The Porch Wolf

Olivia Lawrence’s POV

Anita drove until the sun was up, and we pulled off the interstate as we approached Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “Pancakes all right with everyone?”

“PANCAKES, YAY!” Vicki had woken ten minutes earlier and was a little sore and crabby from being in the booster seat all night. I couldn’t blame her, my neck had a crick in it, and I’d had to wipe the drool from my face when I woke up.

“IHOP it is,” Anita said.

“Just pull in front and get out, I’ll fill the tank and come back to you,” Mike said.

“Sounds good.” She stopped in front of the doors, and I unbuckled Vicki and helped her out. Mike drove off as we reached the door. “Let me check it out first,” she said as she went in.

I stretched my aching body out as Vicki copied me. “My butt is sore,” she said.

“Mine too.”

“Where is Unky Leo?”

I knew she was going to ask, and I didn’t want to tell her the truth yet. We needed to be somewhere I could let her cry it all out. Hell, I needed a place to cry it out, but a pancake house wasn’t that place. “Leo and Adrienne are busy in Atlanta. We’re going on an adventure instead.”

“Really?” Her eyes got wide as she looked around. “Where are we?”

“Louisiana,” I said. “Do you know how the Mississippi River begins in Minnesota?”

“At Lake Eyetacka,” she said.

“Itasca,” I corrected. We had visited last summer with my Grandmother; we had jumped across the rocks where the river started in a bay on the Northwoods lake. It was only twenty feet across, while by the time it got near us, it was a big river. “We’re almost to the end. After breakfast, we’ll drive over the Mississippi again, close to where it goes into the Gulf of Mexico.”

Anita waved us in, so I held open the door, and we walked into the restaurant. “This way,” the waitress said. A minute later, we were seated in a booth with a booster seat for Vicki. She put down three menus and a paper kid’s menu with some crayons. We ordered drinks, and by the time Mike was back, we were ready to order. “What would you like, young lady,” she asked Vicki.

“Chicken-fried steak smothered and covered, with eggs sunny-side up and extra pancakes instead of hash browns,” Vicki told her. The waitress looked at me and raised an eyebrow; I nodded, and she wrote it down.

“I’ll have the same with the hash browns and a side of bacon,” I said. Mike ordered a steak omelet, and Anita a breakfast combo. “I told Vicki we were on an adventure,” I said. I continued over the link to the adults. “I said Leo and Adrienne were busy.”

“Are you excited?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “What’s is Loo-see-ana?”

“We’re going to drive until around lunchtime so we can get to Texas. We’ll find a place by the beach where we can stay a few days.”

“Beach? The OCEAN? SHARKS?” She was bouncing in her seat.

“Yes, yes, and maybe,” Anita said. “I hope we don’t see any big sharks with Sharkbait in the water,” she said with a smile. “We’d find out who has the bigger chompers!”

“Yay!” We finished breakfast and laughed at the waitresses’ eyes as she saw Vicki’s bulging stomach. I took my daughter to wash up as Mike paid the bill.

“Get out to the car now; another werewolf couple just walked in,” Mike told me. “Don’t look, just walk out.” I made sure Vicki was ready and picked her up; I didn’t want to be dragging her if something happened.

Mike was standing near the entrance, and I walked past him and out before he moved. Anita was waiting by the car; she buckled Vicki in while I got in the driver’s seat. Mike took the passenger seat. “Just go,” he said as soon as the doors closed.

“Who were they,” I asked as I pulled out of the lot.

“I don’t know. It was a mated couple, maybe fifty. The two just nodded at me as they went by; they didn’t smell like rogues,” he said.

“Did they scent Vicki?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked in the side mirror again. “No one is following us. Get back on the freeway and let’s put some miles behind us.”

I did, and he relaxed and fell asleep by the time we passed the Mississippi. With Anita sleeping off the meal as well, I appreciated the mental bond even more. Vicki and I were able to talk without disturbing the others.

We had a slower time through Houston, luckily not hitting it at the morning rush hour. Mike took over at the next stop and drove the rest of the way to Corpus Christi. We drove directly to the harbor where the Texas State Aquarium was, arriving about two in the afternoon. “Let’s GO,” Vicki said.

“We need to find a hotel, and it’s late,” I told her. “We need to eat lunch, too.” I checked north of the aquarium and didn’t like the look of the hotels, so we drove over the harbor to the south side where the larger hotels were. We settled on the Emerald Beach Hotel, the four of us taking adjoining tenth-floor double-twin rooms with a bay view. “What do you think of the ocean,” I said as I brought Vicki out onto the balcony.

“WOW,” she said. “It’s salty and smells like fish!”

We ate lunch, then did some shopping. We all needed swimsuits and towels, plus I bought sunblock and swim goggles for the girl. I talked her into going on the beach today, and we’d do the aquarium in the morning.

We changed into swimwear, then went out to the beach behind the hotel. Anita claimed four lounges under one of the beach umbrellas. The groomed sand was warm as the rest of us ran across it to the gentle surf. Vicki screamed in happiness as she hit the water, jumping up as the first wave crashed into her. I held both her hands, keeping her steady as we kept moving into deeper water. The next wave would have been over her head; when she jumped, I helped her go over it. I stopped when the water was to her chest. “Dive the next wave,” I told her. She was a good swimmer for her age, but I wasn’t going to let her hand go. She had her goggles on, so when the next wave came, she leaned into it and went underwater.

For the next ten minutes, she was swimming the hotel beach “looking for sharks” in the shallow water. I’m sure they were out there; bull sharks, hammerheads, blacktips, and others were all present in these warm Gulf waters. It just wasn’t likely to be on the well-maintained hotel beach.

When she got tired of our ‘boring’ beach, Mike escorted us as we walked north along the surf to the public McGee Beach. It was more crowded than the hotel beach. After a few runs into the water and some prospecting for shells and crabs, Vicki was ready to head back.

Mike ended up carrying a worn-out Vicki back to the hotel beach. Anita was already relaxing with a drink in the shade when we got back. We used the outdoor shower to wash the salt off, then joined her. Vicki fell asleep in her chair almost immediately. “Why don’t you two go up and shower and change,” I said. “We’ll be up a little later, and we can go to a late dinner.”

I didn’t have to guess what Anita was planning as they walked off; she left the scent of her arousal behind. I ordered a strawberry daiquiri and watched the seagulls fly around as my daughter napped in the warm breeze.

Ivan Volkov (John Petersen’s) POV

I hadn’t been asleep long when the door opened, and a man walked in. The guard closed the door, telling him to bang on it when he was ready. “Who are you,” I asked.

“I’m your lawyer,” he said. He held out his hand to me as I sat up on the mattress. “Lawrence Fenwick. I was your brother Leo’s lawyer, and I guess I’m yours now. I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

“Having Brenda dead is not a great loss. It solves a problem or two, although I had nothing to do with it.”

“You don’t know?”

“I felt Brenda die, then I was silvered and brought here,” I replied.

“Your brother, Leo. After the jury left, he collapsed in the courtroom. It was a massive heart attack; he didn’t suffer. I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t believe it. How could my brother be dead, and I didn’t feel it? I reached out to him, but the bond was blocked. “I never felt the bond break,” I said. “Does silver do that?”

“I don’t know.” Luna, this was all such a mess, a mess that I had started when I tried to remove Vicki from her home. If I had done nothing, she would have been under Leo’s protection. Her great-grandmother would still be alive. And, Olivia might forgive me for how I treated her. “I’m afraid we don’t have time to grieve your brother. The Council interrogators will be taking you soon and questioning you. That’s why I’m here.”

“She’s dead because of me,” I said.

“You need to stop saying that. You don’t have a fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, but you don’t have to volunteer information either. I’ll be with you; answer the questions truthfully. They’ll know if you are lying.”

As we waited, I told him everything that had happened; my rejection, my arranged mating with Brenda, the fling with Olivia, and the failure to produce a mantled heir. I continued with the kidnapping attempt, the brokered agreement with Brenda, and our fragile agreement. “She didn’t want me around her after no one challenged her on arrival,” I said. “I’ve been hanging out and drinking. I don’t even know how she died.”

The door opened, and two guards came in. They moved me down the hall to an interrogation room. My lawyer watched from a chair in the corner while they shackled me to the chair. The interrogator, a former Alpha in his sixties who looked like Captain Picard on Star Trek, sat at a table across from me. “Alpha John Petersen,” he said.

“Ivan Volkov,” I said. “I only changed my name because Brenda wanted her family name to continue, and she was the mantled one. It’s time for a change, wouldn’t you say?”

He made a note. “Where were you tonight?”

“I was drinking with the Betas in the rec room until I got called for the Scratch ’n Sniff, then I was waiting in line there until the arrest,” I said. I gave him the names of people I had partied with.

“How would you describe your relationship with Luna Brenda?”

I laughed. “Our relationship ended when Brenda went after my daughter,” I said. “She found out that I’d slept with a human, and that resulted in a pregnancy. Brenda rejected me, and I left the Pack. She offered money to Alpha Todd Miller of Welch to kill Vicki, an attack that injured her, her mother, and my brother. I went back to Marengo to kill her, but Mediator McInnis and Chairman Wolfe were waiting. They hammered out an agreement; I would stay on as her Alpha Protector, and she wouldn’t do anything to harm my daughter.”

“Did the agreement extend to anyone else?”

“No. I should have insisted on it being broader, I guess. Brenda’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter.”

He tapped the paper. “Brenda’s death leaves you as Alpha of Marengo,” he said.

“I know. I thought about refusing it, but our children deserve a chance to inherit the Pack, mantled or not. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“Were you part of any discussions between Luna Brenda and Alpha Mark of Stillwater Pack?”

Lawrence caught my eye; I was to answer the question and ONLY the question. “No. Brenda didn’t trust me after I returned. I had my own house on Pack land, I had no Alpha authority, and she did not seek my counsel. I was a bodyguard and a threat to those who might challenge her, and that’s all.”

“How did she feel about your brother?”

I laughed. “Brenda hated Leo with a passion. He claimed Vicki as his heir, stopping her from killing the girl so the mantle would return to HER heirs. I know she put a claim in on Vicki with the Council; although she would not break the blood oath she made, I figured someone else would do the job for her. You know, a ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest,’ Rasputin-like moment. I couldn’t allow that to happen. Vicki is my firstborn child, and I would gladly sacrifice my life to keep her safe.”

“Would she act against Leo directly?”

I laughed. “Brenda is a coward; she wouldn’t dirty her manicured nails with that. It’s easier to pay someone.”

The interrogator closed his pad. “Return the prisoner to his room,” he told the guards. “You will remain in the cells while we verify the information and complete the investigation.” With that, I was unhooked from the chair and taken back to my room.

I laid back on the mattress pad, more confused than ever. What had Brenda done before she died?