Werewolf Wedding (25 page)

“This is good leather,” he growled at his brother. “I’m going to have to oil this when I’m done.”

Jake wasn’t much for one liners, but the grin he cracked was just as good. He took another swing, but this time Dane was ready. He lifted a hand and deflected the blow, then slammed the palm of his hand square into Jake’s face. Jake yowled in pain, but it seemed like it was more for a distraction than because he was hurt.

The momentary look of satisfaction on his brother’s face was replaced a split-second later with a look of surprise as the knife – which looked like something a Klingon would use – took a long trip down Dane’s left biceps.

“What is this supposed to prove?” Dane howled, deflecting another blow and lifting a knee into Jake’s stomach. “You can fight?”

He grunted as a fist met his solar plexus. He twisted in pain when Jake clapped him on the side of the head with an elbow, and then finally managed to get away in the second before a haymaker took off his head.

“I don’t think I need to prove that,” Jake said, easily knocking a wild swipe aside and countering with another elbow to the jaw. “All I gotta do is keep you busy long enough for her to show off that statue. What the fuck were you thinking?”

Dane roared fiercely, throwing back his head. His teeth grew into yellow daggers, and a moment later, he hunched down and let the wolf take him. He lunged and locked his jaws onto Jake’s arm. With Jake thrashing around trying to free himself, I took another long pull off the bottle and hurled it at the black figure locked on my fiancé’s arm. The bottle didn’t hit hard, but it was enough of a blow to dislodge him and give Jake a second to do his own wolfy shifting.

Both of them dove, meeting in the middle. At first they clamped down on one another’s jaws, but Jake was able to twist his neck and leverage it enough to get on top of his brother, then take a hunk out of his foreleg.

Retreating for a second to hold his wound, Dane screamed, “Do something!” to his little gang before Jake was on him again. I twisted around to see what the five idiots were doing, and smiled when I saw Greta with a shotgun. Where it had come from, I’ve got no idea, but a girl’s gotta have her secrets, right?

“Don’t you even think about it, you mongrel pups,” she snarled. Leveling the barrel at one of them, then the next, she seemed to have them under control. One of them tried to go for her, but a shotgun blast into the air stopped him in his tracks. “Next one gets it in the stomach,” she said.

I want to be her when I grow up
, I thought for the second time. There I was, caught between a she-wolf matriarch brandishing a shotgun, and two brothers ripping each other apart – at least partially over me – and all I could do was stare and hope.

Teeth gnashing turned to another flurry of savage attacks quickly turned into clawing. Again, Jake came out on top, clamping his jaws around his brother’s furry neck. This time though, Dane managed to dig a hind claw into Jake’s chest and give him a nasty wound. Jake didn’t seem to notice though, he just clamped down harder, fighting to keep his brother on the ground.

“Statue!” he hissed in that tight, painful-sound wolf voice. “Show... them the statue!”

A grotesque laugh from Dane’s belly preceded him twisting out from under Jake and giving him a rake with his claws.

A yelp of pain from Jake got me moving a little faster. The statue wasn’t far – I’d had Doug place it next to the dais, but every step I took felt like I was dragging my feet through quicksand. My nerves were shot, and between Jake fighting his brother, and Greta with the shotgun, I figured that at any second, my head could pretty much explode from the strangeness of it all.

But then, the damndest thing happened.

Jake took a swing at Dane, and connected clean. His brother staggered, and... the pack started cheering.
Cheering
! For Jake! It was like this whole awful ordeal had turned into a professional wrestling match. At first the yells of support were sparse, only coming from a few, but with every blow he landed, every chomp of his jaws, they got louder, until the roar was just enveloping.

I neared the statue and realized that, for the first time, I felt
confident
. I felt like there was a solid chance of us both escaping this thing with our heads cleanly still atop our necks. Suddenly, I understood why athletes got all worked up when they had the crowd behind them. It was energizing, it was incredible.

As soon as he figured out what was happening, Dane looked in my direction and started in again. “Yes! Mate, show them their new leader! Show the pack their new alpha in all his glory!”

Which was a little amusing since he had a black eye, and his fur was matted down pretty good with blood, but it was almost like Dane hadn’t wrapped his head around what, exactly was going on.

Jake grabbed him around the throat with his massive jaws, a deathgrip that could have crushed the throat on just about anyone else. With his brother’s neck in his mouth, Jake looked in my direction. I felt all of the emotion, all the squiggling and tingling and excitement, and I felt it hit me all at once. One of Dane’s goon wolves went for me, but I scarcely noticed his hand on my back before a decisive blast put him on the ground.

“Show them, mate!” Dane was howling.

“Oh I will,” I said, cutting through the twine holding the tarp over the absurd, ridiculous, incredible statue.

As the red painter’s tarp flew away, I heard a gasp louder than anything I’d ever heard relating to one of my works of art. Sure, Mrs. Cumberbatch got excited about her dog statues, and yeah, everyone got all worked up for a good dolphin ice sculpture, but this was the sound of
astonishment
.

For a moment, there was no sound. Not a single one – Dane’s hooting came to a stop, and Jake’s grunts of effort to keep him contained likewise fell silent. The audience’s cheering or jeering fell dead.

“He thinks he’s some kind of king!” someone in the audience finally shouted. It turned out to be the bald headed lunk who had dragged me to the stage. “Dane,” he said, “that ain’t... you can’t...”

“Ain’t right!” someone else joined in. “This just ain’t right!”

All of a sudden, reality hit the face of the great black wolf.

Jake had decided it was time to let things run their course, and backed away, shifting back into his man-skin. His deliciously naked man-skin, by the way. He collected me off the ground and stood beside me, shamelessly, beautifully bared. His hand on mine felt like heaven, like security and safety all wrapped into one.

“Watch,” he whispered. “You think it worked?”

I couldn’t help but grin.

Terror spread across Dane’s face. “Wait, what? I won the challenge! What the hell does it matter what you think about all this? I’m the damn alpha. I
make
the rules!”

More general cries of “it’s not right!” and “who does he think he is!” came from the crowd. Then, Jake spoke up.

“He says he won a challenge – my brother, Dane Somerset, says he won a challenge. But did he really? Did he win her, or did he force her?”

“Quite forced, I’d say!” Barney’s voice came from behind the dais. “Get away from me!” he said, batting one of the goons away who tried to re-tie him. “He lured Miss Coltrane to the mansion and took me hostage.”

“Us,” Jeannie said, rubbing her wrists. “That crazy son of a bitch, he didn’t leave me anything to read except old back issues of
Sculpting
.”

The armor of smugness and overconfidence that had clung to Dane’s shoulders for as long as I’d known him began to crinkle and crack. “I’m the alpha!” he shouted again, as though that was going to suddenly convince anyone. “Who the hell are you?”

“They’re the pack,” I said. I felt my chest swell with pride. “Our pack. And this wolf,” I grabbed Jake around the waist, “is the one who won me. Not the one who kidnapped my friends and threatened their lives.”

“Game, set, and match,” Jake said, winking at me.

It was really hard not to roll my eyes, but I appreciated the effort. Dane, however, judging from his howling, wasn’t so amused. He rose to his feet, and tried to run, but Barney stuck out a foot, tripping the giant naked man and sending him sprawling to the ground. “Bad form, Mr. Somerset,” he said. “To run from a challenge? Shameful.”

“I didn’t!” Dane was protesting. “I didn’t run from anything. I won! He cheated, he...”

Jake strolled casually to where his brother lay on the ground, face a mess of dirt and blood and sweat. “Don’t look like a winner to me,” Jake offered.

Once again the crowd was roaring, in a way that reminded me of what it must’ve been like at the Coliseum in Rome right after a massive battle between two famous gladiators. The knife that Jake had dropped when he turned into a wolf, found its way back into his hand. He looked down at the curved, jagged blade, turning it around in his hand.

Then, he looked at Dane, who had pushed himself to his knees and was sweating profusely, breathing heavily, and in general, just a mess.

“Do it, then!” he hissed. “You want to prove you’re the big alpha? Do what you
have
to do.”

He tilted his head back. Jake grabbed Dane’s sweat-soaked hair and touched the tip of the knife to the place where neck met jaw. He dug the tip in just enough to draw a drop of blood. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t need to kill you.”

The knife fell to the ground with a clatter of metal on wood. “I don’t need your blood on my hands. Get up,” he said.

The hush in the audience returned. Everyone looking on, watching, waiting to see what happened next.

“Kill him!” someone shouted. Soon others joined in with calls from Dane’s head on a stick. Someone said something about dessert.

The cries were so loud a few seconds later that I could hardly hear myself think. Finally, at length, Jake lifted a hand to quiet them. “This isn’t us, brothers,” he said. “Senseless violence, murder in the name of tradition. This isn’t us. And anyone who thinks it is doesn’t belong in my pack.”

Dane’s eyes lit up.

“Anyone who thinks that our kind can survive with all the blood soaked things that Dane seems to love so much, feel free to join him.”

He turned his eyes on me. “Seems to me we have a whole lot of food and drinks and decorations to not have a marking,” he said. A smile crept across his face that warmed me to the core. “That is, if she’ll have me.”

“Yes!” I shouted, leaping up and throwing my arms around his warm, bronzed skin. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“Get out of here, Dane,” Jake said, punching at his brother with a toe, knocking him off balance and once again into the dirt. “No one wants you here. I hope this proved it.”

Jake grabbed me roughly around the waist and turned me to face him. He smiled through the busted lip and cuts all over his face, and pulled me in. I inhaled deeply, the smell of sweat, dirt and iron filling my nose.

When I pulled away and looked toward the setting sun, an almost red, deep orange color against the horizon, it was all I could do not to stare at Jake. The sun caught my attention though, and when I squinted into it, I realized Dane was still there.

“I’ve got more important things to do,” Jake snarled at his brother. “Get out of here and don’t try to come back.”

With a snarl, and a snap of his jaws, Dane looked like he was actually going to make another lunge. Two very large, very bald-headed wolves sidled up next to him and grabbed his elbows. “Want us to take care of him?” one of them asked.

I looked at Jake, waiting for the answer. I wasn’t the only one. The entire audience was staring at him in something that could only be described as awe.

“No,” Jake said. “But thanks for the offer. He’s going to turn into a wolf, and scurry off. Just like he did before. Isn’t that right, Dane?”

Dane snarled and gave a sour look to the bald monster to his left. “Let me go,” he said with a hollow, defeated voice.

With one last look at Jake, Dane turned around, and did exactly as he was told. He was limping slightly, but he didn’t waste any time in making tracks.

“There,” Jake said with a smile and then turned to the crowd. “Now who’s ready for a marking? Who’s ready for a
real
party?”

What had been a chant for blood only minutes before turned to a chorus of voices calling for a marking. I guess no one really
did
care what happened, as long as
something
did.

––––––––

“I
’m not just a butler, you know,” Barney said with a sly grin. “I’m also the second oldest wolf in the pack. And since Greta is related to him, pack law says I perform the ceremony. I hope that’s okay with you?”

I just smiled. The whole thing was over the top, the whole thing was ridiculous and wonderful and bizarre all rolled up into one delicious, lupine jelly roll. Which I know sounds dumb, but when you’re standing on a dais with a busted up, sweaty, long-haired, muscle bound, naked werewolf? You think a
lot
of stupid things.

“No,” I said. “Of course not. But I’ve just got jeans on. That’s not very formal, is it? Shouldn’t I wear something nicer?”

“My shirts torn up, barely hanging together. My pants are shredded below the knee, and my mate-to-be is worried about looking nice. God, I couldn’t possibly be more in love with this woman.”

Jake shot me one of those knee-melting looks as he pulled his ragged clothes back on. In the deepening dusk, his eyes glittered with the moon’s light. His hair thrown back over his shoulders caught some of the quicksilver sheen.

A voice from behind me piped up. “All I’m missing is the giant ice cube she said she’d carve.” It was Greta, but the ones that joined afterward came from most everyone. A chorus of the most honest, raucous laughter I’ve ever heard rose up. The mood of the entire group seemed to shift when Dane was gone, even from the few who’d followed him in the past.

“Next time?” I asked, turning around and trying not to cry. “I promise I’ll make the biggest, gaudiest wolf ice sculpture the world’s ever seen for the next one that comes along.”