Pack or Prey (Wolfblooded book 1)

Chapter 2, Part 1

July 29th 2010, 8:31 p.m.

"I just don't understand why. I mean, you've always told me you looked up to him. That he was like a father to you or something." I'd been trying to wrap my head around what Frank had said for some time.

Two years in, and I was still scrambling to make heads or tails of this life. Now, he wanted to change things. A 'purging', he had called it.

"I ain’t ever called him my dad, Harls," Frank growled from the shower.

We were sitting in a motel bathroom about the size of a closet. We'd stopped on our way to

Texarkana to get a couple days of rest and for Chuck and the guys to handle some kind of business. When I asked him what business, Frank told me it was the kind I'm not a part of. It felt like a slap in the face. I wasn't sure when he'd started keeping things from me, but eventually I just let it go. I figured I probably didn't want to know anyway.

"Whatever. The point is he's someone you looked up to, right? Now you're planning some kind of… coup against him?" I pushed off the little sink and turned around, wiping the steam from the mirror. "I just want to understand why, is all. He doesn't seem that bad a guy to me."

"You wouldn't understand. I've tried explaining it to you, and you just don't get it. I know you think he's this great guy. That's my fault I guess, but really Harley, you don't know him.

These people need to follow someone who's gonna be a real leader. Who can make the hard decisions needed and not take the easy way out of shit. He can't talk about becoming this powerhouse like he is and then sit on his ass and let shit slide by that make us look weak. It leaves us vulnerable."

He was right; I didn't get it. Make us look weak? Powerhouse? Frank had been talking about the Coyotes like it was an army for some time now.

The water squeaked off, and the room was suddenly quiet. I thought about what to ask him as he dried off—something that might get a direct answer from him for a change.

"What is it you plan to do, exactly, Frank?"

The glass door slid open, and Frank stepped out from a billow of thick steam. If he was trying to distract me, it worked. Water clung to his freshly scrubbed skin, drawing attention to every crease and swell of his upper body. Frank was fit. Not in a scary weight-jockey way. His was much more subtle. A nice surprise hidden under his clothes.

The towel he'd dried off with was slung low around his hips, held up only by the grace of

God, himself. I never thought I'd be one of those girls that let a hard body and a charming smile make my brain go soft, but here I was. Frank awakened things in me I never knew existed.

"Why do you care?" he asked as he stood across the bathroom from me.

"I… I don't know," I finally admitted. "I don't know why it's bugging me so much, but it doesn't change the fact that I want to know. I'm part of this family now. I think I deserve to know why the man we've been following around Texas is suddenly not fit to lead us."

"Oh, babe," Frank said with a laugh. It was the laugh that said I was being silly. Amusing.

He'd been making me feel that way a lot lately—like I was just some silly little dewy-eyed toddler with no capability to understand the grown-up talk—and I was growing less and less fond of it. "It's cute. Really. It's sweet that you consider yourself a part of our… family… after two whole years of riding with us."

I managed to ignore the way his bicep flexed as he ran his hand over the back of his head.

Mostly. Even the power of his absolutely hypnotizing body couldn't withstand the surge of offended resentment beginning to swell inside me. Thank you, anger. "Don't talk down to me like I'm some stupid kid."