Garth shot Hans a dirty look.
Hans rubbed his lower leg. “I didn’t appreciate you taking a chunk out of me in wolf form, Captain.”
Garth had no memory of biting the man. In fact, he’d only just learned it had been a week since he’d been in Savannah with Nicolette. It had seemed like seconds to him. “I need to get back to her!”
“Captain, you’re having major control issues. You are the biggest danger to her.”
Garth didn’t agree. He bared his teeth at the man.
Hans grinned slightly. “Be upset all you want and face the truth. You had a bad reaction to the meds they gave you and you lost your mind over some girl.”
“She’s not some girl,” snapped Garth. “And if you all know what’s good for you, you’ll stop keeping me here against my will. If something happens to her, I’ll kill each and every one of you.”
Hans glanced at his brother.
“That makes number three hundred and forty for him and the death threats today. He’s on a roll.” Jannick raised a bottle of water in the air as if it were a beer. He’d sworn off alcohol several weeks prior after he’d woken up four states away from where he’d started the night’s festivities.
Jannick’s personality was vastly different from his twin’s. Where Hans was stoic, Jannick was all about fun. Too much fun. “I’m with stick-up-the-ass. Gladiator death match or we’re out.”
Hans shot his brother a hard look. “I am not that bad.”
Jannick said nothing in response. He merely grinned like a Cheshire cat.
“I’m with the Germans. That is somethin’ you do nae hear many Scotsmen saying,” said Gram. “Less bitching and more blood sport, now! The vampire offered to keep you occupied and us entertained. Now make it so.”
Laughter echoed through the room at the suggestion.
Garth didn’t find the matter funny. “Grid is in Savannah. He’s stalking a human woman and you fucks are keeping me prisoner here. He’s going to hurt someone else while you all sit on your thumbs!”
Gram stopped smiling. “You forget, I was given the same shite you were. Turns out a side effect is hallucinations. You know that. Trust me, Viking. For the first two days I was awake, I was certain I was having conversations with my mother. She’s been dead and gone for over a century. If that wasnae enough, I kept seeing white wolves in the room with me. I think they were my version of dancing elephants.”
“I did not imagine my brother. He was there. He threatened the woman I was with,” argued Garth, needing them to understand he was telling the truth. Nicolette’s life depended on it. That being said, the smallest of doubt crept into his head. Had he merely imagined Grid there?
Jannick cleared his throat. “Gram also thought I was Brooke and he tried to kiss me. That shit they gave you makes you randy, too. Makes sense you’d spend the weekend fucking a hottie, but we’re telling you, Captain, Grid wasn’t there. The Outcasts who contained you said they found the other shifter whom they’d been tracking prior to coming across you losing your shit in the open. And the wereduck was not your brother.”
Gram grunted. “Och, I dinnae try to kiss you. Stop telling people that. They’re likely to believe you. As for you, Viking, stop with thinking yer brother was in Savannah. What do you think the odds are that you’d be sent on an assignment there at the last minute and he’d just so happen to be there too? Oh, I know, one in a fucking million. Now, fists up, mouth shut. Kick the vampire’s arse.”
Hans tipped back in his chair. “Why am I only hearing of the wereduck now?”
Gram snorted. “Because it was nae a wereduck. It was a werebird—eagle, I think I heard Corbin saying.”
Jannick lifted his hands as if he was innocent. “Same thing.”
“What if you’re wrong about Grid? What if I didn’t imagine my brother was there? What if he attacked the woman I was with?” asked Garth, desperate for his friends to listen to him instead of dismissing everything he was saying. “Just let me go to her. Let me see with my own eyes that she’s okay.”
He’d already tried to take them all on to get free. Turns out, one Viking—who hadn’t bothered to eat or sleep properly in a week while stuck in wolf form—against nearly ten PSI operatives who had eaten and slept didn’t really stand a chance.
Hans looked to Garth. “The human female is fine. The Para-Regs are keeping tabs on her just in case you aren’t crazy. The Outcasts who managed to get you subdued and keep you from harming innocents made sure the human woman had a protection detail put on her, even though neither of them laid eyes on your brother. They only saw you.”
“No. The one called Wheeler saw Grid following Nicolette. He just thought it was me,” said Garth harshly.
“This is getting old, Viking,” said Gram. “The woman is fine. Your brother is not in Georgia. When I was keeping tabs on him, he didn’t enter the states much at all. Canada was as close as he’d come. He prefers to do his dirty work overseas.”
Garth’s gut said otherwise. The men were now taking turns babysitting him around the clock, making sure he couldn’t run off and do something they saw as stupid.
Like get stuck in wolf form again.
But going to Savannah again wasn’t stupid. Nicolette needed his protection. None of them could see that though. They thought he was overreacting. That he’d imagined Grid being there because no one else had seen him. That Garth’s response was born out of an adverse side effect of the serum he’d tested for Gram’s recovery. Even if it was, he still had the burning desire to check on Nicolette. To see for himself that she was well. Not only that, but he needed to touch her. To feel her soft skin against him and to smell her as he held her.
His body burned for her, longing to be close to her. She consumed his thoughts, and he couldn’t stop the feral need to try to get to her. If the men he called friends were mistaken, and Grid was in Savannah, Nicolette was in grave danger.
Human or not, Grid would harm Nicolette just because he could. Because he’d always taken what he’d wanted growing up. He’d always had to have the best of everything. And if he thought for one second Garth wanted Nicolette for keeps, Grid would kill her just for the fun of it. That was what his brother had become. The monster that he’d permitted himself to grow into.
Maybe Garth was acting like an idiot because of the drugs that had been in his system. But they were gone now, and he still wanted to get back to Nicolette. Back to Savannah to be sure she was safe and sound. He didn’t trust her fate left to two Outcasts and the Para-Regs in the area. She was his to worry about. His to protect.
Mine.
He growled.
Jannick snorted. “There he goes again. Bet he loses his shit and shifts again. Vikings are pussies.”
“Agreed,” said Gram. “Total pussies.”
Garth lifted his hand in the air and flipped off all the ops who were present.
“Precious, Garth. Really,” said Gram with a wink. “The human is fine. Corbin is keeping tabs on the situation there, at least that’s what Hans told me.”
Hans nodded, looking bored with life. “It is true. The Brit has checked in daily with a contact in the area. All is well on that front. Now, are you going to confess to bedding the woman? You said you were with her, but do you mean with her like sex or with her like something boring?”
“I’m telling you all he totally spent a couple of nights screwing her until he couldn’t walk. No other reason for his behavior this week. She had to be something special in bed,” said Jannick with a laugh.
Garth stilled. He knew he’d had sex with Nicolette on the night he’d lost control and shifted. He could vividly remember how it felt sinking into her…but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember much beyond that. Bits and pieces of events were with him, and in them, he saw Grid near a trashcan, mocking him. Even that memory was slightly jumbled. He remembered Cody appearing, and a man named Wheeler coming out of nowhere. Mostly, he just remembered the burning need to protect Nicolette right before his w
olf took hold of him fully.
Maybe Gram was right.
Maybe the drugs had done a number on his mind. If that was the case, then how did things end with Nicolette?
Jannick cleared his throat, his expression growing serious. “If we let you run off right now, you’re going to look for trouble. If you turn over enough rocks, you’ll find it—or rather, it will find you. Hans and I know what The Corporation does when it has its hands on twin male shifters. If they get to you because you ran off half-cocked and get stuck in wolf form again, trust me when I say, death won’t come quick enough.”
Hans averted his gaze but nodded. “He’s right, Garth.”
Jannick watched Garth. “We keep you from leaving for your own good. Not to punish you. Besides, if you show up down there and its turns out Grid is really truly following you, and isn’t a figment of your imagination, he’s going to make the human a target because she means something to you and he finds it funny. You know it. So do all of us.”
Garth hung his head for a moment. “I just need to see that she’s okay with my own eyes. Let me call her.”
“We tried that this morning when you finally started walking on two feet again. You spent more time trying to eat us than bothering to tell us her name and her phone number,” reminded Jannick.
“Someone can get a message to her. Have Cody do it,” said Garth.
“Captain, she’s fine,” stressed Jannick before he pointed to Auberi. “Focus on the dickwad in front of you. The two of you can’t stop bickering. Might as well fight it out. Take your aggressions out on the French guy. It’s what we Germans like to do too.”
Auberi grunted. “Dickwad?”
Jannick shrugged. “Let’s not pretend you’re anything but. I know you have no love for Germans. You French don’t much care for us.”
Hans lifted a brow. “It’s mutual.”
Garth ignored the pair as they began to argue back and forth. His focus returned to Nicolette. When he’d woken to find himself shackled and locked in one of the holding rooms in the lowest level of PSI, he’d been furious. He had no memory of being dragged away from Nicolette’s home by Cody and Wheeler. James had been the one to fill in those finer points. And he had no memory of the Para-Regs who apparently assisted with transporting him back to Division B Headquarters.
From what Garth had been told, the men had sedated him, put him in a cage, loaded him on a plane, and brought his ass back to Division B to be handed off and become someone else’s issue.
What he did remember was coming to in a holding cell, being disoriented, hungry, tired and desperate to get to Nicolette. The fierce need to free himself had been all-consuming. Hell, it had been so intense that it even managed to scare him. He could only imagine what it looked like to his friends.
Truth was, it had only lessened slightly. Enough for him to look like he was close to being in control. In reality, he was a ticking time bomb. He knew it. Apparently, so did the rest of the men.
He knew they were doing what they felt was right to protect him and others from him, but that didn’t change the fact they were wrong.
She was in danger.
And Grid had fucking been there.
He knew it with every fiber of his being.
Hans tapped the tabletop. “Are we here to watch a real fight or not?”
“No one is writhing in pain, so I’d say no,” added Jannick as he slammed the rest of his water bottle.
Groaning, Gram leaned partially in the hospital bed the other operatives had lifted and carried (with Gram still in it) through the facility to the training room the second a fight had broken out between Garth and Auberi in the infirmary. Garth had already been past the point of reasoning because he was being held in the facility against his will. Add in having to spend even more time with that arrogant vampire who he couldn’t stand, and it spelled a recipe for disaster. A fight had been bound to happen.
In this case, it led straight to a fight breaking out in the infirmary.
That was what had gotten them to this point. He and Auberi had been quickly shooed in the direction of the training room and told to settle their differences there. Not in the center of the infirmary.
Multiple operatives were spread out in the training room. Several had set up another card table and were doing their version of scorecards while they did shots. Garth wasn’t surprised by that. He’d have been shocked if they hadn’t.
“Hurry this up or call a draw. It’s my first taste of freedom. I want to see hot chicks. Nae you two. Yer nae the least bit sexy,” said Gram.
While the thought was nice, Garth knew better. He knew his friend well, and he knew Gram’s heart was still in the process of breaking over the love that he could no longer have. He knew the wolf-shifter’s world had crashed down on him. He’d lost the woman he’d proposed to, the little girl he saw as a stepdaughter, and nearly his life. The man was putting on a brave face and a good show in an attempt to throw others off the scent of his feelings.
While it might work on some, it didn’t on Garth. He knew Gram too well.
“Since I’m nae at risk of shifting and getting stuck like the Viking, I say we cut me loose,” said Gram. “Like I said, you and Auberi are ass-ugly. I want something sexy to look at.”
“I don’t know about them not being sexy. Auberi has girlie hair. That kind of counts as sexy,” said Jannick as he blew a kiss in Auberi’s direction.
Garth used the moment and struck out quickly, catching Auberi in the jaw. The vampire’s head snapped back.
“If the Viking kills yer doctor, can we take you to a strip club then? That damn French arsehole has you on bed-rest orders and willnae let you have any fun. So, if he’s deader than normal, we can go, right?” asked Striker (Dougal only to his mother) McCracken as he put his feet up and onto the end of Gram’s hospital bed. The outspoken Scottish wolf-shifter had a tendency to attract trouble. So much so that he made Gram look tame.
In truth, Gram had tamed over the last few years. He’d met a woman who had a child and had done the family thing. Unfortunately for Gram, that woman was already mated to another man. One she’d thought was dead. A man Gram knew well. And a man Gram had about as much love for as Garth did with Auberi. Though that was changing too.
Gram and Malik, the man in question, were finding common ground. Garth highly doubted he and Auberi would ever find equal footing. They didn’t have a woman they both cared about. They did have mutual friends, but the manly best friend code only extended so far—it did not cover dickheads.
He snarled at Auberi as they continued to walk in a slow circle, each mirroring the other’s steps. When they’d first started to fight, it had been intense and an all-out battle. After three hours, it had certainly waned, but it was far from over.
Auberi struck out fast and hit Garth in the chest. The blow made Garth stumble slightly. Righting himself, he rubbed his chest. “Going to need to do better than that, Bouchard.”
The vampire came at him again, this time slicing open Garth’s torso. The wounds were superficial, but they did bleed. He swiped his hand through the blood and lifted his crimson-tipped fingers in Auberi’s direction.
A tic began in Auberi’s jaw as his gaze snapped to the blood.
Garth laughed mockingly. “So easy to tempt. It is why your kind is weaker.”
Auberi gathered himself. “Tell me. Are shifters the better species when they’re in animal form licking their own asses?”
“Och, I do nae lick my arse,” protested Striker. He then grinned wolfishly. “Ask me if I lick my balls.”
Gram’s eyes widened. “Do nae ask. He’ll show you and I’ll throw up. I could pull a stitch or something.”
Hans cleared his throat and waved a hand in the air. “I have no wish to see Striker lick anything.”
“Yer no fun.” Striker sat in a wheeled office chair that he’d brought from the bullpen area of the offices. While he’d started off using scorecards as well, he’d gotten bored with that and hungr
y. He’d already eaten his way through most of the food that had been in the breakroom refrigerator, regardless of who it belonged to, and was now doing his best to destroy the popcorn reserves. He watched Garth and Auberi while he ate from a bowl of microwaved popcorn. He lifted the bowl to Gram. “Want some? I’ve seen the shite they feed you in the infirmary. Bland diet is right. Even the pudding tasted horrible. How can you fuck up pudding?”
Gram snorted but didn’t take any. While the serum had ultimately worked to help kick-start his body’s natural healing abilities, it by no means offered an instant cure. He had burns that were still being treated over large portions of his body and his bones were still mending. All things, as a shifter male, he should have done already, but whatever he’d been given by The Corporation was proving harder to counter than anyone thought.
Somehow, Gram had managed to pull through. But the man on the other side of the explosion wasn’t quite the same as the one before it occurred. Not that anyone could blame Gram.
“No popcorn for you,” said Auberi sternly to Gram, ever the medical professional when called for, as he pointed a finger at his patient.
Gram met Garth’s gaze. “I changed my vote. Kill him. Turn him into dust. Be quick about it and I’ll help spring you from this hellhole with me. We can build a boat or something. Is that nae what yer kind enjoys doing? That or go steal loot. I know you have a thing for acquiring weapons. We’ll go in search of those. Make it quick, I’m nae getting any younger in this fucking bed.”
Striker chuckled as he tossed a handful of popcorn into the air, leaned in the chair, and artfully caught it all. Knowing Striker, he’d spent centuries perfecting the art of catching food like that. He chomped on it, seemingly unconcerned that bits of it were stuck in his wild, deep red beard. The man had the attention span of a gnat and a beard that was fast reminding Garth of the band ZZ Top. At some point, someone was going to hold the man down and cut the thing.
“Does somebody want to tell me what in the hell happened to my infirmary? And where is Gram? He’s supposed to be resting. He’s not even in the medical wing, let alone resting,” said Dr. James Hagen as he entered the training room. His gaze slid to Gram and the hospital bed. He lifted a brow. “Striker, what did you do?”
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