by Cari Z
I could have headed down the hall to my own waiting, silent room, but instead I paused outside Ward’s door.
He looked straight at me. “Stay,” he said, and I was grateful that he made the offer instead of waiting for me to ask. I was having trouble asking for what I wanted these days.
“I can’t promise anything.” Earlier I’d been filled with desire, wanting nothing more than to see Ward splayed out beneath me in bed, his pale chest heaving as I sucked my mark into the skin over his heart. Now, though….
“I don’t need any promises.” Ward sounded firm. “I don’t care if all you want to do is steal my covers and curl up into a ball. I’d like your company regardless.”
“I don’t steal covers,” I muttered.
“Oh, you so do.” He pushed past me into the room and went straight for the radiator, turning it up higher. “You’re a cover thief, which I don’t get because you run, like, ten degrees hotter than me, but it’s true. It’s a good thing you’re so warm, or I’d have spent last night freezing my ass off—literally.”
“You can’t prove it.”
“Oh no? Wait until we wake up tomorrow morning and you’re so wrapped up in blankets that you can barely move. You’ll see.” He pulled down the comforter, then looked at me. “Bathroom first or cuddling in bed?”
“I don’t get you,” I told him honestly. “I don’t understand how you manage to stay so calm when everything around you is so fucked up. I know I haven’t helped with that very much, and I’m sorry, but Ward… honestly, how do you do it?”
He shrugged. “What’s my alternative? Freaking out? I’ve used up my share of freaking out for the next, oh, probably ten years. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that I can’t muster the energy to get all excited about it. Give me some time,” he added. “I’m sure when Ava starts dating, I’ll find some hidden reserves.”
I loved that he thought about that, about the future, about his daughter. His optimism was catching. “Cuddling,” I said. He didn’t even miss a beat.
“Okay.” He went over to the bed and got onto it, still fully dressed. “C’mere.”
I obeyed, like he was the alpha instead of me, and lay down next to him. When he drew my head onto his chest, I didn’t fight it. I pressed my ear to his rib cage and listened to the sound of his heart, steady and reliable despite the underlying labor of his lungs.
It was all the lullaby I needed.
Chapter Seventeen
Ward
SAM WAS hiding something.
I was honestly surprised I noticed the change in the middle of everything else going on with the pack right now. I hadn’t been here long, and so much of my time was spent with Ava and in school with the other kids that I didn’t have much of a breadth of understanding when it came to the other werewolves of La Garita. I couldn’t tell if it was normal or not for the parents to start showing up at school, having hushed conversations with Sam as they dropped their children off. Maybe we were coming up on tests. Maybe they wanted to arrange for tutoring or something like that. Not that any of the pups needed it, even Roman. Like Tennyson said, his calculus skills were excellent. He didn’t need my help, but he still sought it out, carefully taking notes on every explanation or shortcut I offered up.
I also couldn’t tell if it was normal or not to start having various members of the pack over for dinner every night. Henry was careful to spend some one-on-one time with each of them. Twenty-six members total, minus Henry, Sam, Liam, me, and Ava—twenty-one were left, and six of those were kids. It didn’t take many dinners to have some quality time with all of them, even Gerald and Peggy. Gerald had seemed antsy, but Peggy had been perfectly composed for the meal, and Roman had helped with the dishes.
I could tell that something was off with Sam, though. I’d worked with her long enough to learn a few of her tells, and after three days of watching her skulk and dodge and generally only keep up appearances for the kids, I was ready to start asking questions. I didn’t start easy, either.
“If this were my old campus, I’d be reporting you to the cops for suspicious activity,” I informed her after the kids had left for the day. I was supposed to go meet Henry to work with Ava, but that would keep long enough for me to have a heart-to-heart with Sam. Besides, as Henry and Tennyson kept telling me, I was something for Ava to look forward to. It didn’t hurt for me to be a little late.
“What?” She looked up from her phone. “What are you talking about?”
“The messages you keep checking even in the middle of class, the way your mind is wandering, how you haven’t managed to spend more than five minutes alone with your brother since he got his orders. Which isn’t his fault, by the way,” I added, “so it’s pretty fucking lame of you to avoid him for it.” He hadn’t said as much, but I knew it bothered him. He wasn’t going to push his sister right then, though, so it was time I did it for him.
“Oh Ward, I’m not ignoring him—”
“You’ve totally got both of us fooled, then.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with him. It’s that I don’t want him to leave at all,” Sam insisted. “I’m working on something that might make it possible for him to stay!”
That was… I moved closer. “What?”
She shook her head. “It’s still in the works, and it’s not a sure thing. And you know Henry—if he thought I was doing something dangerous, he’d tell me to stop whether or not it would help him.”
“Because he’s a selfless idiot.”
“That, and because he’s the alpha. And my brother. So I have to take this chance, but if I spend more than a few minutes together with him, he’ll know something is up. I’m shit at lying to him.” She ran a hand through her hair, looking frazzled. “So I hurt him by avoiding him instead, but I promise, if this works, I’ll make it up to him. I’ll explain everything.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then there’ll be hell to pay if my brother dies over there,” she said, every bit as fierce as any werewolf I’d ever met. I looked at her, did what I could to gauge her sincerity, and made up my mind.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Sam collapsed a little with relief. “Not right now. Just distract Henry as best you can. I’m—well.” She took a deep breath. “I’m working with some contacts on something big. If it comes off, then we might be able to do a lot of good, and not just for Henry. For every alpha and every pack.”
“We?” Wait, no, that wasn’t the part that stood out most to me in that little reveal. “Contacts? How are you contacting anyone, when our communications are all being monitored?”
“There’s a bit of a trick to that.” She grinned at me. “We’ve actually got you to thank for it.”
I gaped at her. “Why? What did I do?”
“It’s not what you did, it’s what you brought.” She leaned in close. “Your car had its own mobile hotspot. One that the guardian and the government don’t know we have access to. It’s not foolproof, especially since Colonel Hill knows you’re here, but Liam hasn’t caught any red flags yet.”
“Liam is helping you on this?”
“Of course.” She sounded surprised. “He’s a hacker. This is child’s play for him.”
“You married a hacker? Are you serious?”
Sam shrugged. “Well, professionally he worked for an IT company developing ways to keep people from hacking into systems, but he’s always been a bit of a white hatter. It’s been a little maddening for him, living here with such limited access to computers.”
“I can imagine.”
“But we’ll make that better too.” She said it more to herself than to me, I thought, like a mantra. “We’ll make it better. And you should get to your appointment with Ava,” she reminded me. “Don’t tell Henry anything, okay?”
“I hope you’re not overestimating my abilities,” I warned her.
“I know I’m not.”
Nice that one of us knew that. I’d o
bviously underestimated her abilities, though. I wondered what exactly she was doing and whether it was better for me to have plausible deniability even though they were using my car to do their hacking or whatever it was. On the other hand, if Henry was gone and Sam was booted from the pack, that would leave—what, Gerald as alpha, acting as a stand-in until Roman grew up? Or would they go straight to the young, impressionable kid and try to turn him into a coldhearted killer? They’d have to start a lot earlier if that sort of thing was going to work on someone like Roman.
Maybe with a very young child. Even one as young as Ava. I already knew that gender was no barrier to being an alpha, nor would it prevent her from being sent into the field. I shivered. Time to go hang out with my kid.
I was happy to see Ava when I finally walked through the last door leading to the safe room in the clinic, but apparently my pleasure had nothing on how excited she was to see me. Henry was in the room with her, but she left him immediately, bolted over to the window, and put her hands up on the glass—
Put her. Hands. Her hands, oh my God—
“Ava!” I fell to my knees and pressed my hands up right across from hers, covering them. Holy shit, her tiny little pink hands, they were right there, they were… attached to her furry forelegs, not arms, but I didn’t give a fuck. It was her first sign of change yet.
“Oh, thank God,” Henry murmured from where he was crouched, his shoulders slumping with relief. “She’s started.” Even as I watched, though, Ava’s pale, stubby fingers slowly began to retract, becoming dark and hairy. Ten seconds later her paws were back, and she threw back her head and howled her displeasure to everyone within earshot.
“It’s okay, baby,” I reassured her. “You did it! You did it once, so you can do it again. Soon you’ll be able to shift all the way.” I’d be able to hold her again, kiss her cheek, cradle her against my chest….
“Ward, breathe.”
“I—am—breathing.” Except my inhalations were getting shallow and tight, like I was having an asthma attack. Or a panic attack.
“Ward!” I heard Henry open and shut the door to the cage, felt him settle in next to me, but I couldn’t see him at this point. My vision was going dark with stars, and I fumbled for my inhaler even as I knew that I was probably going to black out with this one. I hadn’t had a panic attack in months. I wasn’t… I wasn’t….
“Ward.” I felt a heavy hand rest against my chest, solid and grounding. “Not the inhaler—it’ll just make your heart race faster. Breathe in with me. One… two… three.” I stuttered, little fluttering breaths at least triple the rate he was trying for, but it helped. “One… two… three. And exhale. One… two… three… exhale.” Ten more cycles and I was able to approximate his breaths. Another ten after that and I was actually starting to feel calm.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said with a cough as soon as I could speak again. “I can’t believe I had a panic attack out of happiness.” I chuckled hoarsely. “Worst timing ever. Now she probably won’t want to change at all, in case it sends my lungs into a stupid convulsion again.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” Henry promised me. His voice was a low rumble, almost a purr, right in front of me. I knew if I opened my eyes he’d be there, so close to me it would take nothing to touch him with more than my chest. He was so warm; I felt his heat like a blanket.
He was looking right at me—I knew it. I could feel his eyes on me, even though I wasn’t looking back. I could keep my own eyes closed and let this moment pass us by, let it fade and go back to the odd, only slightly uncomfortable détente we’d been maintaining since Wilson. I could ignore this and make my life easier.
I opened my eyes. Henry was right there, gaze as blue and clear as a Colorado sky, his lips curved in a slight, secret smile. “Look behind you,” he whispered. I craned my head around until I could catch sight of Ava—
—who was right there, with her beautiful hands pressed to the glass again and her eyes—oh my God, her velvet brown eyes, not the pale amber of her wolf but her human eyes—staring up at me. The changes faded again, but this time when I laughed, I was able to keep my breath. I turned back and didn’t let myself think about it, just leaned forward and sank into Henry’s arms, pushing my face against his neck.
“She’s going to be okay.”
“She is.” He put his knees down on the outsides of mine, almost like I was holding him on my lap instead of the support going the other way around, but he didn’t put any weight on me. He just held me close and ran his broad, strong hands up and down my back. “And so are you.”
“Yeah.” I wanted to say the same, but I knew Henry’s future was damnably uncertain. There was no telling where he’d be in a week; the language training would probably take place stateside, but once he got over to the Ukraine, I bet we wouldn’t get the chance to communicate much. It made sense, then, to tell him what I was thinking now. Only my tongue was tied, my face still flushed from my panic attack and buried against the warm, soft skin at the base of his throat. So, fine, I couldn’t quite bring myself to be articulate. I could still get my point across. I pressed an openmouthed kiss to the top of Henry’s chest and then waited for him to tell me to stop.
“Ward.” That wasn’t an angry or offended kind of growl, more… guttural. It wasn’t that Henry hadn’t already expressed an interest, but things could change, especially with people wanting me. I chanced glancing up at him. His eyes were still blue, but they were unerringly fixed on me. “Be sure.”
“Sure of what? That I want to kiss you?” I kissed him again, right against the Adam’s apple and enjoyed the way it hummed beneath my lips. “I am. Sure that I want to do more with you?” I kissed the corner of his jaw. “I am. Sure that you’ll listen to me if that changes?” I pulled back and met his gaze. “I totally am.”
That was it for talking, Henry taking my yes and running with it—hell, sprinting with it, from cautious kisses to a heavy make-out session in the blink of an eye. His mouth slanted over mine, hungry, even though there was no tongue, no teeth. Kissing was probably safer that way, and I wasn’t missing anything about frenching as he left my mouth for my neck, nuzzling into the space just beneath my jaw before sucking a bruise into my skin.
“Oh fuck,” I moaned, then remembered where we were. “Fuck, wait, we have to stop.”
Henry pulled back immediately, his eyes gone dark and his expression a little grim. “What is it?”
“We’re just—Ava’s right here.”
“Oh.” He looked surprised. “Right, sorry. Let’s head back to the house.” He stood up and pulled me with him like I weighed nothing. Well, comparatively speaking, that wasn’t too far from the mark. Still….
“I don’t want to leave her alone,” I fretted, even though my body was very loudly yelling go go go!
“Tennyson is due back any minute. In fact, he’s probably waiting somewhere we can’t see him to save us from embarrassment.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. “Okay. Just—hang on.” I turned to look at Ava, who now had her paws up against the glass again and was giving me the most pitiful puppy eyes ever.
“Baby, I’m so proud of you,” I said. “You’re amazing. Soon you’ll change back all the way, and then I’ll hold you so tight your feet might never hit the ground again.”
She sniffled. I sniffled. Shit, I was such a softie. “I have to go now, Ava, but I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? Early. We can have breakfast together.” Predictably, this got a howl, and I had to force myself to my feet and away from the glass. “Okay, we have to go now.”
Henry put an arm around my shoulders and looked at my daughter. “I’ll take care of him,” he said, and that at least got Ava’s howl down to a few disconsolate whimpers. We left, and we made it all the way back to Henry’s house in complete silence. It was empty inside—of course, since Sam and Liam were probably off doing their totally illegal hacking project, and from the smell of things, dinner was in the slow cooker.
>
“Are you hungry? We could—”
“Take me upstairs.”
Henry looked a little taken aback. What, like me being cockblocked by my kid was enough to dampen my libido at this point? After literally sleeping together for days, but just sleeping? I was hungry, all right.
“I’m serious,” I said, bending over to yank out the knots in my bootlaces. I left the shoes at the door, along with my heavy jacket. “I want to be upstairs in bed with you in a minute or less. Can you smell how honest I’m being? Can you hear it in my damn heartbe—whoa!” Apparently he did hear it, because he moved in and picked me up before I could take another breath. He carried me up the stairs, opened the door to our room, and only set me down on the bed so he could go and turn the radiator all the way up like I preferred. Then he was at the foot of the bed, staring at me like I was a tasty deer and he was just the wolf to bring me down.
“Why are you giggling?”
“I’ve been watching too much Animal Planet,” I said around a snicker as I lay back and opened my arms. “Oh my God, come shut me up.”
He did, following me down onto the bed and covering my body with his. I wound my arms around his neck and kissed him again and again, quivered when I felt his hand slip beneath my sweater and groaned when his thigh pressed between my legs. I got hard so fast, my body remembering that it hadn’t done this much lately and, wow, it really liked it. Apparently his did too, if the enormous bulge pressing against my hip was any indication.
“Jesus Christ,” I swore as Henry went back to my neck, rubbing his face up and down and leaving my sensitive skin red from the rub of his stubble. “Fuck, how am I going to go out in public tomorrow?”
“Marked up like you’re mine,” Henry said, so full of smug satisfaction that I had to whap the back of his head with my palm. He just laughed. “That’s a good thing.”
“It could be better.”