Off the Beaten Path

by Cari Z

  “I can’t believe you brought him here.”

  He wasn’t happy with me either. I’d already decided to make Ward’s presence look deliberate on my part, rather than the result of an unknown intelligence leak and a faulty camera system. Neither of those things would inspire confidence.

  “It was a last-minute decision,” I said. “Based on what Sam told me about Ava, I thought it was vital that we improve her chances.”

  “You should have consulted me about it.” He extended his glare to Sam. “I’m the doctor here, aren’t I?”

  “Of course,” she said soothingly, but he wasn’t about to be calmed.

  “And you agreed to defer to my medical opinions when you accepted me into this pack, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, within reason.”

  “You can’t put caveats on my—”

  “T,” I broke in. “C’mon, slow down and think for a minute. What would your reaction have been if I said I was considering bringing Ava’s father here?”

  “I would have said you were crazy, and I’m not convinced I’m wrong.”

  You and me both. “But you can’t deny that she wasn’t getting better. She’s been declining since I left, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” he said guardedly. “But you didn’t even bother to try to revitalize her yourself before bringing her father here.”

  “Because I wasn’t sure I’d be enough for her,” I said with complete honesty. “And I want to give her the best chance possible for survival.” Sam frowned, but Tennyson nodded.

  “I can see that, but….”

  I pressed my advantage. “And he’s having a positive effect on her well-being already. She’s up and moving. She’s hungry.” I’d felt the surge of heat in her little body as Ava’s metabolism had suddenly shifted from a state of torpor to activity. She was probably starving. “Her odds are improving. Look, a lot of crazy things had to come together for this to happen”―which was a massive understatement―“but it has, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

  Tennyson stared at me, and I met his gaze without flinching. “I just hope you don’t make a habit of it, Alpha,” he said after a moment. I understood his reaction. His former alpha had forced a lot of consequences on his pack without a second thought. I wasn’t that kind of leader, and I never wanted to be.

  “I don’t plan to. If I’d had time to inform you beforehand, I would have.” Pure honesty, again, and some of the lines in Tennyson’s face smoothed out. I extended a hand to him, and once he took it, I tugged, gently enough that he could pull away if he wanted to. He came forward instead, and we embraced as pack. I scented him and found traces of adrenaline and stress, but both were dissipating now. He smelled like the clinic, sterile and warm, and a little like Ava. Not quite like pack, but getting there. He inhaled deeply, and his arms tightened around my rib cage for a moment.

  When we separated, Tennyson frowned at me. “What have you been doing? You smell exhausted.” He politely didn’t mention the stench of death that probably lingered.

  “It was a busy time abroad, and I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  Now Sam was staring at me too. Great. “Well, get some sleep and some more food. And for God’s sake, shower before you get back in there with the pup. She doesn’t need to smell all of this. Besides”—he narrowed his eyes slightly—“you’ll need your strength if you’re going to be bargaining for a new pack member.”

  He was right. I was going to have to make Ward pack now, whether he wanted it or not. I’d as good as sealed his fate by bringing him to see Ava and getting positive results. Shit.

  Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission at this point. I was going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do to my commanding officer, but if Sam’s connections with other packs and within the agency could help us, it might defray the consequences a little. I just hoped Colonel Hill didn’t send me out again before I had a chance to really solidify the pack.

  “I’ll go and check on the pup,” Tennyson said, stepping away. “And bring her some food. Just hamburger, to start with. Something easy for her to chew.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tennyson shook his head. “Don’t thank me for doing what I’m supposed to. I’m a doctor. It’s my job to look after the health of my pack.”

  “And I’m the alpha, and my job is the same. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate you for doing it.”

  If anything, he looked confused. After a moment, Tennyson nodded, then headed toward his office. I turned to Sam and sighed. “Ward is still alive, so it could have gone worse.”

  “You wouldn’t have let anything happen to Ward.”

  Was that true? I’d been caged up with Ava, not even considering that Tennyson might smell someone unfamiliar and become unnerved, or that Ward might not be able to protect himself. He had protected himself, but he shouldn’t have needed to. I’d been trained to think tactically, and the situation that we’d just barely scraped through without incident wasn’t the result of sound decision-making on my part. I could have done better. I should have done better.

  My sister didn’t need to bear the weight of my doubts, though. “I have to talk to Gerald before things go much farther.” Gerald Owens was a La Garita elder, the patriarch of the only other founding pack family. He was a decade older than me, a husband and father, and the pack’s resident carpenter. I’d been half convinced he’d challenge me for my position after my mother died when Sam and I were twenty-one, fresh out of college. I’d succeeded my mother without complaint, though, and Gerald and I had been friendly, if not best buds, ever since. He was staunchly traditionalist, and I didn’t know how bringing a human into the pack would sit with him.

  Not that it mattered. If he didn’t like it, he could take it up with me. Part of me. The part that had tasted blood and torn flesh less than forty-eight hours ago was hungry for more of the same.

  “I already invited him and Peggy over,” Sam said. “You can talk to them at breakfast.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “Which you’ll eat, if I have to spoon-feed you myself. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.”

  I looked in on Ward and Ava before I headed back to the house. He was still pressed to the glass, watching avidly as Ava ate raw hamburger off of Tennyson’s fingers. Those two seemed to have buried the hatchet. I couldn’t sense any tension between them, despite their knockdown fight not half an hour ago. Liam watched from the rocking chair, silent. When he saw me, he stood and came over to me.

  “I think they’ll be all right for the time being,” he said.

  “Looks like it,” I agreed. “She’s eating well.”

  “Better than she ever has before. Her father’s influence, certainly.”

  I’d take it. “Ward. Ward!” It took a few tries to get his attention. “We’re heading back over to the house for breakfast. Ava isn’t the only one who’s hungry.”

  “Go ahead, I’m fine,” he said instantly, although I could hear his stomach rumble beneath the lie. Or, not a lie, just… not the whole truth. I wasn’t going to pry him away from his kid yet, though. The entire room was filled with a sense of contentment, soft and soothing. Hell, I’d rather stay and bask for a while myself than go right now, but I had responsibilities. I’d send some food over.

  Gerald and Peggy were sitting in the kitchen with Sam when Liam and I arrived, drinking coffee and chatting about the supply drop scheduled for next week. Gerald was a broad man with light brown hair and a beard twice as bushy as mine. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen his lips, which was funny since the man was always talking. Peggy was small with short dark hair dappled with silver here and there and clear, perceptive eyes.

  “Roman wants to come along on the pickup,” Gerald was saying, “get a feel for how to handle these kinds of things.”

  “That makes sense,” Sam said, flipping a pancake on the griddle. “He’s going to need more exposure to social interactions with other people before he goes off to coll
ege.”

  Peggy stiffened, just barely, as Gerald chuckled and shook his head. “He’s already learning a trade from me. Living in a place like this, there’s always work to be done.”

  “I thought he was interested in electrical engineering.” Sam was the pack’s teacher. She’d been working with Roman since he was six. “He’s all set to take his standardized tests this year. If he gets good scores, then those and his GPA will certainly be enough to get him into a local university.”

  “Electrical work is one thing, but engineering? That’s a waste of time. He’s going to be living here, so he should have a job that will put him to work here. I mean, look at Henry.” He finally did look at me, just quick enough to keep his delay in addressing me from being outright insolence. “What did you get a degree in, art? History?”

  “Art history,” I said as I sat down beside him. Peggy gave me a smile. Gerald just kept talking.

  “Something with no real use to your pack. Not that it really mattered, with you. You were always going to go into the army.”

  “It’s the alpha’s duty,” I said. “Speaking of my duties, we have a new pack member.”

  I waited for their exclamations to die down before explaining the situation with Ward, again, making it seem like his inclusion had been deliberate rather than accidental. Fuck it, if I was picking a side, I was choosing wholeheartedly. Ava was a different pup with her father here.

  “Oh,” Peggy said with a melancholy sigh at the end of my explanation. “I’d been hoping we could take her in once she’d mastered her shift. She’s a sweet little thing.” Peggy, I recalled, had wanted more than one pup herself, but werewolf reproduction was a fraught thing. I’d had two siblings die in the womb, victims of prenatal shift complications. If a child wasn’t born in human form, its chances of surviving were almost nil.

  “You’ll still be able to see her,” I promised. “They’re pack, they’re not going anywhere.”

  “Henry.” Gerald sounded pained. “You can’t keep doing this. You should be focused on gaining permission to bring a wife here, starting a family of your own. Not wasting favors on some human, not after you’ve already taken a degenerate pack’s leftovers and—”

  I didn’t bother to resist the urge to growl. “Mind your words.”

  Peggy looked down, but Gerald met my gaze, even if it was only for a few seconds at a time.

  “You know I would never speak badly of Sam. She can’t help how she was born, but she was raised pack. She knows how to be pack. A new human, with no claim on our world except a child he couldn’t take care of—”

  “She was taken from him,” Sam interrupted. She never had liked being talked about as though she wasn’t even in the room. “Ward didn’t get a choice in her care.”

  “Because he’s not a werewolf,” Gerald said placidly, like she’d just proved his point. “We’re not human, and it’s no good pretending to be. We shouldn’t have to change to accommodate him.”

  “He’s the one changing,” I said. “He’s accommodating us by coming here and talking to us instead of taking what he knows to the nearest news station. He’s got her best interests at heart.” Or at least, he’d better be fucking accommodating after all this bullshit.

  “But the timing, Henry. It could be years now before you can take a wife.”

  “I don’t plan on taking one.” I’d said I was gay a hundred times. Gerald was the only person who kept bringing up wives. “And my private decisions aren’t open to discussion.”

  “But if Sam and Liam’s children are human, who will our next alpha be? Your family has led this pack since its inception.” When Gerald met my eyes this time, his seemed to gleam with disappointment. “What would your mother say, if she could see her son throwing away his status?”

  I was on my feet before I knew it, fist slammed so hard into the middle of the thick wooden table it creaked. “Get out.” It was a gross breach of courtesy to throw them out, but I’d had enough. One more rude word out of his mouth and I’d rip his hairy lips off.

  Peggy got to her feet instantly. “We’re pleased you’re home safe, Alpha,” she said formally. She didn’t come in to scent me, and I didn’t invite her closer. “You and your family are invited to dinner at our home later this week. Please bring Mr. Johannsen.”

  “Thank you, Peggy,” Sam said when it was clear I wasn’t going to reply. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be gracious, but it felt like I couldn’t, like my throat was filled with fire, and if I opened my mouth again, I’d breathe flames all over both of them. They left, but Sam waited for the front door to shut to speak.

  “Jesus, sit down!” She practically pushed me into Peggy’s abandoned chair, switching out the mug of coffee for a fresh one. “You look like you’re about to have a stroke.”

  “If that means I don’t have to listen to Gerald be an asshole anymore, I’m for it,” I grunted. Liam put the platters of pancakes and bacon down on the table, and Sam briskly served me some before I could refuse.

  “Eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I wasn’t, either. My stomach roiled with pent-up anger and frustration.

  “I don’t care. You’re not leaving this table until you’ve eaten a real meal.”

  “I don’t need another person telling me what I can and can’t do today!” I shouted.

  Sam and I stared at each other for a long moment. “Honey,” she said finally, glancing at Liam. “Would you please make a plate for Ward and take it to him? We won’t be long here.”

  He nodded and was gone in under a minute, food tucked safely away under foil. The door shut, and I braced myself for Sam to start yelling.

  “Gerald’s an idiot sometimes.”

  Some of my righteous indignation deflated. “Try all of the time. He knows I’m gay. I don’t understand why he persists in pretending I’m going to marry and bring home a wife someday.”

  “He likes tradition. He likes to pretend things are the way they were before our folks died. But he doesn’t know better than you, okay? You’re our alpha, and you have been from the moment you stepped up to take care of this pack despite how awful everything was back then.” It really had been awful, utter chaos: our parents killed in an off-the-books operation, my sister and I both away from the pack when the news was delivered, the frantic unease of our people. The pack had nearly splintered before I could get back. “Gerald could never do what you do.”

  “I know that.” The last of my tension eased out of my throat, and I could finally breathe easy again. “But that won’t stop him from causing trouble.”

  “Trouble is for later. For now, eat. Please, eat something.”

  I looked at the food, fresh buttermilk pancakes and crispy bacon, things I’d dreamed about having during my month away. “I can do that.” I cut a bite of pancake and stuffed it in my mouth.

  It tasted like sand.

  Chapter Seven

  Ward

  I DIDN’T move from my seat in front of the glass for hours. I stayed through Ava’s feeding, her meal a pile of minced, raw meat that I was fairly sure hadn’t come from a supermarket. I stayed through Liam pushing a plate of my own at me until I finally scarfed it down just to get him to stop being distracting. I didn’t budge through the series of tests that Tennyson decided to perform now that Ava was up and moving again. I winced at her piteous little howl when he drew blood, but Tennyson was unfazed.

  “No child likes needles, whether they’re in pup form or human form,” he said, calmly corralling my daughter’s flailing paws as she batted at him. I don’t know what Henry and Sam said to him, but he’d gone from threatening to rip my throat out to being surprisingly chatty in short order. “This is the first time in a long time she’s had the energy to actively dislike it, though.”

  I pictured Ava lying on her side, still as the grave while Tennyson poked her with a needle. It didn’t compute. She was a tornado of a kid, only still when she’d finally dropped from exhaustion. I watched her play, first with Liam, then
with Tennyson once she’d forgiven him for coming at her with a syringe, and it was only after she finally curled up into a ball on a blanket made from the shirt I’d borrowed—Tennyson’s idea, since it carried some of my scent—that I realized my bladder was about to burst.

  I pushed up to my feet with a little groan. How was I so stiff? All I’d been doing was sitting. “Bathroom?” I asked Tennyson, who was sitting in the rocking chair behind me and glaring at his tablet like it had just given him the finger.

  “Out front, the first door on the right,” he said absently.

  “Thanks.”

  “Mmm.”

  Compared to the safe room in the back, the front of the clinic felt cold. I finished as quickly as I could, then ran hot water over my hands until they were flushed with borrowed heat. I dried my hands off, then pressed my warm palms to my neck. God, that felt good. I had never retained body heat all that well, and my hands and feet were the worst offenders.

  It looked like I could safely say at this point that Ava was going to dodge that bullet as she grew older. Could werewolves even have something like poor circulation? What kinds of illnesses affected them? That was definitely something I needed to know.

  I opened the door of the bathroom with a new sense of purpose and almost immediately ran into a teenage boy standing in the front office. “Whoa—hey, sorry about that,” I said, stepping back to put some space between us. He had a book, a calculator, and pad of paper under one arm, and he was dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater, but no jacket. He had to be a werewolf, then; otherwise he’d be covered from head to toe like me.

  “Wow.” His brown eyes widened as he looked at me. “You really are Ava’s dad. You smell a lot alike.”

  “Who told you that?” And who was this kid?

  “My parents went to talk to the alpha this morning, and they said he brought you here to help her.”

  Well, that was one way of framing things. “Yeah, that’s why I’m here.”