Christine Warren - Hungry Like a Wolf

Puppy, you have got to get ahold of yourself. You are not the alpha here, and your best friend is. So quit trying to sniff on his wife and do your damned job.

He let himself into the outer office then paused outside the door of Graham’s inner sanctum to take a deep breath. He repeated his new mantra a time or twelve. Not mine. Not the woman, not the pack. Not mine.

He took another breath and waited for the hair on his neck to settle back into place before he raised his hand to knock. He ignored the voice in the back of his head that pointed out how the settling was taking longer and longer to happen these days.

“Come on in.”

Logan pushed open the door with his game face on. His brown eyes took in the office, empty except for Graham, and he met the other Lupine’s gaze for a second before he shifted his own to stare politely over his alpha’s shoulder. “Sorry I didn’t come earlier today. I was at the gym until after two, and I didn’t get your message until I got back.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Graham pushed back in his chair and closed the folder he’d been working on. He waved Logan to a seat. “It was your day off. I didn’t expect you to be on call.”

Logan settled himself in the leather armchair that faced Graham’s desk, but he didn’t relax. Oh, he sprawled and stretched out just the way he always had, but relaxation was out of the question. On the inside, he remained coiled and tense, the way he always did these days, and he felt Graham’s gaze on him. The sensation made his hackles rise, and he fought back the growl that wanted to rumble low in his chest.

Damn it, this is not happening. You are not challenging your alpha in his own damned home, moron, so shut up and play nice doggie. Now.

He clenched his teeth so hard, he thought he heard the grinding sound echo in the quiet office.

“All right. That’s it.” Graham leaned back until his chair threatened to tip over. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What the hell is your problem lately?”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Right.” Graham’s eyes narrowed, and Logan looked at the alpha long enough to guess his own were probably sparking with an eerie amber light. “That’s why in the past month you’ve been in four fights, broken three pieces of gym equipment, driven six waitresses to tears, and destroyed the door to my office. Because you don’t have a problem.”

“Right.”

The nasty little voice inside Logan’s head was telling him to go ahead, pick a fight. Let him and Graham have it out and finally see who deserved to be alpha over this pack. To hell with the Winters line, to hell with Silverback tradition. To hell with loyalty. Alpha was about strength and ruthlessness and power, and Logan had more than enough of it to make the pack his own.

Logan had to fight the urge to curl his lip and meet the alpha’s gaze head-on, no more turning aside, no more avoiding the fight his wolf wanted so desperately to pick. His wolf wanted more, wanted a pack of its own, wanted to lead and rule and run at the front. His wolf knew it had the strength to be alpha on its own, and the role of second-in-command had started to feel more like a muzzle than a medal of honor.

The man in Logan hated that his wolf had begun to erode his relationship with the man he’d always called brother. That side of him, that voice was the one that screamed a denial every time the wolf began to growl and pace and look for a weak spot. Damn it, Graham was his best friend, the closest thing he had to family, closer than any other member of the pack. Logan would die for that man.

But damn it if he didn’t really want to kill him right now.

“You know this can’t go on forever.” The alpha’s voice rumbled deep, raising hackles. “Sooner or later, you won’t be able to ignore it anymore. What happens then?”

Logan’s lip curled, and he wrestled it back into place. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t be an asshole. Don’t lie to me, and don’t act like I’m not supposed to figure it out. It’s not like it’s a surprise. I knew it would happen one day, because I know you.”

Graham leaned forward and willed his friend to meet his gaze. Their gazes crashed together like two bighorn sheep on the top of a mountain. Logan could almost hear the echo.

“I know you, Logan, and I know what you’re going through. We can find a way around it—”

“There’s. No. Problem.”

Silence descended, stretched thin, and finally snapped with a backlash that stung.

“Fine.” Graham’s voice indicated things were anything but. He sat back again and picked up a piece of paper, which he tossed across the desk to Logan. “You say you don’t have a problem, that’s terrific. Because I do.”

Logan caught the letter in one hand, but didn’t bother to glance at it. He snarled in satisfaction. “Perfect. Who do I get to kill?”

“No one. It’s not that kind of problem.”

Well, shit. Just when he could have used a little judicious bloodshed.

Suppressing another growl, Logan got up to pace around the office. The restlessness inside made it impossible for him to sit still for long. “Fine. Then what do you want me to do?”

“If you’d read the damned letter, you might have a clue. There’s been a death in Connecticut. The White Paw Clan has lost its alpha.”

That bit of news actually managed to get Logan’s attention. He turned toward Graham with interest. “Ethan Tate is dead?” He paused, letting it sink in. “Challenge?”

Graham shook his head. “Cancer. And apparently he managed to hide it from the pack until the end.”

Logan let out a low whistle. That was old-school wolf, and a hell of an accomplishment. In the old days, any sort of illness that might compromise an alpha’s ability to lead would have been punished by a swift challenge and the likely death of the sick or wounded Lupine. Knowing that, the toughest alphas of the past would hide any sign of weakness, using whatever means necessary to camouflage their vulnerability and maintain control of their pack. But with an illness like cancer, it was damned difficult. Most Lupines could smell the taint of the disease and would have known immediately. He wondered how the old alpha had done it? Tate had been a tough old bird, but hiding cancer…? That took balls.

“So no one guessed at all? Not even his beta?”

“That’s probably one of the things that helped him fool everyone.” Graham nodded to the letter in Logan’s hand. “The e-mail I got is from his beta, who was also his daughter. She probably didn’t want to think her father was ill, so she denied it, and that made it even easier for him to deceive everyone else.”

A female beta? Female alphas and betas weren’t unheard-of in the Lupine world, but they were few and far between, more like myths and legends than actual people. Boadicea had been a pack alpha, but Logan couldn’t think of one more recent than that. The fact was, even if a female Lupine was ten times stronger than the average human male, a male Lupine was twice as strong as that. Females rarely managed to battle their way to the top of the pack structure, and when they did, they even more rarely managed to stay there. A male would always challenge, and males generally won. The old Lupine adage said, “A female alpha is a dead alpha.”

Female betas occurred only marginally more often. Usually they won the position not through challenges, but by appointment, and they kept their places with cunning more often than with strength. Tate had obviously installed his daughter as his beta, either before or after learning of his illness. A wolf strong enough to hide cancer would sure as hell be strong enough to ensure no one protested his decision on that front, but with Tate gone, his daughter would now be fair game. Given the traditional Lupine pack structure and its basis in rule through strength, when a pack alpha died, the logical choice to take his place was usually his beta, the next strongest wolf in the pack, but when that wolf was a female … Well, all of a sudden the old rules didn’t apply anymore.