Cat Scratch Fever; Blue-Collar Werewolves V (11 page)

A low growl of frustration drifted in the
air. “
Lunch
was a couple of hours ago and I’m hungry
now.
So unless that ham is supposed to be saved for
something special, I’m claiming it before my stomach decides to
secede from the rest of my body and find a fast food restaurant to
move into.”

“
Adam.”
Diana sighed. “Fine, take the
ham. I want to talk about Brandon.”

Bradley had to strain to hear the next words
as the Pack leader mumbled around a mouthful of food. “Leave it
alone. The boy has a right to build both his businesses. He can go
where he wants,” the next words were distracted. “and meet who he
wants.”

“
What do you mean by that?”
Diana’s
voice rose several octaves. “No. don’t try sneaking out now,
Furface. You said something you didn’t intend—and now I can feel
you hiding something from me. The alpha’s bond works both ways
buddy, so spill.”

Diana Weis may not be able to shift into a
wolf, but her temperament and her loyalty were as ferocious as any
wolven born. She was a natural mother.

From the moment Bradley and the rest of his
teenage Pack brothers met her, they’d wanted her for their own and
they’d conspired to that end until Adam had finally fallen in line
and gotten the message. They’d known Adam wouldn’t be able to
resist her. Hell, Rick, Seth, Mark, and even Brandon called her Mom
as soon as they could get away with it. Their adoption had been the
highlight of their miserable existence.

Except for Bradley. He alone refused to be
adopted. He’d never needed another set of parents. Been there done
that. He was a wolven. He needed alphas, strong leadership, and
unconditional acceptance.
That
was what he needed.

“Well,” Adam hedged. Bradley could
practically see his alpha running his large hands through his pale,
almost white hair. “Who knows when we’ll get a visitor? Right?
We’ve got Pack members who were born elsewhere. Someone might come
to say hi. Right? And we can’t just say no. That would be rude, if
say, Tamara’s parents wanted to visit.”

Diana snorted in derision. “For starters,
Tamara’s parents are both wolven born. Neither one of them would
dare set a foot in our territory without first asking permission.
And since any mating of Tamara’s wouldn’t benefit their Pack, they
haven’t had any contact with her since she joined us. Good try, but
no cookie.”

“Raymond Reys has family in Jacksonville?”
Adam sounded unsure. The alpha had many heroic traits, but pulling
excuses out of his ass to keep himself out of trouble with his wife
had never been one of them.

“My love, you are a horrible liar.” She
sounded more amused than angry, but ready to be pissed if
necessary. “We still have to come to some kind of agreement with
the other supernaturals. The werecoyotes and the rest of the Reys
family should be handled on a case-by-case basis. I wouldn’t
disallow Raymond visitation with his mother.” Her voice turned
quieter, sad and grieving. “Raymond missed out on knowing Rick as a
brother. Everything was so crazy when we met…adopting the boys.
Neither one of us thought that the coyotes were so closely related
to the old Pack that Rick had a mother and a full brother out
there. It’s not a mistake we’ll make twice.” She took a breath.
Silence hung heavy in the air as the past raised its ugly head.
“But I know that’s not what you’re keeping from me, is it?”

“It’s Victoria Hunter.” Adam said without
artifice, though he sounded braced for the inevitable
explosion.

“Carter’s mother?” Diana’s voice held a note
that Bradley couldn’t truly identify. He didn’t dare probe the Pack
bond to clarify. Already he’d lowered his breathing to very shallow
breaths and hoped the noise from the washer and dryer would cover
his heartbeat while he eavesdropped. “Why would she do that? Once a
psychic is bitten and turned, the others turn their backs on him.
Bailey chose Mark as her mate and her family considers her dead.
Why would Victoria Hunter be any different?
” By now, Bradley
could hear and feel the fear in Diana’s voice. It resonated in his
soul.

“Now, baby.” Adam soothed. “She helped when
we needed it. We wouldn’t have figured the connection between
Carter’s assistant and that crazy bunch of psychic zealots from the
Church of the Clean without her input.”

Diana sucked in a breath as realization hit
her hard. It was the same reality that was dragging lead weights in
Bradley’s gut. Part of his aversion to Hunter. He could accept the
guy as a Pack member. But as a brother? A full blood relation? That
was a hard pill to swallow.

“That’s why Brandon is gone, isn’t it? If
that woman wants to try and take my sons from me, she’ll see what a
real bitch is.” Tears in his alpha’s voice made Bradley want to put
his arms around her and comfort her. Diana slammed a hand down on
the solid wood counter. “Well, you can just send Bradley away too.
She isn’t getting them. She may have a biological connection to
them, but she wasn’t here when they needed…” her voice broke on
Adam’s comforting shush.

“I didn’t send Brandon away, honey. I don’t
know where he went. But I know he’ll be back.” Adam didn’t sound
quite as sure as he probably thought he did. Brandon was anal about
checking in with his mate and his alphas.

Bradley couldn’t take anymore. “They’re not
hers.” Diana’s teary voice was muffled against her mate’s chest.
Bradley tried hard to pretend that he was a loner. His
arrangement
with the fairy lord, Morgan was a huge
commitment, reinforcing the whole lone wolf image—with special
fairy superpowers. But the fact was, the Pack was his life, his
family. Bradley Starr was nothing without them all; every Pack
member and his alphas meant everything to him.

He didn’t realize he’d made the decision to
show himself until he’d left the laundry room. Adam’s ice blue eyes
bored into his as he wrapped his arms around the woman he’d always
considered the ultimate maternal figure. “Hey, Mom,” Bradley
whispered the words in Diana’s ear as he rested his cheek on the
crown of her head. “Want me to go find Brandon and drag his sorry
butt back? He’s probably just sneaking a cupcake somewhere.”

Diana’s ban on junk food, and sugar in
particular, was legendary. They called her the Food Nazi, but loved
her to distraction because she cared about their health. Bradley
nuzzled his alpha’s hair, hurting for her insecurity and wishing he
could take her pain away.

“You called me Mom,” she whispered back, the
tears sounded worse, making Bradley want to rip his own heart out
and set it at her feet. “You’ve never done that before.”

Bradley froze, edging back. “I’m sorry.” He
swallowed. He was such a dumbass. How could he have forgotten that
he didn’t have the right to call her that? He refused the adoption.
It was his fault that he and Brandon didn’t have their biological
parents in the first place—mentally he shut the door on that
memory. The old Pack was gone, taking the past with it. Though, it
was his fault that Hunter’s mother was nosing around their
territory. For their own private reasons, neither Bradley nor
Brandon wanted to play meet and greet with Hunter’s mother.

Diana caught him with a small hand on his
arm. She smiled up at him with the unconditional love that made him
squirm. He wanted that, needed it. But deserve it? No he
didn’t.

“Bradley, you are the son of my heart. I
fell in love with the five of you the first time Karen dragged you
home.” Tears swam in her eyes. “And yes, I’m as possessive and
jealous of my children as any wolven born female. But if you and
Brandon need to see her.” Diana visibly got a hold of herself. Her
rioting emotions of anger and possessives were born of love not
selfishness. “If you need to
connect
with Victoria Hunter,
then I understand.”

Bradley shook his head. He had no idea of
the stark pain and emotions written across his own face. “I don’t
need her.” He’d already abandoned Victoria Hunter once already. He
couldn’t do the same with Diana.

“You are the only mother Brandon knows. You
took a chance on us when no female of our own kind would bother
with us.” Bradley let go, making himself finish so that he could
get out before he chanced meeting that bastard Carter, or Victoria
Hunter by accident.

“Where ever you are,” Bradley’s eyes met
that of Adam, including the man who’d saved his Pack from the
degrading rule of the previous alpha. Adam showed him what it was
to be a true leader, an alpha and protector. “you are my
home.”

Bradley clutched at the fairy magic imbued
in his necklace and teleported himself away to his lair in the
fairy realm. Morgan, his other master, was easy to work for. The
fairy lord just pointed him at a task and he was on it, like the
hound he’d sold himself out to be.

For the moment, Bradley needed to get as far
from the emotional upheaval in his wolven life as possible to
regain his composure. He’d lost his sense of purpose. Once he found
it again, and he would soon, then, he’d find out how much his
brother knew about Victoria Hunter’s visit before the woman could
hurt Diana. It didn’t’ matter which brother he dragged the
information from. Either brother would do, the one he claimed or
the one he didn’t.

* * * *

Diana Weis looked up at her husband with
wonder in her face. “He called me Mom,” she repeated, just for the
sake of doing so. Adam touched her cheek and smiled down at the
woman who meant the world to him.

“I know. Even if he never does again,
remember that Bradley doesn’t give his loyalty, or his love,
lightly. In his heart, you’re his mother.”

Diana nodded. “And so help me God, if that
woman so much as hurts his feelings. She’ll wish she’d never set
foot in Texas.”

* * * *

Bradley inhaled, expecting cool, untainted
mountain air. He grimaced on a lungful of petroleum-laced city air.
“I apologize for the detour,” Morgan didn’t sound sorry. In fact,
the fairy leaned against the side of the unknown alleyway Bradley
had teleported into. “I have a task for you.”

Bradley shook his head, trying to figure out
where he was by peering down the alley. “I have to find
Brandon.”

“Your brother is fine, wolf. He can
accomplish his task without your help. Better, in this case.”
Cryptic as the answer was, Morgan’s statement reassured Bradley.
The fairy had his own agenda in most things, but he didn’t lie or
try to twist the truth like many other fairy kind Bradley had run
across since his indentureship.

“Where is he? I can’t get a fix on him.”
That was a cool thing about his fairy powers. They mixed well with
his wolven abilities. Really well. Using the Pack bond, Bradley was
usually able to get a location, kind of like a magical GPS locator,
then teleport to them. It came in handy whenever he had to save
some silly fool from his or her own mistake.

Unfortunately, Brandon had some weird
ability to block himself completely from the Pack bond. If it
weren’t for an odd kind of extra sense the brothers had, Bradley
might have believed Brandon dead many times over in the past. It
was like his brother just disappeared from existence, much like the
effect of going into Morgan’s fairy realm, which was set up in some
kind of alternate reality, pocket in space, or black hole. Bradley
didn’t know, the place just was, and didn’t exist anywhere on the
face of the Earth.

Morgan watched him for a moment. The fairy
lord’s eyes shifted from normal human brown to an eerie green color
that never failed to weird Bradley out. Morgan knew it too and
messed with Bradley accordingly. Morgan’s mouth twitched with
humor. “Dallas, but I need you here,” he finally conceded.

“Dallas,
where?
” There was more than
one city in the US with that name, even though it’d be natural to
assume is was the nearest one. And it would be very much Morgan to
exploit that assumption for the fairy’s own reasons.

“Texas. So, your brother is only a couple of
hours from home and has available backup should he need it.”

“Backup?” Now that sent alarm through
Bradley. “Why would he need backup?” He shook his head, aggravated
that he’d let himself be distracted. Pack came before the fairys.
He had to keep his priorities straight. “I have to help him.”

Bradley pulled on the fairy magic that
powered the teleportation ability, only to find it blocked. His
hands shifted to claws, clenching with the need to attack as he
glared at Morgan. “Let me go. My brother needs me.”

The eerie green eyes fixed on him with clear
understanding. “Brandon does not need your help. He never has. He
is a warrior of remarkable fortitude and determination”.

The raw truth hurt. Bradley looked away,
flinching against the slap. No, he admitted, Brandon did not need
him. Adam and Diana loved him, he knew that, but they didn’t need
him. The Pack brothers he’d practically raised in their early
years, before Adam Weis had stepped in as Pack leader, didn’t need
him anymore. Rick too, but his little Pack brother was dead and
definitely didn’t need him, even for vengeance. Someone else had
taken care of that.

The Pack itself had increased with the Weres
being sucked into the Pack bond. They’d acquitted themselves well
in the fight with the Church of the Clean that had exposed them to
the world. Some of them, like Nathan the werepanther, would make
great wardens. It was only a matter of time before Chase, the head
warden, convinced Adam to include the Weres into the Pack proper.
As for Bradley Starr, no one
needed
him.

“Okay. What do you want?” Bradley asked. At
least this little mission would be an excuse to get him away from
the possibility of meeting Victoria Hunter, the mother of the
Pack’s very own Van Helsing-style monster hunter turned
werewolf.