by Bru Baker
“So you could arrest him? Fuck, Max. I love you, but you don’t exactly have his best interests at heart. You’d look at him and see a criminal.”
Max’s angry retort died on his lips. “You love me?”
Danny’s eyes widened, but he didn’t contradict him.
The door opened before Max could respond. A teenaged blur was on a crash course with the bed, and Max let go of Danny so he could grab Joss around the waist and change his trajectory so he didn’t collide with the bed and rattle Danny.
The kid was all elbows as he lashed out, struggling in Max’s hold. Danny was shouting the kids name and telling Max not to hurt him.
“I’m not trying to hurt him, I’m trying to stop him from hurting you.”
“Joss wouldn’t hurt me, Max.”
The kid stopped fighting, and Max cautiously released him. “Not on purpose, but if I hadn’t grabbed him he’d have jumped on the bed. Do you want Phil to have to set your bones again?”
Danny let out a sound that was close to a whimper. “Definitely not.”
“Are you okay?” Joss asked, his voice thick. “There was so much blood, and you passed out. I didn’t even know Weres could pass out.”
Danny’s smile was weak but genuine. “Learn something new every day, huh, kid?”
“Fuck, Danny. I told you they weren’t kidding. I told you.”
Joss’s voice broke, and he knelt by Danny’s bed, head down. Danny couldn’t reach him, so Max stepped up and put a hand on the kid’s back, rubbing small circles while he sobbed. Danny met Max’s eyes, and Max had no problem reading the pleading in them. Danny was still worried Max was going to arrest Joss. Like he’d be worried about that when Danny had been half dead in that bed twenty minutes ago.
Guilt and misery were coming off the kid in waves so strong they choked out the air in the room. Max trusted Danny’s judgment on Joss, but even if he didn’t, it was clear that the kid had been just as surprised by the attack as Danny had been. If the witches had Joss’s skin, then it was a case of coercion. Joss couldn’t be blamed for what he’d done. He was just a scared kid.
Of course, Max would have a hell of a time convincing the DA that Joss shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions. He’d have to ask Uncle Al to make some calls and quietly get the evidence against Joss dismissed. The kid didn’t belong in prison.
“Joss, c’mon,” Danny murmured. “Sh. We’re okay.”
“What about all the other people in the diner?” Joss asked, sniffling. “What about the people they’ve already killed? I don’t know what to do, Danny. I can’t leave, but I don’t want to do this.”
Max squeezed Joss’s shoulder. “You don’t have to. You know the Werewolf Tribunal? They’re sending Enforcers to help me bust the witches. All you need to do is tell me whatever you can remember about them.”
Joss’s eyes were red and puffy when he looked up. “They’ll burn my skin.”
“Not if we find it first. The Enforcers are very good at what they do, Joss. Do you have any idea where they’re keeping it?”
“I know exactly where they’re keeping it,” he said with a snarl. “It’s warded a million times over. No one gets in there without the coven’s permission.”
Danny scooted up on the pillows with a groan. “Joss, this isn’t helping. You need to answer Max.”
“Actually, I think it’ll be better if we do this formally,” Max said. “Do you think you can give a statement, Joss? And keep magic out of it? Something we can use as a reason to get a search warrant.”
“They’ll fry you and your warrant,” Joss said.
“Not if the Enforcers get in there first and disable the wards,” Max said. He’d never worked with them before, but Jackson assured him there wasn’t much they weren’t capable of.
Joss sat back on his heels. “It’s not my fault if your boyfriend gets killed,” he warned Danny.
Max held his tongue. The kid was scared out of his mind, and if being a little shit made him feel like he had more control over the situation, then so be it. It was something Max saw often on the streets. Joss would cooperate in the end, but he was going to put up enough of a fight that he had plausible deniability when someone accused him of being a rat.
“Do I need to call a lawyer for him?”
“I’m not looking at him as a suspect anymore,” Max said. “We’ll cut a deal. I’m sure the DA will agree that it’s more important to go after the big fish.”
“I want his record sealed,” Danny said. “Something like this will follow him for the rest of his life if we’re not careful.”
“I’ll let the DA know. That’s not my call.”
“Max—”
“It’s okay, Danny,” Joss said quietly. “Whatever happens, happens. As long as the Enforcers stop the coven, at least we’ll all be safe.”
“I’m going to take him in later so we can formally question him. He’s a ward of the state, so his social worker will need to be there before we can interview him. Right now I’m taking him to meet Jackson so we can talk. Oscar doesn’t know who he is, so I’ll ask him to stay here in the waiting room while I run home a kid who was in the accident with you. Sound like a plan?”
“If the witches come for me, Oscar won’t be able to stop them,” Danny said. “Why don’t you have him go back to the precinct?”
“I don’t want him digging around without me. As for the coven, Phil’s here, and so is Ray. They’ve probably already called reinforcements. They’ll take care of you.”
He could tell from the tilt of Danny’s mouth that he didn’t like that, but Max didn’t care. His mate had almost been killed today. He was allowed to be a little overprotective. And it wasn’t unwarranted. They’d gone after Danny in a public place once today already.
“I’ll have Phil text me with updates about when you can go home,” Max said. He leaned in and kissed Danny softly. “I don’t want you to be alone until this is over. You can stay with me, and if I’m not home, you can stay with someone else.”
Danny pursed his lips but nodded.
“Okay. Joss, we’re going to Alpha Connoll’s compound. Will you be comfortable there? We could meet somewhere else, but if we do it there we won’t have to worry about eavesdroppers.”
Joss shrugged. “Selkies are nomadic. It doesn’t matter whose territory we’re in. Not to us, at least.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I DON’T need a blanket,” Danny protested. He sighed when the tiny woman armed with itchy wool glared at him. “Thank you, Auntie.”
She spread the handmade blanket over him, taking care to tuck him in. Danny didn’t even know her name, but he’d learned that all older women in the Torres Pack were addressed as auntie. Her face had lost a bit of its scowl when he’d used the honorific, and Danny was left relieved he’d escaped death for a second time in as many days.
Phil had kept him in the hospital overnight, but he’d released him into Sloane’s care this morning. She’d brought him to Max’s parents’ house, since she couldn’t miss her residency orientation.
That had been hours ago, and there was still no word from Max. He’d talked to him late last night, and Max said he was waiting for Jackson to get permission from the Werewolf Tribunal to move in on the coven. The raid was happening today, but Danny was in the dark about the details.
He hated that. He felt so helpless.
His mother had come to see him in the hospital, which had been a shock. She’d cried over him, which had been an even bigger surprise. Danny had never felt so loved. She hadn’t argued when he told her he planned to go to Max’s parents’ house to recover. There was no way his father would allow him into the town house in Manhattan, and he couldn’t ask Sloane or his mother to stay with him at his apartment. Not with the coven still on the loose. Max had made sure his Second was there to accompany Danny home. Bert had slept in the room next to Danny’s last night.
Joss had slept on the floor right next to the bed. The poor kid was traumat
ized, and Danny didn’t know how to help him. He’d have to get him a new therapist. Maybe Harris or Tate, since they were Connoll Pack members and Joss wouldn’t have to edit himself like he would with a human.
“There are like, a ton of people here,” Joss said as he wandered in with a plate full of food. He sat near Danny’s feet, his weight pulling the blanket even tighter around Danny.
“It’s a big Pack. And a big family too.”
Danny’s head was pounding, but he’d refused when Ray had tried to carry him upstairs to one of the bedrooms. He didn’t want to be packed away upstairs. He wanted to be down here where they couldn’t hide updates about the raid from him.
“Phil said you needed quiet. Are you sure you don’t want to go take a nap? You’re not supposed to be straining your brain after you scrambled it.”
He’d been given strict instructions not to do anything strenuous for at least twenty-four hours. Officially it was more like seventy-two, but Phil had given him alternate instructions when the nurse was out of earshot.
His bones had healed, but a severe concussion took more time, apparently. Danny felt like fresh hell, but at least he’d been able to leave. Phil was handling the fallout of his miraculous recovery by telling everyone that Danny was a lucky bastard who’d come in covered in other people’s blood. Danny wasn’t sure how far he was going to get with that, but thanks to the fabricated reports, there was no medical reason to keep him aside from the concussion, and that could be monitored at home as long as he had someone with him.
He had about fifteen someones, which was fourteen more than he’d like. It was sweet the way the Pack kept dropping food by for him, but he could do without the revolving door of concerned well-wishers.
Mrs. Torres insisted that Joss stay with them while his social worker figured out where to place him. The group home he’d been living in wouldn’t take him back, and there weren’t many foster families who’d take on a seventeen-year-old runaway with a troubled past.
“I don’t need a nap. I just need people to whisper,” Danny said.
Joss shot him a look of concern. “They are whispering,” he said. “This is why you should go upstairs. Ray said the bedrooms are soundproofed.”
“I want to stay down here,” Danny said firmly.
“I’ll come let you know if they hear from Max,” Joss said, ignoring him. “I bet he’ll text you first anyway. If he does, I’ll come read it to you right away.”
Joss patted his pocket. Phil had confiscated Danny’s phone, which had also survived the crash. He wasn’t allowed to read or use any type of screen for the next two days. That meant he couldn’t even distract himself with a game of Candy Crush. All he could do was sit and wait to hear how the raid on the coven’s warehouse went when Max finally called.
The Enforcers usually worked alone, but they’d let Max and Jackson come along. Danny wished they hadn’t. He didn’t want to think about all the ways the raid could go wrong.
“He seems pretty great,” Joss said. “Max, I mean. He knows his stuff. And you should have heard him on the phone insisting all the charges against me be dropped by the DA. It was wild.”
That had gone well at least. Danny was going to have to work overtime to help Joss’s social worker find a placement for him, but that had to wait until his jailers gave him back his phone and laptop.
“And Oscar is funny. Dude’s got jokes.”
Now that he was actually focused on him, Danny realized Joss was babbling because he was nervous. He’d told them where the coven kept the selkie skins they’d stolen, and he had to trust that Max would honor his promise to rescue them. It wasn’t only his—Joss said there were at least a dozen pelts in the warded vault.
“What’s Oscar doing now?”
“Ah,” Joss said, looking away. “He’s probably at the station or something.”
Danny’s senses were still out of whack thanks to his concussion, but it didn’t take super hearing for the lie to be obvious.
“Or something, huh?”
Joss wrinkled his nose. “Max told him. He kind of had to, I guess? Oscar said he had fangs and flashing eyes on the drive over to the hospital.”
Shit. Poor Max. Like he needed more stress right now.
“How did Oscar take it?”
“Better than most humans would,” Joss said with a shrug. “He didn’t run screaming when Max flashed his eyes at him on purpose. That would make 90 percent of people wet their pants.”
It sure would. Especially since Max was an Alpha.
“So where is he really?”
“Sitting in a car a few blocks from the warehouse monitoring the police radio so he can give them a heads-up if anyone calls the cops on them.”
That was smart. Danny relaxed his death grip on the blanket. Having Oscar watching their back was a good thing.
“They’ll be okay,” Joss said, pasting on a brave smile. “Have you met that Jackson guy? He’s built like a tree. He used to be an Enforcer. If the rest of them are built like him, those witches don’t stand a chance.”
Danny smiled because it seemed like Joss needed him to. “I’ve met him. And his husband, who’s a great guy.”
Joss rolled his eyes. “He’s like twice my age. I wasn’t perving on him.”
Danny had seen Jackson. There was no way Joss hadn’t perved just a little. Hell, Danny had perved a lot, both on Jackson and his husband Harris. They were a gorgeous couple. He’d been jealous of them when they joined the Pack. Not that he’d cared that Alpha Connoll had brought in an outsider for the Second position, but because Jackson and Harris seemed so effortlessly in love. It was something he’d been sure he’d never experience, yet here he was.
Joss sat in silence with him for a few minutes, quiet but still managing to be the loudest thing in the room with his fidgeting and his heavy sighs. Danny took a minute and centered himself, like he always did before a therapy session. Joss clearly needed to talk, and Danny wouldn’t mind taking some distance from his own brain right now.
“How about we talk about what happened with the coven?”
Joss gave him a sidelong glance. “How about no?”
Danny held up his hands. “Hey, it’s up to you. Just think about it, okay? You’ve been through something traumatic, and you might be struggling with how to process it. I’m here anytime, or if you’d rather see someone else, I can get you in touch with some great psychologists who specialize in Supe patients.”
“I’m not the one who almost died! They made me rob some apartments and a few warehouses. No one hurt me.”
Danny waited, letting the silence stretch on. Joss broke about forty seconds in.
“They didn’t like, mistreat us. We had a place to stay, and they made sure we had food. We could come and go. I wasn’t—I’m not the victim here, Danny. I’m the criminal.”
Danny made a soft sound. “Would you have stolen things for the coven if they hadn’t taken your skin?”
Joss swallowed hard. “No.”
“You said you could come and go, but did they threaten you with anything if you didn’t come back?”
“If we missed check-in or we weren’t there for a job, they said they’d destroy our skins. There was this guy, he was older, like, older than you. He chickened out and didn’t go into the warehouse with the others. When we got back they brought out his skin and held a branding iron to it. I’ve never seen someone in so much pain.” Joss blinked away tears. “After that we listened, and no one fucked around. Not the selkies, at least. There were other Supes. I don’t know how they controlled them. I’m glad I don’t know.”
Danny wanted to wrap him up in a hug, but he had rules about contact when he had his therapy hat on. He couldn’t blur the line—he had to be impassive or he couldn’t help them. Some of the things his kids told him in session were horrifying. They had to trust that when they ended the session, he’d be fun-loving, happy Danny for them. Breaking down in the middle of a session and asking for a hug wasn’t an option.
“Do you think you’ll feel it?” he asked instead. “When they free your skin? Are you connected to it?”
“It’s not like I can tell whenever someone touches it. They’ve had it for weeks, and I’ve never felt anything. I’d definitely be able to tell if anything bad happened to it. The guy they punished—”
“Tortured,” Danny cut in, keeping his voice mild. “Words have power, Joss. They weren’t punishing him for misbehaving, they were torturing him. There’s a difference. Nothing that happened to any of you while you were at the mercy of the coven was your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. The things they made you do—you were surviving, Joss. You were doing exactly what anyone would have done in your place. You were staying alive.”
Joss’s inhale was shaky, but he continued his story with a firm voice. “That guy, he got sick. After they’d taken his skin away again and put it with the others, he was still in a lot of pain. And then he had a fever and chills. They took him away on the third day, and he didn’t come back. I think they might have killed him.”
Danny hated that Joss had to live with that memory. He’d seen enough grief and had enough heartbreak in his short life—it ate Danny up inside to know Joss would be haunted by this too.
“The Enforcers are going to make sure the coven is brought to justice,” Danny said with more certainty than he felt.
“And I’ll still be a homeless fuckup with a criminal record,” Joss muttered.
They both jumped a little when Max’s mother walked into the room with a tray of cookies and two big glasses of milk.
“I thought you boys might like a snack,” she said, putting the tray on the table. She ran a hand across Danny’s forehead like she was checking for a fever, then ruffled his hair and sat next to Joss.
“I know you two have a lot on your minds right now, but I might be able to lessen the burden a bit. Danny knows this, Joss, but you probably don’t. My brother is the mayor.” She folded her hands in her lap and leaned forward. “He has an ego the size of city hall. I’ve always hated politics, but Al is a pretty good egg, if you can forgive his abundance of self-esteem. He made a few calls for us, and since Sam and I both had extensive background checks during Al’s campaign, he was able to move the paperwork along for us to become a certified foster family. We’ll still have to do a home visit and an interview, but the state is allowing us to provide an emergency home for you while all that happens, Joss. If you’d like to stay here, that is. We hope you’ll say yes, but I don’t want to pressure you. Sam and I are suffering from an empty nest, and I’d love to have someone to feed and fawn over in the house again.”
