by L. A. Banks
The real question was, however, how long would they buy it, and what would happen under a full moon while the watchful eyes of the interclan pack were on them?
This was some very serious shit, for more reasons than one. Sasha walked quietly beside Hunter, not even glimpsing his profile. Each pack within the regional clan had an alpha male that had sent out their primary enforcers to investigate the wayward Werewolf scent. Those guys weren’t even the top wolves! And if Hunter’s own strongman, Bear Shadow, had been prepared to take him out for the good of the whole North American clan, then the possibility of serious dissension in the ranks was afoot.
The Uncompahgre incident involved rogue pack members across the clan moving illicit toxic substances in order to change their rank and financial position. Trust was therefore null and void. Hunter had explained the political fallout more times than she’d wanted to remember. All packs had been made vulnerable, thus very touchy and subject to extremes in martial law.
She just hoped that the mini-purge had worked and that Hunter could hold it together while they were around each pack leader. All they’d need was for a bit of the Werewolf virus to surface at an inopportune and deadly time. Then again, what was she saying? If this thing finally took him over, there was only one decision to be made, and it would have to be done in a very detached, unemotional way. There was no sense trying to put one’s head in the sand. Hunter needed immediate evaluation.
Sasha kept walking in silence beside Hunter. Maybe that was it; she wanted to know for sure before a permanent, irreversible decision was made. At least that was the partial lie she told herself. If there was ever a time for the Great Spirit to hear prayers it was now. The only other alternative was to get him away from the pack, using a very good explanation . . . but if he was infected, she alone would have a nightmare on her hands.
Sasha chewed her bottom lip as her mind continued to burn with questions. She glimpsed Hunter quickly from the corner of her eye, but his gaze caught and trapped hers as they walked quietly side by side. The same questions she’d had haunted his silent stare and she no longer had to wonder what he was thinking.
“Aw, man, you smell like pure hell!” Crow Shadow laughed as Hunter entered the small clearing in front of the outpost cabin.
“Good to see you, too, brother,” Hunter muttered and folded his arms over his chest.
“Drop your gear in the yard, man,” Bear Shadow said with a smirk, holding his nose. He motioned toward an old-fashioned tin tub near an outhouse twenty-five yards away that had thick plumes of steam and eucalyptus wafting from it. “We gotta hose you down in the yard before you come inside.”
“Trudeau!”
Woods and Fisher burst out of the cabin with a unified shout and bounded across the knotted pine porch and down the steps, practically lifting her off her feet in an excited reunion.
“Shit, Lieutenant! We thought you were a goner!” Woods hugged her tightly and made Fisher wait his turn.
“I thought we were goners, dude,” Fisher said, laughing and wrestling to join in on the group hug. “What’re you talking about?”
“You guys are a sight for sore eyes,” Sasha said, slapping them both on the backs and then cuffing their necks to pull their faces against hers.
Family. This was all that remained of her military family, save Doc and the inside team that by now should be in New Orleans. But these guys were in the trenches with her, carried weapons, laid in the mud on missions next to her. There was a different level of bond.
The merry threesome swallowed hard, smiles bright, each one too much of a soldier to let emotion seep all the way out, but it was felt. Relief, joy, sorrow, hard experiences—too much to get out all at once in front of strangers. The stories needed time and several cold beers, if not Wild Turkey, to gain form and substance. For now, just seeing who had made it was enough. Then came the awkward quiet. The moment of silence for the ones who didn’t make it.
“Butler,” Woods finally said in a reverent tone and shook his head.
“I know,” Sasha said.
“Doc told us on sat-phone while we were on the move trying to get back to North America.” Fisher’s voice dropped to a pained murmur. “Nobody else made it out, either.”
Sasha nodded but didn’t say more. Memories washed through her like a dirty rain. Fisher’s serious blue eyes became moist as he stared at her for a moment, and then just as quickly the unshed tears dried as he dragged his fingers through his unruly blond hair. He was gaunter than she’d remembered, his body more angular. But Woods had oddly seemed to fill out and become broader, heavier. He’d grown a beard and it was hard to tell where his almost shoulder-length brunet hair and the thick growth on his chin began and ended. Stress was an individual thing, affected people differently.
Still, trauma shone in Woods’s liquid brown eyes. No telling what horrors these men had seen as their commanding officer transformed into a beast and then turned on the squad. To have that happen, survive it, only to have their own Black Hawk airlift turn the heat on them to try to “clean up the situation” was inexcusable.
Before she could really dwell on it or allow her unspent rage at the brass to make her irrational, she opted for proper pack introductions. Later they could bitch and vent in their beer. There was another, more pressing situation at hand that they all needed to survive. Hunter.
“Guess you guys have met and hung out with Crow Shadow and Bear Shadow long enough to know they’re pack lookout and enforcer,” she said, giving each Shadow Wolf a nod of utmost respect. “This is the pack’s alpha, as well as the North American clan’s alpha, Max Hunter. Good man to have at your side in a firefight. Seen him in action.”
Woods, the more dominant of the two remaining men on Sasha’s squad, stepped forward and extended his hand. “Good to know you.”
Hunter stared at Woods’s outstretched hand, jaw pulsing. “Tell your familiar I’ve got toxin on me, but it is good to know him and your other one.” Then without another word Hunter spun on his heel and walked away toward the steaming tub, then began to strip.
Sasha opened and closed her mouth and then stepped into the vacant space Hunter had left. “He’s really fucked up right now,” she said loudly, fury roiling just under her surface as she stared at Hunter’s back and then returned her gaze to her stunned men. “After what we went through last night, give him a minute. Generally he’s not so rude and is good people.”
“It is true,” Bear Shadow said, seeming unfazed. “Max Hunter is a man you can count on.” He loped away with a smile and motioned toward the thicket with his chin. “Gonna rustle up some steaks—Crow, man, you get the beer and bottles from the locals. But take the truck.”
Crow Shadow caught the keys Bear Shadow tossed and winked at Sasha. “Make Hunter refill the tub for you. No offense. You’re not as bad as him, but it splattered you. Get Woods and Fisher to bring you both some clean gear from the house when you’re done. Burn everything in the yard—damn!” Within the space of a blink, he’d merged into a tree shadow and was gone.
“I still can’t get used to this shit, Trudeau,” Woods said, glancing around nervously once Crow Shadow had disappeared, his voice almost a low whisper. He kept his eyes on Hunter while speaking to Sasha between his teeth. “Like, what the fuck are we doing here? What’s the new mission? Our damned lives are way out of control—there’s no more normal. Half the time I don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about.”
“Yeah, and what did he mean, ‘tell your familiars’? He meant like family, right?” Fisher asked in a nervous burst under his breath.
“Yeah,” Sasha muttered, glaring in Hunter’s direction. “I’m sure that’s what he meant.”
Chapter 5
She walked across the yard fighting mad. Yeah, okay, Hunter had some Werewolf shit with him, but that was still no reason to be rude to her men—her family! Not to mention if he couldn’t hold it together under non-stressful conditions, he was a dead man walking into a clan council meet
ing, or whatever kind of powwow the packs were planning for tonight. If he made it past all of that to the United Council of Entities meeting in New Orleans, once Vampires sniffed him out, it’d be all over but the shouting. Seeing him act like this told her everything she needed to know. They had to get out of there stat and down to Doc in Denver somehow, before heading to New Orleans with the rest of her team.
In a few fluid strides, Sasha had reached the tub. Whatever wrangle they were going to get into, it had to happen fast. Woods and Fisher had gone into the house to get clothes and towels, and would be back soon. Rank was still rank, whether military or wolf pack. The last thing her men or Hunter’s needed to witness was a shouting match between squad leaders. Although common sense told her that tone and the way she phrased the question would significantly determine the outcome of Hunter’s response, he’d plucked her last nerve till it felt like raw meat hanging off a bone.
“And your problem would be?” she asked in a low, lethal tone between her teeth as she rounded the tub. She couldn’t have censored herself if her life depended on it. “What gave you the right to—”
“They’d better learn protocol and learn it quick,” Hunter snapped and then doused his hair. He came up from the water with eyes flickering amber and his canines elongated. “They’re familiars and I’m not their problem. If they address pack leaders so casually during these tense times, their dumb asses will cause a shape-shift and they’ll find themselves with their throats between an alpha’s teeth.”
“You could have suffered their ignorance and told me so I could clue them in. Do you have any idea how freaked out these guys are? I don’t even know what the hell protocol is, and I sleep with you! How in the world are they supposed to just know all this mysterious crap?” Sasha gripped the edge of the tin tub and stared at Hunter so hard she was practically leaning in the water. “It’s not fair!”
“It never is about fair—and you know it. It’s about rank. What about any of this is so-called fair? Are you insane?”
He let out a disgusted breath; she snatched the thick, square-cut, homemade bar of soap from him and practically slammed it against his head as she began soaping his hair.
“They aren’t telepaths. This culture is brand-new to them and your men should have told them.”
“Who said they didn’t?” Hunter snarled. “I know Crow Shadow and Bear Shadow; they would have versed them on approach protocol first! What it is, Sasha, is that your men are unpracticed, and at a full clan meeting that can get them severely reprimanded—and if they fight against a reprimand, it could get them killed. The wolf culture is rigid, you know that. My snub was to make them think—just like you would have done in boot camp with new recruits that improperly addressed your rank.”
Frustration practically made steam come out of her ears, but the man had a point, even though she wasn’t altogether ready to relinquish hers.
“That’s all you had to say, Hunter. You could have barked orders at them to address you properly, then told them not to make the same mistake tonight or they’ll get jumped. Woods and Fisher aren’t stupid. In fact, those guys are the salt of the earth and are solid squad in a firefight. They don’t know their roles cold yet. But I’d put money on it that with a little time, they’ll be awesome lookouts, will be able to run interference with human forces, courier messages between the shaman, you name it.”
“All right. I hear you,” Hunter finally said in a grudging tone. “But they have to learn quickly.”
“What the fuck were they supposed to do, Max? Genuflect when they saw you? Or do the happy freakin’ puppy dance? You tell me—because right now you’re being a real ass!”
He turned so quickly in the water to face her that a huge splash sloshed on the ground. “They were supposed to wait for me to approach them—remain stock still,” he said through his teeth. “I scent them, determine if they can pass my inspection or not. If they walk forward aggressively toward an alpha that doesn’t know them like they did with me, with that G. I. Joe military stare that would bristle even a beta male, they’d get their asses kicked. In the eyes, Sasha? A stare-down?”
“They didn’t mean it, they’ve been military trained all their lives . . . oh . . . shit.”
“My point exactly. What is normally the way things are done in one culture is a complete offense in another. You’re also a damned diplomat and know what I say to be true.”
“I know, I know,” she muttered. “You’re no liar.”
Incredulous that she didn’t immediately get it before simply because they were her men, people close to her, his voice trailed off into a furious grumble. To his mind, that was all the more reason she should have also been appalled and corrected them on the spot. They were her familiars, not his!
“No damned familiar is to ever look at a pack leader in the eye until he’s given them the right to look up—sons-of-bitches needed to lower their heads and look down . . . a direct, in-the-eye stare? Unheard of. A handshake, not chest-cross—one of them, the goddamned dominant male, reached for my swing arm? Bullshit! The alpha from Toronto would have yanked it out of his fucking shoulder socket. We don’t play that.”
The more Max grumbled the more outraged he became, until he was so indignant that all he could do was turn around and fold his arms over his chest while Sasha angrily began scrubbing his hair.
“Jesus . . . What the hell is in this stuff?” she said, making a face and ignoring his diatribe. She needed a moment to recalibrate her emotions and to amp down the fight hormone surging through her. “Smells like Witch Hazel cured in gasoline.”
“Yeah, it’s got Witch Hazel in it, plus white willow bark, white sage oil, and about twenty-five other herbs to kill the Werewolf stench. Smells like hell in the tub, but once you rinse off, whatever demon splatter you got on you is gone for good. Then your own body chemistry neutralizes it.”
“And I’ve gotta wash my hair with this stuff, too.”
A half-smile tugged at Hunter’s mouth. “You don’t have to do anything, Sasha.”
“I know one damned thing I have to do,” she muttered, rubbing harder to build lather, “is to get my men, along with your ornery, surly ass, out of here with however many other testosterone-pumped alphas. Right about now, New Orleans by way of Denver sounds like a plan. We get out of here before nightfall, hop a plane from Yellowstone Regional Airport to—”
“Why Denver, then New Orleans?”
“Doc is in Denver,” she said flatly.
Hunter hesitated. “I don’t think, given this unresolved crisis, that now would be a good time for you to go to the U.C.E. meeting. I can take my chances alone, and cannot afford a delay in Denver to—”
“Listen, I’ve got a squad down there in New Orleans, resources, and my people were from there. I’m going. Period. I can’t make you stop in Denver to see Doc; that’s your choice. But you damned sure can’t stop me from going to the U.C.E. meeting.” She yanked his hair back and ignored his smile.
“Then why not Toronto—you don’t have to get your intel from a dangerous annual U.C.E. meeting. My grandmother was Haitian and from there—that corridor has a large population of people who know how to access the supernatural realms. Our Shadow Wolf allies are strong along the Canadian—”
“Because I said so,” she whispered with a quiet, threatening snarl in his ear. “I am not going to some highly populated, pristine city in the opposite direction of the action, with you possibly going buck-wild as a demon-infected Werewolf down in a city that has already experienced catastrophic human losses. We clear? I’m a soldier, and it’s my job to put my life on the—”
“You’re also my mate and I wouldn’t be who I am if I didn’t care what happens to you.”
She looked away from him. The words were right there, climbing up her throat to yell that she wasn’t really his mate and had just said it to pass muster—but the words caught in her larynx. She couldn’t cough them out. The dynamics of who they were and what they were to each other was cha
nging on the fly and that made her nervous.
“Until we know your contagion is under control,” she said in a calmer voice after drawing several breaths, “we head south where I can get to Doc, Silver Hawk, and whatever else we need in a more sparsely populated zone . . . and because the Big Easy is still the paranormal black-market Big Apple, and there’s also a big Haitian population there, too, if we need to go that route—any questions?”
“Why didn’t you just say so?” he said, smiling broadly and teasing her. “You don’t have to be so touchy about it.”
She ignored him and flung the strong soap into the water, then dug her fingernails into his scalp and scrubbed hard. His change of mood was truly freaking her out. Was it the water that was pulling out the last of the toxin? Was it the fact that his normal Shadow Wolf system had finally absorbed the infection and had quarantined it? Not knowing was the worst. Then again, the niggling thought that by her not challenging the “my mate” comment was viewed as acquiescence gave her pause. But now was just not the time to get into all of that.
“Ow, that hurts,” he said, now chuckling and trying to lean away from her.
She wound his long thicket of soapy black hair around her fist, yanked hard and spoke into his ear with a menacing whisper. “If you ever treat my guys like they’re golden retrievers again, I will promise you it’ll get ugly between me and you.”
“Okay.” His smile widened, and just as suddenly, he reached back, grabbed a handful of her parka, and flipped her into the water. She fell with her arms and legs sprawled over the tub edges, and splashed half of the water out onto the ground. The sound that exited her was a combination of a yelp and a shout. She threw a punch, but he dodged it, making her scream with rage.
Hunter’s hard belly laughs only turned her sputtering into a colorful range of expletives. It took her a second to get hold of the side of the tub and push herself up. Completely pissed off, she put a muddy hiking boot in the center of his chest and unsnapped her parka, almost angry enough to draw on him.
