He studied the twinkling bottles of alcohol behind the bar and frowned. Then he saw the beer and wine list and brightened.
“Two Labatts.” Scott decided for me, and the bartender bent beneath the bar to retrieve the bottles from the mini fridge.
When she’d opened them and moved down the bar to attend to another guest, Scott turned to me and said, “Hunt with me tomorrow night.”
My stomach flip-flopped, and it wasn’t all due to the fact Scott was gorgeous as hell. It mostly had to do with waking my wolf now that she was supposedly normal.
“What if she won’t come out?” Scott was possibly the only person on Earth I felt comfortable with talking about my wolf. Comfortable was not even a very good word. He’d been there the last time I’d tried to shift and couldn’t do it.
“It was the pack bond holding your wolf back, Stanzie.” He nudged my beer closer to my hand with his bottle. Ice-cold condensation dripped down the brown glass. “It’s gone now. She’ll come out.”
I cast him a doubting look.
“And if she doesn’t, I’ll be there with you. Look, we’ll shift away from the rest of the hunt. That way if there’s an issue, no one will know. But there won’t be.”
Shift away from everyone else. I took a sip from the bottle. The beer tasted bitter as my thoughts. I hadn’t participated in many Regional hunts, but when I had, I’d always shifted away from everyone else and gone the opposite direction, with Grey, Vaughn and Elena, my former pack mates, chasing after me.
Now my wolf was theoretically normal, and Scott, unwittingly, proposed the same basic concept. Screw that.
“I don’t know.” I took another sip and watched as his gray eyes filled with both compassion and exasperation. “What about Faith?”
“Have you seen her?” he said and then laughed. “She’s not shifting again until after the twins are born. She says it’s too uncomfortable.”
There was no medical reason to avoid shifting during pregnancy, but most women did prefer to avoid it after they got bigger.
“Why don’t you go with someone who you know will be a good hunt partner,” I suggested.
His seductive mouth twitched. “That would be you.”
“We may be good Advisor partners, but I don’t know about hunting, Scott.”
“Well, I do.” He put his hand on my arm, and the weight of it was so soothing I wanted to melt.
“You smell good, you know that?” I didn’t mean to say it, but the words escaped me anyway. He did. He smelled like Pack.
“Faith got me this new cologne. Made me wear it tonight.” Scott rolled his eyes.
“Pussy,” I said and he grinned.
“Hey, if it gets you to agree to hunt with me, I’m fine with it.” He gave my arm a squeeze. “At least give it some thought, Stanz, okay?”
I nodded, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t do it.
“You’re going to have to do it sometime,” was his parting shot before he walked away. “Why not do it with a friend who understands?”
“I thought you were such a dick when I first met you.” I shook my head in amazement.
Laughter was his only response.
I turned back to the bar and squared my shoulders. Maybe Scott was right. Hell, he was. I had to face my wolf. If the worst happened and she wouldn’t come out, Scott would be the only one to see it. And he understood. He was Alpha of Mayflower. He knew how my father’s pack bond had dominated the pack for thirty years and made everyone who’d activated the bond into slaves. I’d run from my birth pack and never activated the pack bond. It had remained an invisible wall between my psyche and my wolf. The reason she’d been childish and stubborn and so different from everybody’s wolves was because she couldn’t get past the pack bond.
For years I’d let her do whatever she wanted. I’d never tried to reach her. I hadn’t known about the pack bond. I’d just thought she’d been different and hadn’t wanted to force her to be like other wolves because I didn’t think she could.
Then I’d met Murphy and he convinced me she could be changed. From the start my wolf had adored his wolf. For him, she’d tried to change, but had been so frustrated because of the unactivated pack bond. The more we pushed, the more she suffered. She’d been so mad at me and her circumstances. She refused to come out the last time I’d tried to shift. But there was nothing holding her back now. Scott was right.
If we hunted together, she’d come out, she’d be normal. And what the hell would that be like? Even if she did look for Murphy’s wolf and he wasn’t there, she could handle it as a normal wolf. After all, I was handling it as a normal human.
I snorted and drank more of my damn beer.
* * * *
“Can I talk to you?” Jason Allerton approached the dessert table at the same time I did. Neither of us was aware of the other until we both reached for the same piece of cheesecake.
When I spoke, he let his hand drop away in an indication I should take the cake.
“Please?” I added when he didn’t say anything.
Behind us the dance floor was full of couples moving sinuously under flashing strobe lights. Faith’s laughter rang out above the music as she and Scott danced together and he whispered crazy, naughty things in her ear.
Alan hadn’t left the floor since the music started. He’d had a different partner for nearly every song, including me once. He was full of confidence, brimming over with excitement.
“I’ve met more people tonight than I have my entire frigging life, Stanzie,” he’d confided to me as we’d danced together.
“Found a hunt partner?” I’d teased, and he blushed.
“She asked me,” he whispered, awestruck, as if the thought of it was too weird to be possible.
He’d changed so much from the frightened, sheltered boy he’d been when I’d visited Mayflower two months ago.
“Who’s initiating your wolf?” I’d asked him and he’d grinned.
“Dorothy. Can you believe it? She asked me if she could. She remembered when I’d asked her and she’d turned me down because of the pack bond. But there is no pack bond now, so she asked me. It’s going great, Stanzie.”
I remembered I’d told Scott about Alan’s preference for a teacher and wondered if he’d had a hand in Dorothy’s recent offer. I suspected he had. He was a good Alpha.
The slice of cheesecake was the last one. Bright red strawberries decorated the creamy frosting, and I could smell their juice above all the other desserts. My mouth watered at the thought of sinking my teeth into one of the plump, ripe berries.
“Not tonight.” Jason’s voice was cold, as if he didn’t even know me and I was some stranger who wanted an audience when he had better things to do. Right now better things to do translated into what dessert should he choose now that he couldn’t have the cheesecake.
“Take it.” I pushed the cheesecake in his direction. “I bet you’re getting it for Wren. Cheesecake’s her favorite. She never got it much. Paul preferred chocolate cream pie.”
He pulled his hand back from the piece of chocolate cream pie he’d selected and I walked away.
* * * *
I needed air so I pushed open the reception hall door and walked out into the salty breeze.
A wooden deck overlooked the sandy beach. Moonlight streamed down upon the