Page 8 of Sigma
“Sorry to cut you off, Lincoln, but to save you some words, I know about your pack.”
He stopped speaking and regarded me a moment before replying. “Then you may also know as we’re a non-traditional pack, a lot of folks who find they don’t fit that traditional structure request to join ours. Those who do get that opportunity voluntarily stay.”
“I do know all that.”
“And they thrive. No faking required. You won’t have to wear beta perfume ever again. I bet it turns your stomach.”
“Uh huh.” I took a big swig of my beer.
“I take it you’re not interested in taking a minute to consider my offer.”
“I prefer living away from packs. Too much risk, too complicated.”
“Well-”
I interrupted him again. “I know you guys are often called in to save wayward lone wolves from themselves, but I choose to be on my own for personal reasons. I don’t need or want anybody to ride to my rescue. I’ve done just fine for the past seventeen years.”
He raised both hands defensively. “Change your mind, reach out. Let’s change the subject. Or, if you prefer… I’ll dip.”
I should have let him dip. I also immediately regretted revealing it’s been seventeen years. That information can be used to dig into my past and Linc’s a private eye so I knew he immediately filed that tidbit away.
“Got a bottle of Jim Beam inside. Feeling like crackin’ it. You want some?”
“Got nowhere to be,” he replied. “Set up my tent here next to the camper if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
In truth, I minded. I never slept near anyone, hadn’t since I hit puberty and learned what was inside myself. But I felt a kinship with this guy, something I couldn’t explain, but chalked it up to knowing enough about the pack he comes from to know there’s a wider degree of acceptance of things outside the normal wolf shifter pack structure.
We met when we were both hired by different people in the same pack to help them oust their alpha. The problem was that the guy who hired me was an asshole with an ugly agenda. I read the situation wrong.
When I saw who the other side hired and knew Linc was one of the Arcana Falls council alphas, I took stock and watched carefully. Watched how the other private eye worked. Looked at the other perspective of the situation. And in the end, savedLincoln Fowler’s life by taking out the guy who hired me when he had a wolf shifter ending weapon aimed at Linc.
Linc tracked me down to thank me and caught that I don’t carry a scent, a fact I’ve been hiding by wearing a bottled beta pheromone whenever I’m around other shifters. His scenting abilities are unlike anyone I’ve met. He’s got the best nose I’ve ever come across and caught up with me to thank me by tracking the fake scent lingering on my vehicle and my trailer. When he didn’t ask questions about my lack of scent, I wondered if he’d clocked it. I was paranoid about it for a while.
A few months later, I was a few hours from his village for a complicated job that required work while shifted. I turn down jobs with that requirement, but the client was desperate for help and offering a fat bounty, so I called Linc up and offered him the gig.
He asked me to work it with him and split the bounty. I should’ve declined. But we worked well together. And he didn’t ask me why I refused to be the shifted wolf. I now know he was paying attention and gleaning information about me. And I guess I knew then, but for some reason it didn’t stop me.
Another job happened down the line that he hired me for and this time he saved my life, pulling my bloody and wounded wolf out of a fire. A spontaneous lunar event coupled with rage and self-preservation had me shifting against my will, but my guess is that an avalanche of burning debris knocked my wolf out.
Because my wolf was unconscious, Linc never saw just how wrong it was. He did remark on the size of it, on the teeth, and saying it’s almost as large as his. Linc read something in my reaction when I said it was a birth defect that halted the questioning.
I camped on the other side of Drowsy Hollow for three weeks after working that job and he when we ran into one another in town. Urges I now know I should’ve denied drew me to accept his invitation and pop into his village’s tavern for a few drinks. The way all that felt led me to accept his offer to camp on their land whenever I’m in the area, as much as I want.
That first visit to Roxy’s Bar, the place was packed with shifters and Roxy herself flirted with me, but I wasn’t about to take things anywhere with someone from Linc’s pack.
Either Cicely wasn’t there or I didn’t recognize her scent. I didn’t pick it up a few months later when I stopped in again, either.
I also met up for drinks in Drowsy Hollow with Linc and a few of his council members a couple times and got to know a few of them, especially Joel, who has helped me with a few cases.
Well, enough that more than one of them have asked why I’m not part of their pack. I maintain I’m happy to live as a lone wolf and placated them by saying camping there occasionally as well as connecting with them once in a while is enough. It seems to satisfy them, particularly the ones with the mindset that there’s something wrong with a lone wolf shifter, that he should be coerced into joining a pack.
Joel asked where I grew up, and I evaded the question. Since then, I know he’s had his eye on me. Joel and Linc have a lot of the same investigative skills and often work together, Joel at the computer while Linc is in the field. I’ve often wondered if they’ve tried to figure out where I come from, if they know more about me than what I’ve shared.
Hell, more about me than even I know, because I’ve never met anyone like me. The few cases I was brought in on where a shifter’s wolf was said to be feral sounded nothing like mine. Not that I know much about my wolf other than the few snippets ofvideo footage I got when I set up cameras before shifting. Linc knows about the size of it, the teeth, the lack of a scent, but recently, he found out about the rage. The danger. And why I’ve been drawn to stay here.
Linc and his council will undoubtedly come to me tomorrow morning with ideas. I have no doubt they put their heads together as soon as they watched me park at the motel and will try to talk me around to whatever plan they and the Young coven come up with.
