by A. F. Henley
Table of Contents
Wolf in League
Book Details
Mostly He Missed It
Do You Feel Me, Child?
Making the Moves
A Dawning Sun
Time to Rise and Shine
The Day the World Changed
About the Author
Wolf in League
WOLF BOOK THREE
A.F. HENLEY
It's been months since anyone at the Committee has had any contact from the O'Connell family or their pack members, and they are not happy. Suspicious of the activities that took place in D.C. and determined to find out what the wolves are up to, the Committee recruits one of their newest residents, Doctor Matthew Dietrich, to play the part of neighbor and infiltrate the family.
Matthew has always been a keep-to-himself kind of person. Though idealistic and optimistic, he prefers to work in solitude, at night, while he researches the findings that he hopes will one day change the world. When he's approached by the executives of the Center, he has no idea why they'd choose him. And to say he is skeptical over the concept of men that can shift into wolves would be an understatement. Until he meets his new partner, the man that will play the part of his "husband" in the Committee's scheme, Doctor Gavin Strauss.
Wolf in League
Wolf 3
By A.F. Henley
Published by Less Than Three Press LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.
Edited by Tracey Pennington Cover designed by Raphael http://boysininkandcolour.com/
This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
First Edition October 2016
Copyright © 2016 by A.F. Henley Printed in the United States of America Digital ISBN 9781620048771
Print ISBN 9781620048788
Mostly He Missed It
(SEPTEMBER 2016)
The sun was rising. He could smell it in the air—crossed wires, blown fuses, burning ozone—and it left a bitter taste in his throat. At that point there wasn't a single beam of light in the sky, not even a brightening of the horizon, but it was most definitely coming; he could feel it worming into his pores, lifting hair, rolling alongside every thump of his sluggish blood. Above him the bats entertained as they always did, circling like performers on soundless wings with their 'fingers' extended to ply the wind into workable currents. Below him sat a fat rat, gorging appreciatively on the leftovers of the dinner he had left for it. Bones crunched and splintered beneath its furiously working teeth, but although it ate with fervor it never took its beady black eyes off its provider. It knew that in a moment the tall, slim man could decide he was still hungry and there would be no reprieve for the rat if that was his choice. While quick, the rat could never be quick enough to outrun the man. Not this one.
The man had no interest in the rat, though. His hunger, for food anyway, had been satiated. Now he stood and watched the dark skies for the shine of what he could smell approaching, musing on another hunger entirely: the one for justice. For vengeance. For it too was coming, as sure as the sunlight. That he could control; would control. And maybe, someday, he'd find a way to control the sun as well. Because by all rights and dues he hated the sun the second-most of all the things in life. He hated the way it burned his eyes, the way it bubbled his skin, the way it forced him to see everything in blacks and grays—he hated the way it had stolen the very color from his life.
The greedy bitch. The choosy, picky, human-loving bitch. The brilliant, burning, vampire-hating bitch.
He hated it. Except... as much as the hate... he missed it. He missed feeling it, seeing it, closing his eyes and warming his skin with it...
But that was a truth he would not speak of, even to himself.
The wind rose in swirls, up the side of the building and into the night sky, carrying the scent of pine needles and gathering leaves. He ignored the odor of blood that moved off the roof and into the air and gave his attention to the curve of blue that seemed to grow with the rising wind. It was time to seek the kind of darkness that sunlight could not find. He could spend more time watching tomorrow. It was hard to believe after so many years of cursing the way time moved so slowly that it suddenly seemed there would never be enough time. So many plans to make. So many things to do.
But the days were getting shorter and the nights were getting longer. Things were moving in his favor.
The rat startled as fabric twirled above it, not sensing the movement before it had already come and gone. Then it turned back to the litter of the departed man's meal and continued to eat.
*~*~*
A bright glow spotlighted the place where Matthew Dietrich worked. Other than that solitary bulb (and even its glare had been tightened down to a six-inch radius), the only lighting in the room was the strip of blue fluorescents that ran above the counter and under the row of glass and metal cupboards. It was enough for Matthew. Though his optometrist wouldn't condone the activity in the least, especially since his most recent eyeglass prescription had been increased in severity yet again, Matthew believed it helped him focus. In the daylight hours it would be impossible to do as every single light in the facility would be on, the sunlight would be streaming in through the windows, and although his crew was small in comparison to some of the other teams at the Genetics Development and Biological Connectivity Group (aka the GDBCG), none of his team members had his preference for ruining his vision for the sake of his concentration. Some, he knew, wouldn't be caught dead in any of the labs while it was dark and quiet. He'd never quite figured out why, but he was only a resident. Maybe in a few months—less, really, if he kept putting in the hours he was putting in these days—when he finally got offered the staff position he coveted so terribly much, maybe then he'd know what made the doctors and the administration staff cast nervous glances over their shoulders when they walked down certain hallways or passed some of the doorways.
Staff and administrators aside, he'd learned very quickly that the executive staff didn't give a single hoot about when one came to work or whether one worked alone. As long as the work got done, as long as the results were definitive and stunning, he could have told them that he wanted to work in the basement underneath a tarp with Beethoven's Fifth playing on loop for all they'd care; and stunning work was not something Matthew ever had to struggle to achieve. He had to work hard, yes, but he didn't have to struggle. He'd been born with the need to dig into things and he didn't stop until he'd wrung everything he could out of a topic. So while he hadn't had the highest MCAT score in the state, he had been in the top five. Nor had he been top of his class when he'd graduated UCLA. He had, however, been second. During his internship at the DGSOM, while he'd still been debating between joining a family practice or specializing (not that he'd really debated too hard, to his father's great disdain) he'd been told that he was one of the most vibrantly talented young men that his professor had ever had the pleasure to teach.
Of course, his professor had also been three Scotches into the evening at that point and sitting across from Matthew in a lowly lit, very private booth in the far corner of a bar that had been thirty miles out of the city. Matthew hadn't put much faith in the man's gushing promises of "limitless experiences and opportunities." Besides, by that point, he hadn't had a single reason to put the sleep-with-the-guy-in-charge-and-excel theory into practice. When he'd decided he really was going to pursue Board Accredited status in genetics, the GDBCG had practically kicked in his door to find him.
Always a pleasure to be wanted, it was. And
considering they left him alone and let him do his thing at will, he'd decided within a couple of weeks of his residency that he just might like to stay there. There were dark and interesting corners in the GDBCG's facility and Matthew wanted to know them all. Even if there wasn't something about the place that tickled his subconscious, the GDBCG was iconic in the field of genetic research. A hundredfold more doctors were laughed off the list of applicants than were allowed to pass through. The fact that they had given him, the mere son of a simple pediatrician and a quiet housewife, a residency was astounding. Good was good and smart was smart, but the people in the know at the GDBCG had seen something special in him that they'd chosen to pursue. For that he was ever-grateful. He'd often thought that he'd give up his eye teeth, without sedation, if they would grant him a permanent position. Preferably tenured.
It wasn't just pride working its ugly self through his blood, either. It was purpose. The GDBCG granted him purpose. It was here, right here in the hallowed embrace of the Center, where Matthew would make a difference in this world where mothers and fathers could die of cancer, babies could be born without fully-formed skulls, and some kids had to grow up knowing that they were boys trapped in female bodies and not be able to fix that in a viable, utilizable way. He, however, was going to find a way to fix all of it; through the grace of God, he would, darn it. And there was no place better than here to do it in the entire world. If he could do it in solitude, tunelessly humming the relevant bars of Monster Mash while he worked, that just made it all the better.
It was late—early, really—and his eyes burned and his shoulders ached. Posture, he reminded himself as he straightened and stretched, was something he definitely needed to work on. He'd told himself he was going to pack it in earlier than usual. Though his findings on his newest project were fascinating they were also as slow as molasses in January. Still, his mind always seemed to find something to pick at. Once again, most of the night was gone.
"And I need a breather," Matthew whispered to nobody.
What he really needed to do was go home and sleep, but that didn't stop him from tugging off his glasses and dropping them onto his desk. His eyes would appreciate the break and he didn't need them for things that weren't up close, anyway. His vision was plenty sufficient to navigate the hallways toward the balcony that many of the staff members used for breaks.
As always, the moment he stepped outside he was awed by how bright the September sky was. California skies had been positively gloomy in comparison, Los Angeles's more than the rest. While there were places where the stars weren't drowned out by light pollution or hidden behind the smog of ten million vehicular emissions, even the best of the best of places weren't Wyoming. He'd been in Wyoming just over three months and his system still hadn't gotten used to how clean and fresh the air seemed. He knew it wasn't. It couldn't be. There were far too many oil and gas operations in Wyoming to convince Matthew that was all clear in the star-studded or baby blue beyond, but it was a heck of a lot better than it had been back home.
It wasn't the stars that drew him here in the wee hours of the morning, though. It was the bats. There was something about the construction of the Center that drew a bucket load of bats, not that Matthew could have said what it was. The thing he found most interesting about the phenomena was that one could find them swooping and swaying around the building's concrete block walls and its flat, thermoplastic roof at times other than the hour or so between dusk and darkness. Common sense told Matthew it had to do with insect population, reflective lighting, and a lack of predators, but the owls and hawks that were common to the area made that last reason somewhat unlikely.
Who really knew, though? Maybe the same things that kept the doctors peeking covertly at dark shadows kept the smarter birds of prey away as well. Regardless, Matthew found himself staring at the tiny, black, soundless beasts for stretches of time that surprised him when he finally thought to check his watch. For creatures of the night with all kinds of Hollywood superstitions behind them, they were surprisingly peaceful to watch.
He'd just told himself that he'd better be heading back in when a sound seemed to brush past his ear. He cocked his head, paused, and listened. He almost thought it could have been one of the bats, drawn by the light or maybe the scent of his cologne, but if it had been a bat, then it was one of the most talented bats in history. Because there'd been something awfully weird in the way it had sounded. If he'd been asked to say what that oddness was, he would have had no choice but to admit—foolishly, really—that he'd heard someone speak. His name, even. Which was more ridiculous than imagining someone had spoken in the first place. He was six stories off the ground. He could see every inch of the otherwise empty balcony. Besides, there was no one else on the level Matthew occupied but for a security guard who had been half-asleep, if not completely asleep, when Matthew had walked past him twenty minutes ago; Matthew had checked the sign-in roster just to make sure because he'd wanted to have a chat with one of his colleagues regarding a certain finding Matthew had stumbled across the night before. And there were no after-hours visitors allowed, without exception. Even during the day, not even an expected guest would get past the security gate without a badge—a badge which automatically added their name, picture, and personal details to the roster so that anyone who was anyone would know where they were allowed to be and where they were not. If there was someone out in the darkness whispering his name at barely audible levels, it had to be one of the bats. Or a very talented deer with the ability to fly.
Matthew flipped up his collar, shook his head and turned back to the door that he'd left propped open behind him. The doors were all glass. The windows were glass. Glass, glass, everywhere glass. He'd often figured it was there for security more than just an effort to soften the rest of the cold concrete building. After all, it was easy to see through; nothing could hide behind a glass door. It was also reflective.
So when he saw a face—a smirk, bright eyes, sharp cheekbones—shining back at him, Matthew startled. He whirled back to face the balcony.
There was no one there. Just the stars and bats above him, and the trees, manicured lawn, and fading gardens below him.
He shook his head and grabbed the handle of the door. It was time to cut back on the coffee. The caffeine was making him jumpy.
*~*~*
With the clock at six-fifteen, just under two hours before the majority of the Center's staff would start crawling in, and still a half hour before even the most dedicated few would show up, Matthew was staring blankly through the windows of the main entrance. He'd already transferred his Petri dishes back into storage and flicked off the microscope, the laptop, and the spotlight. He'd saved his data, powered off his laptop, and it now rested inside his backpack. He was debating the idea of grabbing a coffee from his preferred vending machine (his head was reminding him that caffeine and sleep did not a happy partnership make, but his desire was already mentally counting the change in his pocket) and he was so lost in his internal argument that he shrieked, mouse-like, when he was interrupted by a voice.
"Doctor Dietrich?"
Matthew spun, more to confirm the voice than anything else. He'd only heard it once and he'd told himself that he would never forget it: Samuel Volos, Chief Operating Officer.
Being there at such an hour was unheard of for Volos, and while that fact alone was a surprise, the idea that Volos had seen fit, in his infinite wisdom, to not only acknowledge Matthew but to do so by name, was unbelievable. Shocking, even. Samuel Volos had barely registered Matthew's existence when Matthew had been brought around for introductions. He'd granted Matthew a, "Welcome aboard, young man," given a limp, uninterested handshake, and then shown his back as he turned away, busily globbing sanitizer into the middle of the palm that had been sullied by their contact. That had been the last Matthew had seen of him but for the pictures in the various displays.
Now, here Volos stood, hands behind his back, stance casual—not only talking, not only staring dir
ectly at Matthew, but smiling. Smiling!
Few men managed to pull Matthew's head out of his work and into places where the imagination could dwell on those things that happened when two men got naked together, and Volos was one of them. Tall, well-dressed, lithe, and with just enough lines under the eyes and between the eyebrows to let a person know that a lot of thinking went on in that head. Volos was the real-life equivalent of every one of the older-gentleman-love-interests that grumped their way through the storylines of the risqué animes that had held Matthew's interest in his teens. And still did, on occasion, though he'd never admit that in a group of his peers.
"Are you on your way out?" Volos asked.
"Yes," Matthew said, and then quickly added, "but I was here all night. The team has been trying to mutate the MYB-NFIB in an effort to see if we can match the gene in reverse. Make one that can think backwards, if you can imagine it, and I've been watching—"
"Yes," Volos said around a nod. "I know. Both of the project and your schedule."
"Of course." Matthew dropped his gaze and began to mentally beat himself over the head. Of course he flipping knew. What kind of an EO would he be if he didn't know what his staff was up to? "I didn't mean to imply that you—"
"I've been keeping a very close eye on you, in fact," Volos said, as though Matthew hadn't said a single word. "Have you always been a nighttime person, Doctor?"
Matthew couldn't tell if the inflection behind the question was amusement, disapproval, or nothing more than casual interest. "I prefer the solitude, is all."
"Ah, solitude." Another nod. A tug at the pristine white cuff of the shirt that edged around the arm of his suit. "And your spouse doesn't mind you being gone all night?"
So, Volos hadn't been keeping that close of an eye on him. Most people Matthew worked with knew he was single. And gay. Although, to Volos's credit, Volos had said "spouse" and not "wife."
