by Selena Scott
She took the opportunity and rolled out of bed. “I’m going to scrounge up some coffee before your head gets any bigger.”
“It’s okay my love.” He rolled to his knees and placed a large finger over her lips. “You don’t even need to say a word.”
She batted his hand away with a roll of her eyes and left his laughter behind as she slipped on one of his sweatshirts and a bunchy pair of his socks and headed downstairs.
It was barely dawn, so she wasn’t surprised to be the only one in the kitchen. She was surprised, however, once the coffee was percolating, to see the shadow of someone on the front porch, pacing back and forth. The shadow looked familiar to her. She crept forward, peering out the side window.
She frowned. She knew exactly who it was. And she wanted to know why the hell he was at a client’s house at the crack of dawn. And she really wanted to know why the hell he looked so agitated.
***
Quill jolted when Dawn’s front door swung open unexpectedly. He hadn’t slept in almost twenty four hours. His fight with Dawn last night had kept him from falling asleep. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the look on her face as she’d realized that she’d been a burden to him this past year.
At least, that’s what he’d thought she’d been thinking.
In just a few cruel words he’d reduced their budding friendship into nothing more than a professional obligation and he’d watched her practically crumble. He’d never felt worse about himself than he had in those moments and considering the amount of guilt he’d been grappling with recently, that was really saying something. He’d made her feel stupid about assuming they were friends. Hell, it probably counted as gaslighting her. He had, after all, made her feel like something that was obviously and completely true had all been in her own mind.
Even though he didn’t have to be here, even though everything would be easier if he just left it alone, let their friendship fracture and fall away, even though he was proud and driven and concerned almost exclusively with his own survival, he was somehow standing on her front porch, ready to eat crow. He was ready to ask her forgiveness. To tell her that he’d been wrong. That they were truly friends. That he’d been mad and tired and exasperated when he’d told her that she was nothing more than a mentee to him.
But now, here he was blinking at his boss who had sex hair and no pants on. And yet somehow she still looked imperious and in-control as she eyed him up and down.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
He could have asked her the same thing —though the answer was absurdly obvious— but Quill preferred his balls to remain on the outside of his body and she had a distinctly ball-busty look in her eye right at that second.
“Um.” He cast about for a reasonable excuse as to why he was here practically before the sun had even risen. Last night I lied about my feelings for a client in order to keep her at arm’s length so that when I trick her into getting abducted into a semi-legal government program for the rest of her life I don’t feel too guilty about it. Yeah… no. Somehow the truth seemed just a touch too heavy for this early in the morning. Not to mention the fact that Diana was the last person on this earth he would ever confess that particular sin to. She cared so freaking much about the welfare of shifters that she’d probably drag him down to the police station by his tongue. “I have a meeting with Dawn.”
She made a show of looking over her shoulder at the obviously empty room. “Does she know that?”
“I got here a little earlier than expected.”
“It’s barely five am.”
“Yeah.”
Diana crossed her arms over her chest, making the large sweatshirt she was wearing ride a few inches up her legs. Good god, Quill could barely believe it, but he was blushing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed. But seeing his boss in morning-after clothes was downright embarrassing him. He’d never felt more like a kid in the principal’s office than he did right at that very second.
“You make a habit of showing up at your mentee’s houses before the rooster even crows?”
Wordlessly, he shook his head. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the lack of coffee or the fact that Dawn’s wounded expression was playing on a loop in his brain right then, but Quill couldn’t think of a single freaking thing to say to Diana right then. Instead, he just let his eyes drop to the wooden planks of the front porch like a guilty child.
Diana sighed and stepped forward, out onto the porch with him. She let the door close behind her. “Quill,” she said quietly. “Is there something going on that you should tell me about?”
He lifted his eyes to her. For the first time since he was a kid, since he’d been brought into the internment camps, Quill actually wanted to tell someone about the Director. As a matter of survival, he’d always known that he had to keep everything about the Director a complete and utter secret. He could not, under any circumstances reveal that he secretly worked for the Director. And he certainly couldn’t reveal anything about what the Director’s program actually did to the shifters he recruited. But right now, looking into Diana’s familiarly stern face, Quill found himself wanting to spill his guts. Of every person in his life, he truly believed that Diana might actually help him. She was a hard ass for sure, but everyone who knew her even a little bit knew exactly how gigantic her heart was. She’d bust her ass to help him. If he told her what was going on with him, there was nothing she wouldn’t do to make sure he was all right.
But, of course, the visual of the Director administering euthanasia to another shifter flashed through Quill’s head. The Director had no qualms about killing those who betrayed him. And he had the weapons at his disposal. It wasn’t overkill that Watt had fled the city so quickly. Quill wasn’t surprised to hear that he was living roughshod in the forest, off the grid and looking over his shoulder.
Quill had been eighteen the first time he’d seen the Director murder a shifter. And he’d seen it four times since then. Quill was useful to the Director, sure, but only so long as he did his job and kept his mouth shut. He was under no illusions that the Director wouldn’t kill him dead if he caught so much as a whiff of disloyalty.
Quill snapped his mouth shut. There was no telling Diana. No reason to even dream about it. No one could help him. He’d signed on the dotted line when he was a teenager and there was nothing to be done for it. He was in for life. And his life would only be as long as the Director was willing to let it be. The facts were that the Director held the end of the leash around Quill’s neck. Up to now, he’d enjoyed a particularly long leash. Just so happened that Dawn was just out of reach, the bonds of his life choking him out when he tried to reach her.
“Something going on?” He played dumb. “No. Of course not.”
She stared at him, seeing way too much. “You’re sure there’s nothing going on between you and Dawn?”
Quill almost sagged in relief. Oh. She thought that whatever was going on had to do with him and Dawn. He gave himself half a second to wish that his biggest problem were a crush on a client. Wouldn’t that be a luxury. But no. His biggest problem was being murdered by an ex government official.
“No,” he answered honestly. “There’s nothing going on between us. I mean… it’s all above board.”
Diana shifted on her feet and let her crossed arms fall. “Look, I’m obviously the pot calling the kettle black, here.” She pointed to her sweatshirt, which was most likely Orion’s. “But if you’re involved with a client, it’s just better if you tell me.”
He said nothing.
She tried again. “The no fraternization rule maybe doesn’t have to be as strict as the staff handbook makes it out to be, all right? Phoenix and Ida have made me see that romance doesn’t necessarily mean that something sneaky is going on, all right? If you and Dawn are in love, you don’t have to hide it—“
He physically jolted at the implication that he might be in love with Dawn. An almost crazed laugh burst out of him at the though
t. Because wouldn’t that just be perfect? One more layer of shit on the shit sandwich of his life? To roll over and realize that not only was Dawn his friend, but that he was in love with her? To realize that he could never, ever be with her? To have to choose between his own life and the freedom of the woman he loved?
Yeah. No.
His brain absolutely shut out the idea of being in love with Dawn. Not possible. Did not compute. His body full-on rejected it. If he were in love with her, his life would be one million times worse than it already was. He was not going there. Ever.
“No,” he eventually choked out. “No. We’re not in love.”
Her eyes narrowed as she observed his reaction. “Okay. So, you’re just hooking up then?”
“Diana, I swear, everything is kosher between me and Dawn.” He rushed to cut off Diana’s line of thinking. He did not need her planting ideas of love in his head and he did not need her planting ideas of hooking up in his head. “I mean, we’re friends. I’m better friends with her than any other mentee I’ve had before and yesterday I was kind of a dick to her. I’m here to apologize. But seriously, we haven’t screwed with any rules and we’re not going to. I swear.”
Diana bit her lip. “And everything else is all right with you? If it’s not Dawn, is it another mentee? You’ve just seemed a little off lately and I want to make sure you’re okay.”
His brain, so sluggish just a minute ago, seemed to work at quadruple speed. He realized that he was going to have to initiate part of the plan he’d worked out with the Director. This was the part of the plan designed to throw Diana, a sure liability, off the scent. He just wished he had the paperwork to toss onto her desk the way he and the Director had planned. “I’m just preoccupied because there’s this project I’ve been working on for the center and I’m stressed that it’s gonna fall through.”
“Project?”
“Yeah. I heard about this government grant we could apply for and I’ve been working on the application a ton but I’m really stressed we won’t get it.”
“What kind of grant?”
“It’s actually a federally funded medical research project. They’re looking for participants. Shifter participants.”
She lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “A federally funded medical research project that is specifically looking for shifters to apply? Quill, you of all people know that the US government hasn’t been particularly kind to shifters in the past. I’m kind of shocked that you’d be interested in signing anyone up for a program like that.”
Diana was a little too sharp to make this easy on Quill. If he’d been a different man, who hadn’t been tortured and trained into being the Director’s perfect little mercenary, he might have had a bead of sweat leaking down his spine. “Normally I’d agree with you. But apparently it’s part of that whole image rehabilitation thing the government is trying to do. You know, that initiative where they’re building housing and subsidizing car loans for shifters.”
She squinted at him. “I’m familiar with that initiative. But I don’t exactly understand how ‘medical research’ could possibly fall into the same category as free housing for shifters.”
“Apparently, if you’re selected for the program, the government will wipe out any existing medical debt you might have.”
Diana’s eyebrows raised up immediately. Quill saw, with a leap in his gut, that he’d piqued her interest. Shifters were the demographic with the most medical debt in this country. Because six years ago, when the internment camps had been shut down, it wasn’t exactly like any of those shifters had had medical insurance. And most of them had been so malnourished, so roughed up and sick that they’d basically been ferried straight from the internment camps to the hospital. Where they’d been tended to and promptly saddled with crippling medical debt. What a welcome home gift.
This federally funded program would have been something the shifter community could have desperately needed. If it had been real. Unfortunately, it was just a dummy program that the Director had cooked up, hoping to lure shifters back into his laboratory. When the Director had first pitched this idea to Quill as the initial part of the plan to get his hands on the Wolf siblings, Quill hadn’t thought much about it. In fact, he’d rather tepidly admired the Director’s guile.
But now, seeing the light in Diana’s eyes as she considered the opportunities a program like this could afford shifters, Quill suddenly felt sick, a stone turning over in his gut.
Don’t think about it, he commanded himself.
“Wow,” Diana mused. “Can you send me the information on it? There are so many clients we could submit for this! It could change so many futures! This is incredible.”
“Actually,” Quill cut in, sticking to the script. “They only accept three applicants per organization. I think because they’re anticipating such a big applicant pool and they want to get started as soon as they can.”
“Only three.” She looked disappointed. “You said that you’d already started the application process. Which three clients were you thinking of submitting?”
Quill cleared his throat and nodded toward the house. “Phoenix, Orion, and Dawn.”
“Wow,” she said again, her eyes clouding over. Due to an accident with a forest fire the year before, the Wolf siblings certainly had accrued a significant amount of medical debt. It would take them decades to pay it all off.
Diana’s eyes cut to Quill and he saw what he thought might just be a lick of suspicion. “What kind of medical research are we talking about here?”
“The paperwork outlines it. The research is mostly in pursuit of understanding the transition that a shifter’s cardiovascular system goes through during the shift. Lots of monitors and wires, and they definitely specify that they need shifters who are well in control of their shifts.”
“Huh.” Diana shifted on her feet again. “Well, I guess just send email me the information on it and I’ll help any way that I can.”
“You got it.” Quill rocked on his feet and turned toward the stairs, headed back toward his car.
“Quill,” Diana called. “Aren’t you going to talk to Dawn?”
He was already halfway down the walkway. Talking to Dawn was what he’d come here to do. Stay! Something inside of him screamed. Stay! Talk to her. Work this out. Let her know how much she means to you.
But it was for that exact reason that he took another step away. “No. No, you were right. It’s too early. I’ll see her later.”
The stone in his gut turned over once again. He’d come to this house this morning to make amends with Dawn. Instead, he’d initiated part one of the plan. There was no turning back now. Nor should he turn back. His only path through this was the way he’d already planned. He couldn’t waver now. It was a matter of survival.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Orion sat very still in the chair and let a woman hold a knife to his Adam’s apple.
“Orion,” Wren laughed, bringing the straight razor back to her hip and laughing at the expression on his face. “You’d think by now you’d be used to me giving you a shave, I’ve done it every week for like six months.”
“I know,” he said, cracking his neck to one side and then the other. “I’ll just never get used to baring my neck to a weapon. It’s freaky. Must be all those years as a hunter. I’m not comfortable showing weakness.”
His friend laughed again. “Then why the hell do you keep coming back to my salon? Just shave on your own!”
“Because you’re good at it. You can do that blendy thingy with my beard and my sideburns.”
She rolled her eyes. “God save me from vain shifters.”
He snorted. “Last time I checked, you were both a shifter and fairly vain yourself.”
Wren stuck her tongue out. “Not a crime to look good.”
Orion cocked his head and watched her in the mirror. Wren wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she was certainly attractive. She always had a new hairstyle, and a new hair color. She had piercings and tattoos and a thi
n face, like a fox. Though her shifted animal was a raven. Her body was long and thin and athletic. He’d mostly been joking when he’d called her vain, but now that he really looked at her, he could see that she did take a great deal of care with her appearance. Maybe she didn’t exactly look mainstream, but she was put together, in a certain sense of the word.
“Wren, why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
She frowned at him, one eyebrow inching up toward her hairline. “Tip your head back, let’s get the shaving part done.”
He followed directions, not because he was any less nervous about the sharp blade against his jugular, but because at the end of the day she was his friend and he trusted her. He waited until she was wiping the shaving cream off with a hot towel to try again. “You’re not going to answer my question?”
“It’s a stupid question.”
“It’s a genuine one. I’m not trying to be rude. I’m just curious.”
Her posture went from suspiciously rigid to kind of deflated. “I don’t usually talk about this kind of stuff. Not with anyone but Ida, that is.”
“Oh. Well. Am I being nosy?” He asked because he genuinely didn’t know. Growing up as a wolf, only shifting into his human form every now and then, he hadn’t gleaned much human culture. He didn’t always know when he was pushing too far. In Orion’s eyes, if he was curious about something, he should ask about it. Simple as that.
“No. Yes.” Wren laughed. “We’re friends. I guess it’s okay for you to ask stuff like that. So, yeah. The short answer is that you have to trust someone for long enough to make them your boyfriend. And that hasn’t happened for me in a really, really long time.”
He mulled that over. He hadn’t particularly thought of Wren as distrustful, but he had to admit that she wasn’t exactly open when it came to personal details of her life. “So, you’ve had boyfriends in the past?”
A dark look came across her face, making her brow furrow. “Just one. A long time ago. Speaking of boyfriends, how are things going with Diana?”
