She felt the eyes on her as she settled into the carved wooden chair and pretended to ignore them, which was easier said than done when you considered that more than two thirds of the pack tended to show up at these twice-weekly group meals. For as long as Honor could remember, the alpha had hosted the pack on Wednesday and Sunday nights in the enormous barnlike meeting hall with the attached industrial kitchen at the back. When she’d been a child, Honor’s Aunt Marie had been the head cook, whipping up mammoth pots of chili or stew, or roasting entire deer and cows on spits outside the back door. These days, Joey had taken over, of course. She was her mother’s daughter, after all, and feeding anyone who stood still long enough seemed to be her calling in life. That and reorganizing Honor’s T-shirts according to some system Honor had yet to figure out but seemed to always get wrong.
“Tonight is the last of the bison,” Joey said as she set a heaping bowl of fiery red chili and an open bottle of beer in front of her cousin. “Sunday we’ll turn three sheep into stew, but hopefully after the Howl there will be enough clear heads around here to bring down some deer and leave them whole enough to share. Everyone has been asking for venison.”
Wrenching her attention back to the present, Honor threw the other woman a smile. “Thanks, Joey. The way you roast it, I’m sure they have been. You let me know if you don’t get what you need, though. I’ll make sure we bring you a buck or two.”
Joey nodded, drying her hands on her apron, but making no move to head back to the kitchen. Feeling awkward, Honor reached for her spoon and stirred her chili. She really didn’t feel much like eating at the moment, but she didn’t want to insult her cousin. Usually, Joey was so busy at the big meals that she didn’t have time to stay around and chat.
“How have things been going with the beta from the city?” her cousin asked after a moment, and Honor reflected that the answer to that question had more to do with the death of her appetite than she would care to admit.
She lifted a spoonful of food to her lips and blew on it. As if she had the faintest intention of eating anything. “Fine.”
“He’s been asking a lot of questions. The girls mentioned it to me.” Joey nodded toward the kitchen doorway where half a dozen women bustled around finishing dishing out tonight’s dinner and cleaning up from its preparation. “Most of us haven’t been exactly sure what to tell him.”
Tell him to go fuck himself.
“I’ve noticed that myself,” a deep voice drawled, and Honor had to exercise a considerable amount of strength not to plant her face in her bowl in a reckless attempt at drowning by chili. If she offed herself that way, at least it would take care of her inner wolf. Her approaching heat had the furry little slut panting and howling every time Logan Hunter got within ten feet of her.
“M-Mr. Hunter,” Joey stuttered, her color leaching away and returning just as quickly in a flash of bright red embarrassment. “I didn’t notice you come in.”
Logan smiled his charming smile. “I’m not surprised. There’s quite a crowd in here, but I’m pretty certain that can be explained by the amazing scents I’ve been smelling for the last couple of hours. Someone around here evidently knows their way around a kitchen.”
“Oh, it’s just chili. Would you like me to get you a bowl? I meant it when I said in the note that I’d be happy to fix you something back at the house if you’d rather not eat with everyone else.”
“Note?” Honor growled, wondering when her cousin and their uninvited guest had gotten cozy enough with each other to start exchanging notes.
“Your cousin thoughtfully left me a note in the kitchen up at the house letting me know that most of the pack usually eats here at the hall on Wednesday nights.” Logan offered the explanation easily, almost as easily as he slid into the chair next to Honor and reached across her for the heaping basket of corn bread and garlic toast. “And, thank you, Joey, I’d love a bowl. If it tastes half as good as it smells, I could probably be persuaded to beg for one.”
Honor’s wolf snarled at the flirtatious tone and the way Logan smiled at her cousin, which made Honor want to punch herself. Despite their mistake of this afternoon and her horny animal instincts, it was none of Honor’s business who the visitor flirted with. In fact, she should thank Joey for taking the annoyance off her hands. She certainly shouldn’t be growling possessively over the man, even if he had tried to mate her just a few hours before. That had been about nothing more than her intensifying heat pheromones and the heat of a particularly passionate moment. She hadn’t taken it seriously, so there was no reason she should expect him to do so. Besides which, she currently needed a mate slightly less than she needed a full frontal lobotomy.
A spoonful of chili shoveled into her own mouth concealed her instinctive growl.
“Coming right up.” Joey offered a blush-pink smile of her own and bounded off to the kitchen. Honor choked down more chili.
“Sweet kid, your cousin,” Logan commented, breaking off a chunk of corn bread and raising it to his mouth. “Friendly, too. She’s been real helpful since I got here.”
Honor’s wolf snarled viciously. Possessively. Honor smacked her down, and mustered a passable smirk. “Yeah, well, she’s still unmated, and with the lack of selection around here, it’s easy for a girl to lower her standards.”
“Of course, she doesn’t make my dick hard every time I look at her, so I guess it’s a good thing she wasn’t the one I got naked with a few hours ago, huh?”
This time, Honor choked on more chili. Her gaze flew to his face and narrowed on the gleeful spark in his eyes. The bastard enjoyed throwing her off balance. She wondered how much he’d enjoy it when she threw him out a window. What was she supposed to say to something like that? She wasn’t an idiot, and she knew that in the time he’d been posing his muzzle into her business—Goddess, had it only been one day!—she likely hadn’t made a great impression, at least not in terms of rationality and a cool head for command. Maybe pissing her off was part of his strategy to prove her unfit to lead her pack? Whatever his motive, he seemed to get a real charge out of yanking her tail, and she’d had enough of giving him the satisfaction.
Ignoring him, she set down her spoon and took a swallow of cold beer. It cut through the spicy burn of the chili but did little to cool the heat of the bitch inside her. It whined every time she inhaled and got a whiff of Logan’s musky scent, prompting Honor to wonder how difficult it would be to get her hands on some ketamine. The horse tranquilizer sounded about right at the moment, provided it would actually do the job and knock her out. With her Lupine metabolism, drugs tended to burn off faster than they were administered. She couldn’t even get a good drunk on without resorting to multiple bottles of the hard stuff. Sometimes, there was no justice.
“How are you feeling, Honor?” He leaned closer, his voice rumbling against her ear in an insidious tickle of heat and smoke. “You ran away before I got a chance to look you over. You’re not … hurting, are you?”
The question must have been directed straight between her thighs, because that was the only part of her to answer, and she wasn’t about to mention the ache she felt there. Not when it had nothing to do with injury and everything to do with renewed hunger. If she could call it renewed. If she were being honest, she’d have to admit it had never really gone away to begin with. Her wolf whispered evilly that it would take days and days of privacy before that need had a hope of being assuaged.