by Moira Rogers
“Do you need it?” Andrew asked.
“Maybe.” He kicked off his boots and shed his socks. “It’s been a long week.” A frustrating week, full of problems that couldn’t be faced head on. Not surprising the wolf was ready to claw his way free.
“No shit.” Andrew fell silent, and a rough surge of magic ripped through the still night air. Derek rose to his feet and watched as the brownish wolf explored Alec’s backyard, every movement carrying the same leashed tension Andrew evinced as a human.
“He’s getting better,” Alec said from behind Derek, his low voice carrying on the evening breeze.
“I know.” That was the scary part. “He wouldn’t be holding it together at all without your help.”
“He’ll be okay. You both will. Now hurry the fuck up.”
Derek shed the rest of his clothing in silence and reached inside. The wolf rose, gleeful at the chance to escape, and the change flowed over him in a rush of pure magic.
Andrew howled. The breeze carried the short burst of sound, an invitation to run, to shed more than their clothes and human forms. To shed their humanity.
The man slipped away, and the wolf hurt. Part of Derek was missing, the mate he’d stalked and cornered, the one he’d taken and let claim him in return. Pain tore through him, and his howl held loss and loneliness and the agony his life had become.
A moment’s hesitation, and Andrew joined him in a rising call of mourning. Magic surged again and a third howl shook through the night, low and hopeless enough to remind Derek that Alec had known loss of his own, a loss that had left him slowly bleeding to death for years.
Derek moved first, lunging toward the tree line. Andrew overtook him quickly, bumping his way ahead through the dim forest.
The urge to challenge was gone. Violence wouldn’t ease the pain of Nick’s absence, but the slowly forming bonds of pack could give him something he needed in order to cope. Friendship. Family.
After only a few hundred yards, Andrew skidded to a stop on the carpet of pine needles and fallen leaves, his ears and tail erect. He’d scented prey. A chase.
They knew their places now, knew how to stalk their prey. Derek gave in to the thrill of the hunt, silent as he raced through the trees. Ten days ago, the wolf had been a monster inside, something to be fought and controlled. Now he knew the human world had no place for him, but this world welcomed him. The adrenaline, the freedom, the joy…
The pain.
He’d found the world he belonged in, but he hadn’t found home. Home was Nick Peyton, and neither wolf nor man could rest without her.
So he had to find her again.
He gave himself over to the wolf, knowing tomorrow a different sort of hunt would begin.
Derek accepted the beers Alec handed him and passed one to Andrew. The cool evening breeze set the huge wind chime on Alec’s porch swaying, the quiet tinkling almost soothing enough to make up for the fact that the chime itself was a garish purple and featured cartoonish pink and yellow wolves cavorting across the top.
He caught Alec’s gaze as the older man sat and tilted his head toward the wind chime. “Mari’s handiwork?”
The corner of Alec’s mouth twitched up in an almost-smile before he covered with a scowl. “Kat. Gave it to me for my birthday last year.”
And Alec had hung it up, though it probably made him cringe every time he looked at it. You’re not the only one looking out for her, Gabriel.
Andrew barely glanced up. “Seems like the sort of thing Kat would pick out.”
“Especially if Alec pissed her off first.”
“Which I do weekly.” Alec twisted the top off his beer and flicked it over the porch railing. “Had a talk with Mari this morning.”
Derek’s easy relaxed feeling vanished in a rush of trepidation. “Is our office still standing?”
“Yeah.” Alec gestured to Andrew with his bottle. “Mari was blaming all of Kat’s emotional turmoil on you, which I think is crediting you with a little more prowess than you’ve got, but hey. Kat won’t tell her what happened, so she hasn’t got much to go on.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Andrew drained a fourth of his beer before continuing. “She’s angry, but she’ll get over it.”
Alec’s eyes narrowed. “Kat can’t move on while Mari won’t shut up about this shit,” he said, his voice quiet. “I yelled at Mari. I told her enough that she’s probably going to apologize.”
A hard wave of energy burst from Andrew, but his expression didn’t change. “You shouldn’t have done that. I don’t want her apologizing to me.”
“I didn’t do it just for you,” Alec replied, his voice hushed but intense. “Let her get it out so everyone can move on.”
Andrew didn’t answer. From the tense set of his friend’s jaw, the subject was closed. Derek drained half his beer and changed the subject. “Andrew and I are going to make Penny a full partner.”
“Yeah?” Alec picked at the label on his beer. “Good. She’s one of scariest humans I know.”
An apt assessment, and a compliment, coming from Alec. “She’ll keep things on track over there.”
Andrew grunted. “Penny deserves the promotion, plus she’s got two kids to support. God knows where that deadbeat ex of hers is now.”
Derek took another sip of his beer before answering. “Gave up on his dreams of making it big in Vegas, I think. Mari said she found him on a Dial-a-Psychic website a few weeks ago, charging twenty bucks a minute.”
A growl was Andrew’s only answer as he reached for another beer. “I’d drop a couple hundred just to yell at him for not visiting Kyle and Ross last Christmas.”
It was a common sentiment, but Andrew’s rough words and the anger that rippled through the air was new. Not unwarranted, though. Penny busted her ass working full time and raising two kids while their father puttered through life with a chip on his shoulder because his paltry magic skills hadn’t gotten him a free ride.
Penny was human and lived in the world of the supernatural because she had to. Her older son was thirteen and hovering at the age where puberty might spark latent magic and make it necessary to find him a teacher. She didn’t sit around bitching that it wasn’t her choice or that she wanted her nice, normal life back.
Sometimes Derek thought he could learn a lot from Penny.
He drained his beer and set the bottle aside, determined to follow through on his newfound resolve to make a few changes. The first one, at least, he could take care of now. “When Kat’s feeling better, I think she needs to learn some self-defense techniques.”
Alec watched him just long enough to make him nervous, those dark eyes seeing far too much. Finally he tilted his head. “Not saying I think smothering her has done her a lot of good, but she could have been down at Zola’s dojo five days a week since she was fifteen and not been able to take on a fucking Conclave strike team. So if this is about guilt—”
“It’s about freedom.” Andrew’s voice cut through Alec’s. “Kat’s freedom and his.”
Derek winced, but didn’t disagree. “She’s not a kid, and she’s not going to get a boring job away from all of this shit. She talked about getting lessons from Zola after the Talbot thing, but I…” He’d lost his already short temper. Nick had just returned from a near-suicidal run on a madman’s fortress without so much as asking his help, and Kat might as well have been telling him he wasn’t strong enough to keep her safe.
Alec crumpled the label he’d peeled from his bottle and set it aside. “It’s a stage you go through, and it never goes away. Nothing politically correct about it, either. We need to protect ’em because we’re strong, but you gotta know when your ego’s getting in the way of that. End of the day, all that matters is that people are safe, not that you’re the one who made ’em that way.”
Andrew leaned forward suddenly. “I can help. With Kat, I mean. Some of the responsibility is mine.” His tone dared Derek to argue with his reasoning.
The reasoning was fair enough,
but the execution was trickier. “Thought you were staying away from her for now.”
He frowned. “Doesn’t mean I can’t look out for her.”
“Because that worked great for me.”
Confusion and then anger flashed in Andrew’s eyes. “Are you trying to compare this situation to your thing with Nick Peyton?”
Alec groaned. Derek ignored him. “Yeah, because it’s really fucking hard to see the parallels there, huh?”
Andrew rose to his full height and glowered at Derek. “You’re comparing me feeling responsible for what happened to your cousin to…what? You being too goddamn scared to get off your ass and claim some chick?”
His friend’s power might be stronger, but it was erratic and unfocused, and pain made Derek pissy. “You’re going to throw her out of your life for her own damn good and still think you have the right to have a say in how she deals with it.”
“Yeah?” He set his bottle down on the porch railing. “One of these days, you have to tell me where you got this idea that Kat and I are destined for some great romance even if it’s the last fucking thing either of us wants.”
The rage that rose inside Derek made no sense. A couple weeks ago he’d agreed with Andrew, understood that Kat was better off safely out of reach until his friend understood the changes tearing through him.
A couple weeks ago he’d believed little mistakes didn’t kill a happy ending.
He growled, and Alec made an exasperated noise. “Okay, boys—”
Derek didn’t give the older man a chance to tell them both to sit down and shut up like good little puppies. The wolf inside him would accept violence as a suitable distraction from grief, and it wasn’t until his fist had crashed into Andrew’s jaw that he had the fleeting thought Andrew might be suffering the same problem.
Not that it would stop him from kicking his friend’s ass.
Andrew shook off the blow, grabbed Derek’s shoulders and slammed him against the side of the house. He was shaking with rage, growling as he drew back his fist for a punch of his own.
It came slowly enough that Derek had no problem wrenching his body to the side. Andrew’s fist slammed into the wood siding an instant later, and Alec swore and started toward them.
Derek lunged forward directly into Andrew, knocking him back a couple steps. The porch was only a few feet off the ground, and the railing wrapped around it at waist height except for an opening for a set of stairs leading to the yard.
Another good shove and Andrew slammed through the rail, crashing to the grass with a roar. Before Derek could react, a hard hand shoved into his shoulder and sent him barreling after Andrew.
He twisted just enough that he didn’t actually land on top of Andrew, but he still hit the ground with a bone-rattling thump. Alec stared down at both of them, his face impassive. “By all means, beat on each other. Keep the damage to a minimum, though, because I’m making you jackasses fix it all.”
Insanely, Andrew began to laugh.
Derek sagged to the grass, ignoring the aches and pains and the piece of the railing digging into the small of his back. The adrenaline from the fight faded, leaving the gaping hole in his chest that a month’s worth of violence wouldn’t hide.
“You can help keep an eye on Kat,” he said quietly, cutting through Andrew’s laughter. “You both have to. Because not fighting for Nick is going to kill me.”
Andrew sobered and brushed himself off as he sat up. “I thought there was nothing you could do.”
“Maybe there isn’t.” In his mind he conjured Nick, the way she’d watched him their last night together. The way her lips had looked when she whispered she loved him. “Alec?”
The man’s voice drifted down from above. “I’ll make a few calls. Maybe I can figure out exactly what’s going on up there and we can come up with an idea. Fuck, if it’ll keep Nick from marrying one of those assholes, I’ll even call my damn father.”
Andrew made an apologetic noise. “I’m sorry, man. I’m an ass.”
He knew he should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t. “You will be if you hang around Kat, and she’s really the last fucking thing you want. The girl’s in love with you. She killed two men to protect you. Watch out for her if she’s in trouble but, if you’re going to break her heart, you owe it to her to make it clean.”
“I know that.” Andrew rubbed his hands over his face with a groan. “Nothing is mine anymore, Derek. Not a goddamn bit of my life from before this happened, and that includes Kat. I can—I can make sure she knows that. I think.”
“Leave Kat to me and Jackson,” Alec interjected. Derek sat up and found Alec leaning on the remains of his railing. “Andrew needs to steer clear until he gets his instincts under control. I’m going inside to make my calls. The two of you can fight over who’s going to fix my damn porch.”
Andrew huffed. “I’ll do it. Not surprisingly, I’ve been in the mood to hammer and saw things an awful lot lately.”
“And punch people?” Derek’s back protested as he rose, but the bruise he’d earned from landing on part of the wood railing would be gone by morning. He rubbed at it anyway and eyed Andrew. “Sorry about your face, by the way.”
“Forget about it.” His friend shrugged. “My insides are still where they’re supposed to be. These days, I guess that means I’ll live.”
The memory of watching Franklin with his hands inside Andrew’s abdomen wasn’t fading anytime soon. “If Alec digs something up and I have to go to New York, will you be okay handling work with Penny and Mari to help you out?”
“Too soon for morbid humor, huh?”
“That always was your shtick, buddy.”
“A guy’s gotta have one.”
“Sucks for us that Jackson’s cornered the market on Southern charm and Alec’s hoarding all the brooding man-pain.”
“Nah.” Andrew picked a splinter out of his hand and laughed. “I think there’s plenty of everything to go around.”
Andrew had regained his humor—or at least the macabre part of it—but something edgy still hovered around him. A power that might not settle anytime soon. Maybe not at all.
The wolves of New Orleans rarely bothered with formal ranks and challenges, especially since most of them had come to the city to avoid the supernatural politics that plagued their society. But the first few months after Derek’s change had been hell as he’d struggled with the instinctive need to find his place, to test his strength against those around him.
Alec had slapped him down. A few times. His pride had stung at first, but it hadn’t taken long to realize that Alec was the strongest male wolf in New Orleans.
Or he had been.
Derek cleared his throat and watched Andrew gather the splintered wood into a pile by the steps. “So do you get the urge to punch Alec a lot?”
“Dude, you have no idea.”
“Oh, I have some idea.” He tossed the piece of wood that had bruised his back onto the pile. “Might as well get it over with. Trust me, I speak from personal experience. It won’t go away until you do.”
“Think I’ll wait until I’m not so wobbly.” Andrew leaned over and squinted through the back door. “The man has a cage in his basement and an arsenal in his garage.”
“Yeah.” Derek took a deep breath. “You never answered me. I need to know you’ll be okay if I disappear for a while. Because I can’t just let her marry some bastard. I can’t.”
“I can handle it. Like you said, I’ve got Penny and Mari. If Mari decides to speak to me again.” The humor faded from Andrew’s expression. “How bad is it going to fuck things up for Nick if you head off to New York in a manly, possessive rage?”
“I’m in love, not stupid. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” But he had to try something. Everything. Anything. “Hey. We’ve got money, magic and Alec’s willingness to kidnap random bystanders. What could possibly go wrong?”
Andrew groaned. “I’ll spare you the Gloomy Gus routine if you promise no one else is
getting kidnapped.”
“No promises, man.” After all, he’d spent the previous night staring at his ceiling and wondering if he could talk Nick into packing up Aaron and Michelle and hiding on a tropical island. It still seemed like a half-decent idea, leaving aside the part where he’d have to abandon all of his friends and responsibilities.
He needed her. Simple. Inarguable. He needed Nick, and if there was the slightest chance she needed him too… Jackson and Mackenzie were proof that love could triumph over fucked-up shapeshifter politics.
If he concentrated on that, he wouldn’t have to think about Alec, who was walking proof that sometimes love wasn’t enough.
Chapter Nineteen
Enrica checked her slim watch with an irritated noise. “I’m telling you, he’s not coming. Not after what happened last night.”
“Tradition states we need the full Conclave to pass sentence,” Hoffman reminded her. “Jorge, call him again.”
“Pointless.” Ochoa was the only member of the Conclave watching Nick this morning, his gaze uncomfortable and inscrutable. “He’s hardly going to accept a call from me.”
Veronica had called Nick from the airport late the night before, on her way back to Atlanta. Ochoa had put her on the plane himself. “Ronnie said her father was angry. Ridiculously angry. He wants no part of this.”
This. The moment she got to see Aaron’s face when they told him he’d have his life. His freedom. Her only regret was that Michelle wouldn’t be allowed to attend the meeting.
“What does tradition matter?” Ochoa finally looked away from her, only to glance at her father. “John can’t participate in the sentencing anyway. Let the three of us have done with it, Conrad. We have other things to do.”
Nick shivered in her long sleeves. “Aaron knew the hearing was last night. He’s bound to be a nervous wreck by now. Can’t we just tell him?”
Enrica pushed off the wall and strode toward the door. “He isn’t coming. Let’s go.”
“Fine, fine.” Hoffman smiled at Nick and offered her his arm. “How is your sister? Hopefully the midwife has been of some help?”
