by Cari Z
Olivia’s expression went dark. “He’s so stupid.”
“Olivia.”
“He is! Bo and Riley were our classmates forever, and it’s stupid for him to change his mind just because his wife left!”
“Olivia, that’s it with the name calling. Why don’t you take your furry time early?”
“But it’s more fun when everybody does it!”
“Now, please.”
Olivia huffed but got up and headed for a little paneled-off section in the corner that I hadn’t noticed before. “And I want to see those paws, missy! Howling is not enough proof,” Sam called out.
Well. Okay then.
I answered a few more questions, let the kids sniff me—Josie was so keen on it, I didn’t have the heart to tell her no—and then they split up for some personal classwork time on the computers.
“A lot of their lessons are online,” Sam reiterated as we sat side-by-side on the couch, watching the kids work. “Basic math and science and reading. I do individualized help for subjects of special interest and aptitude, and history and story time are for everyone.”
“Even Roman and Terrence?”
Sam smiled. “Even them. You’re never too old for the classics. We’re reading The Jungle Book right now.”
“So I’ll help with the special interests, then.”
“And if you want to bring more science into the classroom, by all means feel free. The last time I tried to make a vinegar and baking soda volcano, I left the whole room stinking for days.”
Josie peeked over at me and pinched her nose tight between two fingers. So stinky, she mouthed.
“I see that, kiddo,” Sam said. “Back to your addition!”
“I don’t like adding up apples,” she insisted. “They’re boring! I want to add bunnies.”
“Well, maybe you can pretend they’re bunnies.”
“Or imagine that the apples are actually bunny hearts,” Louis said.
“Oh.” Josie looked disturbingly more interested in the program now. “Okay!”
“Science I can do,” I said. I’d come up with some kid-friendly practicals that had interesting problem sets for the older ones. “What comes next?”
“Well, lunch is in about an hour, and then we have recess, and then another few hours of lessons in the afternoon. And kids, listen up.” Five sets of human eyes and one set of wolf eyes focused on her. “I have it on good authority that if you’re good today, Alpha Henry will come and play with you at recess!”
Josie and Pippa both shrieked with glee, and even Roman looked pleased.
“Can he show some partial shift again? I need to get better at that.”
“Maybe. We’ll see. First, lessons!” Newly motivated children dedicated themselves to their computers, and I got up to glance over their shoulders and see how they were doing. Apart from some trouble with fractions, everything seemed under control.
Five minutes later, Olivia burst out from behind the screen, human again, still tugging her sweater on. “I did it, I’m done! How fast was I?”
“Twenty-seven minutes, nice job!” Sam congratulated her. “That’s a minute and a half faster than last time.”
“I’m going to get to twenty minutes by the end of the year.”
“That would be fantastic. Your parents will be so proud.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I chuckled at her easy confidence.
Lunch was hot chocolate and a copious amount of beef stew served over noodles, compliments of Terrence’s mother. Apparently the families took turns cooking for the kids. As soon as the bowls were cleared, the kids began to ask about recess. More specifically, about Henry.
“Gosh, he’s a little late, isn’t he?” Sam said. “Maybe Mr. Ward should go and remind him that it’s time.”
I smiled sardonically. “Right, because I’m just who he wants to see right now.”
“Yes, exactly.”
She sounded serious. I swallowed. “Let me grab my coat.”
“Don’t forget your boots either,” Josie reminded me.
“Good call.”
Trudging across the snow-covered expanse between the schoolhouse and Henry’s home was a lot less daunting in the sunlight, but I was still shivering by the time I got there. I opened the front door and knocked my boots against the doorjamb before entering.
“Henry! It’s recess, and everyone is expecting you!” No reply. Maybe he was still at the clinic? “Henry?”
It was faint, but I managed to catch the “Out back!” I headed around to the back of the house, expecting to find him with his arms crossed, staring out at the glistening mountaintops while getting his manly brood on or something. Instead, I found him chopping firewood.
He’d chopped lots of firewood, judging from the enormous pile next to him. With a big fucking axe. And no shirt. And he looked hot doing it. I mean, no, he didn’t look hot hot, although now that the thought had entered my brain that was all I could focus on, dammit, but he looked hot as in sweaty and overheated too. His body was almost steaming while I was holding on to myself so tight I was practically cracking my own back.
He set the axe down and straightened up. “Hey.”
“Hmuh.” I coughed. “I mean, hey. It’s, um, time for recess. The kids are waiting on you.”
“Sorry, the time got away from me.”
“But the forest didn’t,” I noted. “Nice work, Paul Bunyan.”
“Ha-ha.” He wiped his face with his palm, then came over to stand next to me. I valiantly tried not to swallow my tongue. It had been a while since I’d dated, much less dated a guy, but I wasn’t blind. “I’ll be right with you,” he said before heading inside.
“Mu-huh.”
Brilliant, Ward. Brilliant.
Chapter Ten
Henry
THERE WAS nothing worse than absolute silence from your superior officer. Approval was easy to accept, expressed disapproval could be dealt with, but stony silence upon giving your report was brutal. If I’d learned nothing growing up as a werewolf, though, I’d learned that patience solved a lot of problems. At the very least, it didn’t make many of them worse. I matched silence with silence, and finally Colonel Hill spoke.
“Are you tired of your position in La Garita pack, Major Dormer?”
“No, sir.” Straight to threats. Unimaginative, but effective. I was just happy I wasn’t being threatened in person. I’d only met Colonel Hill twice before, and there was something about the way he smelled that made me want to snarl. A lot of people in the agency weren’t big fans of werewolves, for all that they recognized our utility, but Colonel Hill was the only one I’d encountered who’d smelled actively hostile.
He kept going. “Because it seems to me like you are. First a failed mission, a mission in which you had demonstrable opportunities to fulfill your objective and chose not to do so, and now making contact with a civilian and bringing him into pack territory without prior permission?”
“I deemed it to be a matter of life and death, sir.”
“That’s not your call to make.”
“It was a child’s life.”
“Still not your call, Major.” His face was cold and composed over the screen. “I think it’s possible that the US government has been too permissive with your pack lately. We’re giving too much and not getting enough back. Do you understand me, Major?”
I nodded. It was all I could do. “Sir.”
“Why didn’t you complete your mission, soldier?”
“Sir, my report has already—”
“You allowed your target to compromise you.” Colonel Hill’s voice was as hard as steel.
“There was no proscription against bringing his family with us.”
“It was impractical, and you knew it.”
“If we had left them behind, they would have been murdered,” I protested.
“They ended up dead anyway, Major, despite your good intentions. Along with a valuable asset that we’d been developing for years
.” He looked at me with eyes full of scorn. “You may be alpha to your pack, but don’t forget who’s holding your leash.”
My hands shook with rage. I clenched them tight and forced the tremors down. “Sir.”
“You can keep the little wolf’s daddy, contingent upon him actually getting kid to change in the next month. If she doesn’t, he’s got to be disposed of like any other pack problem. The pup too. Do you understand me, Major?”
One month wasn’t a lot of time to initiate a change in a pup as young as Ava, but then, she’d already been here for three. No argument I could offer up was going to make a difference right now.
I inhaled slowly, then said, “Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to think on what your behavior merits, but you better believe you’re going to make this disobedience up to me. And whatever I want out of you next time, I’d better get.”
I held it together just long enough for the screen to go dark. The second Colonel Hill’s face vanished, I sprang to my feet and sank my claws into the wood of the desk so deep they left gouges behind. I felt my feet turn to paws, my posture hunch as my spine cracked into shape. I wanted to change all the way, wanted to change and rend and tear, wanted to howl my anger up to heaven where someone I loved might actually listen to it.
No. Couldn’t. Needed to focus, focus on anything other than fury. Liam close, smell of Sam, smell of… of Ward. His smell tantalized my semishifted nose enough to persuade me to leave my room and head into the hall. I opened his door with a bloody hand, my palm carefully sealing over where my claws had punctured it. It smelled….
He wasn’t quite like any person I’d ever scented before. I had spent plenty of time with humans, both in college and in the army, and I knew the wide range of scents they could offer. I could pick out the smells of emotions, of recently eaten meals, of sickness―sometimes of dark, hateful secrets. No human’s hands should smell like death anywhere outside of a mortuary or butcher shop, but sometimes they did. It had been hard not to react to it as a student. I’d made plenty of anonymous calls to the cops, and sometimes they had helped. Sometimes they hadn’t. The point was, I knew scents. I knew their flavors and hues, and I could categorize them accordingly. This, though. Ward. He was different.
Sweat, more sweet than acrid. The aroma of my and Sam’s cooking, in his clothes. A hint of sickness in the medicinal tang that followed him around. A dryness that almost seemed to indicate frailty, and a strange ironlike smell that made me think of determination. He was a delight for a werewolf’s senses—all of us had synesthesia to an extent, a side effect of our abilities. I felt calmer just being in his room, surrounded by his personal blend of aromas mixed with the familiarity of my own home.
By the time I’d fallen out of shift, I was almost in a trance. I had also ripped my socks and the laces on my boots and popped three buttons on my shirt, not to mention the damage done to my hands. The wounds were almost healed now, but that wasn’t the first time lately that my emotions had ruled my shift. It was a disturbing trend. I didn’t feel overly energetic, but clearly I needed to burn off some energy anyway. Time to cut some wood.
I relaced the boots but didn’t bother fussing with my shirt. I wouldn’t be wearing it for long. I split logs fast enough that they always threw splinters, and it was bad enough picking those out of my beard and hair, never mind coaxing them out of flannel before I could throw it in the wash.
Stepping out into the cold, fresh air was like being slapped in the face by reality. This is where you are now, my body reminded the rest of me. Home. No matter what happens tomorrow, for now you’re home. Home, and cold. The faster I got to work, the better. There was a pile of logs by the shed in the back, leftovers from what I’d culled out of the beetle-killed pines earlier in the year. I picked one up, set it on end, and then grabbed the axe out of the shed.
Thwack. There was something about handling a tool that was also a weapon that tended to make me leery these days, but the axe was different. It was immense and as sharp now as my father had ever kept it, but I only ever used it for wood. It wasn’t a gun or a knife or anything else that I’d put to multiple purposes. This axe had only ever chopped wood, for going on fifty years now. It was perfect for the task and meant for nothing else.
Thwack. Getting into the strokes was almost meditative and warmed me up faster than I could say “brr.” I lost track of time, falling into a rhythm that complemented my heartbeat. I didn’t hear the front door open, but I did hear Ward calling my name.
“Out back!”
I had expected surprise. I’d even expected the joke about Paul Bunyan, because it wouldn’t be the first lumberjack crack he’d made and it probably wouldn’t be the last. But the way his heartbeat started to race and his tongue seemed to trip over itself as I got close… that was new. Even stranger was the way it made me want to stand up straighter, to get closer to him, and see if his scent held any hint of arousal. And if it did… well.
I didn’t know what I’d do, but I might feel a little better about soaking up the smells of his room like some creepy lupine sponge.
One new shirt later, I rejoined Ward at the front of the house. “Sorry again about the delay.”
“Oh, you know, it’s—fine—and look, aren’t you going to get cold now that you’re not swinging an axe around?”
Was he worried?
“I would if I was going to stay in this shape for long,” I said. “But I probably won’t, not for recess.”
“You’re going to shift into a wolf for recess?”
I shrugged. “The kids like playing when I’m a wolf. It’s less intimidating than when I’m in my human form.”
“Oh right, because the fangs are totally the sign of a snuggle bunny at heart.”
I grinned. “Are you jealous of recess?”
Ward scoffed. “Jealous of a bunch of kids who’re going to be running after a werewolf in the snow? No, thank you. I’d probably have an asthma attack a minute after I began.”
He had a point. “Sometimes I give them lessons in shifting instead,” I said, skirting an icy patch of ground. “Generally it’s the parents’ responsibility to make sure their kids are shifting consistently well, but as the alpha, I get to be involved too.”
“Yeah, Sam had to sentence one of the girls to furry time this morning.” Ward ducked his head. “I didn’t realize it was something that took so much effort.”
“The first one is instinctual, usually a reaction to stress. The next hundred shifts are all acts of extreme will and concentration. It’ll help Ava that you’re here. As soon as she’s got her strength back, we can start encouraging her shift more actively.” I wasn’t going to mention the timetable, not yet. It hadn’t really changed. We had a month. Either Colonel Hill would approve the paperwork for Ward and it would be forwarded to John, or Ava wouldn’t shift and approval would never come.
That didn’t merit thinking about yet.
“Roman said something about partial shifts. Is that like what Tennyson did in the clinic?”
“Ah.” Tennyson had only shifted part of his face and his hands. He couldn’t do more, as far as I knew. I could, but I wasn’t entirely sure that was a skillset I wanted to put on display for Ward yet. He was brand-new to everything. It wouldn’t do to scare him with the nightmarish reality of a partial shift. Later, when he felt more comfortable, when he was better prepared. “Something like that, but I’ll demo it some other time. I haven’t seen the kids for a while, so I imagine they’ll probably be pretty wild. It’s better to let them run.”
The way he smiled made me think he knew something I didn’t. “You’re probably right.”
Wild was an understatement. I got mobbed by the kids as soon as I showed my face, and for the first time since I could remember, I laughed.
“Help, I’m being overrun!” I looked at Sam. “Head for safety. They’ve gone mad!”
“If they have, it’s because you’ve wasted so much of their recess,” she informed me loftily. “Furr
y time for you, Alpha, hurry up!”
“Furry time!” Josie shouted.
“We’ll time you,” Olivia said. “Last time was twenty-two seconds, I remember. Not as good as your record, but it’s close.”
“What’s your record?” Ward asked.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“It’s a pack record,” Roman said, with the determined air of a kid who was going to do his best to beat it. Good. Someone should.
“Okay, hang on.” I left my boots by the door, then headed to the enclave in the back. I stripped out of my clothes, then said, “Ready?”
“Ready! One, two, three—go!”
I’d been shifting from a young age, almost as early as Ava. It hadn’t always been easy, but with my mother as the alpha and my sister unable to share in the shift, I’d felt compelled to do it until it was as easy as breathing, so I could better protect her. Sam had never needed my physical protection, but especially when we were younger, it had made me feel better to know what I was capable of, just in case. Shifting was usually as basic as breathing, the equivalent of a full-body stretch.
Today it didn’t come so easily. Maybe it was because I was a little tired, still run-down from my mission, and not quite enough to eat. I trotted back out into the schoolroom just as Olivia said, “Twenty-nine.”
“No new record,” Terrence remarked.
“Not everything is a competition,” Sam said. “All right, out back, everyone. I think tag would be a fun game today, huh?”
The kids made their way outside, leaving the door open. The world was like a new place for me, every scent sharper, the colors I saw muted and blurry by comparison. My hearing was about the same, though, and I heard the sharp intake of breath from Ward and heard his feet shuffle back slightly as I approached him and Sam.
“It’s fine,” she assured him. “Henry is totally cognizant in this form. He can understand everything we say, and he’s not going to do anything to hurt anyone.”
“No, of course not,” Ward agreed, but he sounded a little breathless, with a faint rattle deep in his chest. He was frightened.