Chapter 9 #2
The door flung open, and Noelle eyed her like she wanted to murder her.
But ten times worse was the stink of vomit that wafted out and the sound of whiny children from the back bedroom.
“Now you show up,” Noelle said. “After they burst through, wake up the boys, and nearly scare me to death. I’d just gotten the kids to sleep, and suddenly the goons bang on the door, and my boys are screaming and throwing up again. And everybody’s looking for you.”
“Noelle—” she began, but the woman held up her finger, wagging it in front of her face.
“No. You don’t get to talk. It’s been tag team vomit for two days.
Thank God, they’re keeping down the Pedialyte now, and what do those assholes do?
They demand to see you, and when you weren’t here, they left.
Just left. Not even an apology. And they have the nerve to wrinkle their noses at the stink.
Well, duh. Vomit stinks, and they’re assholes. ”
Frankie nodded, letting Noelle burn through her fury. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. The woman was so exhausted she couldn’t even keep up her anger. Instead, she dropped her arm and eyed Kennedy.
“Aren’t you the cop everybody hates?”
Kennedy jolted. “Um, I didn’t know everyone hated me.”
“Yeah. ’Cause you’re a bear and you didn’t do shit when you worked in robbery and all those wolves were getting targeted. What the hell are you doing here and with her?”
Frankie winced. “I keep telling you that Raoul made up that story. Raoul—”
“Didn’t make that up. He just broadcast it because you were all about how everybody should be like Detective Kennedy.
He’s a good cop, helps the kids, blah blah.
” She rolled her eyes. “If it weren’t for you, nobody would have even noticed him.
What do we care about a bear in the PD?” She was going to say more.
The woman was definitely a talker, even when exhausted.
But at that moment Harley came up and tugged on his mother’s pants.
Of the three-and-a-half-year-old twin boys, he was the demanding one.
Noelle sighed as she leaned down to pick him up. She groaned as she did it, and Frankie guessed Noelle’s sciatica was acting up. It made her lower back ache and sometimes shoot pain down her legs. It had been a chronic problem since she’d given birth.
“My tummy hurts,” Harley whined, then he added a whimper as he rubbed his eye with a fist. It wasn’t a real whimper from true pain.
Frankie had been around when one of the boys conked his head while roughhousing, which was often.
This was an I-want-attention whine, and it worked.
His mother squeezed him tight and headed into the kitchen.
“I know, baby. Those mean men woke you up, didn’t they?”
Harley nodded, his expression sad. God, wasn’t that just the most manipulatively adorable sight?
“Let’s get you some juice, and then maybe a bath, huh? You smell awful.”
The whole apartment smelled awful. Frankie trailed inside with Kennedy following, his sharp gaze missing nothing. He saw the dishes in the sink, the dirty laundry spilling out of the hamper, and the overflowing garbage can. She noted the nearly empty case of water.
“This isn’t the Detroit Flu, is it?” she asked.
“Nah,” Noelle said as she poured apple juice into a sippy cup one-handed.
“It’s the regular flu, apparently. Doc said the best thing I could do was go home and not expose the boys to the really sick people at the clinic.
” She handed Harley the sippy cup, and he obediently drank.
Then she looked hard at Frankie. “There’s been no shifting in this house.
We’re not drinking the water. We’re just trying to get one night of uninterrupted sleep.
” The longing in her voice was palpable.
“Let me help with that.”
The woman openly scoffed. “Don’t you have more important stuff to do? Big doings at the community center.”
“This is the most important place for me to be right now.” She held out her arms. “Come on, Harley. Come to Aunt Frankie.”
Noelle was skeptical, but starting from the day her husband deployed overseas, she never refused help with the twins. Frankie had been a regular visitor, so Harley transferred easily to her arms. Which is when the other brother came out, his whine more genuine as he rubbed at his eyes.
“Mommy?”
“Hi, Jaxon,” Frankie said.
He looked up and his eyes filled with tears. He clearly didn’t want anyone but his mother.
“Right here, buddy,” said Noelle as she scooped him up. One hand held him, the other felt his forehead. “Your fever’s down. Do you feel better?”
The boy tucked close to his mother’s neck.
If ever there was a young werewolf in the making, it was this boy.
His every action was puppylike and he seemed to move by scent and touch.
He was the smaller twin, but he was strong and tenacious when he wanted to be.
Noelle went to the refrigerator and grabbed the Pedialyte.
She poured that into another sippy cup as she nuzzled her child.
Meanwhile, Harley wanted attention from Frankie, and so he started patting her face to demand it.
Both women were occupied with the boys, and yet Frankie had a moment to look back at Kennedy. He stood near the door, his posture protective, but what she saw in his eyes startled her. Was that yearning there? A raw hunger that she never expected to see from the bear cop.
Until the moment he noticed her looking. At that second, his expression tightened down, his face turned sideways, and he spoke with a gruff voice.
“You’re almost out of water. I’ll get you another case.
” But he didn’t move out the door. Instead, he went to the overflowing garbage can, grabbed the edges of the dark sack, and pulled it tight.
Then he grabbed another trash bag from the box on the shelf and snapped it open with one flick of his wrist. “Is it okay if I get the other garbage?” he asked.
Noelle’s brows went up in surprise as she gestured to the bedrooms. “Knock yourself out.” Then they both watched as he went off in search of trash.
A domestic bear. Weird. Except Frankie was stunned by the answering echo inside her heart.
She’d spent her life managing the shifting power structure of the werewolf pack, constantly checking loyalties and underlying motivations.
What she saw in Kennedy’s face was a hunger for family and a need to protect and serve those he held dear.
That resonated to her core. It was her deepest need as well and the whole reason she had to take over her pack.
Because her brother and her father had failed in that primary duty and she was going to right the ship by getting her brother put in jail for his crimes.
But God, how she longed to have someone help her, a man she trusted to work by her side for the same goal.
She just never thought it would be a bear.
But rather than focus on what that meant, Frankie took the moment to press her friend for details on what Delphine had wanted.
“What did the goons want with me?”
The woman shrugged. “The usual. Where is she? What has she been saying? I didn’t tell them anything. Mostly because I don’t know anything.” She narrowed her eyes. “What have you been doing?”
Frankie leaned forward, repeating what she’d been saying to every member of the pack. “Raoul is poisoning the city. That’s stupid and suicidal. Revealing that shifters exist is insane, and his serum is killing us.”
Noelle helped Jaxon drink from his sippy cup, but her attention remained on Frankie. “You took the stuff. Don’t you like it?”
“That’s how I know. It’s a lie, Noelle. It made me feel all powerful, and I’m not.
” If only she was. She’d lock up her brother where he couldn’t hurt himself or anyone else.
But now it was time to put it all on the line.
“Raoul has to pay for his crimes, and Father has to step down. What they’ve done is inexcusable. ”
Noelle took a moment to absorb that statement and all its ramifications. She eyed Frankie with a long, heavy stare and then slowly shook her head.
“Without them, who would run the pack?”
Frankie held her friend’s gaze, letting her intention sink in. Noelle got it in the time it took her to adjust Jaxon on her hip.
“You can’t lead the pack!” she friend cried, then her voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “You’d never win the dominance fight. You’ve never even shifted.”
“I’ve been winning since I was a kid.”
“That’s because you’re the alpha’s daughter. No one would dare hurt you.”
Maybe. It was also because she was smart and had trained hard thanks to Hazel. “Plus, I do shift.”
Noelle’s eyes widened, and her expression abruptly turned joyous. “Really? When? Oh my God, you never told me. That’s fantastic!”
Yeah. Well, it might not be once she saw the truth.
But rather than explain, Frankie squared her shoulders and made the mental shift to her hybrid form.
She looked her friend in the eye and changed.
She’d had weeks to practice this, so she knew she had the smell under control, but she’d never done it in front of a true member of her pack.
Someone who was a regular wolf-shifter and had no reason to respect a hybrid.
She felt her face elongate, her ears sprout fur, and her hands turn to claws. She tried to do it as slowly as possible, to give Noelle time to adjust, but the whole change was done between one breath and the next. And there she stood holding Harley while Noelle gasped and stumbled backward.
Kennedy came tearing in a second later, his fists up, and his gaze scanning everything. Frankie turned and held up a hand—er, a claw—telling him silently to stay back. He stopped and nodded, his sharp eyes landing on Noelle’s horrified expression.
“She’s not one of the crazy ones,” he said.