“I’ll help clean up after breakfast,” Benjamin said, glancing around at all the clutter. He liked things tidy.
“Get some of the others to help you,” Roman called out after him, striding back towards his tent. “I’ll be out chopping firewood.”
As Roman passed Bertram’s tent, he heard a woman’s voice raised in shrill rebuke. Bertram was starting to get serious with some chick from Silver Peak. The two were already having problems.
“You can’t tell me to be exclusive if you’re still out chasing tail!” the woman yelled. “And don’t tell me you’re not—my sister told me about Friday night!”
Roman shook his head. This wasn’t going to end well.
He began taking a mental tally of all the pack members he’d already seen that morning; it was his job to keep track of them.
There were twenty in all. Marcus wasn’t there, and neither was Zeke, he realized. When they’d been out at the Hootenanny tavern the night before, Zeke had said something about spending the night with a girl in town.
Marcus hadn’t gone out with them, and his tent was set back from the others in the woods. He was an antisocial A-hole; a pack like Roman’s was his only hope of staying in the good graces of the council.
“Benjamin. How long has it been since Marcus checked in?” Roman called.
Benjamin, who was kneeling on the ground scooping beer cans into a trash bag—he just couldn’t help himself—called back, “Haven’t seen him since Friday night. I stopped by his tent yesterday; he wasn’t there. Pretty sure he’s been out roaming around the woods by himself.”
Roman let out a muffled curse. Marcus just had to push it. Always.
Roman was really trying to cut the guy some slack. His entire pack was a refuge for shifters who couldn’t fit in anywhere else, or who wanted to leave an ugly past behind them, so he tried to help out when he could. That was why Roman regularly faked the monthly reports he sent in to the council, pretending that Marcus was spending the allotted amount of time with the pack. He’d had Marcus put his paw print on multiple check-in sheets at one time to cover for the times that he didn’t check in, and he was almost out of the faked documents. This was getting old.
“Want me to go get him?” Benjamin offered.
“Nah, I’ll do it as soon as I call Zeke and see where he’s at.”
He headed back towards his tent, shaking his head in annoyance. Marcus was going to have to shape up, or…well, there weren’t really any other options.
Hell, he hated the council as much as anybody, but trying to ignore them was like trying to ignore gravity. They existed. You dealt with them.
They’d been created after the shifter experiments of the 1930s had been exposed—by terrorists. First a clandestine branch of the government had secretly used the genes of athletes spliced with the genes of animals to synthesize a substance that caused humans to morph into animal form. They’d planned on creating an army of soldiers with the strength of bears and lions, the scenting ability of wolves, the ability to climb like monkeys or burrow like moles…
Then a terrorist group had stolen the substance, manufactured mass quantities, and placed it in the water supply of several major cities around the globe. Tens of thousands of humans had been turned into shifters against their will—and it was a genetic mutation that was passed on to their children.
Chaos had resulted. Humans had formed mobs, had rioted in fear of these shifter creatures.
The council had supposedly been created to protect shifters, but really they were like an annoying government nanny, always poking their nose where it didn’t belong.
Roman shrugged. He’d known when he became Alpha that he’d have to deal with them from time to time. He’d figure out something for Marcus; he wasn’t giving up on the surly, annoying bastard.
He pushed aside the tent flap and climbed in.
He had a small generator set outside the tent to keep his mini-fridge going and his cell phone charged.
The girl was sitting up now, hair rumpled, sleepy.
“Hey, baby, want to go another round?” she slurred.
Moderately tempting.
He shrugged. “Sure, Brittany. Right after I make a phone call.”
“Brittany’s my twin sister! I’m Bethanny! Have you been sleeping with my sister?” she shrieked indignantly.
Roman had to pause to think. One thing about being a single Alpha, he never lacked for female attention.
“Screw you!” It came out in a shrill wail. She scrambled to her feet, and grabbed her clothes. She stomped out of the tent, naked, with her clothes in her arms, as he texted Zeke.
The reply came back a minute later. Hey, bro, be back in a couple hours. Everything’s good here. Not a lot of detail. Not that it was any of Roman’s business who Zeke was screwing or whether he showed up on time.