Case was surprised Guthrie had bothered to help him out, though. Case had done his best to hide it, but he’d never really liked Guthrie much, and he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. After Guthrie’s first visit to the construction site, the foreman had taken Case aside and sheepishly told him to watchhis step: Guthrie didn’t like people who didn’t have what he called “the right background.”
The snoring lump that was the world-class jackass suddenly came to life. “Special favors!” he sneered. “You should rot in here! You punched my lights out!”
“You hit me over the head with a bottle,” Case snapped.
“You shoved me first!”
“I shoved you because you tried to kick an old man’s service dog. It’s like you were playing asshole bingo.Anyonewould have shoved you, I was just the only one who was close enough.”
Dean blew a raspberry at him.
“You tried to kick a dog?” Jeremy said. “I’m not buying one of Mabel’s breakfasts for a man who tried to kick a dog.”
“It was in my way,” Dean said with an aggrieved sniff. He curled back up on his cot and went straight back to sleep, snoring away again with the clear conscience of the unapologetically awful.
Case rolled his eyes at him, even though it cost him another pang in his head, then tried to concentrate on his breakfast.
It wasn’t easy. The food was delicious, but his concussion clearly didn’t think he should get a chance to enjoy it. After only a couple bites, his stomach tightened up like a fist. It left him feeling sick and woozy, and he couldn’t even think about trying the paper cup of coffee Jeremy had for him. He was a little relieved when Jeremy got a phone call—“Yes, sir. Right away, sir!”—that made him shoo Case out the door before the syrup on his pancakes could cool.
The bright sunlight outside made him blink, and more pain lanced through him. He was having trouble focusing on Guthrie, but he did his best.
“What were you thinking?” Guthrie said, his voice laden with contempt.
Case did his best to choose his words carefully. Guthrie had done him a favor, after all.
“I don’t know how much you know about what happened last night, but I didn’t exactly pick a fight. I stopped a guy from kicking a service dog, and then—”
“I don’t care!” Guthrie said. “I knew you’d be trouble. Men without roots always are. That foreman spoke up for you, said you were a good worker, but I don’t like people I don’t know. And I was right. Do you think I want people going around saying somestrangerI employ is getting mixed up in brawls?”
If they understood the circumstances, Case had trouble believing most of them would care. But apparently Guthrie still cared, and that was all that mattered. It wasn’t about right or wrong, it was about appearances, about who fit in and who didn’t. Case didn’t belong, and as far as Guthrie was concerned, he never could.
“Okay,” Case said levelly. “Are you saying I’m out of a job, then?”
“I’m saying I want you out of town! Immediately!”
Yesterday, he’d liked this place a lot, but this conversation had taken a lot of shine off the apple. He wasn’t going to kick up a fuss about leaving. But he wasn’t going to abandon all dignity and act like he’d done something wrong when he hadn’t, either. Guthrie had the right to fire him, but he didn’t have the right to shoo him out of town like he was a bad smell. Case would go, but he was going to go with his head held high.
More importantly, he was going to go with his head properly stitched-up and all the blood washed out of his hair.
“That’s fine,” Case said. “If I don’t have a job, I don’t have much reason to stay anyway. But I have a concussion, and I’m going to get that looked at before I start off on a long drive.”
Guthrie sneered at him. “All you’re doing is making excuses,” he said, like he couldn’t see the blood matted in Case’s hair.Case was pretty sure his pupils were unevenly dilated, too, but Guthrie was determined to ignore it. “What do you want, a payoff? I’m not going to slip you a bribe to get you to—”
“I don’t want your money,” Case said. At this point, he was tempted to say he wouldn’t take Guthrie’s money even if he was starving to death, but that seemed a little melodramatic. “I’m just telling you the facts.”
“Go to hell,” Guthrie said. He turned on his heel and stalked off towards his car, which was, Case had to admit, pretty nice. Being a small town kingpin evidently paid all right.
It was funny, Case thought. If Guthrie cared so much about his reputation—and if he really wanted to get Case out of town as soon as possible—it would have made more sense for Guthrie to give him a ride to the ER instead of making Case either stumble there on his own or call for a ride. But apparently Guthrie wasn’t going to spendtoomuch time and effort on it, no matter how much he valued appearances. On top of everything else, he was lazy.
Maybe it was the concussion, but Case suddenly felt exhausted. It wasn’t even about feeling unwelcome or unwanted (though he really was getting tired of that). It was just ... Guthrie. He’d run into too many Guthries in his life. Not every town had one, but too many of them did, and the towns deserved better. It was dispiriting to know that in most cases, they weren’t going togetanything better—and he couldn’t do anything about it. Strangers never could.
3
It turned out that people weren’t lining up around the block for a marriage that would come with an immediate, non-optional bloodbath.
It didn’t help that the pack wasn’t exactly flush with cash. Lydia’s mate, whoever he would be, wouldn’t be getting a fortune along with his bride, especially since neither she nor her grandparents had ever approved of alphas taking a chunk of their pack’s income. When the town heard what she had planned, they took up a fund to serve as a kind of alpha-dowry, which was unbelievably touching ... but Ruth said, and Lydia guessed she agreed, that they couldn’t let anyone make that kind of sacrifice. She was the alpha-in-waiting; it washerjob to fix the problem.
So: no money. Not much, anyway.
