Werewolf Wedding(64)

“I don’t think I need to prove that,” Jake said, easily knocking a wild swipe aside and countering with another elbow to the jaw. “All I gotta do is keep you busy long enough for her to show off that statue. What the f*ck were you thinking?”

Dane roared fiercely, throwing back his head. His teeth grew into yellow daggers, and a moment later, he hunched down and let the wolf take him. He lunged and locked his jaws onto Jake’s arm. With Jake thrashing around trying to free himself, I took another long pull off the bottle and hurled it at the black figure locked on my fiancé’s arm. The bottle didn’t hit hard, but it was enough of a blow to dislodge him and give Jake a second to do his own wolfy shifting.

Both of them dove, meeting in the middle. At first they clamped down on one another’s jaws, but Jake was able to twist his neck and leverage it enough to get on top of his brother, then take a hunk out of his foreleg.

Retreating for a second to hold his wound, Dane screamed, “Do something!” to his little gang before Jake was on him again. I twisted around to see what the five idiots were doing, and smiled when I saw Greta with a shotgun. Where it had come from, I’ve got no idea, but a girl’s gotta have her secrets, right?

“Don’t you even think about it, you mongrel pups,” she snarled. Leveling the barrel at one of them, then the next, she seemed to have them under control. One of them tried to go for her, but a shotgun blast into the air stopped him in his tracks. “Next one gets it in the stomach,” she said.

I want to be her when I grow up, I thought for the second time. There I was, caught between a she-wolf matriarch brandishing a shotgun, and two brothers ripping each other apart – at least partially over me – and all I could do was stare and hope.

Teeth gnashing turned to another flurry of savage attacks quickly turned into clawing. Again, Jake came out on top, clamping his jaws around his brother’s furry neck. This time though, Dane managed to dig a hind claw into Jake’s chest and give him a nasty wound. Jake didn’t seem to notice though, he just clamped down harder, fighting to keep his brother on the ground.

“Statue!” he hissed in that tight, painful-sound wolf voice. “Show... them the statue!”

A grotesque laugh from Dane’s belly preceded him twisting out from under Jake and giving him a rake with his claws.

A yelp of pain from Jake got me moving a little faster. The statue wasn’t far – I’d had Doug place it next to the dais, but every step I took felt like I was dragging my feet through quicksand. My nerves were shot, and between Jake fighting his brother, and Greta with the shotgun, I figured that at any second, my head could pretty much explode from the strangeness of it all.

But then, the damndest thing happened.

Jake took a swing at Dane, and connected clean. His brother staggered, and... the pack started cheering. Cheering! For Jake! It was like this whole awful ordeal had turned into a professional wrestling match. At first the yells of support were sparse, only coming from a few, but with every blow he landed, every chomp of his jaws, they got louder, until the roar was just enveloping.

I neared the statue and realized that, for the first time, I felt confident. I felt like there was a solid chance of us both escaping this thing with our heads cleanly still atop our necks. Suddenly, I understood why athletes got all worked up when they had the crowd behind them. It was energizing, it was incredible.

As soon as he figured out what was happening, Dane looked in my direction and started in again. “Yes! Mate, show them their new leader! Show the pack their new alpha in all his glory!”

Which was a little amusing since he had a black eye, and his fur was matted down pretty good with blood, but it was almost like Dane hadn’t wrapped his head around what, exactly was going on.

Jake grabbed him around the throat with his massive jaws, a deathgrip that could have crushed the throat on just about anyone else. With his brother’s neck in his mouth, Jake looked in my direction. I felt all of the emotion, all the squiggling and tingling and excitement, and I felt it hit me all at once. One of Dane’s goon wolves went for me, but I scarcely noticed his hand on my back before a decisive blast put him on the ground.

“Show them, mate!” Dane was howling.

“Oh I will,” I said, cutting through the twine holding the tarp over the absurd, ridiculous, incredible statue.

As the red painter’s tarp flew away, I heard a gasp louder than anything I’d ever heard relating to one of my works of art. Sure, Mrs. Cumberbatch got excited about her dog statues, and yeah, everyone got all worked up for a good dolphin ice sculpture, but this was the sound of astonishment.

For a moment, there was no sound. Not a single one – Dane’s hooting came to a stop, and Jake’s grunts of effort to keep him contained likewise fell silent. The audience’s cheering or jeering fell dead.

“He thinks he’s some kind of king!” someone in the audience finally shouted. It turned out to be the bald headed lunk who had dragged me to the stage. “Dane,” he said, “that ain’t... you can’t...”

“Ain’t right!” someone else joined in. “This just ain’t right!”

All of a sudden, reality hit the face of the great black wolf.

Jake had decided it was time to let things run their course, and backed away, shifting back into his man-skin. His deliciously naked man-skin, by the way. He collected me off the ground and stood beside me, shamelessly, beautifully bared. His hand on mine felt like heaven, like security and safety all wrapped into one.