Wild Embrace

by Nalini Singh

  Just the past week, Kenji had walked into the weight room in his den to discover torn clothes scattered over the machines. The scents in the air had made it clear it hadn’t been because of a fight, and since the training rooms were all considered communal spaces, it had been a clear violation of den policy.

  He’d pinned a still-almost-in-one-piece shirt on the door to the room, written: Lost & Found—see Kenji.

  The red-faced miscreants had skulked in an hour later, after word ran through the den. Well aware how hard it could be to control a body driven by the most primal urges, and knowing that the ribbing they were no doubt already taking from their denmates was punishment enough, Kenji had simply reminded them to stay in private spaces and to clean up after themselves.

  “Kenji,” Ruby said now, “you went way beyond losing it.” She poked him gently in the chest. “It’s like you were determined to bang every bangable woman within banging distance.”

  “Stop saying ‘bang.’” Kenji put a careful hand on her belly after making eye contact and getting the okay. “Your pup’s going to get the wrong idea about his future uncle Kenji.” It hurt to play this way while knowing there was no chance in hell he’d ever have Garnet for his own; it just fucking hurt.

  And he was the one who’d made certain of that through his own conscious actions.

  The only reason he could bear it was because seeing the ache of quiet loss in Garnet’s eyes would be even worse. Years ago, before he’d done his best to cut the bond that tied him to Garnet, his wolf had urged him to tell her the truth, let her decide if she wanted to be with him. But he couldn’t—because he knew her heart. She was far too generous for her own good. She’d have decided for him regardless of what it would mean for her.

  Kenji couldn’t have lived with that decision then and he couldn’t live with it now: he never wanted to steal her dreams. And the one dream being with him would destroy, she’d had since childhood. He could give her everything . . . except the one thing she’d never wavered on wanting over the years.

  In front of him, Ruby stretched, placing one hand on her lower back. “This pup is going to give me a herniated disk if he doesn’t pop out soon.” She smiled and stroked her belly. “Mommy loves you, baby boy. She wants to hold you.”

  Kenji tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and the question, it just came out. “So it’s really serious between Garnet and Rev?” He had no right to ask that, but he could no more stop himself than he could stop loving Garnet.

  “Revel’s not your competition.” Ruby’s expression softened. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you: Garnet might think you’re cute, but she also thinks you’re a player.” She drew out the last word. “My smart, sexy sister has no need to date players—she’s looking for a long-term thing, not a quick you-know-what.”

  Yeah, he knew. He’d always known. Had intended to be her long-term guy since the day he’d first realized his best friend’s younger sister was no longer the pigtailed kid he’d chased in countless games of tag. “Garnet’s special, Ruby,” he said, unable to bear that she might believe he didn’t know that truth.

  “Yeah, well, you might’ve missed the boat, Kenny.” Patting him on the cheek again, Ruby started to walk past. “My bladder is the size of a peanut.”

  Turning, Kenji watched her to make sure her balance was okay. She was tiny and the belly was huge. Garnet would be the same way when she became pregnant.

  Kenji rubbed a fist over his heart. “Shut it down,” he ordered himself. “You let her be happy. If you love her, you goddamn let her be happy.”

  With that quiet, raw order to himself, he turned on his heel and jogged the rest of the way to the meeting, figuring he must be the last to arrive. He’d had to leave later than expected because of a situation in his den, and then the heavy rain had slowed him down even further. However, when he entered the small break room he’d been told was the location of the meeting, he found only Garnet within.

  Dressed in faded blue jeans that hugged her legs before disappearing into knee-high boots of dark brown, topped with a simple white sweater with a wide but high neck, her hair up in a rough knot at the back of her head and held in place by a hair stick, she looked young and beautiful. But the power in her, it hummed against his skin, made his wolf’s fur stir.

  This woman, the wolf knew, was its match in every way.

  “Riaz and Indigo?” he asked, bracing his hands on either side of the doorway to keep from lunging at her.

  “Delayed by a major accident that’s caused gridlock.” Garnet poured herself a coffee from the carafe set on a warmer on the counter, then scowled and poured him one, too.

  It did something to him when she automatically added one sugar to his.

  “A car’s automatic nav system shorted out, owner didn’t react in time,” she said as she stirred the sugar in. “He went into the back of a truck. No fatalities, thankfully, but the truck was carrying hazardous material that the authorities are scrambling to contain.”

  “Damn, the rain can’t be helping,” he said and, having somehow wrenched his body under control, walked inside to take his coffee from her. “We have anyone in the cleanup team?” Given SnowDancer’s power in the California region, they also took a lot of responsibility for it—including helping with incidents that could affect the ecosystem.

  Garnet nodded. “One of our people is leading the containment effort, with backup from a mixed team, all trained to SnowDancer specifications.” She took a sip of coffee. “Weather forecast is also saying the rain might turn into a storm. If that happens, Indigo and Riaz will have to stay put until it’s safe to drive up here.”

  “Yeah, the winds were picking up the final half hour of my drive up.” Kenji drew in the scent of the coffee in a vain attempt to drown out the far more delicious scent that was Garnet. “I was in one of our gruntiest all-wheel drives and, with the mud and wind, it was having trouble gripping the road.”

  The sheer amount of precipitation hitting the mountains meant the land was struggling to handle it. It didn’t matter how far civilization advanced, Mother Nature still packed a punch—and that was exactly how changelings liked it. Wolf or leopard, deer or swan, it was about living in harmony with the world rather than beating it into submission.

  So, once you left the cities, the roads up to their dens were less roads and more tracks. It meant occasional delays such as this, but it also meant they left no permanent scars through their surroundings. Should a pack disappear, nature would reclaim those tracks within mere months.

  “I told them we can always reschedule if the weather goes on this way,” Garnet added.

  “Sure.” Sitting his ass down on one of the two battered sofas, he grabbed a sandwich off the tray of lunch goodies on the coffee table in between. “You want to start without them?” he said after taking and swallowing a bite.

  “Yes.” Her eyes flicked to his hair. “I didn’t know we were meant to be in fancy dress.”

  His wolf bared its teeth at the deadpan sarcasm, delighted by what it stubbornly took as play. “Simple daywear,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “I thought about pairing it with something black and blue, ran out of time.”

  She scowled again at his reference to her punch, but he caught the shadow of that hidden dimple. “So,” he said, warmth rushing through him, “the routes into the city.”

  They’d been talking things over for only about twenty minutes when Revel ran in, tall and with warm-toned skin of golden brown against a black tee he wore with black jeans and boots. The expression on the senior soldier’s face had them both jerking to their feet. Though Kenji and Garnet occupied an equal position in the pack hierarchy, Garnet was the one who spoke. This was her den and Kenji’s wolf understood the rules of behavior on an instinctive level.

  Here, he was her backup.

  “What is it?”

  “Russ Carmichael is dead,” R
evel said shortly, his skin flushed and his breathing fast enough that it was clear he’d run here full tilt. His next words made the reason for his urgency clear. “And it looks like Shane did it.”

  Chapter 2

  “Has anyone touched the body?” Garnet asked as she and Kenji followed Revel to the scene.

  “Eloise found them in Russ’s quarters and she stayed in the doorway while she called me, but I had to go in to check for signs of life. Shane’s alive and needed medical help, so I sent for Lorenzo.” He glanced at her, dark eyes holding a question. “You weren’t picking up your phone.”

  Garnet reached into her back pocket, came up empty. “Damn, I must’ve left it in my quarters.” Dropping her hand, she said, “Doesn’t matter—I’ll grab it later. For now, can you get me a forensic kit from stores?” They had a couple of trained forensic techs in the den, but since the two were rarely needed for pack matters, both worked at external jobs and were currently away at an out-of-state conference.

  That wasn’t, however, a major handicap. All SnowDancer lieutenants and their most senior packmates underwent a rigorous training course to ensure they could handle such situations. Revel was still completing his training after his promotion, but Garnet had recently done a refresher course alongside Kenji and the other lieutenants.

  “You have the updated codes?” she said to Revel before he broke off to grab the kit.

  “Yep.” His gaze shifted to over her head. “Hey, Kenji,” he said, no hint of annoyance or tension in his tone at the sight of a lieutenant notorious for flirting with Garnet.

  That Kenji outranked Revel had nothing to do with it. Neither did the current situation. Wolves had been known to growl and snarl at romantic rivals while working together to deal with an emergency.

  No, it was Revel.

  Garnet had always liked that about the senior soldier—that he was so confident, so centered, and so reliable. Part of her winced at that description even as it rolled through her mind. It hardly sounded exciting, and Revel was exciting. He was beautiful, for one, all quiet, intense eyes and fluid muscle; he was also a dominant and dangerous with it.

  All the women, and yes, a few appreciative men, too, watched when Revel moved.

  She had to remember that, not get caught up in the wild sexiness and wit and wickedness that was Kenji Tanaka, only to come out alone and hurt on the other side. She’d been there, done that, had the bruised knuckles to prove it.

  “Good to see you, Rev,” Kenji replied, his own tone friendly, with no apparent undertone. “Despite the circumstances.”

  “We’ll catch up later.”

  The two men bumped fists, and then Revel was gone.

  Two minutes later, she and Kenji arrived in front of a room sternly guarded by a tall young packmate with a blunt fringe of mahogany hair against skin of dark cinnamon brown. “Lorenzo got here sixty seconds ago,” Eloise said before Garnet could speak, and though the junior soldier’s voice was calm, her mouth was pinched, her eyes a stark wolf-yellow. “He’s in there working on Shane.” The gleaming strands of her shoulder-length braid became apparent when she angled her head toward the door, her profile strong.

  Garnet didn’t immediately step inside the doorway. Instead, she turned a flinty gaze on the packmates buzzing about at the end of the corridor, and suddenly everyone had someplace else to be. Only when the corridor was clear did she move forward. “Lorenzo,” she said, looking into the room without entering, “what’s the damage?”

  Kenji put his back against the wall on the opposite side of the door from Eloise, close enough to listen without butting into Garnet’s space. It caused a flicker of pleased surprise in her wolf. She and Kenji had worked together on pack business for the past three years, ever since she made lieutenant—at the same age at which he’d originally been promoted. However, given their different specialties, they’d never had reason to work side by side this closely.

  Cocky as he was, part of her had been waiting for him to attempt to take charge.

  “Shane’s unconscious.” Lorenzo’s familiar accented voice broke into her thoughts, the healer having lived in El Salvador until two years earlier. His birth pack was small and the only wolf one in the entire country—but, oddly, it had been gifted with the births of two highly talented healers of a similar age.

  The situation had left neither one truly fulfilled: healers as strong as Lorenzo and his packmate needed their own group of people to nurture. The El Salvador pack was tight-knit and the two healers were best friends, but there was simply too much drive and energy between them and nowhere for it to go.

  Meanwhile, before Lorenzo’s SnowDancer mate snagged him, Garnet’s den had been making do with three junior healers supervised remotely by SnowDancer’s head healer, Lara. These days, a deeply contented Lorenzo acted as Lara’s deputy in a number of matters, including training the younger crop of healers.

  Garnet trusted him without question.

  “He has a pretty big bump on the back of his head,” Lorenzo continued. “He’ll have to be carried out. Some facial bruising. Possible broken ribs, too.” A compact man with silvered black hair against skin of a honeyed brown, the den healer got up from his crouch beside Shane’s sprawled form. “Stretcher’s on its way, but you can have a quick look at the scene as it is. I’m going to take a few readings from Russ’s body.”

  Garnet glanced at Kenji. “Can you take some photos?” If she didn’t have to worry about him attempting to pit his dominance against hers, she could use his support.

  “No problem.” He slid out his phone as he entered the room with her, his shoulders fluidly muscled under the white of his shirt, the sleeves of which he’d rolled back to the elbows.

  He wore the shirt untucked over jeans of dark blue denim, his only ornamentation—aside from his hair—a handcrafted pendant carved from black hardwood and polished until it gleamed like stone, which he wore at his throat on a rawhide tie. She was used to seeing that circular pendant with its simple spiral pattern. His maternal grandfather had made it for him, and Kenji wore it in remembrance after losing the other man to an unexpected lung ailment three years earlier.

  Now he began to snap photos from beside her while she took in the scene; neither one of them would move any farther into the room at this point.

  Death was a sticky, iron-rich scent in the air, but it wasn’t old death. No, the iron was too bright, tasted “wet” to her senses, while Shane’s breath was a living warmth. Russ, by contrast, was bleak white in death. The fifty-four-year-old lay on his side on the floor; he was facing Shane’s feet, an improbably small red stain on the front of his white shirt, and his head resting against the oat-colored carpet that showed every drop of blood. There was no pool of dark red, just droplets. Russ’s skin appeared plastic with lack of life even from a distance, his head covered by sandy brown hair cut with military precision.

  A delicate handkerchief lay half-crumpled and streaked with blood on the carpet beside his curled-up left hand, as if it had fallen from his fist. The dried blood Garnet could just glimpse on his palm seemed to support that theory.

  Shane, meanwhile, lay on his front on the carpet not far from a display cabinet. He was facing the door, his hands flung out as if he’d tried to break a fall and his head turned to the side. Dark blond hair stuck to his tanned skin, and though he, too, was motionless, his skin held an undertone of pink.

  Unlike Russ’s starched shirt of crisp white and formal black pants, Shane was dressed in clean jeans and a simple button-down shirt in pale blue, the sleeves long. “That look like blood to you?” She pointed to a spot on the back of Shane’s right forearm, the brownish red distinct against the blue of the shirt.

  “Possible.” Kenji began to record the scene with snapshots and video both. “Can’t see any on his hands from this angle.”

  Neither could Garnet, but what struck her as an assassin’s blade—the blade long a
nd thin—lay below Shane’s right hand. While the blade was bloody, the carved hilt was clean, so even if he had zero blood on his hands, the lack might not be significant. It would depend on the wound or wounds the blade had inflicted. To her untrained eye, it seemed as if Russ had only a single slice in his shirt.

  “This couldn’t have happened long ago.” Kenji slid away his phone just as Revel arrived with the forensics kit.

  “Thanks.” Garnet frowned. “Athena,” she said, referring to Russ’s ex and Shane’s current lover.

  “I’ll take care of telling her,” Revel said, his eyes taking in the scene once more. “And I’ll handle any other pack business that comes up in the interim.”

  “After you speak to Athena, call Hawke, give him the heads-up.” The SnowDancer alpha needed to know about this situation. “Tell him I’ll make a full report once I have anything new to share.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Giving him a small smile of thanks, this dark-eyed wolf who was so much better for her than the wild one who’d broken her heart, she returned to her conversation with Kenji. “I know Shane was working night shift this month on scheduled den maintenance.” Things it was easier to do while most packmates were asleep and the corridors clear. “He would’ve gone off shift around seven, seven thirty.”

  She glanced at her watch. “It’s only just past twelve thirty now, so, given his clean shirt and jeans, the aftershave I can smell under the blood, if we allow an hour for him to get to his quarters, shower, dress, maybe grab some breakfast, the earliest it could’ve happened was eight, eight thirty, give or take.” They’d have to verify all of that, of course, but it was a good place to start.

  Moving into the corridor when Lorenzo’s assistant arrived with a hover-stretcher, onto which Kenji helped them load Shane, Garnet noted the lack of blood on the front of Shane’s shirt as well as the bruising on his face. His palms, fully visible now, also proved devoid of any traces of blood.