by Tamara Hogan
Crap, what have I missed? The meeting had barely started, and Lukas already looked ready to blow.
“Krispin, we’re evaluating candidates for the Humanity Chair. Hu-man-i-ty,” he emphasized between gritted teeth. “Every single one of the candidates will be human. That’s the point.”
As Krispin once again repeated his objection to filling the Humanity seat, which had been empty since Carl Sagan’s death, Lorin noticed Jack tap something on his mini. Probably urging Lukas to throttle back. The WerePack Alpha specialized in being a pain in everyone’s ass—especially Lukas’s. The tension between Lukas and Krispin had been escalating ever since Stephen had somehow escaped from their most secure holding cell.
It wasn’t as if Lukas had personally allowed Stephen to escape. Lorin looked at Claudette and Scarlett Fontaine sitting side by side on the other side of the table. The sirens had been impacted by Stephen’s crimes even more than the Woolfs had been. Stephen had killed Claudette’s daughter and Scarlett’s sister Annika on his rampage, but not only did the Fontaines not blame Lukas, Scarlett had become his bondmate.
On-screen, Lukas’s nostrils flared at a particularly bigoted comment. Jack’s face was rigid with distaste. Today, the two men seemed to share nothing in common except their oversized bodies. Lukas usually exuded a casual, rugged presence, but today his aura seemed dark and barely leashed. Jack, sitting next to him, was blond Armani elegance.
Beef and Cake. Lorin knew that despite their nicknames, first impressions could be deceptive. She and Jack were occasional sparring partners, and any human who could hold his own against a Valkyrie was no pushover. Lukas, despite his size, was an absolute marshmallow with those he loved, and if anything, his recent bonding had simply softened his center even more.
Elliott Sebastiani finally tapped on the boardroom table with the unusual palm-sized rock that had served as the Council president’s gavel for as long as anyone could remember. “Order, please,” he said impatiently. The tension between Lukas and Krispin was long running, ongoing, and never ending, but even if he privately agreed with his son, Elliott was a stickler for procedure. “Ten minutes for the WerePack Alpha.”
If sticking to procedure put a time limit on Krispin Woolf’s remarks, all the better.
As Krispin expounded upon the apparent gaps in Dr. Tyson’s resume, Lorin watched the other Council members mentally push back from the boardroom table. Most of the Firsts had schooled their faces into expressions of polite neutrality, but the Seconds, several of them new to their positions, either weren’t as successful at it or simply didn’t care who saw their reaction. Sitting next to his father, WerePack Second Jacoby Woolf seemed frozen in place as he listened to his father’s frighteningly rational-sounding, yet bigoted, assessment. Scarlett Fontaine focused on Lukas, worry chasing over her pale redhead features. Teenaged Incubus Second Antonia Sebastiani’s expression simply said, “WTF, dude.”
Lorin opened a private message box.
[LSchlessinger]: Hi, Mom.
In the room view camera, Lorin saw her mother reach for her laptop. Her huge jade and bone bracelet clattered.
“Alka, do you mind?” Krispin Woolf shot her a dirty look.
Her mother removed the priceless bracelet and set it on the boardroom table with a polite smile. She then typed as noisily as she could.
[ASchlessinger]: Hello, dear. How was the drive up?
Lorin sighed. She was twenty-seven years old, and her mother still worried when she traveled by herself.
[LSchlessinger]: No ice on the roads, no freezing rain, no snow. No flat tires or blown radiator hoses. No marauding bears. No serial killers hiding in the bathroom at the rest stop.
[ASchlessinger]: No need to be nasty. How is the site?
[LSchlessinger]: Mud Bowl City. I… found something.
[ASchlessinger]: You started digging? Lorin. You know better.
[LSchlessinger]: Mom—
[ASchlessinger]: You know how important preparation is…
[LSchlessinger]: Mom—
[ASchlessinger]: You have to follow procedure, Lorin—
[LSchlessinger]: MOM. I found it WHILE I was repairing the grid.
Lorin watched her mother pause and purse her lips. She cursed under her breath and finally responded.
[ASchlessinger]: What’s “it”?
Lorin glanced at the box gleaming on the table.
[LSchlessinger]: Let me open a private cam session…
Lorin activated the supplemental webcam, opened a stream to her mother, and tried not to squirm in her chair as she waited.
“Despite what the younger Mr. Sebastiani says, filling the Humanity seat places us at more risk, not less.”
Lukas sat up. “Krispin, with today’s technology and social media saturation, it’s becoming more and more of a challenge to stay under humanity’s radar. It’s just a matter of time before our true origins are revealed,” he said. “We need to start preparing the way for—”
“We all know your assessment of risk isn’t exactly foolproof these days.”
Hoo boy. Did Krispin Woolf have a death wish?
Her mother abruptly straightened in her seat. Leaning in closer to her laptop screen, she raised her hand and tried to touch. “Oh, my. Oh, my stars.”
Krispin Woolf cut off his harangue. “Alka, perhaps you’d like to share whatever it is that you find so fascinating with the rest of us?”
“Certainly,” her mother responded, her face full of pride. “Lorin?”
“One moment, please,” she responded evenly, fingers shaking as she took control of the meeting’s conferencing software, initiating the sequence that would change the webcam stream she’d been sharing with her mother from private to public so everyone at the meeting could see the box. A small smile crept up the corners of her mouth.
Suck it, Krispin.
As she waited for the software to engage, she fidgeted in the hard-backed kitchen chair. The greenish-silvery box glowed on the table like an otherworldly thing, and it was all she could do not to stroke it with her fingers. “Damn it, hurry up,” she muttered. She was an arm’s length away from announcing the find of the freaking millennia, and the damn technology was moving at a glacial pace.
After years of digging, after decades of begging for tidbits of a budget, the Schlessingers finally had something to show for it.
A chilly breeze whistled through a gap in the cabin’s old pine logs. Lorin shivered again and pulled her head more deeply into the neckline of her flannel shirt. “One more moment,” she repeated. “Software is coming up now.” Lorin smoothed the folds of the chamois. Unable to resist, she ran her finger very lightly along the edge of the button positioned at the center of the box’s latch. Smooth to the touch, slippery, like warm ice, looking as if it would open at a—
“Whoa.” The webcam engaged, giving everyone a close-up view as the lid of the box rose as if lifted by an invisible hand.
“Lorin! No!” Her mother’s horror was evident, even through the tinny laptop speakers.
Biohazard protocol. Lorin shoved back from the table, tipping the chair over with a clatter, and dove to the corner of the cabin farthest from the table.
Not that a dozen feet meant anything at all if opening the box had released some alien toxin into the air.
Chapter 2
“So you’re the sacrificial lamb?” Lorin stalked over to Lukas Sebastiani, who stood on the other side of the simple flat deck that broadened the entry to the cabin she’d been forced to stay in since yesterday. The afternoon sun was doing its best, but she buttoned her light insulated jacket before looking up to his face. “Any last words you want me to pass on to Scarlett before I throttle you?”
Lukas held up a grease-stained takeout bag and shook it. “Bacon cheeseburgers and onion rings.”
“From Gordy’s Hi-Hat?” As peace offerings went, it was a good one. “Damn you. Gimme.”
Lukas extended the bag. She snatched it, quickly sat down at the wood picnic table,
and dove in. She stuffed an onion ring into her mouth, nearly moaning with pleasure. Miracle of miracles, they were piping hot.
She winced. The crooks of her elbows stung.
“What?”
Lorin flexed the arm that wasn’t delivering the precious grease to her mouth. “I swear, Wyland used the largest gauge needles he could find to take my blood.”
“You’re lucky he used needles and not fangs. Suck it up and deal.”
“Hmmph,” she grumbled around a convenient mouthful of food.
The quarantine team hadn’t found anything toxic in the cabin, or in the dirt up at the site, and there wasn’t an area of her body that hadn’t been examined, probed, and Roto-Rootered from here to kingdom come. After countless claustrophobic hours stuck in either the cabin or the mobile med trailer, she finally had a clean bill of health—a provisional clean bill of health, at any rate. Some of the lab tests Wyland insisted upon performing were so esoteric the results wouldn’t be back for weeks.
Her old friend certainly knew her weaknesses—hence the food—but she also knew his. The pleasant expression on Lukas’s face wasn’t quite natural.
Something was up.
She reached into the bag for the first foil-wrapped burger. “Just so you know, I’m onto you. But I’m going to eat these burgers while they’re hot.”
“Lorin—”
“Is it safe to come over yet?” another voice called. Rafe Sebastiani rounded the corner of the cabin with his languid, lanky saunter, hands in his pockets. Before she could swallow and return his greeting, Chico Perez also appeared.
“Well played,” she murmured to Lukas around the first delicious bite. With his choice of peace offering and traveling companions, it was clear that Lukas had taken her species’ hyperactive adrenal system into account. After being confined to the cabin for nearly two days, she had to burn off some of the energy that had built up in her system, or else she’d jitter away.
Food, fight, and fuck—the Valkyrie trifecta. Lukas had covered all the bases—or so he thought. Apparently Rafe hadn’t told his brother that they’d discontinued their arrangement.
Interesting.
She stopped eating long enough to stand and hug the two men, and then—what the hell—hugged that traitor Lukas as well. “I’m not sharing,” she informed them all. “If you’re hungry, there’s food in the cabin.”
“Excellent.” Chico quickly ducked inside.
Rafe touched her shoulder to get her attention. “How are you?” His concern was evident on his face.
Rafe looked… tired. What was going on with him? When he’d told her that the “benefits” part of their “friends with benefits” relationship wasn’t working for him anymore, she hadn’t pressed, hadn’t asked him why—even though his decision had left her seriously in the lurch. Maybe she should have. “I’m fine now that I can get outside and move,” she said aloud. “Embarrassed as hell, though. I’m just sorry that an accident turned into such a big honkin’ production.” She glanced at Lukas. “Did the media pick anything up?”
“Nothing so far,” he responded. “The quarantine and med units were pretty well-camouflaged.”
Lorin nodded. The mobile labs looked like any other recreational vehicle driving up north for the weekend, right down to the children’s bicycles bungee-corded to the back. Dipping her hand back into the paper bag, she came back with nothing but paper napkins. Ugh. She’d eaten three burgers and two orders of onion rings all by herself. She’d pay for it later with heartburn.
One more thing to blame on Lukas.
Snatching one of the napkins, she wiped the grease off her mouth and hid a smile. Time to yank her old friend’s chain, just a little bit.
Lorin patted her full belly. “So, that took care of food. What’s next?” Her gaze dropped to Lukas’s lips as she moved her own hand slightly south. “Fight or… fuck?”
Lukas shifted uncomfortably, glancing at his brother, flaring his nostrils to get a bead on her emotional energy.
“You know what will happen if I don’t burn off some of this energy,” she said silkily. “Do you want me to stroke out here and now?”
Finally he held out his hands. “I’ll fight you, sure, but—”
Lorin burst into merry peals of laughter. Rafe joined in. “You are such a bitch,” Lukas muttered.
“You deserved it. Stop pimping out your brother.”
Lukas looked at Rafe. “Why aren’t you dragging her into the cabin already?”
Rafe opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again.
What the hell was going on with Rafe? Damn it, she should have insisted on an explanation. And now Lukas had a puzzled expression on his face. He’d picked it up too.
“Hey.” Chico emerged from the cabin licking Cheetos dust from his fingers. “What’s it gonna be?”
Lorin sighed. She had to bleed off some of the excess energy her confinement had created, and they all knew it. Sex with Rafe—sex with any of them—wasn’t an option.
“I’ll fight you,” Lukas repeated.
Lorin seriously considered his offer. She’d get in a few good licks before he defeated her, and whapping Lukas upside the head even once had definite appeal. Nah. When she sparred with Lukas, she had to fight defensively; he was just too physically dominant. Today, she didn’t want to think that much. She just wanted to beat on something.
Lorin extended her clenched fist to Chico. The werewolf grinned and bopped it with his own. “Bring it on.”
***
Gabe bumped along the rutted dirt path someone had mistakenly informed him was a road, wincing when something scraped the undercarriage of his Beemer. He hadn’t seen a sign of civilization since taking a left at the ramshackle watering hole squatting by the intersection where the asphalt ended and the gravel began.
He should have stopped at Tubby’s Municipal Liquor Store when he’d had the chance, because this road was going to drive him to drink. He’d canceled a date for this—a setup by his brother, sure, but it was an authentic date, his first since his diagnosis—hell, the first since he and Kayla had broken up half a year ago. He’d scored reservations at a great downtown restaurant, and had orchestra seats for the latest Broadway touring show. He was under no illusion that Elyssa had bondmate potential; she was gorgeous, fun, and wasn’t looking for anything serious. As Gideon had said, Gabe had to get back in the saddle somehow. But when Elliott Sebastiani had asked him to handle this epic shit-storm personally, in that oh-so-charismatic tone that made him feel like the most capable person in the world? Yeah, he’d caved. Even with possible sex on the agenda, he’d caved.
One more thing to blame Lorin Schlessinger for.
Bright sunlight dimmed to shadow as he drove into a tunnel created by pine trees taller than telephone poles. As he removed his clip-on sunglasses, a rogue branch swished along his passenger side, undoubtedly drooling sap on his new car’s paint job.
“Shit.” He hadn’t even reached his destination yet, and this was already the assignment from hell. Dead bugs spattered his windshield, nearly obscuring his vision after an ill-advised attempt to swipe them away with the windshield wipers. And this was just the beginning. Once he got to his destination, he’d experience all the joys of camping. Mosquitoes. Ticks. Frost warnings and wilting heat.
Lorin Schlessinger.
Gabe sighed heavily. Elliott Sebastiani owed him—big-time.
Mood now mine-shaft dark, Gabe thought about acceptable ways to make Elliott pay. A budget increase? An equipment upgrade for the Metallurgy lab? Hazard pay? A sabbatical, as soon as Alka returned from hers? The upcoming months were going to be absolute bloody hell. He knew this as well as he knew his parents’ itinerary, or the melting point of gold.
Regardless of Elliott’s vote of confidence, he really wasn’t comfortable being away from Sebastiani Labs for the entire summer, even with technology keeping him in regular touch with his team. He was still getting up the learning curve on his new responsibilities. Lorin, previous
ly his peer on the org chart, was now reporting to him. He didn’t know if there was any truth to the rumor that Lorin had been offered the position first. If she had, she’d declined it—and it was just as well. Her administrative skills were atrocious.
But this? Gabe whistled under his breath. The Valkyrie Princess had gotten herself into some deep shit this time. Elliott was completely right to insist on more direct supervision, but given that Alka hadn’t left yet, he hadn’t anticipated supplying the supervision himself.
Damn it, Alka.
Gabe didn’t quite know what he was damning Alka for—honing her daughter’s prodigious talents with such focus and precision? Letting Lorin get away with her perception that status reports, schedules, job queues, or priorities didn’t apply to her? Leaving her post without giving him insight into how he, a werewolf mutt with dodgy lineage, was supposed to manage a reporting relationship with the Valkyrie Second? Giving birth to such an annoying creature in the first place?
He was clearheaded and rational. Lorin was headstrong and impetuous. She argued with him for sport. And… she was so damn talented. Imagine, Noah Pritchard’s command box. Despite her protocol screwup, the Valkyrie Princess just might have made the archaeological find of the ages. Though he hadn’t seen the box for himself yet, Elliott had told him that the metal had some highly unusual properties. Gabe couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.
But the timing was horrible.
Now, almost five muscle-cramping hours later, he finally saw the landmark—a weathered wooden sign reading “Noah’s Ark Wilderness Camp”—and turned onto the private road. Before long, he reached the “church camp,” a scatter of buildings in a space cleared of pine trees. Gravel crunched under his tires as he parked between Lorin’s rattletrap truck and the black Impala he knew belonged to Lukas Sebastiani.
Had Lukas given Lorin the happy news yet? As a Valkyrie, the urge to argue and fight was bred into her very bones, and her first instinct would be to kill the messenger. Gabe didn’t envy the man. He clipped his sunglasses back onto his thick-lensed rimless glasses, knocked back the last cold mouthful of gas station cappuccino, and slowly got out of the car. As he stretched his arms to the sky, a howl split the air.