“Stop thinking so hard.”
“Michael?”
He laughed. “Yes?”
“How did you get Seamus’ clothes?”
“I told him to give them to me.”
That was surprising. “And he did?”
“Almost everyone does what I tell them to do.” He rubbed her neck. “Go to sleep.”
Her eyelids closed.
Chapter Three
Michael looked at the clock next to the bed. It was ten thirty in the morning. He’d been up for hours, but beautiful Scarlett still snored lightly next to him. From the moment she’d closed her eyes she hadn’t budged.
He’d slept lightly. At first, he’d kept waking himself up just to make sure he hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing and that she really was pressed up against him and after that because he wanted to be on alert in case of any of the pack members from this crazy place decided to make another try for her.
He wasn’t a betting man, except he’d place money on the idea that Scarlett had been hurt in ways he couldn’t possibly fathom. His wolf growled and he felt his eyes change.
Shaking off the need to shift, the need to hunt, the need to kill who dared harm his mate, was not an easy task but he forced himself to do it. If she woke up and found him in his half-crazed wolf form she’d probably make a run for it, and it had taken a good hour last night of soothing words and simple movements to get her trusting him to begin with. Not to mention a passive-aggressive play of refusing to speak until she made eye contact with him. Fortunately, it worked.
She smelled like strawberries and he closed his eyes to enjoy the aroma for a few minutes. Normally, he didn’t lounge around in bed this late in the day. Only he wasn’t going to move a muscle until she woke up for fear of disturbing her. If she needed to sleep twelve or more hours, she was going to get that much sleep.
His wolf sighed. Her wolf needs help.
Haven’t you been paying attention? She doesn’t have one.
He never got a chance to hear his wolf’s response as his nose twitched. Three odors that shouldn’t have been standing outside his room wafted inside. It was Tweedle-Dumb, Tweedle-Dumber, and Tweedle-Dumbest. Otherwise known as Seamus, Todd and Barge, the idiots from the night before who had helped to beat up Scarlett and then thought to attack him. Hadn’t they gotten enough?
Scarlett’s eyes flew open and he could tell from her gasp and wide-eyed stare that she’d smelled them too.
He petted her head gently before kissing her forehead. “Relax, I’ll get rid of them.”
“Michael.” She sounded as if she might hyperventilate.
“I’ll get rid of them.”
Jumping out of bed, he didn’t bother to dress. He’d probably be shifting in a few minutes anyway. No need to waste the clothes.
He swung open the door, letting it bang against the wall. Sure enough, dressed and looking worse for wear—thanks to the fight they’d had with him the night before—were the three wolves he’d hoped not to see again. Inwardly, his wolf howled his pride that Michael didn’t have a mark on him. Unfortunately, it was clear they’d already started to heal, unlike his tiny mate who would take weeks, maybe months, to recover from her ordeal.
Yeah … he could go another round if they wanted to.
“Hi.” Barge was the first one to speak. He held a cup of coffee out to him. “We thought y’all might like this.”
What? His wolf was as confused as he was.
Todd stepped forward next. “And we brought one for Scarlett. She likes tea, so that’s what we got.” Todd held up the Styrofoam cup up like a child showing off his new Christmas present.
Finally Seamus held up a large brown shopping bag. “We thought she might like clothes so we went into her apartment and got some for her.”
Michael stared blankly at Seamus. “Are you telling me that you broke into my mate’s apartment and handled her clothes?” He paused as he narrowed his eyes, the full extent of what bothered him finally dawning on his brain. “Her underwear?” The very idea of Seamus’ grubby hands picking up her panties made him want to throttle the man right now.
All three of them dropped what they held and shifted immediately into their wolf forms. The tea and coffee spilled all over the floor. Whimpering, they fell to their stomachs, ears flat against their heads. Barge panted.
“What the hell are the three of you doing?” Michael looked left and right.
Fortunately, there was no one around. One room was open with a housekeeping cart positioned outside the door. Damn, but that was close.
“Are you crazy? You don’t shift in public where anyone can see you unless it’s a dire emergency.” Michael groaned. He could feel a migraine starting to throb between his eyes. “Get in here.”
All three wolves stood and ran into his hotel room. Michael picked up Scarlett’s clothes and closed the door behind them just as Scarlett shrieked. Grabbing the covers, she stood up on the bed, panic radiating from her. The wolves started whimpering again.
Michael silently cursed. He’d just woken up and already he was having a long day.
“Gentlemen, since you’re here, you can shift back and make your apologies to Scarlett. Then you can tell me what you want and get out.”
The sooner he got the hell out of New Orleans the better. Already he was missing the cool winds off the Atlantic Ocean. His pack might be cursed, battered and half-missing, but at least they weren’t entirely made up of lunatics.
The warm white light that came before natural shifts filled the room and the three men reemerged.
Seamus looked at him. “We were apologizing, Mr. Kane.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “Michael will do. Scarlett doesn’t have a wolf. She can’t speak telepathically to you or hear what you say. You need to use words to speak to her.
Apologize out loud.”
Scarlett interrupted. “Michael.” She looked back and forth between the three men before she spoke to him. “Nero taught the pack to shift into their wolf form and hit the floor as a means of apologizing. That’s what they did. I didn’t understand at first because I’ve never seen it directed towards me, but they did say they were sorry, right?”
“That’s a stupid rule if ever I heard one. Shift and drop to the floor? Do you guys go around town just shifting and dropping to the floor?”
Barge nodded. “For the most part, if we’ve done something wrong.”
Todd stepped forward. “Michael said to apologize aloud.” He stared at Scarlett. “I’m sorry, Scarlett, we should never have laid hands on you even if we were just following Zack’s instructions.”
The other three followed suit as Michael mulled over what was said. He turned to Scarlett. She was the only one in the room who made sense to him and even she spoke in riddles part of the time. “Who is Zack?”
When we get her home and out of here, we won’t have to put up with all these strange people darting in and out of conversation.
“No true Alpha presented itself after Nero’s death. Cole and Zack both want to hold the pack and are fighting for control of it.”
Todd nodded. “Everyone has taken sides. We aligned ourselves with Zack because he’s stronger. Scarlett is on Cole’s team.”
Team? He acted as if this was a sporting match and not life and death decisions.
Still looking at Scarlett, he was relieved to see the dark circles under her eyes from the night before had faded a bit and some of her bruises seemed better.
“Why did you side with Cole?”
“Because part of what Zack is preaching is that all latent and beta wolves need to be put to death.”