Red's Wolf

by Piper J. Drake

  "Nothing, Grandma Jenna, a little hungry." Carri hadn't lied. After all, she was always hungry.

  "Well, let's get you fed." Jenna smiled, placing a hand on her mate’s arm as he growled low under his breath. Carri didn't miss the way Grandpa Ben slanted a critical look at Jason.

  "We came straight from the station, Ben." Carri aimed a pointed glare at him, reaching across the picnic table to tap the alpha male on the chest. No reason for him to get on Jason’s case because her stomach grumbled. "Jason made sure I came here directly to get something to eat as soon as possible. What was he supposed to do, run down a rabbit for me to snack on along the way?”

  Ben’s expression twisted in a weird mixture of dismay, and Jenna laughed at his discomfiture. Carri would have given up her favorite dessert to know what he thought. And hell, what Jason had thought earlier with almost the same question.

  A plate appeared at her elbow, loaded with a choice piece of steak and a few helpings of grilled vegetables. She looked down at it, momentarily distracted by the mouthwatering smell, and then glanced up to see Jason scowling at her as he set it down on the table in front of her. "Eat before you get me into trouble."

  Swinging one leg over a bench to sit at the table, she took the knife and fork he handed her and cut into her steak, finding it rare and juicy. Considering his tone of voice and wondering what made him so grumpy, she took a small piece and chewed the tender tidbit slowly, letting the savory juices flow over her tongue. She closed her eyes a bit to enjoy the taste, all thoughts blown away by the sheer bliss of good food.

  "Thank you, Jason." She went for a bite of the grilled vegetables, finally remembering to thank him for his consideration.

  "Don't mention it." Jason practically growled. "If you want more, I'm sure there's plenty of helping hands ready to get you seconds."

  Mid-chew, she glanced up at him and had to suppress the surprising skip of her heart as she realized he was possibly, maybe a little, jealous. She expected him to be reticent, grouchy about being dragged to a social event, but jealous? Even more interesting, she hadn't anticipated how happy the realization made her feel. Suddenly, the earlier moment in the woods popped up in her mind, and she wondered whether she would have followed where the moment had taken them.

  Jenna asked her a question then, and others in the pack stopped by to be introduced. They drew Carri into conversation and gave her a warm welcome from every member of the pack. Everyone seemed to be in constant motion, without any sense of hurry, simply enjoying the afternoon. She recognized a few faces, the males who had run errands for Jenna, staying close by, making sure Carri always had a drink and something savory in hand.

  It wasn't until later, when some of the cubs began a friendly competition, she found herself with a little space, free of the constant attention. Sipping a steaming mug of apple cider, she watched the shenanigans of the cubs in their little races with Jenna and Ben cheerfully presiding. Since it would take up some time, she considered slipping over to the table covered in desserts. A couple of the males had offered her some earlier, but she hadn't accepted until she had a good meal of protein and vegetables first. They'd mistakenly come to the conclusion she didn't like sweet things. In fact, Carri loved desserts, but couldn't risk eating them until she had a real meal.

  "For a little person, you eat a lot.”

  She looked over her shoulder, startled as Jason arrived at her elbow. She’d lost track of him for a bit, catching glimpses of him leaning against a tree along the edge of the clearing or wandering someplace where the concentration of people wasn't quite so high. It took her a minute to register the plate of sweets he held.

  He wouldn't look at her, but nudged the plate toward her. "The cubs almost ate all of the chocolate cake. You said earlier it was your favorite, so..."

  "Thank you." She accepted the slice, partly wrapped in a napkin, and immediately took a bite of the moist chocolaty heaven. Sweet perfection exploded across her palette. Carri half-closed her eyes in bliss, enjoying the velvety richness of the cake and smooth, intense icing. "Oh, whoever baked this should win an award." Jason shook his head, catching her attention. Blushing, she mumbled around a mouthful of cake. "What?"

  "It amazes me how much you can enjoy a bite of food." His voice had its usual grumbly tone, but his eyes warmed with a twinkle she hadn't noticed before.

  "Good food deserves to be appreciated properly." She stood straighter. "This is a work of art. Chocolate is a wonderful thing."

  He frowned, his expression doubtful. "It's a slice of cake."

  "It’s chocolate cake, very moist, and with really good icing." She corrected him, holding out the slice. "Here, try some."

  "Maybe a taste." He gave in, but he didn't take a bite from the slice she held. Instead, he separated the space between them, taking his taste from her lips.

  Startled, she froze as his half-open kiss sealed hot over her lips. Heat washed through her, streaking through her body at the contact. His tongue flicked along the corner of her mouth before he sucked lightly at her lower lip and withdrew. His eyes shone almost silver as he stepped back, watching her reaction.

  Before she could say anything, Ben stepped to her side. "Carri, we want you to come judge the next race."

  "Oh, uh, sure." Dazed, she didn't fight Ben as he steered her towards the rest of the pack, but at the last second she caught the look he threw at Jason. It wasn't friendly, tweaking her temper. She planned to have a word with Ben about interrupting something she really would have liked to have let play out a little longer. It wasn't as if others weren't openly displaying affection too.

  All around the clearing, couples traded little kisses or held each other in light embraces. They laughed and conversed, watched the antics of the young cubs, and generally enjoyed themselves.

  Other adults took turns judging the races or contests of skill amongst cubs or juveniles. When her turn came, a few of the contests evolved into a more mature competition between some of the bigger and unattached males.

  And the races get a little more testosterone-prone.

  Carri smiled at the obvious effort to impress, feeling awkward and flattered but not nearly as interested as they might hope.

  No lack of other female attention.

  Other single females gathered, calling out favorites or challenging the males to greater effort. Sometimes those efforts met with applause and sometimes they resulted in hilarious accidents.

  In the midst of it all, Jason slipped away. She saw him as he melted into the woods beyond the clearing, knowing the exact moment he’d withdrawn. Without him nearby, the cold winter air nipped a little more around her face, the chill seeping through her jacket. A gust tugged at her breath and stole it away, making her throat catch. She coughed to clear the itch away and sipped some hot cider.

  Jenna materialized out of nowhere it seemed, looking at her with a critical assessment. "You've been out in the cold for hours, Carri. We're all used to it, but you're not. It's probably time for you to head inside and warm up."

  "I'm having a good time, Jenna." The idea of a toasty room sounded wonderful, even though she’d enjoyed meeting all of the new people and the easy camaraderie of the pack. In truth, she missed the heat of Jason’s company more than any comfortable room. "But maybe it would be good to get inside and get warmed up again."

  "There will always be other times. We'll make sure there are more chances to get together while you’re here." Jenna smiled with understanding, her eyes gentle as she tucked one of Carri's curls back into her hood.

  "Aw, Jenna, so soon? The stray just left too.” One of the males stepped up to Carri as a couple of the others chuckled at his words.

  "Excuse me?" Carri turned to face him. Bradley, if she remembered correctly, a fairly sturdy male with a pretty-boy face and sandy brown hair.

  Her sharp attention forced him to step back a little, but glancing at his pack brothers he recovered quickly and gave her what he evidently thought to be an engaging grin. "He was a dampe
r on the party; it's as well he took off. His kind does better on a solitary run, anyway."

  "Explain, please, what his kind would be?" Her voice became dangerously quiet and calm, almost sweet, while her temper burned her ears, and judging by the expression on the unfortunate male's face, he wasn't sure why the scent of her anger hung in the air.

  "Well, you know." He started, no longer sure of himself or his opinion. "He's a lone wolf. Shapeshifters like him don't want to be pack. They don't know how to be pack, and they don't know how to care about anyone but themselves. He didn't know what to do with himself at a gathering like this."

  She clenched her jaw and ground out her next words. "He is working on one of the key protections for your territory."

  Ben approached, putting an arm around her shoulders. "Now, Carri, that's the way of it with loners."

  Even angrier, she shrugged off Ben's arm, turning to face him. "Did you ever ask why he's a lone wolf? What happened to his pack? He had to have come from one."

  Ben shook his head. "Jason works on consult. He's been in our territory from time to time, and he's good at what he does. We don't pry into a man's past."

  She wouldn't accept that. It smelled like an excuse, even to her human nose. "What I saw this afternoon was an entire pack unified in the effort to ignore one man. Of course he left." She looked around at each of the males. "I don't see any of you concerned about him roaming the woods alone, but I can't even be allowed to walk the distance from the house to the surveillance station on my own."

  "The man can take care of himself.” Ben pointed out. "You know the situation, Carri. We can't risk you with the hunters out there. All of the packs and prides are on alert, and you are even more vulnerable out in the open."

  "But you're not as concerned about losing him." The thought made her center grow cold, seeping from her core outward. "He's just another lone wolf.”

  "He's a skilled technician." Ben touched the sleeve of her coat, attempting to calm her down. The gesture only made her more tense, angrier. She stepped away, and he let his hand drop. "Of course we want everyone safe."

  "He's lower on the priority list than pack and me." She stalked towards the edge of the clearing, headed in the direction of the house and her guest room. Silence filled the clearing behind her, and suddenly her anger left her empty. She turned around, filled only with the sadness her fury had left behind. "Did you think maybe a person might be a lone wolf because you never gave him the option to be something else?"

  Too keyed up to head back to Ben and Jenna's home, Carri let her momentum carry her out of the clearing, then she oriented herself and headed back to the surveillance tower. At that point, she wasn't going to be good company for anyone considering her mood, so figured she might as well get more work done on the coding and configuration for the surveillance system.. At that particular moment, finishing the project that much quicker was the most positive thought she could muster.

  After a few moments, Carri stopped in her tracks. She hadn't heard anything, didn't have the enhanced senses of a shape shifter, but she had common sense. Someone followed her.

  A moment later, Jenna stepped out of the shadow of a tree. "Never let it be said you aren't your mother's daughter."

  Partly relieved Jenna didn't sound mad, partly annoyed her mother's mentor hadn't understood Carri's frustration with the pack, she scuffed a boot in the snow bank on one side of the trail. "I apologize for letting my temper get to me." Her mother also ran a hot temper, phenomenally explosive, but quick to burn itself out.

  "No dear, not talking about your temper, although several males found it interesting." Jenna approached, her thumbs hooked in the front pockets of her jeans, her posture relaxed. She didn't seem angry at all, Carri thought with relief. She cared very deeply for Ben and Jenna which made it hard to see them lead by example, thoroughly shutting out a good man. Then, Jenna's next words surprised her. "I meant your ability to reach beyond the barriers people set between each other to take everyone into your heart. You teach us what pack should be, not just what it is. Your mother could do it, see past the differences between human and shapeshifter and simply care about people."

  "Jason isn't only a shapeshifter. He's..." Uncertain what he meant to her, shook her head. He wasn’t just another wolf. "He shouldn't have to be a lone wolf."

  "To all appearances, he seems as if he wants to keep it that way."

  "How much of appearance is what you expect to see?" Carri kicked hard at a drift of snow, her stomach twisting with the anger she felt. "There’s more there."

  "Ah well, you made it fairly obvious." Jenna nudged Carri with her shoulder. "You stated your preference loud and clear too."

  Carri swallowed, staring down at her snow-covered boot. Ben and Jenna had been incredibly transparent in their preferred matches for her too. She shook her head, rubbing her forehead with cool fingertips. "The man barely tolerates me. Some of the guys have been very nice."

  "Preference is preference." Jenna stated, matter-of-factly. "Your 'Grandpa' Ben might feel better if you chose one of the pack, but you’re an adult, and I think your heart sees more clearly than those of us who’ve gotten a little stagnant in the way of things. I, for one, have learned to trust your judgment and think maybe, in this case, you're seeing more clearly than the pack.”

  "Ben wants a safe male for me." Which didn't exist either in, or outside of, shapeshifter societies. All shapeshifters had the potential to be dangerous. Leaning her weight to the opposite side and studying the top of her other boot, she amended the thought. "Well, as safe as a shapeshifter can be. One of his pack is at least in the scope of his control, to a certain extent."

  "And we alphas are control freaks, admittedly." Jenna didn't sound the least bit apologetic. Instead, she smiled with cheerful acceptance, her eyebrows raised as she shrugged.

  Encouraged, Carri squared her shoulders. "I don't know what might happen, or if anything is going to happen at all, but I want to find out." There it was, out in the open, not only for Jenna, but for herself as well.

  Overjoyed was not the description she would have used to describe Jenna's rueful grin, but there was no disagreement either, and she would take what she could and run with it.

  “Your choice, Carri."

  She blew out a puff of breath in frustration. Choice belonged to two people when it came to these matters. "Let's hope his coincides, otherwise this could be a pointless conversation."

  A slow smile spread across Jenna's face. "From what I could see, there shouldn’t be an issue. You, my dear, have definitely caught the eyes of the big bad wolf."

  3

  Carri didn’t know whether she’d caught his eye or not. What she did know—she couldn’t keep her eyes off Jason when they both showed up to work the next day, despite it being a rest day.

  Neither of them said a word about the picnic or why they had each gone. They simply fell into the rhythm they’d developed over the past couple days, assembling the sensors and testing them before attaching them to their housing and testing the clusters.

  "Ready to run the diagnostic on this sensor." His attitude toward her hadn't changed. If anything, he cooled ever so slightly, his mood quiet.

  "It's running now." She kept one eye on the scan results as they flashed across her console and the other on his reflection in the surface of another console. His broad shoulders and powerful chest tapered to a neat waist and hips. He wore his jeans loose enough to give him freedom of movement, but allowed her a very nice view of his rear. Every move, every gesture, caused a rippling effect of muscles under his skin, barely hidden under the soft flannel shirt he wore.

  "We should be ready to install this first cluster today and take test readings tomorrow." Even his voice wrapped around her, the timbre of it resonating at the center of her chest.

  It took effort to keep her head in the conversation. If she wasn't careful, she’d say something completely out of context and sound like an idiot. "There's no reason to pull anyone else in t
o place it, the two of us can manage it on our own."

  "You're not climbing up any of those trees, Red." He only seemed to call her that with no one else around, his own private nickname for her. He said it like a private joke between them. Every time he used it, a gentle heat rose up in her cheeks as she thought about the stolen thank you, or about the moment in the snow, or the taste of chocolate.

  Yeah. Keeping her head in the conversation turned a tad difficult.

  She rolled her eyes, wondering if she could be any more distracted. She remained facing the console so he couldn't see her expression. "Fine, you climb. I'll spot you."

  After a moment of consideration, he surprised her by giving in easily. "It's doable. I can climb up first with a rope and toss it down for you to attach the cluster. I'll haul it up while you steady it from below. It shouldn't take long to install."

  "Good. Then we won't need to bring anyone else in."

  Another pause.

  "You don't want anyone else here?" He questioned, quiet, incredulous.

  She knew he asked about more than work, but she chose to answer him in the context of the conversation. "We work fine with just the two of us."

  As he moved to stand behind her, she didn’t turn, but the heat of his proximity warmed the back of her neck and shoulders. That close, she couldn't see anything in the reflective surface of the monitor. Her hair stirred as he toyed with a lock, sending teasing flicks of tingles across her scalp. She swallowed to keep from making a sound, but oh, she dearly enjoyed it when someone played with her hair. She wanted to tilt her head back, feel his hand plunge into her hair and his strong fingers slide against her scalp.

  The room temperature definitely rose with her excitement and no hiding it from him.

  "Red." His voice turned gruff, the nickname almost a command, not a question anymore.

  She couldn't make herself turn to face him, too afraid she would do something else to break the moment and lose the chance again. Instead, she settled back in the chair a fraction, letting her head rest against his stomach. The contact between them shot thrills through her, while her heart beat faster as blood rushed in her ears, heightening her skin’s sensitivity. His fingers twined in her hair, and she closed her eyes with the pleasure of it.