Howling on Hold

by E. J. Russell

  “You can! You are!” Tanner gulped, trying to find the words, any words, that were big enough, expansive enough to explain what Chase meant to him. But there weren’t any. So instead, he grabbed Chase’s shoulders and mashed their lips together.

  Ow. Teeth. Pressure. Adjust.

  Chase made a sound—muffled by Tanner’s mouth. Tanner eased up on the intensity and angled his head a bit. Gods. Chase’s lips were so soft. Pillowy. Like Tanner had always dreamed they’d be. With a tiny flick of his tongue, he tasted them, and they tasted like he’d always dreamed too.

  I could do this all night. I could do this forever. I could—

  Then Chase put his hands on Tanner’s shoulders. Yes! He’s going to hug me now. We’re going to hug. And then kiss some more. And then—

  And then Chase pushed him away.

  “No, Tanner.”

  Tanner blinked, sucking in air like he’d been underwater for too long. “I— What?”

  “This isn’t right.” Chase gently removed Tanner’s hands from his shoulders. “You shouldn’t— I mean I ought to have told you before you— That is, I need to—” He clenched his eyes shut. “Shit.”

  Gods, was that disgust in Chase’s expression? Tanner was so dizzy with beer and anxiety and Chase that he couldn’t be sure. But if it was . . . If Tanner had made a massive fool of himself . . . assumed that Chase liked him that way . . .

  Oh, moon and stars, what if he’d been deluding himself all along?

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” He turned and stumbled blindly through the tables.

  “No, Tanner! Wait!”

  But Tanner didn’t wait. He needed to run. To hide. But he couldn’t run in this crowded bar, and there weren’t any convenient caves or trees. His gaze focused on the table where his housemates sat. No hiding places, but there’s camouflage. Chase surely wouldn’t chastise him in front of everyone. Would he? That would be even worse.

  Tanner slid into his chair. His beer glass was right where he’d left it, so he took a giant gulp.

  “Hey, man.” Dakota grinned at him as the server plopped another basket of nachos on the table. Dakota neatly snagged it from under Hector’s hand. “Dude. Seriously. Have you even heard of vegetables?”

  Hector hmmphed. “Jalapeños are vegetables.”

  “Barely,” Gage drawled. “Wolves—even geeky ones—do not live by junk food alone.”

  Chase arrived at the table, his chest heaving, and stood behind Dakota’s chair. “Tanner—”

  “Maybe not,” Hector said, placidly patting his rounded belly, “but life wouldn’t be worth living without Cheetos and Doritos. Just ask Jordan. He always snitches half my stash anyway.”

  “Jordan.” Chase’s voice was hard-edged with alarm. “Where’s Jordan?”

  Chase’s chest was as tight as if he’d been running through the woods all night without shifting. Between the kiss—gods, the kiss—and Tanner bolting away before Chase had a chance to explain, he wasn’t sure he’d ever catch his breath again. He needed to reassure Tanner, to tell him it wasn’t that he didn’t like the kiss, awkward though it was on both their parts, or that he didn’t want the kiss, because, gods preserve him, he did.

  But he needed to explain about consent. He’d given that lecture to everyone else in the house, even Jordan, although in his case, it had started as a lecture about not stealing the other juniors’ toys. But for some reason, he’d never had “the talk” with Tanner, because Tanner had never encroached on anybody else’s personal space, and it wasn’t a discussion Chase relished even with cause.

  How was he to know that his reticence would come back to bite him in the ass at the worst possible time? Chase had failed—as an RA, as a wolf, as a man. Failed with Tanner, the person he’d wanted most to cherish and protect. Because he could tell that Tanner was mortified. And it’s all my fault.

  But right now, Chase had a missing junior, and that junior was Jordan. Oh gods. What were the chances Jordan had simply needed to visit the restroom after consuming his body weight in soda? As much as Chase would like to believe that, he and Tanner had been standing in front of the restroom, and Jordan hadn’t passed them.

  Outside? Chase wouldn’t put it past Jordan to mark the bricks in the alley, which raised its own set of issues.

  “Guys. Where. Is. Jordan?”

  Hector and Dakota looked at one another, clearly mystified, and shrugged. Hector grabbed a nacho. “I didn’t notice him leaving. Usually he’ll tell you all about what he’s gonna do. You know how Jordan is.”

  “I do,” Chase said grimly. “Which is why his mysterious disappearance raises all my hackles. T-Tanner?” Tanner didn’t look up from communing with his half-empty beer glass, but he shook his head. “Gage?”

  Gage’s eyes slid sideways, and he hunched in his chair. “Um . . .”

  “Gage.” Chase infused more alpha authority in his tone than was strictly necessary, because Tanner was sitting there, right there, refusing to meet Chase’s eyes and drawing a cloak of I’m-not-here around himself.

  Gage licked his lips. “I’m not sure, exactly.”

  “Give me your best guess.”

  “I think he went . . .” Gage pointed to the floor.

  “Under the table?” Chase started to crouch to check. It wasn’t unheard of. Jordan still curled up to nap in the weirdest places and at the strangest times. He was barely eighteen, after all.

  “No. You know . . . the fight pens.” Gage mouthed the last words, as if it were a secret, as if everybody in the damn place didn’t know about them.

  “And you didn’t try to stop him?”

  “Come on, Chase. It’s Jordan. Even you can’t stop him if he’s on one of his tears. It’d take Mal or Dr. MacLeod to do that.”

  “You could have at least tried. Gods damn it! He’ll get himself killed. He can’t control his shift half the time, and the supes who use the fight pens are—” Chase scrubbed his face with both hands. “Okay. All of you—stay here. Don’t move. Tanner—” Tanner hunched further over his beer and wouldn’t look up. “Never mind.” He jabbed his finger at each of the other guys in turn. “Stay.”

  Then he rushed across the room, dodging a server carrying a tray of empties, and a couple of dryads with their arms wrapped around a rough wooden post—which had started to sprout unlikely flowering branches—until he reached the curtain in the corner that hid the stairs to the basement levels.

  Why don’t they have a bouncer at this door, damn it? The fight pens weren’t strictly illegal, even by supe standards, but there should be regulations! Supes had to be so freaking careful about revealing their presence to humans, but only a fraction as many laws covered beating each other nearly to death in the stupid fight pens.

  He plunged down the stairs. “Stupid, bloody, infernal instincts!”

  The first flight of stairs ended in a storeroom that was ringed with shelves full of glassware and paper goods and stacked with crates of beer, wine, and alcohol. He zeroed in on the door nearly hidden behind a wine rack and raced across the room. As soon as he opened the massive door, yells, hoots, and howls rose up from the depths, along with the smells of adrenaline, urine, and blood.

  Lots of blood.

  He barreled down the stairs. At the foot, his way was blocked by a couple of shifters half a head taller than Chase—bears, by their smell. They were shoveling burgers into their mouths while holding several more in their arms as they watched whatever was happening in the middle of the room.

  Chase craned his neck, careful not to appear to threaten the burgers, because getting between bears and food was never a good idea, especially when approaching hibernation season. He couldn’t see the ring, but he could see the avid expressions on the people across the room. None of them were as relaxed as the bears—of course, this close to the solstice, Chase was surprised bears would even be awake at this time of night.

  Then he heard it.

  Jordan’s whine.

  “Pardon me.” When the be
ars didn’t move, he squeezed between them, earning growls from both as they curled protectively over their snacks.

  Ah, shit.

  Beyond the ropes that marked the main fight ring, Jordan, still in human form, was facing down two fully shifted hyenas. His hands were out in front of him, trying to placate the snarling pair, and nobody was doing anything to stop what was sure to be a bloodbath.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it! I wasn’t making fun of you, I promise.”

  “For the gods’ sakes,” Chase cried. “Aren’t any of you going to stop this? He’s a kid!”

  One of the bears shrugged. “Nobody forced him to come down here.”

  “Damn it,” Chase muttered. “At least get him out of the ring once I’m in.” He took off his jacket, shoved it into one of the cubbies meant for fighters’ belongings, and toed off his shoes. As he shed the rest of his clothes, he had serious doubts whether he could hold his own against two hyenas.

  Yes, he was an adult were. Yes, he’d passed his combat exams. But he was still only twenty-four. Any shifters who spent time in the fight pens obviously had more experience than he did.

  On the other hand, nobody else down here had just had their dream within their grasp only to fuck it up completely.

  Chase let the change take hold of him, dropping to all fours as his spine lengthened and his arms and legs changed their articulation, his jaw distending to accommodate his additional teeth. Fur sprouted, on his back first, then his belly, his legs—all four of them—and his muzzle. Then he bounded into the ring, teeth bared in the snarl of an alpha werewolf protecting one of his pack.

  The hyenas yipped their annoying laugh and tried to flank him, but Mal had taught him how to defend against that. Hyenas depended on their jaws for most of their attacks, so Chase just had to neutralize that advantage.

  Behind him, he could hear Jordan clambering out of the ring between the ropes, assisted by the two bears. Good. The one rule the fight pens did enforce was that all bloodshed must occur within the ring.

  And for the first time in his life, Chase was in the mood to shed a little blood.

  He dodged to the side, then doubled back and leaped up, landing astride one of the hyenas. He sank his teeth into the bastard’s rough-furred nape. Pfaugh. Disgusting. But that didn’t matter. He was almost twice the size of the hyenas, and Chase was able to flip his opponent up, exposing his belly to his partner. Hyena A kicked ineffectively with his shorter back legs, like an inverted T. Rex. Hyena B feinted and lunged, but every time he did, Chase countered, so B had to pull back or risk biting his own partner in the nuts.

  Enough of this. Chase started to growl, the sound growing in the humid cavern, resonating off the rough ceiling beams: the sound of an alpha werewolf about to make a kill. Red tinged his vision, and his attention narrowed, split between the hyena in his jaws and the one snarling in the corner of the ring.

  Bite. Shake. Snap its neck. Protect my pack.

  Chase growled again, tightening his jaws a fraction and triggering a yelp from his prey. Puny. No match. I can kill them both and then—

  The adversary in the corner shifted into a scrawny blond guy with a wispy beard. And tapped out.

  For an instant, Chase was tempted to bite down, feel the blood in his throat. But then he caught sight of a wide-eyed face beyond the ropes. Jordan.

  He released the hyena immediately, shaking his head as he backed away until his rump hit the ropes on the other side of the ring.

  I almost lost it. Gods, I’m supposed to teach juniors how not to lose it. How can I do that when I have so little control myself?

  Chase huddled in the corner as he shifted back to his human form, shudders racking him when he realized how close he’d come to a truly unforgivable act.

  Somebody should have prevented this.

  Somebody? He should have prevented it himself. He knew how to talk anxious juniors out of a panic shift, how to remind them of acceptable social behavior, how to reassure them while out in the Wider World, away from the isolation of their pack compounds. Yet he was the one who’d lost control.

  Is this what it means to be a pack enforcer? Sure, his pack was pretty civilized. Their economy was based on real estate and property management. He expected his role, once he’d gotten his stupid law degree and passed the bar, to consist mostly of contracts and landlord/tenant disputes, with nothing more violent than the occasional acrimonious eviction notice.

  But behind that, there was always this possibility. The throwback to days when pack authority was based on physical strength and ruthlessness alone.

  Chase wanted no part of it. How the hells do I escape something that’s been planned since I was born?

  “Dude!” Jordan appeared outside the ropes next to Chase, Chase’s clothing clutched in his arms. “If I’m good at my hand-to-hand lessons with Mal, will I be able to fight like that? That was awesome!”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Chase snatched his clothes from Jordan, glancing at the opposite corner of the ring as he pulled on his briefs. Both hyenas had shifted back to human and were pulling on jeans and band T-shirts. Gods, they’re not much older than Jordan. One of them was murmuring to the other as he checked the puncture wounds in the back of the guy’s neck. The wounds would heal quickly enough—Chase hadn’t bitten down that hard, and hyena fur was thick—and they wouldn’t fester, since shifter saliva had antibiotic properties, but Chase’s belly clenched in horror of what he might have done.

  What was worse, though, was the part of his mind that wanted to howl in victory because he’d dominated his enemy.

  Gods.

  Chase finished dressing and climbed out of the ring. The other shifters in the room hollered—howls, roars, hoots, whatever their animal nature dictated. One of the bear shifters offered him a beer and half a burger, but Chase waved them both away. Instead, he grabbed Jordan’s elbow and towed him out the door and up the stairs. When they got to the storeroom level, Chase let go, only marginally guilty when Jordan winced and rubbed the spot.

  Chase took a deep breath, although it didn’t calm him down. “Do you mind telling me, Jordan, what the fuck you were doing in the fight ring when I told you explicitly not to go there?”

  “Well . . . um . . . there didn’t seem to be anybody blocking the door, and—” Jordan screwed up his face in something that was obviously supposed to be a conciliatory grin. “—forgiveness easier than permission?”

  For the first time in his life, Tanner wished he were smaller. If only I could shrink, like those angels who can dance on the head of a pin, and hide under the nearest bar napkin.

  He clutched the base of his beer glass—miraculously full again, thanks to that stupid pitcher the OSU weres had left on the table—and kept his elbows tight to his body, waiting for the inevitable questions, accusations, and derision.

  “Dude.” Hector’s voice held something milder than flat-out accusation. Dismay? Maybe, but this was Hector, Tanner’s fellow misfit. Of course he’d keep his reaction low-key. Tanner sighed and raised his chin, prepared to face his friend’s disillusionment. But Hector wasn’t paying any attention to him. He was staring at Gage. “Did you know Jordan was heading downstairs? Do you know what the fight pens are like?”

  Gage slid even lower in his chair. “I didn’t think it would do any harm for him to just look.”

  Dakota snorted. “We’re talking Jordan. When has he ever just looked at anything?”

  “Shit,” Gage muttered. “I screwed up, huh?”

  “Jordan is the one who screwed up,” Hector said. Then he paused, a chip halfway to his mouth. “Although it would have been good pack behavior to . . . You know, I’m not sure what good pack behavior would have been. If you couldn’t stop him—and since it’s Jordan, you probably couldn’t have done that without pinning him to the ground—should you have gone with him? To have his back?”

  Dakota leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Maybe he should have pinned him to the ground. It’s up to seni
or pack members to make sure the juniors don’t do anything stupid, and sometimes that means physical restraint. I mean, other than Tanner, technically we’re all still juniors, but we’re all older than Jordan.”

  “But in the middle of a bar?” Gage asked, his voice edged with outrage and guilt. “What about all those lessons on being unobtrusive in public?”

  “Yeah, in human public,” Hector shot back. “But this is a supe-only joint. Humans can’t even find the door because of the redirection spells.”

  “I’m not sure pinning him down would have been the right way to go, but Hector’s right,” Dakota said. “We should have done something. Talked him out of it. Told Chase what was going on. Maybe we should have all gone down with him. Or distracted him.” Dakota shook his head. “That’ll teach us never to leave the house without a Frisbee.”

  “My dad would have expected me to stop him,” Hector said. “Like the way we keep juniors out of the packing plant, so they don’t get their noses stuck in the machinery.”

  “Our pack doesn’t work that way,” Gage muttered. “The juniors know they have to behave or they’ll be gutting fish for the next three moons.”

  “Yeah, but when they’re really young, you don’t let them on a boat, do you? They have to learn somehow.”

  “We’re not stupid. We don’t let them near a boat until they’ve passed their sailing test.” Just when Tanner thought he’d managed to evade everyone’s attention, Gage turned to him. “What do you think, Tanner? What would they do in your pack?”

  Tanner took an injudiciously large swallow of beer—which went down the wrong way. He coughed wildly, while Dakota pounded him on the back and beer spewed across the table and out his nose.

  Hector ran over to the bar to get a glass of water. Gage snagged a stack of napkins off a passing server and mopped up the table, then dabbed at the beer on Tanner’s shirt.

  Finally, Tanner managed to recover enough to wheeze his thanks. He accepted the water from Hector and took a long drink.