by Nalini Singh
Except, there shouldn't be a fire. They were alone on the dark, twisting road--
He was outside the car, screaming at them to stop, but they were both still laughing, dressed in the clothes they'd worn to attend the wedding, and they didn't hear him, didn't even see him--
--fire! He was trapped inside the car and the flames were blistering his flesh. He cried out, reached for his parents...but they'd turned to bone, charred and black. "No! No!" he screamed as his flesh melted.
Cooper jerked awake on a scream, the echo of it hanging in the air. Shuddering, he thrust his hands through sweat-soaked hair and checked the status of the audio shield round his room. Thank God, he thought when he saw the switch flicked in the right direction. The last thing the den needed was to hear its lieutenant screaming in terror like a child.
Shoving off the sheets tangled around his legs, he walked into the shower. Scalding, that's how he wanted the water. To thaw the lump of ice that was his heart. Always, he woke from that nightmare chilled to the bone. He'd never understood it, not when the fire was so hot.
He stayed until the shower stall was so full of steam, he couldn't see the hands he'd braced on the wall. Wrenching off the tap, he stepped out, dried off, and--towel wrapped around his hips--stared into the mirror. His jaw was dark with stubble, so he focused on that, shaved. The task took a bare few minutes, and then he no longer had even that slim buffer against the echoes of nightmare.
It had been worse this time, because he hadn't expected it, hadn't prepared himself for the horror that awaited him in the dark of night. It had been so many years since he'd been trapped inside that phantom car, burning and burning and burning.
"Enough." It was a quiet command to himself.
Leaving the bathroom, he pulled on underwear, jeans, a black T-shirt, socks, and boots.
The den was quiet when he stepped out, not unexpected at five in the morning. He almost turned toward Grace's room, wanting desperately to ask her to let him hold her, just that. But he didn't have the right to push for those skin privileges, so he took himself up to his office and began to go through a number of financial reports Jem had forwarded.
His fellow lieutenant kept an eye on Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, was the one Sebastian in San Diego called first if he had a problem. Cooper, by contrast, looked outward to the border with Arizona, Joshua Tree, and the arid Mojave falling under his mandate.
His and Jem's geographic closeness--relatively speaking--meant they could get together in person every so often, but they did most of their work via the comm. Both having an aptitude for and training in finance, they were in charge of the pack's investments, working with a small, dedicated team to ensure SnowDancer stayed healthy on that level. Normally, Cooper found the intricacies of the work invigorating, a complex jungle of a different kind, but today it felt like wading through quicksand. Still, he got it done, then began to plow steadily through the other paperwork that had built up on his desk.
All the while, the rain continued to fall beyond the window, and no matter what he did, he couldn't forget the charred black of his parents' bodies.
*
GRACE returned to work on sector 4B the next morning, after a systems and tech meeting where it was revealed the previous night's storm had done major damage to the solar panels. Specifically designed to blend into the environment so as not to give away the den's location, the panels provided the main source of its power.
"We're switching to hydro-station power till the replacement panels come in," the lead power tech had said, referring to the ecologically sound system that harnessed the kinetic energy of the water as it thundered down the mountains. "Shouldn't cause any issues, but keep an eye out for power surges anyway."
As she worked, Grace couldn't help but replay the previous night in her mind. Every now and then, she'd push back the sleeve of her coverall and sneak a look at the bracelet Cooper had given her. Which led her to recall the callused skin of his palm against her neck, the wild, dark taste of him in her mouth as his tongue licked at her own. The things the lieutenant could coax her to do...
Her nipples rubbed against the supple fabric of her bra.
Glancing guiltily around, she saw she remained alone. But the moment was enough to have her snapping her attention back to work.
When lunch came and went--a lunch she had with her crew--without word from Cooper, her mood began to plummet. Dominant males never backed off during a courtship. Perhaps Cooper had rethought things in light of her wolf's response by the blackberries, decided he didn't need the hassle of dealing with a timid submissive when he could have an enthusiastic dominant playmate anytime he wanted?
"Or maybe," she muttered, annoyed with herself, "he's a lieutenant in charge of a den and got caught up in work."
Putting down her tools, she closed the cover on the computronic junction she'd finished checking, then glanced at her watch. Three forty-five. Since she was well ahead of schedule after working like a fiend on the off-chance that Cooper would turn up for a visit, she decided it was time for a coffee break.
About to tag Vivienne, she hesitated. Neither side of her nature was comfortable pursuing a male, but this one had made his interest clear. Taking a deep breath, she stowed her tools in her office, then went looking for Cooper. He wasn't in his office, but Bethany saw her coming down the smooth stone stairs and said, "If you're trying to hunt down Coop, he's out with the crew handling a slip caused by last night's rain."
"I hadn't heard." It hadn't been mentioned in the daily den e-bulletin. "Was anyone hurt?"
Bethany shook her head. "But it's on an evacuation route, so it needs to be cleared, the land stabilized. At least the rain's stopped for now."
"I've been inside all day," Grace said, hoping Cooper's aunt would accept her words at face value. "I can take coffee out to the crew, stretch my legs."
"You're a doll." A beaming smile. "There's four of them--Cooper, Shamus, Vitoria, and one of the structural engineers. Todd, I think."
Not bothering to change out of her coveralls given the area was likely a muddy mess anyway, Grace popped into the large communal kitchen and prepared a big thermos of coffee, as well as a smaller one of tea, then added some plas cups. The cook had just baked several trays of blueberry muffins, so she appropriated a bunch of those as well, plus some fruit, putting it all in an insulated carrier.
It only took her ten minutes to walk to the site of the slip using the directions Bethany had provided. Cooper was standing with his back to her when she arrived, his T-shirt stuck to his skin, boots caked with mud. She saw they'd cleared a path, were working on a temporary retaining system until the storm-damaged trees could regain their hold on the soil, or new trees could be planted. As she watched, Cooper thrust his shovel down...and turned to look at her, eyes of near black intense with emotion so raw, it stabbed at her heart.
"Tell me you have tea!" Todd's voice shattered the piercing intensity of the silent connection.
"Pussy drink!" Shamus yelled in return. "Grace's smart enough to bring a manly drink like black coffee."
Vitoria, a colorful scarf holding her curls off her face, punched him on the arm. "Who're you calling manly?"
"Ouch." Shamus rubbed his arm as they ambled over to where Grace was setting out the food and drink on the flat surface provided by an old tree stump.
"Coffee," she said, tapping one thermos, then, "tea," tapping the other.
"I knew I could count on you." Todd kissed her on the cheek before going for the tea.
Only then, when the other three were occupied, did Cooper touch his fingers to her lower back in a fleeting but undeniably possessive caress. "You know Todd likes tea."
Yes, definitely possessive. "I've had meals with him and Vivienne lots of times." She poured Cooper a cup of coffee, added cream from the little bottle she'd slipped in. "I also know a certain lieutenant," she whispered, "doesn't particularly care for Shamus's manly black coffee."
His lips kicked up at the corners a
t the gentle tease as he accepted the cup, and it did something to her to know she'd made him smile. "Thank you, Grace."
Simple, everyday words, and yet they sounded akin to a caress. When Shamus asked him something, Grace chanced a look up, hungry to drink in the sight of him without worrying about matters of dominance. Except he looked back for a single electric second before returning his attention to the senior soldier.
In that instant, Grace felt her entire body come to life...even as she once again caught the shadows of pain in the midnight depths of his gaze. Unable to understand how no one else saw the hurt he carried within, she waited until the others had headed back to work, with Cooper remaining behind--ostensibly to talk to her about a maintenance issue--to say, "Cooper? Are you okay?"
An instant's stillness before he handed her an empty thermos to pack away. "Sure. Little stressed with this slip, I guess."
His refusal to admit to his hurt was no surprise. Grace was well aware that often, the only way a woman could get a dominant male to open up was to ram at his defenses. Only she wasn't the ramming kind, wasn't even sure she had that right, their relationship a nascent thing. "Will you walk me back a little ways?"
"Anytime." He slung the bag over his shoulder.
Grace stopped once they were around the corner and out of sight of the rest of the team. Then she did what came naturally to her in this situation and slipped her arms around the muscled heat of his body, the scent of clean, male sweat and Cooper in her lungs. "I'm sorry for whatever it is that's put that look in your eyes."
His arms came around her, his cheek rubbing against her temple as her wolf rubbed up against his in an effort to offer comfort. In that instant, she felt no fear at this strength, only the need to temper his pain.
"I'm fine," he murmured. "Especially now that I'm holding you."
Frustration clawed through her at his stonewalling, but Cooper wasn't a man who'd trust easily. That he'd accepted her need to care for him, accepted her affection when he had to be feeling vulnerable, it was a powerful step. So she just held him, stroking his back until she felt the final fragments of tension leave his body...and when he rubbed his nose playfully against her own, she shyly petted him with a slow dance of a kiss that made champagne bubble through her veins.
*
COOPER returned to the site of the slip feeling more himself than he had since waking from the nightmare. It wasn't the first time a submissive wolf had done or said something to heal an emotional wound in a dominant--in their own way, they were as fiercely protective as the soldiers. But it was the first time Grace had done the same for Cooper. More, it was the first time she'd initiated skin privileges, her kiss a luscious gift that gave him all sorts of ideas about winning another from her tonight at the dinner she'd promised to have with him.
"Everything okay in the den?" Shamus asked when Cooper got back, wiping his face on the sleeve of his T-shirt. "You were with Grace awhile."
"Nothing the systems and tech teams can't handle," he said, and gestured to a post they were planning to sink to anchor the temporary retaining mesh. It wasn't the best option, but with more rain on the horizon, they had to get something in place, at least for the next few days. "How're we going to get that in without causing vibrations that might further destabilize this area?"
"I have an idea. Spoke to Todd and he thinks it'll work."
As the two of them got down to work, Cooper thought again of Grace. So perceptive, his highly intelligent, intuitive engineer; seeing what no one else had, what he'd thought he'd successfully submerged. Part of him didn't want her to see, didn't want her to know, but another part of him howled in delight, seeing in her insight the promise of a bond that would make her his on the most elemental, most primal level.
Chapter 6
HAVING SPENT THE remainder of the afternoon in 4B, Grace headed home at close to six p.m. All she wanted was to wash off the grime from crawling around in access corridors and narrow ducts she knew full well had been cleaned a mere two weeks ago.
Too bad spiders only needed a day to build a sticky mansion, complete with multiple rooms and storage facilities. She shuddered at the reminder of the bugs she'd seen trapped in the webs. Yes, she was changeling, hunted when her wolf needed it. But there was something very creepy about keeping your food hanging around.
Her comm panel chimed an incoming call just as she was stepping out of the shower cubicle. Recognizing the caller's ID code, she wrapped a towel around herself and answered with a smile, picking up another towel to rub at her hair as the visual feed went live. "Hi, Mom." It was a choice she'd made as a child, to call Milena and James Mom and Dad. It gave them the beloved place they deserved in her life while differentiating them from her lost mama and papa.
"Hi, munchkin." Milena beamed, the natural deep honey of her skin caressed by a glow that said she'd spent several hours outside under bright sunshine. "How was your day?"
"Great." Unable to resist, Grace bragged a little about how her crew was ahead of schedule, then asked her mother about the rest of the family.
"I know you talk to Pia and Revel, too," Milena said after catching her up on a few things, "but I don't know how long I'll be able to keep the two of them, not to mention your father, from paying a visit to check up on you."
"They turn up, I'll kick them back out." She cherished her family, but they continued to see her as the half-mute seven-year-old they'd taken in after her parents were killed in the catastrophic events that had overtaken the main Sierra Nevada den roughly two decades ago.
So many children had become orphans, but none had been left without support, without family. Milena and James, and their teenage children, Pia and Revel, had become hers. Old enough not to mind the tiny intruder in their home, the teenagers had thrown their protection over Grace. Hardly surprising, since both Pia and Rev were strong dominants who now held senior soldier status.
As a shocked child, she'd needed the comfort of their protective natures, needed the cage provided by falling asleep curled between her siblings, all of them in wolf form. It had made her feel safe when her world had splintered into so many pieces, she didn't know what to do, how to survive each painful hour.
But she hadn't been seven for a long time.
"I'll pass on the message," Milena said with a sigh, "but you know how stubborn they are." Then she laughed, hazel eyes shimmering. "Look who I'm talking to--you always were a stubborn thing. I remember trying to get you to release your blankie so I could wash it. You didn't scream, didn't cry, didn't claw out at me or growl, but would you let go? No. I had to resort to sneaking it away one night weeks later when you finally fell asleep without it clutched in your little fist."
The story was a favorite one of her mother's and still made Grace laugh. Now, she reached out and picked up the furry orange teddy bear Milena had made from the scraps of her blankie after it had finally fallen apart. He'd survived her childhood and these days sat cheerfully on her bookshelf, next to photos of her family. "I wash him, I swear."
"Cheeky girl." Blowing her a kiss, Milena said, "I better go. I promised your father I'd make his favorite quesadillas. I love you, baby."
"I love you, too, Mom."
As she ended the call, Grace thanked God that neither Pia nor Rev had been posted to this den--they'd have been appalled at the idea of their sister dating a lieutenant. Grace would have told the two of them to butt out, of course, but she much preferred to play with Cooper with no one looking over her shoulder.
"Tell me what bad-girl things you got up to as a juvenile."
Even as heat bloomed in her abdomen at the memory of that lazy, caressing voice asking her wicked, wicked things at dinner the previous night--while he fed her spoonfuls of decadent chocolate mousse--a message came in on her cell phone.
Storm-damaged tree found along main den route. Needs to be brought down. Rain check for dinner? Coop.
Disappointed, she went to say yes, paused. Has your team eaten?
No. Bethany's bringing
it over in a half hour.
I'll do it.
xx
It made a goofy smile break out over her face that Cooper had signed off with kisses. Dressing quickly, she found Bethany in the kitchen, putting together the meal. When she offered to take it, the older woman raised an eyebrow. "Todd?"
Grace squirmed. "Er, no."
"Hmm. Who else is out there?" She continued to make the sandwiches. "Bill replaced Shamus and they're both mated, in any case. Which leaves my Cooper."
Having finished her own set of sandwiches, Grace wrapped them up so they'd stay soft. "I'll get some of the brownies."
"Grace."
She froze, bit her lip. "It's new. We're not ready for the pack to know."
Bethany didn't stop her again when she moved to grab the brownies. Since the site was at least a half hour away on foot, Grace headed to the garage, Bethany walking down with her. They saw Vitoria on the way, the other woman having had to return to the den in order to teach a novice class. "You have more hot drinks for everyone?" the senior soldier asked from the other side of the corridor. "It's chilly out tonight."
Grace's nod received a thumbs-up before Vitoria turned to continue on her way.
"He always was a law unto himself," Bethany mused as Grace got into the driver's seat of a sturdy four-wheel drive, "so all I'm going to say is--submissive or not, you make sure you don't just sit and take his care. You give back."
Grace's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "If you think only dominants know how to love, you don't know your packmates very well."
Bethany's response was startling. Laughing, she leaned in to kiss Grace on the cheek with open affection. "Just checking you've got spine--you'll need it with Coop. That boy likes to get his own way. Good luck."
*
AFTER helping to demolish the food Grace had brought, Cooper nixed her offer to stay and help with the tree, receiving unexpected support for his decision from Todd.
"Can't risk those hands," the engineer said. "You're a surgeon with the systems."
"Anyway," Bill added, shoving a hand through his blond mop, "this shouldn't take long. Now that we have it down, all we have to do is cut this baby up enough that we can clear the road. Rest of the cleanup can be done tomorrow by a novice team."