by Noah Harris
“And yet, to be a threat to me, they would have had to have learned something along the way. No one completely ignorant of the modern world would have been able to cause this much trouble,” Michael pointed out.
“Well, no, he’s had some help. Apparently, some things have changed since I was away, since he said something about having studied the human world before he came here. I’m guessing that they figured if they were going to try to bring down a city full of wolves, they were going to have to dirty their hands a little. Though I’m betting that Stephan is one of the only ones familiar with the modern world. If I know the elders from my sept, they’re keeping it as quiet as possible that they’re letting one of their own go out into the human world without being shunned for it,” Adrian said, not without a measure of bitterness in his voice.
“Does that sound like something your former sept would do?”
Adrian couldn’t help the harsh snort that passed his lips. “Them? Jesus, I’m shocked they even let someone from there come within fifty miles of a city, let alone learn about it. There’ve apparently been some changes since the last time I was around.”
Michael watched him for a quiet moment. “You sound bothered by the idea.”
Adrian glanced at him sharply. “I’m not missing home, if that’s what you’re thinking. I left for a reason, a damn good reason.”
“One you won’t get into,” Michael finished for him.
Adrian nodded. “It doesn’t have anything to do with this. Stephan said he didn’t even know I was here. I wouldn’t normally believe a word someone like him said, but I’m kind of inclined to believe him.”
“Why?”
Adrian shrugged. “Even if he did study the human world for a bit and learn its ways, he’s still got people helping him fill in the gaps. I changed my name ages ago, and unless he’d had people scouring the country for years, trying to find me, there’s no way I can think of that he’d know I was here. I went as far as I could from them, changed my name. I stay out of the press, I do anything and everything I can to not announce where I am or who I am.”
Michael nodded. “I suppose that would explain your penchant for subtlety and subterfuge, outside of casual conversation, that is.”
Adrian grinned, liking Michael’s dry attempt at humor. “Sometimes I make exceptions, like when I talk to you, but yeah, and no. I’m not some sneaky little eavesdropper just because it’s kept me under the radar. I also do it because I’m good at it.”
“And so it’s become a job rather than a hobby,” Michael noted, the corner of his mouth twitching.
Adrian smiled. “Well, if you’re good at something, it seems a waste to do it for nothing.”
“A practical man,” Michael said with an approving nod.
Adrian was pleased by Michael’s approval and a little embarrassed. “Well, it’s the practical business that’s got you in trouble right now.”
Michael eyed him for a moment, lips pursing. “You aren’t, by chance, finding a way to blame yourself for this whole mess?”
Adrian hadn’t quite gotten to that point yet, but he knew his mind had been working his way to it. If someone else were in his shoes, he would have told them that they were no more at fault than anyone else. He was surprised that Michael anticipated him blaming himself. Adrian wasn’t one to broadcast his thoughts, his true thoughts in any case.
“I suppose I feel a little guilty that my own kin is out here, causing you trouble,” Adrian admitted, after taking a moment to consider it.
“From the sounds of it, they’re no more kin of yours than they are of mine,” Michael said easily.
Which was true, Adrian had cut every tie imaginable when he left his sept. After spending so much of his life within the bounds of the territory his sept owned, Adrian had been eager to cast off everything that tied him to them. His name had been one of the first things he changed once he left. After that, it had been a simple matter to learn more about the world he had thrown himself headlong into, the world of humans and city wolves.
“I can’t imagine that you want to refer to them as your family, so why blame yourself for what they do?” Michael continued.
Adrian shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed since he knew he was being foolish. “It’s just odd to have someone from my past show up like this. I spent a few years after I left afraid that even though I was living in the cities, someone would show up and try to bring me back, or worse. I stopped worrying about it a long time ago, but now it looks like I should have been worried all along.”
Michael reached over to pat Adrian’s knee, smiling. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that the past has a way of finding us, no matter how far we go, or how long it takes. But that doesn’t mean that we’re at fault. They came to you, you didn’t invite them.”
“All the same, they’re a threat to you, and really, every other werewolf in the city,” Adrian reminded him grimly.
Michael nodded. “And now I suppose the question is do we involve them in this?”
“The other pack leaders?” Adrian asked in surprise.
“You sound as if I shouldn’t.”
Adrian winced. “If you go to them with this problem, won’t it make you look weak? This all started because this group has been focused on you, so it’s been your problem. I can’t say that I know every pack leader in the city intimately, but I know enough of them would probably see that as a chance to bring you down a few pegs. I mean, how many of them would just love to see you brought lower?”
Michael sighed. “That is something I had considered, yes, but there is very little choice. Unless you intend to try another method, we haven’t learned anything that can help us bring this group of disrupters down. The only one’s identity that we have been able to confirm is that of your long-lost cousin, who might as well not even exist as far as the system is concerned. And from the sounds of it, they plan on moving even further very soon. I have full confidence that I can survive whatever they dream of throwing my way, but I cannot guarantee they will not cause irreparable harm in the process.”
“There’s always a better option than throwing in the towel just because it looks hard.”
Michael’s brow rose a bit. “Do you have a plan?”
“At this moment? No. All I can think about is getting out of these wet, stinking clothes, and maybe having something to warm me up so that I can think straight.”
Michael chuckled lightly. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I planned to return you to my home. Let’s get you into something more comfortable and a little less pungent.”
Adrian, ignoring the fluttering in his stomach, nodded. “A hot shower sounds really good right now.”
Chapter 13
Adrian had halfway expected Michael to try to join him in the shower. After several minutes bathing beneath the comforting spray of warm water, it became obvious that the alpha was leaving him alone. Annoyed at his disappointment, Adrian shoved the emotion aside and tried to focus more on the experience of the shower itself.
By the time he emerged, a cloud of steam followed him out the door. There was a bathrobe laid out on the spacious bed as he exited, which he scooped up and threw around his shoulders. He wanted to make a joke about Michael owning a robe, but the soft press of the fabric against his skin made him second guess any pithy remark. He’d had no idea that robes were so comfortable, and he pulled it a little tighter around himself as he descended the stairs.
He found Michael sitting in the living room on the couch, a book in hand. Before him was a steaming mug, out of which the rich scent of chocolate wafted. He smiled, bending to take the mug before he sat down and took a sip. The dark chocolate washed over his tongue, eliciting a low sigh of pleasure.
“God be good, how did you know I liked hot chocolate?” Adrian asked.
Michael chuckled. “Call it a hunch. You didn’t quite strike me as an herbal tea kind of guy.”
“If I wanted to drink leaf juice, I’d go suck on a cactus or somethi
ng,” Adrian snorted.
Michael frowned. “Don’t the little thorns count as the leaves on cacti?”
Adrian shrugged. “And drinking from most cacti would actually make you thirstier than you were before. That’s kind of my point.”
Michael shook his head. “It’s nice to see the shower has brought back some of your old personality.”
Adrian eyed him. “What, you didn’t enjoy me soaked to the bone and sulking?”
“The wet shirt was pleasant enough, but the smell and attitude weren’t quite doing it for me,” Michael replied easily.
And there it was again, how casually Michael would throw a comment insinuating something else. Adrian was used to operating, with people who made their intentions known quickly and with great emphasis. If it wasn’t for the fact that Michael had already had some fun with him, Adrian would have wondered if Michael’s comment was meant as a come on, or to throw him off balance a little. He still wondered, but he at least could be reassured that Michael had some sort of intent beyond mind games.
Michael looked up from his book. “You’ve grown quiet?”
Adrian quickly scrambled for a plausible story. “Well, if you think about it, I just had a lot thrown at me. Now you’ve gone and asked me to come up with a plan, so maybe getting lost in thought is kind of understandable?”
Michael snorted. “I’m glad one of us is thinking about it. I can’t seem to drum up a single course of action that wouldn’t make matters worse.”
Adrian frowned at him. “Now that you mention it, you have been rather hands-off about this whole thing. You seem really calm for a man who’s having his entire life attacked as the basis for future attacks on other pack leaders.”
Michael closed the book over one finger, marking his place. “I’ve learned a great many things in my life, and one of those is that, sometimes, it’s important to let others take over when you are at a disadvantage. I’m no stranger to backroom deals, or underhanded tactics in the business world, but a crusade led against me based on an ideology that I cannot begin to grasp is not my forte.”
“Right, but you really think it’s mine?”
“You lived and breathed this ideology of theirs, and you were the one who got away from it all in the end. You have more experience than I could ever hope to have. If either of us is going to come up with a plan that might work, it would be you.”
Adrian raised a brow. “I lived it, I breathed it, and then I ran the fuck away. I wouldn’t really call that very helpful experience for your problem, unless of course, you were planning on taking off, out of the city.”
“No, but if they are headed by your cousin, you have a firmer grasp on their mentality and motivations than even another former sept wolf might. And for all my experience, you have seen a hundredfold more than I have. Your entire skillset is based upon learning the most underhanded, subtle, or cunning things that others might do to get ahead, using it against them to help your pack. You are the one who has lived in the underbelly of this city long enough to have gained quite the collection of facts about the human and werewolf psyche. I can mobilize my pack, gather resources, allocate power, but when it comes to knowing how to deal with a group of shadowy individuals who will use whatever means and methods possible to gain victory, I trust that you are more fit to come up with a counter plan than I,” Michael explained in that slow, patient way that both maddened and comforted Adrian.
“Use a thief to catch a thief, eh?” Adrian asked, hoping he didn’t express the faint bitterness that rose within him at the thought.
Michael smiled knowingly. “You know them, all of them, perhaps better than they know themselves. If you didn’t make it your business to know the things they did, and to do it better, you wouldn’t be alive right now to help me. It is no sin to do the dirty work so other’s hands may stay clean. It’s time that you stopped believing otherwise.”
Not for the first time, Adrian found himself at a loss for words in face of Michael’s. Michael had, whether intentionally or unknowingly, cut to the center of one of the biggest wars Adrian waged within himself. As much as Adrian was proud of his skills and accomplishments when it came to helping his pack, there were nights when he wondered just how much of him was left that wasn’t tainted by the world he constantly lived in. He knew that his work was important, and that it was often the difference between his pack surviving or falling victim to another’s ambitions.
Adrian gave Michael a weak smile. “I know what I am, dude, it’s okay. No matter what I think, it’s not going to stop me.”
“And a man who allows himself to believe he is only worth the job he does is bound to falter eventually,” Michael said softly.
Adrian opened his mouth to snap at Michael, to wonder just what he would know about that, but the look on Michael’s face gave him pause. There was a sadness there that Adrian recognized, one that came from a place of knowing. Michael had already set his book aside, waiting to see what Adrian would have to say before he continued.
Adrian scoffed. “Your dad?”
“My mother, actually,” Michael replied calmly.
Adrian nodded, thinking of his own sharp, cold mother. “Parents are a bitch.”
“My mother expected a great deal of me, even at a very young age. There were private schools, private tutors, math, languages, even art, and all of it was expected to be known by rote,” Michael began.
“Doesn’t sound like a whole lot of time to be a kid,” Adrian said softly.
Michael shrugged lightly. “No, perhaps not, and looking back, comparing it to others, I didn’t have much of a childhood. My mother’s wishes were for me to be a great pack leader and a great businessman, all in one. When I wasn’t learning equations or business theories, I was learning to fight, to arrange battles. She expected nothing but perfection from me.”
“You were just a kid, how the hell could you be perfect?” Adrian asked, remembering all the times in his youth when his own parents were as severe.
“To my mother, it mattered very little.”
“And your dad, what did he think?”.
“My father died when I was quite young, and I have only faint, somewhat hazy memories of him. I remember him being a quiet man, and I remember that my mother smiled far more when he was alive. There seemed to be little joy left for her after he was killed by a rival. I imagine that was my mother’s reason to be so strict and demanding.”
Adrian huffed. “That sounds like an excuse. No matter what she lost, she shouldn’t have used that as a weapon against you. You were just a boy, a fucking child. How could she have expected that you’d be the perfect little pack leader so early?”
“I never said that it was right, or that I believe she shouldn’t have done differently. But she was my mother, and even to this day, I still hold love in my heart for her, even if it is muddled up with some hatred. My sole regret is that I never had the chance to find out the truth, or to perhaps find peace with her. Once I was old enough, I made up my mind that I would not lead in a city where my mother lived. Leaving her behind, I came here, with what little money she would begrudgingly give me to begin.”
Adrian shook his head. “Even after everything, she didn’t want to give you a few bucks without a fight?”
Michael chuckled. “Oh, it was far more than a few dollars. My father was quite the businessman in his own right and there was a considerable sum left for me. My mother, through some sense of duty, or perhaps it was love in the end, also added to the sum before I left. I had scarcely been here a year, with my income and business growing slowly, when she passed.”
Adrian sat back, blinking. “How did she die?”
“Cancer,” Michael responded blandly.
“How? We don’t get cancer,” Adrian insisted.
Michael smiled sadly. “No, werewolves do not, but my mother was kin, not wolf.”
Adrian sat back, deflating a little. “I didn’t realize.”
Michael shook his head. “How could you possibly know
? She carried the werewolf gene, but it wasn’t active, which was more than enough for my father to marry her and have a child. I was an only child, my father died before they could think of bringing another into the world. She couldn’t teach me some of the things that came with being a werewolf, but she did her damnedest to make sure I could learn everything else. She kept her condition from me, and I only found out after she had gone.” Michael’s voice had grown hard and brittle.
“Maybe… maybe she was just trying to protect you.”
“She very well may have been. I understood my mother’s thoughts and motivations no more than I understand physics. She was not a woman who shared much of herself, and she was gone before I was given the chance to bring down her walls and see what secrets lay within her heart,” Michael said quietly.
Adrian had spent years wondering about his own parents, torn between his love and admiration of them and the fear of failure and their judgment. Looking back on his years growing up in the sept, he could only see the hard lines drawn in the sand, the ones he was never meant to cross, and the harsh punishments that would follow if he did. He supposed that there might have been love there once, but he could no longer see it through the lens of his memory.
“It’s hard to speak for those who are no longer with us, impossible, quite frankly. However, it does help to think that she might have known some peace seeing me as I am now,” Michael said.
Adrian smiled at that. “You think she would have been happy?”
Michael chuckled. “My mother was never a joyous woman, at least not after my father passed. But I think perhaps she would have known a little bit of calm had she seen how far I’ve come. Everything she had instilled in me as a boy has come to fruition in the man that I am now. She could rest easy, knowing that I became the person she always wanted me to be.”
“Even with the trouble you’ve been having lately?”
“Well, to that, I imagine she would be concerned, and I can already hear the lectures she would pour into my ear. Yet I think by now, at least I hope, that she would have faith in my ability to handle matters.”