. His beast wanting to do things to Luke. Bad things.

He slammed out of the bedroom without even bothering to tell them to get rid of the pot or stop with the underage drinking. He knew if he didn’t get to a pair of shackles, all the work he’d been doing with the current sheriff would be in vain, because his beast would get out and then it’d be lights out on his human, on his career as Rafe’s beta, probably also on at least one of the two wolves in the guest bedroom.

He ran into his room and kicked the door shut. On the floor nearest the door were two tear-resistant, heavy-duty dog beds that had been pushed together, with some cheap sheets on top them. On the other side of the room was a mount with a long, thick chain that had a large shackle at each end, one made of silver and one of steel. He’d installed the mount himself, drilling into the wall and attaching it to the steel frame that ran all the way to the bottom of the house. But the shackles were a custom job, designed by a master craftsman to contract if the joints they were clipped around got smaller. They were actually a common safety precaution for wolves who lived among humans. However, Grady lived in a pack town where no humans were allowed. And wolf shackles were usually fashioned of steel. Grady had spent his entire first paycheck to get a silver version made.

He rushed to the silver shackle, falling to his knees as he clamped it around his dominant wrist. Then he clenched his teeth tight, because the silver against his bare skin burned like a motherfucker. His stomach rolled in a desperate attempt to lose its contents.

He needed the pain, though, to distract his beast, to keep it down. To keep it from…

Grady concentrated on his breathing, just like all those meditation books had taught him. Breathe… breathe… breathe… and eventually the tingling started to fade. He sank into the wall, sweating so much he knew the tux Rafe bought him for tonight was probably ruined. It would take another paycheck to replace it. Relief and disgust battled for territory inside his head.

Disgust won. This is why he put up walls. This is why he never let anyone in. Better they think he was an uptight prick who only lived for law and order than know what her really was. A beast barely contained.

A beast and an idiot, he realized, as he began the tedious and painful process of switching from the silver shackle to the steel one. When Tu had signed “fun,” she meant exactly that, “This was fun.” She had not meant “thank you for the fantastic kiss, I shall never forget tonight.” The kiss they’d shared was, for her, “not boring” just like meeting up with Luke to get high and drunk was also, “not boring.” But that was it. The only person who had taken that kiss seriously was Grady. The idiot.

At the end of the day, he was still a defective beta, she was still a princess, and his brother was still the most popular guy in school, the one everyone liked… the one every girl wanted to party with if given the choice. Truth was, Grady couldn’t even be mad at Tu as he laid himself down to sleep like a dog, curled up on the floor. The only person to blame for this fucked up situation was himself for thinking, even for a second, that someone like her would be interested in a useless half-breed like him.

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[ Image: top-of-book-viking-wolf-graphic-.jpg ]

Five years later, a week before Christmas…

Grady smelled her before he saw her.

He’d been driving slowly for hours with the window down, hoping he hadn’t been wrong about searching for Tu and Alisha and their possible kidnappers on this back road, which led from Colorado to Oklahoma, instead of going directly to the Oklahoma kingdom town to look for them there. Rafe was sitting in the passenger seat, his eyes scanning for any sign of his mate, Alisha, and her younger sister.

Alisha had been kidnapped along with Tu because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time: with Tu who was being sought out by the Oklahoma wolves who’d come to Colorado to snatch her. That was not a good thing. Tu, they’d probably keep alive for torture and punishment purposes. But Alisha didn’t figure into any of this ugly business and that made her disposable, a fact he knew must be weighing heavily on Rafe’s mind.

But then Grady picked up Tu’s scent. Alisha’s too. And remnants of the chicken blood the kidnappers had used to cover their trail after they grabbed the two sisters.

Grady wrenched the Chevy Silverado 3500’s wheel to the left, crossing the two lane back road and bringing his truck to a tire screeching stop on the opposite side of the road.

“You catch scent,” Rafe signed from the passenger seat. His hand was already on the door handle.

But Grady shook his head. “You stay car.”

Rafe signed and spoke at the same time, as was his habit. “That’s my mate out there.”

“Bad wolves maybe with.”

“That’s why I’m going,” Rafe said.

“Not safe. If bad wolves have gun, you hear shoot. Call more wolves come here. If you come with, maybe we both get hurt. No help Tu and Alisha. I go down. Smell. Text if safe. My job.”

It was a sound plan, one even Rafe in his frenzy to get his mate back couldn’t argue with. Grady technically was the wolf responsible for making sure no harm came to the Colorado king. However, Rafe had never been the kind of royal to sit back and let others do his dirty work. And though he eventually acquiesced with a signed, “Go fast,” Grady could tell the decision to stay behind didn’t sit well with him.

Grady did as he said, jumping out of the truck and following the she-wolves’ scents down the hill into the wooded area beneath as quickly as possible, hopefully before Rafe could change his mind. But when he came to the place from which their scents had been emanating, he found it empty, and the sisters’ scents were now split and coming at him from two different directions.

His eyes went to two nearby trees on either side of him, not even ten feet away, and he figured it out. They were here, and the wolves who had kidnapped them were not. But they were hiding. From him.

He could smell Alisha’s fear scent coming from the tree on his left side, which meant Tu must be behind the tree on his right side.

“Go. Leave here. Cannot stay.”

The argument he’d had with Tu the day before spiraled back to him. He’d been reading her lips from the window of the office trailer he worked out of and caught her telling her older sister, Janelle, that she might stay in Wolf Springs and help Alisha with her and Rafe’s three children. And Grady had just… lost it.

Having Tu here in his town had been bad enough, watching her sulk around the place with her all black clothes and her hair in two French braids, her eyes permanently set to haunted, like she was the one who’d died and not his brother. But finding out she planned to stay? No, he wasn’t having it. He’d gone out there to let her know she wasn’t welcome in Wolf Springs, not after what had gone down in Oklahoma, not caring that Janelle was looking on.

“What are you saying to her?” Janelle had asked. “It looks like you’re yelling at her. You can’t do that. Leave her alone.”

Grady, turned his shoulder to Janelle, effectively pushing the ignore button on her words.

Everyone had been treating Tu like she was so fragile now, and as far as Grady could tell, she’d been going along with them, meek to the point of concern. But wouldn’t you know it, the humbled princess act came crashing down.

Oh, how her eyes had flashed as she told her sister she could handle this and signed to Grady that she was a princess and if he had a problem with her, she could talk to his boss. Chin raised. Haughty as hell. Like what had happened in Oklahoma was a footnote in her history book and Grady no more than a speck in her eye.

Then she’d told Janelle to come on before walking away, ending the conversation about as rudely as you could with a deaf-mute. Like as far as she was concerned, he didn’t even register on the “people who matter” scale.

God, she’d made him furious. And even though she hadn’t stuck around to see his reaction to her signed words, she must have realized she’d hit a nerve. Because now she was hiding behind a tree, her refusal to come out so aggressive, it was easy to tell she thought Grady had been in on the kidnapping.

Hell, it looked like he was the wrong man for this job. He pulled out his phone and texted Rafe. He needed backup. Backup that could talk the two she-wolves out from behind those trees.

He looked up from pressing send just in time to dodge the tranq that came flying his way. What the hell…

He froze when he saw Tu leaning against the tree on his right. Her wrists had handcuffs around them, and judging from the puckered and angry pink skin and the faint burn smell, they were made of silver. Her face was swollen and battered like someone had punched her more than once, her left arm hanging at a weird angle. The tranquilizer gun was on the snow-covered ground now, and she was clutching her side as if raising it to shoot him had taken every ounce of strength she had.

It was a heart shatter of a moment, seeing her this way. Knowing she’d shot at him because she thought he could… that he ever would…

He went to her on instinct. She needed a doctor. She needed to turn into a wolf, so her injuries could heal. All he knew in that moment was he had to get her what she needed, he had to help her.

But he’d underestimated how weak she was. She came off the tree like a banshee, screaming at him. And the words registered loud in his head even though he couldn’t hear them. “This is your fault! You sent them to do this to me. You…”

He shook his head frantically, signing as best he could. “No. Never. Bad wolves not with me. I don’t know bad wolves. Please believe. Please believe.”

“You’re lying! You fucking liar!” Tu eyes were unhinged now. Dilated, too, like she was in pain. Bad pain, enough to make her hysterical. Or on drugs. Or both.

He sniffed the air to confirm his suspicion and there was a distinct chemical smell coming off of her. Meth. No wonder she hadn’t morphed into her wolf form to deal with her injuries. Meth was a complicated stimulant for werewolves, one that made a wolf’s human so powerful, the wolf couldn’t take over even if it wanted to. Originally it had been used by wolves who lived among humans as a back-up measure if there were too many humans present to safely change on full moon nights. But like all drugs that start out beneficial, people in their communities had found a way to use it for more nefarious purposes. As a source of cash from both humans and werewolves who were addicted to it. Meth could also be used as a way to extensively injure a werewolf while making sure he didn’t turn on you and rip your throat out with his powerful teeth.

Or in this case, she. Grady had seen Tu high before. Drunk too… before the situation between her and his brother came to a head. But this time he doubted she’d volunteered for the needle. No, this was a torture job, and the meth coursing through her system was both keeping her from healing and fueling her into a crazed rage.

If it had been any other wolf, he would have pulled out his tranq gun. Drugged out wolves in pain were a danger to themselves and to anyone unlucky enough to be in their vicinity. But Tu wasn’t any other wolf, so he tried to get through to her again.

“I no lie. Your head bad because meth. Need doctor. Let me help you—”

A flash of sudden movement from Tu and then the impact of her cuffed wrists meeting the side of his face. Grady let out a grunt of pain, he knew because he could feel the involuntary response in his rarely used voice box right along with the sizzle of burning hurt where the silver made contact with his skin.

Tu was yelling something at him. He couldn’t quite get it all, but recognized the words “hick” and “inbred piece of shit.”

Then she hit him again. This time on his arm. Weak hits that Grady barely registered, since his brown cowhide leather sheriff’s jacket was protecting him from any damage the silver might have inflicted on him.

Full-on attacking an officer. Protocol said that he should tranq her now. However, he couldn’t bring himself to do that. She was doing her best to hurt him, but it was obvious to him who was in the most pain.

All at once the energy to keep hitting him seemed to leave her body, and she started crying. In an ugly way made all that more wretched when an image of the night they’d first met popped into his mind. The merry twinkle in her eyes, the smile that never left her face, the laughter percolating behind it, like it could come pouring out of her at any time.

“Your fault!” she said again. She was crying so hard, he couldn’t read all the words coming off her lips, but he did understand when she said, “Your pack!”

He raised his hands to sign another denial.

But then she gave him the middle finger and walked past him to Rafe who was now standing just a few feet away from them with her sister, Alisha. Unlike Tu, Alisha looked unharmed, the steel handcuffs on her wrists and the more crazed than usual nature of her back length curls the only indication that she’d recently been kidnapped.

Later Grady would find out it was she who had saved her and her sister, taking the tranquilizer gun off one of their kidnappers and tranqing the other two wolves when they pulled over to investigate the commotion. Pretty bad ass. But now Alisha’s face was stricken with helplessness as she listened to whatever Tu was saying to Rafe.

Rafe didn’t like it much either. He shook his head. Issuing the same denials that Grady had but better, telling her that if not for Grady’s instincts and nose, Rafe never would have found them.

But Tu just shook her head and said something else.

Now Rafe looked torn. Tu, Grady realized, must have been asking for Rafe to fire him. And Rafe who had just that morning been urging him to go back to Oklahoma and serve as his own pack’s king, was trying to figure out how to both convince Tu she shouldn’t blame Grady and get Grady to take responsibility for the kidnapping, since Tu had been right about one thing: It was his state pack who had done this to her. His pack members, who when left without a king, had beat and drugged Tu.

“Don’t argue with her,” he signed to Rafe. “I R-E-S-I-G-N.”

Rafe looked torn, but in the end he nodded at Grady and then at Tu.

Alisha shook her head, her confusion over Rafe’s sudden acquiescence to Tu’s unreasonable demands written across her face. But Rafe nodded again and made it official. “I accept your resignation, Grady” he signed and spoke. “Effective immediately.”

Tu swung around then and stared at Grady for a very long time, meth and pain radiating from her crazed eyes. And when she finally did speak, her words were so strung out with hate, he didn’t have any trouble reading her lips.

“This is your fault, and I will never forgive you,” she said.

Then with a clumsy sway of her entire body, she passed out.