On the other hand, what if Piper reacted badly from Dana’s interference? What if too much parental dictation of her imaginary life stunted her creativity and individuality?
Dana felt like every day was a battle, and every day, she failed in some way.
She lost her temper, or she didn’t make a healthy meal, or she didn’t get Piper to pick up her toys.
Before all of this, Dana had been very good at her job. She’d been a first-rate tracker who had brought it rogue werewolves. Rogues were wolves who’d changed for the first time and gone crazy, generally killing people. The SF found those wolves, brought them in, and trained them to control their shifts so that they didn’t have to shift at the full moon.
Then Dana had been promoted to head up her own branch of the SF—the Pack Liaison Branch. She’d pioneered the working relationship that the SF now had with traditional werewolf packs.
In the past, the SF had required all wolves to go through their training. But the training stripped a wolf of pack ties, and it focused on suppression of wolf characteristics. The traditional packs kept their shifting in control because they all had alpha wolves, and those alphas could control the shifts of the others in their packs. Packs were typically family units. Mothers and fathers were the male and female alphas, and their children were beta wolves. When a wolf took a mate, he or she became an alpha, in full control of shifting.
Dana and Avery had their own pack that way. They were alphas to little Piper.
But even though Avery was an alpha in his own right, he still struggled against his wolf. He had been trained by the SF to believe that he and the wolf were separate entities. That his human side was the true side of him, and that the wolf ought to be suppressed.
Dana used to believe that as well, but she didn’t really. Not anymore. She knew that things were better whenever she made sure to shift and run in the woods. Being one with her wolf meant that she was happier, more balanced. If it weren’t for running in her wolf skin, Dana was pretty sure that the strain of raising her daughter would have driven her insane by now.
She wished Avery would do it with her, because she thought it might mellow him a bit. He always seemed so tense and touchy. He’d get angry at the slightest thing. She tried to convince him to run with her, but Avery wouldn’t do it.
For one thing, Avery didn’t have as much control over his shifting as Dana did. The full moon forced wolves to shift. If they had an alpha, they would shift back. If they had gone through the SF training, they could resist the shift. Most wolves didn’t bother with shifting at any other time, treating it as a nuisance. But it was possible for every wolf to get mastery of his or her own shifting, to be able to do it at any time and to be able to do it without pain.
When Dana had been captured by Cole Randall, the wolf serial killer who had kept her chained in his basement while he tried to work up the nerve to kill her, Cole had taught her how to control her shifts. He had taught her how to embrace her wolf, to integrate both of them together, so that her wolf was part of her, and she was part of her wolf.
She thought she could teach Avery the same thing, but he resisted. He was afraid of the wolf, and he didn’t want to give in to it.
She tried to explain to him how blissful it was, how deeply peaceful and tranquil, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t interested, and that was that.
So Dana ran alone, glorying in her simplistic, animal side. And it was a sweet respite from the rest of her life, an oasis of freedom.
Sometimes, when she ran like this, she had an urge to keep running. Running forever, never shifting out of her wolf form. Simply staying in this perfect world of rightness and peace.
She felt it again as she leapt through the forest. Stay, whispered the leaves on the trees. Be with us.
Not today, Dana thought back.
But someday… someday she wondered if she just might do it.
CHAPTER TWO
Avery looked up to see his wife coming back into the apartment. She had that glow around her that she usually did when she’d come back from shifting into the wolf, and he had to admit that she was beautiful. He felt the familiar tug of his wolf to her. They were mated. She was his.
He wasn’t sure why that couldn’t be enough in and of itself.
Maybe it was because real life—human life—wasn’t quite as simple as wolf bonding.
But he still smiled at her. “Hey, babe.”
She made her way into the kitchen, which was sectioned off from the living room of their apartment by a breakfast bar that jutted out between the two rooms. “You’re making dinner?”
Avery gave the green beans in the skillet a stir. “Just chicken nuggets, french fries, and green beans. All frozen stuff I’m heating up. It was Piper’s idea.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, I made the bed too.” He grinned at her.
“Thanks.” She sighed. “I swear, I don’t understand why I can’t get on top of this house. It just seems so overwhelming.”
He turned back to the green beans. They’d argued about this before. She didn’t have anything to do except keep the house clean and watch Piper, so he didn’t understand why everything was such a wreck all the time. But he didn’t want to have that argument again. He didn’t want to argue at all. So, he didn’t say anything.
She was quiet too. Then, she started to back out of the kitchen. “Well, I guess I’ll sit down with Piper for a bit.”
He reached for her and pulled her body against his.
She wrapped her arms around him.
He held her close. She was soft and small, still his Dana, and he knew her body as well as he knew his own.
She buried her face in his chest.
He planted a kiss on the top of her head.
They held onto each other like that for a long time.
Then she went into the living room. He listened while she made Piper’s dolls talk in high, silly voices. He listened to his daughter’s laughter.
God, he loved them both so much. He’d never given much thought to children, and Piper had come along quickly after he and Dana had officially become a couple. But the little girl was basically the best thing that had ever happened to him. The first time he’d seen her, all her tiny fingers and toes, squalling and squirming, he’d been overwhelmed with such a rush of love that it had nearly toppled him. He’d never expected to feel so much for someone.
And he was bonded to all of them through their wolfness as well. Dana was his mate, Piper was their beta wolf. They were connected so tightly and so deeply that being without them would be like losing part of himself.
Still.
That didn’t mean it was all easy, because it wasn’t. He thought that he and Dana would be good at being married and raising a child together. After all, they’d worked together as partners for years, and they had a good working dynamic. Somehow, he thought that the work dynamic would transfer into their family life.
But it didn’t, not really.
Dana was never happy anymore. Okay, that wasn’t fair. She was happy sometimes, but she was complaining more often than not. She seemed to be frustrated with every aspect of their lives together, and it was difficult for him not to take it as a personal affront. It was his job to make her happy, right? So, whenever she wasn’t, it must mean that he was doing something wrong. He didn’t know how to please her.
It didn’t help that his work was different than it used to be. Avery had enjoyed being a tracker more than anything. He was good at it, and it was important work. He liked the excitement of hunting down the rogues, and he liked the unpredictability of the job. He’d never known when he and Dana would get a call that would send them off to Maine or Massachusetts. They’d drive all night, sniff out the rogue, bring him back to headquarters. It was exhilarating. But it wasn’t a great job for a man with a family, because of all the travel and unpredictability. Most rogues broke out at night, and getting up in the middle of the night to go hunt down a wolf would have been
disrupting to his wife and child.
So, now, Avery worked in the SF as a trainer for the rogues. He taught them to suppress their wolves. It was important work, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting, and he sometimes longed for the thrill of tracking.
Whenever Dana would go off on one of her tangents, complaining about all the things that she’d given up to raise Piper, he wanted to scream at her that he’d made sacrifices too.
But he understood that the sacrifices were worth it. Piper was more important to him than being a tracker. Being close to his family trumped all his desires. He wanted those other things, but he wanted to be with them more.
He wasn’t sure if Dana felt the same way.
But as he finished making the dinner, he tried not to think about it anymore.
And eating dinner itself was always too eventful to think about anything.
Piper was in a phase where she liked playing with her food more than eating it. She’d just been moved out of a high chair into a booster seat at the table, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still occasionally throwing pieces of food across the room. She thought that was endlessly funny, and she thought her parents’ angry responses to her behavior were even funnier.
And that night… Avery wasn’t sure why, but it was probably because of the phone call from Cole Randall earlier. But that night, when Piper was laughing, there was a moment in which she twisted her face a certain way, and she looked exactly like Cole.
But Avery didn’t say anything, because he’d decided a long time ago that broaching that subject was only going to cause lots of pain for everyone.
He knew, of course, that there was a chance that Piper wasn’t biologically his. Dana had been mated to Cole and the two of them had been having sex. When Avery mated with Dana, it was specifically to break the bond between her and that monster. It was possible that when he’d done it, Dana had already been pregnant.
He was sure that Dana had considered this possibility too. Hell, she never actually came out and told him she was pregnant. They’d been together for months, and at some point, he began noticing the changes in her body. But he didn’t say anything, not at first. But eventually, one night as he was running his fingers over the swell of her belly, he’d whispered, “Hey, Dana, are we ever going to talk about this?”
And even then, they hadn’t really talked about it. She’d been shy and almost frightened, and he’d had to reassure her that he was there for her, and that they were in this together.
They were, after all. They were mated, tied together with wolf bonds, and sometimes Avery thought those bonds were stronger than anything that humans could forge on their own.
And even if Piper didn’t get made from his sperm, it hardly mattered, because she was born when he was mated to her mother, and that made her his. According to pack logic, if an alpha mated with a female with children, he became the new male alpha of the pack. Piper was his.
Still, he didn’t like thinking about the idea that Piper was connected to Cole biologically, because he didn’t want Cole to have any part of his life.
So, to keep from thinking about it, he helped Dana clean up after dinner, even though he usually wouldn’t have. The way he figured it, he worked all day, and Dana didn’t, so the cleanup was her job. Especially tonight, when he’d also made dinner.
But he wanted to distract himself, so he stacked dishes and scrubbed the table and picked up the green beans that Piper had thrown on the floor. And it didn’t help. He still kept thinking about Cole, thinking about everything that jackass had put him through. And all the things he’d done to Dana. Maybe that was the worst of it. The fact that Cole had put Dana through hell, but that she’d never really blamed him for it. She had a soft spot for the man, and he’d tried to kill her. He was responsible for Dana’s mother’s death. He had killed six other people in cold blood.
Avery sat down at the table, still holding the dishrag. “I’m sorry.”
Dana looked up from the dishwasher. “Baby?”
“I’m sorry about earlier. You were right. I was jealous.”
She straightened up slowly. “You don’t have to be, you know. I would never be with him.”
“You were with him.”
“But not like this.” She gestured around at their house. “I couldn’t share a life with a man like that. You know that. Things that I did… they were only because I was off balance. I couldn’t let the wild, wolf side of myself in, and Cole forced to me to do that. But once I knew how to do it myself, I didn’t need him anymore. I don’t need him now.”
He nodded. “I know.”
She’d explained this to him before, and he guessed it was as good an explanation as any.
He looked at the dishrag. “It’s not really about you anyway. It’s about… fear. My fear of losing you. I don’t know if I could survive seeing you with him again.”
“Avery, that’s not going to happen.”
“Maybe not.” He turned back to the table. It was already scrubbed, but he started scrubbing it again. “But I didn’t know for sure if he was alive, and you did. And…”
Her hand was on his shoulder. “Baby.”
He looked up at her. “You don’t know what it was like back then. Lying awake in my apartment in Brockway and knowing you were just a few doors down, with him. It hurt so much.”
She bit her lip.
“Please don’t do that to me again,” he whispered. “Please, Dana, I think it would kill me.”
* * *
Dana woke to the sound of a phone ringing. At first, she thought it was hers, and the idea of Cole calling her again made her feel breathless. But then she realized that it was Avery’s ring tone.
She rolled over to see that he was sitting up in bed, and switching on the bedside lamp. He answered the phone. “Brooks.”
Dana wrinkled her forehead. Who could be calling Avery in the middle of the night? Was there an emergency at work?
Avery sat up straight. “You’re kidding…. But how could… Yes. Yes, of course, I’ll come in…. No, she can’t leave the baby.”
What? Were they asking about her? Why would they do that?
“I’ll be there soon.” He hung up the phone.
She sat up too. “What’s going on?”
His face was white. “I’ve got to go in.”
“What happened?”
“It’s the west coast regional headquarters. It’s… it’s gone.”
“Gone?” She didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the building’s there, I guess, but everybody in it is dead. They’ve all been shot to death. Every single person.” His voice was quiet.
“What?” Dana was shocked. She and Avery worked for the largest SF headquarters in the United States. There were regional headquarters set up in various spots on the country. Since the northeast region was the most heavily populated, it was the largest, with the most staff. The organization’s board had offices here. But the west coast was the next largest. It served a huge area, stretching over the entire west coast. “W-why? Who? How?”
He shook his head. “No one knows. But they’re calling people in right now. There’s probably nothing we can do, but…”
“No, of course, you should go.” She hugged herself. “If I didn’t have to stay with Piper, I would—”
“No, I know that.” He kissed her on the forehead.
* * *
Avery still wasn’t home by noon the next day. Dana talked to him on the phone a few times. (Of course, not on her cell phone, because Avery hadn’t bothered to give that back to her. Instead it was the land line in the apartment.) He told her that there was still no official confirmation on who had killed all the SF workers in California. There had been a lot of them, whoever they were, and they’d managed to kill every single person working there.
Most workers at the SF weren’t trained to protect themselves. There were only a few people who were trained as trackers and knew how to use tranq guns. Since trackers only tracke
d on full moons, they weren’t constantly working. The eastern branch only had four. There were probably around that many on the west coast. There were also guards in the facility, but, even factoring them in, there were probably less than twenty people who were trained to fight. Even if those people could have mounted a quick defense, they would have only had tranquilizer guns, and that wasn’t a match for people with real firepower.
Apparently, calls had been placed to local law enforcement, but the police had been late in arriving. Probably because there was friction between the majority of regular humans and werewolves. Most people were inherently distrustful of wolves. Werewolves who lived outside the confines of the SF kept their identities secret, despite routine outcries from the populace that lists of werewolf identities be made public.
Truthfully, the SF made the world safer for people, corralling rogue werewolves and teaching them to control their shifts. In this way, the wolves never had to harm anyone ever again.
But most people didn’t see the SF that way. They were frightened of werewolves, and they wanted them segregated—or even killed.
The reigning theory, according to Avery, was that a group of angry humans had found a way to get into the SF headquarters and kill all the wolves within.
“It’s a hate crime,” said Avery, “but you think anyone in the mainstream media’s going to see it that way?”
“No,” she said. “Probably not.”
Good press about werewolves was practically unheard of. There were a few progressive groups who advocated acceptance and goodwill, but they were the minority.
At any rate, no one knew what had happened. There were no clues about what had happened, and the SF itself was not going to be allowed to investigate, since this didn’t seem to be a crime perpetrated by werewolves. The SF only had jurisdiction over wolves, not humans. That meant they were at the mercy of the same police who had taken their sweet time getting there to help in the first place. To say that the SF was not confident justice would ever be served was an understatement.
“Mommy, watch!” said Piper. The two-year-old was on the floor of the living room, at Dana’s feet while Dana talked on the phone. Instead of playing with all of her toys, which were scattered around, she’d decided that a stack of decorative coasters were more interesting. Piper was now hurling the coasters around the room.
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