Pack Dynamics

by Julie Frost

  “Hey! The protein shakes are nutritious and filling,” Alex protested, gesturing at the half-full glass next to his computer.

  “And disgusting.” Megan grimaced. “Honestly, sometimes I think you need a babysitter.”

  “That’s what I have you for.” He smirked. “Now, if you’d only dress the part.…”

  “In your dreams. Mr. Jarrett.”

  “I must admit that this new pajamas-and-T-shirt look you’ve got going is quite fetching.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “I’m having some of my suits sent over today.”

  “You know, if you’d just move in, it wouldn’t be an issue.”

  Ben watched their joust like a spectator at a ping-pong match, hiding a grin, and Janni seemed amused as well. She leaned against him and whispered, “Those two so have a thing for each other.”

  “And they don’t even know it,” he whispered back, squeezing her hand. “It’s hilarious.”

  “I heard that,” Megan said. “And no, we don’t.”

  “We don’t what?” Alex asked.

  “Nothing.” Megan looked at Ben, frowning, her nostrils flaring. “Are you all right, Ben?”

  “I think so,” he answered. The back of his neck tingled, and the hairs stood on end. “Why?”

  Her eyes looked … odd. She shook her head. “I don’t know, no reason, I guess, but then again it’s a natural question since you were shot in the chest a few hours ago, so I was just wondering.” She was babbling, which was really not like her at all.

  “It’s sore, but kind of distant. Whatever painkillers they gave me are doing their job. Back itches.” He frowned. “I can already breathe a little easier. Funny.”

  “Not so much,” Alex said. “The nanotech is pretty amazing stuff, and Mike’s been doing some remarkable work in that field. He knew to bring the latest and greatest. Well, the latest and greatest he’s tested, anyway.”

  “Using Ben as a guinea pig?” Janni asked sharply. “I’m not sure I like that.”

  “Actually, we mostly use rabbits, but that’s why I emphasized the ‘tested’ part,” Alex hastened to reassure her. “As in, human tests on volunteers to make sure the stuff works the way it’s supposed to. I’ve always taken my ethics seriously, Janni, and I always will.”

  She glared, but backed off. Ben thought she was damn cute when she went all mama bear, especially considering how tiny she was, and he squeezed her hand again.

  “You’re really okay?” she said.

  “Really. Well. As okay as I ever am.” He closed his eyes, visions of the three people he’d shot flashing across his memory in a spray of blood. “You know.” Deep breaths he couldn’t take because, shit, his lung still hurt, and he wouldn’t get the shakes, he wouldn’t, dammit, but the muscle in his jaw was jumping.…

  Janni hugged him and stroked his hair. “I know,” she murmured as he leaned into her. “Shhh.”

  Yeah. He was going to ask her to marry him. Sooner rather than later.

  O O O

  Megan’s nostrils twitched. Something was off about Ben, but she couldn’t quite put a finger—or paw—on it. The fact that the moon would be full in two days wasn’t helping matters, because the wolf was eager and didn’t want to wait, even though she’d let her out earlier. Hell, maybe because she’d let her out earlier.

  Over the last seven years, she’d gotten used to being able to smell each individual ingredient in a chocolate chip cookie. Deciphering this scent was proving more difficult. But Ben seemed all right for now, so Megan back-burnered the issue until she could think about it more fully.

  Pulling out her phone, she checked and was gratified to note that Alex actually had cancelled his appointments for the day. She was less pleased to see that he’d cleared his schedule for the entire week. This was a little too enterprising, and she shot him a glower, to which he replied with the innocent look he practiced in the mirror. She answered that with an eye-roll, and he smirked.

  “Master Alex, luncheon has arrived,” said Chambliss over the intercom. The local pizza and sandwich joint was always lightning-fast when Alex ordered in, because he tipped something like a hundred dollars per delivery.

  “Bring it down? Join us if you like.”

  “Thank you, sir, I will.”

  “Excellent. We have a lot to talk about.”

  Over food, Alex told them what he’d uncovered. “It’s weird. I’ve got industrial espionage in an area that Jarrett Biologicals doesn’t actually research, that I know of, which is apparently something else I need to take a closer look at—from a company that doesn’t do nanotech but wants it for this. So I need to dig deeper and figure out exactly who’s doing what and why.”

  Megan swallowed a bite of turkey club sandwich. “Give me some names and I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “In your phone,” Alex said through a mouthful of pizza.

  He had been busy, although talking with his mouth full was obviously a habit she’d need to work with him on, she thought with exasperated affection. Even her wolf was relaxed, mostly, although whatever was going on with Ben was still niggling at the back of her mind. Janni was feeding him a slice of pizza. They were awfully cute together, and for a second Megan envied them.

  Then she caught up with the conversation going on around her, and it was Alex regaling everyone with one of his favorite African photo safari stories, starring hyenas, and she decided she wouldn’t trade her life for anything.

  O O O

  Hans slammed the door of his house so hard it bounced off the latch the first time, and he had to turn back and close it carefully. The knob warped under his grip anyway, which no one would blame him for since he’d just gotten home from identifying his nephew’s body.

  He stomped over to his sideboard and poured himself a large vodka, regardless of the early hour, banging the bottle back down and glaring around the room. He knocked back about half of it and slumped into his favorite chair. Brooding about what he was going to do to Alex Jarrett.

  Idna came in and placed a cool hand on top of his head. “I’m so sorry, darling.”

  “Self-defense, they called it.” His teeth lengthened, and his claws extended and retracted. “He was shot with his own rifle—how could that be self-defense?”

  The phone rang. “What?” he barked into it.

  “We’ve … hit a snag,” said the man on the other end—Brandon Kincaid, Mike Reed’s lab assistant. Hadn’t they planned a meeting with Reed today?

  They had. Hans sincerely hoped that whatever this “snag” was wouldn’t interfere with that. “Have we.” It wasn’t a question. “Care to enlighten me?”

  “The compound has been used on a subject we can’t control.”

  “And why is that?” Hans’s voice was dangerously soft.

  “I don’t have any details yet. Just … it got used. I haven’t been able to ask him why; my calls are going into voicemail and his office is locked.”

  “Find out.” Hans missed the old days when you could slam the receiver down; pushing a button to hang up just didn’t give him the same satisfaction. “I’m surrounded by incompetents.”

  Idna had sunk down onto the dark brocade sofa, her hand over her face, breathing heavily, although she didn’t need to breathe at all. Alarmed, Hans leaped to his feet and rushed over to her, dropping to his knees next to the couch. “Idna?”

  She waved her fingers weakly. “Just a dizzy spell.”

  “Do I need to get you someone to eat? One of the servants would be more than happy to provide you a snack, or I could—” He stripped his sleeve back even as he spoke.

  “No, darling, thank you.” This worried him even more. She cupped his cheek. “But I think our timeline should be moved up. If it can be.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Anything for her. Anything, he thought, and picked up his phone as she left, dialing the number of one of the people he had in his pocket on the board of directors at Jarrett Biologicals.

  “I thought I told you not to ca
ll me,” Barnhardt said, obviously unhappy at being disturbed. “Especially on a Saturday.”

  “And a good day to you, too,” Ostheim said. “You people need to learn a better way to manage Jarrett. Because whatever you’re doing now isn’t working.”

  “Do you watch the news?” Barnhardt sounded impatient. “He has the controlling interest in the company. Nobody ‘manages’ him well but Megan Graham, and even she only succeeds about half the time. And no one manages her.”

  “No?” Ostheim drummed his fingers on the table and made a decision. “She has a secret you might do well to exploit.”

  “Miss Graham has never had a moment of impropriety. I don’t see what you could possibly say—”

  “Miss Graham is a lycanthrope, just as I am. It’s not impropriety, but it is a secret she wishes to keep from Alex Jarrett. A word in her ear at the right moment could be apropos.”

  A pause. “You have proof of this?”

  “Would I offer you the information if I thought you couldn’t use it? We don’t let outsiders in on our status without very good reason.” His very good reason was ill and resting up in their room.

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “See that you do.”

  O O O

  Mike Reed sat in his preternaturally neat office at Jarrett Biologicals, elbows resting on an uber-organized chrome and glass desk, massaging his temples. The pounding in his head beat a counterpoint to the pounding on his door that told him Brandon was worried.

  Mike had done some idiotic things in his career, but this took the cake, mashed it up, and fed it to a colony of fire ants. He had no idea what had possessed him to bring that particular compound with him when he got the call, other than Hasgrave’s urgent tone of voice on the phone coupled with the outrageous hour.

  And then to use it and leave? Mike was socially awkward at the best of times, and Jarrett was a force of nature who generally got exactly what he expected—in this case, he expected Mike to want to come back here and work on his latest project. And rather than argue the point, he’d done exactly that.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” He straightened two pens beside his mouse pad that were already perfectly aligned.

  But he hadn’t even hesitated. The guy had been dying on the table, and the standard stuff had already been fruitless. Except.…

  Side effects.

  Only they weren’t side effects. Side effects were unintended consequences of medication, whereas the effects here were not only intended, but the stated goal. The “side effects” of this thing were the benefits that had manifested in the OR.

  Which meant he’d better get Ben the hell out of there before the intended effects became evident or who knew what would happen?

  Well, no one. And that was a problem. Because he hadn’t tested this on people yet—and wasn’t sure he should, because it wasn’t meant for “people” in any case—but he had a bunch of scary-looking rabbits, both alive and in various stages of dissection, back at his house, and they’d been out of control and hard to kill, with fangs and claws like something out of a horror movie.

  Mike buried his head in his arms. He wasn’t sure, when all was said and done, that Ben would thank him for saving his life.

  Chapter Six

  Janni’s brow creased. Ben had snarfed down three huge roast beef sandwiches and two slices of stuffed-crust all-the-meats pizza and fallen asleep on her shoulder. “Not that I’m complaining about him being actually alive, but should he be this tired?” she asked Alex. “Because you got shot, too, and you’re not crashing in the middle of a sentence.”

  She could practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes, wondering how much he should tell her. “Ben’s injuries were … a little worse than mine, Janni,” he said slowly.

  She lifted an eyebrow, and his mouth did that thing it did when he hadn’t been completely honest and gotten caught. Alex had a terrible poker face.

  “Okay, a lot worse than mine.”

  “How bad was it?” she asked quietly.

  “How much do you want to know?”

  “Just give me the general picture. I don’t need details, but toss me a damn bone, Alex.”

  “Mine was pretty simple, through and out, right side, the bullet didn’t tumble or splinter a rib on its way in. And I hadn’t been tortured for two days first. Ben—” Alex paused for a second, and Janni found herself wishing she hadn’t asked. “Well, he probably would’ve died if Mike hadn’t gotten here when he did.” His mouth quirked again. “There it is.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed for a few seconds. She’d suspected, but not known. And she wasn’t sure that knowing was better. Kissing Ben’s hair, she squeezed him, not hard, not wanting to wake him up, but needing to feel him, whole and solid and alive, next to her.

  He stirred, and sighed, and opened his eyes with a lazy smile, the one he had just for her. “Hey. Did I fall asleep?”

  She nearly choked, because he’d almost been taken from her twice in two days, and how could he be this cavalier about it? “Yeah.”

  “You all right, honey?”

  She swallowed. “Fine.” More breathing. “Okay, maybe not.”

  He sat up and reversed their positions, wrapping his arms around her and kissing the top of her head. “You wigging out?”

  Everyone else busied themselves doing other things.

  “A little.” Sniffles. Dammit. She hated crying in front of him, because it stressed him out, especially when he was the cause of it. On the other hand, she’d determined long ago that crying over physical issues rather than psychiatric ones was more permissible. So. Here she was. Sniffling.

  “Because it’s okay for you to wig out. If it was you, I’d be a basket case. More of a basket case,” he said into her hair, and her heart twisted at how very self-aware he was. “No lie. You don’t have to be my Hermia, little and fierce, all the time.” He exhaled a shaky laugh. “Although it’s awesome when you are.”

  “Just … please be more careful? Please?”

  “Trust me, my life isn’t usually this exciting.” He kissed her again and put his hand over his heart. “I solemnly swear that my life will go back to boring. No more shooting people. Or getting shot. See? All better.”

  Never had Janni simultaneously wanted to kiss and kill him at the same time as much as at this moment. She settled for a not-so-gentle hug. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Alex’s cell phone rang. He looked at it before answering. “Yeah, Mike? What, no, he’s fine. You’re fine, right?” he said to Ben.

  “Considering everything? Yeah, better than fine,” Ben confirmed. Only Janni was close enough to notice the light tremor running through him, and she stroked his chest with the backs of her fingers in an attempt to soothe his always-unquiet nerves.

  “He’s fine. No funny side effects … should there be some? What did you use? I forgot to ask.…” He listened for a minute. “Really? Excellent … Sure, he can probably come by the lab in the next day or so … Okay, you could do that instead. Thanks, Mike, we owe you one.”

  “Funny side effects?” Janni asked warily.

  “Eh, Mike’s a worrywart. The stuff he used is perfectly safe. It was just a higher concentration than normal is all.” Alex shrugged. “He’s coming by later to check up on the results.”

  Janni snuggled into Ben’s side. “And you’re really okay, right, Ben? You wouldn’t shit me about it so I wouldn’t worry? Because I know you.”

  “Nah, honey.” He took his glasses off and waved them around. “Better by the minute. Seriously.” He dropped the pitch of his voice so only she could hear. “Physically, anyway. The other part—well.”

  She relaxed, somewhat, because the other part was old hat and routine and she could deal with that. “Okay, then.”

  O O O

  Megan wasn’t so sure, and she almost wished that Mike would show up sooner rather than later, because her wolf was more restless than usual and she didn’t know why. She noticed that Ben’s expres
sion got pensive when he put the glasses back on, and he took them off and hooked them over the collar of his T-shirt, rubbing the bridge of his nose and grabbing another slice of all-the-meats pizza, which her inner wolf approved heartily.

  Or maybe he was just tired again. Tired still. Megan had never had occasion to be on the receiving end of the nanotech that had gotten her boss out of one wild scrape after another, but she’d seen how it made Alex alternately ravenous and exhausted. Whatever this new stuff was, it apparently worked the same way.

  In spades. Ben nodded off practically in mid-bite. Janni grabbed the pizza before he dropped it, set it aside, and smoothed his hair back. Exhaling a trembling breath, she hopped off the bed. “You got a little girl’s room down here?” she asked.

  “Round the corner on the left,” Alex said, pointing.

  “Thanks.” She made her escape.

  Megan gave her a few minutes and followed, finding her sitting on the floor in the hall with her knees pulled into her chest and her arms over her head. “How’re you holding out?” Megan asked gently.

  Janni didn’t look up. “It’s hard, you know? Seeing him like that? And I don’t like crying in front of him because that makes things even harder on him than they already are.”

  “I know.” Megan sat beside her. “I’ve seen Alex hurt like that plenty of times. And I have to take care of him, because he won’t take care of himself, and there’s no one else to do it but me.” Of course, most of Alex’s wounds were self-inflicted—which didn’t actually mean they were easy to deal with.

  Janni looked at her from under her arm. “But you don’t love him. You say.” She scrubbed at her hair with her fingers. “It’s different.”

  “I don’t love him, and, yes, it’s different,” Megan acknowledged. “But I like him, and so it’s still hard.” Maybe if she could get Janni talking, it would ease the knot in her own chest. “How did you meet?”

  “Dad left us when I was four, and Mom moved us here from Texas when I was five. Ben and I went to high school together.” Janni huffed out a strangled laugh. “Not sweethearts or anything, just friends with the same people, and we weren’t even that close. After we graduated, he joined the Army and went to Afghanistan, and I went to college and majored in theater and English, of all the stupid-ass things. I was waitressing for a high-end caterer—still am, waiting for my ‘big break,’ like that’ll happen. I do some work at the PI firm on the side sometimes; I think my mom would like me to take over when she retires, honestly. I don’t know if I will.” Janni seemed to realize she was rambling and wrenched herself back on topic. “So Ben came back just devastated because his parents got nailed by a drunk driver while he’d been held prisoner by insurgents.”