For the second time that day, they were interrupted. Danielo ducked into the tent. “Sorry to barge in.” He looked anything but. “Drones are in, Z. Movement to the south. I think it’s human, but we should check it out.”
In an instant, Zio became the soldier Devan had been ordered to protect. He rolled off Devan and scrambled to his feet. “I’m coming.”
“You might want to zip your jeans up first, mate. We don’t all want to see your dick.”
“Liar.”
Danielo smirked.
Devan leapt to his feet. A growl rumbled out of his chest, deep and possessive. Zio gripped his elbow and motioned to Danielo to leave. “Easy. I’ll do it up, see? And I’ll even take your quack pills. Just don’t kill my brothers, okay? I need them.”
Devan needed them too, but with Danielo’s scent still lingering in the tent, it was hard to think clearly. He pulled Zio close, rougher than he’d meant to. “Wherever you’re going, hurry back.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The push and pull of a triggered bond was officially insane. And a complete ball ache. Zio couldn’t see how anyone in his position ever got anything done, how the whole world didn’t grind to a halt because shifters couldn’t get their shit together.
Not that together was on Zio’s radar. At least, it wasn’t when responsibility put a safe distance between him and Devan. When the possessive, demanding current hummed weakly enough to gift them perspective.
Zio scanned the camp. His gaze automatically sought Devan out, but the skip in his pulse when he found him was bearable. Or maybe it was masked by Zio’s concern for the soldier Devan was currently bent over, a scout from a returning patrol. Zio caught Danielo’s attention and jerked his head in Devan’s direction. “Find out what happened. Nothing came through on comms.”
Danielo hurdled the hedge separating the communications base from the rest of the camp. The most agile of all Zio’s team, he moved with a grace that was almost feline, though he had nothing on Devan—
Focus.
Zio forced himself to turn away from Danielo and Devan and study the intelligence spread out in front of him. Patrols over the last few days had confirmed the activity close to the border had been the human army setting up a base of their own, a clear attempt to discourage shifter violence, though all they’d truly achieved was to drive the enemy to a place where Zio couldn’t see them.
He drew circles on the big maps with a pencil. “If the southern packs believe Shadow Clan have joined us, they’ll want to attack as soon as possible. Catch us before clan forces arrive to boost our numbers.”
“Shadow Clan have ways of moving their people without the rest of us knowing,” Michael said. “The enemy might think they’re already here. That’s why they’ve pulled back, because they’re scared.”
Zio could think of a dozen enemies he’d rather face than the powerful clan Devan came from, but Michael’s theory didn’t sit right. For Shadow Clan’s reinforcements to make a difference, they’d have to be substantial, and the enemy would see that. Without Gale on the front to shield Zio’s soldiers, enemy drones saw as much as their own. “They’re not scared. They’re testing us. Waiting to see if we chase them down or stay put, shore up, and prepare to fight here.”
“You think they’ll attack the camp? Even with the humans there?”
“No. They’ll either attempt to draw us out or they’ll wait for the humans to move on, which they will if nothing happens soon. You know they’re only here for the media coverage. They don’t give a shit if we destroy each other.”
Michael grunted, though Zio couldn’t tell if he agreed or not, and his attention soon wandered again, drifting back to where Devan was still working on the wounded shifter. Gentle hands. Soft smile. Everything Zio’s wolf wanted to claim as his own.
Danielo returned. “Idiot got hit by a truck. It flipped him into a tree and a branch went through his thigh. Missed the artery, but it’s gonna take a while for Devan to put it right.”
Zio scowled. “How does that even happen? We can sense approaching vehicles from miles away.”
“Fucked if I know.”
“Why don’t you know? I sent you over there to find out.”
“Dude’s lost a bazillion pints of blood and crawled back here. Give him an hour, eh?”
Danielo wasn’t known for being the voice of reason, but he possessed more patience than Zio right now. With a sigh, Zio waved him away. “Whatever. Find out later. I don’t want defective scouts on my watch.”
“Yes, boss. I’m off to get the dinner on. Can’t have Michael and Devan showing us up.”
Danielo ambled away. Zio brooded over maps and surveillance footage until nightfall, then returned to the tent, heart sinking when he found it empty, though he’d known from fifty feet away that Devan wasn’t there.
Woodsmoke reached Zio’s senses. Danielo’s laughter as he called to anyone close enough to pay him attention.
Zio rolled his eyes, and his stomach growled. Somehow over the last few days, he’d grown used to the regular hot meals cooked up on the campfire, and his appetite had become befitting of a shifter. He was hungry all the time. He cast a glance at Devan’s stuff, neatly piled in the corner, half-hidden by the chaos that was Zio’s belongings. He brought the kitchen sink in that tiny bag. I wonder if he’s got any food.
Searching through Devan’s things was all wrong, but Zio’s nose led him to a supermarket bag tucked under a coat. Inside he found nirvana—ginger biscuits, salt-and-vinegar crisps, and a packet of Rolos. How did he know?
Zio pondered on it as he ate his way through Devan’s supplies but was no further to the answer when Devan returned a little while later, the scent of another wolf’s blood clinging to him. A growl threatened in Zio’s chest. He swallowed it down with the last of the biscuits and offered Devan the empty wrapper. “I’m not even sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be. I got them for you.”
“How?”
“I went to a shop. We’re not stationed on the moon.”
“I meant how did you know everything I like?”
Devan’s gaze flickered, wary. “Emma wrote it on the front of your file. She said it was the best way to cheer you up if you were terminally pissed off.”
“I’m not terminally pissed off.”
“Why do you think I hadn’t given them to you yet?”
“Valid.” Zio dusted his hands together. “I don’t know why she kept notes like that. It’s not like ginger nuts could ever help a healer reattach a limb or some shit.”
“Not all injuries are physical. Sometimes kindness is enough.”
“You sound super old when you say stuff like that.”
“I prefer wise.”
Devan smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He looked . . . tired, and Zio realised he’d neglected to ask after the injured scout. He opened his mouth to rectify his mistake, but Danielo called for dinnertime before he could speak, and the moment passed.
“Come on.” He stood and held out his hand. “Let’s go eat.”
“You just ate.”
“So? Those pills you gave me are turning me into a gannet. I’m still hungry.”
“How do you feel otherwise?”
“About what? You?”
“No, Zio. I know how you feel about me . . . you couldn’t hide it if you tried. I meant how are you feeling physically. Those pills are pretty powerful if the shifter body takes to them.”
“What happens if the body doesn’t?”
“Nothing.”
It was on the tip of Zio’s tongue to stake a claim on nothing, but as the words formed on his lips, he realised they weren’t true. He’d spent his entire life in a bad mood, even before Emma’s death. War had been his constant companion. Violence. Death. Grief and misery. But though the triggers were more prominent than ever and his emotions had been disrupted by Devan as he lost himself to introspection, a cloud had lifted. Worries still gnawed at him, but for the first time that he co
uld remember, there was a distance between him and them. Perspective. How is that possible when we’re in the middle of a fucking war?
Zio had no clue, but he couldn’t deny it—whatever was in those plant pills, he felt fantastic. “I think they’re working.”
Devan smiled for real then. “Good. Now let’s go eat before we find new ways to get in trouble.”
“Nothing to report?”
Michael shook his head. “We swept everywhere. Sent the drones up to check where we couldn’t reach. No activity. Not even recon units. It’s like they’ve disappeared.”
Zio narrowed his eyes as Michael’s choice of words sank in. Enemy forces didn’t disappear unless they chose to, and why would they do that? Getting over the border was the southern pack’s main objective—it had to be if they wanted to claim northern England as their own. Why would they retreat?
The hospital flickered into Zio’s mind. He sent Michael to get some rest and searched out the satellite phone. It took a while to get hold of Gale. Waiting unsettled Zio’s wolf, so he allowed his thoughts to drift to Devan. It was a strange state of flux to be fighting a war that seemed to have got lost in the post and to be fixated on a shifter that was unlike any Zio had ever known. The routine of patrols that went nowhere, camp meals that put him in a food coma, and games of verbal chicken with Devan were driving Zio slowly mad, but at the same time, in a world he’d ceased to understand weeks ago, he was . . . happy.
Devan, on the other hand, was not. He barely ate, and Zio rarely saw him sleep. It’s like we’ve swapped personalities. Well, not exactly. Devan was still a better person than Zio, a fact Danielo reminded him of daily.
But still. He’s not happy. And Zio couldn’t live with that.
“Um . . . hello? Anyone there?”
Zio jumped, even Gale’s soft voice enough to startle him. “Fuck. Sorry. I was distracted.”
“Clearly. Everything okay? I heard about you and Devan.”
“Of course you did,” Zio grumbled. “Haven’t people got anything better to talk about?”
Gale chuckled. “Not around here. Monitoring a human hospital is pretty boring, you know.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The briefing I got yesterday said nothing unusual had been picked up, but I wanted to hear your take on it.”
“The briefing was my take on it. I wrote it and sent it to you.”
“Uh-huh.” Zio let a speculative silence hang out. Gale was a black and white thinker, but when pushed, he had stronger instincts than even he knew.
Five, four, three, two, one . . .
“There was something, though,” Gale said.
Bingo. Zio sat up straighter. “Go on?”
“Nah, it’s probably nothing.”
“So? If that’s the case, we can eliminate it and move on.”
“I guess.”
“So?” Patience wasn’t Zio’s strong point.
Gale sighed. “We’ve been monitoring backroom staff—housekeeping, maintenance, the orderlies, all areas it’s easy to sneak people in without proper records, but we’ve seen nothing in those departments. It’s the medical staff. A year ago, the hospital couldn’t keep employees longer than a few months, but recently, that’s stopped.”
“Did the working conditions change?”
“No. If anything, they’ve got worse. This is a failing hospital—cancelled surgeries, massive waitlists, huge queues in the emergency department. There’s a lot of anger in the air, and front-line staff take the brunt of it.”
“Shifters couldn’t infiltrate a hospital like that. Even the humans would notice.”
“I know. And we sweep the building day and night. No shifter has even come close.”
“And no new humans either?”
“Not for a while.”
Zio scrubbed a hand through his hair. It needed a cut, but only Emma had ever taken scissors to his hair. For now, he was content to go wild. “You’re right. It might be nothing, but something about it feels off. Do you have any way of accessing the staff database?”
“Of course, but it will take time to do that undetected by anyone who’s got there first.”
“How much time?”
“A couple of days at least. We’d have to do it in stages.”
“Then do it,” Zio said. “And get to work checking out anyone who strikes you as suspicious—actually, check out everyone. We can’t afford to miss anything.”
Gale sighed again. “Okay. I suppose that means I’m not going home again. Vicky is going to kill me.”
“No change there. How does that work anyway?”
“How does what work? Her wanting my balls for a hat because I haven’t had dinner with her for a month?”
“No . . . your attachment to her. You’re married, but you’re not bonded.”
Silence. Then Gale cleared his throat. “I’m not going to speculate as to why you suddenly give a shit about my private life, so I’ll just say this: Me and Vic love each other, fancy the crap out of each other, and neither of us can imagine ever being with anyone else. It’s been fifteen years. Yeah, we’re not bonded in a shifter sense, but wolves aren’t all we are . . . we’re human too.”
“But you are shifters. What if you trigger a bond with someone else?”
“Then I’d ignore it. Let it fade. It’s not as though I haven’t got a million other things to distract me.”
An ache flared deep in Zio’s chest. “I’m not sure it works like that.”
“Maybe not for you, but you’ve never loved anyone the way I love Vic. The bond you’ve triggered with Devan is the first true affection you’ve ever had outside of the tiny circle of people you tolerate. And you’re out in the field, fighting, hurting, healing. Living in each other’s pockets. Everything’s heightened, on top of the fact that you’ve been forbidden to complete it. If I know you at all, and I think I do, that’s bound to make it more desirable.”
Not it. It’s not a thing. It’s Devan.
Gale laughed. “Don’t growl at me, Zio. You asked me a question; I answered it.”
Zio pressed his hand over his mouth, as if he could shove his aggression down. Bury it. As if. He let his hand drop. “Do you think it would be different if we were away from the war . . . away from the pack, from everything? Do you think it would hurt less?”
“I don’t know. Nothing about loving someone is easy, but you don’t know Devan well enough to love him. What’s between you is pack affection and a biological reaction determined by your shifter genes. I guess you have to figure out what that means to you.”
Gale said other words, but Zio heard nothing more as he tried to rationalise his primal desires for Devan against the ever-increasing swell of his heart. His wolf wanted to bite Devan, to fuck him, claim him, and solidify all that swirled between them, but Zio wasn’t just wolf, he was human.
And the man in Zio wanted so much more.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Come out with me.”
Devan squinted in the dark at Zio. “What?”
“Come out.” Zio reached into the medical tent and grabbed Devan’s hand. “You’ve healed everyone. No one needs you.”
“No one?”
“Well, okay, I do, but that’s not the same thing.”
“Yeah. It’s biology. I remember.” Devan couldn’t keep the sour note out of his voice, though he knew on some level, Zio’s simplistic take on their situation made the most sense, and that he’d said it himself at some point . . . more than once. “What are you even doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be out on patrol?”
“Been and gone,” Zio said. “Next one’s already headed out, which means . . . I’m free, and so are you, so let’s go.”
Devan had no idea what Zio was asking of him but let Zio tug him out of the tent and through the camp. It was early, predawn, and apart from the stag guards and the returned patrol, no one was up, save Michael who had already stoked the fire.
He watched Devan and Zio drift past him w
ith a gaze that was, as ever, impossible to read, but Devan didn’t try that hard. Couldn’t when Zio’s palm was so hot in his.
They neared the back of the camp. Devan frowned. “Where are we going?”
“I told you . . . out.”
“Out where?”
“You’ll see.”
Devan was officially mystified, but given the direction his life had taken since he’d come to England, it wasn’t an unusual state of affairs.
They slipped out of the camp. Zio retrieved a bag from a bush and slung it over his back. “Supplies,” he responded to Devan’s questioning stare. “I can’t stop eating.”
Devin grinned faintly. “That’s good.”
“Is it? I feel like it’s the only thing keeping my mind off everything else.”
“Everything else” could’ve meant anything from the war to their triggered bond and all that came between. Devan wasn’t sure he had the stomach to investigate.
So he didn’t. He clutched Zio’s hand like a drowning man and let him lead him away from the camp and deep into the countryside.
They hiked miles on their human legs, up hills and across fields, wading across icy streams and tramping through mud. The weather was cold, but with their shifter blood, not unpleasantly so, and the scenery was glorious. Devan took advantage of mother nature and restocked his supplies, all the while trying not to lose his mind every time Zio trooped back to his side with a handful of leaves and a soft kiss.
“If you’re trying to stop me getting attached to you, tactile foraging isn’t the way,” he remarked dryly when they’d stopped to eat.
Zio inhaled a hunk of stale bread that was wrapped around leftover sausages. “I’m not trying to do anything. I just figured getting away from the camp would do you good.”
“Since when have you cared about doing me good?”
A muscle in Zio’s cheek twitched and a faint flush stained his skin. He swallowed thickly and cleared his throat. “Do you think I’m some kind of monster?”
“Do you?”
Zio’s gaze narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
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