Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6)

Having lost part of his leg in an oilrig accident, Nixon Tucker accepts his friend’s offer to join Norseton’s new wolfpack. At the age of forty-one, Nixon is finally ready for some stability, but the wolf goddess doesn’t make things easy for her favored ones. She drops a broken single mom of two kids onto his path, and immediately, his inner beast takes notice. In spite of Esther Denis-March bearing another man’s bite and scent, Nixon is more than willing let her complicate his life. She could give him the family he craves.

With her abusive husband dead by her hands, Esther arrives in Norseton hoping her brother’s pack won’t send her away. She’s certain that Nixon is the rightful mate her husband wasn’t, but there are no guarantees he’ll keep her. Wolf women aren’t supposed to fight back, and she fears that telling Nixon what she’s done will send him running.

She doesn’t know that Nixon’s got insecurities of his own. He thinks a woman like her deserves a physically strong mate. He was once a threat to other alpha wolves, but he doubts he ever will be again.

“Hey, lady. That isn’t even on my map. That’s gonna cost you a hell of a fare, assuming there’s even anything out there.”

“I see.” Esther Denis-March hitched her heavy backpack a little higher up on her shoulders and tried to meet the reluctant cab driver’s unflinching gaze.

At thirty-two years old, she should have been more street-smart and travel savvy, but during every leg of the long bus trip between New Jersey and New Mexico, she’d had to rely on the kindness of strangers to ensure that she didn’t miss her connections. Werewolves were renowned for their superior sense of direction, but she’d never traveled across a country before. She’d never even left New Jersey before, but she’d run out of options. She had to make the daunting trek. Having nowhere else to go, she was counting on her brother to take her in.

With two young children relying on her tenuous ability to hold herself together, she’d had no choice but to open her mouth to speak to the strangers who might have been able to help. Talking to the men was the hardest. In the wolfpack where she’d come from, women didn’t speak out of turn unless they were willing to endure the consequences. Insisting on being heard was a reckless endeavor. Silence was safer. She’d already had too many split lips and black eyes in her life.

The last bruise she’d gotten had been her breaking point—the point when her reflexes finally motored on and she’d fought back.

She’d never have the same fight again. Her husband was dead, and her pack didn’t want her. Both of those were good, but frightening things. So much of her life was uncertain.

“H-how much?” she asked, flinching at her daughter Darla’s punishing grip on her fingers. The startling hisses coming from the parked buses in the depot—their brakes, Esther was pretty sure—had the child clingy and high-strung. The three-year-old probably wanted to be carried, but Esther was already carrying too much because of all the bags. Even little Kevin was stoically carrying his own duffel.

Such a trooper through all this. Nothing like his father, thank the goddess.

The driver stuffed the phone he’d been tossing from hand to hand into his pocket and, assessing her from head to toe, made a rude grunting noise. “Assuming there’s actually anything out there, we’re talking over a hundred miles. I’m not psychic or nothing like that, but I’m pretty sure you ain’t got that kind of money. You’d be better off renting a car.”

At another of Darla’s clenches, Esther let out a long exhalation and bent to pick up the child.

Just for a moment.
The little girl probably wasn’t any more comfortable being around strange men than her mother.

“As far as I understand the way those things work, you have to have a driver’s license and a credit card to rent a car,” Esther said.

“And insurance. I imagine you don’t have that, either.”

“Not that kind.” Other than the little life insurance policy her ex-alpha had insisted every member of the pack possess, she was woefully underinsured. If she’d actually had access to her late husband’s policy, she would have been better off, but Alpha held the reins. He’d be getting the check, not Esther. Esther was lucky to be getting away scot-free, seeing as how she was the one who’d pushed her husband off their balcony.

The police report said that he got drunk—which was true—and that he fell. He’d fallen, all right, but he’d had some help getting started.

“I don’t know what to tell you, lady,” the driver said. “I just can’t drive ya. Too far, and whatever I make driving out there I’ll pretty much lose on the drive back. I wouldn’t have a fare.”

She forced down a swallow and set Darla back on her feet. “I understand. Thank you for your time.”

She moved the kids away from the curb—out of the queue of Albuquerque cab drivers waiting for their next passengers—and maneuvered them toward a bench of questionable sturdiness.

When the seat didn’t collapse beneath the kids’ little butts, she squatted in front of them, rooted through her canvas tote, and found the remnants of their lunches. She gave Darla the rest of her turkey wrap and Kevin the end of his sub, and allowed herself a moment of handwringing.

Her cell phone was on a prepaid plan and only had a few call credits left. She figured if she could find a free Wi-Fi connection, she might be able to search the web for a phone number.
Any
phone number. She hadn’t been thinking clearly before she left Jersey, or else she would have gotten all that information before the trip. Her primary motivation three days prior when she’d had her friend drop her and the kids off at the bus station was to get away before Alpha changed his mind about letting them go.

Norseton
. That was where the pack grapevine said her uncle and aunt were, and if they were there, so were her cousin and her brother. They’d been expelled from the pack twenty years ago, and they’d made a new pack in a place called Norseton. Alpha’s daughter supposedly lived there. Ashley had stirred up quite a scandal when they’d learned the anonymous mate she’d traveled across the country to get claimed by was the son of Alpha’s longtime enemy, Adam Carbone.

Uncle Adam.

Esther had been so glad to hear he was still alive, and her cousin Vic, too. That meant Aunt Lilith was probably okay—her mother’s sister. She’d missed them so much, but when they’d been forced to leave, she’d had to stay. Such was the way in wolfpacks. They always sent away the males who could become threats to the alpha.

“Mommy, I’m sleepy,” Darla whispered.

Esther winced and took another scan of their surroundings. The child had barely slept in two days—only napping in short snatches here and there. She had a wolf’s wiring, and was a light sleeper. The baby needed rest. They all did.

There was a motel about a block down. The sign advertised that rooms were $43 per night.

Plus tax.

Esther didn’t want to spend $43. She didn’t know how long they’d be stuck in Albuquerque, and she’d need to hold onto some cash to feed the kids. What little money was in her pocket had come to her courtesy of a very discreet collection by the other women in the pack. Her friends, her mother—even sympathetic strangers who’d caught rumblings of what had transpired. They’d all chipped in. They all told her to go and not look back—to leave New Jersey before the cops asked any more questions about how Michael found his way to the ground from the apartment balcony.

She tried to put a little sunshine in her voice and smiled, even though the attempt felt false. “We’re gonna get settled in somewhere real soon. Just hang in there a little while longer. Finish your sandwich and we’ll go find some drinks, okay? Mommy needs to find someplace to get an Internet connection. Maybe there’s a coffee shop around here.”

“They have Wi-Fi in there.” Kevin crooked his thumb toward the bus station’s door. “I saw the sticker on the counter.”

“I didn’t see that.”

His lips spread to reveal a checkerboard, the pink of his tongue filling in the voids where teeth were gone. “They put it low down. Said Wi-Fi available.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re down there to see stuff for me.”

Esther fiddled with her phone and tried to find the appropriate network, hoping her boy hadn’t read the sticker wrong. Finally, fortunately, something was going her way. The connection was there, and it was
free
, courtesy of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.

She wedged herself between the kids on the bench and surfed the slow connection. There was scant information online about the town of Norseton. No pictures. No address on the town website, aside from a PO box number. Everything nested inside the site was protected by a password that she assumed only residents had. There was a phone number at the bottom of the page, though. Esther had twelve minutes left on her calling plan, and those would have to be enough, as she didn’t think they’d accept a collect call from a stranger.

She got her words straight in her head before she dialed, and then held her breath as the rings began.

She counted them.

One. Two…

“Norseton switchboard,” came the cheerful voice on the other end.

Esther may as well have been stone for the way she froze up.

“Mommy, she’s talking,” Kevin said. The kids couldn’t shapeshift yet, but they could still hear as good as any wolf.

“Um.”
Go. Go. Go.
“Please help me figure out who to talk to. My name is Esther. I’m at the bus station in Albuquerque right now. I—”

At the last moment, she thought better of telling a stranger that she was a werewolf and looking for the pack in Norseton. Wolves weren’t “out.” For the most part, they kept their existence under tight wraps, and Esther had no way of knowing if that lady was aware of them. For all Esther knew, she could’ve called the wrong Norseton.

“Ma’am?”

Esther gave her knee a pound.
Move your stinkin’ tongue
. “Uh, sorry. I only have a few minutes left on this phone. I’ve traveled a long way with my kids and I can’t get a taxi to take me out there because no one quite knows where you are. The zip code doesn’t make any sense to them.”

“Who exactly are you looking for, ma’am?”

A name won’t hurt. Just a name.

“Lilith Carbone. She’s my aunt.”

“Ah, the muffin lady. Blueberry ones today.
So
good.”

Esther let out an involuntary scoff.
Thank the goddess.

“I just saw her walk past a few minutes ago,” the operator said. “You don’t have a number for her?”

“No. All the ones I had went dead years ago.”

“She might be in the kitchen. Let me try that line. Hold on a sec.”

Please don’t be gone long.
Esther pulled the phone away from her ear and read the elapsed call time.

Hurry, please.

“Ma’am, she’s not picking up, but she might not hear the phone if she’s got the mixers on or something. Gets loud in there this time of day. She’s gotta feed a lot of folks. I can’t leave my desk, but I can take a message and have the next person who walks past my desk carry the note downstairs.”

“You’re in the same building?”

“Yep.”

“Oh. Well, just—um, tell her I need someone to come get us. Tell her it’s—it’s
Esther
, and I’ve got my kids. Just the three of us, and—we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Her voice might have cracked at the end, but she’d gotten the words out, and she wasn’t going to cry in front of those kids. They’d seen her cry too much already in their three and seven years.

“Just hold tight, honey. You got a number she can call you back at?”

Esther relayed the digits, and also those of the nearby payphone just in case. Then the operator hung up.

Esther waited.

She was hoping Aunt Lilith didn’t keep her waiting for too long, because Esther was just as tired as Darla.

The thing with not feeling safe for so many years is that a person couldn’t really sleep at night. Too many times, Michael had dragged her out of her sleep to yell at her about some stupid thing, and she’d learned to figuratively keep one eye open at all times. That was how she’d kept him from the kids. She didn’t know if he would have hurt them, but she hadn’t wanted to give him a chance to, either.

An unwelcome tear tracked down her cheek, and she swiped the moisture away before the kids looked up.

She was going to curl up around her kids and sleep for days and days as soon as she got a chance.

Heaven help the fool who tries to wake me.