"I don't mean as a quad-mate, dumbass."
He stared at me with an expression I couldn't figure out, like he was thinking about denying it but was tired of not being honest. "I like him," he finally said in a tone that said the topic was over, so I let it go. But I couldn't help thinking back to earlier, when he said marriage and a litter of kittens wasn't what Marcus wanted.
I almost asked Milo about the specifics of this state of "like," considering how things had turned out with Felix. Or rather, hadn't turned out. Milo had allowed himself to fall in love with a man who couldn't love him back—not in the same, romantic way, at any rate. I didn't want Milo to fall into the same trap with Marcus. Therians lived incredibly short lives and procreation was expected of everyone in order to ensure the survival of the Clans; I'd never before heard of a gay Therian. Which really meant nothing, considering how little I collectively knew about Therians, anyway, and—
Speak of the devil.
Marcus rumbled into the gym like a thundercloud. He spotted us and seemed to relax just a little. I tilted my head. He came over, already dressed in sweats, his entire body coiled tight. "Couldn't sleep, either?" I said.
"No," Marcus replied. Milo twisted halfway around to see, and it was to Milo that Marcus added, "Astrid and I will be visiting Elder Dane in the morning to pay our respects, and to offer our support to Riley. How's your head?"
"Still attached," Milo replied.
Marcus quirked a slender eyebrow. "So I see. Pain?"
"Just one in my neck." You dangled at the end of the statement.
"I'm serious."
"Well, stop already. There's enough seriousness to go around. My head's fine, so stop worrying about it, for fuck's sake."
I stayed quiet, too amused by the friendly bickering to distract them. I also noted that both Jackson and Shelby had abandoned their bikes and were taking their time wiping down with towels. Probably listening. Damned Therian hearing. I caught Jackson's eye, gave him a glare, and he hustled Shelby out of the gym.
"Then how about a few rounds on the mats?" Marcus asked.
Marcus liked to wrestle. He was really fucking good at it, too, and he'd handed me my ass twice while I was still in post-torture training. Now I could hold my own, but I couldn't pin the bastard. Yet. One day I'd get the chance to win, but it wouldn't be today. Because he'd asked Milo.
"You sure you want to, old man?" Milo asked in a perfectly reasonable voice. "Don't think I'll take it easy on you because you got bad news."
"I know you won't take it easy on me. I think I need the challenge."
"It's your ass on the mat."
I couldn't see Milo's face as he got up and followed Marcus into the other room, but I heard the note of pleasure in his tone. And from the smile that kept quirking the corners of Marcus's mouth, he was looking forward to the battle, too. The first time the two ever sparred, Milo had hustled Marcus beautifully, luring the larger, more muscular were-cat into a sense of overconfidence just broad enough to trip and pin him in the third round. And it had been a beautiful pin.
Feeling a bit like an intruder this time and not entirely sure why, I left them to their wrestling.
Chapter Three
With Marcus and Astrid out of the Watchtower for a while, our quad was given a day off from official business. This meant Wyatt and I had a few hours to spend on the unofficial business of finding three teenage boys in a city of half a million people—three teens who just happened to shape-shift into werewolves, and whose bites were highly infectious (and deadly) to humans. Wyatt found that out the hard way five weeks ago when he was bitten.
After several hours in a painful fever, he woke up…different. With silver-rimmed eyes, enhanced senses, and the ability to affect a partial-shift that was probably the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. I've seen some scary shit, things that would give people nightmares, but nothing compared to seeing his handsome face at odd angles, chin and neck covered in black fur, upper and lower jaw extended and full of sharp, deadly teeth. His eyes had gone completely silver, with a tiny red pupil. His fingernails had turned black and hard, and he'd actually grown a few inches in height.
He tried to describe the shift experience once: "Imagine the worst Charlie horse ever, all over your body, until the shift completes. Then imagine pins and needles racing up and down your limbs until you let yourself go back to normal. Everything's louder, sharper, like someone's messing with the focus on your computer screen, but you can't get it back to normal. It's awful, but it's also…freeing."
I didn't understand the "freeing" part. I couldn't see what was freeing about having a monster prowling around in your subconscious, ready to fight and attack at a moment's notice. Always angry, always hungry, always aroused—the first two he was letting me help him with. It was the third that made me want to whack him in the head with a solid object on a very regular basis. Lupa were apparently very sexual creatures, and they also mated for life. For complex reasons, Wyatt had declared me his mate to the Assembly several months ago, around the same time that we finally had the best sex ever.
Long story short: he wanted me, I wanted him, but he was still worried about controlling himself. I've been abused by a lot of people in the last couple of months. I was raped by a goblin. My pinkie finger was chopped off in the name of science. I was strapped to a table and tortured for three weeks. And the very last thing he wanted to do, Wyatt said over and over again, was to be another person who hurt me. Which was why every time we seemed to inch past the kissing and light petting stage, he shut back down.
It was also why I had a plan for later today; it was about damned time he stopped being so careful and let me take some control of our relationship. Maybe the timing wasn't ideal, given everything we were currently dealing with, but our lives never slowed down. There was no such thing as the perfect moment. We didn't get breaks for romance. I had to make this happen.
But first, teenager hunting.
Not as easy as it might seem, since the only information we had to go on were general descriptions (appeared between fifteen and seventeen years old, red hair, pale skin, tall and lanky) and names: John, Mark and Peter. The good news was that in the last five weeks, there had been no reports of animal attacks linked back to the Lupa pups. The bad news was that we had no reports of animal attacks linked back to the Lupa pups—no reports meant no leads. Our usual informants had nothing for us. The pups simply have not been seen.
And the disappearing act made me nervous. The man who raised them was dead. Half of their brothers were dead. The fact that they were given to a human by the Fey suggested they'd gone back to the Fey (or were taken by the Fey), but we had no way to verify that. So we were stuck driving around Mercy's Lot and hoping Wyatt's mental werewolf detector went off—some sort of telepathic link that exists among the Lupa packs. So far, no dice.
I turned onto Cottage Place and slowed a bit as we passed the empty storefront that had once been Old World Teas. Last month we'd busted the mage who ran the shop and given him a non-choice about getting the hell out of town. Brutus was a freelance magic worker who did spells and enchanted crystals, and he'd taken work from Wyatt on occasion. He'd also taken work from Walter Thackery and the Fey, and we were sympathetic enough to his sense of capitalism and the need to make a living that we didn't kill him outright.
The shop has been empty ever since.
A few blocks down, I spotted the familiar shape of my old residence. The building housed a couple of businesses, including a kitschy jewelry store, as well as the walk-up apartments on the second and third floors. I'd lived in one for four years with my old Triad partners Jesse and Ash. We'd abandoned it for good several months ago, but I couldn't stop a pang of guilt as I thought of my dead partners. And grief, too.