She-Alpha (Hell's Wolves MC Book 6) Page 4

  “The Hell’s Wolves,” Joel said.

  “The Wolves?” Owen felt a surge of alarm. “How did they get our number?”

  “I don’t know. But they called just now.”

  “Who talked to them?” Please don’t say Damon.

  “Dusty did. He talked to a guy called Wes. I guess Wes told him that the Wolves’ alpha is coming here to talk to you about the attacks that have been going on.”

  “They’re going to say it isn’t them,” Owen said.

  “Can we believe that?” Joel asked.

  “I don’t know,” Owen said. “I’ll have to be convinced.”

  “So you’re going to meet with their alpha?”

  “If he’s coming all this way to talk to me, the least I can do is hear what he has to say,” Owen said. “Besides, it’ll be perfectly safe. He’s on our ground, in our house, surrounded by our people. He’s taking all the risk.”

  Joel hesitated. “Why would he do that if the Hell’s Wolves were guilty?”

  “I don’t know,” Owen said. “But we can’t assume anything about any of this, Joel. Do you know when the alpha is due to arrive?”

  “It should be any minute, I think,” Joel said. “According to Dusty, Wes said that he’d already been on the road for a while.”

  Owen nodded. “Let’s get everyone in the living room and get ready,” he said. “We’ve got the numbers on our side, but I don’t want anybody going off on their own while there’s a wolf on the premises.”

  “Right,” Joel agreed. “That makes sense.”

  “Go and get the girls,” Owen said. “I don’t want the three of you to say a word while the wolf is here. Just stand in the living room and listen. I want you to get the information, so you’ll be equipped to help us discuss possibilities when he leaves.”

  “Understood.” Joel nodded and loped off.

  Owen took the stairs two at a time going down. Angus, Dusty, and Damon were in the kitchen, looking pale. Damon’s fists were clenched at his sides. “I can’t believe one of them is coming here,” he said, his voice a low growl. “I can’t believe he’d dare to set foot on our land. He must be insanely arrogant to think he’ll be safe here.”

  “We aren’t going to hurt him.” Owen made his voice as firm as he could. “Do you hear me, Damon? He’s coming here to talk, and we’re going to honor that. No violence, except in self-defense.”

  Angus and Dusty nodded. Damon’s jaw clenched.

  “And I mean real self-defense,” Owen added, spotting a loophole and endeavoring to close it. “Not preemptive self-defense. No attacking him. No fighting unless he attacks one of us—physically—first. Is that understood?”

  “Understood,” Angus said.

  “Damon?”

  “Understood,” Damon ground out.

  “Good. Into the living room, then. Dusty, you stay here and greet him when he arrives. Make sure he isn’t armed, and then show him in.”

  They made their way into the living room. Owen took his seat in his favorite armchair just as he heard the rumble of a motorcycle’s engine pulling up to the house. A moment later the front door opened, and he heard Dusty’s voice.

  Dusty entered the living room. His eyes were wide. “Um,” he said. “Owen, the, uh, the alpha of the Hell’s Wolves is here.”

  A young woman stepped around him and into the room.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  Chapter Six

  FIONA

  She strode into the room, not waiting to be invited. No one asked her to take a seat, but perhaps that was for the best. Standing forced them all to look up at her, rather than down. It gave her an advantage.

  “Why did you come here?” one of them asked.

  “Wait a minute.” Another held up his hand. Fiona could tell by the way the others in the room turned their attention to him that he must be the alpha. When his hand went up, everyone fell silent.

  That’s the way an alpha should rule his pack, she thought admiringly. He was good at what he did. A part of her wished she had time to stick around and study, learn from him the way she never had from her father.

  “Who are you?” he asked now, narrowing his eyes.

  “My name is Fiona,” she said. “I believe my packmate told you I was coming.”

  “We were told that the alpha of the Hell’s Wolves was coming.”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t going to spoon feed them the explanation. Let them put it together themselves.

  “You’re the alpha?” the Wild Grizzlies’ alpha asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The Hell’s Wolves have a she-alpha.”

  She felt heat rising from her skin. “You can just say alpha,” she informed him. “And you haven’t introduced yourself yet, or the rest of your pack.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “I’m Owen. I’m the alpha of the Wild Grizzlies.”

  “It’s good to meet you.”

  “This is my second, Damon...this is Angus, and Dusty...the twins there are Riley and Nova, and that over there is Joel.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you all,” she said nodding around the room.

  They didn’t look pleased to meet her. The expressions around her ranged from dubious to downright hostile. Clearly, they had been expecting a man.

  And they were probably also displeased by the presence of a wolf in their home. Fiona knew she would be a fool to overlook that aspect of this meeting.

  “Sit down,” Owen said.

  “Thank you, I’ll stand,” she countered.

  He frowned. She understood. As alpha, he was used to having his orders obeyed. And he had probably thought to test himself against the alpha wolf, to prove that in his own house he was the dominant force.

  Be damned if she was going to let him order her around. It would be hard enough to earn the respect of these bears as a wolf, as a woman, without submitting to their alpha too.

  “We need to talk about the Feral Fangs,” she said, steering the conversation in the direction it needed to go before Owen could try to push another order on her.

  “What are the Feral Fangs?” he asked.

  “You haven’t put it together?” she asked, surprised. Only as the words were leaving her mouth did she realize how judgmental she sounded. Well, so much the better. He should have put it together. “Haven’t you heard about the attacks in Butte? They’re closer to you than they are to us.”

  “We know about them,” he said. “And I assume you’re here to tell us you’re not behind them?”

  She threw him the most poisonous look she could muster. “The Hell’s Wolves have never harmed human populations or attacked cities in all our years as an organized pack.”

  “Yeah, but I see you’re under new leadership,” Owen said.

  “You think I would condone that sort of thing?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe not. Maybe you just don’t have your pack as tightly under control as you think you do.”

  Fiona felt her blood begin to boil. “Listen, jackass,” she said. “Just because you’ve failed to do your research on this issue doesn’t mean you can blame the only wolves you happen to know. There is another pack in town, and five minutes of observation would have made it clear that they’re riding under different colors than ours. Another ten minutes, and you probably could have connected their colors with their history. The Feral Fangs don’t exactly operate in secret.”

  “You act like everyone is just supposed to know this stuff,” Owen said.

  “We figured it out. Why couldn’t you?”

  “Forgive me. We don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to the subtle differences between wolf packs.”

  “Well,” she said, “maybe if you did, you would be able to tell the difference between an enemy and a friend.”

  He stared at her.

  She stared right back, not breaking eye contact, not so much as blinking. She would not allow herself to be intimidated by this bear.

  Finally, he spoke. “Perhaps it wou
ld be best if you and I discussed the issue privately,” he suggested.

  At that, an uproar went up. Several members of the Wild Grizzlies raised their voices in protest. Fiona rolled her eyes as they argued. For God’s sake, she thought. I’m not going to kill the man. I’m here to ask for his help in confronting the Feral Fangs. Do they really think that if I meant to launch an attack I would come alone and walk into a den of bears?

  She was the one who had reason to fear an attack, not any of them.

  Owen held up a hand. “I’m going to speak to Fiona out in the yard,” he said firmly. She recognized that he was giving an order. It didn’t affect her, had no pull on her, yet she could sense it somehow. “The rest of you, wait in here. You may watch us from the windows if you want, but keep them closed. I don’t want anyone listening in.” He scanned the group, frowning, as if deciding something. “Angus,” he said finally. “Make sure of it.”

  The one called Angus nodded.

  Owen left the room and headed out to the yard, clearly expecting that Fiona would follow. She thought for half a second about staying where she was—he hadn’t asked her to follow him, after all, and she didn’t want him running away with the idea that he was in charge—but she did want to talk to him, and she couldn’t allow her pride to get in the way of that.

  Once out in the yard, he turned to look at her. “I’ve never met a she-alpha before,” he said.

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “I mean, I don’t know how else to put it. I’ve never met a woman who was an alpha before.”

  “My father was the alpha of the Hell’s Wolves before me,” she said. “I was his only child. I inherited the gene.”

  “And the rest of your pack just accepted you as alpha?”

  “No,” she said. “But once I overthrew the bastard who tried to take the position when my father died, they weren’t left with a lot of choice.”

  “You won your position in addition to gaining it by birthright?”

  She could tell he was surprised. “It’s hard for a woman to rise to power,” she told him sharply. “No one ever handed an alpha rank to a woman. We have to fight for it. Not like you.”

  He glowered. “You don’t know anything about my pack, so don’t presume to act like you do.”

  “I came here to ask for your help,” she said. “I came here because the Feral Fangs are terrorizing the town of Butte, and my pack can’t hope to run them out by ourselves.”

  “And so you want the Wild Grizzlies to team up with a bunch of wolves.”

  “You would also get to fight against wolves, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” he admitted. “It might be the most compelling argument you’ve got in your favor.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “So what did you have in mind?” he asked.

  “I want your pack to come back down south with me,” she said. “I want us to get to know each other, and to learn how to fight together. Then, as soon as we possibly can, I want us to attack the Feral Fangs and run them out of Montana. I want to put the fear of God into them, so that they’ll never dare to come back. I think that seeing we’ve got bears on our side will be enough to do that.”

  “It’s not our job to fight your battles for you,” Owen said.

  She glared at him. “It’s not just our battle. I know you know better than that. Their actions could make this an unsafe place for all of us to live.”

  Owen hesitated. “My people aren’t going to want to come and live with a bunch of wolves,” he said. “Why don’t you all come up here instead? You said yourself that we’re closer to Butte.”

  “No,” Fiona said. She couldn’t compromise on this. She couldn’t let her pack perceive her as working under another alpha’s leadership. It wasn’t just a matter of pride. If Percy and the others lost faith in her, the Hell’s Wolves might never recover.

  Owen narrowed his eyes, and Fiona could tell this moment was just as significant to him as it was to her. If he knuckled under here, he too would be showing weakness in the eyes of his pack.

  He probably thinks it’s worse for him than it is for me, she thought, brimming with frustration, because he’d be giving in to a woman. He probably thinks that makes him weak.

  But when he spoke, he surprised her.

  “You’re not going to give in on this, are you?” he asked.

  There was frustration in his voice, certainly. But not nearly as much stubbornness as she had anticipated. He wasn’t going to make this a hill to die on.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

  He studied her face. “What happened to make you like this?”

  “To make me like what?”

  “So...commanding.”

  She shook her head. “What kind of alpha isn’t commanding? How could I hope to lead my pack if I couldn’t take control?”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he admitted.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You said that already. You’ve never met a she-alpha.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. I’ve never met...anyone like you. Male or female. I’ve never met anyone so sure of themselves.”

  Fiona was stunned. She wasn’t sure of herself at all. She questioned herself at every turn. But Owen didn’t seem to see it that way.

  Did he see something in her that she herself wasn’t picking up on? Or had she simply fooled him that well?

  Something about the way he was looking about her made her feel very off kilter. Embarrassed, somehow. She was always aware of the fact that she was a woman in a role traditionally held by men, but she usually tried to make up for that by playing up the more masculine parts of her personality. Right now, though, she felt hyperfeminine.

  What was going on?

  Perhaps it was just the giant, hulking man before her, with his huge biceps and shoulders and his chiseled jaw. Next to him, it was easy to feel small and delicate and female.

  She struggled to regain her composure. “So you’ll come?” she asked. “You’ll bring your pack south?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “We’ll ride south with you.”

  “We should go right now,” she said. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  But he shook his head. “My pack will need time to prepare for the journey—and I need time to convince them that this is the right thing to do, as well.”

  “How much time?”

  “We’ll go tomorrow,” he said. “Will that be soon enough? Stay with us tonight, and we’ll all go together in the morning.”

  “Are they going to kill me in my sleep?”

  He gave her a wicked grin. “I’ll tell them not to.”

  “I think I’ll lock my door anyway, just in case,” Fiona said.

  Chapter Seven

  OWEN

  Owen could hardly believe what he was doing, even as he showed Fiona up the stairs and into the room that was usually his.

  A she-alpha. And he was allowing her to stay in his house, to sleep in his bed, when for all he knew she had hoodwinked her entire pack. What kind of manipulation was this woman capable of? He had no way of knowing. He only knew that for some reason, by some means, she had gotten an entire pack to follow her.

  And it wasn’t as if the Hell’s Wolves were weak. He had never met them before, but he knew them by reputation. They had been in this part of Montana as long as the Wild Grizzlies had, and Owen knew that the peace between their packs had been agreed upon by their ancestors because of an understanding that war would claim so many casualties on both sides.

  Was it possible that the Hell’s Wolves had simply fallen apart so much since those days that they had become willing to entrust their pack to a woman?

  It couldn’t just be that. Because Fiona had told him she’d had to fight for control of her pack. She had overthrown a male alpha in order to take the reins.

  He watched her as she made her way into the bedroom, stopping to touch a few things like the desk he had car
ved and assembled himself. He couldn’t help feeling that she was judging what she saw, and that thought made him uncomfortable.

  Who is she to judge me? he thought. I’m the alpha here. She’s not even a bear, for God’s sake. She’s just a wolf. He had never thought much of wolves. They resorted to violence far too quickly.

  Of course, I can’t talk about being too quick to violence. Not while I’ve got Damon in my pack.

  Fiona looked up at him. “This will do,” she said, as if he’d been offering the room for her approval, as if there was another room she could have chosen if this one hadn’t been to her liking.

  “There’s a lock on the door,” he said, pulling it closed and showing her how the deadbolt fastened. “You’ll have as much privacy as you want.”

  She nodded. “I appreciate that.”

  Which wasn’t the same as thank you. If she kept asserting dominance over him like this, there was going to be a confrontation, and it was going to happen sooner rather than later. If Owen had been in his animal form right now, he knew, his hackles would be up. It was deeply frustrating having to stay calm and logical in the face of her attitude.

  I’ll go for a run, he decided. When this is all over, when I’m done settling her in, I’ll go for a run before I talk to the rest of the pack. He would need to calm himself down, anyway, before trying to convince them to do what needed to be done. Damon, at least, was going to be furious that he’d already agreed to ride south.

  “Do you need anything?” he managed to ask her.

  “No,” she said. “Just keep your bears downstairs, please. I’m going to try to get some sleep, and the last thing I need is a bunch of shaggy brutes thundering around.”

  That really was the last straw. “Listen,” Owen said. “You came to our house. You asked for our help. And ever since you got here, you’ve been acting like you’re doing us a favor by existing. Trust me, wolf girl, you’re not. We’d be just as happy to see the back of you. So if you hate bears so much, why don’t you get back on that second-rate bike of yours and go home?”