Fang raised his hand to flip him off, but Vane caught his wrist before he could.
"We understand."
Hissing from the burn Vane was putting on him, Fang twisted out of his brother's grasp.
Vane glared at him. Keep your mouth shut and your gestures to yourself, he mentally projected to him.
I don't take orders from bears.
No, but you take them from me. Behave, Fang, or I'll kick your ass back to the Stone Age. Vane grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and dragged him into the bar.
Fang shoved him away. Unless he took him down with magick, Vane was nowhere near as strong as he was. "I'm not your bitch, boy."
Vane turned on him with a look that said he was one step away from taking his best shot. "Then do it for Anya. We might need them to help us if she has problems with her litter."
That was a low blow and it was the one thing Vane knew he wouldn't fight against. Anya was their lifeblood. For her, they'd do anything.
"Fine. I'm just irritable from lack of sleep."
"Why didn't you sleep?"
I was protecting you. . . . Some of the wolves had been on the prowl last night and Fang had feared them stumbling over Vane's position while he healed from his wounds and slept. So he'd stayed up to make sure Vane's injured scent and den went undiscovered.
But he would never tell his brother the truth. It would shame Vane to think his younger brother had protected him. "I don't know. I just couldn't."
"So who was she?"
Fang rolled his eyes. "Why do you assume it was a female?"
Vane held his hands up. "Didn't know you were fond of men. I'll file that under my special Fang folder."
Ignoring him, Fang glanced around the infamous dark club that wasn't overly crowded in the late afternoon. A few humans sat at tables while more played pool and video games in the back. An empty dance area was set before a stage with the name Howlers spray-painted in dark blue and white on the back wall.
Craig and Keegan pulled three tables together in a corner to accommodate the ten of them. Some of the humans eyed them nervously which Fang found hysterical, especially the woman who put her purse in her lap as they passed. Like a wolf needed money. But then, they were a rough-looking bunch. Decked out in biker leathers, each of them was ready to fight if they had to.
The only one of them even remotely clean-cut was Vane, who wore jeans with a brown leather jacket and a dark red T-shirt. That being said, he had the longest hair of any of them. But with it pulled back into a ponytail and with a clean shave, he was passable. The rest of them looked like the feral beasts they were.
Fang dropped his backpack on the floor and took a seat to stretch out his long legs. Leaning against the wall, he adjusted his sunglasses and closed his eyes to catch a combat "nap" while they shot the crap among themselves. If he could just have ten uninterrupted minutes to sit and think about nothing, he'd be a new wolf. . . .
* * *
There's a pack of wolves who just came in."
Her stomach sliding into her stomach, Aimee Peltier glanced up from the ledger where she was going over new orders. Their mother, Nicolette Peltier, froze at Dev's dry declaration.
She met Aimee's quizzical look as she pushed herself back from the large brown desk. "How many?"
"Looks to be eight Slayers and two pups in training."
Maman arched one blond brow. Though she was approaching eight hundred years old, she appeared to be no older than a forty-year-old human. Dressed in a fitted blue business suit and with her blond hair pulled back in a tight chignon, she looked prim and proper-unlike Aimee, who was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and wore her long hair down. "Slayers or Strati?"
Strati were Katagaria warriors who were the fiercest of the bunch and usually quick to anger. The pups, due to hormonal shifts that were even worse on Were-kind than humans, were even more so. But they usually lacked the power and strength to back their egos. Slayers, on the other hand, were indiscriminate killers who slew any and everything that got in their way. Arcadians applied the latter to any Katagari soldier as a justification for why they needed killing.
If this group of wolves really were Slayers, their presence in the bar was like a keg of dynamite resting on an open hearth with a raging fire.
Dev scratched at the back of his neck. "They're technically Strati, but these are hard-core cases. Wouldn't take much to make them Slayers."
Aimee stood up. "I'll go wait on them."