When Simon picked up Sam, his nephew was back to being furry. Blair had brought Meg’s BOW to the office. Since she planned to shop in the Market Square during her midday break, he took the BOW and drove back to the Green Complex.
Parking in a visitor’s space, he carried Sam across the road, then let the pup lift a leg before they went inside.
He closed the apartment door and locked it.
Being locked in fear for two years made a difference in a lot of ways, but for both their sakes, he couldn’t let it make a difference in the most important ways. Not when Elliot had called to tell him Lakeside’s mayor was still whining about the police’s inability to apprehend the dangerous thief who looked like Meg Corbyn. Not when someone had brought an unknown sickness to the western part of Thaisia. Not when it was so vital to their own well-being that he remain the leader of this Courtyard.
Which meant nothing and no one could be allowed to challenge or undermine his leadership in any way.
It was the cocky way Sam held his head, so sure he was going to get anything he wanted from now on, that snapped Simon’s temper. He was on the pup in a heartbeat, pushing him to the floor before rolling him on his back. One hand pressed down on Sam’s chest while he leaned over the youngster, his fangs growing, his eyes fixed on the vulnerable throat.
<I am the leader, not you,> Simon snarled. <I give the orders, not you. I let you get away with disobeying me this morning, but not again. Not again, Sam. If you won’t obey because you’re living here, you’ll have to live with Elliot in the Wolfgard Complex. If you still can’t obey, you’ll be sent to live with a pack beyond the Courtyard.>
Sam shifted to boy. Simon pressed harder on the chest and brought his fangs closer to that vulnerable throat.
“Why can’t I stay with Meg?” Sam whined. “I wanna stay with Meg.”
“You are a Wolf. Meg is human. There are many things you need to learn that she can’t teach you. And you don’t get to choose.” Simon waited, but the boy offered no defiance. “You need to be with other Wolves again. You need to learn again.”
Tears filled Sam’s eyes. “Meg?”
“Meg will be the reward for good behavior.” He was pretty sure that would put him in the wrong with Meg, but he wasn’t going to worry about that. Meg, too, needed to learn. She hadn’t seen an adult Wolf. He would have to change that.
As soon as Simon released Sam, the boy shifted to pup and darted into his cage.
That, too, was going to change.
But as he heated up food for both of them, he wondered if he was trying to take away Sam’s adventure buddy because he truly believed it was best for Sam and Meg, or if he was doing it because he felt excluded.
CHAPTER 15
On Watersday, Simon put the cash drawer in the register and opened HGR for business. He wasn’t in the best frame of mind to deal with customers, but paperwork wouldn’t have distracted him from thinking about what he was going to do when Meg closed the office for the midday break.
Yesterday had been sunny, and the city plows had cleared Lakeside’s main roads as well as the residential streets. So today all the humans were out and about, as if Windsday night’s storm had closed them in for a week instead of slowing them down for forty-eight hours at the most. The Courtyard’s customer parking lot was full. There were humans working out at Run & Thump, including the Ruthie, who was Officer Kowalski’s mate. Most of the tables at A Little Bite were full, and now that HGR was open, he anticipated many of those customers would be coming through the connecting door to shop or browse or just have a reason to be somewhere that wasn’t home for a little while longer.
Cabin fever, humans called it. A phrase that made no sense to the terra indigene. When there was a storm, you slept or stayed quiet somewhere that was dry and warm. When the storm stopped, you went out to hunt and play. There was no need to be frantic about it. Wanting to do one and then the other was wisdom Namid imparted to all her creatures.
Most of her creatures anyway.
Not that he cared. The humans would end up buying a book or one of the limited number of magazines the store carried, and then they would be gone, out in the shock of the cold, heading for the next place where they would flock for a while before eventually returning to their roosts.
John approached the checkout counter, a worried look on his normally cheerful face. “Morning, Simon. I saw Sam at the Wolfgard Complex. Is everything all right?”
“He’s playing with some of the other pups this morning.”
“As a pup?”
Ah, that was the reason for the worry. The Wolves had been told that Sam had finally shifted to human, but most hadn’t seen the boy, hadn’t had a chance to identify by sight or scent who Sam was in his other skin.
“Probably,” Simon replied, keeping his voice mild. “He was supposed to stay human for half the morning, but I think he wore out Elliot’s patience by the time they were done with breakfast, and he received permission to shift.” He couldn’t blame Elliot for making that choice. Letting Sam shift back to Wolf was easier than listening to the continual Meg did it this way and Meg doesn’t do that.
Meg was now the yardstick by which they were supposed to measure all things human. Of course, the boy had also campaigned for Meg to go with him to puppy school because there were things she didn’t know.
Simon didn’t think Meg really wanted to know how to eviscerate a rabbit. He could be wrong about that, but he just couldn’t picture Meg pouncing on a bunny and ripping it open with her teeth.
Maybe if he tried harder to picture it?
“Looks like there’s a gaggle of college girls next door,” John said. “Do you want me to add more stock to the quick-buy table up here or shift and do security?”
He caught the scent of two other Wolves before he saw them. When they reached the front of the store, Nathan was in human form, and Ferus approached as a Wolf.
Simon watched Ferus take the corner spot that gave the Wolf on watch a clear view of the door and the whole front area of the store. Since he or Vlad were usually in the store when it was open, they typically didn’t have more than one Wolf as added security. It was Ferus’s turn to be the watch Wolf, so why was Nathan with him? “Is Blair expecting trouble?”
Nathan shook his head. “Henry said there should be a box of books here for our library. He wants to work with the wood this morning, and I wasn’t doing anything particular, so I told him I’d pick up the box and take it over to the Market Square.” He grinned at Simon. “Besides, tomorrow is Earthday, and I’m looking for some quiet. If I help with setting out the new books, I get first pick.”
“You could always buy one,” John said.
Nathan just laughed.
Since Nathan’s presence gave him an extra enforcer in this part of the Courtyard, Simon didn’t see any reason not to use the Wolf. “Before you pick up the box, step in at Run and Thump and the social center. Check the upstairs rooms; get a look at everyone who’s there today. The Ruthie was there when I looked in the window. She’s mated to one of the police. Keep an eye on her. We gave him—and her—a pass to shop in the Market Square. She knows the rules, but that doesn’t mean someone won’t try to slip in with her if she decides to shop before going home.”
“I’ll look in, let everyone see the Wolves are watching. Marie is keeping watch from above, but most humans don’t think about the Hawks when they try to do something stupid.”
Most humans didn’t think about the Crows either, or how effectively they could sound an alarm that could travel all over the Courtyard faster than most humans could cause trouble.