The Head Wolf-Chapter Two
Chapter Two
“I didn’t come to find you and ask for help because I want to get back together.”
He half-smiled at her, and the wolf flashed in his gaze. A thrill went down her spine. It was dangerous. Falling for him had been dangerous the first time, and she had zero faith that she could extricate herself a second.
“But you need the big, bad wolf to accompany you into the den of iniquity.” To punctuate his point, he popped a dumpling into his mouth. A soup dumpling—the heat permeated her mouth, even though he was the one eating it. They still had the same connection.
“I need you. To help me.” The words hurt to say, and the flavor of her own hurt was almost more than the excruciating heartbreak of the server’s ugly divorce. Letting him go again—if she let herself get too deep—would send her into a spiral. “And then I will go back into my hidey hole. You will never see me again.”
Titus clicked his tongue against his teeth and rubbed his fingers on his napkin. She’d always liked his hands. Some people thought that the wolves were dirty—like undomesticated dogs. Wolves were actually better at blending in than anyone in the normal world though.
“So you can’t get into Mac Tíre unless you’re a wolf, a guest of a wolf, or an employee. And your first solution was to ask me to take you as my date?”
“As your guest. We’re not dating anymore.”
They’d never gone to Mac Tíre together while they were dating. Although wolves didn’t flood her consciousness with the ghastly images that humans pushed on her without even knowing it, that many other beings in one room would swamp her senses and leave her empty and flat for days. If her connection with Titus hadn’t made her powers intensify, she might have been able to block better, but it had been debilitating before.
“Are you going to be able to handle it?” He furrowed his brow at her, concerned. Always concerned.
“It’s not your job to worry about me anymore.”
He shoved his plate away so forcefully that it hit the dim sum tray at an odd angle and broke into three pieces.
“You know better than to press my buttons when the moon is nearly full, Samantha.”
Sam didn’t flinch. Wolves were temperamental, and Titus was the head wolf in charge, so his fuse was shorter than most. But he would never hurt her.
If he’d been pissed about their breakup, he could have tracked her down at any point in the last two years and meted out any punishment he liked. He hadn’t. He’d respected her boundaries until she had to blow them up.
She’d also known how to find him, and she’d been tempted more times than she could count. He was a creature of habit, and she could hack his phone if he broke from standard operating procedure. She just hated that she’d been forced to do it.
Fucking Frankie.
“Are you done?”
He looked at her under his too dark lashes. “Never.”
He was most dangerous when he got quite and spoke in one-word sentences. But she pressed on. “Will you help me?”
Composure washed over him like a cloak, and his face became its ordinarily placid mask. It was honestly more unnerving than his grimace. “Always.”
****
“So, how do you propose to handle this?” Titus leaned back in his seat, satisfied by his repast. His Sam always had a plan.
“You bring me to Mac Tíre as your date, and I snoop around to see if there’s any trace of Frankie or hints as to her whereabouts.”
Titus shook his head. “That will never work. If I go into Mac Tíre, people are going to expect a show.”
He allowed that statement to settle. The pupils of her eyes moved quickly over him, as though she was assessing his veracity.
“A show?” Her voice came out on a bit of a squeak. Oh, how he’d like to make her squeal and squeak with pleasure. He’d love to bend her over the table right her and now, reveal the creamy-soft skin of her bum and thighs, and show her that she still belonged to him.
Because of her “gift,” she had a hard time finding a partner who could pleasure her without shedding all their emotions on her. That’s why it was so extraordinary that they’d found each other. It was a total fluke that Frankie had convinced Sam to go to a pub on that particular new moon Friday night instead of sitting at home, buried in work.
He really had a lot to thank Frankie for.
As a wolf, the emotions that weren’t directed towards her were more amorphous and less acute. And yet his feelings for her were always clear and unambiguous. She’d once told him that it was pleasant to have his desire feed on hers and amplify. They were in love when she’d said that. Maybe it would be different now.
He moved his chair towards hers and put his arm behind her shoulders. Close enough to smell that she’d never completely lost his scent. He was still all over her, and it wasn’t just that she’d been wearing his coat. She wouldn’t want to hear that, so he didn’t say it.
“I’ll have to touch you to justify bringing you into what’s best described as our den. Everyone will know that my intention is to mate you.”
She gasped. “I can’t do that with you.” She looked away from him, probably scanning for exits. “I know. You’re terrified that your brain will explode if you join the pack, but I’m telling you—”
“We’ve had this discussion too many times.”
He held put a hand. “You don’t trust me enough to surrender, and you won’t let me take care of you.”
She looked down at the table. “You still think this would all be okay?” She motioned between the two of them. “You don’t think that I would just a higher-octane version of the kind of freak I am now.”
“You’re not a freak.” He sighed. “You’re so afraid of something worse that you’re barely alive now.”
“I couldn’t have my senses be more acute.” She looked down at her plate. “I have a hard enough time just getting through the day in my apartment with all the people walking past, just shitting their emotions onto the street.”
“I hate to think of you all alone in that little apartment, with no one to talk to.” No one to give her pleasure. It actually pained him. He rubbed at that ache in his chest. What she didn’t understand was that he was as connected to her emotions as she was to everyone else’s. But the absence of her hurts was what caused him pain. He could take on everything that vexed her and more—if only she’d let him. “Let me in, my love. We’ll find a way to make it okay for you.”
She stood up, moving to leave the restaurant. “If you can’t help me on my terms, then I’ll figure something else out.”
He grabbed her hand to prevent her from leaving. It was overbearing and inappropriate. He had no right to touch her, but he’d never been able to suppress those parts of himself when he was around her. She was singular in that regard. “Don’t leave. I’ll do it.”
Her shoulders dropped a little, but she tugged her hand out of his. His heart rate slowed when she sat back down. “Thank you.”
“There are rules, of course.”
She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. “Rules?”
“The wolves at Mac Tíre are much more formal than the ones in the country. They believe in all the protocol. As their leader, I have to follow it.”
Titus had been trying to modernize the way the wolves operated since he took over from his father five years ago after he passed. The werewolves in the UK were still a functioning monarchy—Titus could trace his lineage back to the first werewolf in the realm.
That didn’t mean that all of the werewolves in his territory were governable though. But the city wolves were much more resistant to the changes. He was only in the city for this month’s full moon because he had to straighten out his lieutenants. He suspected that the city wolves were growing too cozy with the vampires.
Bringing a non-wolf into Mac Tíre wouldn’t exactly help his standing, and it might even tip the pack into a civil war. He didn’t want that, but it felt inevitable, and part of him didn’t care. If he was no longer in charge of the pack, he could steal away to the country and never deal with dissenters again. If he could convince Samantha to come with him, he wouldn’t care about the loss of power.
“What are the rules?” He’d been careful not to tell Sam anything that would scare Sam too much before. He’d never changed in front of her, and he’d never gone into detail about the intricacies of werewolf politics.
He hesitated to tell her. Even though she’d come to him as a last resort, he had no doubt that she could run scared at any moment. She’d constructed an entire life around not coming into close contact with anyone. He could only be grateful that one of her schemes hadn’t worked out, and she’d had to pick up her own groceries one day two and a half years ago.
“Do you remember how we first met?”
She shook her head. “We’re not going to talk about that right now.”
“It’s important. I promise.”
“Yes.” She screwed up her face. “You sniffed my neck at the pub, and I slapped you across the face.”
Titus nodded. “The first rule is that you don’t do that.”
“Random wolves are going to sniff me?” Disgust dripped off her tongue.
“No, they’ll be able to smell me on you, but you know how we are. They’ll want to get close. They might try to touch you.”
“Even if they smell you on me?”
“My power in London is not as consolidated as it is in Sussex.” He winced at having to admit that, hoping she wouldn’t view him as worthless if he couldn’t help her by throwing his weight and power around. “There are wolves in this city that want to hold on to traditions that no longer fit the modern world.”
“Do you think this could be connected to Francesca’s disappearance?”
He did a double take because he hadn’t thought of that. But as impulsive and reckless as Frankie was, she didn’t disappear. “My brother wolves have never been involved in trafficking supernaturals. That’s a vampire thing.”
Sam clicked her tongue and shook her head. “The wolf supremacy is strong with you.”
“Vampires are monsters.”
“You’d do well to remember that empaths are the descendants of vampires.” She’d never passed up an opportunity to remind him that she was kin to his sworn enemy—as though that mattered to him. In his eyes, she was the only woman he could ever mate with. Full stop. If he couldn’t be with her, then he would remain alone.
“Werewolves are also monsters, but we’re monsters with ethics. Like you, an unlike the vampires who sired your grandfather.”
Sam sighed. “Tell me the rest of the rules.”
“You have to do what you’re told.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Sam rolled her eyes. “You know that’s not a strength of mine.”
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