by E. A. Copen
“That was stupid,” Bo said as he pulled off his clean shirt to try and staunch the bleeding. “Stupid girl! I raised you better.” He knitted his eyebrows together and lifted the shirt, eyes traveling a few inches over. Bo was realizing what she already had. If she’d been a hair quicker, the shot might have hit her in the chest and been much more serious.
Nic hovered a short distance away with a white box in his hands. “First aid kit.” He was smart to announce himself to Bo, whose teeth already looked more like fangs. Bo was losing it. That was unlike him.
“I can help,” Nic offered.
Bo turned to snarl at Nic, his eyes gleaming bright gold.
Nic raised his chin. “I’m not going to hurt her. You’ll do better protecting her if you’re not shin-deep in her blood. I’ve got experience, old man. Won’t be the first bullet wound I’ve patched up.”
Bo looked back down at her. He was on the cusp of the Change, which would make him completely useless. The only reason he’d held back must have been because of Nic. Changing would take fifteen minutes at least and he’d be vulnerable during that time. Bo probably didn’t want to be vulnerable in front of someone he apparently considered a threat.
Jackie closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her teeth. “I’ll be fine,” she ground out. “You need to go upstairs.” She didn’t say why, but he’d understand. Upstairs, he could Change without the added burden of looking vulnerable.
Relief appeared on the edges of his hard features. “I’ll go make up your bed, then.”
With Bo gone, she could finally breathe. She let Nic help her to sit up, but kept Bo’s shirt clamped over both sides of the wound as firm as she could manage.
Nic dropped to his knees next to her. “Let’s see.” He peeled the shirt away. Blood poured from the hole in a steady beat.
Jackie turned away. The blood didn’t leave her squeamish so much as the smell of it made her hungry. “You said you had experience with this.”
“I’ve patched up one or two in my time. I’m not as good as a doctor or nurse, but I can manage. Unless you’d rather I take you to the hospital?”
Nic studied her with even eyes. Big, pretty blue eyes with streaks of storm gray. How unusual, those eyes. And how strange that she would notice. The shirt she held to her wound nearly slipped away until she tightened her grip.
Focus, Jackie. Going to the hospital would mean reporting the incident to the police. There would be paperwork and investigations. The pack would have to hand Tara over to human courts for prosecution. That was the way American justice was supposed to work, but it would always feel open-ended to the wolves unless they dealt with it themselves. Besides, because Jackie was a werewolf, the crime would get turned over to BSI. Barrow didn’t have a BSI presence, so someone would have to fly up from Anchorage. It’d be a big, stinking mess, one that would only distract from and slow down their progress.
“No.” She shook her head and immediately regretted it because it made her dizzier.
“Good. This is going to hurt.” Nic pressed into the shirt a lot harder. She couldn’t stop the growl from rising in her throat. “Easy.” His voice was gentle even if his touch wasn’t. “We’ll have to stitch this up. Provided I do my job right, and you don’t get exposed to infection, you’ll be back at full strength tomorrow.”
Mandy, the omega Bo had seemed so fascinated with, closed her eyes and started to hum and rock back and forth gently. Jackie closed her eyes and focused on the sound of Mandy’s voice. She was a little off-pitch, but there was a purity about her humming, a comforting innocence that made Jackie wonder if she’d ever been naïve like that. No, not naïve. This girl was innocent. Maybe that was why Bo had chosen to use her to get to Nic.
“You shouldn’t let him get to you.” Jackie’s voice was rough. She hadn’t even meant to say it. Dammit all, it was the lightheadedness getting to her, making her talkative.
Nic stopped stitching her up a moment. “Who?”
“Bo.” Her eyes fluttered open to see him hard at work, hovering over her. Nic had managed to keep himself from losing it, which was somewhat impressive. This much blood should have made him feel as she did. Hungry. But his eyes were still that striking shade of blue-gray.
He averted his eyes as soon as she looked into them. “He’s rather used to getting his way, isn’t he?”
“You might say that. Then again, all of us are. All of us dominant wolves.”
He tugged tighter on the thread he was lacing through her arm and then cut and tied it off. A little smile crept over Nic’s lips. “I’m not sure he remembers me. This isn’t the first time we met. If he does, though, there’s a good reason he’s being such a…”
“A dick?”
Nic chuckled and turned her arm over to start on the other side. “Yeah, maybe. But I’d probably still be grumpy ten years later if some young pup filled my shoes with snow on the coldest night of the year.”
She wanted to laugh, but her arm hurt too bad and she had to grit her teeth as he finished stitching. It wasn’t often that someone got the best of Bo like that, but anyone who did wouldn’t be someone he’d forget. No wonder Bo was being so harsh on him.
The werewolf she’d saved earlier inched into view, his head hunched low. “Sorry. That bullet shoulda been for me.”
“Vince Welsh,” Nic said as an introduction without looking up. “My third.”
“I was more worried that if I didn’t do something, Bo would.” She turned back to study Nic. “He would have killed her without a second thought. He still might.”
Vince’s eyes traveled from her to his alpha. “What are you going to do with her? Tara, I mean.”
Nic finished stitching up Jackie’s arm and started wrapping a bandage around it before he answered. “She’s human, which means I should turn her over to the human authorities, but that’s a headache I don’t want to deal with. Tara’s angry and upset and she’s well within her rights to feel that way. She’s just lost her mate. The fact that she’s human doesn’t lessen the blow any. Ultimately, the worst thing she did was injure our guest here. Nobody died.”
“I’ve been in worse scrapes,” Jackie confirmed. It was true. She’d been shot before and in a lot worse places, though it’d been a long time. It was one of the reasons she didn’t like to go out on assignments for Lou anymore. Working from behind a screen was safer.
“That doesn’t mean I can just let this go, either.” Nic pulled away the bloody shirt that he’d draped over her leg as he worked and wadded it. “We’ll need to immobilize that arm. I’ll call Donna and see if she can get us a sling, but in the meantime, we’ll have to improvise.” He scanned the immediate area, pressing his lips together before he sighed and grabbed the bottom hem of his shirt to pull it over his head.
Jackie tried not to notice how nice he looked without a shirt. Most werewolves did look pretty nice under all the clothes. It was a side effect of being what they were. The Change took a lot of energy and burned a lot of calories. Combined with a naturally high metabolism, a high-protein diet and lots of running, it was no wonder. Nic didn’t have the physique of fitness magazines, which were airbrushed and photoshopped anyway, but he certainly wasn’t hard to look at.
Nic folded and draped the long-sleeved shirt around her arm, tying it off behind her head to keep it in place. “That’ll have to do for now. We’ll rig up something better in a few, but it’d be best if you don’t move it too much.”
She frowned down at her arm. Since none of the silver had been left behind, the skin had already begun to knit itself back together, though it’d be a slow process, longer than Nic had assumed maybe. Without a pack to draw on for healing, she was at a disadvantage. “About Tara.”
“Yeah?”
Jackie met Nic’s eyes, her tone grave. “Buy her a plane ticket out of this town. First plane to anywhere. Get her gone, Nic. I don’t trust Bo not to hurt her.”
The muscles around Nic’s jaw tightened. “I can’t send her anywhere
until David’s been interred and that’ll be a few days. I won’t deny her the chance to mourn. Wouldn’t be right.”
He stood, using his forearm against his knee as leverage, and extended a hand to help her up. So as not to make him look bad in front of the gathered members of his pack, Jackie took it.
She opened her mouth but stumbled because whatever she was about to say flickered out of existence when she saw Nic looking at her. Dammit. If she wasn’t so awkward, she’d know what to say. Why was he looking at her like that? All intense and dark. With him staring at her like that, she couldn’t think. Even breathing was hard. What the hell was wrong with her?
Bryce stepped into the living room, a wooden spoon in one hand, and leaned against the doorframe between the kitchen and living room with his arms crossed.
“Sorry for ruining dinner,” she offered with a sheepish smile.
Bryce grinned from ear to ear. “Nothing a little reheating can’t fix. Come on, now. You’ll need to eat to heal. Aspen came on through the back door with all the commotion. I told him to wait.” He uncrossed his arms and flicked the spoon through the air. “Told him he’d get a good smack to the head if they had one bite before you. Bet he’s getting pretty antsy about now.”
Nic gestured for her to go ahead. He, Vince, and Bryce all followed her into the kitchen. Aspen, the one werewolf she hadn’t met yet sat in the middle seat on the left side of the table. He had a big, red bushy beard and soft features, but a grin that lit up the room. He stood when she came in and removed his ball cap, pressing it against his red and black flannel shirt. “You must be Jackie Wheeler. I’m Aspen Klaibel. Pleased to meet you.”
Bryce pointed his wooden spoon at Aspen. “I see that grease stain on your shirt, Aspen!”
“It was only a carrot!”
Once they all sat down, only two chairs remained empty. One was the one Bo had sat in earlier. The other must’ve been for Donna. Or maybe it was for David. She didn’t think they’d leave an empty seat for him. The memory of his loss would be too painful. But then, Jackie didn’t know much about how packs mourned. Usually, she was long gone by the time any mourning happened.
Bryce spooned out hearty helpings of caribou along with vegetables and rolls with homemade butter. He spent a lot of time apologizing that it wasn’t as good because of the delay, but most people seemed not to hear him over the chatter of the table. Jackie put a bite of the meat in her mouth and happened to glance up at Nic, who smiled and nodded at her. She thought the food was just fine.
Chapter Seven
J ackie pushed away her empty plate after two full helpings of the caribou. “So tell me about Justice.”
Aspen, Vince, and Bryce exchanged glances over empty dinner plates, taking turns looking at their alpha in between.
Nic rested his elbows on the tabletop and interlocked his fingers, looking over them. He’d put on another shirt for dinner, this one a simple gray shirt with three-quarter sleeves and a v-neck. It had been chosen for functionality, but probably also to emphasize the muscles in his arms and shoulders by the way it clung. Could be it meant nothing, but Jackie doubted it. He was interested in her and had been trying to catch her eye all through dinner. Maybe he was only flirting with her to piss off Bo, but then why continue when Bo was upstairs?
“I’d be happy to tell you all about Justice Flynn, but it’s my night to do the dishes,” Nic said. “So we can talk after, if you’d like. Either way, it’s too late to catch him at the store. I’ll take you and Bo out tomorrow.”
“You think he’ll talk with you standing over him?” She lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t think he’ll resent his former alpha?”
“It was Justice’s choice to leave the pack,” Bryce cut in. “He’s got bad blood with us, but he wouldn’t start anything.”
Aspen nodded. “It’d be stupid for a lone wolf to start trouble with a whole pack. Justice might be a hard fighter, fierce in his own right, but he’s not stupid.”
“Justice continues to live in my town knowing I can remove him whenever it suits me.” Nic’s voice had a harsh edge, but his body language didn’t betray the anger he was trying so hard to project.
He likes Justice. Jackie sipped at her tea, which had long ago gone from hot to cold. Whatever bad blood is between Justice and the pack, it must’ve hurt to kick him out. They were friends once, Justice and Nic.
Jackie’s chair creaked as she leaned back and crossed her arms. “Then why don’t you?”
Nic’s eyes drifted to Bryce a moment, but didn’t linger. It was the second time he’d looked at Bryce during the conversation, and he’d glanced over at Bryce earlier when the topic of Justice came up. Bryce had something to do with why Justice had left the pack, Jackie was almost sure of it.
Instead of answering her, he placed his hands lightly on the tabletop and rose. The rest of the pack rose with him and so Jackie thought she ought to as well.
“Thank you all for being here,” Nic said, his voice steady and firm, the voice of an alpha about to give commands. “Bryce, I’d like you to go see to Tara. Make sure she’s warm and comfortable enough. Get her something to eat.”
Bryce nodded and stepped away from his chair.
“Aspen, you’re on front door patrol until Donna gets here.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Aspen nodded his head and slipped out of the kitchen.
“You want me to help with the dishes, Nic?” Vince didn’t sound overly eager.
Jackie cut in before Nic could answer. “I can help.”
Vince turned and frowned at her. “But your arm.”
She wiggled it. The bullet hole still hurt, but she didn’t think she’d tear stitches drying dishes. “I’ll be fine. Besides, I wanted to continue our conversation.”
She didn’t know Nic well enough to read the expression on his face, but she thought he looked…uncomfortable. Was it the idea of her working alongside him that made him uneasy or being pressed on Justice?
“Vince, why don’t you go and get the rollaway bed and cots?” Nic said. “Considering all that’s happened, I’d much rather everyone sleep here tonight than next door.” He turned to address Mandy, his tone much gentler. “And if you’d take a plate up to Bo, I’m certain he’d appreciate it.”
Mandy nodded and moved to put together a plate from what was left on the table.
Jackie reached out and touched the girl’s arm lightly. “He’s not going to hurt you.”
“I know.” A lie, and not a good one. Mandy pressed her lips together a moment, hesitating before continuing. “I just want him to like Nic.”
Nic chuckled. “Well, that’s more up to me than you. Try and relax, Mandy. Why don’t you take one of your books up and read to him? What kinds of books does he like?” Nic had addressed his question to Jackie.
Jackie frowned. Bo had never been much of a reader, but she recalled on one long road trip, he’d put on an audiobook. A western by Lois L’amor, she thought. “He likes westerns.”
The answer made Nic’s nose twitch for some reason. “I’ve got an old copy of Hondo in the library. He might like that.”
Mandy nodded and finished putting together a plate for Bo—two big chunks of caribou and a handful of roasted carrots and potatoes. Then she left the kitchen to do as Nic had asked. Jackie watched her go and wondered why Nic had been using Mandy to deal with Bo, especially considering how nervous the girl was.
He must’ve sensed her question. “Anyone else would pick a fight. Aspen would’ve been my next choice, but I figured he’d just antagonize another male and the only other female was Donna, who’s actually higher in the pack than Aspen, so…”
“It’s a lot to keep track of, isn’t it?”
Nic shrugged and began collecting plates. Jackie grabbed a few and stacked them with her good hand. The only sound in the kitchen for a time was the sound of metal silverware piling onto ceramic plates.
“What does Bryce have to do with Justice’s leaving?” she asked when she got tired of the s
ilence.
Nic hesitated and then smiled. “You don’t let things go, do you?”
“It’s my job to analyze information. That means following every lead to its natural end.”
“I can respect that.” He nodded. “Alright.”
Nic didn’t answer her right away because the faucet knocked when he turned it on. Steam rose in ghostlike fingers, reaching for the ceiling. Jackie hoped there’d be enough hot water for her to get a shower later. A bath would be even better if she could keep her arm out of the water.
Jackie stood beside Nic, taking up a towel. If she was careful, she could pick a plate up with her good hand, pass it to the one in the sling and then use her good hand to dry it.
“Justice wasn’t happy about where Bryce landed in the pack,” Nic said, scrubbing. “There was some reshuffling a while back. Some contention about who should be second and third. Bryce challenged Justice, which was within his rights to do, but Justice wouldn’t accept the challenge.” He passed the plate through the rinse water and to her.
“Why not?”
“I don’t really feel it’s my place to give specifics, but he didn’t feel Bryce was worthy.”
She dried the plate and set it gently aside, only to turn and find he had two more waiting in the rinse water. He wasn’t going easy on her just because she was injured. Good.
Jackie plucked one plate out and dried it. “Some alphas I know would have refused Bryce the place in order to keep the pack together.”
“I’m not most alphas.” Nic dropped another plate and two forks into the rinse water all at once, inundating it with soapy bubbles.
Jackie put her hand in the water and splashed to dispel the bubbles. “So why not ask him to leave? There’re other packs in Alaska. Does he have family here or something?”
Nic nodded. “His roots go deep in Barrow. Generations. Grandmother’s still here, but she’s a bit…odd. Locals haven’t been kind to his family, either. They’re convinced his grandma’s a witch.”
