Chapter Thirteen

Logan left Honor alone in her office a little less than an hour later. When he took one last look at her, she’d been slightly mussed, entirely breathless and staring at her father’s big, mahogany desk as if she’d never seen it before in her life. She probably hadn’t, he thought, smirking. At least, not the way she was seeing it now.

While things with his new mate seemed a bit more settled—though by no means entirely taken care of—he had an outstanding issue to deal with. It involved a very stupid Lupine who was lucky Logan had been more interested in claiming his mate than in claiming his pound of flesh.

Make that ten pounds, he thought, snarling. Inflation and all.

He stopped by the small group of cabins Joey had told him about shortly after his arrival, the one that served as a sort of community center for the Lupines who lived on Ethan Tate’s land. There were almost always people there, he’d heard, and if you wanted to hear the latest gossip or locate someone in a hurry, it was the place to go.

The group of teenagers playing basketball in front of the house stopped what they were doing when he approached, and the women chattering away on the front porch fell silent. He ignored the scrutiny and prepared to ask his question when the door to the cabin opened and the young man who’d dragged Darin Major away walked outside.

“Max. ” At Logan’s deep rumble, the women all followed his gaze and turned to look at the young man still poised in the doorway. “I’d like to talk to you, please. ”

Max hesitated, and one of the women on the porch shot Logan a baleful glare. “He’s busy. And he doesn’t have to go anywhere he doesn’t want to. ”

Logan didn’t bother to acknowledge the rudeness, and Max quickly brushed the protective woman away. “It’s all right, Cindy. I’ll be back later on. ” He jogged down the porch steps to join Logan in the yard, shoving his hands into his pockets and hunching his shoulders as he looked up at the much larger man. “What’s up? ”

Logan jerked his head away from the house and began walking toward the path leading back to Honor’s house. “I wanted to ask you a question. ”

Max’s eyes widened. “Dude, I swear there’s nothing going on between us. Honor is like a big sister to me. I mean, sure she’s beautiful and all, but I would never—”

One look at the kid’s earnest and slightly panicked expression and Logan burst out laughing. He laughed so long and hard that he had to stop walking to bend over and catch his breath. It was a good thing they were already in the cover of the trees and out of sight, or it could have gotten really embarrassing. As it was, it took him close to five minutes to calm down. By the time he could stand up straight and look Max in the eyes, the younger man had his arms crossed over his chest and a truly irritated expression on his face.

“It’s not that funny a concept, ” Max snapped. “Sure, she’s a few years older than me, but I’m not exactly repulsive, you know. I’ve had more than a couple of older women find me very appealing over the last few years, if you know what I mean. ”

Logan sobered abruptly and scowled at the young man. “Watch it, kid. Believe me when I tell you, it’s better for you if I find the whole thing funny, okay? ”

Max smiled sheepishly and let his arms drop back to his sides. “Right. So, then…um, if it’s not about Honor, what did you want to talk to me about? ”

Logan’s eyes narrowed, his jaw set and his mouth curved into a smile that probably would have scared women and small children. It certainly made Max’s eyes widen a bit more. “Darin Major. Where is he? ”

“Dude, he’s okay. I dragged him back to his cabin and got him into bed. He’s got a knot the size of a golf ball on the back of his head, but his head is harder than most tree trunks. Probably, he’ll sleep it off and be as good and as obnoxious as new when he wakes up. ”

“Where is his cabin? I’d like to talk to him. ”

“Um, yeah. So, um…d’you really think that’s such a good idea? I mean, him being a member of Honor’s pack, and you looking like you want to kill him at all? ‘Cause I can see her giving you all sorts of noise over it if you, like, ripped out his spleen or something. ”

“Where is he? ”

“Dude, fine, it’s your lecture. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Darin’s place isn’t far from the big house. This way. I’ll show you. ”

Shaking his head, Max turned and led Logan to a fork in the path and then east for a while until they came to the old logging road than ran through much of the property. They walked another quarter of a mile or so, past a couple of the small cabins Honor’s father had rented to members of his pack, until Max stopped in front of one of the buildings and pointed.

“That one’s Darin’s. I gotta tell you, though, the headache he’s gonna have when he wakes up is going to look like a stubbed toe compared to the one Honor’s gonna give you when she finds out you came out here and hassled him some more. And if you rip him open or something, then she’s going to get really steamed. ”

Logan turned to his companion and asked very, very quietly, “Are you telling me what to do, Maxwell? ”

Max jerked back and raised his hands, palms out in the universal gesture for ‘don’t hurt me. ’ He shook his head. “Dude, maybe you need to get a pair of glasses or something, ‘cause do I look that stupid to you? I’m just offering a little friendly advice is all, and I’m even done with that. See you later. ”

The young man turned and loped off down the forest path, still shaking his head. Logan watched until Max faded from sight before he put his hand on the railing and began to climb the front steps of Darin’s cabin. He paused to knock at the front door and a flash of movement from inside caught his attention through one of the window. There were no lights on in the small building, so it was difficult to make anything out. He stared for a few moments, then raised his hand and knocked again. Getting no answer, he reached for the knob and let himself in. One distinct advantage to this place over Manhattan, he thought as he stepped inside. No one bothered to lock their doors.

The cabin was quiet and empty. And surprisingly clean for an uneducated man who lived alone and seemed to have been raised in the Stone Age. Somehow Logan couldn’t picture Darin doing his own laundry or washing his own dishes or even just picking up after himself. Maybe he paid a local female to come in and do it for him. The jerk probably pinched her ass and called her sweetheart while she did it, too.

He couldn’t keep his lip from curling as he made his way through the darkened house. Logan might be an old-fashioned kind of guy—he believed in opening a woman’s door for her, paying for their dates and always treating her with respect—but he had no patience for those who called themselves men and yet treated women like objects or emotionless possessions. Logan himself was possessive, but he always remembered that the women he felt possessive toward had their own thoughts and feelings and opinions and brains, and that sometimes their brains reached more intelligent conclusions than his own did. He’d seen the way Darin had tried to treat Honor and he hadn’t liked it.

It wasn’t just that Honor had become his mate, it was that she deserved better simply because she was a better person. Hell, even cats didn’t deserve the lack of respect Darin had shown to Honor. And so, Logan thought it might behoove him to teach the flaming idiot a thing or two about manners.

He moved quietly down the cabin’s short hall to the master bedroom. He could tell where Darin spent most of his time by the scents permeating the small building, and since he wasn’t in the stinking recliner in front of the battered television, Logan thought it a pretty good bet that the next strongest pool of scent would be the man’s bedroom.

The door swung open with a minimal squeak, but from what Logan could see, it could have made the sound of a dying antelope without doing much damage. The figure stretched out on the rumpled excuse for a bed remained solidly unconscious, slack-jawed and drooling. Logan felt his lip curl in distaste and decided to make use of his visit here for something. If he couldn’t take his frustration out on Darin’s motionless body, he might as well accomplish something worthwhile.

As places to snoop went, the small cabin left much to be desired. As he could have predicted, the refrigerator didn’t hold much more than half a case of beer and an opened Styrofoam tray of ground beef, beginning to brown on the edges. It made Logan’s stomach rumble, but he closed the door and kept searching. The cabinets were all but bare, but again, neatly tended and relatively dust free.

The small living room looked neat, for all of its shabby furniture. Someone must come in to dust fairly regularly, because the coating of powdery dirt he’d expected to see didn’t seem to be there. The TV Guide and remote had been stacked neatly on a battered end table beside the easy chair, along with a coaster and a half-empty tin of peanuts. The coaster settled it. This cabin definitely saw the presence of a woman more often than he imagined Darin the Dapper could manage to get lucky in the local bar.

Making his way back into the bedroom, Logan glanced wistfully at the still unconscious object of his frustrated anger and sighed. He turned back to searching and had checked under the bed and in all the dresser drawers before he actually found something interesting in the man’s closet. Women’s clothing.

Judging by the sizes—all six petites—Darin didn’t have a guilty little secret, nor a desire to be a certain kind of lumberjack. There was no way he could fit his beer-bellied bulk into those dresses. But the fact that they hung in his closet shot Logan’s theory about an occasional housekeeper totally out of the water. This was no maid who endured an occasional game of slap and tickle. This was a relationship, or at least evidence of one.

He felt his lip curl as he closed the closet door. What poor woman could be desperate enough for company that she chose to mate herself to Dull-Witted Darin?

Just as the door cleared the window it had blocked when open, Logan caught a glimpse of dull, sandy-gray fur and a brushy tail as a wolf disappeared into the woods behind the cabin. Clearly, someone had been spying on Logan as he snooped around Darin’s house. He wondered if that might have been the flash of movement he’d seen through the window when he’d been standing on the front porch. It was possible a Lupine could have been in the house and let itself out through the back when Logan entered. Then it would have been a simple thing to shift in the woods or behind the house in order to keep an eye on what the stranger was up to.

Logan would have done the same. It was only smart. He’d been through more introductions since arriving in Connecticut than he’d done in most of the last five years, and he still hadn’t met every member of the White Paw Clan. Those he had met had all been introduced in human form. The best way to remain anonymous to him would be to take wolf form. It was hard enough to keep a hundred new faces straight, let alone a hundred furry muzzles. These days, all but the most traditionally minded Lupines considered human form to be the politest one for introductions. It cut down on the need for immediate dominance challenges and therefore on the likelihood of bloodshed. So a Lupine in wolf’s clothing, so to speak, would be the perfect way to conceal his or her identity.

Instinct told Logan it was a ‘she, ’ not a ‘he. ’ Maybe even the ‘she’ who at least occasionally shared Darin’s cabin. The intriguing question, then, became who would Darin be that intimate with if he still had feelings for Honor like the ones he’d expressed in her office earlier? If those qualified as feelings, anyway.

He stared out the bedroom window for another minute, but the wolf did not reappear and the light was beginning to fade. It had been a long day. He needed to get back to the house and maybe call Graham with an update. Then he’d work on his plan to keep his mate as his mate and defend her claim to her alpha status. It wouldn’t be the easiest thing he’d ever done, but if it was what she wanted, then it had just become what he wanted for her.

He closed Darin’s front door behind him and started off down the old logging road toward the main house. He’d even gone a good few strides when the truth kicked him in the chest and he had to pause to catch his breath.

If Honor was his mate now, and she assumed her position as Alpha of the White Paw Clan, that meant she would be staying here in Connecticut. And that wasn’t where he lived. He lived in Manhattan, with the Silverback Clan. Where he was beta, a position he had grown to resent more and more with every passing year.

Well, shit.

As adaptable and urbane as Logan liked to consider himself, he still had a bit of the basic Lupine dislike for change lurking down there in his soul where he could mostly pretend it didn’t actually exist. Right now, he had to stop pretending. He did hate change. He hated it fiercely and unrestrainedly. If he could, he would turn back the clock to the days when he and Graham were a team, when the position of alpha in the Silverback Clan was about tradition, not strength or dominance. When Logan had been able to pretend that Graham only held the title because his father had held it before him, and his father before him; that it would have belonged to Logan if he had been born a Winters instead of a Hunter.

Back before Missy, when women had been women, fun and beautiful and delicious, but for the most part interchangeable. Before he’d smelled her scent and seen her mate take her on the floor of their library. Before he’d seen and smelled the changes pregnancy made in her body, and smelled the scent of fresh milk on a woman’s skin. Damn it, things had been so much easier before any of this had happened.

Logan threw back his head and howled at the injustice of it all. If he could, he would go back in time and change things that way, make things the way they were before those feelings of dissatisfaction had begun gnawing at his insides. But he couldn’t go back, and only now he finally began to realize it. The only thing he could do was to go forward.

At least forward had its advantages. Forward meant Honor—a very distinct advantage, especially during her heat when she smelled so good he could get drunk on just her scent alone—and Connecticut and going from beta to Sol, the mate of the Luna, with no distinct position in the pack but the one he had by her side. He swore again, hands clenching into fists at his sides.

He’d been having a heard enough time lately dealing with being beta, being second to the leader of the pack. Could he honestly deal with being Sol of the pack? With deferring not only to the alpha, but to his own mate on every decision that had to be made? Would he be okay with that because the rewards were so great, or would it grow on him and make him resentful and bitter, strangling the love he had for his woman?

Double shit.

Shit with a side order of fuck, no less.

It all became very plain to him, as if written out before him in black and white. He had a choice to make. He could have Honor, or he could have his pride. Now he just had to decide which of the two things he loved the most he could most easily live without.