Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines)

by Lia Silver

“You’re welcome.” Miguel frowned at the chili peppers on the counter. “What did you want to make? I mean, what could you eat? Maybe some toast?”

  Roy tried to squelch his embarrassment, informing himself that this was entirely his own fault. If he hadn’t hidden what was going on until he dramatically collapsed and was sick for days, anything wrong with him would have been much less of a big deal and wouldn’t have made everyone treat him like an invalid.

  “Anything is fine,” Roy said. “If I don’t feel sick, I won’t get sick. I don’t normally have a touchy stomach. It’s… um… stress-related. What were you planning to make?”

  Miguel opened a package of tortillas. “Migas. It’s a Mexican breakfast dish.”

  “I know migas. I’m from New Mexico. Want me to tear up the tortillas?” Roy took the tortillas and started shredding them.

  “Not so thin,” Miguel said, peering over his shoulder. “Like a purse strap, not like a pencil.”

  Roy corrected his technique, tossing them into a bowl as Miguel started chopping tomatoes.

  “Something I wanted to tell you, Roy…” Miguel began, glancing into the living room. “Before everyone else wakes up.”

  “Sure.”

  “I always felt like I was the weak link of the pack. Even before Gregor did this to me.” Miguel touched his scarred cheek. “After that, I felt like he’d broken me for good. Nicolette and Keisha are so strong, and I was waking up screaming every night. They did their best to protect me, but I couldn’t do anything for anyone.”

  “You did a lot. You participated in an escape plan, you were the only person who actually made it out, you got reinforcements, and you personally carried out several essential and dangerous parts of the rescue mission,” Roy reminded him. “If it wasn’t for you, Gregor would have killed all your buddies.”

  “I see that now. But when I got here, what I mostly noticed was that nothing had changed for me other than that you were taking care of me too.” Miguel looked at Roy earnestly. “Don’t take this the wrong way—I appreciate what you did. But you seemed like everything a man should be, and I kept comparing myself and coming up short. When you ran out and picked up Russell—

  “Yeah, about that…” Roy fished for a way to explain without setting himself off all over again. “Listen, Miguel, I don’t want to tell this whole awful war story right now. But I bolted out like that because I saw something similar once, and it reminded me. I thought he’d been blown up by an IED and people were shooting at us and I had to get him to cover.”

  Miguel stopped chopping, looking at Roy in surprise. “You were having a flashback?”

  Roy began making coffee, unable to have this conversation while he was looking into Miguel’s eyes. “I guess. It was only for a few seconds.”

  “I didn’t realize,” Miguel said. “At the time, it just looked heroic. It was heroic. Especially after what Gregor did to you. He did the same thing to me, and it took me apart. You seemed to shake it off in an hour. I thought you’d never had a nightmare in your life.”

  “I was having nightmares long before Gregor.” Roy didn’t want to get into details, but he couldn’t let Miguel go on hero-worshipping Roy and putting himself down. “And I didn’t shake off what he did. Obviously. These last couple days—that was unusually bad. But it’s not the first time that sort of thing has happened to me. Not by a long shot.”

  “I figured that out,” Miguel replied. “I don’t know if you remember, but I was with you when you were in a pretty bad way.”

  “I remember. You don’t have to describe it,” Roy said hastily. “But if I didn’t say so before… Thank you.”

  “You did say so. And you’re welcome. I won’t say it was nothing, because it was hard to watch. I wish you had shaken everything off. But once I realized what you were going through, I felt better about myself. I figured if a guy like you could break, maybe I shouldn’t be so ashamed of being broken myself.”

  At that, Roy stopped fiddling with the coffee maker and looked into Miguel’s soft brown eyes. “I’m not broken. And neither are you. We’re just… chipped.”

  As a visual demonstration, Roy held up a coffee mug with a chip in the rim. Miguel laughed.

  The smell and sound of coffee percolating roused everyone, as the conversation hadn’t.

  Laura ran into the kitchen, grabbed Roy, and pulled him down into a kiss. He lost himself in her lemon-sugar scent and soft body and sweet lips, her bright presence in the pack sense and her living self in his arms.

  “I love you,” Roy said, not caring who heard. “And I’m sorry. I don’t know why you stick with me, honestly.”

  “Well…” She gave him such a long, thoughtful look that he began to get uneasy. Then she pulled him back down and whispered in his ear, “You’re really good in bed.”

  Roy laughed.

  “You look better, Roy,” Keisha said, having apparently been stealthily examining him while he’d been kissing Laura. “But I want to see you after breakfast. Just to be sure.”

  “Sure.”

  Russell inspected Miguel’s breakfast preparations. “Let me chop another onion. You minced them; they’ll get mushy.”

  “No back-seat cooking,” Laura called.

  “No mushy onions,” Russell retorted. He grabbed the cutting board, scraped Miguel’s onions into the trash, got another onion, and began chopping with lightning speed. Every piece came out as a perfect tiny cube.

  Nicolette leaned against the wall, sucking down a mug of black coffee. Keisha crunched on a strip of raw bell pepper. Laura poured a cup of coffee for herself and another for Roy. The kitchen was filled with a symphony of scents: onions and coffee, peppers and chorizo, caramel and lemon meringue pie, earth and rain, gunsmoke and perfume.

  Roy had too much experience to imagine that everyone was fixed for good. But the pack did seem a whole lot better, just like he was a whole lot better.

  He touched the pack sense, not to check on them but simply to enjoy their presence. After all the agony he’d gone through since he’d been bitten, he finally had a pack. They were his family, his best friends, his fire team. They hadn’t left him alone, and he’d never leave them behind. Maybe later today, they could all go hunting as wolves. Maybe tonight, he and Laura could sneak off to the barn and get some alone time.

  Roy wouldn’t have expected it after the hell that the last week had been, but standing in the kitchen, sipping his coffee with his arm around Laura’s shoulders, surrounded by his pack, he was completely happy.

  Russell turned to Roy. “Will you be able to eat this? I could make you some toast. Or apple sauce.”

  With a sigh, Roy began, “This is fine. If I don’t feel sick, I won’t get sick…”

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Laura

  DJ

  Laura covertly watched Roy from across the table as the rest of the pack chatted and doctored their migas with salsa and Tabasco sauce and, in Keisha’s case and ignoring the general mockery, maple syrup.

  After he’d been so sick for what felt like so long, it was startling to see him sitting at ease, pouring Russell’s homemade salsa onto a mountain of scrambled eggs with chorizo and fried tortilla strips. If she hadn’t known what had happened, she’d only have noted the dark circles under his eyes and thought that he’d had a late night.

  She finally understood what Roy had meant when he’d told her that she couldn’t yet know how hard it would be to be with him. For all of Keisha’s assurances that he only needed rest and rehydration, the last few days had ranked among the most harrowing times of Laura’s life.

  Roy reached across the table and clasped Laura’s hand. A light touch on their bond accompanied the gesture, letting Laura feel his strength and stability: Don’t worry, I’m all better now.

  It also let him perceive something of what Laura was feeling. He leaned in and spoke to her softly. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not used to thinking about what it does to other people if something happens to me. It’s always been the other way aro
und.”

  Not for those last few months in Afghanistan, Laura thought.

  She waved her fork in an arc, indicating the pack. “It goes both ways now.”

  “I know.”

  “I do too,” Laura admitted.

  Hard as it had been to see Roy suffering so much, it had been almost as hard for her to step back and let the pack help care for him. She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t going to make the same mistake he had and run herself into the ground with exhaustion, and furthermore that Roy was bonded to the pack, was used to living in a tight-knit community, and would find their attentions comforting. Laura suspected that being part of a group fulfilled some primal longing in Roy that had nothing to do with a werewolf’s need for the pack sense.

  Laura could feel for herself that the pack would protect and care for Roy, so she managed to pry herself away periodically to sleep or run as a wolf or even take a book outside and spend an hour or so reading in the sun. If he needed her specifically, they could summon her through the pack sense.

  Laura had been relieved to find that despite the pack bond, she still needed alone time. She’d have felt like she’d turned into a different person if she hadn’t. But it wasn’t as difficult to share a one-bedroom cabin with five people as she’d have expected. While she didn’t have the same pull to be part of a crowd that Roy did, being the alpha of the pack felt natural and fulfilling to her. From the moment they’d all bonded, she couldn’t imagine being without them.

  “Who wants to go apartment-hunting after breakfast?” Keisha asked.

  “I’ll go,” Nicolette said. “Still want to be roomies, Miguel?”

  “You bet,” Miguel replied.

  “I want my own apartment,” Russell said. “You do too, right, Keisha? Let’s find three in the same building.”

  This came as no news to Laura, who had been in on the pack’s discussions of their future, but Roy, who hadn’t, looked surprised.

  “That’s right,” Roy said. “This isn’t really Laura’s place. When’s your father coming back, again?”

  “God knows,” Laura replied. “But six of us couldn’t stay here forever anyway.”

  “I’ve lived with more people in closer quarters than this,” Roy said wistfully. “What about us all sharing a bigger apartment? Maybe a three-bedroom?”

  Everyone else shook their heads, even Nicolette, who had undoubtedly also lived in barracks.

  “I need space,” Keisha said firmly.

  “I do too,” said Laura. “But Roy, you and I can keep the cabin. Dad would give it to me if I asked.”

  “He’d give it to you?” Roy asked.

  “He can afford it,” Laura replied. “He’s got these little hideout cabins and apartments all over the country. It’s not like he’ll ever be short of cash, with a sucker born every minute.”

  Roy looked from her to the pack, then back to her, with an almost comical look of confusion on his face. “Have you guys already talked about this? You all want to live in Yosemite?”

  Laura nodded. “We don’t have to live together—we could just meet up a couple times a week—but we have to be close enough to do that. We’re all from different places, so it’s not like we can go back home. And we want enough wilderness to run around in.”

  “We don’t think we’ll have any trouble getting work here,” Keisha tactlessly assured Roy, who looked increasingly depressed as she went on, “ER doctors are always in demand. So are engineers. So are award-winning chefs. Nicolette was about to re-enlist when she was kidnapped, but she thinks she could do private security.”

  “Right,” Roy muttered. “Maybe I could too—no, dammit, I can’t. I couldn’t avoid everything, and I couldn’t bring Laura along.”

  “There is a job we could do together, though.” Laura had been waiting to suggest it, and it looked like now was her chance.

  Roy gave her a doubtful glance. “Is it something you’d want to do?”

  “Yes.” Laura smiled. “How would you like to be a private eye with me?”

  He brightened. “Hell, yeah!”

  “I could handle the computer and phone stuff, and we could always investigate together,” Laura said. “I could sweet-talk and con people, and you could loom over and terrify them. You know, as needed.”

  “You should have a cool name,” Miguel suggested. “Like Cloak and Dagger. Not actually that one, it’s taken.”

  “Kaplan and Farrell,” Laura said.

  “Not Farrell and Kaplan?” Roy asked, at the same time that Nicolette remarked, “Boring. Stuffy. People will think you’re accountants.”

  “We could have a sideline helping werewolves,” Roy said. “You guys can’t be the only ones who were in trouble and couldn’t call the police.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Laura said. “I wonder how we’d get the word out, though. If we put it on our website, we’d scare off legit business and get deluged with letters from people who think they’re vampires.”

  “What if there really are vampires?” Russell asked no one in particular. “If there’s werewolves…”

  “Wolf, Incorporated?” Miguel offered. “Wolf and Bane?”

  “Sounds like a Batman crossover,” said Nicolette. “What about Full Moon Investigations?”

  In all the discussion, Roy had never let go of Laura’s hand, eating and drinking with his other. Now his fingers tightened over hers. He cocked his head, listening, then released her hand and stood.

  Nicolette rose too, wary. “What do you hear?”

  “Might be Jim’s buddy again,” Roy said over his shoulder, hurrying toward the door.

  Laura followed him outside. She watched Roy, not the road, and knew who was coming by the incredulous smile that lit his face before she could even hear the motorcycle. She reached out to take his hand, but he was already tearing down the driveway, not even bothering to put his fingers in his ears.

  A Harley roared up, loaded down with a huge, precarious-looking bundle. The rider vaulted off before it had even come to a complete stop, taking off his helmet with one hand and parking the motorcycle with a kick of his foot.

  Laura caught only the briefest glimpse of a black leather jacket, brown skin, and black hair before a huge white wolf leaped over the Harley, knocking the rider flat. Then two wolves were rolling over and over in the dirt road in a flurry of white and gray fur, playfully nipping and tussling with each other.

  The rest of the pack joined Laura in the driveway.

  “He’s friendly, right?” Miguel said. “They’re just joking around… Right?”

  “That’s the ally Roy wanted to have help rescue you guys,” Laura explained. “It’s DJ Torres, from Roy’s fire team. Roy sent him a message to come up here, and I guess he forgot to call him off.”

  Nicolette eyed the bundle. “Too bad he didn’t come earlier. Looks like he brought some rifles.”

  The air around the wolves shimmered. DJ became a man, and, to Laura’s amazement, tackled and pinned Roy’s dire wolf. Roy became a man as well, and easily flipped DJ on to his back. But DJ pulled him down, and the two of them wrestled together. To Laura’s amazement, DJ, who was much smaller than Roy, pinned him again. Roy fought fiercely, but to no avail. Finally, he extended his hand and tapped out.

  DJ bounced to his feet, laughing. “I’ve been waiting for years to be able to fight you and not hold back.”

  His voice was pleasant but scratchy, as if he’d worn it out talking for hours. If Roy sounded like a Shakespearean actor, DJ sounded, appropriately enough, like the host of a college radio station.

  Roy dusted himself off. “If you use the unfair advantage of superhuman strength, of course you can beat me. That’s like Superman fighting Batman. It doesn’t make Superman a better fighter.”

  “And how fair was it when you thought you were using your size and weight advantage to beat me?” DJ demanded.

  Not waiting for Roy’s reply, he spun around, unstrapped the bundle from the Harley, and tossed it over his sh
oulder. Even though Laura knew about his power, it was bizarre to see a man of his size lift a package that had to weigh a hundred pounds as if it was made of styrofoam.

  DJ stopped, seeming to notice the others for the first time. “Who’re they? Wait, are they the pack? Are they your pack now?” He shot an accusing look at Roy. “Did you go rescue them without me?”

  “‘Fraid so,” Roy said. “I’ll introduce you. There’s coffee inside.”

  “If there’s coffee…” That seemed to satisfy DJ.

  Laura looked at him curiously as he hurried up the driveway, every movement suffused with cheerful, restless energy. DJ wasn’t as small as she’d first thought when she’d seen him next to Roy; medium height, but wiry rather than burly. He was younger than Roy, in his mid to late twenties, boyishly handsome and with very dark eyes that didn’t seem to miss a thing.

  If she hadn’t known who he was, she might have taken him for a graduate student, or maybe an athlete in some quirky sport like parkour or Ultimate Frisbee. Unlike Roy, he didn’t look as if he had seen too much, done too much, and been in combat for far too long; he looked like the sweet, innocent boy next door. She wondered if there was a touch of the con artist in him.

  Roy introduced DJ to the pack, scent names and all. He concluded, “And this is Laura Kaplan. Lemon Meringue.”

  DJ gave her a respectful nod. “So you’re Roy’s mate! You must have nerves of steel.”

  “What do you mean, ‘mate?’” Laura asked. Mr. Torres had used the same word, but she hadn’t thought much of it at the time.

  “Didn’t my folks mention that? Werewolves mate for life. Once you fall in love, you never fall out. Doesn’t mean things always work out, but if you break up, it won’t be because you don’t love each other.” A flash of sadness crossed DJ’s mobile face. “Even before they meet, mates are drawn together. They get impulses to go somewhere—”

  “I had that!” Roy exclaimed. “I hiked about a hundred miles, over mountains, to get here. To get to Laura, I guess. Even before she got here herself.”

  “Yeah, it can work like that. And once a pair bonds, if they’re separated, they can sense when their mate is in danger.”