by Rider, Liv
Reluctantly, he let go of his human form. Smell and hearing sharpened while his color vision dimmed. Wolves didn’t see in black and white, but they didn’t see the same full spectrum as humans either. He landed on four paws, and the office lit up with the ghost movements of people laid out in scent trails.
“I woke up over here.” Dev walked to stand next to a filing cabinet.
Aidan put his nose to the ground. The bitter old-fear scent was stronger here, a blurred impression of Dev’s body on the carpet. A small metallic note dinged against his senses and led him to a tiny blood droplet, invisible to the eye. It was Dev’s blood. Could the minuscule amount of blood be from someone removing a dart before Dev woke up? Another scent lay next to Dev’s, as if someone had crouched beside him momentarily while he lay unconscious.
Aidan’s ears flattened against his skull and he bared his teeth.
Dev tensed. “Is it…is it a werewolf? You could tell if it was, right?”
Aidan shot him a swift look.
Dev didn’t answer, but his tension unwound a fraction. Apparently so long as it hadn’t been a wolf who’d attacked him, that was A-OK? Aidan was getting really tired of Dev’s prejudice. He made sure he’d separated the scent from all the others in the office, and followed it to the door, sending it slamming open with a gust of wind and a mental push to twist the lock.
Dev held out his hands in a what-the-hell sort of gesture.
Aidan huffed at his own foolishness.
Dev stared at the open door in alarm and then back at Aidan. “Hey, you’re not—”
Aidan trotted out onto the main floor, ignoring Dev’s muttered curse. No panicked cries rose from the workers, which meant his glamour was holding. He followed the attacker’s scent to the fire exit and sat back on his haunches beside the door.
Dev hurried across the floor, Aidan’s clothes bundled under his arm. The woman with the desk nearest the fire exit gave him an odd look.
“You all right, boss?”
“I’m just checking something,” Dev said confidently to her. He opened the fire exit and Aidan padded through. The door shut behind them and Dev slumped against the wall in relief. “Did you really have to gamble your glamour would hold?” he whispered fiercely at Aidan. “What were you planning to do if they noticed a giant wolf waltzing past the photocopier?” The more out-of-the-ordinary something was, the harder it was to glamour people to ignore it.
Dev looked back at the closed door and began to laugh, his whole body shaking as he tried not to make too much noise. “Yeah, you are. God only knows what Patricia thinks I’m doing in here by myself.” His amusement faded as he took in their surroundings. “You think someone got into my office through the stairwell?”
Dev didn’t comment as Aidan followed the trail down flights of stairs. Dev’s familiar scent was layered on top of the intruder’s, laced with pain and rage. This must be the route he’d taken out of the building last night. Should Aidan leave it be? But he’d never been very good at that.
Dev was silent for a long time. “You’re fine. It’s different for me.” His tone made it clear that was all he had to say on the subject as he pushed open the exit door on the ground floor. “I need to check with security if someone did get in this way.”
“It just is.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter, okay?” Dev’s tone had gone clipped, and his hands fisted as he changed the subject. “Is there any point in me pointing out you’re a wolf openly wandering around downtown in the middle of the day?”
Dev snorted. “How do you even know all these damn pop culture references?”
He trotted along the sidewalk, Dev beside him. The city wasn’t a great place for a wolf, with its overload of sensory bombardment. Smells by the thousands: people, gasoline, plastics, cigarette butts, browning leaves. Vehicles passed, interspersed with the occasional honk from irate drivers. Pedestrians chattered, heels hitting the pavement in sharp rhythms. In the distance, an alarm sounded. Aidan let it all fade and focused on the mystery intruder—or rather, the bleach on their shoes.
The scent grew muddier, mixed with other people’s movements over the last 24 hours. Aidan strained his senses, until the scent became the world, tracking it across a bridge, down a pedestrian-only side road that opened onto a wide plaza.
And then his nose exploded in pain.
Chapter 9
Dev ran after him, his heart racing.
“Get your dog under control, man!” someone yelled as he dodged pedestrians. Had Aidan’s glamour come unraveled? But no one was screaming about wolves, so it had to be holding at least a little bit. Maybe the crowds were seeing some kind of husky or something—that was the sort of thing Dev knew weaker glamour could do. But what had weakened Aidan’s control of his glamour in the first place?
He caught up to Aidan in an alley on the other side of the plaza. Aidan flung himself at Dev and abruptly his arms were full of whimpering naked man. Dev hugged him close without hesitation, and Aidan buried his nose against Dev’s neck with a groan.
“Fuck,” he mumbled, his breath tickling Dev’s skin. “I love human noses.”
Right. He’d only come to Dev so he could change back to human. Obviously. Dev should probably let him go now. But Aidan shivered. It was cold out, a hint of ice in the air, and Dev wrapped him in a tighter embrace.
This is just a platonic hug for warmth, he told himself. He could feel the firm, muscular lines of Aidan’s back under his hands. Oh, hell. He willed his body not to react, but he wasn’t a saint and Aidan was so very, very naked.
“What was it?” he asked.
“Fucking concentrated gasoline-and-pepper-spray bomb dropped where ten thousand people would walk in it and spread it around.” Aidan made a pained sound. “My head is killing me.”
“My apartment’s close—will that help, getting aw
ay from it?”
Aidan made a muffled sound that Dev took for agreement.
Dev got Aidan back into the clothes he’d brought with him and bundled them back to the office building without getting caught for public exposure. A now-clothed Aidan clung to his neck as they took his private elevator up to the penthouse, still shaking, and Dev didn’t object. The whole scent experience had clearly knocked his human coordination back a few notches.
Platonic comfort, he reminded himself as Aidan’s weight leaned against him. It didn’t work. Nothing about Aidan felt even slightly platonic.
“So, wolf lesson five: stay away from scent bombs?” Dev said, trying to cheer him up.
Aidan gave a strangled laugh. “Yeah. I shouldn’t have been going so fast or I wouldn’t have barreled straight into the epicenter without being prepared for it. I’d give the pups hell for making that kind of rookie error.”
“The pups?”
Aidan lifted his head and gave a weak smile. “You’re not my only pupil. I run Wolf Club on Friday nights.”
The doors opened, and Aidan blinked, taking in Dev’s apartment. “Wow. You live here?” He seemed to realize he was still clinging to Dev’s neck and pulled away. Dev squashed the urge to pull him back.
Aidan wobbled over to the couch and sank down onto it.
“I live here,” Dev confirmed.
“Nice view,” Aidan said, looking around. The living room looked towards the lake, which sparkled under a clear sky. A few small vessels had been lured out by the sunshine, despite the tiny white caps dotting its surface. He rubbed at his nose, still clearly shaken, but then visibly pulled himself together. “Right, enough of my whining. Back to the real issue here.”
Did the guy ever cut himself a break? Dev wanted to wrap his arms around Aidan again and tell him he could be weak for a moment and Dev would protect him.
How will you protect him from yourself?
Aidan continued, oblivious to Dev’s inner turmoil. “Your mystery attacker knew how to get a werewolf off his trail. You were deliberately injected with something that triggered your latent werewolf genes. I need to call Sabas.” He set his jaw and said firmly. “If someone’s out to get you, you should have a different pack member assigned to you. Someone who can control their shapeshifting.”
“I don’t want another pack member,” Dev said, the words spilling out without conscious thought.
“I can’t stay human if I’m further than a hundred and fifty paces away from you,” Aidan argued.
“Aren’t bodyguards supposed to stay close?” Not that Dev needed a bodyguard. He should leap at a chance for space from Aidan, since Aidan sent his prized self-control spinning into orbit. But the idea of Aidan leaving made him panic even more than the idea that someone was trying to turn him into a werewolf. He thought of Aidan being trapped in wolf form again, and his chest grew so tight it hurt.
“You have a company to run. I have a cat to feed. I can’t just…yoke myself to you permanently.” Aidan said it calmly, but his fingers dug into the edge of the couch hard enough to make his knuckles white.
Why not? Dev held the words back because they were crazy. He barely knew the guy. Why did he feel so drawn to him? “No reason not to give it some time,” he said instead. “I can work remotely for a while. I want to help you figure out how to shift back by yourself. I’m not that much of an asshole to leave you trapped when I can help you stay human.” Reasons. Nice logical reasons that were definitely not driven by knee-jerk panic.
Aidan looked down at his hands with unnerving intensity, un-gripping his fingers one by one. The leather made small popping sounds with the release of each temporary divot. “I don’t want to be a burden,” he said finally.
Dev closed the distance between them before he thought better of it, sliding next to Aidan.
“You’re not a burden. You’re here to give me damn wolf lessons, aren’t you?” He’d sat too close. Aidan’s warmth seeped into him where their shoulders touched. Dev could taste the faint mint of his magic, the remnant of the earlier glamour. The kiss before had had the same faint minty edge. Would his skin taste the same? The thought sent heat straight through him, and something primal in his soul gave a possessive growl.
Dev sucked in a breath and forced himself to back off, shuffling until there was a whole damn seat cushion separating them.
Aidan’s eyes flicked to the seat cushion between them, as if he were measuring the distance. He gave a brittle grin. “I thought you didn’t need any wolf lessons.”
“I don’t, but why let that stop you now? Maybe you’ll change my mind. Besides, it’ll give me the chance to demonstrate my super-powered humanity skills. Don’t deny me a chance to show off.” He clamped his mouth shut to stop wild promises coming out; in that moment, he felt like he might say anything to get rid of the echo of despair in Aidan’s expression.
The grin got warmer, more real. “Humanity super powers, huh? So, basically, we’re agreeing on human lessons in exchange for wolf ones, right?”
“I don’t think that’s what I said,” Dev said, but the tight knot in his chest unwound.
Aidan waved his protest away. “That’s what I heard! Can I borrow your phone? To call Sabas.”
His Alpha. Because Aidan was part of a pack. Of werewolves.
What was Dev doing? He should stay as far away from Aidan as humanly possible, but instead he found himself handing over his phone, the brush of Aidan’s hand against his feeling more intimate than it should have.
Aidan went to call Sabas from Dev’s home office, and Dev busied himself with packing for a few days and sending an apologetic email to his long-suffering assistant to let her know he’d be working remotely and, yes, he’d take the tender documents with him to look over tonight. It was the biggest development Morimoto Enterprises had ever done, and Dev should be focused on it. Instead, his brain kept spinning with ideas for ‘human lessons.’ Bet Aidan would get a kick out of making cookies, Dev mused, thinking of the way Aidan moved his fingers, enjoying textures. But thinking of Aidan’s fingers quickly made his mind shift to more R-rated activities.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to mentally work through interest rate calculations. I just have to keep my hands off the guy until we figure out this whole situation. How hard could that be?
Chapter 10
Aidan called Sabas from Dev’s home office, though he wasn’t sure why Dev needed an office here as well as the one downstairs. There was an architectural model of some kind of eco-village spread out on the desk, and he couldn’t help lightly running his fingers over the smooth white shapes of the buildings, savoring the texture. Hands were so great.
It was Sabas that answered rather than one of his Seconds. The main pack line was always manned, but the one for the Alpha sometimes went to whoever was at the den and available to take calls if Sabas was unavailable.
“It’s Aidan. Surprise, I’m a human again!”
A long beat. “Bloody hell. Congratulations. How did that happen?”
“Well, sort of a human again.” Aidan explained the whole Dev-proximity issue, which led straight into the mystery-attacker issue.
He flexed his hands while he talked, trying to carve the shape of them into his brain, trying not to think about what would happen if Dev took one step too far from him, of that horrible forced snap of the change taking him again. But Dev was staying, he reassured himself. He would leave, eventually—people always left—but he was staying for now. That at least meant Aidan had more time to figure this out.
“…so someone attacked Dev and didn’t want us tracking them,” he finished. He felt his Alpha’s attention sharpen.
“See if you can get hold of the security footage.” Sabas sighed, and Aidan could hear his tiredness even at this distance. “This is just what I needed, some lunatic going around trying to make rogue werewolves in the middle of a damn fae succession war and Triumvirate investigation.”
“What could trigger latent we
rewolf genes, though?” That was the bit Aidan was stuck on.
Another sigh. “No clue. How’s our newest wolf coping with the whole situation? Still spitting denial?”
Aidan found himself strangely reluctant to talk about Dev, but he made it a rule not to lie to his Alpha. It wasn’t just because Sabas had taken them in when no one else would have two fae-wolf hybrids. Sabas was a good man, and a good Alpha. “Well, he’s not exactly happy about it yet, but he’s agreed to let me try to teach him.”
There was a low growl through the phoneline. “And how are you coping with this whole situation?”
Well, my wolf wants to pin him down and lick him except I’m pretty sure that’s not a great way to go about trying to seduce anyone. For a wild moment, he thought of asking Sabas for advice, but—no. Just no. “Well, it’s a pain not to have full control over my shifting, but I’m not complaining. Something’s better than nothing, right? And he’s agreed to stick around to try to help me figure it out.”
Sabas made a thoughtful sound, and Aidan steeled himself. Sabas was probably about to suggest sending Aidan another wolf for backup—someone who could control their shifting, who knew how to do all this human stuff properly. It would make sense, but it didn’t mean Aidan relished the reminder of his limitations.
But instead Sabas said, “Well, I’m glad to have you on this, four legs or two. Rogue wolves are no joke, and sounds like you’re most likely to get through to him. Especially if he’s a martial.”
Wait, what? That sounded like a vote of confidence. Aidan blinked down at Dev’s architectural model in confusion. There was a tiny sign stuck to it that read: Leafling Heights.
“Aidan? You there?”
Aidan gave himself a shake. “I’m here. And yeah, that’s my read on his status too.” Though it was hard to be sure before he’d taken wolf form.
“No wonder I managed to piss him off so much in such a short time,” Sabas said wryly.