A Fragile Family

by J. J. Massa

300 W Peachtree Street

  Atlanta, GA

  “Get in the car, Sherman,” Myles ordered, struggling to keep his voice calm and friendly. He knew that this man hadn’t been intimate with Ashley, though he couldn’t believe the desire didn’t exist.

  “You’re Myles Montgomery,” Sherman responded needlessly. He glanced around at the Carnegie Monument standing proud behind him.

  “Got it in one, ducks,” Myles nodded, keeping his eyes on Sherman’s face as he leaned over and pushed the passenger door open.

  Sherman looked startled. “Is something wrong with little sweet cheeks?” he asked in alarm as he lowered himself into the bucket seat.

  With a snarl, Myles pinned him against the seat by the shoulders, fastening the seatbelt harness none too gently. “Ashley, my mate, is simply smashing, thank you. At least as much as you are.”

  Sherman sat unmoving as Myles pulled the door closed and threw the car into gear, accelerating quickly up the busy street and leaving Hardy-Ivy Park well behind them.

  “I, uh, sorry, I…meant no disrespect,” Sherman mumbled, sounding confused more than anything.

  “S’fine,” Myles mumbled, inhaling. “You married to a werewolf?” he asked indelicately, not thinking, just noting the scent.

  “A…a what?” Sherman asked. “Well, she’s a bitch, that’s for sure,” he mumbled more to himself than in answer to Myles’ question.

  Instead of responding to Sherman, Myles merged onto Interstate seventy-five North thinking furiously. Jacob had told him that he had to go and get Sherman. In fact, Jacob had said that Sherman had things to tell him.

  If that were so, and if Sherman needed him, well, in the spirit of friendship and brotherhood, perhaps it was time for Myles to share some home truths with Sherman.

  Glancing at the clock above his rearview mirror, Myles decided he’d make it back to Talking Rock in plenty of time, even if he spent half an hour or more talking with Sherman.

  Spotting a rest area ahead, Myles flipped his blinker on, turning right and parking at the edge of the secluded little oasis, directly in front of a metal picnic table.

  “What…what’s wrong? I thought you were taking me to Ashley?” Sherman asked, looking around nervously.

  Myles could smell his uncertainty, his utter hopelessness punctuated by the pungent scent of a female Were on his person. A close inspection of Sherman’s face revealed a tired man at the edge of his endurance and possibly even past it.

  “I am taking you to Ashley, Sherman. You’ll be with me, and her, her brothers, her entire family. You’ll be safe and welcome. I just wanted to talk to you first.” Myles kept his voice even and low, not wanting to startle the edgy man.

  “I swear, she loves you very much and I’d never…” Myles cut him off, opening his car door and stepping out.

  Sherman followed him, a study in uncertainty. Myles leaned back against the low hood of his car, arm sweeping out to indicate that the other man should have a seat facing him. Sherman did, plopping himself down, planting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hand.

  “Sherman,” Myles asked carefully, “What do you know about werewolves?”

  “Werewolves?” Sherman lifted his head, a look of amused incredulity on his face.

  “What does anyone know about werewolves? They are an intriguing fantasy that…”

  Myles concentrated for a second, feeling his incisors lengthen, his hair begin to grow, his beast was never all that far beneath the surface. “They’re real,” he informed Sherman needlessly, his voice a deep rumble.

  “I, um, I…” Sherman wiped a hand over his face, if possible, looking even more pale than he had before.

  “It’s okay, Sherm, I’m on your side,” Myles murmured, allowing his beast to recede slowly.

  “What…Why?” Sherman’s blue eyes were almost silver now, dark, intent.

  “You are married to a werewolf and it occurred to me that you didn’t know that,” Myles informed him carefully.

  “Lilith? How do you…I mean, she’s a hard woman but…a werewolf?” Sherman was obviously well outside of anything he could get a handle on. Myles knew his calm demeanor was tenuous at best.

  “Werewolves, like dogs, have a very strong sense of smell. In fact, in many ways, werewolves are very canine—lupine, really,” he supplied, wondering what would come next.

  “So, is Ashley…?” Sherman asked, trailing off, his question obvious. “I’m trying to process this,” he admitted, running a hand through his hair.

  “No, Ashley is not a werewolf. But some human women are meant to be mated to werewolves. Ashley is my mate. She was always my mate. This Were you are married to...” he struggled to find the right words. “She isn’t meant to be your mate. It’s something a Were can smell.”

  Sherman shot to his feet, holding his arm out, shaking hard. “Bite me then,” he demanded, closing his eyes and turning his head.

  “Wha?” Myles shook his head hard. “Cor, ducks, why would I want to do a thing like that?”

  “Bite me and make me a werewolf,” Sherman spelled it out, his voice hard, talking loud and slow as if to a small child. Myles looked at him and shook his head, stunned. “Come on! I’m married to a werewolf—in love with a werewolf; I want to be a werewolf! She’ll love me then. Make me a werewolf, too!”

  “It doesn’t work that way, luv,” Myles tried to explain. “You don’t just make someone a werewolf,” he hedged, neatly bypassing the fact that he had been made a werewolf, although not by being bitten.

  “Bullshit!” Sherman spat, stepping forward and grabbing Myles by the lapels. “It happens that way in the movies! Jack Nicholson became a werewolf. They get that stuff from somewhere! If werewolves are real, then…”

  Myles lifted Sherman by the shoulders and sat him back on the picnic table, stepping back from him. “You can’t believe everything you see on television, ducks, it’s just make-believe,” he tried to reason.

  “You’re really strong, aren’t you?” Sherman interrupted, seemingly diverted, for the time being, from his desire to become a werewolf.

  “Uh, yeah,” Myles answered cautiously. He wasn’t sure what this new direction of conversation meant, but he’d try it. “I’m exceptionally strong, even for a werewolf.”

  He picked up a large rock and crushed it, showing Sherman his strength. “I had some gene-splicing done and it made me strong with extra endurance. It’s hard to injure me—I heal right up,” he explained judiciously, hoping Sherman would grasp what he was trying to say.

  Suddenly, the silver-haired man was all over him, throwing wild punches and kicking at him, trying his best to injure Myles.

  “You sorry son of a bitch! How could you? Why didn’t you..? You piece of shit!”

  Sherman raged, his face red as he attempted to bring Myles down.

  “Blimy you fool! What the bleedin’ hell are you doin?” Myles pushed him to the ground and sat on him, at a complete loss.

  Sherman looked up at Myles from his position flat on his back, blue eyes sparkling, sparking with fury.

  “You could have fucking saved us,” he rasped, the words low and harsh, forced through a tight throat. “You could have saved the little boy that died in her arms; you could have gotten us out of there, kept us from…” Sherman was breathing heavily, anger and hurt pouring off of him in waves.

  Myles backed up, pulling the larger man with him, dragging him onto his lap and pulling him tight against his chest. “Tell me, pet,” he murmured, his voice low and soothing. “Tell me what happened,” he urged, stroking through Sherman’s unruly curls.

  “It’s just us, you and me. Tell me.”

  It could have been awkward, perhaps should have been. Myles didn’t think beyond his role of protector. Sherman Landon was a man in pain.

  Myles remembered the video he'd seen at Ashley’s apartment. In it, Sherman had treated Ashley as an equal, but it was obvious that he tried to look after her as well.

  He’d fought hard aga
inst any number of things bigger than he was and had kept Ashley somewhat safe while he was doing it. He needed comfort and security and Myles was determined to give it to him. In that moment, Myles opened his heart and let Sherman in. He was family.

  It was Myles’ job to provide whatever he was capable of for members of his pack and so he would. And Sherman was, irrevocably, a member of Myles’ pack.

  With a deep, shuddering breath, Sherman relaxed against Myles and began to speak, leaning into the stroking palm petting his hair, his voice dead, colorless.

  “It was just a little village on the side of a mountain—there are so many through there. We knew there were less than twenty people, three families, and no way to get them out.” Sherman’s voice was flat, monotone, and he probably didn’t realize that warm tears were trickling down his face. Myles continued his rhythmic movement. He needed to hear this as much as Sherman needed to tell it.

  “We were so arrogant,” Sherman shook his head slightly, and then leaned back into Myles stroking hand. “Educated, capable Americans, to the rescue. We dug trenches, we filled sandbags, Ash tried to fix their car, but we knew we were there for the duration. It was too late when we realized that we were screwed. The rains had already hit, the ground was loose from the earthquake, and I had reports that a shelf above us would probably collapse. The families didn’t want to go, couldn’t leave everything they had. So we did the best we could, dug more trenches, filled more sandbags, tried to make a cave hoping the debris would just pass us by, flow over us and keep going maybe.”

  Sherman stopped talking for a minute, just resting. Myles shifted him slightly, wiping his leaking tears with his thumbs. “So?” he hated to ask, almost didn’t want to know, but he felt he had to. “What happened next?”

  “Like I said, there were three families. Three sets of parents, a couple of teenaged boys, a twenty year old girl, and a handful of smaller kids—twelve, ten, eight, five—like that.” Pulling in a deep sigh, Sherman closed his eyes and went on. “We heard the shelf up the mountain give. Sounded like the wrath of God or something—a herd of freight trains, it was horrible.”

  Sherman shuddered, his breath hitching as he turned his face against Myles’ chest.

  Whatever was next had to be truly awful, Myles reasoned; Sherman Landon was not a weak man.

  “Shh, mate,” Myles crooned, “take your time.” Yes, Jacob had told him he had to be back there by two-thirty. It had been just after twelve when he’d pulled over here.

  Some things just took the time they took. He wouldn’t rush Sherman in his telling.

  “There was a gap—an air hole of sorts, an escape hatch. We’d fixed it in such a way that you could get out, air could get in, but the floe should have passed right over.”

  Sherman paused, his hand gripping the arm that Myles had wrapped around him, hanging on tight. “We were clinging together, mothers holding the little kids, dads holding the moms. This little skinny boy, eleven or twelve—he’d been hanging on Ashley, she’d glommed on to him right away. When the shelf collapsed, he broke free, shooting across the room,” his throat clicked and his grip tightened on Myles. “Little bastard just had to see. He stuck his head out of that hole. His sister, hysterical, shot up after him—her boyfriend jumped up, too. Fucking deluge of rock, mud, natural bullshit, just ripped ‘em right in half.” He shuddered again. “Fuckin’ tore ‘em right up. Three kids, half their bodies ripped off. The older two were stuck there. The little boy…his lower half dropped, too skinny, I guess. Took his head off, but the rest of him was intact. Had a cartoon Ash had drawn for him, still holding it in his little hand. She caught him when he fell from that hole…”

  “Bloody hell,” Myles croaked, resting his chin on Sherman’s head.

  “We were trapped in there for a week with the rain and debris still pouring down that hill. Then we tried to dig out. Stuck there with hysterical moms, devastated fathers, traumatized kids, and three mangled corpses. A week.” His voice had dropped to a whisper and then, nothing. Sherman swallowed once, twice, over and over, his body tight, fine tremors wracking his tense frame.

  In his lifetime, Myles had been responsible for more death than he’d ever thought possible. He was an enforcer, jokingly referred to as a troubleshooter for his pack. He kept the peace throughout the enormous Montgomery-Livingston pack, whatever that took. Sometimes that meant giving his beast free reign—all at the behest of his adopted father and pack alpha, Mik Montgomery.

  Myles trusted that Mik would never put him in a situation where his violence would be used in some self-serving way. In fact, when Myles was finally called in, it was usually in an effort to protect the local human population. Werewolves convinced of their own superiority were a dangerous lot indeed.

  Never, ever had he wanted Ashley to be exposed to such violence. And thus far, she hadn’t been. Aside from the violence of her own biological father, Ashley had been spared the demons that drove some men and werewolves to hurt one another. He couldn’t have foreseen the possibility that she’d put herself in harm’s way to help people in emergencies.

  He wasn’t surprised, thinking about it. Ashley was a giving soul who would always do for others before she would do for herself. And now, he had an armful of what appeared to be her soul mate of sorts. He just didn’t have it in him to hold that against Sherman.

  “Come on, guv, let’s go see my princess, hmm?” He dropped an easy kiss on the top of Sherman’s head and pulled him to his feet. “You can see for yourself she’s okay, and let your new family take care of you.”

  “What about Lilith?” Sherman mumbled, stumbling alongside Myles, an automaton.

  Myles helped the larger man climb into the car, easing the seat back and buckling him in. Sherman, completely spent, stayed where he was put.

  “I’ll give a call on Lilith a bit later, pet. Never fear,” he smiled grimly.

  There wasn’t a thing he could do to fix what had already happened, that was true.

  Lilith Landon, however, was a puzzle to Myles. He’d never liked puzzles. He didn’t expect to like Lilith, either.

  Chapter Eleven

  Office of Jack Aschtholdt

  Landon International

  Suite 2B, 5400 Peachtree Street

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “Did you know that she was married into those Montgomerys?” Lilith demanded, stalking into Jack’s office.

  Jack was pulling on his jacket and giving Lilith only a modicum of his attention.

  “She’s not actually married, Lilith. There’s no record of it,” he murmured, flipping through a stack of papers on his desk.

  “He’s a werewolf, moron!” she growled. “They’re mated. You can be sure there’s some legal-enough record in the family rolls somewhere.” Jack arched a brow but didn’t say anything. “What, you don’t believe in werewolves? I thought we settled this…”

  Jack leaned forward, into her face. “I don’t give a shit if he’s a mermaid. Hell, he could be a vampire, they can still be killed. I just don’t like staying up that fuckin’ late. Now, you got something for me? Cuz I have a job to do.”

  “Your job,” Lilith hissed as she stepped up to him, invading all of his personal space, “is to do what I tell you to do. I don’t recall telling you to do anything besides find out about Ashley West-Montgomery.”

  Jack snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her hard against him and shoving her against the wall. Had she been as delicate as she looked, she might have been hurt. As it was, she a little angry, and Jack suspected, she was probably aroused, too.

  Too bad if she was. It would be good for her to want for awhile. Maybe she needed a crash course on what he really was doing here. In fact, maybe she needed reminding that she was not the baddest ass on the block.

  “I am here to do what you need, and I’ll stay here and do it as long as it coincides with what I need. Right now, I need to know what I can about the guy that picked up your husband and see if he’s the same one that’s screwing around
with my daughter.” He bucked his hips against her roughly. “If it turns out that Sherman and Ashley are in the same place, it will be a lot easier to do something about them. If they’re in the middle of a bunch of hotheads, we have a motive for their murder, now don’t we?”

  Lilith stared at him, transfixed. Was that respect in her hard yellow-green eyes?

  “So? What are you doing now?” she purred, rubbing her pelvis against him.

  Jack looked at her with narrowed eyes. “I’m going out. I need a team, and not a management team, either.” He gave her a shove and walked around her, heading for the door.

  “You can do that later,” she barked. “I want you to do me right now.”

  “Maybe in a while, Lilith,” he smirked, slipping through the door and closing it behind him.

  It wouldn’t hurt her to know that he wasn’t just a stud for her. Besides, he didn’t care who she was, he had needs she couldn’t meet. Living behind bars in the society of men had taught him more about his body and about the worst people had to offer than Lilith ever could. She thought she was bad—she had no idea.

  “Twenty-five Rockwell,” Jack growled to the cab driver, sliding into the back seat.

  “It’s gonna be twelve bucks, up front,” the reed-thin driver insisted, looking suspiciously back at Jack.

  The neighborhood wasn’t really bad, not all that great either. Jack supposed he looked a little iffy, hardened, but he wore a new suit. It didn’t matter. He would get what he needed there and twelve dollars wasn’t that much money to him right now. Funny how all things were relative. A month ago, he didn’t have twelve cents to his name, now he was handing some skinny little prick a ten and a five and letting him keep the change.

  More ironic, if he thought about it, was that he’d just turned down a good romp with a pretty and rich woman just so that he could hook up with a guy he had known in prison. Not just any guy, though.

  Becker was a bullet-headed black man with a scar down his left cheek. He’d owned Jack during his stint in federal prison and eventually, Jack had been grateful. Not at first, of course.