“He’s getting better,” Alec said from behind Derek, his low voice carrying on the evening breeze.
“I know.” That was the scary part. “He wouldn’t be holding it together at all without your help.”
“He’ll be okay. You both will. Now hurry the fuck up.”
Derek shed the rest of his clothing in silence and reached inside. The wolf rose, gleeful at the chance to escape, and the change flowed over him in a rush of pure magic.
Andrew howled. The breeze carried the short burst of sound, an invitation to run, to shed more than their clothes and human forms. To shed their humanity.
The man slipped away, and the wolf hurt. Part of Derek was missing, the mate he’d stalked and cornered, the one he’d taken and let claim him in return. Pain tore through him, and his howl held loss and loneliness and the agony his life had become.
A moment’s hesitation, and Andrew joined him in a rising call of mourning. Magic surged again and a third howl shook through the night, low and hopeless enough to remind Derek that Alec had known loss of his own, a loss that had left him slowly bleeding to death for years.
Derek moved first, lunging toward the tree line. Andrew overtook him quickly, bumping his way ahead through the dim forest.
The urge to challenge was gone. Violence wouldn’t ease the pain of Nick’s absence, but the slowly forming bonds of pack could give him something he needed in order to cope. Friendship. Family.
After only a few hundred yards, Andrew skidded to a stop on the carpet of pine needles and fallen leaves, his ears and tail erect. He’d scented prey. A chase.
They knew their places now, knew how to stalk their prey. Derek gave in to the thrill of the hunt, silent as he raced through the trees. Ten days ago, the wolf had been a monster inside, something to be fought and controlled. Now he knew the human world had no place for him, but this world welcomed him. The adrenaline, the freedom, the joy…
The pain.
He’d found the world he belonged in, but he hadn’t found home. Home was Nick Peyton, and neither wolf nor man could rest without her.
So he had to find her again.
He gave himself over to the wolf, knowing tomorrow a different sort of hunt would begin.
Derek accepted the beers Alec handed him and passed one to Andrew. The cool evening breeze set the huge wind chime on Alec’s porch swaying, the quiet tinkling almost soothing enough to make up for the fact that the chime itself was a garish purple and featured cartoonish pink and yellow wolves cavorting across the top.
He caught Alec’s gaze as the older man sat and tilted his head toward the wind chime. “Mari’s handiwork?”
The corner of Alec’s mouth twitched up in an almost-smile before he covered with a scowl. “Kat. Gave it to me for my birthday last year.”
And Alec had hung it up, though it probably made him cringe every time he looked at it. You’re not the only one looking out for her, Gabriel.
Andrew barely glanced up. “Seems like the sort of thing Kat would pick out.”
“Especially if Alec pissed her off first.”
“Which I do weekly.” Alec twisted the top off his beer and flicked it over the porch railing. “Had a talk with Mari this morning.”
Derek’s easy relaxed feeling vanished in a rush of trepidation. “Is our office still standing?”
“Yeah.” Alec gestured to Andrew with his bottle. “Mari was blaming all of Kat’s emotional turmoil on you, which I think is crediting you with a little more prowess than you’ve got, but hey. Kat won’t tell her what happened, so she hasn’t got much to go on.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Andrew drained a fourth of his beer before continuing. “She’s angry, but she’ll get over it.”
Alec’s eyes narrowed. “Kat can’t move on while Mari won’t shut up about this shit,” he said, his voice quiet. “I yelled at Mari. I told her enough that she’s probably going to apologize.”
A hard wave of energy burst from Andrew, but his expression didn’t change. “You shouldn’t have done that. I don’t want her apologizing to me.”
“I didn’t do it just for you,” Alec replied, his voice hushed but intense. “Let her get it out so everyone can move on.”
Andrew didn’t answer. From the tense set of his friend’s jaw, the subject was closed. Derek drained half his beer and changed the subject. “Andrew and I are going to make Penny a full partner.”
“Yeah?” Alec picked at the label on his beer. “Good. She’s one of scariest humans I know.”
An apt assessment, and a compliment, coming from Alec. “She’ll keep things on track over there.”
Andrew grunted. “Penny deserves the promotion, plus she’s got two kids to support. God knows where that deadbeat ex of hers is now.”
Derek took another sip of his beer before answering. “Gave up on his dreams of making it big in Vegas, I think. Mari said she found him on a Dial-a-Psychic website a few weeks ago, charging twenty bucks a minute.”
A growl was Andrew’s only answer as he reached for another beer. “I’d drop a couple hundred just to yell at him for not visiting Kyle and Ross last Christmas.”
It was a common sentiment, but Andrew’s rough words and the anger that rippled through the air was new. Not unwarranted, though. Penny busted her ass working full time and raising two kids while their father puttered through life with a chip on his shoulder because his paltry magic skills hadn’t gotten him a free ride.
Penny was human and lived in the world of the supernatural because she had to. Her older son was thirteen and hovering at the age where puberty might spark latent magic and make it necessary to find him a teacher. She didn’t sit around bitching that it wasn’t her choice or that she wanted her nice, normal life back.
Sometimes Derek thought he could learn a lot from Penny.
He drained his beer and set the bottle aside, determined to follow through on his newfound resolve to make a few changes. The first one, at least, he could take care of now. “When Kat’s feeling better, I think she needs to learn some self-defense techniques.”
Alec watched him just long enough to make him nervous, those dark eyes seeing far too much. Finally he tilted his head. “Not saying I think smothering her has done her a lot of good, but she could have been down at Zola’s dojo five days a week since she was fifteen and not been able to take on a fucking Conclave strike team. So if this is about guilt—”
“It’s about freedom.” Andrew’s voice cut through Alec’s. “Kat’s freedom and his.”
Derek winced, but didn’t disagree. “She’s not a kid, and she’s not going to get a boring job away from all of this shit. She talked about getting lessons from Zola after the Talbot thing, but I…” He’d lost his already short temper. Nick had just returned from a near-suicidal run on a madman’s fortress without so much as asking his help, and Kat might as well have been telling him he wasn’t strong enough to keep her safe.
Alec crumpled the label he’d peeled from his bottle and set it aside. “It’s a stage you go through, and it never goes away. Nothing politically correct about it, either. We need to protect ’em because we’re strong, but you gotta know when your ego’s getting in the way of that. End of the day, all that matters is that people are safe, not that you’re the one who made ’em that way.”
Andrew leaned forward suddenly. “I can help. With Kat, I mean. Some of the responsibility is mine.” His tone dared Derek to argue with his reasoning.
The reasoning was fair enough, but the execution was trickier. “Thought you were staying away from her for now.”
He frowned. “Doesn’t mean I can’t look out for her.”
“Because that worked great for me.”
Confusion and then anger flashed in Andrew’s eyes. “Are you trying to compare this situation to your thing with Nick Peyton?”