by Bru Baker
Drew blew out a breath. “Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Drew Welch. I’m the new doctor here on campus. In the interest of honesty, and because I know you can scent it anyway, I’m going to admit I find you attractive. I enjoyed having sex with you. I’d enjoy having more sex with you in the future. I do not, however, want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. So if you tell me our relationship has to be purely professional, then I’ll respect that. It doesn’t have to be a thing. No one has to know.”
Nick’s lip curled. “Anyone with a nose can tell you’re attracted to me.”
Christ on a cracker.
“First of all, it’s common courtesy not to comment on things like that.” Drew gritted his teeth and tried to channel his calm, unflappable stepfather. He was his go-to role model in awkward werewolf situations. “Secondly, super senses take away a lot of privacy, but that doesn’t correspond to a lack of agency. Just because you know I’m attracted to you doesn’t mean you owe me anything other than the courtesy of not rubbing my face in it.”
“They can smell it on me too,” Nick ground out. “Between the two of us, that porch smelled like a goddamn brothel.”
Drew threw up his hands, more frustrated than embarrassed. “I’m not going to jump you in the mess hall or anything. It is what it is. I’m attracted to a lot of people. None of them are going around yelling at me about it.”
Nick’s brows furrowed. “Who else are you attracted to here?”
“Does it fucking matter?”
It was hard not to laugh at the put-out expression on Nick’s face. It obviously did matter to him, though Drew didn’t understand why. He’d seen his stepbrothers get possessive over partners, and it had looked a lot like this, but Nick was also sending out crystal-clear vibes that he didn’t want anything to do with Drew. He couldn’t have it both ways.
“I—” Nick cut himself off, looking away for a moment before continuing. “I feel like I’m two steps behind, and I don’t like it. The camp isn’t what I was expecting. It’s better, don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t fit the picture I had in my head. And then you’re here, but you’re human and you already know everyone who works here. I’m confused, and I’m not handling it well. I’m sorry.”
That was more than he’d expected to get out of Nick. The apology sounded completely sincere, even though the sentiment behind it rankled.
“You have a problem with me being human?”
Nick wouldn’t be the first werewolf supremacist asshole Drew had met. There were some real pieces of work out there, Weres who believed they were better because they had heightened senses and could go furry and howl at the moon. The greater werewolf community was hardline against that mindset, but it still crept up. It was surprising to run into it here, though, and in someone who’d clearly had no problem having sex with a human. It was usually all or nothing.
“No!” Nick looked around like he was worried they’d be overheard, uncurling his arms from his chest and stalking closer. “No. Not at all. But that’s what everyone was muttering about at the meeting. They think I’m a dick who doesn’t like humans.”
“And you’re not. You’re just a dick who is embarrassed by having one-night stands with one.”
Even in the dim light Drew could tell he’d scored a hit with that one. Nick ducked his head, staying silent. Wonderful.
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, but Drew wanted to be done with this conversation. Avoidance might not be the healthiest way to deal with this situation, but it would get some distance between them before Drew said or did something that strained their working relationship even further.
“Drew, it’s not—”
“I’ll do my best not to smell like sex when you’re around. No one would have known it was for you, anyway. Last time I was here, Kenya caught me in the lake with Scott, so if anyone smelled anything particularly lusty from me, they probably assumed it was directed at him.”
“Drew,” Nick said, and he sounded earnest enough that Drew listened. “I’m sorry. We got off on the wrong foot.”
“Getting off wasn’t what we had trouble with,” Drew muttered, unable to help himself.
Nick let out a low, regretful laugh. “No, it really wasn’t. That part was great. Everything that’s happened since, not so much. And the way I’ve handled things is my fault. If I’d known we were going to be working together, I wouldn’t have had sex with you, but it’s not fair to blame you for that. So I’m going to take your generous offer of starting over. For real this time.”
He held a hand out. “I’m Nick Perry. It’s nice to meet you. I’m the new psychologist here at Camp H.O.W.L. I’m a beta from the Cooper Pack in Denver.”
Drew looked at his hand and fought the urge to roll his eyes. Nick hadn’t shaken hands with anyone in the staff meeting. It wasn’t something werewolves did—it was a human custom. He ignored the outstretched hand and tilted his neck to the side, then touched Nick’s neck with his wrist so Nick would carry his scent, a traditional greeting for new Packmates or close friends.
“Drew Welch. I’ve been the doctor for the Garrison Pack in St. Louis for six years, as well as an ER doctor, so I’m well qualified to run the infirmary here. I’ll also be taking over a medical practice nearby, so I’ll be splitting my time between camp and the town.”
“How did you become a pack doctor?” Nick sounded genuinely interested, so Drew made a conscious effort not to go on the defensive. It was a fair question, and if it had come from anyone other than Nick right now it wouldn’t have pushed any buttons. As it stood, Drew was still smarting from Nick’s obvious regret over sleeping with a human, so it was a touchy subject.
“My stepfather is Alpha Garrison’s second. I was raised in the Pack.”
He could tell Nick was familiar with the Pack, given the way his eyes widened slightly. His Alpha was the head of the Midwest Werewolf Tribunal, which was how he’d gotten to know Adrian. They joked about meeting at werewolf leadership camp but there was a grain of truth to it. Every summer the heads of the tribunals met for a weeklong summit, bringing their Packs along to socialize. Drew and Adrian had hit it off immediately, and they’d gotten especially close after Adrian’s Turn hadn’t manifested at nineteen. They’d had a lot of bitch sessions about being humans in a werewolf pack over the years. Even now, after Adrian’s late-in-life Turn, he was Drew’s go-to guy for werewolf frustration.
“Wow. Okay. Well, I’m going to say good night and slink back to my cabin so I can meet my campers. Hopefully that first impression will go better than ours.”
Dammit, he wanted to hate Nick. The guy was obviously an asshole and had issues, but he was also charming when he wanted to be.
“First impression was a good one,” Drew said with a shrug. “It was the second one where the wheels fell off.”
DREW wasn’t a morning exercise kind of person. But he also wasn’t an evening exercise kind of person, which meant his best bet was to force himself into his running shoes and go for a jog first thing. That way later in the day he wasn’t in the position to make up excuses about why he didn’t have time to work out.
Lately, they’d been legitimate. Diann had run an immaculately organized infirmary, but the same couldn’t be said for the medical practice he’d taken over outside Marengo. When he’d arranged to buy out the old doctor he hadn’t realized none of the patient records were digitized. Everything, even the appointment book, was paper. It was a stark contrast to the hospital, where everything had been available at the tap of a touchscreen. Even Camp H.O.W.L.’s records were all digital so campers’ files could be sent to their primary care doctors when they went home.
He’d anticipated hiccups. There were bound to be patients who didn’t want a new doctor and left, or appointment mix-ups as things transitioned. He hadn’t expected spending his evenings scanning old patient files into his digital records or his afternoons entering his own billing, since his receptionist was only available to work a handful of hours a week.<
br />
It was a nightmare that had him seriously questioning his sanity. He’d thought practicing family medicine in a rural area would give him the opportunity to get to know his patients and take a more holistic, whole-patient approach to their care. At the hospital he’d had an average of six minutes with his patients. Six minutes to get critical information about their symptoms, double-check their histories, and try to figure out if the problem they were presenting with in the ER was the primary problem or a symptom of something else.
That wasn’t what he’d envisioned when he’d gone to medical school. He wanted to have the kind of interactions with his human patients that he did with his Were patients. Appointments that weren’t jam-packed and rushed so he could talk through treatments with them. Long-running relationships so he could track their physical and emotional well-being over a lifetime, not a five-minute appointment.
He’d get there. At least, he hoped he would. And all the stress of digitizing records would be worth it in the end. As would convincing little old ladies he could take care of them just as well as the old doctor—literally old. The guy had been practicing there fifty years. Some of his patients had never had a doctor other than him. It was mind-blowing.
But all that work meant if he didn’t force himself to get up early and go for a run, it wouldn’t happen. And since he was living in what felt like a constant state of sexual frustration, thanks to Nick’s perfect everything being all over campus, exercise was an outlet he definitely needed.
The air had been chilly when he’d set off forty minutes earlier, but it was edging toward hot now that the sun was fully up. Nicely groomed trails wound all through the grounds, but Drew preferred making up his own route. The added difficulty of buried roots and low-hanging branches made his runs more fun. They were more like the full-moon runs he and his stepbrothers used to take in the woods near the Pack compound.
He was running through his options for switching processing labs for bloodwork when he heard a group of teens giggling and smelled the unmistakable aroma of pot.
“Shh, Scott can still hear us from the cabin if we’re not quiet.”
They must be close to cabin one, then. Drew hadn’t been to see him since he’d arrived, but Drew doubted Scott had moved since the last time Drew slept over.
“Whatever, like he cares. You realize he’s basically a highly paid babysitter, right?”
Tate had grumped about that once, but he hadn’t meant it. The counselors and other staff helped the wolflings through their Turn and provided essential support and structure during a very difficult time for the teens. That the kids didn’t realize it was actually a good thing. It meant they weren’t feeling any undue stress.
Whoever had called Scott a babysitter was an asshole, though. Scott had a master’s degree in kinesiology and had been a US Olympian. He still spent a few months every Olympics cycle training fencers.
These entitled little shits didn’t know that, though. And Drew couldn’t blame them for their attitudes—it reflected more on their parents and their Packs than on them.
The drug use, though, that was on them. Drugs were a problem with wolflings because the usual teen outlets like alcohol and caffeine didn’t have much effect on them. Things that were inhaled or injected, though, did. Marijuana wouldn’t give them too much of a buzz, but it could cause unpredictable behavior and paranoia in wolves. Nothing terrible, but wolflings who experimented with pot were often using it as a trial run for harder stuff. Crack was a huge problem with Weres under thirty in the St. Louis area, and his stepbrother Jackson was seeing the same thing in Lexington, where he was a cop. And those kinds of drugs? They could force uncontrolled shifts and a host of other dangerous behavior.
Drew was downwind of the group, but if he was close enough to smell the pot, they should have been able to smell him. So not only were they stupid, they were being lazy with their senses. Not a good combination, especially when doing something illegal.
He stepped out of the trees and strode over to them, channeling the attitude of a chief resident he’d admired. She’d been five foot nothing but radiated authority and menace. He towered over her but never once thought about giving her shit. That was the kind of persona he needed to project with the wolflings. Any one of them could tear him apart if they wanted, but he wasn’t going to let that affect the way he treated them.
“Hand it over,” he barked once he’d reached them. They’d dragged logs into a circle and were perched on them like little kids around a campfire. Drew held out his hand expectantly, but the wolfling with the joint just laughed.
“You’re not a counselor,” the boy said, stopping to take a toke. “You don’t have any authority over us.”
A vein in Drew’s neck pulsed so hard it hurt. “I’m not a counselor, but I’m a staff member, which gives me all the authority I need. Put it out now and give it to me.”
The wolfling who’d called Scott a babysitter snickered and reached for the joint, taking a toke while looking Drew in the eye.
“This place is really going downhill,” he said after he’d blown out the smoke. “The facilities are nice, but they’ll hire just about anyone these days. My dad said it’s a shame.”
Drew gave them no outward sign of the words affecting him, but inside he was seething. He’d worried about running into attitudes like this before coming to Camp H.O.W.L., but his Pack had assured him there would be no problems. The kids who could afford the camp were all from affluent Packs, mostly from cities where they didn’t have space to handle the Turn themselves. Generally when he ran into this kind of attitude, it was with wolves who were rural, not those from city Packs who interacted with humans more often.
“You can discuss it with him when you call home from the director’s office to talk about your punishment for breaking camp rules and disrespecting a staff member.” Drew kept his tone even and didn’t let his voice waver. He couldn’t do anything about the way his pulse spiked when the mouthy kid stood menacingly, but he didn’t take a step back even though his instincts were screaming at him to retreat.
“Our parents don’t care about this,” the kid sneered. He passed the joint to the girl to his left and walked up to Drew, never breaking eye contact. “What are you going to tell them? That we hurt your feelings?”
Drew sent up a silent prayer for patience. “I’m going to tell them you were caught with illegal drugs on campus, which by itself is an offense you can be expelled for. You’ll be lucky if the director doesn’t turn you over to the local police.”
That was a lie, but he was already so agitated he hoped the kids wouldn’t be able to tell. Like they’d hand over a newly Turned wolfling to the human police?
The girl who’d been holding the still-lit joint squeaked and dropped it into the leaf litter. She stood up, eyes wide, looking to the boy Drew thought of as the leader.
“I have deferred acceptance to Brown. I can’t have a criminal record, Grayson.” Her gaze flicked between the boy and Drew, and he could see the moment she registered how tense he was. She folded her hands together and let her arms hang limply. “I’m sorry, Dr. Welch.”
Drew saw a blur of motion behind them, his heart in his throat until he realized it was Nick, not more campers. Nick didn’t move out of the tree line, so Drew kept his mouth shut.
The other two wolflings stood, one scrambling to find the joint on the ground while the other stepped up to stand next to the ringleader, shoulders squared and ready for a—hopefully metaphorical—fight.
“God, Rebecca. It’s his word against ours,” Grayson said. “You really think anyone is going to take his side over us? He’s not even a wolf.”
The wolflings all started when Nick stepped into the clearing, expression thunderous.
“You’re going to want to think very carefully about your next words. Sit down.”
The girl they’d called Rebecca sat immediately, as did the boy Drew hadn’t heard speak yet. But the other two remained standing, even though they didn’t l
ook nearly as sure of themselves as they had a moment before.
“I said sit down,” Nick said. The words dripped venom. Drew had never heard someone who wasn’t an Alpha manage that tone. He’d be lying if he didn’t admit it affected him as well as the wolflings. They all dropped immediately, while Drew’s pulse jumped for a different reason.
“Do you think being here is a joke?” Nick’s voice was colder than Drew had ever heard it, even when he’d been angry after the staff meeting.
When none of the wolflings answered, Nick turned to Drew. “You’re related to someone on the Tribunal. What happens if a werewolf isn’t able to handle himself? If, say, a Were was experimenting with drugs and wolfed out in a nightclub?”
Nick was good. Drew had to hand that to him. He was telling the wolflings that Drew mattered in the Were world, giving him authority by naming him as a Tribunal member’s kid. Not that he actually had any pull because of it. Neither did Adrian, who was a Were himself. But Nick was subtly telling the kids Drew was connected in ways that weren’t obvious, given his human status. Smart.
“Depending on the severity of the breach, the wolf could face penalties ranging from fines and community service all the way up to death. If the Were even made it to the Tribunal.”
Nick nodded. “In most cases of extreme breaches, the Pack handles it. Alphas have been known to hand down death sentences for far less than smoking pot in a public place.”
That probably wasn’t true, but Drew wasn’t going to interject. It was too much fun watching the color drain out of the wolflings’ faces. Poor Rebecca might pass out, which would be inconvenient because he didn’t have his bag with him.
“Your bodies metabolize things differently from a human’s,” Drew said. “That includes drugs. So while I get the appeal of trying something your human friends can use with no real ill effects, it isn’t going to be the same for you.”
Grayson’s lip curled up at Drew’s words. “How would you know how our bodies work? You’re a human. It’s ridiculous they let you come here. You don’t know anything about us.”
