Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6) (2 page)

Nixon Tucker hadn’t even pledged his oath to his new alpha yet and the man already had him out running errands. Had his alpha been anyone but Adam Carbone, Nixon might have found that peculiar, but he and Adam went way back. They’d been friends for twenty years. Their paths would cross at irregular times and places, as they’d both been the kind of men to take jobs wherever they could find them. While Nixon’s jobs may have been more of the blue-collar sort, he didn’t fault Adam for the hired gun shit he and his crew of misfits got into. Perfect gig for men who lived on the road, but Adam and those boys didn’t live on the road anymore. They’d formed a pack in a place called Norseton. Nixon hadn’t been there yet. He’d been on the way there to check out the digs when Adam called. He needed Nixon to swing past the bus station in Albuquerque and see if there was a liar outside.

“Yep?” Adam said when he answered Nixon’s call.

“Well. There’s definitely a lady with some kids out there.”

“What’s your opinion?”

“They’ve got some beat-up bags. Kids have their heads on their momma’s lap, and she’s looking around at everything and nothing.”

“Like a wolf, or like she’s guilty?”

“The wolfy way.”

“What’s she look like?”

Like somebody else’s.

Nixon didn’t generally spend much time assessing women who were obviously unavailable. The habit was supposedly typical of unattached wolf men over forty. Every woman he met was a potential mate, and he had to eliminate each one from the list of potentials quickly or his brain would explode or some such shit.

He rubbed his eyes and fixed his gaze at the woman through his truck window.

“Dark hair,” he said.

“And?”

“That’s about all I can see from here.”

“Well, Esther had brown hair the last time I saw her, but she was just a kid then. That lady could be anyone.”

“Want me to go talk to her?”

“Yeah. Lil didn’t get to say much to her before Esther’s phone cut off. She wants to believe that’s Esther, but I told her not to get her hopes up. I didn’t even tell Anton. He’d be on the fastest thing smoking to go scoop her up, and I just want to make sure that’s really his sister.”

“I understand. I’d probably do the same thing if I still had family ties.”

“For wolves, most of the time, having no family is the preferable option.”

“Got that right.”

Like most male wolves with alpha potential, Nixon had been punted from his north Florida pack before his balls had fully stopped dropping. The culture in the States and up in Canada had been that way ever since Colonial wolves stepped onto American soil, and few folks wanted to fight the system. The men in charge benefited from the status quo too much, and their kiss-ass followers were afraid to rock the boat. The women and kids got the worst end of the deal. Things were different in the Norseton pack, though. Adam—being an outcast himself—didn’t tolerate that kind of bullshit. There was no caste system there. Everyone pulled their weight, and the women weren’t possessions to be traded or discarded on the whim of one power-tripping asshole.

Whoever had started the rumor that a bunch of alpha males couldn’t get along in a single pack had been a bold-faced liar.

“Going now. I think she’s spotted me,” Nixon said. “I think she finally noticed the truck and me staring at them.”

“Do me a favor and take her picture. Hopefully she won’t refuse.”

“I’ll tell her why I’m taking it.”

“Send the photo to Lil, too. Esther used to look just like Lil’s sister, but you can never guess what genetics and stress will do to a face over twenty years.”

“Yep. I’m sure she’s been plenty stressed.” Nixon disconnected and got out of the truck with no further ado.

The lady on the bench kept her wary gaze pinned on him as he crossed the lot.

He kept his hands where she could see them, and so she could see
what
was in them. His keys in one fist, his phone in the other.

“You called Lilith?” he asked her.

The two kids sat up and moved closer to their mother as he stepped onto the curb.

Scrawny little things.
Boy and a girl.
Not very old
. He couldn’t tell their ages, but he’d never been good at that. He hadn’t spent much time around children since being expelled from his pack. Most of his company in more than twenty years had been ranchers and roughnecks. Best he could tell, the kids were out of diapers and under ten.

“I called Lilith.” Her tone was even—submissively neutral in the way female wolves defaulted to so they didn’t get themselves smacked by some dickhead on a werewolf power trip. Damn shame, in his opinion. A wolf like her shouldn’t have been submitting to
anyone
. If she was who she claimed to be, she would have been the same kind of big Eurasian wolf as her aunt and uncle. Intimidating as hell when they shifted. Peak-of-the-apex types of predators, and apparently she’d let some run-of-the-mill New Jersey wolf wear her down.

Nixon could smell the man’s claim on her—the man whose missing ring left a bright white circle of untanned flesh around her fourth finger. She belonged to someone. Or
had
.

He hoped
had
. If her mate didn’t give her away, he’d be stalking after her soon enough.

She tightened her arms around the kids who were looking up at him in that petrified way all the little ones did—the ones who didn’t understand he wasn’t the kind of wolf they needed to worry about.

Nixon had serious doubts that she was some kind of spy or plant from Adam’s old pack. She wouldn’t have brought those kids if she had been. Folks could say what they wanted about wolf women being doormats, but they tended to be ferocious when they had to protect their kids.

“Nixon Tucker,” he said. “Me and Adam go way back. Pulled me out of the gutter a few times.”

“He told you to come?”

“I was in the area. Had been working in Texas for a few months and Adam finally caught up to my new number. Invited me out, and I was on my way west at the moment.”

“That’s convenient,” she said quietly. Her gaze faltered. At first, he mistook her expression as a flinch, but longer consideration of the moistness of her eyes and the bags beneath them suggested to him that she was trying the best she could just to stay awake. She probably hadn’t had a wolf’s regenerative sleep in ages. She’d have to shapeshift to get one, and she likely couldn’t shift when the kids needed her.

“Yeah. Real convenient.” He crouched in front of her and showed her the phone. “Adam asked me to take your picture. Hope you don’t take that personally. He just wants to make sure you are who you claim to be.”

She ground her palms against her eyes, that naked ring finger of hers making his inner wolf spit and hiss, and let out a ragged sigh. “Go ahead. Maybe there’s enough of the old me left in here for him to recognize.”

She entwined her fingers atop her lap and fixed her gaze somewhere toward the parking lot, chin down.

Reflexively, his hand darted out and angled her face toward his. He hated that shit—a woman thinking she couldn’t look at him unless she was being spoken to. She could look at him whenever she wanted to, and he was probably going to do his own fair share of looking back, because behind that curtain of exhaustion and fear—behind the hunger and the wearing-down by years of humiliation and demoralization—was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen. Maybe he had a thing for dark brown eyes and nearly black hair on ladies. Or maybe it was the full lips she kept stretching tight as she ground her teeth. Or it was just the general refinement of her features. What was there between the scars he hadn’t noticed at first scan.

Some asshole had put his hands—his claws and teeth—on her. Her neck was scratched up. He could see marks starting on her jaw and dipping down beneath the collar of her shirt.

I’ll kill him. Whoever did that to her.

He forced back the unbidden possessive threat from his inner wolf and tried to smile a little for her and the kids.

He couldn’t hold the grin, though. She looked like a fucking fugitive countess or someone who needed protecting.

What’s that make me? Bodyguard?

He let out a quiet growl and snapped the picture.

The picture wasn’t pretty. He was no photographer, and did well just to get an image in focus, but he was successful in capturing all the features that mattered. Her lovely face, the ringless hand rested atop the head of the little girl who leaned against her, and all those scars.

He sent the picture to Adam and Lilith and forced himself to stand. His creaking knee gave its usual complaint.

Don’t start that shit today. I don’t have the time.

He leaned against the support post nearest the bench and watched the scared wolves watch him while he waited for his phone to buzz.

Cute kids, I guess.

Paying attention to some other wolf’s kids had always been on Nixon’s no-no list, but that man wasn’t there at the moment to give him any grief about looking.

The little girl looked like her mother, just more scared—apparently, such a thing was possible. Nixon didn’t know who the boy looked like. Maybe no one.

Hopefully no one.
Not some other wolf
.

Nixon wasn’t even sure why he gave a damn.

He looked down at his buzzing phone and squinted at the tiny text.

ADAM CARBONE:
Bring her on out.

LILITH CARBONE:
That’s Esther.

“Esther.” Nixon tasted the word in his mouth, and let the name shape his lips, just
because
.

She pushed a slow eyebrow up.

“Your aunt and uncle say you are who you claim to be,” he said. “I guess they’d be able to tell.”

NIXON TUCKER:
Anything on the road between here and there? Kids look like they haven’t had a decent meal in a while
.

LILITH CARBONE:
Don’t tell me any more. You’re just going to get me stressed out. And when I get stressed Adam starts growling.

Nixon cringed.

ADAM CARBONE:
Going to be hard seeing her in person with her looking like that
.

LILTITH CARBONE:
Do what you’ve got to. Take me out of the message thread, though. Just text me when you get close.

That was typical Lil. She was a fretter.

Adam apparently got the gist. He removed Lil from the thread and continued to text.

ADAM CARBONE:
Feed them before you leave town and make sure you fill up your gas tank. Norseton’s intentionally isolated, so you’ll be hard-pressed to find food and fuel in between Albuquerque and here.
I’ll reimburse you for whatever you spend.

Nixon looked up at the lady and the kids who were gathering up their bags and felt something in his chest seize up. His heart, maybe, but he’d convinced himself long ago that he didn’t have one.

The little girl, clutching a stuffed wolf and standing barely higher than his knees, stared up at him with dark, bottomless eyes for a long moment, and her mother nudged her away—made her stop looking.

Wolf shit. Fucking hate wolf culture.

“What’s your name, honey?” he asked her.

The girl looked to Esther, who grimaced, then nodded.

“Darla.” Her voice was so very quiet that if Nixon hadn’t been a wolf, he wouldn’t have heard her.

“You ain’t gotta whisper around me, honey. Do me a favor and speak up. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“How old are you?” the boy asked.

Esther gave his shoulder a little pluck. “Stop that.”

Nixon snorted and scooped up Darla’s overstuffed backpack. “That’s all right. I asked a question. It’s only right if y’all get to ask some, too.” He let out an exaggerated sigh. “And I’m forty-one. The AARP’s got me on their watch list. How old are
you
?”

“Seven.”

“Oh. Okay. Seven. I’ll call you seven, then.”

“My name’s Kevin.”

“Well, seven rhymes with Kevin. Or at least, I think it does. I dropped out of school so long ago that I can hardly remember the basics on most days.” Nixon shrugged. “I’mma call you
Seven
.”

Kevin blinked, and then the tiniest corner of his lips turned up.

That’s right, kid. I’m a good guy.

Nixon even had the white cowboy hat in his truck as proof.

He picked up Kevin’s bag, too, and gestured toward the truck. “Adam said I should feed y’all before we hit the road. Not much between here and Norseton, so if your belly’s rumbling, don’t be shy about saying so.”

Esther opened her mouth and just as quickly closed it.

“Come on, honey. Don’t beg off saying y’all’ll be all right until you get there. When’s the last time you had hot meals?”

She let out a ragged breath, bent her knees, and heaved up her tote bag. “A couple of days ago. We’ve either been on buses or waiting for buses.”

Which meant she not only wanted a hot meal and a bed, but probably a shower, too.

“We’ll grab something quick. I know you’re anxious to get settled in, and I don’t blame you for that. Living on the road is no life at all for a lady.”

“Then maybe I deserve it,” she whispered.

As startling as that response was, Nixon didn’t turn around. He kept walking, wondering what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into, and hoping he got her to Norseton before the rain came.

The forecast didn’t call for rain, and New Mexico certainly didn’t get much in general, but the throbbing in what remained of the bone beneath his left knee indicated that the weather was changing. He’d want to get his prosthesis off in pretty short order. The padding in it had worn down or something. He hadn’t had a chance to have his prosthetist in Texas look at it again. He’d have to find a new prosthetist when he got settled in.

He tossed the bags into the back of the truck, along with the ones Ester carried, and ushered them on around, limping a little as he went.