Hungry Like a Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

orders in my own territory. I don’t care how big, bad, and wolfie you might think you are. I am alpha here, and I don’t take insults lightly.”
    “You might be alpha of this pack, but you still answer to the Silverback Clan. Don’t forget that.”
    “I respect the Silverback Clan, beta. I answer to no one.”
    Their gazes clashed for a long moment, a heavy silence weighted with rapid pulses and the sharp smell of temper. Neither of them blinked. Then the Silverback beta’s hand slid from her arm to the back of her neck, and he hauled her forward, mouth descending on hers for a rough, violent kiss.
    It lasted no more than a handful of seconds, but it seared her senses with lips, tongue, teeth, and hunger. She tasted the thick, spicy flavor of him, smelled the musky, woodsy scent that clung to his skin, and felt the sharp edge of his strong, white teeth. When he pulled back, she blinked up at him, silent.
    “We’ll see, honey. We’ll see what happens once I get around to asking the right question.”
    Then he turned on his heel and strode out of her bedroom, closing the door softly behind him.
    Honor stared at the white wooden panels for a long time before her knees unlocked enough for her to sink to the bed, where she sat for a while longer, trembling.

 
    Three
    Damn him and the horse he rode in on.
    Honor lay in her father’s huge sleigh bed and stared at the ceiling in frustration. The clock on the bedside table gave off an eerie green glow announcing three A.M. and Honor’s fifth unsuccessful hour of attempted sleep. She blamed it all on her unexpected visitor from Manhattan.
    Next, she planned to blame the instability in the Middle East on him as well.
    She really could kill him for … well, for nothing that was actually his fault. But far be it from her to buck the long-standing and honorable tradition of killing the messenger. In reality, her father was the one to blame, but he was inconveniently dead, and therefore a much less satisfying target than the arrogant, sexy beta from the Silverback Clan.
    Sexy?
    Shit.
    Honor groaned and rolled onto her side. The second to last thing she needed in her life was to develop a mad crush on any man, let alone the beta of another pack sent to evaluate her leadership capabilities in the first week of her rule. Because no matter how politely Logan Hunter had phrased it, that was exactly why he’d come to this remote corner of northwestern Connecticut to mingle with the White Paw Clan.
    He’d come to grade her like a teacher on report card day, and Honor didn’t like it one bit. She didn’t like it because no alpha’s earned position in a pack should ever be called into question, especially not in any way so transparent to subordinate pack members. She doubly didn’t like it because she really wasn’t all that confident she would be given a passing grade.
    She didn’t doubt her ability to lead the pack, to make decisions that would benefit them as a whole and help ease them into the twenty-first century in a way her father had never been willing to attempt. She didn’t doubt her ability to hold her own among the international council of packs, where decisions affecting Lupine society as a whole were discussed and debated and voted upon once every five years. Honor didn’t even doubt her ability to win any alpha challenge that presented itself to her. Lord knew she’d won three since the moment her father had drawn his last breath, and she knew in that sick place in her gut that’d she’d face even more; but she also knew the wolves in her pack. She knew their strengths and weaknesses, and unless a new, stronger wolf tried to come in from outside the pack, she didn’t fear for her position. No, Honor didn’t doubt for a second that she had the ability to become as confident and capable an alpha as the White Paw Clan had ever seen.
    What she doubted was her desire.
    “I was happier being beta.”
    She whispered the words to the ceiling and heard the truth