Page 14 of Claimed by the Pack

6

Ridge

“I've never been into humans,” the old wolf said as he stuffed another handful of chips in his mouth.

They'd picked up the old wolf around the same time they found Chase. He never told me exactly how old he was, but if I had to guess I'd say around eighty.

We were on a stake out, on a Friday night.

For the past three weeks, I hated Friday nights. I longed to see Cheyenne again and thinking about those nights at the club, just sitting and talking to her and gazing into her beautiful eyes was killing me. Before I even realized what I was doing, I started to talk about her...and I even told my partner for the night, an old guy named Granite, that I'd lost my mind, drugged and kidnapped her.

The rest of the pack didn't know about all that.

The alphas had kept it all between us and I was grateful. As the days passed, I felt guiltier about what I had done. It was the way of my ancestors, but times had changed and I knew I had to grow and change along with them.

“So all these extra shifts you've been doing, and those toilets I saw you fixing on the compound...all that was your punishment for what you did?”

“Yeah. Extra shifts, less pay, dirty jobs and the threat of being expelled if anything like this ever happens again.”

It was infuriating to be told what to do like a child, but these were orders that I was afraid I couldn't afford to defy. Being a lone wolf is about as risky as things can get for one of us. We need our pack to sustain our lives and continue to hide our identities from the humans that would come at us with the figurative pitch forks and torches.

But sadly, if I thought there was any chance I'd still end up with Cheyenne I might take the risk.

I hated to give up, but she had been so incredibly freaked out that day three weeks ago when Chelsea took her home that I was sure she'd run screaming in the other direction if we ever came face to face. I suppose the good news was that she had made up a story about where she was those two days and as far as we could tell, she hadn't told a soul about us.

“I never really knew a human, before Chelsea, Clay, Will, Titan and Manny,” I told him, trying to think of something that would keep me from talking about her...and how badly I wanted her, still.

“I've known plenty of them,” Granite said. “There was this one hooker down in Memphis...human as they come, but this chick was into wolves. She used to give us a fifty percent discount if we'd agree to change for her before we left at the end of the night. I guess everybody has their preferences, and their fetishes.”

I chuckled and said, “So Granite, why don't you have a mate?”

“I had mine, son. My Racine and I were together for fifty years before our pack was discovered and we were forced out of Memphis. We lived for a while in the Black Hills, but the winters were hell and the pack was slowly dying off. Moved from there to Arkansas back in '95, but got caught up in a war between two packs and lost a bunch more of our younger people. Racine got sick there, got a bad case of Lyme disease.

Normally, our immune systems can fight off just about anything, but my sweet Racine was already up there for years and all the travels had caused her to lose a lot of weight...her poor body just couldn't handle all of it.

I lost her on the way to California.

By the time we got to Mexico it was only me and one of the pups left of the pack. We stowed away on a boat and ended up in Australia for a while.”

I didn't question what he was doing with the hooker in Memphis if he had, his “Racine,” not out loud anyways. “You have a pup?”

He looked sad as he said, “I did. You know Australia doesn't have any wolves, indigenous ones, anyways. So the dingoes weren't too happy to see us. The problem with the dingoes are how sneaky they are. The son of a bitches attacked us in our sleep, 8 of them. The boy was amazing. He fought off at least five of them on his own. When all was said and done, there were six dead dingoes and the other two ran off and didn't come back. We were both pretty torn up, but I've always healed quickly and I guess I just assumed the boy would too. He seemed to be healing, but one of his wounds got infected and within days, he was gone. After that I was just lost, wandering the world with no purpose...and then the Pack found me. I tell you boy, you don't ever want to go off alone. It's a harsh world we live in.”

I nodded.

I knew he was right, but at the same time I spent so much of my time feeling alone.

All I ever wanted was a family, besides my pack, a mate and some pups of my own. My thoughts were interrupted by the motion of the door we'd been watching all day.

It was finally swinging open.

We were hired by an insurance company that thought there was something fishy about a payout they'd recently made to a widow on the island. The police had done an investigation when the man's car went off the side of a cliff and ended in a fiery crash. His body was burned beyond recognition and he was declared dead. The insurance wrote a hefty check to the widow, and then almost immediately hired us.

According to Clay, they think the man faked his own death. We had been watching his widow for two weeks. She sure didn't seem to be grieving at all. She was busy all the time...spending all that money on having her home redecorated, buying a new car and a lot trips to the mainland to shop for designer clothes and jewelry. But, we hadn't seen any sign of her husband, or any man in her life...at first. Then one day when I was watching the house, the man who tended to the lawns and gardens arrived.

The problem was that he wasn't the same man we had photos of, the same man who had been doing it all along. He was heavier and older.

I pulled up the photo of McAvoy on my phone and started to compare the two. The caretaker had a thinner nose than McAvoy, different color hair and eyes and a scar on his cheek...but I would still swear it was the same man. I ran that by the alphas and after careful scrutiny of the photos, they all agreed.

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