Chapter 3 #4
No doubt my scent rose with that awareness. I saw Wade’s nostrils flare and he flicked a quick look down my body. I stared back, noting a hint of a similar response in those boxers, but all he said was, “How did you get in?”
I patted my pocket, making the lock picks click. “Building needs a better door.”
“Hah. Not likely to happen with this landlord.” He rocked his weight from foot to foot, still intent on me. “When did you leave the pack? You did leave permanently, right?” A sudden tension froze him.
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t lead them to you, let alone to Shawn.” Mentioning Shawn made my overeager dick settle down in the echo of those bad years. “I left two years after you did.”
“Two years? You stuck with them that long?”
“Yes! Because going any sooner would’ve been a huge red flag.
I couldn’t let them suspect I had any reason beyond general distaste to feel wrong about killing Shawn.
They agreed his death was sad, regrettable, but his being gay shook the rest of the pack as much as my action to silence him.
Some of them fucking thanked me for protecting the pack.
” I swallowed down the remembered bitterness of that unwanted praise.
“Bastards,” Wade muttered.
“Our top wolves, especially our enforcer, were watching pack reactions closely afterward, keeping an eye out for anyone too soft or too sympathetic. So I stuck around and was Alpha’s good wolf and solved the pack’s problems for two more years, all the while knowing I’d be the one sent off that cliff for real, if they had any idea who I was.
” Growing up, I’d always thought— hoped— that Alpha might not be as rabid on the topic of queer wolves as other Alphas were said to be.
That he might have some compassion. Some tolerance.
Shawn’s fate took away that hope. “I did it for your safety and Shawn’s. ”
“Sorry.” He frowned. “What do you mean, mine?”
I waved him off with a headshake. If he was ignoring the fact that I could scent arousal from him too, and that his dick had briefly stirred under the thin cotton of his boxers, I wouldn’t rub his face in it.
Yet. Don’t think about rubbing his face in anything.
“I waited till I had to do another bad job that I could use as an excuse for losing my nerve, and I took it.”
“Another death?” He paled.
“Oh, no, I didn’t have to kill anyone. Harris got careless shifting, failed to draw his blinds, and a teenager out looking for his lost cat got an eyeful. The kid blabbed to his parents who mentioned it to Harris in a roundabout way, fishing for answers.”
“What happened? What did you do?”
I’d snuck into the boy’s room the next night, hid drugs in his backpack, and dropped a high dose of LSD in his snoring mouth.
He’d woken disoriented and tripping hard.
His parents stopped believing him, and that bad trip didn’t do him any favors.
He ended up kicked out and living with an uncle.
“I made him into a liar.” I shrugged as if it was all in a day’s work.
Which, for a pack Fixer, it was. “Alpha beat the shit out of Harris, and planned for him to move as soon as it wouldn’t seem suspicious.
I got permission to leave the pack and go lone.
” Which validated Second’s opinion that I’d always been too soft for my father’s job.
I wondered who was doing that work now. I was torn, but I had to wish him well.
Because ultimately, the safety of all werewolves in a totally human-dominated world was worth hurting a few individuals. I just disagreed about which ones.
“Where do you live now?”
“Chicago. North metro.” I’d thought my choice of the Midwest was logic, a central location.
Now, when I looked at Wade and felt that undeniable tug, down in my core, I had to wonder…
Mating among us wolves didn’t usually work that way.
Our wives were chosen by logic, by ordinary emotions, and bonded by deliberate effort, not fate.
And yet, here I’d ended up, less than an hour from Wade, for the past four years.
To lighten the mood, I grinned. “I work as a private detective. I’m very successful, I’ll have you know.”
“I believe it.” Wade turned away abruptly and retreated into his room.
When I followed, he was pulling on unfashionably narrow-legged jeans and a T-shirt.
He got out a backpack, stuffed underwear and a couple of changes of clothes into the main compartment.
“I need to tell Mrs. French that I’ll be away for a few days. She’ll let the others know.”
“Will she be awake at this hour? We could wait till morning to leave.” I could sleep on your floor, or your couch. Or your bed.
“I don’t want to wait. I’ll slip a note under her door.” He brushed past me, heading to the bathroom. The bump of his shoulder along mine had to be deliberate. It made all the hairs on my arms stand on end.
I want this man. Except Wade hadn’t said a word yet about being gay, let alone seeming interested in me after hating my guts for so long.
Patience. I was good at that. “All my stuff’s in my car, if that’s okay for the drive.
We can take yours if you’d rather. Or you can follow me separately.
” I wanted that drive time sitting side by side, hour after hour of breathing each other’s scent and regaining ease, but I’d understand if he didn’t.
“Your car. Mine’s even more ancient and unreliable.
” He stuffed some toiletries into his bag and zipped it shut.
The kitchen was his next stop. He slipped the photos of Shawn and the washcloth into a pocket in the front of his pack, then filled a paper bag with road food— apples and bread and cheese.
“You should eat properly first,” I told him. “Two shifts. You need calories.”
“I want to go!” He glowered over his shoulder at me, growling deep in his throat, his eyes boring into mine.
For a moment, my wolf considered bowing our head. Wade was younger and smaller, but he had a powerful presence when he chose to use it. I stuck to my guns, though, didn’t change my relaxed position, just raised an eyebrow at him.
“Crap.” Wade bit back the growl, slumped, and rubbed his face. “Okay, yeah, I should eat.” Of course, he didn’t sit down, just lifted a covered bowl out of the refrigerator, grabbed a spoon, and began stuffing cold stew into his mouth.
“Whatever works. I’m going to hit the john.
” I went into the bathroom, but left the door ajar.
I was a snoop by nature and training, and Wade needed reassurance more than I needed to check the contents of his medicine cabinet.
Anyhow, we wolves didn’t use much medication.
At most, there’d be condoms in there if he’d been sleeping with women, and I found I didn’t want to know.
By the time I was done, he’d finished the stew, washed the bowl, and was penning a note on a piece of paper. I peeked over his shoulder.
“Hi Mrs. French, I have to go out of town for a few days. I’ll call you if it’s longer than that. Tell anyone who needs me to leave a note if it can wait, and go to Mr. Owens if it can’t.
Wade McKinley.”
He folded it in half and glanced back at me. “See what you wanted?”
“A wolf takes care of his people.”
“They’re not my people.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Wade could’ve been Alpha material one day, if he hadn’t been forced out of the packs.
Well, no, perhaps not quite. He had the protective instincts, but not the ruthlessness that an Alpha needed, to keep a whole pack of wolves in line.
Perhaps he was better with a human pack that would accept protection without challenging him at every turn.
“Let’s go.” He opened the door for me, stopped to lock it behind us, then motioned me toward the stairs while he slipped his note under the door across the hall.
Before he could straighten, the door opened and a tiny old lady in a bathrobe peered out. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Mrs. French. Wade.” He picked the note off the carpet and handed it to her.
She took it, the paper fluttering in her grasp. “I don’t have my readers on. Can you tell me?”
“Just letting you know I’ll be out of town with… my friend for a few days. Maybe a week, max.”
“Oh, good.”
“Good?”
“Why yes.” She patted his arm with one small hand.
“You need a vacation. Five years you’ve been here, and you only travel for a day here and there to sell your carvings at the markets.
You do work around this building seven days a week.
I don’t think you’ve had a real holiday ever, and I don’t see you party with your friends.
You’re a young man. You deserve some fun. ”
“I… Right. Thank you.” He stepped back. “You know, you shouldn’t just open your door in the middle of the night. I could’ve been anyone.”
“This is the safest building on the block, and I’ve lived here fifty years. I’ll be fine.” She smiled at me. “Make sure this man has a good trip, okay? He deserves it.” She closed the door, and I heard her click the deadbolt.
“At least she locked it,” I murmured.
“Yeah.” Wade stared at her door for a second before he shouldered his pack. “Let’s go.”
When we reached my car, he paused for a moment, pivoting to scan his squat tenement building with its red-smudged bricks, the street, the alley, the buildings next door.
Conflict showed in the set of his shoulders and the scowl on his face.
He touched the front pocket of his pack where Shawn’s photos were stowed, then tossed his bag into the back seat next to my stuff and climbed in the front.
I’d hoped, forced to sit together for hours, that Wade and I might get to know each other again, begin to bridge the gap between us, but as soon as we were on the road, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
I figured he was avoiding me. His “sleep” was clearly fake.
Except, slowly, as hour after hour spun away in the darkness, his muscles softened and his jaw sagged open.
Whatever plans I’d made for conversation were thwarted as his breathing evened out, but I’d take Wade McKinley trusting me enough to actually sleep as a win.