by Selena Scott
She shrugged in affirmation.
He squinted at her. “What kinds of books talk about how men’s houses look in such detail?”
She shook her hair back, semi-defiantly. “Romances, mostly.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t know you were reading romances.”
He’d only ever brought her classic fiction and some biographies. Some manga here and there because she had a special place in her heart for it. She’d learned to read using manga, after all.
She rose and moved into the living room to inspect his bookshelves. “Only at night,” she replied.
He stopped in his tracks and stared at her back. She genuinely didn’t seem like she knew she’d said anything interesting with that sentence.
“You read romance novels at night,” he repeated, almost tonelessly.
“Yeah,” she confirmed, pulling a book out, looking at it for a moment and then re-shelving it.
“Like, right before you fall asleep?” His voice was much too gruff. His skin was too hot and too tight. His apartment was suddenly way too small. Why was he doing this to himself? He needed to be picturing Dawn in her bed, hot and bothered, like he needed a hole in his head.
The image of her on the van floor slashed in front of his vision and he winced. This was all so fucked up.
“Yeah. They pretty much always have a happy ending. It’s nice to fall asleep with that kind of story in your head.”
She turned back to face him and her explanation immediately made him feel like a perv. She was reading romance novels for the happily ever afters, not for getting herself off before bed. He needed a therapist.
“Dawn,” he tried again, his voice still as rough as the serrated edge of a saw. “Is there a reason you’re in my house in the middle of the night?”
She stared at him, her eyes all over his face, the quiet between them intensifying. With anyone else, this would be a very weird moment. Just staring at one another like this. With Dawn, it was the usual. It had taken weeks for her to even speak a single word to him at the beginning of their mentorship together. And even now, she was often more quiet than not. The woman was stingy with her words, and generally speaking, so was Quill. They spent a lot of time locked in eye contact, playing a game of chicken for who was going to be the chump who spoke first.
“How did you even know where I live?” Apparently Quill was the chump. Just like always.
She tapped her nose in response.
Of course. The infamous Wolf Sibling sense of smell. The whole reason they were in this mess in the first place. They had the best sense of smell of any shifter that Quill had ever met, which meant that not only could Dawn track him down across town, right to his apartment door, it meant that the Director wanted nothing more than to recruit them. Which was how Quill found himself in this horrible predicament. Dawn in her black coat looking so lovely next to his packed bookshelves. Soon to be Dawn knocked unconscious, lying on the cold metal floor of a van, handcuffed and speeding toward the Director.
“Right,” he grumbled, turning and going to sit on the couch. He collapsed down, gripping the back of his neck like a vice.
Maybe he should just come clean.
“I’m here because something is wrong with you.”
He raised his head and his eyebrow at once. “What?”
She sighed and moved to sit on the coffee table in front of him. She was so close that their knees could have knocked together if he’d let them. “Something is wrong with you,” she repeated in that blunt way that all the Wolf Siblings had. They hadn’t grown up speaking a lot of English so sometimes their colloquialisms were a little bit rough around the edges. “And don’t deny it. I’ve been noticing it for the last few months. You’re moody and tense and weird. And I know it sounds silly, but I couldn’t sleep tonight thinking about it. I don’t know if you’ll tell me about it or what, but yeah, I think you’re in some kind of trouble.” Her eyes shot up to his. “I’m almost positive that you are.”
Those eyes of hers were dangerous. The same kind of dark that waited for a man at the end of a dock at midnight. Dark water. Black with an unknown depth. She had eyes that could suck him down to the bottom of the ocean if he let them.
“You think I’m in trouble so you drove over here in the middle of the night uninvited?”
She shrugged. “We’re friends.”
It was just two words, simple ones, ones that had been said by millions of people over the course of thousands of years, he was sure of it. But those two simple words simply skewered him.
“Yeah,” he croaked, his throat raw and aching, his fate laid out before him, already sealed.
They were friends.
According to Dawn, they were friends. Which meant trust. Affection. Honesty.
Quill had never wanted to deserve anything more than he wanted to deserve Dawn’s friendship.
The only problem was that friends didn’t sell one another out to government programs that would seek to radicalize and weaponize them, thereby stripping them of freedom and future. Friends definitely didn’t take part in plans to get each other tranquilized and handcuffed in the backs of unmarked vans.
Dawn thought she was friends with Quill. But she didn’t know Quill at all. She only knew the minuscule part of himself that he let her see.
Silence descended again and Dawn sighed, leaning back on her palms. “You’re not going to tell me what’s wrong, are you?”
He said nothing. He was too tired to lie to her. To claim that nothing was wrong. He just sat there and let her eyes search him. God only knew what she saw.
“Fine,” she eventually said. “Then you give me no choice.”
She rose and disappeared into his kitchen. He heard his refrigerator open and close. The silverware drawer. She came back in and he found a pint of vanilla ice cream that he’d forgotten he even had shoved into his hand. She eyed his television dubiously and then stepped around to the bookshelves instead.
“I’d put a movie on but it’s all so loud. I’d rather do a book.”
“A book?” What the hell was she talking about?
She pulled one off the shelf. “I haven’t read this series yet. But people talk about it all the time.”
He saw that she was holding the first book of a popular fantasy series for adults. He’d read it in high school but barely remembered it. He watched, utterly mystified, as Dawn came back to the couch and sat down next to him, just close enough that he felt the cushions depress under her weight. She leaned over and took a spoonful of the ice cream he still held in his hand. For a moment, she was close enough that he could have leaned down and smelled her hair. Luckily, his self preservation instincts chose that moment to kick in and he saved himself the torture.
“Dawn,” he said hoarsely. “What the hell are you doing?”
She shoved the spoon back into the carton and leaned back, cracking the book open and clearing her throat. “I’m giving you company,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why?”
“Because you’re clearly sad and stressed and you’ve been a good friend to me over the year. I’m returning the favor and making sure you’re not lonely tonight. It’s the least I can do.”
She cleared her throat again and began to read.
Quill stared at her, the ice cream growing soupy and warm in his hand. He couldn’t remember the last time his loneliness was anyone’s concern. Certainly it hadn’t happened since before his family had died. Since before the shifter camps. Before he’d had his heart ripped out by the cruelty of the unaccepting world.
He didn’t listen to a word she read, all he could do was look at her. All he could think about was what was coming for her. And how there was no way in hell that he could stop it.
***
Diana got to work extra early the following morning. Perhaps it was her way of paying some kinds of karmic penance for her indulgent evening with Orion. She wasn’t going to take it back. She wasn’t
going to apologize for it. But maybe, just maybe, she should work extra hard at her job today. She figured it was a good compromise between her orderly half and her wild half. Rome wasn’t built in a day and she couldn’t be expected to let messiness enter every single aspect of her life just because she’d allowed herself to start fooling around with Orion.
She frowned when she reached for the back door of the center and found it unlocked. She had definitely locked it when she’d left last night. A few of her more trusted mentors had keys to the center but she’d never known any of them to use them this early in the morning.
She reached into her purse and pulled out her pepper spray as she cautiously entered the building. Why did she have to wear her extra high heels this morning? Not only were they louder than tap shoes, they were not exactly getaway footwear. If she had to run, she was definitely going to have to do it on a turned ankle or two.
As quietly as possible, Diana made her way toward the main room of the center. “Hello?”
A dark shape rose up suddenly from a desk in the corner. Large. A man. Diana braced and stepped back.
“Who’s there?”
“Diana.” A familiar voice said. “Sorry. It’s just me.”
“Quill.” A strange feeling tripped down Diana’s spine. One she’d never had with Quill before. He had been one of the first mentors she’d hired on. And she’d considered him doubly useful over the years because not only was he really, really good with shifter re-acclimation into human culture, he was a shifter himself. He had an insider’s perspective on how to help the shifter population that almost none of her other mentors had. She’d trusted him from the beginning. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry,” he said again. “I just— I have an early meeting with Callie.” One of his mentees. “And I came in to use the printer and the, um, copy machine for some stuff we were gonna do today. I didn’t bother letting you know because I thought I’d be in and out. But, yeah, you’re here early. Sorry.”
It was three times he’d apologized to her at this point. Diana was almost positive that he was lying to her about why he was here. Her eyes discreetly took in the scene around her. From where she was standing, she could see just slightly through the door of her office. She registered, with shock that she hoped she was hiding, that her computer in her office wasn’t dark-screened and sleeping like it usually was. In fact, it was woken up, like someone had just been on it.
She frowned. “Okay.”
There was really nothing else she could say without outright accusing Quill of lying to her.
“I should get going to meet Benjamin.”
“I thought you said your early meeting was with Callie.”
“Right. Yes. Benjamin and then Callie. Busy morning.” Quill nodded to her as he scuttled past and out of the center. She stared after him for a moment.
Slowly, Diana walked to her office and stared at her computer, the desktop incriminatingly lit up. “Shit.”
Oh, she really, really didn’t want this to be a thing. She did not want to have a weirdly suspicious feeling about one of her most trusted employees. But facts were facts. Her computer was the only one in the entire center that could access clients’ personal files. Diana could think of absolutely no other reason why Quill would have been on her computer instead of the ones out in the main room. Especially when you added in the fact that he’d come to the center at damn near five am to do it.
He hadn’t looked good either. In fact, he’d looked like shit. Purple under his eyes. Haunted. More thin than usual.
She thought of the way she’d slammed Orion against the wall in the hallway recently. How sharply she’d surveyed him, searching for any clues that he’d gone the way so many other shifters had before him. Drugs and alcoholism. Gambling. Gang activity. Her stomach fell out. Was it possible that she’d missed the signs with Quill? Was it possible that one of her very own needed her help and she’d been too preoccupied to see it?
Well, no more. Whether he wanted it or not, Quill was going to be getting Diana’s full attention.
***
Orion was three quarters of the way through a particularly easy moving job when a stiff breeze ruffled through the trees overhead. He stood up straight and turned straight into it, his nose twitching from side to side.
“Hey, boss!” Orion called to no one in particular. “I’m taking a break.”
He didn’t stick around to see how his news was received. If he got fired, well, there were other moving companies to whom he could offer his services. This was way more important.
Because for the first time since he’d abducted Ida in an attempt to lure Phoenix into captivity, Orion had caught Watt’s scent.
He took off at a dead run toward the stand of trees due directly north of him. Once he was there, he was going to shift, damn the consequences. He would have shifted right there on the street if not for Diana’s voice in his head, reminding him of the laws that required shifters to shift in private, out of eyesight of the general public. Whatever.
The second he was half a foot into the stand of trees, Orion shifted in a whirl of claws and teeth and fur and growl. He sprinted in the direction of the scent, stronger and stronger with each step he took. He wondered, briefly, if his siblings had caught the scent as well. If all three of them were converging on Watt from different directions.
Orion carved through the trees, realizing that the stand of trees he’d plunged into had been just the beginning of Forest Park. He was surrounded on all sides by lush green trees and plush moss. If not for his nose, he would have completely missed Watt. The man practically blended in to the forest around him.
Watt was hunched against a tree, his burnished skin streaked with mud and rain, his red hair dulled and matted. He wore Goretec clothing and a good pair of hiking boots, but his cheeks were hollowed from lack of food and his eyes looked impossibly tired.
“I don’t want any trouble, Orion,” Watt said, apparently recognizing Orion even in his wolf form. “I’m not here to hurt anybody.”
Watt’s voice was cracked and broken from disuse.
Orion eyed Watt suspiciously, peering at him through the green gloom of the forest.
“I knew if I got close enough to the city that one of you would track me down. I’m here on purpose, not trying to sneak anything past y’all.”
Orion waited. If he’d been in his human form, he might have had something to say to Watt. But in his wolf form, he let his unblinking stare do all the talking for him.
“Look, I never meant to hurt Ida. I didn’t want Phoenix to get hurt either, for that matter. I really like Phoenix. I know you won’t believe me, but I considered him a friend.”
Orion growled, low and insistently, just loud enough to have Watt taking a quick step backward.
“You don’t have to believe me, I guess,” Watt said, hanging his head and dragging a hand over the back of his neck. “But… I had reasons for doing what I did. For being a part of the Program. The Director is… very persuasive. You have no idea, man. No idea.”
Orion cocked his head to one side and without thinking twice, shifted into his human form. This was a conversation that definitely required English.
“What program? What director?”
Watt whipped his head up, surprised to see that Orion had shifted so quickly. “The one I was trying to recruit Phoenix for.”
“Right, but no one ever really explained to us what it was. We just knew you were a radical. An extremist of some kind.”
Watt kind of shook his head and laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You could say that. I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but that was never really me. I was never sold on the ideology. I just wanted my sister back. Trust me, I was never as far in it as…”
He trailed off and looked around him, a hunted look coming into his eyes.
“As who?” Orion’s blood chilled when he considered the implications of what Watt was saying. Was it possible that there were more people
like Watt in their lives? Could there possibly be more people who would do something as horrible as Watt had done?
Watt shook his head. “I can’t. Look, my sister is all I’ve got. I can’t screw this up any more than I already have. I can’t go spilling the secrets. They already want me dead. I’m just saying that you and your family need to be careful. The Director wants you. And he’ll take you any way he can get you. Don’t trust anybody, Orion. Seriously. The Director has ways of manipulating people so that they don’t even realize they’re following his orders.”
Watt started to back away. “Don’t trust anybody,” he repeated.
“Wait,” Orion called.
But Watt was already shaking his head and backing away. “I can’t. I can’t. She’s all I’ve got.”
And then, as weak and sick as Watt looked, he was running back through the forest, away from Orion. Orion could have easily overtaken him, but he knew a lost cause when he saw one. There was no way he was getting any more information out of Watt tonight short of torture. And Watt already looked tortured enough. He was obviously living in the forest somewhere. And not particularly well. He looked weak and hungry and close to the brink. He was obviously scared enough of this Director guy that he was trying to go off the grid. He had the distinct look of the hunted. Orion recognized it as the same look as the one in the eyes of any animal he’d ever tracked and killed. It chilled him to see that look in the eyes of a human. No. He wouldn’t chase Watt tonight.
Instead, he shifted back into his wolf form and headed toward home.
Don’t trust anybody, Orion.
Watt’s words reverberated in his head.
He needed his siblings.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Diana knew something was wrong when Orion wasn’t on her front porch when she got home from work. He’d said he would be there.
But he wasn’t.
She frowned. This was just the cherry on top of a shit sundae. This day had started with her becoming extremely suspicious of a formerly trusted employee, it had accelerated into a surprise visit by a health inspector, and then she found out she’d been rejected for a grant that the center had been awarded for the last two years running. She’d all but spent the money already. Now she was going to have scrounge for it, probably throw another fundraiser where she’d have to don a low cut dress and beg, borrow, and steal from Portland’s moneyed factions.