She could look at Terrence, and so she watched his eyes assess the wolves Shawn had brought like a general surveying his troops. His gaze settled on Michael.
Keisha looked, too, seeing what the Marrok saw: old jeans with a hole in one knee, tennis shoes that had seen better days. It was very much like what she was wearing, except that her hole was in her left knee, not the right.
"Will the time it takes to drive to Montana and back put your job at risk?" Terrence asked. Thomas kept his eyes on his toes and answered, soft-voiced, "No, sir. I work in construction, and this is the slow season. I okayed it with the boss; he says I have two weeks."
Terrence pulled a checkbook out of his pocket, and using one of the other wolves' shoulders to give him a solid surface to write on, made out a check. "This is for your expenses on this trip. We will figure out a pay rate and have money waiting for you when you get to Montana."
Relief flashed in Michael's eyes, but he didn't say anything.
Terrencewent through the door, passed by Keisha, and started up the stairs. As soon
as he wasn't watching them, the other wolves lifted their eyes to look at Keisha.
She jutted her chin up and met their gazes, forgetting entirely her decision not to do just that until it was too late. Shawn's eyes were unfathomable, and Michael was stil looking at the ground, but the other two, Scott and Brian, were easy to read. With Terrence's back to them, the knowledge of what she'd been in their pack was fully visible in their eyes.
And they had been Leo's wolves by inclination as well as fact. She was nothing, and she had brought about their Alpha's death: they'd have killed her if they
dared. Just try, she told them without using words. She turned her back on them without dropping her eyes, as Malcom's mate, she supposedly outranked all of them. But they weren't only wolves, and the human part of them would never forget what they had done to her, with Leo's encouragement.
Her stomach raw, and tension tightening the back of her neck, Keisha tried to keep an even pace all the way up to her apartment on the fourth floor. Terrence waited beside her while she unlocked the door. She stepped aside so he could go in first, showing the others that he, at least, had her respect.
He stopped in the doorway and looked around her studio apartment with a frown. She knew what he saw: a card table with two battered folding chairs, her futon, and not much else.
"I told you I could get it packed this morning," Keisha told him. She knew it wasn't much, but she resented his silent judgment. "Then they could have come just to carry out the boxes."
"It won't take an hour to pack this and carry it down," said Terrence . "Shawn, how many of your wolves are living like this?"
Summoned, Shawn slid past Keisha and into the room and frowned. He'd never been to her apartment. He glanced at Keisha and walked to her refrigerator and opened it, exposing the empty space inside. "I didn't know it was this bad." He glanced back. "Michael?"
Invited in, Michael, too, stepped through the door.
He gave his new Alpha an apologetic smile. "I'm not quite this bad, but my wife is working too. The dues are pretty dear." He was almost as far down the pack structure as Keisha.
"Probably five or six then," Shawn said with a sigh. "I'l see what can be done."
Terrence opened his wallet and handed the Alpha a card. "Call Malcom next week and
set up a conference between him and your accountant. If necessary, we can arrange for a loan. It's not safe to have hungry, desperate werewolves on the streets."
Shawn nodded.
The Marrok's business apparently concluded, the other two wolves surged past
Keisha, Scott deliberately bumping against her. She pulled back from him and instinctively wrapped her arms protectively around herself. He gave her a sneer, as he hid quickly from the others.
"Illegitimis nil carborundum," she murmured. It was stupid. She knew it even before Scott's fist struck out. She ducked and dodged. Instead of a fist in her stomach, she took it in the shoulder and rolled with it. The small entryway didn't
give her much room to get away from a second blow. There wasn't one.
Shawn had Scott pinned on the ground with a knee in the middle of his back.
Scott wasn't fighting him, just talking fast. "She's not supposed to do that. Leo said no Latin. You remember."
Because once Keisha realized that no one else in the pack except Bella, who she had thought was a friend, understood Latin, she'd used it for secret defiance. It had taken a while for Leo to figure it out.
"Leo is dead," said Shawn very quietly, his mouth near Scott's ear. "New rules, If you are smart enough to live, you won't hit Malcom's mate in front of his father."
"Don't let the bastards grind you down?" said Terrence from her doorway. He was looking at her like a child who had been unexpectedly clever. "That's horrible Latin, and your pronunciation needs some work."
"It's my father's fault," she told him, rubbing her shoulder. The bruise would be gone by tomorrow, but for now it hurt. "He had a couple of years of Latin in college and used it to amuse himself. Everyone in my family picked it up. His
favorite saying was, 'Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum europe vincendarum.' "
"Sometimes I have the urge to conquer large parts of Europe'?" Scott said, sounding a little incredulous. Bella hadn't, apparently, been the only one who understood her defiance. She nodded. "Usually he only said it when my brother or I were being particularly horrible."
"And it was his favorite saying?" Terrence said, examining her as if she were a bug, but a bug he was growing pleased with. She said, "My brother was a brat."
He smiled slowly and she recognized the smile as one of Malcom 's.
"What do you want me to do with this one?" asked Shawn, tilting his head toward Scott. Terrence's smile fled, and he looked at Keisha "Do you want me to kill him?"
Silence descended as everyone waited for her answer. For the first time she realized that the fear that she'd been smelling wasn't hers alone. The Marrok scared them all.