Chapter Six

Like he needed this to get any more complicated.

Logan rounded the corner into the kitchen still brooding over the incident the previous night. Developing a severe case of the hots for the alpha he had come here to evaluate did not sit well on his stomach. Doing the evaluation promised to be complex enough as it was. He didn’t need the added complication of a constant erection. Nor did it help much to find out that the alpha he had the hots for, the one he was here to evaluate, tasted like she’d be hitting her heat on the night of the next full moon.

Could you say, “shit hitting the fan, ” maybe?

“Good morning, Mr. Hunter. Can I get you some breakfast before you leave? ”

Logan glanced in the direction of the question and saw Honor’s cousin, the small, quiet one who had interrupted them last night, backed up into a corner where two sides of counter converged. She held a pair of tongs before her like a weapon and shifted nervously when his gaze fixed on her.

“I’m making bacon, but there’s some sausage as well, and plenty of eggs. Steak, too, if you prefer. ”

“What makes you think I’m leaving? ”

She shifted again, her eyes darting nervously about the room. “Well, Honor said. She said Greg would be taking you into town as soon as you finished eating. How do you like your eggs? ”

“Sunny side up. ” He pulled a chair away from the small table and sat down. “With bacon. But I’m not leaving today. ”

“But Honor said—”

“Honor is mistaken. ”

Joey didn’t say anything else, just placed a mug of steaming coffee on the table in front of him and turned back to her frying pan, but he could feel the way she kept shooting him suspicious glances while he ate. Needless to say, he didn’t linger over the meal.

He took the last slice of bacon with him, munching as he left the house and followed Joey’s nervously worded directions about where to find her cousin.

She’ll be down at the stoneyard. That’s where the howls happen. She and some of the men will make sure everything is secure and safe for the pack. But I don’t think she’ll be expecting to see you.

Logan disagreed. He knew that if Honor Tate had half the intelligence he credited her with, surprise would not be her first response to seeing him again.

He followed the trail that Joey had indicated through the woods. The scent of the pine trees and the crisp chill of winter air lessened a little of the tension inside him. Usually he didn’t mind the city. He’d lived there for as long as he could remember, so it felt comfortable and familiar to him. Like home. But there was something about the forest, the crunch of packed snow beneath his boots, the tang of pine and soil in the air. The smell of game and the rich sounds of a living ecosystem all around called to his primal instincts.

He snorted to himself and ducked beneath a low-slung branch. Primal instincts? If he wasn’t careful, he’d be scratching behind his ears in public soon.

The path wound through the woods long enough for him to stretch his legs, but he wasn’t worried about getting lost. He could smell the years of Lupines winding through the trees, concentrated on the path ahead of him. It guided him more surely than signposts. Every pack had its own scent, and he thought he was beginning to recognize the White Paw, but he didn’t particularly care. The only scent he cared about was rich and earthy and still bore the faint trace of flowers. Honeysuckle, he thought. And clover. But even the scent of flowers couldn’t mask the trace of her approaching heat. Now that he had tasted her, he knew what that trace of spice to her scent had signified, and it made the fit of his jeans tighten uncomfortably.

He swore under his breath and kept walking. Speaking of complications he didn’t need, this had to be the biggest. Adjudicating the right of an alpha to lead his—or in this case, her—pack was a touchy subject to begin with. Not many people appreciated an outsider settling pack business. Heaven knew he’d have bitten the face off anyone who tried it with the Silverback Clan. Yet here he stood, ready to do it to the White Paw. He didn’t blame Honor for being a bit miffed with him.

From the little bit of information he’d managed to pry out of her cousin, Honor’s brief tenure as alpha had not been a peaceful one. At the pack meeting she’d called to announce her father’s death, she’d received her first challenge from a young male who thought a female beta could be overlooked, but a female alpha should be overstepped.

Honor taught him the error of his ways, fairly bloodlessly, by accepting the alpha challenge and pinning him by the throat in less than ten minutes of combat. She had thought a swift display of strength would cement her position and demonstrate to the pack that she intended to keep the position that had come to her. No such luck.

Two days later, the second challenger had stepped forward. According to Joey, Honor had almost welcomed it. The Lupine who called her leadership into question was a bad apple in the pack. Less intelligent than he was brawny, Chet had needed to be taken down a peg or two, and if Honor had to be the one to do it, so be it.

The fight hadn’t been a quick one. While Honor had been fighting to the surrender, Chet had been fighting to the death. They had wrestled across the pack ceremonial grounds, the stoneyard, for almost three hours before Honor had given in to the fact that Chet would not surrender unless forced. She had applied that force to his hind legs, slicing through his hamstrings with razor-sharp teeth and leaving him alive, but crippled. The injuries would heal, but not quickly, and Chet would remember the bite of alpha and humiliation for a long time to come.

The final challenge had apparently been the worst for Honor, and it was the one about which Joey had said the least. It had occurred just the night before, only a few hours prior to Logan’s arrival on White Paw lands. The challenger, he gathered, had been one of Honor’s childhood friends, and his bid for alpha had shocked her. Even more shocking to her had been Paul’s insistence on turning their challenge into a death match.

She hadn’t killed him, Logan knew. Joey hadn’t given him any specifics, but it sounded as if Honor had again gone for a crippling wound instead of taking her challenger’s life. It didn’t speak well for her in terms of her ability to lead the pack. Logan admired compassion from a theoretical point of view, but he knew it had little place in the hierarchy of a Lupine pack.

For all the veneer of civilization their human forms lent them, at their core, a Lupine pack functioned in much the same way as a wolf pack. The strongest led, the others followed, and the weakest either made themselves useful or they didn’t live to see another winter. To humans it sounded brutal; to Lupines it was the way things worked. They didn’t make the rules out of cruelty. They simply knew that the survival of the pack was more important than the survival of any one pack member, and a hell of a lot more important than manners.

He made no effort to silence his footsteps as he strode toward the stoneyard, and he wasn’t surprised to break through the tree line into the clearing to find Honor and two teenaged males staring at him.

Honor thrust the tip of her shovel into the dirt at her feet and pointed toward the west. “Town is that way. ”

“I’ll keep that in mind. ” He smiled pleasantly and walked toward her and the fire pit she and the teens looked to be repairing. “For when I’m ready to leave. ”

“You’re ready now. ”

“Not true. You’re ready for me to leave, but me? I prefer to stay a while. ” He turned toward the two boys who watched the interplay avidly. “You guys might want to go now. ”

Both boys turned to look at Honor who scowled, but nodded curtly. “Go. Head up to the offices and tell Mike I want you to go along when he looks at that pipe work we want to replace in cabin twelve. I can finish here. ”

This time the boys nodded and moved off, heading back along the same path Logan had used. At least the young ones knew enough to take orders only from their alpha. But teenaged boys were one thing. He still wasn’t sure about her qualifications for leading the entire pack.

As soon as the sound of the boys’ footsteps had faded from their sharp ears, Honor turned on him with a snarl. “What the hell are you still doing on my land? I thought I made myself pretty damned clear last night. I want you gone. ”

“Oh, you were clear. And so was I. ” He met her gaze squarely, not bowing to anyone else’s alpha. “I’m not leaving until I finish the job I was sent to do. That means I’m not leaving until I see for myself whether or not you have what it takes to run this pack. ”

She threw down her shovel and planted her hands on her hips. “Who the hell are you to tell me if I have what it takes? I grew up in this pack, and I’ve been its beta since I was fifteen years old. I know the way things work around here a hell of a lot better than you do, so who the hell do you think you are to give me orders? ”

“I’m the man who intends to see them carried out. ”

She laughed at him. Literally threw her head back and laughed, but when her eyes met his again, the look in them had very little to do with humor. “You go right on thinking that, city boy, and I’ll tell you what my father told me. ‘A White Paw leads the White Paw, and everyone else can go hang. ’ You can make any damned decision you want, and you can go carry your news to your boss back in New York. But I am telling you right now, what you two think won’t make one bit of difference to this pack. We do things the way we do them, and to hell with you both. ”

Logan smiled, which was the only way he could think of to keep from snarling. Not that he disagreed with what she was saying, because it made sense—although in the end it wouldn’t make any difference to his decision or Graham’s—but he did have to exercise every iota of self-control he possessed not to jump her where she stood. In the heat of her anger, her scent had intensified. It trailed across the space between them and teased his senses. The spicy note seemed even stronger today, confirmation of how close she was to her heat. He wanted to lick that fragrance from her skin and nibble his way up the insides of her thighs until he could feast on her, unimpeded.

Shit. Why the hell had he decided to wear button-fly jeans?

Dragging his mind off his crotch for a good five seconds, he imagined his feet nailed to the ground beneath him. And if that didn’t work, he’d have to try real nails. “I understand your feelings, Honor, but they don’t change the fact that I am not leaving until my job here is done. ”

Honor threw up her hands and all but howled. “What fucking part of ‘get the hell away from me’ do you not understand? ”

Logan was on her before she got it out. So much for his imaginary nails. “The part about ‘away, ’“ he growled and closed his mouth over hers.