Tooth and Claw (Kootenai Pack Book 1) Read online

  “How are you doing today Lee?” Professor Carlson and his wife ordered burgers and beer from me. Their young kids were with and begging for chili fries. I passed their order to Evan and Professor Carlson was waiting for the food while his wife corralled the ghost, pirate, and princess to a waiting picnic table.

  “Pretty busy, professor,” I responded blowing a lock of hair from my face, it was stuck in the puddle of sweat on my forehead and driving me nuts.

  “I got a buddy down at the University of Pittsburgh that’s finishing up his Prosthetist Master’s program. He’s planning on setting up shop in Mainsbury,” Professor Carlson said casually. Evan’s posture shifted, he was eavesdropping, asshole, “Anyway, I mentioned that I have a student who could use a prosthetic and-”

  “Professor Carlson-” I started, “I really can’t afford one.”

  “And he said he’d schedule an appointment for her to come in and get fitted, free of charge” Professor Carlson continued ignoring me, “Provided she was alright working with a total newbie.”

  All the air left my lungs, I felt like I’d been punched in the chest, “I... I don’t know if I ca-”

  “Let me and Earl know the date and time of the appointment,” Evan was reaching past her to hand Professor Carlson the first load of his family’s order, “And we’ll make sure she’s there.”

  Professor Carlson smiled at Evan and nodded taking the first plate of food back to his family.

  “You have no right to speak for me,” I growled at him.

  “When someone is offering to help you-”

  “I don’t need help,” I snarled.

  “Yea, clearly,” he said taking my order pad from my stump and throwing it on the ground outside of the truck.

  38 Present day

  I was in Kendrick’s room again. I was lying on my stomach and my back ached. I should have killed the bitch.

  “Aster?” it was Kendrick’s voice, he sounded worried, “Are you awake?”

  “Fuck you,” I bit out. I pushed myself up onto my knees and sat back. There was a sting in my buttocks when I sat back on my heels. The whip had reached my thighs at times. Not every strike, but enough. Kendrick offered me a glass of water, I accepted it. If I was lucky it’d be poison.

  “The Elder Council has accepted you as my chosen mate,” he said, either not hearing or not caring about my curse of him, “The ceremony is tomorrow. There will be a celebration, we’ll party, the pack will run together.”

  “Chosen mate?” I asked skeptically.

  “Err, yea,” he shifted from one leg to the other, “No one would believe we are moon blessed...”

  Because you never claimed me, I kept the thought to myself, focusing on finishing my water. The liquid stung my throat as it went down. It was raw from the screams that came from me during my punishment. The first of 156 punishments.

  “The celebration should be fun; the pack is really excited. We haven’t had many matings in recent years,” he continued. He sounded cautiously optimistic. As if the previous day had never happened.

  “Just kill me,” I groaned.

  He made a face and took a step closer, reaching out to touch me, I flinched back and unconsciously winced at the pain the small motion caused, “Shift and let your wolf heal you.”

  “I shift and let my wolf kill you,” I tried to flinch away from his grasp again, but my reaction time was slowed by my wounds. Kendrick’s hands pulled me from the bed to my feet. I was unsteady. I hadn’t been this weak since the drive to Easterville.

  “Shift, Aster,” he commanded.

  “She doesn’t want you anymore,” I told him, “My wolf finally saw what I saw in you all those Years Earlier. My wolf wants to be free, Kendrick. But she doesn’t want you.”

  He grabbed my face by the jaw, “I’m not losing you again, Aster. The Elders saved you for me. They know you’re the alpha female this pack needs.”

  “The police are coming,” I told him, “Maybe the Feds. Was it your truck you kidnapped me in? How are you going to survive prison?”

  “They already came,” he told me, “While you were sleeping after the challenge with my mother. The truck was reported stolen. We have no idea who took it or what they would want with you. No one has seen you since you left after graduation.”

  “Evan won’t stop, he-”

  “Aster,” Kendrick’s grip loosened from my jaw and his hand gently stroked my face, his golden eyes were soft, “What will it take for you to love me back?”

  “I will never love you.”

  “Never is a long time when wolves mate for life.”

  “You aren’t my mate; you are the trap around my leg. You’ve seen what I will do to be free.” I told him pushing his hand off of my face. I walked into the attached bathroom and closed the door. There was a standalone shower with glass walls on one wall, and a tub on the other.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I hated the mirror. I forced a smile to see the space where my fang used to be. My tongue had been focused on the empty spot since it regained its ability to move. My missing fang’s human equivalent was a molar further back and not my canine. At least I wouldn’t look like a hillbilly all my days, there were small miracles.

  My black hair was matted and my green eyes glassy with weakness. I could see dabbles of red along the tops of my shoulders where the bullwhip had kissed them. I should shift to heal. I told Kendrick I wouldn’t because my wolf would kill him, it wasn’t the truth, I wouldn’t shift because I was too tired to. I hadn’t eaten since I made the pack breakfast and between the escape attempt, the challenge, and shifting back and forth from human to wolf, I had no energy stores left.

  I ran the shower and stepped into the warm spray. The water stung as it cascaded down my wounds. I hissed at the pain. Kendrick didn’t have shampoo, but he had a bottle of body wash that would do in a pinch, I’ve done worse to my hair. I bent over angling my head fully into the water keeping as much of my back away from the soap as I could.

  By the time I left the shower, the water had started to cool. I used one of the towels neatly folded on the shelves drying off my front half. No way was I getting towel fluff in my wounds. I pressed my hair into the towel and let the rest of me drip dry.

  I looked less like a train wreck after the shower. I felt a little better. I was still starving. I opened the door to Kendrick’s room, and he wasn’t in it. I willed my wolf to come from me and heal me, but she wouldn’t. She was too hungry, too tired, too depressed, too broken.

  39

  15 years earlier

  The December wind blew bitterly across the school yard. We were in 7th grade for goodness sake, we didn’t need to be out here for recess. Christmas break was fast approaching, and all the little kids were playing Santa and his elves. Kyla and I sat back and watched them pretending we weren’t as cold as we really were.

  “What’s going on over there?” Kyla asked pointing at the parking lot, “Is that Ricky?”

  I looked where she was pointing and it was Ricky, he was sitting in the front seat of Mama Biel’s car. He looked...different.

  “Was he in class this morning?” I asked Kyla, she’d been obsessed with Ricky Biel since her family joined the pack two years before. She thought he was dreamy. I barely knew him. We weren’t in the same classes and at pack functions, our families rarely interacted. My mother was a widow wolf, his parents were the Alphas. My mom was one of the lowest ranked pack members, his were royalty.

  “No,” Kyla said lowering her voice. Mama Biel was out of the car now, everyone knew how good her hearing was. Even though we weren’t wolves yet, Shifter School on Sundays had taught us that we did not want to start our lives in the pack on the bad side of the alpha female. Especially one as tough as Mam Biel.

  Ricky was following his mom towards the office. He looked uncomfortable. His head hung and he didn’t look at his friends as they called his name from the playground. Mama Biel nudged him forward into the building. He looked back toward the bench whe
re Kyla and I were sitting and his eyes met mine, they were gold.

  “He shifted,” I whispered to Kyla. She was dumbstruck too; she nodded her head slowly.

  “I bet his wolf is hot,” she breathed. I rolled my eyes. Of course, that’s where her mind went.

  Kyla was irritatingly interested in Ricky’s shift. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was too. He was the first of us to shift. Shifter School told us to expect our first shift between 15 and 16.

  “90 percent of wolves shift between their fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, there’s a slight curve,” Elder Pliny’s voice echoed in my head, I could even see the graph she’d drawn as she explained it. It was less a bell curve and more a steep peak at 15, “One in twenty million will shift before they’re 10, one or two a generation might shift before fourteen. A few will shift at seventeen, one in a million will shift after that. Wolves are consistent in ages of maturity. Unlike humans.”

  But Ricky wasn’t 15. He was 13. I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. Being the freak who shifted early. He’d have to switch from Shifter School classes with his own age and move to the prepack classes with the older kids. The ones who had their wolves. He’d have to learn to fight them. If I was him, I’d be scared.

  I spent the afternoon drawing. I loved to draw. I always drew the same subjects, wolves. Today in particular I had a hard time focusing my thoughts away from them. The human teacher droned on about holiday traditions across the world. It was her pathetic attempt to get her Christmas fix in Social Studies. I stopped paying attention a while ago.

  What would Ricky’s wolf look like? It’d have his eyes, for sure. Those haunting yellow eyes like something you’d expect to come out of the dark woods at night, not the middle school’s cutest boy.

  “Miss Fields?” crap the human woman had asked me a question. I looked up and glanced behind her. Time to make a guess.

  “France,” I said confidently.

  The class laughed.

  “No, the Kwanzaa colors are not, France,” she said, I could hear her mocking tone. She’d known I wasn’t paying attention. Whatever it’s not like I needed to know this stuff anyway. I was going to be a wolf. Wolves didn’t live in the human world. No wolf was going to care if I knew what Kwanzaa was.

  School mercifully ended and I trudged to the bus stop and made my way home.

  Mom wasn’t home when the bus dropped me off. That was either a very good sign, or a very bad sign. I searched the fridge for a note, there was none. That was a bad sign. There was no food in the fridge and I already knew from this morning’s breakfast hunt that the cupboards were bare.

  My stomach grumbled, I had an apple and a cheese sandwich I’d stolen from the cafeteria at lunch. Here was dinner, again. I sat on my bed and did my homework eating my wee meal.

  Mom still wasn’t back when Kyla called. She called every night around seven to gossip about what we’d already talked about at school. I loved it though. She made me feel normal.

  “My dad confirmed it,” Kyla said not bothering with a greeting. I could hear her flopping back on her bright pink bed, in her bright pink room, covered in band posters and pictures of her friends from her old pack, “Ricky shifted. Full on wolf boy.”

  “Wow,” I said more for her than in real surprise. I’d been the one to tell her that he’d shifted.

  “How did you know? I watched him all class and he doesn’t seem any different,” Kyla said, “A bit more grumpy, but that could have been explained by Dale and Jackson being like, all up in his grill the entire afternoon.”

  I snorted, at the image, “I don’t know, he just...” he’d felt different. But I didn’t know how to explain that to Kyla, “I think it was his eyes. They were more yellow or something.”

  “That makes sense,” Kyla continued blissfully unaware of my personal confusion, “Ugh, as if he couldn’t get any dreamier! He’s like, totally going to be the coolest guy in school for like, ever.”

  “I don’t know Ky,” I said, “He must be freaked out. Don’t wolves normally show up between 15 and 16?”

  “Well, yea, but the super powerful ones come earlier. And his came at thirteen. THIRTEEN, Aster,” Kyla said, “That’s incredible. He’s incredible. Do you think he found his mate today? What if it’s one of us? What if it’s me? Oh, just picture it, Aster,”

  “Yea, yea, yea,” I laughed anxiously, hoping to come across as casual, “I’m sure when we get back to school that’s the first thing he’ll do. Oh Kyla, my wolf wants you forever.”

  “Ugh, don’t,” Kyla whined, “That’s the dream! I can’t handle the thought right now. What if it’s not me? I’m so awkward no one would want to be my mate.”

  “Ricky Biel would be lucky to have you, Kyla. Any wolf would be,” I reminded her. We had this conversation every night, Kyla wanted nothing more than a mate. She wanted him as soon as possible. I heard my mom come back home, she wandered straight to her bedroom, reminding me why the prospect of mating send fear down my spine, “I don’t know Ky, from what I’ve seen, mates bring nothing but heartache. Look, I have to go.”

  “Love you, Star” Kyle said, and I heard a smooching sound before she hung up. I buried my head in my hands waiting for it. And there it was right on time. The bone rattling howl. I jolted out of bed, not able to push it from my mind, not today.

  I pulled on my heaviest sweater and sat in my spot staring out into the woods. “She’s howling again,” I reminded the woods, pretending my dad was out there, ready at any moment to come back his large grey wolf tumbling from the trees pink tongue lolling out of his jaws like a dog, “She misses you, dad. I miss you too.”

  I stared out into the woods unseeing. My mind wandered to my parents. They’d been so happy. So, in love. I wanted that. Worse yet, I wanted that now. But I was just thirteen. I hated being some dumb kid. Ricky had shifted, he was thirteen. Maybe I’d shift too. I let my mind wander to the place I’d been trying to keep away from all day. What if I was Ricky’s mate? The way he’d looked at me across the playground felt meaningful, felt important, but I didn’t understand how or why. I wish I knew him well enough to talk to him, to ask. But I wasn’t, we weren’t. I started to get cold and mom’s howls grew louder and more insistent. I shook all thoughts of mating out of my head, “Nothing but heartache.”

  40

  Present Day

  Kendrick came back to the room with food. My stomach growled betraying my firm jaw.

  “I hope you don’t mind more leftover chili,” Kendrick said holding up the bowl, “The she wolves have started preparing the feast, and wouldn’t let me take anything else.”

  I ignored him and walked into the closet I found a pair of yoga pants and put on a soft cotton tee shirt under an oversized sweater. The shirts were too big, but looser was better. The soft cotton fabric stuck to my wounds. It would be painful to pull them out later.

  “I like you in my shirts,” Kendrick said from the closet door, “I like you more out of them....”

  I turned my head to look at him but said nothing. I walked past him, and he held out the bowl of chili as an offering to me. I ignored him leaving the room. I didn't want to go to the stairs. I didn’t want to go to the pack. I went further, deeper into the Alpha’s Den.

  My wolf picked up Alpha Biel’s scent. I turned left down the hallway and followed it to another intersection. I turned right this time. Two large doors stood out at the end of the hallway. I walked through them.

  I heard a groan in the room. A large four post bed sat in the center. The whir of machines and the hiss of an oxygen pump echoed in the otherwise silent space. Resting on the bed was the shape of what was once a large man.

  The figure on the bed groaned again. I walked further into the room.

  “I heard you were dying,” I said to the man, “You must be horribly disappointed that you won’t outlive me.”

  Alpha Biel looked so small in the massive bed. He had a full oxygen mask over his face. His eyes barely opened to look at me. The same gol
den color as Kendrick’s only the Alpha’s eyes were glazed over in imminent death.

  “You didn’t want me to mate your son, all those Years Earlier,” I continued, “You thought I wasn’t worthy of him, right?”

  His eyes blinked slowly, which I took to be an affirmative.

  “A low born pup of a widow,” I said. I sat on the bed beside the now frail man his eyes followed me lazily. His mouth opened and closed several times like he wanted to speak, but he did not, “You probably felt incredibly justified when I turned out to be a dud, right? No one would ever know your son’s shameful moon blessing. She’d be off in the world never to return. He’d find a better mate. How many did you trot out over the years hoping to catch his wolf’s eye?”

  Alpha Biel did not take his eyes from me, I kept talking, “I can’t imagine how horrified you were when he came for me. Not only the dud, but a three legged one. Such a creature could never be Alpha female of the proud Kootenai pack. Did you tell your mate to kill me in the woods or was that her own idea?”

  He squirmed at the mention of Mama Biel.

  “Did she disappoint you too?” I asked him. I reached up and moved a lock of his greying hair from his forehead, “Losing a fair challenge against a three-legged dud? Has to bring a little shame to you, right?”

  Alpha Biel squirmed again, “It was a fair challenge. And you would have had me executed for it. How did it feel? To be told you were wrong by the Elder Council? That not only is the dud allowed to live, but she’s going to be queen?”

  Alpha Biel groaned. Then coughed.

  “I can’t imagine what’s worse, knowing your son is to be mated to the dud, that your wife couldn’t defeat her, or that you’re going to die a human death? An old man, an invalid, not a warrior. That the last memories your pack will have of you is your rulings being overturned, your wishes denied, and you being too weak to even dole out the pathetic punishment they gave me.”