Nic winked at him and motioned to the pillows on the floor. Mandalay sat down, and Nic sat opposite him facing the door.
“I wanted tonight to be special, but I hope I didn’t overdo it,” Nic said.
He snorted. “I just hope this is the way you mean to keep doing things. I hate to find out six months from now, you’re one of those guys who pulls out all the stops just to win a guy and then stops trying once you’ve got him.”
“I know what’s important,” Nic told him. “My father taught me well.”
“We’ll see,” Mandalay commented. “They’re okay with you being gay?”
“Yeah.” He frowned. “When I came out to my dad, I thought he’d be furious and embarrassed. Wolves aren’t gay, but he just went back to eating breakfast, and my mother laughed and asked me if I thought they didn’t already know.”
“No guilt trips? What about your brother?”
“He doesn’t care, either. He just said if I started prancing around trying to get out of my chores he was going to beat me up.”
Mandalay laughed. “My sister is on the fence, I guess.”
“Serena’s proud of you,” Nic told him. “She’s always bragging about you. She doesn’t care that you’re gay. She just doesn’t want you to know.”
“How can you tell?” he asked, digging into the meal.
“I listen.”
“You asked her about the cake, didn’t you?”
“My secret.” Nic grinned.
“You did,” Mandalay exclaimed. “She never let on.”
Nic laughed. “She’s protective of you, too.”
“I know,” he said on a sigh. “She’s always been like that. I think she was afraid someone would hurt me, and I wouldn’t be able to protect myself. I can, though. The snow wolf thing and all.”
“I’ll have to work your abilities into your training,” Nic told him.
“You’re seriously going to train me?”
“I have to,” he said. “It’s Jody’s orders. He’s worried about things not being over.”
“Are they?”
“No. Don’t tell anyone I told you, but things could get worse. Blacktooth could be looking to start a fight with us now. They’re running drugs with a cartel called Wildhead, and they’ve already started in on the panthers.”
“Oh.”
“Jody wants to make sure we’re ready if we need to be,” Nic told him.
Mandalay nodded. “It’s hard to believe.”
“I just hate I might not be able to take my time to show you how serious I am.”
“This is a good start,” Mandalay assured him.
Boom!
The ground literally shook beneath them, and Mandalay let out a startled cry. At the same time, Nic’s phone rang. He righted himself and jerked it from its holster on his belt loop.
“What’s going on?” he demanded as he glanced across the table at Mandalay.
Mandalay saw concern in his eyes and wondered if that was for him or the cause of the explosion.
“I’m on my way,” Nic said. “No. I’ll handle it.” He ended the call. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
“Attack at the south perimeter.” He dialed a number. “Ross, get over here. I need you to stay with Mandy while I get to the southern perimeter. Now, man. Now.”
“I can get home on my own,” Mandalay assured him as Nic got to his feet.
“No, baby, stay here for me, okay?” he asked as he helped Mandalay up. “Ross will be here to stay with you until I get back.”
“I—”
“Mandy, please, don’t make this a fight,” he said. “I can’t do that right now.”
“Fine. Go.”
He hurried out, and Mandalay heard his tires squeal out of the drive seconds later. He sighed. His birthday had almost been perfect.
* * * *
Nic reached the perimeter on foot, having ditched his truck at the road. The gate had been breached, and the fighting was still going on. He raced to the line to jerk a jackal from a female soldier’s back and fling him to the ground. The animal snarled, but Nic didn’t have time to take care of him.
A tiger’s growl had him jerking around. The animal lunched at him, knocking him off his feet and biting his arm. Nic grabbed him by the ears and tugged his head back, teeth bared. The tiger snarled as it tried to pull free.
Nic rolled them, and in the turn, he released the animal, allowing one hand to go clawed. Then, he sank them into the tiger’s side. The tiger tried to bite him, but Nic held on to his ear and drove his claws into the cat’s throat.
He shoved the dying animal off him and got back into the fight. Gunfire erupted in the night, and he knew several of his men’s lives would be lost.
Chapter Seven
“Hey.” Ross came into the living room, his expression grim.
It wasn’t exactly the look on his face that told Mandalay something was wrong. He could feel it. The explosion, the dull sounds of shots in the distance, were all indicators of trouble especially since their community was normally quite quiet.
“They need you in the clinic,” he said.
“Nic?” His stomach knotted and fear tightened his chest, making him nauseated.
“I don’t know,” Ross answered, his expression tight. “I was just told by the doc to bring you.”
He nodded tightly and pulled on his shoes. “I’m ready, but we need to swing by my place to get my bag.”
“Why? They have everything you need there. It’ll only waste time,” Ross insisted.
“Not these tools,” Mandalay told him. He’d spent years honing his studies and some of his tools were ones the other two healers didn’t use or consider valid, like his crystals
Mandalay didn’t know what he’d have to do, but he was trained in crystal healing as well as energy and medicinal healing. His abilities were as natural as the other two healers’, but he’d gone to nursing school to augment his skills.
After a quick stop to pick up his tools, they were on the way to the clinic. The drive was a tense one, and when they arrived, Mandalay went straight to the nurse’s station. Georgie, a nurse, sat behind it wearing a grim expression.
“Go ahead and scrub up and go to five,” she told him. “I don’t think the soldier is too bad.”
“How many?”
“Ten were severely wounded, but fifteen others have non-life-threatening injuries. Jody’s already here, and he said not to waste too much energy if you didn’t need to in case you needed to feed some of yours to Nika.”
He nodded. He could lend energy or channel it to another healer, as well as using his to heal. The other two healers lacked the ability.
Mandalay hurried to the scrub room, where he washed up and pulled on a scrub top before grabbing one of the kits from the shelf. It would be stocked with things he’d need to suture wounds he couldn’t heal or didn’t think he needed to waste energy on healing.
Mandalay found his first two cases quick and easy, not requiring much use of his abilities. The third one was different. She’d been shot in the shoulder and was slowly dying. He could see it in her eyes.
Someone had given her something for the pain, but the bullet was still inside her.
“Milly.” He touched her forehead, and she looked at him with drowsy eyes. She was already hooked up to a machine to monitor her vitals.
“Jody,” she said softly.
“Hang on,” he said as he pulled on a pair of gloves. She had a fever and her heart rate was low. “I’m going to fix you right up.” She’d probably lost too much blood and was going into shock.
“He saved my life,” she whispered. “Nic.”
“Did he?” He cut away her blouse, not wanting to think about Nic right now. Mandalay prayed he was okay as he reached into his kit for a bottle.
The essence would put her out and the rest of the work would be up to him. He’d use energy to dissolve the bullet inside her into tiny harmless pieces. Then, he’d he
al the damage. That should only take forty-five minutes or less, depending on the damage.
He could heal burns and stab wounds faster considering the practice he’d had on his packmates.
“They shot him, but he wouldn’t stay down,” she said and winced when he placed a cool crystal against her skin. The blue stone had a numbing and anesthetic effect.
“He’s strong,” Mandalay said, trying to soothe himself with the words more than her.
“He is,” she said. “He’s a hunter. The pack’s only one. Xavier brought him back into the pack because he didn’t have one.”
“Is that so?” he asked and waited for her to close her eyes.
Hunters were the pack’s assassins. Security did a fine job of protecting them, but hunters hunted down the rogues, the depraved killers of their species, and ended them. They were special, all had some kind of hidden talent that wasn’t easily noticeable, he’d heard, but Mandalay didn’t know for sure, because he’d never met a hunter.
He closed his mind to Nic, though he wished he could touch his thoughts and find out if he was okay. Wolves were telepathic. They could communicate with those of the pack they chose, especially in human form.
They all learned to block out the chatter of other minds when they were in animal form as kids, because they would go insane if they didn’t. Opening that door now only got them into the minds of those they knew well, and only if that person allowed it.
He finished his work and cleaned up before moving on to another of the wounded. He was sporting several deep gashes from claws and a shattered leg bone.
Swallowing tightly, Mandalay got to work on the unconscious man.
He didn’t know what time it was when he finally started to feel the fatigue, but he went to remove his scrub top before heading to the doctor’s lounge. It was empty, and he collapsed on a chair and closed his eyes, drained and hungry.
Slightly rough fingertips stroked his forehead bringing him awake.
“Are you okay?” Nic was kneeling before him, his whiskey eyes filled with concern.
“Nic,” he breathed out. “Are you? I heard you were shot.”
“I was just grazed,” he said.
Mandalay straightened in the chair he’d fallen asleep in to cup Nic’s jaw. “You look tired.”
“I’ve been busy with the clean-up,” he said. “I’m going to head home and rest for a few hours. Come on, Jody told me to take you with me.”
“I should stay.”
“They’ll call you if they need you, but you’ll be no good if you’re too tapped.”
“I know, I just feel like I should be here.”
“Okay, we’ll stay,” Nic said. “Come on, let’s grab one of those couches. I’ll get you a blanket.”
Mandalay watched as Nic grabbed a blanket and a pillow from a cabinet. He took it to the couch and sat down on it. Mandalay joined him, and Nic pulled him down next to him.
“This isn’t going to be comfortable for you,” Mandalay said. “Go home.”
“I’ll be fine. I won’t sleep long anyway before I have to be back out on shift.”
“What happened?” Mandalay asked after sitting down and removing his shoes.
“We were attacked, and by all indications it wasn’t Blacktooth, but it’s still too early to tell.”
“Who could it have been?”
“Their buddies, Wildhead,” he answered tiredly. “I’ll start my investigation tomorrow. Now, close your eyes, and don’t think we’ll be postponing that training session.”
“I’m not a fighter.”
“After tonight, I was thinking I’m going to suggest to Jody that he change his mind about you being considered as a reserve soldier. We need you as a healer at a safehouse.”
“I don’t have to be at a safehouse, Nic, but I can’t fight. I swear I can’t. I’ll learn some more of the basics, but I can’t do it.”
“Okay, pretty baby,” he said in a soothing tone. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Mandalay looked up at him. “Can you? It would hurt me too much to kill someone.”
“You’re an empath?” Nic asked, surprised. “I didn’t know. I’ll call my uncle and have him work with you. Your abilities can be far more valuable in other ways.”
He did have empathic skills, but that wasn’t the reason he couldn’t kill.
Mandalay just didn’t have the stomach for the violence and he knew it. He saved lives, not took them.
“Like what?”
“Like getting into people’s minds and making them see or think what you want them to,” Nic told him. “That is as defensive a skill as shooting someone if done right, and when my uncle is done, you’ll be able to do it right. And with confidence.”
“I’m sure—never mind,” he said and rested his head on Nic’s shoulder. “We’ll talk about it later.”
* * * *
Palmer paced the small study of the home that was his base of operations for now as he waited for news of the first strike. He hadn’t wanted to move so soon. At the same time, he’d thought it better to keep the wolves on edge.
This afternoon’s meeting hadn’t gone the way he’d planned, and his mole had reported that Jody planned to send out scouts and alert Nightshade. Palmer didn’t want the damned panthers on guard. If their new alpha became hypervigilant, it might be hard for him to finish this.
“Palmer, Marvin and Valente want to talk to you.”
He frowned. Obviously, they wanted to talk about the meeting, but knowing Valente, someone had found out about the attack he’d launched. That might mean him getting another helper besides that jerk Malfoy. The last thing he needed was another kid looking over his shoulder second guessing everything he did and challenging his every order.
“Thanks, Malfoy,” he said and headed for his desk where his tablet lay. “Tell them to call me on the tablet.”
“The call should be coming in now,” Malfoy answered.
As he reached the desk, the screen blinked, announcing the incoming call. He hit a button and two faces came on screen.
“How did your meeting go?” Valente demanded.
“As well as I expected. The wolf doesn’t want us here and issued a veiled threat of attack.”
“Don’t make any moves, yet,” Valente said. “Get things set up and then get ready. I’m sending down my stepson, Manuel. I want him to be your second. He’ll take over when you’ve secured the wolf den, and you can move on to Nightshade.”
“Fine, but I’m in charge, not the snot-nose kid.”
“He has experience running ops, Palmer, so don’t be a jerk about this,” his brother said calmly. “He knows what he’s doing. That’s going to be his new territory when all is said and done, so treat him as your equal.”
“Like hell,” he muttered. “Let him come down after I’ve finished.”
“We want him in on the ground floor.” Marvin spoke up for the first time. “It’ll be better that way. No surprises for him. Not only that, there will be a fresh pair of eyes on this for you.”
Damn them!
“I don’t need fresh eyes.”
“You haven’t been able to run a successful op in a while,” Valente said. “This is your last chance. I don’t want you to take second chair to a younger man, but that’s what is going to happen if you fuck up again.”
“Peyton City was Josh’s fault. He got over-confident.”
“Be that as it may,” Marvin said. “We want that pack and that pride. Those tunnels will be invaluable for defense and for eventually overtaking Peyton City.”
“If you’re going to let Manuel take over, then let him run this,” he said angrily. “I don’t want any part of it. Send me back to New York.”
“You’re tucking tail like a pansy-assed—”
“I’m throwing in the towel while I still have some pride left is what I’m doing,” Palmer said. “Josh hardly took orders from me, and you were giving him the territory you promised me. I’ll go into Nightshade aft
er I run the successful attack there and take it over, and you’ll be sending your damned son down here to run it. No. I want out.”
“Fine. Stay in place until Manuel and Chico get there. Then, you can head to New York. I’ll have them arrange a new meet with the wolf. He won’t put them together with us.”
“It might even work out better,” Marvin said. “They’ll just assume they managed to get rid of us. Alert your moles of the change.”
“As soon as possible,” Palmer muttered. He was tired of being slighted. At least in New York, he’d had a little power and his authority wasn’t usurped.
“See me before you head for the East Coast, Palmer,” Valente told him. “We have a few things to discuss.”
“No problem,” he said and ended the call with the punch of a button. He wasn’t going to stand around here and lose all over again.
“The team leader is back,” Malfoy said. “Shall I have him come in?”
Palmer shrugged. “Sure.” The outcome didn’t matter now.
A female of medium height strode in several moments later in blood-stained and dirty clothes. She looked as if she’d been hit a few times if the dark bruise on her jaw was anything to go by. She was walking with a limp, as well.
“Report?”
“We lost most of the team,” she said. “We had to retreat sooner than expected.”
“Clean up and wait for the new man to come in,” he told her. “He should be here by morning.” He knew his brother. His power-hungry stepson was more than likely already on the way.
There would be no victory here if the little putz didn’t know how to tone down his need to prove he was better than every older man running the show.
“Leave me alone, Malfoy,” he said. “I’m sure you’re already aware of Manuel’s arrival. Go do whatever he asked you to do.”
Malfoy gave him a curious look but left all the same. As soon as the door was closed, he dialed Beaker.
“Yes?”
“There’s been a change in plans,” he said. “I’m out. Manuel and Chico are coming down to run things. Do you know them?”
“I know Manuel quite well.”
Wolf’s Fall Page 5
