Tooth and Claw (Kootenai Pack Book 1) Read online

  He coughed more.

  “Sleep well, Alpha Biel,” I said standing up patting his leg, “Or should I call you, dad?”

  22 Years Earlier

  “Awoooooo” I howled crawling around the living room, “Awwoooooo”

  My dad ran up behind me and lifted me off the ground, “Aster the mighty wolf.”

  I giggled, “Daddy!” I hadn’t seen him for what seemed like forever. He was always off defending the pack. I missed him. I wrapped my arms around his big shoulders barely able to touch my hands around him.

  “How’s my mighty wolf today?” he asked spinning me in a circle, “Are running through the forest catching rrabbbittts?”

  I giggled again, “Daddy!”

  “Ahh there’s my beautiful mate,” daddy set me down and picked up mom instead. She giggled, just like I did. I love watching my parents. They were the prince and princess at the end of a fairy tale.

  “Put me down,” mom finally said after kissing dad several times, “You’ll scar poor Aster for life.”

  “Nah,” he said with a laugh burying his face in her neck, “She’ll just know what she has to look forward to when she finds her mate. If she grows up to be half as lovely as her mother, her mate will be a lucky wolf.”

  Mom hit his shoulder, “She’s too young to dream of mating.”

  “But never too young to know what love is,” he laughed kissing up and down her neck some more. He opened his arms and I ran into them.

  41

  Present Day

  “What were you doing in there?”

  The door to the Alpha suite closed behind me and Mama Biel rushed upon me like a bull. I sighed and looked up to meet her eyes, “Talking to the Alpha.”

  Her breath was hot on my face as she heaved angry breaths, “You have no right.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her, “If memory serves, I beat you in a challenge, you can’t tell me what to do. I outrank you.”

  Her eyes flared in recognition. It was true. By the laws of shifters, challenges determined the rank of pack members. Rank challenges usually occurred after commencement but happened other times as well. I had beaten her. Being accepted by the Elder Council as Kendrick’s mate solidified the challenge as valid, though my punishment would still occur.

  “And if I mate Kendrick,” I said lowering my voice, “Which, neither you nor I want, my first decision once your mate dies, will be to exile you. As is my right under pack law.”

  The great Mama Biel seemed to whither under my stare, “Better go check on your mate,” I told her, “He was coughing when I left.”

  She pushed past me into the suite and I continued down the hall. Kendrick was standing at the T in the hallway.

  “My mother has no influence to stop our mating tomorrow,” he said, “Threatening her with exile is just beating a wolf when she’s down.”

  “Isn’t that this pack’s favorite pastime? Or was I just special?” I said brushing past him, “It is my right to exile her. You force me to mate you, I’ll force her out into this world all alone.”

  Kendrick stiffened.

  “If a one-armed dud can survive,” I continued, “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  Kendrick grabbed my good arm stopping me in the hallway, “You’re not a dud, Aster. You’re my mate and you’re going to be alpha female of this pack sooner rather than later. Why are you fighting this?”

  “You asked me what it would take for me to love you back,” I told him, “But you don’t love me. You never have. You don’t know what love is.”

  “Show me,” his grip tightened on my arm, his eyes were glistening.

  I shook my head and wrested my arm from his hands. I continued down the hallway until I reached the stairs. I could smell the meat slow roasting in the ovens. My stomach growled louder.

  “You’re still hungry,” Kendrick called after me.

  I descended the stairs. There was a crowd in the living room. They’d been talking and laughing but silenced when I walked in.

  “Oh, don’t go quiet on my account,” I told them with my best smile. The conversations started up again, more subdued than before. I walked through the living room. Small touches to my hand and shoulder reached out to me as I passed. Comforting touches, apologetic, even. My wolf started to wake again; these were her pack members. She’d longed for a pack. She’d longed for a mate. Her mate had disappointed her. Maybe she could find what she needed in the pack.

  One touch lingered, I met the eyes of Marcus, the wolf who’d been with Kyla. He nodded toward the hallway away from the living room. I followed.

  “Here’s some salve,” he whispered pulling a baby food jar from his pocket, “Have your mate rub this on the wounds until your wolf can heal you.”

  The thought of Kendrick touching me send a growl into my throat. Marcus’ hands started shaking, he nearly dropped the jar in his hands, “Sorry Marcus. Thank you, Marcus,” I took the jar from his hands and slid it into the pocket on my sweater.

  “No need to apologize,” he said, lowering his head in the submissive posture my mother had shown to every other wolf of the pack after my father died. I hated it.

  “Don’t do that,” I bit out, “Look at me when you talk to me.”

  His shaking intensified but he looked at me, “I... I meant no disrespect,” he said fighting the urge to bow his head again. He was struggling to keep his eyes on mine.

  “Sorry, Marcus,” I apologized again, “I’ve spent so much of my time in the human world. I can’t stand to be treated.... like that. I am no better than you, you are no better than me.”

  His eyebrows twitched, “But you are better than me, Aster. You will be Alpha soon and I am nothing.”

  I grabbed his shoulder with my hand, “You could be anything, Marcus. Don’t let anyone make you believe you are nothing.”

  “Get your hands off my mate!” Kendrick’s shout startled me more than it did Marcus. I spun to face him. The wolves in the house were silent.

  “Sorry Alpha,” Marcus stepped out of my grasp and bowed his head to Kendrick.

  “Don’t apologize to him,” I instructed Marcus, “You did nothing wrong,” Marcus started quivering at the competing instructions, “Just go. I’ll deal with this.” Marcus’ eyes glanced at Kendrick who was focused on me before he darted off away from us.

  “Why did you let him have his hands on you?” Kendrick growled at me.

  “First, I was touching him,” I stated holding up a finger, “Second, even if he was touching me, it’s none of your damn business. Third-”

  Kendrick’s hand reached out and gently grabbed my hand and held it with his, the sudden connection pulsed over me forcing the words from my mouth, “You’re my mate. No wolf can touch you but me.”

  “What are the rules on bears?” I asked with a cruel glint in my eye. Kendrick’s gentle grasp tightened on my hand.

  “No man can touch you but me,” his voice was a growl now tinged with desperation. His eyes were bloodshot, “you are mine.”

  I felt thirty pairs of eyes watching us. The privacy of the hallway was not so private. His fingers were digging into my palm, his fingernails starting to dig into the skin, I stared down at where we were connected, “I only have one hand left, Kendrick. I’d appreciate if you would take care not to damage it.” His grip loosened immediately. And my hand fell to my side.

  “Sorry,” the word was so soft it was barely audible despite his closeness.

  “Third,” I said continuing my tirade from earlier, but I shook my head not wanting to engage him in conversation any more than I already was, “This is pointless.” I walked toward the kitchen seeking out one specific wolf.

  42

  12 years earlier

  “Did you hear that Gloria, Steven, and Renata got their wolves last night?” Kyla asked as soon as I answered the phone.

  Of course, I’d heard. They’d practically announced it to the entire school. Renata and Steven were even mated to the surprise of everyone, particularly R
enata’s human boyfriend. I stared at the wall. The fact that all three of them were the last of the grade below us to get their wolves stung even more. It was just Kyla and me now. The only ones of our generation without our wolves.

  “What if I’m a dud, Aster?” Kyla cried, “I don’t know what I’d do. I’ll be seventeen in a week and-”

  “You’ll get your wolf,” I assured her, “I’ll get my wolf. They’ll be gorgeous and our mates will be smoking hot and we’ll make adorable little wolf babies.”

  “How can you be so confident?!” Kyla shouted into the phone. She was spiraling again. Panicking, “I don't understand how this could be happening to me. My dad’s a sentinel, my mom’s the pack healer. I can’t live the life of a dud, Aster. I can’t do it.”

  “Maybe you’ll get mated to an enforcer or something, there are unmated wolves coming for visits every year,” I told her, “Hey, if you’re a dud, there’s always room at my mom’s table, it’d make pack meals more interesting.”

  “Oh ha, ha,” Kyla groaned, “Until graduation I eat with my parents. And if I’m a dud, after graduation, I’m not exactly going to be allowed to stay, am I?”

  “No, but if you’re a dud, would you want to stay here? You see the way they treat us, we’re not duds yet,” I told her, “We’re barely even human to them.”

  “Kendrick’s nice enough,” Kyla mused. I sighed; this was not where I wanted this conversation to go. She was still in love with him. She took anything he said as if were secretly in love with her.

  “He’s nice to you,” I muttered. He and all his wolf crony friends treated me like crap. Kyla still had the respect from her parent’s status. The worst they’d do to her is call her names just in earshot. She’d cry and mewl about the cruel words.

  My hands rubbed my stomach from where Jackson had used me as his punching bag during gym class. Kendrick had just watched. Why would he do anything else? I wasn’t a wolf.

  I heard the front door slam as mom got home. Her bedroom door shut close behind it, “I gotta go,” I told Kyla.

  “No, you can’t go!” Kyla shouted, “I’m spiraling! I’m doomed to be a dud. I need you to tell me it’ll be ok. Make human life plans for me. Tell me it’ll be ok.”

  “I can’t right now, Ky,” I told her. My mom would start howling any minute, “I have to go. It’ll be ok, you have your dud plan all worked out.”

  I could hear her fighting me as the phone descended into its cradle just as the first howl loosed. I sighed in relief. Kyla wouldn’t have heard it. I stood up from my bed to bring the phone back to the end table and winced at the motion. Ugh, Jackson really got me this time. I lifted my shirt in front of the mirror and inspected the bruising. This wasn’t good. The skin around my belly button was mottled purples greens and blues. Everyone saw what he was doing, and no one told him to stop. I wasn’t a dud yet, but it didn’t matter.

  I laid on my bed and drew. I let my mind wander away from wolves, away from school, and just let pencil on paper go. I was drawing a person. Slender Roman nose, firm jaw, slightly pronounced Adam’s apple. Dark hair, broad shoulders, eyes so yellow they- I ripped the sheet from my notebook.

  No, I was not drawing Kendrick, not again. I threw the page into my drawer of shame. For years my subconscious artist drew him. I had hundreds of pages of sketches of his stupid face. I wanted to rip them, shred them, burn them, or at the very least, throw them away. But some part of me couldn’t. I slammed the drawer shut and ran outside.

  I wanted to scream at the forest, but it was pointless. I sat in my spot and willed a wolf to come out. Just as I had done every night for years.

  And just like all the other nights, no wolf came.

  I walked up to Kyla the next morning at school, ready to apologize for leaving her in her time of need the night before. She was standing at her locker. She looked taller somehow. Her hair shinier even. Before I reached her, I knew.

  Kyla slammed her locker door and stared down at me, her brown eyes alit from behind with the fire from her wolf, “Looks like I’m not the dud, Aster.”

  Her words cut deep but when she spun on her toes and walked away.

  I was truly alone. The last one of my generation without a wolf. The dud.

  I thought the aching loneliness could kill me, if only it would.

  43

  Present day

  “Mom,” I found her elbow deep in dishwater, just where she spent most of her time preparing for pack events. A mating of the future Alpha would be the biggest one in recent memory.

  Dish water splattered as she spun around looking at me, “Oh Aster,” she grabbed a towel and dried her hands quickly before wrapping her arms around me. I hissed at the sudden pressure against my still raw wounds, “Oh sorry.”

  “Take me home?” I asked her with desperate eyes.

  My mother’s lips pressed to a firm line as her mind raced to find an excuse.

  “Your house,” I clarified, I wouldn’t have turned down the chance to get back to Easterville, but I just wanted to be anywhere but the Alpha house right now.

  My mom looked beyond me as if asking permission from someone else, probably Kendrick who’d no doubt followed me into the kitchen despite the mass of she-wolves who’d want ready to throw him out. She turned her attention back to me and patted my chin and cheek with her hand and she nodded.

  She wrapped her arm around my vestigial limb and led me out of the alpha house through the back door. She always parked by the dumpster. My feet stung as I walked across the icy blacktop, but I didn’t care, it was the first time I was leaving this house without being chased.

  Her car was ancient, and the blower didn’t work. The shocks were all but gone, the fabric of my shirt dug into my wound with each pothole. I did my best to keep quiet, but I saw my mom flinch with each hiss out of my mouth.

  “I remember my first punishment,” she said quietly, “Your father made me shift right after, so I’d heal. Have you shifted?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t want to come out,” I told her honestly, “Marcus gave me some salve, when we get back to your place, could you-”

  “Of course, Aster,” she told me.

  My mother’s house was unchanged from when I was exiled. The green and yellow striped wallpaper in the living room and kitchen had faded and the couch cushions were sagged, but it looked largely the same. The television was older than I was with a turning dial and walnut case.

  “Your room is still-” my mother started to say motioning toward the hallway where the two bedrooms and bathroom waited.

  I nodded and walked toward it. I pulled off the sweatshirt and winced, I’d bled through the t-shirt and the blood stuck to the sweatshirt material.

  “Here,” I felt my mother’s hands on my hips helping me get the fabric out of my wounds, “Lay down.”

  I pulled out the salve and handed it to her before complying.

  “Ah, Kyla’s recipe,” she said unscrewing the lid, “That she-wolf has a knack for healing herbs. Much better than anything her mother could make.”

  I felt a soothing sensation spread where her fingers touched. It was cold at first but warmed slowly. I could feel my skin knit back together.

  “You heal quickly,” my mother said rubbing more salve into the deepest welt, “Your wolf may not want to come out, but she’s still healing you.”

  My stomach rumbled.

  “When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”

  “A while,” I told her.

  “Rest now, I’ll fix you something to eat,” she pressed a gauze bandage to my back and pulled the blanket over me.

  “Thanks,” I mutter.

  Sometime later the smell of cooking pork lured me from my prone position and wandering down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Oh, Aster,” mother said as if she didn’t know I was there, “Here,” she already had a plate of pork chops ready for me to eat. I sat on the wooden kitchen chair and devoured the fir
st chop without so much as a breath. The meat had no flavor, my mother had never been much of a cook, and I’d been spoiled after years with Evan’s cooking, which was delicious. I didn’t need flavor, just substance. The chops were just what I needed.

  I was mid-way through the second chop when my mom sat across from me at the table sipping from a coffee mug, “What was your reward?” I asked her.

  “What?”

  “When you visited me at the Tooth and Claw, you said Alpha Biel issued a reward for information on the she-wolf from the trap,” I took another bite of the chop, “You were instrumental in bringing me here. What was your reward?”

  She averted her eyes from my gaze, swirling her spoon in the mug. The metal clinked on the ceramic cup, the sound grated in my ears, “Aster...”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “To have my daughter back in my life again?” she asked, tears welling in her eyes, “To see my mates eyes on her face? Yes.”

  “You knew about my wolf before you came to visit,” it wasn’t a question, it was a statement, “You pretended to act surprised when you found out.”

  The spoon clinked around the cup more, before she breathed, “Yes. Kendrick told me when he came to get your address. I didn’t believe him at first, but I wanted an excuse to see you again.”

  “To kidnap me?”

  She shook her head, “The plan wasn’t to kidnap you, Aster. Never kidnap you. Owen was going to talk to you, he’d invite Kendrick in, you two would have a happy reunion. I’d come in the next day, help you pack, we’d load up Owen’s truck and you’d live happily ever after.”

  I growled.

  Her brows furrowed, “I don’t understand, Aster. He’s your mate. You should be happy, he came to you, save you from exile and solitude-”