by Kathy Lyons
Other werewolves.
He felt guilty for crashing last night and not going to find them, but Nero had made it clear that he wasn’t allowed back downstairs yet. The last thing the other werewolves needed—according to Nero—was Josh hanging around confusing the issue.
So, wearing his regular jeans and the Wulf, Inc. tee, he tried his bedroom door and was reassured to find it unlocked. A quick walk down the hall brought him back to the game room and then into the kitchen, where a wiry brown-haired guy was dropping cheese onto an omelet while humming random musical theme songs. This was the guy who’d been singing off-key “Mamma Mia,” and he looked up with a broad grin.
“Good morning!” he cried. Lord, even his voice belonged on a Disney soundtrack. It was happy, excited, and really ought to be making animated squirrels chirp along with him. “I’m making omelets. You want one?”
“Sure,” he answered without thought. He never turned down food someone else cooked for him. But as he spoke, he wondered how his stomach was faring. There was no queasiness right now, but the idea of eating something heavy made his belly clench. “Um, better make that just scrambled eggs. Nothing fancy. I’ll be back in a second.” He saw the door to downstairs and headed for it.
“Sure thing. I’m Laddin Holt, by the way. That’s short for Aladdin ‘cause Mama said I was magical. Who knew she’d be right? And the door’s locked. I already checked.”
Laddin was right. Josh couldn’t budge it. And the palm reader flashed red when he flattened his hand on it.
“You one of the regular wolves or a new guy?” Laddin asked. “I’m new,” he continued without pause. “My trainer says there are five of us, but she still wants more recruits.”
Josh turned away from the locked door and focused on Laddin. Information was key in every situation, and right here was some new info. Giving up on the door, he went deeper into the kitchen. “New one—”
“Wait. Let me try to remember,” Laddin said, his face scrunching up. He also held up his hand to stop Josh from talking, and right there was yet another thing to focus on.
Laddin’s hand was deformed. His thumb, forefinger, and a crooked pinkie looked mostly normal, but the middle two fingers were infant sized. But it didn’t prevent Laddin from using the hand. He managed the omelet and pan without any problem, not to mention all the normal cooking utensils as he started thinking out loud.
“I was still half out of it, but I remember a lot of roaring and barking. There was a fight between a naked guy and a big guy. Gel guy had a… a stick?”
“Naked guy was me. Big guy was Nero. Gel guy had a cattle prod.” Josh kept his voice neutral, but his side twitched in memory. The pain had burned through him like ants eating through his insides. His muscles had clenched, his body had jerked, and yet the fury of his attack hadn’t lessened. If anything, the pain had tripled his anger.
And he’d attacked like an animal. Like a….
Werewolf.
Josh’s side knotted up as he flinched away from the word. It was too alien for him to accept as being attached to him. His words were boy, chemist, nerd, puny, gay. Also friend, man, son, and brother. But not animal. And certainly not werewolf. And yet the word wouldn’t go away.
Laddin did an exaggerated shudder. “I got an up-close-and-personal look at the weird guy’s stomach.” He blew out a breath. “Creepy.”
Josh nodded as he forced himself to focus on Laddin. “Last I saw, you were being sedated. Which… um….”
“Cage was I in?” Laddin supplied. “Second from the last.”
Was his transformation due to a Romani curse? Josh couldn’t remember. There had been so much to absorb yesterday.
“Yeah,” Laddin continued as he poured his omelet onto a plate before breaking a couple more eggs into a bowl and scrambling them with a fork. “I have no idea how long I snoozed. Next thing I know, a woman is calling me by name and telling me to get up and get dressed. We had things to do.” He grinned as he looked up. “She sounded like my grandma. So I got up and got dressed as a man. It took me a moment to even realize I’d crawled out of a cage as a wolf. Weird, huh?”
“Definitely,” Josh said, though he’d experienced something similar. He didn’t even remember shifting, but he sure as hell remembered wanting to beat the shit out of Nero. And there was the anger again. The confusion and the betrayal, rising like acid in his throat. He pushed it down once more. He needed to focus, not emote. Fortunately, Laddin was a chatterbox.
“Captain M says it’s different with every person, but there’s always a trigger. She’s the head honcho around here and the one assigned to me. She’s in her office, over that way.” He gestured down the hallway opposite from the bedroom wing. “Anyway, she just had to sound like my grandmother, and I obeyed.”
“Yeah,” Josh murmured. “Nero sounded like my father, and I wanted to humiliate him. I went human so I could correct his pronunciation.” And beat the shit out of him.
He remembered the hatred burning like hot lava that he couldn’t escape and couldn’t control. He’d been all animal, teeth and claws. He’d needed to taste blood and feel entrails in his claws. Nothing like father issues to bring on the heat.
Laddin shot him a sympathetic look. “One of those dads, huh? That sucks. My mama ditched my asshole father when I was too little to remember. I used to want a dad, you know? But then I saw how many dirtbags are out there, and I thought, just having her and Grandmama wasn’t so bad. We got along fine.” He grinned. “And I can’t wait to tell them that I’m not dead!”
It took a moment for Laddin’s words to penetrate the memory of what he’d been, of what he’d felt.
Werewolf.
But eventually his mind cleared enough to replay Laddin’s words. “You knew about all this?” he asked. “About being a….”
“Werewolf? Hell no. But Grandma’s got second sight. She gives people readings at psychic fairs and stuff. It’s mostly good intuition, but she’s got a real gift too. She told me that I was born with this”—he held up his deformed hand—“because my whole life would change when I was twenty-eight.”
Josh frowned, not knowing what to say to that. How did a congenital defect lead to werewolf-ism? Fortunately, Laddin wasn’t one to let conversational silences hang there. He was filling up the space with his chatter as soon as he poured the eggs into the skillet.
“She said it was a life change. A transition thing. Like death, and maybe death, but she didn’t know. Said it would happen in my twenty-eighth year.” He pointed to his normal thumb and forefinger as he counted. “That’s ten and twenty.” Then he spread both hands, showing all eight normal fingers. “And that’s eight. So twenty-eight.”
“Your grandmother told you you’d die when you were twenty-eight?” God, what a horrible thing for anyone to say.
“Not die. Transition, or there’d be some big change during the year. I’d thought it would be realizing I was gay, but that happened when I was eighteen. Then maybe when I switched jobs or something. I never, ever expected to become a werewolf.” He nabbed a plate and scraped scrambled eggs onto it. “Honestly, I was beginning to doubt, but I should have known better. Grandmama is always right, at least with me. I turn twenty-nine in seven weeks.” His expression fell. “I text them every night to tell them that I’m okay. Mama’s probably planning my funeral, but Captain M wouldn’t give me back my phone. Have you got yours yet?”
Josh shook his head. Worse, he knew that none of his family would even think to miss him until the holidays. His lab would notice he wasn’t around come Monday, but…. “What day is it? I mean, it was Friday when—”
“Things went loco?”
“Yeah. How long were we….” He couldn’t say the word, but it slipped out anyway. “Werewolves?”
“Don’t know. For all I know, it could be Saturday. Or Sunday. Or next year.”
“It’s Monday,” Nero said as he pushed opened the door from the lower floor. He stepped out, and Josh felt the zing of attraction
tighten his insides. Then anger surged. He shouldn’t be attracted to his captor. He shouldn’t be looking at how the guy’s strong hands dwarfed the doorknob or feeling that mesmerizing voice settle into his groin and thrum there. Josh got a low vibration of pleasure whenever Nero moved his mouth, and that was just wrong. But there was nothing Josh could do to stop it. Meanwhile, Nero kept talking while Josh felt every beautiful sound. “We found it’s easiest to keep new recruits unconscious for a while. It lets their bodies rest before they shift back to human.”
“Monday!” Laddin squeaked. “But Mama will be frantic—”
“Captain M already texted your mother and grandmother. They know you’re alive and well and will contact them as soon as it’s prudent.”
Laddin shook his head. “That won’t be enough. Not until she hears my voice and—”
“Pinches your cheek. Yeah, we know. We’ll set up a time and place for your family reunion”—he glanced at Josh—“for everyone’s reunions, but only when it’s safe. New recruits are emotional creatures, and no one triggers a meltdown like family.”
“But Mama—”
“Will have to learn patience. It’s the way it is. I’m sorry, Laddin. No exceptions.”
Laddin pressed his lips together in a show of annoyance. Josh had just met him, but he guessed that Laddin rarely went silent. But was he now pouting or plotting revenge?
Nero turned his attention to Josh. “How are you feeling? Can you handle food yet?”
Zing. Nothing like the focused interest of a hot guy. Josh hated that he warmed to the attention, but damn it, how could he not? Nero was looking at him like he cared. Worse, like he was worried, and even Josh’s mother hadn’t treated him like that in years. Casual disinterest was more her style, but she always remembered to pray for him before she went to sleep at night. Like that made up for how she turned her head whenever his father went on the attack. Compared to the other things going on right now, this issue felt almost comforting. He smiled as he shoved a forkful of eggs in his mouth and found it not-too-revolting. “Guess so.”
Nero grunted. “Don’t go too fast.”
Yeah, he’d learned that lesson last night.
“And stay hydrated with electrolytes. There are lots of choices in the refrigerator.”
Josh was about to say a sarcastic “Yes, Mother,” but he cut off the words unspoken. That was too familiar and too creepy, given what they’d done last night and what Nero had revealed. He didn’t know if Nero was his abductor, partner, or lover. The first, yes, the second, maybe, the third—definitely not, though there certainly were lusty feelings coming from his body. Which left Josh in an uncomfortable place. And uncomfortable places always made him angry. So he turned to the best distraction he knew and made sure irritation burned through his tone.
“Where’s my phone?”
“Put away. And no, you can’t have it.”
“You can’t keep us prisoners like this!”
Nero exhaled in a long slow release. Obviously the guy was trying to keep himself calm—and doing a better job of it than Josh—which pissed Josh off even more. “You’ll stay like this—without your phones—until you prove you can handle shifting. It’s for everybody’s safety, including yours.”
“What about your friends? I thought you wanted me to solve that fire blast thing?” It was horrible of him to throw that at Nero. The guy was still grieving, and Josh had implied that Nero had forgotten all about it.
Not surprisingly, Nero’s eyes chilled, but he didn’t lose his cool. “Any help you can give us on that will be richly rewarded. Things might even go back to how they were before all this ever happened.”
Josh glared at the man for who-knows-what-reason. He was pissed off, and Nero was the best target. But he couldn’t stand here, eating and throwing irritation at random targets. He needed to do something to distract himself from deeper emotions. From the fact that he was a werewolf now and that his family didn’t give a shit that he’d been abducted. So he went for the second-best distraction.
“Fine,” he growled, and it was a growl. Did he do that now? “Point me at the science.”
Nero’s expression didn’t change, but Josh felt the ramp-up in intensity. Like Nero was holding himself back from leaping on the suggestion. “You sure?”
“You said you need me to figure out magical fire resistance, right?”
“Yes.”
“So show me what you got. Point me at the diagrams, the biology, the facts and figures. Hell, I want to see your alchemy experiments. You needed a geek, let me go geek.”
“Really?” The hope in his voice was palpable, but even so, Nero tried to give him a different option. “I assumed you’d want to get adjusted first. To understand what it meant to be a werewolf.”
Like his identity could be figured out in an afternoon. Not if you were an egghead. “I’ll bet you played football in kindergarten.”
“Yeah, and it was called peewee ball. So what?”
“So you go at things from a body perspective. You approach everything from what you can hold, throw, or smash. That’s how you get adjusted.”
Nero straightened. “And you do what? Think at things first?”
Josh shrugged. “If I can conceptualize it, then I can deal with it. I can manipulate it, reverse it, and blow it up. So get me on your database and I’ll take it from there.” Plus, it had the added advantage of getting him out of proximity to Nero, whose simple presence was enough to muck up his thoughts.
“Works for me,” Nero said with real enthusiasm. “This way.”
Josh followed a couple of steps behind as they headed to the door downstairs. He tried not to notice the way Nero’s body moved, tried not to watch the tight ass and broad shoulders. Didn’t work. Same with trying to ignore the guy’s scent or block the memory of orgasming in his massive hand. He tried not to think of a dozen different sexual things and only managed to get himself even more hot and bothered.
God damn it, nothing would stay settled. He couldn’t be angry and attracted, but he was. He couldn’t be science geek and werewolf—nothing like that ever happened outside of the comics. And he sure as hell couldn’t be missing his family that he hated.
Right in the midst of all his conflicting, confusing emotional turmoil, another person came up through the basement door.
It was a measure of Josh’s distraction that he hadn’t recognized the guy last night. Even in wolf form, Josh should have known he who he was. He’d been in the last cage, and now that Josh saw the human behind the fur, everything slipped into place.
“Holy shit,” he gasped, “are you Red Wolf? Like the Red Wolf?” He couldn’t even remember the actor’s name, but Red Wolf was as famous in manga circles as Wolverine was in comic book stores. The story had started as a series of manga comics but then spun off into a live action TV show with kickass martial arts. This guy played Red Wolf, the mysterious, moody loner of a werewolf who sometimes saved the day, sometimes destroyed it. The fans loved him.
And if this guy wasn’t an actor but really was a werewolf, then…. “Are you saying that the manga is real?”
The actor/werewolf turned to him, his Asian eyes as flat as his mocking tone. “Yeah, dude, manga is totally for real. Obviously.” He rolled his eyes. “Not.”
Josh felt the burn of embarrassment roll up his face. Jesus, he’d made a fool out of himself fanboying over a manga-turned-real-life actor. God, he was an idiot. And what a jerk this guy was to rub that in his face.
“Oh, right,” he drawled, making sure the sarcasm dripped acid into the room. “Red Wolf is a sophisticated character. A complicated good guy beneath a scary exterior. That can’t be you ’cause you’re just an asshole.”
He saw his words hit as the guy’s skin flushed ruddy. He squared his shoulders and bulked out in the way that every Red Wolf fan had tried—and failed—to imitate. “Look, punk—” he growled, but Nero stepped in between them.
“And that’s enough getting-to-know-you time unt
il everyone’s belly is full. Quick note to the new recruits: everyone is cranky on an empty stomach.” He swung the actor toward the kitchen stool and shot Laddin a look. “Can you fix Bing some breakfast?”
“Sure thing,” Laddin answered, chipper once again.
“And if you’re done eating,” Nero continued as he pulled Josh around, “let’s get you to the lab.”
That would normally give Josh a graceful exit, but Bing Wen Hao (as he now remembered the actor’s name) was giving him the stare down. It was a Red Wolf trick that—on screen—came complete with glowing red eyes and an unnerving sound effect. And damn it, Josh couldn’t break eye contact even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. He was going to stare down this asshole until the bastard whimpered “uncle” in his puffed-up prettiness. Because, he had to admit, the actor had won the beautiful looks lottery. And that the hypno-lock was real.
Shit. He really couldn’t break his eyes away.
Fucking hell. It was real!
Panic churned in his gut and he tasted bile. He might be a werewolf, but all of a sudden, even that status wasn’t enough. Dammit!
Weak werewolf.
The impact of that thought nearly crushed him. All his insecurities rushed at him; all the emotions that he’d been so desperately trying to avoid came back to mock him. Even as a badass werewolf, he could barely stomach food, had been jerked off by his captor, and now an asshole actor had shown him how limited he was among the paranormal set.
He was going to fucking kill—
Nero stepped in front of him, breaking the hypno-lock and grabbing Josh’s arm to haul him toward the stairs. “Time to geek out,” he said loudly. In fact, it sounded very much like an order. He even gripped Josh’s hand and slammed it down on the hand reader before half dragging him downstairs.
Josh followed, mostly because he didn’t have a choice. Nero was bigger, stronger, and he had leverage. And then the idiot made the mistake of trying to be conciliatory.