Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
CHRISTIAN
“Does that look like eggs to you?” Christian stuck his fork into the pile of yellow, leathery stuff and watched as it stayed standing stubbornly upright.
Dave’s nose wrinkled slightly. “Dinosaur eggs, maybe,” he confessed, just as their server showed up with a fresh pot of coffee.
“Honey, if you’re expecting Michelin stars, you’re about five hundred miles too hopeful,” she said, topping off Christian’s mug. Then she gave Dave a wink. “And you’d eat better if you stopped pretending grapefruit counts as breakfast.”
Dave grinned. “Grapefruit kickstarts the metabolism. This way, I can eat enough lunch for two.”
She laughed as she walked away. Dave took a quick picture of Christian’s plate to appall the pack WhatsApp. “I wish Jason was here. Not that I’d want to inflict these on him, but I miss his cooking.”
Christian snorted and jabbed his fork at the mess again. He missed Jason’s cooking too, but what he didn’t say—what he couldn’t say—was that he’d eat five plates of this leathery crap if it meant more mornings like this one. Just him and Dave, talking quietly like this.
Jason’s food was the only thing he was sorry to leave behind in Elk Ridge.
Something had started to worry at him there, like a burr under a saddle, and if Matt hadn’t sent him and Dave here when he had, he couldn’t answer for what might have happened.
The place that had once been his home now felt claustrophobic and wrong on every level.
Being away was letting him breathe again.
“We should go back to the cliffs and have another look around,” Dave said as he looked dubiously at his grapefruit before he pushed it away. “I got absolutely nowhere last night, and we don’t have any other leads.”
Christian nodded, chewing determinedly at another forkful of those damned eggs before he gave up. He might be hungry, but he wasn’t that hungry.
Once they were out on the cliffs, shifted and loping beside one another, he forgot about hunger. He forgot about everything except the gray wolf at his side, matching him stride for stride the way he always did.
They searched again around the buildings they’d found, but there was nothing left.
No scent of wolves or people, and no indication that anything except the wild had been here for years.
The earth was slowly taking back its own.
Christian shook his head slightly to clear it, because that was the sort of thing Dave would say.
Dave, who was sitting on his haunches in the middle of the clearing, head cocked to one side as if listening, and breathing deeply.
The way he’d been for the past ten minutes while Christian had been fruitlessly pacing around.
Sometimes, Dave could just be with the world in a way Christian didn’t understand. It unnerved him, maybe even scared him a little. But deep down, it also made him fall in love all over again.
He walked over and nudged him with his muzzle.
It took a moment for Dave to lose the distant look in his eyes and see him.
Christian hated it when Dave did that. He hated that there was ever a time when Dave didn’t see him, and he hated even more the fear that he might one day lose Dave to wherever it was he went in his head.
He nipped at his ear, determined to bring Dave all the way back, and Dave stood up and shook himself, a silent announcement that he didn’t appreciate Christian’s roughness.
They went back through the tunnel and up the path to the top of the bluff, following the line of the cliff farther than they’d gone the previous day.
They found another cave entrance about a mile away, which led into a whole mass of caves.
Once more, it felt dead and silent, but for the strangest instant Christian got an impression of how it had been when Jesse as a pup had played hide-and-seek here, pouncing out onto older wolves who indulgently let him wrestle with them.
Just a pup and his family, playing together.
Christian had never had that. Not once. And now Jesse never would again.
Pity flared in him, sharp and painful. God damn it, they had to find out what had happened to this pack.
He had no sympathy for what had happened to Cale’s pack—they’d lived in violence, so it was only fair they died the same way—but if Jesse’s memories were to be trusted, his pack had been like any other.
They’d done nothing to deserve the terror that had been visited upon them.
He was still burning with the need to do something when they got back to the car and shifted once more. “Forget all that subtlety bullshit. We’re just going to ask them what happened to the pack.”
Dave took his time replying, seeming to concentrate instead on buttoning the butt-ugly shirt he’d chosen to wear today. It looked like someone had thrown up on it after a pizza binge, with splotches of yellow, red and green on a bright blue background.
Then he looked at Christian with that quiet, unreadable expression that sometimes made him feel like he was under a microscope. Not in a bad way, just in a Dave way.
“Let’s give subtle one more try,” he said eventually. “If they’ve got something to hide and they know we’re looking for information, they’ll close ranks.”
He didn’t care how reasonable Dave sounded—there was a line between patience and pissing around, and Dave was real close to crossing it. Christian didn’t do passive.
“One more try,” he said, his eyes challenging on Dave’s. But he didn’t mean it like a threat. Not to Dave. Never to Dave.
“That’s enough,” Dave said mildly, folding himself into the passenger seat.
DAVE
Christian was greeted like a long-lost friend when they walked into the old plant that night.
Dave left him surrounded by people and searched the crowd, wondering where to start.
Justin’s blond hair caught his eye, bright in the light, and he bought two beers from the bar and made his way over to their quiet corner.
“Hi,” he said, passing Justin one of the bottles and seating himself beside him.
Justin’s smile was open and warm. Dave wasn’t sure whether it was at his arrival or the fact he’d brought beer.
“Is this how you spend every weekend?” he asked.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” There was wry, resigned amusement in Justin’s voice.
“California, by way of Colorado,” Dave said. “Why d’you ask?”
“I’m guessing there’s a bit more to do in California than there is here.”
“There’s the coast,” he said.
Although he was happier in Matt’s pack than he’d ever been, he missed the vastness of those wide, endless beaches.
He missed taking a board out. He missed sitting on the sand and listening to waves and remembering how small his worries really were.
The ocean didn’t change, and that steadiness had made everything else feel survivable.
“I’d love to live by the ocean,” Justin said, longing in his voice. “To wake up every morning and find everything washed clean again.”
Dave nodded.
“All sins forgiven,” Justin said, his voice thick.
Dave frowned as he glanced at Justin, who was concentrating on the bottle in his hands, and wondered just what sins Justin had committed that needed forgiving.
And then the first fight was announced, and the noise level grew until it was impossible to talk.
Dave leaned back against the wall the way Justin was, and waited for two guys to finish beating the crap out of one another.
He shook his head in bemusement when the fight finally ended and the loser limped away, obviously scarcely able to see due to the blood that was pouring from a cut over his eyes but still snarling at anyone who tried to help him.
“I don’t understand it,” he said, then checked himself. “I mean, I do, but I don’t.”
Justin’s lips tugged into a grin. “Unlikely as it sounds, I get what you mean,” he said. “I guess you either have the urge or you don’t.” He glanced sideways at Dave. “So if fighting doesn’t call to you, what does?”
Dave stared up at the girders high above them as he thought about Justin’s question. It took him a while to answer.
“I like to go with the flow, not try and control it,” he said at last. He’d learned as a kid that what he wanted didn’t matter. The universe would do its own thing regardless. “And I like taking a step back, only joining in with the world again when I’m ready, when I’m centered.”
He realized suddenly how personal he’d gotten with a complete stranger, and sent a fleeting look sideways at Justin.
In his experience, shifters tended to be more forceful than the non-shifters he knew—ready to push back, to prove themselves.
It was probably something to do with that territorial streak in their wolves.
Instead of the mockery he half-expected, Justin’s lips were pursed and he was nodding slightly.
“But how do you do that?” he asked, turning to look at Dave. “How d’you just step back and stop everything from mattering so much?”
Dave shook his head. “I didn’t say things stop mattering,” he said, because he’d never found a way to make that happen, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “I just try and leave the bad things to one side and concentrate on the good.”
It had been Morgan—stranger turned unenthusiastic caretaker—who’d taught him how to let go of the bad.
Like the hopeless dream that his mom hadn’t really parked him at Morgan’s house with an overnight bag and left him there, till Morgan had no option but to keep him, like a stray dog she felt sorry for.
It had been the hardest thing in his life to let go of the hope his mom would come back for him one day.
The only way he’d managed it was by following Morgan’s contemplation techniques. She’d meditated on the porch every morning at dawn, come rain or shine, and though he hadn’t been allowed to join her during those sacred sessions, she’d been willing to teach him at other times.
He’d never dared ask why his mom had left, not when the answer might’ve broken him. And now, he sometimes wondered if he’d let her go too completely, because he could scarcely remember what she looked like.
“Wish you could teach me how to focus on the good,” Justin said with a soft sigh, eyes fixed on his bottle.
Dave hesitated as a tiny voice in his head reminded him he didn’t really know this guy. But the openness in Justin’s expression was disarming.
“If you want to drop by the motel around dawn tomorrow, I could walk you through some meditation stuff,” Dave offered.
“I tried meditating once,” Justin said, a bit sheepish. “Fell asleep halfway through.”
Dave laughed. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a knack to it. I can show you, if you want.”
“I’d like that.” The warmth in Justin’s smile had Dave smiling back before he realized it.
He wondered what it would be like to share a piece of his world with someone who wanted to know more than just the broad strokes. Christian never asked. Not because he didn’t care, but because emotions made him uneasy, and vulnerability even more so.
The rest of the pack… He was close with them, but this wasn’t the sort of thing they talked about.
Tristan asked questions because he was curious about everything, and Bryce would listen if Dave opened up.
Hell, any of them would listen if Dave wanted to talk to them about these things.
He never did, but with Justin, it felt easy.
Two strangers shooting the shit over a beer—it was as if he could say anything. Talking to Justin felt effortless.
But effortless wasn’t the same as real. Christian didn’t make things easy. He didn’t offer polished responses or hollow reassurances. But what he gave, even at his most difficult, was raw and honest and wholly him.
A roar from the crowd cut through his thoughts, and Dave jerked back to the moment. Christian’s fight had begun.
Anxiety curled in his gut as he watched Christian’s opponent. This fighter wasn’t like the others. He moved with precision, with purpose. He wasn’t here to spar—he was here to put Christian down hard and fast.
Dave didn’t like the look of this. He didn’t like it at all.