Page 47 of Curse of the Wolf
“Did you show him your canines? Yourlupines?” I asked. “That always helps.”
“Lorenzo did.”
“As your mother commanded.” He inclined his head. “I am, of course, here to protect her.”
“To mundane outsiders, he’s more fearsome than the magical alarms.” Mom tilted her head toward the ferns between the trees along the winding gravel driveway.
Having felt how effective those magical security devices could be, I curled my lip in that direction. I would rather face Lorenzo.
They stepped to the side so we could drive up to the cabin and park. I offered a ride in the truck bed—in his wolf form, Lorenzo had hopped back there before—but maybe Mom was past the age of wanting to clamber over tailgates. Holding hands, they walked up the driveway after we passed.
“What did the real estate agent want?” I asked when we all stood on the porch.
Mom’s gaze drifted to the medallion under Duncan’s shirt, but she nodded, looking satisfied that he wore it, not annoyed that he’d asked to borrow it. She’d offered him a place in the pack, and maybe she believed that he would accept it, andthe medallion would soon hang again on the neck of a male Snohomish Savager.
“To see our land.” Mom waved at her cabin but also the surrounding forest.
I didn’t know how many acres came with the property. It wasn’t the home I’d grown up in, which had burned to the ground in a fire, and I’d never poked around in the county records to find out where Mom’s land ended and other parcels began. Werewolves weren’t ones to erect fences. Someone had mentioned that the property abutted state land to the rear, but I didn’t know if the gully with the magical cave lay within her borders or not.
“Does he want to list it?” I asked.
Mom’s lips rippled. “He said itislisted and that he has interested clients.”
“Uh, I assume you didn’t do that.”
“I most certainly did not. This land has belonged to the pack for generations.” Mom saidthe packbut touched her chest. Presumably, it belonged to her. Others in the family had nearby properties, and when the pack was in wolf form, they tended to come and go on their hunts without worrying about who owned what. “I’ve talked to Renata, and she’s going to check on it.”
That was Jasmine’s mom, and I nodded since she was in the real estate business. She would be able to get to the bottom of the problem.
“Apparently,” Lorenzo said, “it’s not that uncommon for crooks to list land they don’t own in the hope that they’ll be able to make a quick cash deal with someone willing to skip going through a title agency. That’s usuallyrawland, not a parcel with a home on it, but…” He waved around the area, as if to say the rural location made it susceptible.
“Acompetentagent,” Mom said, “would do some research to make sure someone has the right to sell a property before listing it.”
“Hm.” I couldn’t help but wonder if Radomir and Abrams were behind this, scheming to sell Mom’s property out from under her. That seemed like a lot of work—criminalwork—just to get her medallion, but they were posing as buyers for Sylvan Serenity, so who knew what ends they would go to in order to disrupt our lives and get what they wanted.
“Renata said she knows what to do to get the listing removed, and that I don’t need to personally show up at the office of the real estate agent who put it up.” Mom lifted her hand, fingers curled to emulate claws digging someone’s eyes out.
“You sound disappointed that you don’t need to do that,” Lorenzo said.
“No, I’m too tired to want to drive around and threaten people.” She sighed. Sadly.
My throat tightened in sympathy.
“Perhaps that’s the part that’s disappointing to you,” he murmured, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
“I do miss having vigor.” Mom looked from Duncan to me.
My sympathy waned as I had the feeling she would use that as a segue to ask if we were frolicking between the sheets to make young werewolf pups.
“We have a problem, Mom,” I blurted, hoping to forestall that discussion. “Duncan might be dying.”
His eyebrows arched. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so blunt.
From the way Mom’s lips twisted, I expected her to say something like,Join the club.
“What happened?” she asked instead, perhaps remembering that she wanted him to father offspring with me. That would be hard for him to accomplish if he was dead.
I summarized the night of the battle, reluctantly admitting that I’d been the one to destroy the control device. She’d been the one to suggest I do that—well, we’d discussedstealingit—but I didn’t try to put any blame on her. I’d had an inkling that destroying it wouldn’t end well, but I’d been the one to snap it in half with my own jaws.
