Page 42 of Triumph of the Wolf
“That’s all right. I can handle him if he gets violent.” I grimaced. “Or handsy.”
Duncan’s eyes closed to slits. “I fully acknowledge that you canhandle him, but if he does either of those things, I won’t be able to keep myself from intervening.”
Since my own savage instincts could take over my rational mind when the werewolf magic came upon me, I neither doubted him nor would I blame him if that happened. I understood all too well. But I also didn’t want to put Chad in a position where Duncan might kill him. He was a sleaze, and I didn’t want him in my life, but I didn’t hate him enough to want him dead. And I definitely didn’t want him to be killed in front of our son. Nor did I want Cameron to be in any danger. The thought that he might be, if Duncan lost himself and turned savage, sent an icy chill down my spine.
“Maybe you should keep an eye on those guys then.” I pointed in the direction the rest of the group was disappearing. “They might be less excited about their resort plans if their fenders were all ripped off.”
Duncan hesitated but then nodded. “All right.”
He stepped back enough to bow toward me, then headed across the stream and leaped lightly over it without making a sound.
A part of me wanted to call him back, second-guessing my decision to confront Chad on my own, but for all the reasons I’d just been thinking about I didn’t. Instead, I crept in the direction his voice had come from.
The first person to come into view was Cameron, not Chad. With a fur-lined parka on, he sat perched on a boulder and tapping at his phone. As I well knew, there wasn’t muchreception out here, but maybe he was playing a game that didn’t require it. I peered about, expecting Chad nearby, but didn’t see him. I did see a hole in the rocky side of the draw, branches dangling down and half obscuring it.
The old mine shaft that had interested the group?
There were also a couple of pools of water between boulders, steam wafting from them. They didn’t look as muddy and unappealing as Jasmine had implied, but they wouldn’t have made me promptly thinkresortif I’d stumbled across them while on a hike. It hardly seemed worth dealing with werewolves over, but I supposed that was why the developers were trying to buy up all the land, in the hope that the werewolves would move away without a confrontation.
I considered stopping to speak with Cameron, but he’d been in Seattle for however long and hadn’t reached out to me. I also worried about what he thought after seeing me deck Chad the night before. And he’d seen Duncan hurl Chad over a car. He might not want anything to do with me ever again.
Trying not to feel like a coward, I skirted Cameron. Leaving him to his game, I continued up the draw. Chad wouldn’t have wandered that far, would he? Unless… Could he know about the cave and have gone in that direction?
No, a rustling sounded up ahead. I crept closer until I spotted Chad’s back between the trees. My senses picked up on something magical. Chad was hunched over whatever it was.
I moved forward and to the side, debating whether to call out or not. I wanted to confront him about scheming with the real estate developers, but I didn’t know what I would say. Was he even doing anything illegal? Besides trespassing?
The arm holding the magical device was in a sling, making me feel guilty that he’d been hurt the night before. At least, if he was using it somewhat, the bone shouldn’t be broken. He might only have sprained his wrist.
Soft beeping came from Chad’s device. I blinked. It reminded me of Duncan’s magic detector, and when I stepped to the side enough so that I could see it, itlookeda lot like it too, a box-shaped device with a couple of divining-rod-like antennae sticking out of it. They quivered slightly to accompany the beeping.
“Huh.” Chad bent forward and plucked up a mushroom. “Youcan’tbe what it’s excited about.”
To my human eyes, the mushroom didn’t glow, but it might have if I’d been in my wolf form. Unusual purple speckles on its blue cap reminded me of one of the specimens at Radomir’s mushroom farm.
“I’m looking forwerewolfartifacts,” Chad told the machine and tossed the mushroom into the bushes.
“Why do you obsessively seek them out?” I asked, stepping forward. “I’ve never understood that.”
13
Chad droppedthe magic detector as he spun toward me, utter shock on his face.
That surprised me. Had he not realized the werewolves up here were my family and considered that he might run into me?
“What are you doing here, Luna?” Chad glanced around, as if seeking the rest of his group and hoping for backup in dealing with me. Or was it more that he worried that Duncan might be in the area?
Good guess…
“My family owns this territory,” I said, though I had no idea who this parcel belonged to. It had sounded like it might be part of Mom’s property. If so, she had a lot more land than I’d realized. “The question, I believe, is what areyoudoing here?”
“Like I told you, I’m working with a real estate developer who called me in because of concerns aboutwerewolves.” Chad raised his eyebrows, then looked in the direction of my mother’s cabin, though we were a mile away from it and couldn’t see anything but trees.
“The werewolves own this land. Your developer doesn’t have any right to be here.”
“He said he’s wrapping up a deal to get it.”
“Uh-huh. He’s a bigger schemer than you are. He’snotgetting this land.”
