Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,84

forms they absorb, not right down the line. With the Wolfgard, the dominant pair will mate and the pack will raise those pups. But the following year, if the dominant enforcer in the pack has a mate, they’ll be the ones who breed and the pack will help raise their pups.

“Virgil was the dominant enforcer in his pack and Kane was another enforcer. They had been out tracking something—prey or adversary, I don’t know which. But they weren’t with the rest of their pack when men in the Humans First and Last movement targeted the pack and killed all of them. Even the pups.” Tobias said nothing for a moment. “I have the feeling that Virgil isn’t proud of being able to shift to human form well enough to almost pass for human. But he was offered the job of being the dominant enforcer for this large mixed pack, and he accepted. That doesn’t mean he feels any tolerance for humans.”

“Do you think he had a mate?” Jana asked.

“I do. And I’m guessing some of the young who were killed were his.”

Sobered by what she’d just learned, Jana rode back to the livery stable. When she realized she had just enough time to run back to the sheriff’s office and take Rusty out for a piddle break before going to the council meeting, she accepted Tobias’s offer to unsaddle Mel. She’d need to learn how to do that for herself, as well as take care of her horse, but she had enough to deal with right now.

“I’ll swing by your office later this afternoon,” Tobias said.

“See you then.” Feeling lighthearted about seeing Tobias again, and vowing to try to be more understanding when she dealt with Virgil, she jogged to the office, took Rusty to the square for a few minutes, and then checked e-mails in case there was something she should report at the meeting.

* * *

* * *

Jesse walked into the meeting room with a box lined with a piddle pad in one hand and a puppy in the other. The daypack she usually carried weighed twice as much today because Tobias, damn and blast him, had talked her into this. She hadn’t had to lug this much stuff around since her boy was in diapers.

She looked down for just a moment as she set the box next to a chair. She looked up to find herself sandwiched between two Wolves in human form—if you didn’t count the furry, Wolf-shaped ears.

“What’s that?” Virgil said, his attention fixed on the gray puppy.

The puppy, who was either very brave or not too bright, yapped at him.

To Jesse’s surprise, Virgil grinned and held out a hand for the pup to sniff.

She said, “This is the new addition to my family.”

Virgil gave her a sharp, assessing look, but he didn’t comment about her choice of words.

Setting the puppy in the box, Jesse slipped the daypack off her shoulder and tucked it under her chair. The puppy whined and tried to climb out of the box. As she wondered about the wisdom of distracting the puppy with treats—and teaching the pup that bad behavior would be rewarded—Virgil settled the matter by sitting on the floor next to the box. He picked up the pup and said, “See? You’re mom is right there.” Then he cuddled the puppy against his chest and said nothing when those sharp puppy teeth gnawed his hand.

Jesse dug out one of the bone-shaped treats. “Let her gnaw on that instead of your thumb.”

He took it and smiled as the pup settled in his lap with her treat.

He had been a father once, Jesse thought. The certainty of it made her heart hurt as she watched Virgil with the pup. She glanced at Kane, who had taken the seat next to Virgil and was also focused on the pup. And he had been an uncle. Their family is gone now, casualties of war.

Jana Paniccia came in and sat beside her. “Didn’t have time to shower. Sorry.”

Virgil leaned forward to see past Jesse’s knees. “Why sorry? You smell like the horse who is not meat. That is good.”

Fortunately neither woman had to respond to that because the Sanguinati arrived along with two young Intuit men.

“I have called this meeting because a request was made to expand the boundaries of the town to include one of the two full-size grocery stores in Bennett,” Tolya said. “Fagen and Zeke will present their proposals for us to consider.”

Fagen talked about how he and the