Chapter 18
Ice tiredly blinked his eyes open. He rolled his head on the pillow to look at the clock on the nightstand. The glowing red numbers read two o’clock A.M. Ice groaned and rubbed his temples. Thanks to the pounding in his head, he couldn’t sleep. He’d taken more aspirin before going to bed, but it did nothing to ease the throbbing pain of yet another headache.
He threw the covers off and got out of bed. He was probably dehydrated. The team had spent the day running drills and he must not have drunk enough water to recover from the exertion and the moisture he’d lost from sweating.
After pulling on his balaclava, he quietly opened his bedroom door and went out to the kitchen. He left the light off, relying on his night vision and then the light from the fridge as he got a glass and poured a drink of cold water from the pitcher. Deciding to stay in the common area, he took the water over to the couch and sat down. He’d just taken his first sip when another door opened.
Hazard came out of his room looking sleepy and rumpled. Ice’s gaze slid from the top of Hazard’s head all the way down to his toes, lingering to take in everything in between. His dark hair was too short to be mussed but his jaw was shadowed with overnight beard growth. He was dressed in a pair of black pajama pants and gray T-shirt. And his feet were bare. Seeing those bare feet, nails neatly clipped, seemed almost too intimate in the quiet, late-night hour when it was just the two of them.
“What are you doing up?” Ice quietly asked.
“Woke up for some reason and couldn’t fall back asleep,” Hazard whispered back. “What are you doing sitting out here in the dark?”
“I have a headache. Thought a glass of water might help.”
“Hmmm,” Hazard sleepily hummed, slowly scratching low across his stomach. “It’s not from that beating I gave you during our sparring match is it?” he teasingly asked.
Ice’s eyes were drawn to the movement of Hazard’s hand. The hem of the sleep shirt rucked up a few inches, teasing him with a sliver of skin on Hazard’s belly before the shirt shifted back into place. He dragged his gaze back up to answer. “I’d hardly call that match you giving me a beating. Besides, that was three days ago.”
Hazard huffed a quiet laugh. “I’ll sit with you until you’re feeling better.”
Ice was surprised at the offer but he didn’t turn it down. “Thanks.”
Hazard came over and joined him on the couch. He sat with one leg pulled up so he could turn sideways to face him.
Ice noted that there were sleep creases on his face. Like his bare feet, they too were almost too intimate to witness. As Hazard got comfortable, Ice breathed in the scent of apples, softened on bed-warmed skin.
“Do you get headaches a lot?” Hazard asked in a low voice husky from sleep.
“I used to when I was a teenager. But I haven’t for a long time. Don’t know why they’ve decided to come back all of a sudden.”
Hazard looked at him with concern. “Do you think you should get checked out by medical? Maybe you took a knock on the head during one of our missions.”
He stretched his arm out along the back of the couch. His wrist landed near where Ice sat, bringing his scent closer.
“No need for medical. I’ll be fine.”
Hazard shook his head. “Typical alpha. Promise me you’ll go to medical if they continue.”
“Why do you care?” Ice answered his own question before Hazard could. “Never mind. Care taking is part of being an omega.”
Hazard looked at him for a long moment before he lowered his lashes. “Yep, that’s why.”
They sat there in silence for a few moments before Ice spoke again.
“Your scent is apples.”
Hazard looked up and his lips curled in a mischievous grin. “It is.”
“Why didn’t you point that out when you saw me eating apples like I was Johnny Appleseed?”
“I thought it was best not to. I suspected I was the reason for your new craving but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. If I was wrong I would have embarrassed myself and pissed you off. Of course, if you’d scented me you wouldn’t have had to resort to eating all those apples. But you got some nutritional value out of your stubbornness so it’s not a total loss,” he teased with a low chuckle.
Ice had to smile himself at the situation. “Why do you put so much value in scenting?” he asked in genuine curiosity. Since his Instinct seemed to be returning full force, he might as well learn how it functioned. Ortiz and Jax seemed to think scenting was important too. Although maybe not as much as Hazard since they’d never brought it up before his arrival.
Hazard tilted his head to the side, the gently amused smile still on his face. “It’s important to who we are as shifters. For starters, we can read emotions from them.”
“I know that. But blockers and learning to suppress your scent can prevent people from reading your emotions that way.”
“True. But not everyone uses blockers or deliberately suppresses their scent. Outside the military, most shifters don’t. Besides, plenty of non-shifters learn to control their facial expressions, but reading facial cues is still something all humans instinctively rely on.”
“Hmmm.” Ice conceded that what Hazard said made sense. But reading emotions couldn’t be the only reason scenting was important. “Why else?”
“It lets you know who is family. Who is pack. Unfamiliar scents let you know right away when someone is out of place. If a strange shifter was hiding out in Jax’s room, I’d know it.”
“That’s helpful. But again, anybody going stealth would be wearing scent blockers.”
“We can also use them to find a lost pack member.”
“Give me a real life example of you using scenting to find someone.”
Hazard leaned his head back to think. “When I was a teenager, we had a kid from our pack go out rock collecting without telling anyone where she was going. She got lost and was missing for hours. I found her by her scent.”
“Like a scent tracking hound.”
Hazard laughed. “Yeah. I suppose so. But it’s more than the smell that leads us to a lost pack member.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s the feeling, the echo of the pack member’s soul that we carry within us that we track. And we can only get that connection by scenting.”
Ice couldn’t quite comprehend that since he hadn’t been part of a pack since he was five. But seeing the way Hazard looked as he described the feeling, he trusted that it was true. “Is that all?”
“I haven’t told you the most important reason yet.”
“Which is?”
“Scenting pack members, or a shifter that you’re close to gives you a sense of peace. There’s nothing better to soothe an agitated shifter than scenting a pack mate. And scent glands wouldn’t be a part of our physiology if Mother Wolf didn’t want us to use them.”
“Are you going to tell me that I should start scenting now?”
“Nope.” Hazard shook his head. “That’s your personal choice. If you want to, I’m happy to guide you into it. If you don’t, that’s fine too.”
“I appreciate that.”
“What did you think about the drills they had us trial running yesterday? Think the recruits will be able to handle them?”
Ice was glad for the change in subject. Training and skills. This he understood. “I think they were good for the most part. But there were too many that were there simply for the sake of being difficult instead of helping to develop an actual skillset that could be used in the field.”
Hazard nodded in agreement. “That’s what happens when you have officers who spend most of their time on base behind a desk coming up with field training exercises.”
They continued to talk, keeping their voices low so as not to disturb their sleeping roommates. Ice was no longer surprised at how easy it was to sit and talk with Hazard. He felt comfortable with him, able to relax in a way that he couldn’t manage to do with most other people. Sometimes he went quiet and simply listened to Hazard, enjoying the sound of his voice and watching the animated expressions on his handsome face. And as he sat there, he savored the scent of apples with every breath he took.
“How did you get the name Hazard?”
“You really want to know?”
“I asked didn’t I?”
“My old unit leader gave it to me. In trainings or in missions, if there was more than one way to complete an objective, I always chose the one that might be more dangerous but would have the best chance for success. One day when I came up with a particularly wild plan, he said I was hazardous to his health. The plan worked and the name stuck.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
Hazard grinned. “What about you? Why did people start calling you Ice?”
“I was sent after a target in the dead of North Dakota winter. My gun froze and jammed, so I killed one of his guards with a big, sharp icicle hanging down from the roof of his hideout.”
Hazard’s eyes went wide. “You’re kidding.”
When Ice only shook his head, Hazard gave him an admiring glance.
“Creative and thinking on the fly. Impressive.”
At a lull in the conversation, Ice noticed that the headache had released its vise grip on his temples. He guessed the glass of water was what he needed after all. Except, when he looked down, he realized he’d barely drunk any of it.
“Headache gone?” Hazard asked.
“Yeah,” He sighed with relief. “Finally.”
“Good.” Hazard rose from the couch. “I’d better get back to bed. You know Ortiz will have us up early for our morning run.”
“Mmmm.” Ice hummed in agreement. “Thanks for keeping me company.”
Hazard smiled. “You’re welcome, Captain. Get some sleep.”
Ice stood and returned his glass to the kitchen. Now that the headache was gone, he should finally be able to rest.