Read Online Wild Card by Mark Henwick, Lauren Sweet - Free Book Online Page A

eventually.
    “She never intended to build it, you know.”
    “So you said. And now?”
    “Why would she change her mind now?”
    He didn’t answer.
    I tried to clear my head and calm myself. I needed so much from this meeting. Diana had warned me, but what had she actually said? That if I joined a pack and left, I could go rogue. And if I didn’t have the influence of an alpha while I was in transition, I could go rogue. She’d avoided directly telling me, but the implication was there—for my sanity I should join Alex’s pack.
    I didn’t want an alpha. My House was enough pack for me. But the way my wolf and Athanate fed on each other, it felt like I was like juggling flares at a fuel dump. Echoes of the sick fascination of feeding on Julie’s fear still oozed out of dark corners of my mind. Lurking inside me was a weakness that might pull me to the Basilikos side, or drive my wolf rogue.
    If Felix refused to allow me to join the pack, would I survive? What if he made a condition; pack or House? Surely he wouldn’t do that.
    The trouble was, I didn’t know how Felix would act. I didn’t understand the Were enough. I simply hadn’t had the time to find out. And I was in the same position as I was with the Athanate and the Adepts; a little information was probably more dangerous than none.
    Once I understood all the fractured parts, if I could get to that situation, I had a hope of fusing it all together.
    I’m an optimist like that.
    We pulled in through the Coykuti gates and parked by the ranch house, next to a long, black Volvo and a Dodge Ram colored like a fire truck.
    I got out and looked up, over the house’s maroon roof, to the slopes behind. The dark wave of pines seemed to be reaching down the mountain and stopped no more than fifty yards from the back door of the house. A narrow dirt track wound upwards through the woods and disappeared. I could feel the coolness from the shadows beneath the trees, and an eerie silence hung over everything. I shivered. This whole place had the same sense of watchful waiting as Bitter Hooks.
    The ranch itself was old-style; timber and stone, long and low, with signs that bits had been added or changed as the need had arisen. The roof tiles were fired clay. I suspected they’d been made here, from the earth beneath our feet. I had to say it looked good, it looked like it was part of the mountain.
    Where we’d stopped, in front of the house, the screen of cottonwood and maple all but obscured the road we’d come in on. And beyond the work yard to our left, the rickety, ancient barn where I’d last met with the pack stood in the meadow.
    “Not the barn, this time?” I asked.
    “Only for big pack meets,” Alex said. “This is more of a closed session by the sound of it.”
    “Like a trial,” I muttered, as we stepped up on the wraparound porch, the boards creaking loudly under our feet.
     

Chapter 8
     
    I’d half expected Larimer to have a special room for an audience, like Skylur in his underground lair, but we met casually in his living room. We were ushered in by a woman who didn’t speak and left immediately. I sensed more of the pack in and around the house, but they stayed out of sight.
    The living room was a huge, sprawling space, with enormous leather sofas and chairs scattered around a set of coffee tables, all handmade from railroad ties. A working loom and spinning wheel sat in one corner, half obscured by a rank of spikey-leaved Madagascan dragon trees in pots. An old saloon mirror dominated one wall, across from an eight foot long painting of plains buffalo which stretched over the fireplace. There were water jugs and glasses on the tables. Bowls of fruit and nuts. Almost a welcome.
    We sat opposite Felix. To our right sat Ricky, the big blond Viking I remembered from my visit to the barn, though he was wearing clothes today. He was big enough, he made the oversized chair look normal.
    To our left was a small man, very neat and formally