Scout: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #7)

by Holley Trent

  “You broke a bunch of bones,” Graciella said. “The part of you that’s wolf probably isn’t letting you feel the damage right now, but I bet you’ll be hurting tomorrow. There’s only so long it’ll filter the pain.”

  Ugh. Petra had no reason to doubt the woman, even if she’d never experienced the delayed pain personally. She’d heard about the phenomenon, though. Had to be common among wolves.

  “What’d I break?”

  Paul leaned one knee onto the bed and gestured to Graciella to help Petra sit up. “Listing what you didn’t break would be easier. You’re a walking, talking, hissing miracle.”

  Petra ground her teeth, and then did hiss when he palpated her lower ribs.

  Definitely broken.

  “Sorry.” He moved his fingers more gently over each rib, sweeping across specific ones that all hurt, at least a little. Then her arms. Her collarbones and neck, as if he were trying to feel bones that were out of place.

  “Yeah, that’s about the sum of it.”

  “Huh?”

  “You wondered if I was trying to feel misaligned bones. Yes. I am.”

  She shook her head. “Um, I didn’t say that aloud.”

  “You’re forgetting what he is.” Graciella scooted off the bed and went to the television. She shifted the screen, perhaps to remove a glare, and then stood at the foot of the bed, craning her head toward the set. The volume was low and there was some sort of dramatic conflict playing out on the show.

  Petra furrowed her brow and forced herself to look at Paul.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t looking back. He was too busy assessing the condition of her shins. Her ankles. Her feet.

  She giggled when he tugged on her toes, and then got a hold of herself. “You’re in my head? You can hear what I’m thinking?”

  “Only when I’m touching you.”

  Oh, hell.

  She pulled her foot away from him. “No, that’s not weird at all.”

  “I assure you, I’ve been what I am for thirty-five years. I don’t intentionally try to read my patients’ thoughts, but yours are particularly loud. I shouldn’t be able to hear them at all. You’re not Afótama, and I—” The set of his jaw tensed. “Well. I don’t have power like the queen’s. I’ll leave it at that.”

  “All of you can do that?”

  “Do what? Hear thoughts? Communicate telepathically?”

  Apparently satisfied with the conditions of her bones, he pulled the covers up over her and moved back to the nightstand—back to the pills he probably expected her to swallow.

  “Yeah. Hear thoughts.”

  “Telepathy is typical of Afótama. Not being able to communicate with friends and family members in that way would make a person here exceptional. The skill doesn’t generally work with outsiders, though my other forms of magic usually do.”

  “Like the bone thing.”

  “Yeah. It’s not specifically a bone thing, though. I can discern when things aren’t whole. My friend Chris can actually diagnose some illnesses just by being in proximity to a sick person.”

  Petra whistled low. “Never heard of anything like you people.”

  “And I assure you, I’ve never met a wolf quite like you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He took her hand in his, turned it over, dropped three pills onto her palm, and curled her fingers to enclose them. “I’ll get you water.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Yes. You did.” He left the room without so much as a backward glance at her, and she seethed.

  “How dare he? Stuck-up prickface.”

  Graciella snorted.

  “I’m serious.” Petra uncurled her fingers and squinted at the pills in her hand. Two horse pills and a smaller white capsule. She wasn’t taking them until she knew what they were. It’d be just my luck he’s trying to knock me out again. Can’t talk back if I’m unconscious.

  “That’s just Paul,” Graciella said. “After a while, you learn not to take anything he says personally. His efficiency sometimes comes across as coldness.”

  “Well, I could see that,” Petra muttered.

  Perhaps he had been coolly efficient, but his hands hadn’t been cold. They’d been warm and tender, and although his touches had been purposeful, they’d somehow managed to stir something inside her.

  She didn’t know what. She’d never felt that thrum of exhilaration deep inside her before. Never before had she felt simultaneously so terrified and so intrigued by a person. She’d wanted him to go away, but as soon as he’d left, she’d wanted him to return so she could be sure she’d remembered his face right.

  “Thirty-five, he said,” she mused.

  Graciella cast a querying look over her shoulder.

  “Ignore me. Just thinking.” Wondering if thirty-five was so terribly old. She’d always thought people in their thirties acted younger, or perhaps she simply wanted to believe that since she was crawling reluctantly toward that decade herself.

  Petra dropped the pills onto her lap and straightened up as Paul returned to the room with a couple of bottles of water and his jacket on.

  Where’s he going?

  He gave her one water bottle, set the spare on the nightstand, and then zipped up his medical bag. “I gave you an iron pill, a painkiller, and something to keep the painkiller from making you nauseated. Take them with dinner.”

  “Where are you going?” Stupid. She rolled her eyes at herself before he turned around.

  “Home. I’m off the clock. If you need anything during the night, I’m sure Arnold knows how to get in touch with the hospital.”

  “Arnold’s here?”

  “He’s outside with some of the men in the pack.”

  “Interesting.” If she kept on grinding her teeth the way she was, she wouldn’t have enough enamel on her molars to chew her dinner. “I’m sure he’ll come say hi later.”

  “Maybe.”

  With that terse response, Paul slung his bag’s strap onto his shoulder, nodded at Graciella, and then left.

  Petra scoffed and flicked the pills he’d given her toward the nightstand. “Rude.”

  She’d never cared before if a man were rude, and didn’t know why she’d suddenly give a damn with that particular one.

  “Maybe he forgot to check my head and see if that was broken, too.”

  “Huh?” Graciella asked.

  “Nothin’. Ignore me. My brain’s not quite right.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You’ve ordered the same thing for damn near a year, so I can’t believe you’ve suddenly developed a taste for something else.”

  Paul’s chaos-filled brain unpacked Chris’s words in small pieces, and Chris—standing in line in Norseton’s only coffee shop with one blond eyebrow raised in query—forced Paul back to the here and now.

  “Shit. Sorry.” Paul put in his usual order for a large dark roast and a toasted onion bagel, and then got out of the way.

  Chris joined him at their usual standing table and made a spit it out gesture.

  “I’m not sure I want to know what you’re asking me to say, but tell me anyway.”

  “You seem out of it this morning. I’ve asked you about ten different questions and you didn’t answer a single one.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I guessed that. What’s got you so distracted? Work shit? I just left the hospital. Nothing seemed particularly pressing.”

  “Yes and no.” Paul drummed his fingers on the tabletop and let out a ragged exhalation at the sight of a couple of familiar werewolves passing by the shop window. Just Stephanie and Esther, fortunately. Not the wild woman. “I think I have a problem.”

  “A work problem, you said?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Like I said, I’m just getting off a long night shift, so you’re going to have to excuse me if I’m not processing at my usual speed. Break the scenario down for me in simple terms.”

  “Weird shit happened y
esterday with a werewolf.”

  “What kind of werewolf? A shifted one? Did you get clawed up?”

  “No, still wild, though. A female one.”

  Chris tipped his head back and said, “Ah.”

  Paul drummed his fingertips against the tabletop for a few more percussive beats and watched the barista pour steamed milk into a cup as he gathered his words.

  “From back when we were doing our residencies out of state and working with plain-old humans,” Paul started, “can you recall touching a single one and being able to pick up their thoughts?”

  Chris narrowed his eyes and clucked his tongue for a few beats. “Nope. I don’t think so. The only time I got anything resembling a psychic buzz off anyone was from a lady who later confessed to being a witch.”

  “Ditto.”

  Even after Chris had moved his fated match into the apartment and Paul had moved out, Paul hadn’t put much stock in the Fates pulling strings for relationships. That had always been Chris’s ambition—to be matched with the perfect-for-him woman who could put up with all his bullshit. Someone who could fill in his psychic gaps, such as they were.

  But until Queen Tess had returned to the clan, there were few people in the clan who could honestly state they’d had a match blessed by the old Norse gods. Matches were rare. Precious. Certainly not interventions made for the clan members who ran in the middle of the pack. Chris, the optimist, had ended up with what and whom he’d wanted.

  Paul, on the other hand, didn’t have the magnetism of the typical Afótama clansman, and felt like he shouldn’t have to pretend. Being himself was a lonely prospect, but it was better than being false. He’d resigned himself to the fact that there wouldn’t be anyone for him, so he would have never thought the gods would nudge a snarling she-beast toward him in that “Here’s a gift for you” way he couldn’t ignore. They’d let him into her mind to hear all her scattered, discordant head sounds. That wasn’t normal.

  He was pretty sure Petra was supposed to be his match. Everyone he knew who had a match all said the same thing—You just know.

  He just didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do about that. He also wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be a punishment for his doubting ways, or a reward.

  “So…” Chris made another get-on-with-it gesture. He probably wanted to go curl up in his bed before his wife got out of it. Paul couldn’t blame him for that. He was pretty skin-starved, himself—a well-documented genetic flaw of the Afótama. They needed to touch and be touched.

  Paul cracked each of his knuckles and gathered his thoughts. “I was giving the vicious she-wolf an exam yesterday and her thoughts started popping into my head, clear as a bell.”

  “And…”

  “And I got that sinking feeling.”

  “You mean the glorious revelation that you’ve just found yourself in possession of a vicious she-wolf?”

  Paul grunted and went to the counter to fetch his so-called breakfast.

  Chris grabbed his food, too, already biting down into his breakfast sandwich before he could set his coffee cup down. “Is she really so bad?” he asked through a mouthful of bread and egg.

  Paul shrugged and checked his coffee lid for gaps. “Don’t know. Hard to tell. I don’t know much about her besides the fact that she’s trying to hightail it out of here on the fastest thing smoking.”

  At the tapping of the window glass behind them, both men turned.

  Spotting Lisa and Graciella, Paul groaned and set down his cup. “They probably want me. Be right back.”

  He stepped outside, mentally girding himself for whatever they had to say. “Morning, ladies.”

  Lisa folded her arms over her chest, chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment, and then let out a lip-sputtering breath. “We were debating whether or not to say anything.”

  “You know what? After hearing a preface like that, just do me a favor and don’t say anything.”

  Graciella furrowed her brow. “So you know you’ve acquired a stalker, then?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Don’t look,” Lisa said, “but down the street at the corner, there’s a wolf watching you. Granted, she doesn’t look like much of a wolf, but she’s got the instincts, all the same.”

  “Petra?”

  “Yep,” Graciella said. “We saw her when we were coming out of the grocery store. She’s probably been up for hours, and I guess Arnold didn’t notice she’d left.”

  Shit. “What the hell is she doing? She’s supposed to be resting.”

  Lisa redistributed the grocery bag straps she held and flitted her gaze in the general direction of his apparent stalker. “She probably doesn’t know what she’s doing, herself.”

  “What do you think she’s doing? I really need to hear a wolf’s opinion on the matter.” If Petra had been Afótama, and she was who he suspected her to be, her proximity would have been expected. People of Afótama descent had a tendency to form quick connections, but Petra wasn’t Afótama.

  “My guess,” Graciella said, “is that you imprinted on her, and now she’s watching you.”

  “Shit.” He raked a hand through his messy hair and looked through the window at Chris who was giving him yet another querying look.

  Paul shook his head at him in what he hoped was a don’t come out here fashion.

  If Chris did, he’d push Paul down the street giving him one of those obnoxious pep talks about seizing the day and claiming his mate or some such shit. Paul hadn’t even finished his coffee. He wasn’t ready to seize the day, much less discourse with a lady werewolf who looked at him as though he were in dire need of castration.

  “We don’t have a lot of experience in our pack with letting nature take its course,” Lisa said. “Most of us are in pairings the wolf goddess facilitated. Graciella and Finn were the first couple to pair off without intervention, and even that happened faster than most normal folks would be comfortable with. It’s been so long since wolves were allowed to pick their own mates that we’re still not really sure of how a courtship is supposed to play out.”

  “Courtship? I’m not a wolf,” Paul said. Stating the obvious had always made him feel better.

  “Right, so…” Graciella cringed. “We’re giving you an FYI, I guess. I don’t know what to tell you. If you’re not interested, can you just do your best to let her down gently? Arnold would very much like to stay here, but if Petra leaves, he’ll probably feel obligated to do the same. We don’t want her to leave, either. Every pack member is important, and we think she could add something to our group. We learn something from every wolf who comes out of a different pack.”

  “I see.” Paul risked a glance down the street and let out a startled scoff upon discovering that Petra had moved half a block closer.

  He could see the dark hollows under her eyes and the ill-fitting hang of the masculine plaid shirt she wore. The woman should have been in bed recuperating, not lurking in the streets for the asshole she’d supposedly imprinted on.

  He’d have to find some way to make her change her mind. In spite of the Fates’ meddling, there was no way in hell he was the right man for her. The consensus was that he wasn’t the right man for anyone. She’d be one more women who’d be angry at him for not being open enough—for not smiling at all the right times, or saying all the right things.

  He pulled in a deep, bracing breath, and turned his gaze back to the sisters. “I’ll be kind,” he said. “If she’s still there when I come out, I’ll take her to wolf housing and get her back into bed.”

  “Okay,” Graciella said. “Just pretend we didn’t say anything.”

  Impossible.

  Still, Paul nodded, bared his teeth in something he hoped resembled a smile, and waved the sisters on their way.

  He reentered the coffee shop without turning to see if Petra was still watching from down the block. In spite of his skepticism and his reluctance to connect, some part of him was afraid to see if she hadn’t come closer.

/>   That part of him was afraid that Graciella and Lisa were overreacting, and that he’d been wrong about Petra being his match. The gods offered matches on a “take it or leave it” system. If he refused Petra, he would probably never connect with anyone else.

  He would always be alone.

  ___

  After finishing his breakfast, Paul stepped out of the coffee shop once again and let out an involuntary breath of relief.

  She was still there, and closer. Right at the corner on the bench, sitting with her boots unlaced, her hands folded primly atop her lap, and her dark hair standing up in odd places.

  Chris, behind Paul, chuckled quietly and whispered, “Want me to call the hospital and let them know you’ll be late?”

  “Yeah. I gotta get her back to her house.”

  “She’s cute, at least.”

  “Yeah.”

  She was a little more than cute, but Chris would have been too polite to say so. In the decade since Paul had graduated from medical school, he’d mostly been able to compartmentalize people from their ailments. He didn’t pay much attention to what they looked like or size them up as potential partners. He just did his job and didn’t worry too much about missed opportunities.

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see her just as a patient. He’d been fighting off the sick urge to take her in with his gaze, to touch her since the moment he’d had to pin her to her bed after she’d waked.

  “Ping me later,” Chris said.

  “Yeah. After work.”

  Chris set off toward their shared apartment building, waving at the wary wolf as he passed.

  She didn’t wave back. She tracked him with dark, tired-looking eyes until he’d crossed the street, and then she glanced at Paul.

  Her lush lips were set in a tense line and shoulders gathered high near her ears.

  On edge. Ready to pounce, perhaps.

  Diffuse. He raked his hair back from his face and took slow steps toward her. “I’ll take you home. You should be in bed.”

  She didn’t say anything. Didn’t stand. Just watched him.

  He offered her his hand.

  She stared at it.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Did you have breakfast?”