Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
JESSE
It was midnight by the time we returned to Rome, and the city was unnaturally quiet, the tourists and club-goers driven inside by the storm and January’s bite.
The rain had stopped, but the streets were slick and so shiny they reflected smeared copies of the buildings above them.
As we left the car behind its gate, I could only hope I’d gotten all the mud off the carpet.
Cleaning fees were no problem, but I didn’t need the inconvenience of ending up on the rental company’s ban list.
But if it came to that, so be it. The image of Caleb on his knees wearing nothing but rain and my sweat wasn’t leaving my head anytime soon.
He kept pace at my shoulder, his hands buried in his hoodie pocket and his eyes at half-mast. Every few steps, he listed toward me before rousing and correcting himself.
My beast urged me to pick him up and carry him the rest of the way home. And I could have managed it. Caleb’s weight was nothing to my wolf. But I quashed the impulse. Striding past the Colosseum with a six-foot-one man in my arms would attract unwelcome attention.
And Caleb wouldn’t have allowed it. He’d proven as much in the alley beyond the opera house, when he put me against the wall like it was nothing. It shouldn’t have surprised me. He’d honed his strength and speed on a college football field. Lycanthropy had only enhanced it.
No, the thing that really surprised me was how much I’d enjoyed it.
Had I liked it enough to kneel for him? No, and I didn’t think Caleb wanted that, either. But the alley had uncovered a new layer in our relationship. It was unmapped territory, and maybe we needed to do a little exploring.
Caleb’s shoulder bumped mine. He caught himself and blinked hard, his freckles standing out under the streetlight.
“You okay?” I asked, stepping closer.
“M’good.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Just tired.”
I nodded toward the end of the street. “We’re almost home. You need food, a shower, and bed in that order.”
He slanted me a look, some of the sleep leaving his eyes. “Is the shower a group activity?”
“You still have energy for that?”
His expression turned smug. “I always have energy for that.” He gave my shoulder a deliberate bump. “Too bad you can’t keep up, Grandpa.”
The challenge shot straight to my dick as usual. Calling up my wolf, I waited until its power flooded my chest and rose into my face. Then I looked at Caleb.
“We’ll see who taps out first, college boy.”
He missed a step, stumbled, and cursed softly.
I let my laugh carry into the night air. When he scowled, I pitched my voice low. “Are you sore?”
He shook his head, and some of the smugness returned. “Supernatural healing, remember? I’m fit as a fiddle. And just as tight.”
This time, my laugh emerged more like a choking sound—probably because I choked on it. One day, I was going to get used to his complete absence of decorum.
“Fiddles aren’t tight,” I said when I recovered. “They’re…” I groped for a suitable response to his mangled analogy.
His blue eyes twinkled. “I am, though.”
I could only shake my head. “You’re—”
The scent of rogue snatched the rest of the sentence from my mouth.
Overripe fruit. Earthy rot and sweltering garbage. Unmistakable.
Caleb went rigid, instant comprehension on his face. “Ulfrik.”
“Stay close,” I said, already moving.
He fell in beside me, alert and watchful as I followed the trail away from the rental down a jumble of streets lined with apartments and shuttered shopfronts.
My focus narrowed as it always did when I tracked, the world shrinking to nothing but the trail hanging in the air like a ghostly river.
It thickened, and I moved faster with Caleb at my shoulder. We hurried past churches and gelato shops. Past bars and pharmacies with signs advertising currency exchange. Ulfrik’s scent pulled me south, then east, and then the Colosseum loomed ahead.
Its arches blazed against the black sky. The travertine at the base was deserted, and the grassy areas beyond were dark and quiet.
The scent intensified. My wolf snarled in my mind, hackles raised and fangs bared. Ulfrik was close.
Anticipation pumped hot in my veins. The end of the mission hovered. Finally, Caleb and I could leave Rome and get back to normal life.
It couldn’t come fast enough.
I broke into a run, racing across the travertine toward one of the yawning arches. Its metal grille glittered in the floodlights. I’d have to find a way inside without alerting the Carabinieri.
The scent vanished.
I stopped so fast my boots skidded on the travertine. Caleb lurched to a halt beside me with confusion in his eyes.
Spinning in place, I strained my senses. Nothing. Once again, the trail had snuffed out. It wasn’t even like someone had pinched a candle flame. The candle had never existed in the first place.
“Did you lose it again?” Caleb asked. Immediately, he winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like—”
“It’s okay,” I said, finding his hand and squeezing it once before releasing it.
I stood in place, chest heaving and my wolf standing still in the back of my mind. The beast was just as stunned. In over a century of tracking, I’d lost trails to snow, highways, and the occasional river. But they faded. They didn’t just cut off. Now it had happened twice in two days.
Above us, wings rustled. A handful of crows lifted off a pilaster and fluttered over the Colosseum, disappearing into the night.
Caleb and I watched them go. Frustration building, I cast my senses wide, feeling for Ulfrik’s scent at the edges.
A sudden realization froze the breath in my lungs.
Aside from Caleb, I didn’t sense a single other werewolf. Not one.
Impossible.
I closed my eyes and pushed, casting a wider net. I spun my senses north, past Tuscany and into the Southern Alps.
No wolves.
My heart sped up, and I turned and repeated the process to the south, scanning badlands and mountains and the rugged terrain of Calabria.
Nothing.
“Jesse?” Caleb asked.
I opened my eyes to find him watching me, his earlier exhaustion replaced with tight alertness.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
His mouth tightened, and hurt flitted through his eyes before he masked it. “You don’t have to protect me. I can handle—”
“No,” I said, running my gaze around the empty piazza. Palatine Hill was a dark lump rising behind the Forum. “That’s the problem. I don’t sense any other werewolves.”
He frowned. “Like in Rome?”
“In Italy.”
Silence pressed around us. Caleb stared, his frown growing. “Is that unusual?”
“Very.” And he had no idea, of course, because he was new to being a werewolf. I took one more sweep, focusing on Rome by itself.
Not a single scent signature tripped my senses. A city of three million, and Caleb and I were the only werewolves.
A shuffling sound made us both turn. The beam of a flashlight bounced over the ground, accompanied by the squawk of a radio.
“Let’s go,” I told Caleb. “We’ll talk at home.”
Neither of us spoke on the walk back. I swept my senses out again and again, searching for other wolves, and each time returned the same answer.
Rome was completely devoid of werewolves. How could I have missed it?
The answer was simple: I hadn’t been looking. I hadn’t even thought to try. I’d been focused on Ulfrik and the hunt. Distracted by the absence and then sudden resurgence of Caleb’s gift.
Distracted by Caleb—which was probably permanent.
But there was more to it than distraction.
In any major city, wolves passed through without announcing themselves—traveling, working, avoiding trouble.
I never had to actively search for them because they inevitably crossed my path.
A scent here, a signature there. Background noise I took for granted the way a human absorbed the sound of traffic without really thinking about it.
The thought of deliberately checking for an utter absence had never once occurred to me because an utter absence had never once existed.
Twenty minutes later, Caleb and I entered the rental’s kitchen. Without a word, he filled two glasses of water, pulled protein bars from the cabinet, and set everything in front of me at the island.
Some of the tension in my chest loosened. “You’re doing my job.”
He unwrapped his bar and leaned against the counter. “If we’re going to be married, you have to let me take care of you, too.”
Every part of me liked the sound of that. “All right.”
He took a bite and swallowed. “What happened out there?”
“The same thing as before. I had Ulfrik’s scent and then it was gone.”
He chewed slowly. “And you didn’t sense any other werewolves.”
“Not one. In all of Italy.” I crossed my arms. “It could be a coincidence, but I don’t think so. Someone or something is interfering with scent trails.”
Caleb swallowed. “Could whoever is hiding Ulfrik’s scent also be hiding the wolves?”
I stilled. It was a good question. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what it could mean.”
“Carlo?”
“Possibly. Or a witch. They can suppress magic. You saw it in France.”
Caleb’s expression darkened. “Could it be Sterling?”
“Sterling is an ally, and he has no motive. But he only rules the Moray Coven. There are four others. They fear Sterling, but they don’t answer to him.
” I ran through the facts in my head. “The covens probably aren’t involved in this.
They’re corporations, and they’re conservative by default.
Masking a rogue would be bad enough, but scrambling the scent signatures of every werewolf in Italy could start an interspecies war. It would destroy their business.”
“What about Valentin?” Caleb asked. “The witch who broke through your ward in France. He’s just one guy, right? He could be a loose cannon. Stefanos said he used to work for Sterling.”
“He did. But I’m not familiar with Valentin beyond what happened in France, and whatever his arrangement with Sterling was, it clearly ended. If he was a threat, Sterling would have handled him.”
“What about the Council?” Caleb asked. “Could they be running something behind your back?”
“No. I wouldn’t stake my life on it, but I’m as certain as I can be.
” I rounded the island and leaned against the counter beside him.
“I know how you feel about Stefanos and Nin. But their entire purpose is keeping our existence a secret from the humans. A rogue loose in a major city is their worst nightmare. They didn’t hide Ulfrik.
They want him found, and they’re willing to put a wolfseeker and a seer on the line to do it. ”
Caleb lowered his eyes, his attention falling on his half-eaten protein bar sitting in its wrapper. After a second, he looked up. “What about the Fae?”
“I won’t rule anything out,” I said, “but it’s so unlikely it’s almost not worth considering. The modern world is full of iron, and iron is poison to them. They have Undersomm, where they’re safe and comfortable. There’s no reason for any Fae to involve themselves in werewolf matters.”
Caleb fell silent again. Then he said, “So we’re back to Carlo.”
A new wave of frustration rose. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know, and I don’t like not knowing.”
Caleb pushed away from the island and stepped into me, running the backs of his fingers up the center of my chest. “We have all day tomorrow before the opera. We can experiment in the city. You try to scent Ulfrik and any other werewolves. I’ll try to tap my gift.”
My heart squeezed. We’d been so focused on the assignment that Rome had been mere set dressing.
He deserved more than a brief market trip and desperate sprints around the Colosseum.
The vampires weren’t a threat during the daylight hours.
Carlo’s pets could move freely, but Caleb and I were more than a match for any human, however enhanced by vampire blood.
“We’ll sightsee while we’re at it,” I said.
He brightened. “Kill three birds with one stone.”
“That’s not—”
“I know,” he said, smiling.
My wolf settled, curling up in my mind and tucking its tail around its body.
“I need to text Stefanos,” I said.
Caleb’s smile fled. Stepping back, he swiped his protein bar from the counter and took a bite. “Did you tell him about my vision?” he asked, chewing aggressively as I pulled my phone from my pocket.
“Yes,” I said, typing. I kept my message brief, relaying everything that had happened since my previous text.
Caleb crumpled his wrapper. “And no response, huh? Guess we’ll never know if he creamed his jeans.”
I let my smile have its way. “He’s probably consulting with Nin before he replies.”
“Well, send them both my best.”
I tucked my phone in my back pocket. “I’m afraid they wouldn’t believe it. You’ve made it clear how you feel about the Council.”
“Yeah, they’re all dicks.”
I moved fast, snagging his hips before he could anticipate the movement. “Better keep that one to yourself, puppy.”
His sharp intake of air shot straight to my cock. When he licked his lips, I had to muffle a moan.
“It’ll be our little secret,” he said, voice adorably raspy.
God, I wanted to fuck him again. Bend him over the counter and bury myself in his heat.
He was still leaking me. The faint scent of my cum mingled with the sweat and rain on his skin.
A few tugs of his jeans would reveal a damp circle of my possession spreading over the thin fabric that barely covered his ass.
But fatigue lingered in the corners of his eyes and the slight droop of his shoulders. And I wasn’t convinced he was as…recovered as he claimed. Supernatural healing had its limits.
That didn’t mean I had to be happy about it.
“Enough, brat,” I said, hearing the growl of irritation in my voice. “You need more food after that run—”
“And that fucking.”
“—and then we both need a shower.”
He smiled, twin devils of mischief practically visible on his shoulders. “I want hot dogs.”
“Stop it,” I said, pointing to the table as I moved toward the refrigerator. His husky laugh followed me, and I knew I’d do anything to spend the rest of my life hearing it. Terrible things.
I opened the fridge and surveyed the shelves. “I don’t have hot dogs but I can make you porchetta.”
Chair legs scraped the floor, and his satisfaction drifted across the mate bond as he said, “Sounds perfect, Jesse.”