by Bru Baker
She was a force of nature about as strong as the storms.
“She was also pissed that two of her staffers were unaccounted for.”
“I told her my flight was canceled!”
Adrian made an inelegant noise. “Yeah, and how well do you think that went over? You texted her in the middle of a tornado warning that you’d been diverted to another airport and you’d call her later to tell her your new flight arrangements—and then you never called.”
Shit. He’d been too caught up in Nick’s magnetic presence. Even when Nick had called to sort things out with his boss, all Drew had been able to think about was what he wanted to do to him when they were finally alone. He’d spaced telling Anne Marie his new flight details.
“Don’t worry,” Adrian said while Drew wracked his brain for a way to save face with his new boss. “Tate told Anne Marie that your independence was what made you a good doctor.”
“Did she buy that?”
“Not in the slightest,” Adrian said cheerfully. “But he did get her to acknowledge that you were a grown adult who didn’t need her to Alpha him. So there’s that.”
As a human, he might not need an Alpha the same way his Were Packmates did, but he had a healthy respect for authority. It was hard to grow up in a hierarchical Pack structure and not automatically defer to Pack leaders.
“Don’t worry about it,” Adrian said, correctly reading Drew’s panic in the silence. Which was no surprise, since he’d known Drew since they were children, and aside from Drew’s stepbrothers, no one was better at seeing through him. “Seriously, she’s not angry. She was worried, but you weren’t the only new arrival to get caught up in that storm. She’ll feel better when everyone is safely at camp.”
The knot that had formed in Drew’s chest eased. “Good. I mean, it’s not good that other people were put out by the storm too, but I’m glad I’m not the only one causing her grief.”
“Two new staffers and about six incoming wolflings. She’s probably paced a hole in her cabin floor by now.”
“Maybe I should have her come in for a physical. Even Weres can have stress-induced high blood pressure. She sounds uptight.”
Adrian choked on a laugh. “Oh my God, yes—wait. Hold on.”
Drew sandwiched the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he debated putting his old boxers back on. Nick had freeballed it, but Drew had a few hours before his flight and then a long drive. Comfort won out. He stepped into the boxers.
Adrian was yelling something at Tate. When he came back, he was laughing harder than ever.
“Oh my God. I told Tate what you said about Anne Marie’s blood pressure, and he says he wants you to film her reaction.”
Drew rolled his eyes heavenward. “Fuck you, I’m not violating doctor-patient privilege so you can get your rocks off.”
“Oh whatever. We all know Anne Marie is a robot anyway.”
“She once yelled at Tate hard enough to rupture a vocal cord. That is not a robot.”
“Who among us hasn’t been angry enough at some dumbass thing Tate did to bust a vocal cord? Don’t try to logic me here, Dr. Welch. I get enough of that from my fiancé, thank you very much.”
Drew pulled his jeans on and smiled. “How is the enigmatic Dr. Lewis, by the way? You two still doing well in the Big Apple?”
“You mean have things changed since you visited like a month ago?”
Drew heard Tate say something in the background, prompting more laughter from Adrian. It was good to hear him happy. He’d had some rough years. And as much as Drew mourned losing one of the only other “humans” in his circle, he was glad Adrian was settling into his wolf so well. It had been a shock when Adrian had Turned almost a decade late, but better late than never, right? At least, that’s what his stepbrothers said when they thought Drew was out of earshot—since he’d be in that “never” camp forever. Not that he begrudged Adrian his Turn. His situation was totally different from Drew’s.
“Tate says I need to be nicer to you because you’re about to descend into the seventh level of hell.”
There was a brief scuffle, and Tate came on the line. “I did not say that. I told him to be nice to you because he was being a dick. It had nothing to do with the relentless agony you signed yourself up for.”
Drew had known working with a steady influx of nineteen-year-old werewolves was going to be a challenge, but he wouldn’t class it as relentless agony. Teen angst wrapped up in Turn drama had nothing on the Oxy seekers and meth heads that were his regulars in the ER. It would be a nice change to actually be able to help his patients for once, even if it was just setting a broken bone so it could heal correctly by the morning.
Drew picked up a shirt, his heart thudding hard when he realized it was the one Nick had been wearing yesterday. That must mean Nick had left with Drew’s shirt on. It couldn’t have been an accident. Not with Nick’s super senses. If the attraction was mutual, there might be a chance of looking him up after all.
“Drew? Still there?”
“Yeah, sorry. Got distracted.”
“Ah. It was that kind of layover, then. Good for you,” Tate teased.
Drew wasn’t usually prudish about his sex life, but he didn’t want to talk about Nick with anyone right now. It hadn’t been a typical one-night stand, and he was surprised to find he didn’t want to cheapen it by telling his friends.
“Gotta get it where I can,” he managed to respond, trying to keep it light.
“Right. Because that’s a problem for you with that group,” Tate said with a derisive snort. “Though it’ll be different when you’re in charge of the masses of teenagers around you and not only there as a guest. Constantly bathing in teen angst doesn’t do wonders for the libido, let me tell you.”
“Seemed to work okay for you and Adrian,” Drew joked.
Tate laughed. “Adrian says fuck you. And also that he’ll call and check in later this week, after you get moved in.”
Adrian and Tate were a big part of the reason Drew had even been considered for the infirmary job. The camp had never hired a human before, but he wasn’t just any human—he was a human who was intimately connected to the camp. He’d probably spent more time there than the average wolfling alum had, between visiting Adrian and the other friends he had there.
“Talk to you soon.”
Drew pulled Nick’s shirt over his head after he’d hung up. It wasn’t for sentimental reasons, he told himself. It was purely practical. He needed a shirt, and Nick had taken his. He ducked his head and sniffed at the fabric, disappointed he couldn’t smell Nick on it.
He wasn’t envious of Weres. Not really. He had no problem with being human and fitting himself into his Pack in whatever way he could. But times like this he did wish he had a super sniffer.
What would that change, though? He wouldn’t use it to run after Nick and have some big, romantic scene in the airport. Even if he and Nick had exchanged numbers, this wasn’t the start of some great love affair. There was an undeniable spark, sure. But logistically it didn’t make sense. His new job was so isolated that even if he and Nick wanted to, it would be hard for them to meet up. Indianapolis was two and a half hours from the camp, which wasn’t exactly around the corner. Besides, he’d be busy settling into his new role as the infirmary’s doctor and getting his practice going in the next town. He didn’t have time for distractions, even if they were as adorable as Nick.
Chapter Three
NICK had been out of sorts ever since he’d stepped out of Drew’s hotel room earlier that morning. By some miracle he’d made it to the airport on time, but since he’d gotten there so late, he’d been practically the last to board, earning him a very uncoveted middle seat in the back of the plane.
He may have burrowed into his stolen shirt and used Drew’s fading scent to help him not wolf out on the plane.
Maybe.
He needed to grab his luggage and change before the drive to Camp H.O.W.L. He was 90 percent sure someone wa
s planning to pick him up, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Right now he wanted clean clothes and some coffee, in that order.
Nick didn’t notice the Were at the bottom of the escalator until he nearly walked right into him. As soon as he looked up, he could scent him. Nick’s face heated up in embarrassment. First he couldn’t control his eyes last night during sex, and now he was so out of touch with his surroundings, a Were could sneak up on him? Maybe Camp H.O.W.L. had some remedial werewolfing in the community classes he could sit in on to bone up. Clearly he was a walking disaster and unfit to mentor wolflings at the moment.
“Hey, Nick, right?”
Instead of holding out his hand like a human would, the other Were tilted his neck to the side slightly and nodded. A sign of respect and a promise that Nick was safe with him. Nick followed suit.
“I’m Harris. Usually the director would be the one on pick-up duty, but she couldn’t make it this morning. We had some storm damage. Nothing terrible,” he said when Nick’s head shot up in alarm. “The tornadoes missed us, thankfully. But a tree dropped a huge branch on the Pilates studio and the wind sheared off a bit of the boathouse roof. She’s coordinating repairs now. It’s a bit difficult, as you can imagine. Everyone’s always nervous about having humans on campus.”
As they should be. Not that there was anything wrong with humans, but they did pose a risk. Weres were very selective about which humans they let into their private spaces, for obvious reasons. A human in a werewolf’s den could be catastrophic if they were to see something they shouldn’t. And at a place like Camp H.O.W.L., full of kids who were working out their shift and dealing with their first Turn? That went a hundredfold. There was a reason these camps were in the middle of nowhere. The safety of the campers was their first priority, with secrecy a close second.
Nick and Harris stepped out of the flow of traffic toward the baggage carousels. “What’s the protocol for having outsiders at the camp?”
“The wolflings go underground,” Harris said. “We’ve got a pretty sweet setup with rooms for the Turn that are well hidden and secured. The kids are spending the day cooped up down there while the work gets completed. This is supposed to be the slow season anyway, so it’s believable for the humans to see a mostly empty camp.”
They didn’t actually have a slow season. Wolflings had their first Turn during the full moon after their nineteenth birthday, which meant there were always new Turns in need of a safe space to try out their newfound strength and learn how to control their shift. The camp he’d spent his Turn at outside of Park City had been under a few feet of snow when he’d spent his month there. They’d had underground rooms too, and tunnels to get from building to building. Not that a little cold or snow ever hurt a werewolf—but it was nicer not to have to shift into full wolf every time you needed to go somewhere.
“I was thinking you must have drawn the short straw to have to drive up here to get me, but you lucked out, huh?”
Harris laughed. “You have no idea. Those kids are one of the most hyper groups we’ve had, and they’re all stuck in cinder-block rooms for the afternoon. It’ll be a miracle if everyone makes it out alive.”
Nick wondered what that looked like—a hyper group of wolflings. He hadn’t seen anyone Turn since he’d been a wolfling himself with his cohort in Park City. He was still friends with a few of them—they stayed in touch on Facebook and met up for a beer whenever they were all in town. He loved that he had ties outside his Pack. Hopefully he’d be able to help give these kids the same kind of experience.
Nick saw his suitcase go by and dove for it, pulling back his strength enough to make the leap he’d made toward the carousel seem human.
“You have anything else?” Harris asked once the giant green duffel bag was in Nick’s hands.
“Nope. I figured I’d pick up a lot of what I need out here. I wasn’t sure what the dress code for counselors was.”
Harris guided him toward another set of escalators, these heading up toward a different part of the airport. Asking Harris to wait while he dug through his things and changed seemed rude, so he resolved to be stuck in his dirty jeans and purloined shirt for the long drive. Harris stepped onto the escalator ahead of him, and Nick took the opportunity to discreetly sniff himself. He smelled like stale airplane air and Drew’s spicy scent. Nothing that should be too offensive to his new coworker.
“We’re pretty casual down here. I spend ninety percent of my time dressed like this, even when I’m in session,” Harris said, gesturing to his jeans and a faded shirt with a howling wolf and the words Camp H.O.W.L. on it. “We have staffers who specialize in activities, so it’s not like you’ll be asked to take wolflings on cross-country skiing outings or supervise them at the lake.”
He’d read about all that in the brochure. Camp H.O.W.L. was elite—it cost families more than Nick’s first year of college to send their wolfling there to Turn—and it had the amenities to show for it. In addition to being one of the few camps that employed actual psychologists to be its counselors, it also had sports facilities that would make Olympic camps look like the YMCA. There were probably more employees than campers—between the chefs, groundskeepers, counselors, and all of the athletic and arts instructors. It was a huge organization, which made it all the more impressive that it mostly flew under the human radar.
They stepped off the escalator and entered a long hallway with odd lights strung over the ceiling. He blinked, the bright LED display making his eyes hurt. “So you’re one of the psychologists?”
“There are three of us, and man are Kenya and I glad to have you on board. With Tate gone—that’s the counselor you’re replacing—we had to split all the campers between us, and that made for some very interesting Turn nights.”
He could imagine. “How many campers are usually enrolled at once?”
“Eh, our max is forty, but I’ve only lived through one of those months. Usually we have about twenty kids. It’s not uncommon for a few of them to take a second month to figure things out, so it’s not just brand-new Turns. It’s a nice place, and a lot of parents don’t mind footing the bill for junior to chill and have fun.”
“Nice parents,” he muttered. The tunnel ended in a parking garage, and Nick found himself wishing for something a little heavier than the stolen shirt he was wearing. It was the first day of April, but it felt colder here than it had in Denver.
“Storm brought a cold front,” Harris said when Nick shivered. “Should be warming up for good in a week or two, and by the middle of May, you’ll be dying and wishing for a nice spring breeze. Indiana weather doesn’t linger much between freeze-your-balls-off cold and depths-of-hell hot.”
Nick was familiar with both extremes, but his favorite seasons were spring and fall, where the two balanced. Not here, apparently.
Harris stopped at a black SUV and lifted the hatch, then took Nick’s duffel from him and tossed it in. “We have an official Camp H.O.W.L. van we use when we want to be visible, but we’ve also got a garage full of these for times we want to be more discreet. You’ll be assigned one you can use when you need to leave campus. We all rotate on and off for weekends—you get one weekend a month to leave and do whatever you need to do to keep yourself sane.”
Nick’s thoughts turned back to Drew as Harris maneuvered the SUV out of the garage. He hadn’t realized the camp staff had built-in free time. It made sense because living in each other’s pockets and being on call 24/7 with the wolflings had to be draining, but he hadn’t followed that through to the natural conclusion that he’d be able to spend nights away from camp.
Maybe he should have gotten Drew’s number. Then again, probably not. A fling was one thing, but a regular booty call was another. It implied a level of intimacy Nick wouldn’t be comfortable having with a human.
It didn’t matter with a hookup because they were simply convenient people to share some mutual orgasms with. But dating? He’d never even consider dating a human. Too many complicatio
ns. Hadn’t he seen it again and again with his marital-counseling patients? They’d all been human, sure, but pretty much every relationship he’d seen on the rocks had gotten there through secrets, lies, and miscommunications. And wasn’t that the definition of a relationship with a human? Even if he took the chance and shared his secret, a human could never truly know him. Not like a Were partner, who would understand the pull of the moon. How could a Were have a relationship with a human and be okay with only being able to share half of who they were?
Nick’s stomach gurgled, and Harris looked over. “You in a hurry to get settled in, or you want to stop and eat? It’s about two and a half hours to get down there.”
He was tired of traveling but also starving. Food won out.
“Let’s eat and you can tell me more about the camp so I know what I’m walking into.”
NICK was bone-tired by the time Harris showed him to the cabin he’d be sharing with eight boys. Cabin was a bit of a misnomer. He’d been expecting the kind of rough-hewn log cabin you see in summer-camp movies. All one room, bare plank floors, bunk beds stacked to the ceiling, and not much else.
He’d been right about one thing—it was made of logs. But it wasn’t the simple A-frame setup he’d envisioned. This was more CEO’s fishing cabin in the woods than Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home. The cabin had its own wraparound porch facing the lake, with Adirondack chairs and even a small hammock strung from the eaves. The front door opened to a two-story common room with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the porch and lake, with a small wet-bar-type kitchen with snacks and drinks (no alcohol, just sodas and juices; he’d checked to make sure) near the two-story fireplace with a hearth big enough to cook a deer in. He wondered if that ever happened. His Pack had done it once when the full moon had fallen over Christmas. They’d had a rollicking hunt in the snow and dragged their catch back to the hunting cabin the Pack kept for times exactly like that one. It was one of his favorite holiday memories. Maybe he’d do something like that with the poor wolflings who had to spend Christmas at camp instead of home with their Packs when December rolled around.