life in his care except stand guard.
Like me. I know how to deal with Pack. How do I deal with forever wolves? What will keep them here where I can at least try to stand guard?
I’ve also spent enough time Offland to know the shrill, staccato sound of hype, the sour sweet smell of a lie, the look of a short con, and the greasy taste that self-delusion leaves on the tongue. When I told the Shifter what was happening to Magnus, there was none of that. No denial or protestations, as though it wasn’t news at all. As though it was simply the confirmation of something he’d always dreaded. Now he walks silently beside me.
When the Great North bought the camp from the executors of Hiram Cheeseprunt, ruined suicide, in 1931, there had been four dormitories built to accommodate the enormous staff that Mr. Cheeseprunt required to service himself and his guests during the summer months. Three are normally used to house those Offland wolves who feel the need to sleep in skin, juveniles acting out “sleepover,” and now the motley of Shifters we are saddled with. The woods wanted the fourth so we salvaged what we could and let her have it. It is now an unstable hillock of green north of the Bathhouse.
The Shifter collapses on a lower bunk to one side and stares blankly at the distorted rectangle of late-afternoon light creeping hesitantly across the wide wooden planks.
He leans over, plucking something from the floor, and looks at it carefully before handing it to me. It’s nothing, a shirt button. We have a huge box filled with them in dry storage. Holding it to my nose, I scent past the carrion and steel to the juniper and black walnut.
“But he’s not going to die.” Half question, half statement of intent, it is the first thing he has said since we left Medical.
“No.”
He falls onto the mattress, his back to me, his arms wrapped around his waist.
I slide the button into my shirt pocket.
* * *
He must have heard me from the shower because when I come through the door the next morning, he is standing in the middle of the room soaking wet, a small towel wrapped around his waist, his legs coiled like a wolf ready to pounce. He is armed curiously enough with a curry comb in one hand and a rolled-up copy of Corporate Counsel magazine in the other.
Pulling the screen door closed, I drop a pile of clothes on the desk near the front. I twirl the desk chair around and settle in facing him, my legs straddling the chair back.
“How do you know Varya’s name?”
Water drips into his eyes. He wipes at it with the back of his wrist, then holds out his impromptu arsenal.
“Do I need these?”
“Not unless your fur is matted or you have a need for alternative dispute resolution, no.”
Smiling weakly, he tosses them onto one of the low bookcases where some Offlander must have left them and holds the unraveling ends of the towel.
Tiberius said he was dangerous and he is. Tiberius was afraid he might be dangerous to the Pack, but I don’t think he is dangerous to the Pack or even to the Alpha I have become.
But when he looks at me, I am afraid for the terrified, lonely self I packed away in mothballs the night John died.
With all his hardness and sharpness, this was a man I could cut myself on.
I reach back to the desk and throw him jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. His hand shoots out to grab them, and the towel falls with a damp plop.
Like that, I think, annoyed with myself for dropping my eyes as though I were some human unnerved by nakedness. Look up, Alpha. There’s nothing special about the way the early morning light catches the water beading across his skin before it gathers into small rivulets and swirls down the muscled fissure of his chest. Nothing unusual in the way they tremble among the dark hairs at his nipples or nestle in the curled thicket gathered around skin that is dusky and veined and muscled but not in the smooth and prosaic way of that hard chest.
Shit. I wrap my arms around the sturdy wooden ladder-back as though it will shield me from the distraction and slow the pulse that beats fast and hard at my nipples and puddles warm and slow at my core.
Except when he pulls on the jeans and I see the