Impulse: Southern Arcana, Book 5 (21 page)

Sera couldn’t tell if Carmen wanted her to ask or not, so she settled on a middle ground. “He’s good at it. He’s honest in a way you can’t fake. It’s not about being nice or loved or telling them what they want to hear, and they know it. The wolves here are starting to trust him.”

She exhaled slowly. “I hope so. We need for them to trust someone. No one came close to being this open with me and Alec when we travelled through last year.”

“They’ll trust him. It’s about…” Sera groped for the perfect moment to sum up the past two days. There had been plenty of awkward interactions as wary men tried to keep Julio away from exhausted women with bruised eyes.

Most had been through too much to trust, even when they hoped so hard it hurt to see. Sera had stared at those same eyes reflected in her own mirror, the tight set and the dark circles and brittle weariness that came with not knowing if you’d ever feel safe again.

One man couldn’t erase that look, not even Julio. Not even for her, and certainly not for a group of strangers. But he hadn’t tried. “Football,” she blurted out, then answered Carmen’s confused look by telling her about the way Julio had perplexed the adults by engaging the fifteen-year-old wolf who’d first approached her in a spirited discussion of football that had turned into an impromptu game all the children had rushed to join.

Most of them hadn’t been any good, but the older children had been gentle with the younger ones. By the time Sydney had waded in to captain the opposing team, it had turned into a jumble of shapeshifter kids laughing so hard their parents managed to smile.

Not trust. Not from one night or one game. But everything they did would build on it, and she found herself telling Carmen that too, unable to completely leash her own excitement. “I’m not making it worse here. The people who need us the most, they’re the ones the Conclave and councils have been hurting. Those people don’t trust the ruling wolves, but no one can look at me and say I’m a part of that world.”

Carmen’s eyes glistened, but she covered the tears with a smile and a quick nod. “Then I hope we can help you and Julio help them.”

The tears weren’t precisely the reaction Sera had been hoping for, but Alec stepped through the front door before she could comment. “Good, you’re both still here. Syd and Patty are introducing Franklin to the wolves who needed a doctor. Carmen, you’re right. It’s time to bring Julio and Andrew into the loop and get this done.”

The cryptic words meant nothing to Sera, but Carmen breathed a sigh of relief as Julio walked inside too. “I don’t like that we had to keep it from them in the first place.”

He dropped to sit beside Sera. “Keep what from us?”

“The end of the world,” Alec said gruffly, and Sera tensed before she realized Alec was smiling under that fake scowl, and it couldn’t have been a reference to Wesley’s tense warning.

If Wesley had told Alec at all.

Julio paused with a cookie halfway to his mouth. “You seem awful chipper about it. Care to elaborate?”

Alec and Carmen exchanged a look, and she spoke. “The Conclave is dissolving—on a trial basis for now. The members are heading to their home districts to take care of business.”

Shock made Sera blurt out the first thing that bubbled up. “What did you
do
to them?”

Alec huffed. “Good to see you’re still a brat.”

But Julio narrowed his eyes and stared at them both. “You told them people were getting ready to revolt, didn’t you?”

“Among other things.” Alec sat down, held up a hand and ticked the points off on his fingers. “Without having to maintain homes in New York, they have considerably more resources. If they’re back at home, they can keep an eye on the troublemaking wolves and the members of their councils who might be thinking about replacing them. And, most importantly, we have immunity within our own territories. No more getting permission from everyone else before they can make changes in their region.”

Carmen laid her hand on his arm. “It’s the first step. It didn’t come easy, but it’s a big one.”

“A huge one.” Alec leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “It was a hard choice. Because life’s going to get a lot better in the Southeast…”

Sera squeezed Julio’s hand as she finished the sentence. “But it could get worse other places.”

“What happens then?” Julio asked. “If someone goes home and decides that making the peasants dance is fun entertainment?”

“Then the rest of us declare this a failed experiment and go after them.” Alec shrugged. “It’s a calculated risk, but Ochoa in the Southwest is happy to play nice based on my mother’s relation to him, and Enrica can’t cause too much trouble in the Northwest now that her son’s married to the Alpha’s daughter. The only person
not
allied with us through blood or marriage is Hoffman in the Midwest, but he’s one of the more moderate leaders.”

Every time he mentioned a region his gaze flicked to Sera, and she got the impression he was explaining so blatantly so she could follow the conversation without feeling stupid about her ignorance of wolf politics. Coming from Alec—someone who’d been friends with her father longer than she’d been alive—the tiny gesture might as well have been a ringing endorsement.

“So we’ll be on our own,” Julio mused. “That sounds good.”

Alec smiled. “Damn right it does. And all that money that’s been wasted on Conclave business? I’m funneling it right back into places like this. Which is why
you’re
going to be busy. They won’t talk to me, so it’s your job to hit every wolf settlement in the Southeast. I want to know how many there are in each pack, how much has been taken from them, and what they need to live without desperation. Because desperation is dangerous to all of us.”

“Forget dangerous,” Carmen murmured, frowning. “It’s heartbreaking, not to mention unnecessary.”

“I know, honey.” Alec covered Carmen’s hand and squeezed it. “We’ll take care of it because it’s wrong, but we’ll get away with it because it’s smart.”

“Because it won’t look weak,” Sera said softly. The one thing she understood about survival among wolves. “They’ll trust you more easily if there’s something in it for you. If a strange wolf wanted to give me something that wasn’t in their best interest, I’d think they were trying to trick me. Or buy me.”

It seemed to mollify Carmen. “The money is the most urgent need. After we’ve taken care of setting up the packs for financial self-sufficiency, we can do things like open more clinics.”

“Carmen and I have to go back up to New York for one final Conclave meeting,” Alec said, looking to Julio. “I’ll talk to Andrew and Kat on the way. There are a few packs I want to send them to, ones made up entirely of turned wolves. And I have a couple towns I’d like you to visit before you head back to New Orleans, if Sera doesn’t mind.”

Sera glanced at Julio, unsure what to say, especially in the face of Wesley Dade’s vision. But he only nodded. “Wherever you need us to go.”

Us. She twined her fingers with his and turned back to Alec. “Teri has been wanting to take on more shifts at Dixie John’s. I can call and tell him I need more time. And I’d already decided to take summer semester off from school.”

Alec nodded. “Anna told me she got Josh pinned down long enough to have a witch she knows put a magical tag on him. If he strays more than a hundred miles away from his trailer, she’ll know.”

Julio’s jaw tightened. “Does she have standing orders on how to deal with that?”

“Anna doesn’t take orders from me.” Alec’s gaze shifted to Sera, and her stomach flip-flopped at the coldness in those brown eyes. This was the wolf who had taken vengeance for his first wife’s death with such unrelenting brutality that people still spoke of it in whispers.

His words now were brutal too. “No orders, but Anna agrees with me, and I had her deliver a message so there won’t be any misunderstandings. If he makes a move toward New Orleans, or
any
place you happen to be, his life is forfeit.”

Sera wanted to feel relief, or even nothing. God, she wanted to feel numb. Not this sick, twisted tangle of grief and confusion and fierce satisfaction. “I understand.”

“Then we can hope he’ll know better.” Julio rose. “Let’s take a walk, huh?”

Alec and Carmen didn’t seem surprised by the abrupt offer, leaving Sera to wonder how green she’d turned. Or maybe pale, the sickly white pallor that made her freckles stand out like a cartoon version of the measles.

She let Julio tug her to her feet and out the door and caught only a glimpse of her own reflection.

Pale and spotty. Great.

Julio rubbed her arm. “Anna will do what she has to do, but only what she
has
to do. You know that.”

“I don’t have feelings for Josh.” She winced as the words came out, wanted to cringe at how defensive they sounded. But she felt defensive, not to mention humiliated. “I know you know that. A lot of me wants him dead, because I don’t want to spend my whole life waiting for him.”

“A lot of me wants Josh dead too,” he confessed. “And not necessarily for the right reasons. So I get not being able to separate the rational reasons from the rest of it, from the selfish shit. Trust me, I get it.”

She clung to his hand, because his touch—his
power
—made her brave. “I’ll tell you my selfish reasons if you tell me yours.”

“Mine are easy. He hurt you.” Julio exhaled sharply. “No, that’s one of the good ones. The selfish one is that wolves don’t like competition.”

“No competition.” But that was a blunted truth, and he’d been honest. “None that matters,” she corrected softly. “You’ll never be a coyote, and I’ll never be a wolf. But the mating urge isn’t all that magical. It’s just another way of not having control.”

“It doesn’t change the facts. I can’t kill the guy unless I have to, and I can’t because it would be too pat and convenient for me.”

Sera ducked under his arm and pressed close to his side. “Another part of me wants him
alive
, not dead. I don’t want to have to face the possibility that he was always a crazy, dangerous bastard, and I was a stupid, gullible kid. I don’t want to be that dumb.”

“It wasn’t stupidity, honey. It was…” He shrugged. “Instinct. We’re all at the mercy of it, except when we’re not. That’s about as simple as it gets, and it’s still pretty fucking complicated.”

“It was a little bit stupid.” She sighed and rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Maybe the part I need to remember is that all teenagers are stupid. At least I survived to get smarter, right?”

“Arguable, I guess, since you’re with me now.”

“Good point. You’re a dumbass.” She bumped her hip against his as they followed the path toward the woods where the pack had run the first night. In the distance she could pick up the faint sounds of the trailer campground where entire families were packed into spaces that should have been claustrophobic for one or two.

It would be better soon. Because of Julio—because of
both
of them. “Do you really want me to travel with you? I’d understand if it’s too much, or too fast.”

“Hey, you started this with me.” He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Now you have to help finish it.”

“All right, I’ll be your first lady. On one condition.”

He squinted at her. “Which is?”

She tugged him around and stretched up to whisper the words against his lips. “On our way to each town, we get to spend one night in a hotel doing nothing but screwing each other silly and sleeping late the next day.”

“Deal.” He kissed her, quick and soft. “A day off between stops. It’s the least we deserve.”

I love you.
The words came to her lips, but she bit them back. It was too soon.

Even if it already felt true.

Chapter Twelve

The distinctive beep of a truck backing up echoed across the clearing, and Julio sidestepped a mound of freshly dug earth to greet Sydney. “Everything going smoothly?”

“Like magic.” Arms crossed, Sydney surveyed the bubbling activity in the heart of his domain with an expression torn between excitement and dumbfounded shock. “Alec Jacobson’s better than Santa Claus. Shows up, dumps a few grand worth of trailers on us, eats a couple dozen cookies and disappears back north.”

More like a few hundred grand, though Sydney probably knew the exact amount, down to the dollar. Julio eyed the clearing, as well as the new dirt paths meandering out into the forest. Gone were the tents and old, leaky campers, replaced by a cluster of new single and doublewide trailers. “Will it be enough room until the others get set up?”

“Hell yeah.” Sydney nodded to the nearest trailer, which was already set up and buzzing with activity. “Four bedrooms and a living room with plenty of space to curl up. Jacuzzi tubs too. I think Patty’s jealous.”

Sera’s laughter drifted out of an open window. She’d disappeared into the newly finished trailer with Patty, an antique sewing machine and an army of teenage wolves who popped out the front door from time to time on various errands. Sydney watched with an indulgent smile as the latest girl hopped down the temporary stairs and dashed for the house, a list clutched in one hand. “Patty’s going to miss your girl too. You promise to bring her back for a visit, huh?”

Julio nodded through the sharp stab of longing. Sera had a life, for Christ’s sake, and she’d likely be busy the next time he had to drive over. “Yeah, absolutely. Whenever she wants to come.”

“Good.” His smile faded. “I know you have to hit the road tonight. I’m not friends with many of the rich wolves in the Southeast, but I’m on speaking terms with most of the poorer alphas in southern Alabama and Georgia. Word about what you did here’s likely to spread. What should I tell them when they call?”

The need was there, not only in Sydney’s pack, but in others as well. “I have money,” Julio mused aloud. “Most of it used to be my uncle’s, so it’s only fitting I redistribute some of it. If they call you, pass on the number to council headquarters. We may have to start inviting people out there to tell us what they need.” Especially if Alec was going to be back in New Orleans, like he’d said.