Watcher by Holley Trent

CHAPTER EIGHT

In six months, Leticia had cataloged a lot of Jim’s “new” and interesting moods, but “thorough frustration” hadn’t been one before. At least, not in his two-legged form. His wolf was less restrained about showing her his aggravation, which was why Leticia’s wolf had gotten with the program pretty quickly.

Leticia had finally sorted out that it wasn’t yellowjackets swarming in her head but the echoes of a caged wolf’s constant but ignored growls. Leticia hadn’t recognized what it was because her inner animal had presented herself so differently than other Wolves had described theirs. Leticia hadn’t relied on that part of herself for survival instincts because she was already overcompensating to mask her hearing deficit. She’d chalked up the pent-up anxiety to be a Wolf’s standard baseline, and it simply wasn’t.

Unlike the more human part of Leticia, the wolf part didn’t communicate well or voluntarily. She was easy to offend but also easy to soothe by those who knew how.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, Jim was going to let Leticia have whatever she wanted. Leticia’s wolf had wanted to argue about that one percent because she felt entitled to liberty and pleasure after the life they’d had. She quickly figured out that there was no deprivation with him taking care of her. There was no lack of anything, and especially not his love. The wolf had wanted Jim’s bite to ensure he wouldn’t change his mind about her, but the human part of Leticia and the wolf part finally braided together within a few weeks after leaving Vegas. Bite or no bite, Jim wasn’t going to change his mind, and neither was she.

It’d taken an eighty-year-old werewolf with an oxygen tank and an aluminum walker for two-legged Jim to finally lose his shit.

“Now you know damn well I’m not the kind of shitheel who’s gonna throw my good deeds back in your face, but maybe you need reminding,” he snapped.

Leticia’s grandmother shifted her dentures with her tongue and gave Jim a long, bored stare.

“Oh boy,” Graciella murmured behind Leticia.

“She just had to be the one holdout, didn’t she?” Leticia whispered to her sister.

They’d come to a halt on the creatively named Wolf Path—the main thoroughfare between the mostly-Wolf neighborhood and greater Norseton. Abuela had gotten into her little golf cart and raced up the path, and Jim, who’d been deep into a conference with Adam, had apparently sensed the disturbance in the Wolfland homeostasis and tore off after her.

Seeing Jim streak through the quad through Lisa’s kitchen window, Leticia and Graciella followed at comparatively pathetic speeds. Jim could run a mile in under four minutes. There was no way they could keep up with that without changing into better bras first.

“We didn’t bring you all the way out here for you to poke the beast,” Jim said. “Now maybe we haven’t kept you busy enough. You don’t like Bingo or water aerobics? That’s fine. Maybe Queen Tess can find you a job or something. There’s bound to be some work for a stubborn old Wolf with a death wish.”

“I got things to do,” Abuela said.

“Yeah, that’s what you keep telling us. And we know what those things are. You think we’re dumb, Gloria. You thought that even collectively, we weren’t going to figure out what you were doing.”

“My friends are there.”

Jim gritted his teeth and shoved his hands into his hair. There was actually some there for him to pull because he’d been too busy for a haircut. He spent every minute of free time fixing their house and the apartment Leticia’s landlord had generously let her keep as a wedding gift. They wanted to be able to use the place as a temporary crash pad for the new Wolves who didn’t need quite as much handholding in the community anymore.

“Let me get this straight,” he ground out. “We pulled off one of the stealthiest missions in Norseton pack history to surgically excise the rest of your family from that Delaware group one by one. You made every excuse under the sun to stay behind. We thought maybe your thinking wasn’t so good anymore and that we should do the thinking for you.”

Leticia whistled nervously and shifted her gaze to the sky when Abuela snapped her focus toward her granddaughters. Graciella had suddenly decided that a withering cactus next to the path was very interesting to look at.

All of their mates—Jim, Finn, and Colt had been extremely respectful and solicitous of the Modesto family newcomers. They wanted them to feel comfortable and welcomed in the place they’d made their forever home. They wanted them to feel safe.

But enough was enough, and they were probably all stunned that it had to be Jim putting Abuela in her place. The sisters had all bet Colt would be the first mate to break.

“Don’t look at them,” Jim said. “I think for myself. This lecture is one-hundred-percent Jim Mason. You think you’re gonna hitchhike your way back east so you can socialize with the same Wolves who’ve been telling you for twenty years that none of it mattered anyway? That you should accept the way things are and find comfort in your prayers? How’s that thing go? Faith without works is dead? Well, that’s what your li’l Wolf friends don’t understand. Make new friends.”

Abuela nudged her dentures again.

“You need some help?”

Abuela fidgeted the tubing of her oxygen tank and stared into the distance.

After a few minutes, she said, “I don’t know nobody.”

Leticia and Graciella both let out breaths they’d apparently been holding and went to her.

“Abuela, you should have said something,” Leticia said. “I know you feel different. You’re the one senior Wolf in a sea of witches, but these people aren’t going to exclude you. They want to learn all about you.”

“I’m too old to make friends.”

“No, you are not. You make friends now the same way you made them when you were a little kid. You share your toys and talk about what snacks you like the best. I bet they would love to see your cookie cutter collection. You’ve got every shape Wilton ever sold.”

Abuela appeared to at least be thinking about it.

Laughing, Graciella rearranged Abuela’s collapsible walker and oxygen tank in the cart back and squeezed onto the front row bench. “Come on. I bet the hens are watching their stories on the big TV at the bakery. You can get yourself some sugar-free cake and a cup of decaf and plop yourself at the fringes. I’ll go with you and sit for a while. They all know me.”

Abuela put her hands on the steering wheel and stared up the path.

Jim knelt at the cart side and gave the key a twist in the ignition. “Are you afraid of being okay? Is that what it is?”

“I don’t like you.”

“Cool.”

“You supposed to be putting in floors in Leticia’s house.”

Leticia held her tongue and tried not to laugh.

It always seemed so ridiculous how the family had started having even the most mundane conversations at higher volumes just for her sake. They sounded so aggressive, even when they were talking about things like jellybeans and zinnias. Eventually, she’d have to tell them the hearing aid helped a little. With it in, she had maybe twenty-five percent sound perception on that side, but that was such a massive change over the previous state that it was almost like a cure. It was funny how the most modest of improvements could be such relief. Her brain didn’t have to work so hard.

“I’ll get around to it,” Jim said. “Or maybe I won’t. Maybe if I sit around and twiddle my thumbs, you’ll decide to take up the hobby of nagging me to get shit done. Can’t run away from home if you’re busy micromanaging your grandson-in-law.”

“You weren’t raised right. You need help.”

Jim nodded. “True. Go eat your cake, Gloria.”

Harrumphing, Abuela put her foot on the pedal and started them slowly away. She called back, “I’m going. But not because you said to.”

Once she was out of earshot, Jim shook his head, stood, and said to Leticia, “I don’t think she’s leaving now.”

Leticia hopped onto his back and waited for him to lace his arms around her legs. She kissed the side of his head and laughed when he bounced her onto a slightly higher perch.

He started walking back toward the Wolf quad.

“You’ll probably have to sleep with one eye open for a little while,” she teased.

“I do that anyway. Gotta make sure that wolf in you doesn’t change her mind and decide she wants to suffocate me.”

She gave his ribs a squeeze between her thighs. “Stop. I have her under control. Remember?”

“Mm-hmm. Supposedly you do, but I have my doubts sometimes.”

“Like when?”

“Remember last night when I said I ran out of tile? You sat on my face.”

“I thought that was what you said. Sit on your face.”

She’d been confused at the out-of-the-blue request, but she’d complied. She liked experimenting, and Jim always had ideas.

“I said that I needed to open another case.”

She blinked and played back that series of sounds in her mind.

Then she shrugged and laughed. “That’s what you get for sleeping on my side of the bed. You were talking on the wrong side, and I had my hearing aid out. You could have told me to get off of you. I know you were tired, especially since you’d done an extra shapeshift earlier.”

“Nah. I like when you initiate. You never do, so I didn’t want to clear up the misunderstanding.”

Leticia furrowed her brow and adjusted the drape of her arms around his neck. “I thought you liked the control.” She certainly liked it. He was teaching her so much about the things her body liked, and he always kept her guessing.

“I like a little control, darlin’, but sometimes, I want you to let me know you want me. I can tell by your scent usually, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m missing earlier cues. Last night, I didn’t sense that urge until you’d started crawling over to me.”

“Well, I didn’t have the urge until you told me I could.”

He stopped walking. “Are you trying to tell me you can get turned on at the flip of a switch?”

“I guess.” She hadn’t thought that was strange, but perhaps it was. “Obviously, if I think I’m going to get some action, I’m going to smell aroused. You’ve been waiting for me to have time to think about it?”

“And you’ve been waiting for me to initiate it?”

They were both silent for a minute.

Jim started walking again. “You gotta tell me stuff, Tish. I appreciate that we’ve gotten each other out of our shells in the past half-year.”

“Because we went out and did stuff?”

“Yep. I appreciate having those experiences because knowing all the small details about you helps me keep you happy. But for fuck’s sake, all that time, I tried to keep my hands off you most nights so you didn’t feel like that was all I wanted.”

“So, if I said I wanted it right now, would we go home and make love?”

“No. I’m mad at you.”

She giggled and gave his ribs another squeeze. “No, you’re not. You can’t be mad at me. I just need to pout. Put me down so you can see my pout.”

“The pout doesn’t work. You just think it does because I’m going to give you what you want ninety-nine percent of the time anyway.”

“So…we’re not going home?”

He trooped on in silence.

“You’re going back to your meeting with Adam?”

Adam, not Alpha, because Adam had said it made his eye twitch when people called him that. She was still getting used to it.

More silence.

“Are you still going to take me shopping tomorrow? I need new sweatpants.”

He sighed and took the left path toward Lisa and Colt’s house.

“You’re really going to leave me there?”

“I’m mad at you.”

“For not telling you I wanted you? I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

“Too late. My feelings are hurt.”

She had to put her head back so that her laugh didn’t boom directly into his ear. And because she’d come to know his sense of humor was sometimes a subversive thing, she knew exactly when to straighten up. She saw the smile threatening to bloom at the corner of his mouth.

She craned forward to kiss it, and he gave her legs an affectionate squeeze.

“I love you, Tish.”

“Love you, too.”

He set her down near Lisa’s door and gave her a full-on kiss—complete with cheek-holding and closed eyes.

When he pulled away, he winked. “Adam’s waiting on me.”

“I will be, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I could pretend not to be if you want.”

Jim showed her a new expression, and Leticia had no idea how to parse it yet. She’d seen him raise an eyebrow before, but not two at the same time. Stealing back the space between them, he grabbed her wrists together and pulled her against his body. His husky chuckle seemed to coil around her as he leaned in close to her ear. “As long as you don’t pretend you can’t remember you married me, I’ll play any game you want, darlin’. Just tell me the rules. I might even let you win.”

“I’d rather be tired out. Does that mean losing?”

“It might.” Using his lips, he traced the line of her jaw around to her mouth and put a kiss there. “When you lose, darlin’, we both still win.”

“Could I lose more than once?”

“Hush. You’re going to get yourself in trouble out here.” He pressed her hands against the shocking swell of him only to immediately dash them away. He was the worst sort of tease.

“Well, you’re trouble, remember? But I’d rather you get in me.”

Growling, he gave her a quick one-eighty spin toward the door and nudged her to it.

“Remember this later when that wolf of yours has you whining about carpet burn.”

Leticia would remember every word, and not because of the mild threats.

She’d remember because that powerful Wolf looked her in the eyes and smiled like she was something special.

And, more importantly, someone beloved.

She would never forget that for as long as she lived.