Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines) (42 page)

Laura could feel for herself that the pack would protect and care for Roy, so she managed to pry herself away periodically to sleep or run as a wolf or even take a book outside and spend an hour or so reading in the sun. If he needed her specifically, they could summon her through the pack sense.

Laura had been relieved to find that despite the pack bond, she still needed alone time. She’d have felt like she’d turned into a different person if she hadn’t. But it wasn’t as difficult to share a one-bedroom cabin with five people as she’d have expected. While she didn’t have the same pull to be part of a crowd that Roy did, being the alpha of the pack felt natural and fulfilling to her. From the moment they’d all bonded, she couldn’t imagine being without them.

“Who wants to go apartment-hunting after breakfast?” Keisha asked.

“I’ll go,” Nicolette said. “Still want to be roomies, Miguel?”

“You bet,” Miguel replied.

“I want my own apartment,” Russell said. “You do too, right, Keisha? Let’s find three in the same building.”

This came as no news to Laura, who had been in on the pack’s discussions of their future, but Roy, who hadn’t, looked surprised.

“That’s right,” Roy said. “This isn’t really Laura’s place. When’s your father coming back, again?”

“God knows,” Laura replied. “But six of us couldn’t stay here forever anyway.”

“I’ve lived with more people in closer quarters than this,” Roy said wistfully. “What about us all sharing a bigger apartment? Maybe a three-bedroom?”

Everyone else shook their heads, even Nicolette, who had undoubtedly also lived in barracks.

“I need space,” Keisha said firmly.

“I do too,” said Laura. “But Roy, you and I can keep the cabin. Dad would give it to me if I asked.”

“He’d
give
it to you?” Roy asked.

“He can afford it,” Laura replied. “He’s got these little hideout cabins and apartments all over the country. It’s not like he’ll ever be short of cash, with a sucker born every minute.”

Roy looked from her to the pack, then back to her, with an almost comical look of confusion on his face. “Have you guys already talked about this? You all want to live in Yosemite?”

Laura nodded. “We don’t have to live together—we could just meet up a couple times a week—but we have to be close enough to do that. We’re all from different places, so it’s not like we can go back home. And we want enough wilderness to run around in.”

“We don’t think we’ll have any trouble getting work here,” Keisha tactlessly assured Roy, who looked increasingly depressed as she went on, “ER doctors are always in demand. So are engineers. So are award-winning chefs. Nicolette was about to re-enlist when she was kidnapped, but she thinks she could do private security.”

“Right,” Roy muttered. “Maybe I could too—no, dammit, I can’t. I couldn’t avoid everything, and I couldn’t bring Laura along.”

“There is a job we could do together, though.” Laura had been waiting to suggest it, and it looked like now was her chance.

Roy gave her a doubtful glance. “Is it something you’d
want
to do?”

“Yes.” Laura smiled. “How would you like to be a private eye with me?”

He brightened. “Hell, yeah!”

“I could handle the computer and phone stuff, and we could always investigate together,” Laura said. “I could sweet-talk and con people, and you could loom over and terrify them. You know, as needed.”

“You should have a cool name,” Miguel suggested. “Like Cloak and Dagger. Not actually that one, it’s taken.”

“Kaplan and Farrell,” Laura said.

“Not Farrell and Kaplan?” Roy asked, at the same time that Nicolette remarked, “Boring. Stuffy. People will think you’re accountants.”

“We could have a sideline helping werewolves,” Roy said. “You guys can’t be the only ones who were in trouble and couldn’t call the police.”

“That’s a great idea,” Laura said. “I wonder how we’d get the word out, though. If we put it on our website, we’d scare off legit business and get deluged with letters from people who think they’re vampires.”

“What if there really are vampires?” Russell asked no one in particular. “If there’s werewolves…”

“Wolf, Incorporated?” Miguel offered. “Wolf and Bane?”

“Sounds like a Batman crossover,” said Nicolette. “What about Full Moon Investigations?”

In all the discussion, Roy had never let go of Laura’s hand, eating and drinking with his other. Now his fingers tightened over hers. He cocked his head, listening, then released her hand and stood.

Nicolette rose too, wary. “What do you hear?”

“Might be Jim’s buddy again,” Roy said over his shoulder, hurrying toward the door.

Laura followed him outside. She watched Roy, not the road, and knew who was coming by the incredulous smile that lit his face before she could even hear the motorcycle. She reached out to take his hand, but he was already tearing down the driveway, not even bothering to put his fingers in his ears.

A Harley roared up, loaded down with a huge, precarious-looking bundle. The rider vaulted off before it had even come to a complete stop, taking off his helmet with one hand and parking the motorcycle with a kick of his foot.

Laura caught only the briefest glimpse of a black leather jacket, brown skin, and black hair before a huge white wolf leaped over the Harley, knocking the rider flat. Then two wolves were rolling over and over in the dirt road in a flurry of white and gray fur, playfully nipping and tussling with each other.

The rest of the pack joined Laura in the driveway.

“He’s friendly, right?” Miguel said. “They’re just joking around… Right?”

“That’s the ally Roy wanted to have help rescue you guys,” Laura explained. “It’s DJ Torres, from Roy’s fire team. Roy sent him a message to come up here, and I guess he forgot to call him off.”

Nicolette eyed the bundle. “Too bad he didn’t come earlier. Looks like he brought some rifles.”

The air around the wolves shimmered. DJ became a man, and, to Laura’s amazement, tackled and pinned Roy’s dire wolf. Roy became a man as well, and easily flipped DJ on to his back. But DJ pulled him down, and the two of them wrestled together. To Laura’s amazement, DJ, who was much smaller than Roy, pinned him again. Roy fought fiercely, but to no avail. Finally, he extended his hand and tapped out.

DJ bounced to his feet, laughing. “I’ve been waiting for years to be able to fight you and not hold back.”

His voice was pleasant but scratchy, as if he’d worn it out talking for hours. If Roy sounded like a Shakespearean actor, DJ sounded, appropriately enough, like the host of a college radio station.

Roy dusted himself off. “If you use the unfair advantage of
superhuman strength
, of course you can beat me. That’s like Superman fighting Batman. It doesn’t make Superman a better fighter.”

“And how fair was it when you thought you were using your size and weight advantage to beat me?” DJ demanded.

Not waiting for Roy’s reply, he spun around, unstrapped the bundle from the Harley, and tossed it over his shoulder. Even though Laura knew about his power, it was bizarre to see a man of his size lift a package that had to weigh a hundred pounds as if it was made of styrofoam.

DJ stopped, seeming to notice the others for the first time. “Who’re they? Wait, are they the pack? Are they
your
pack now?” He shot an accusing look at Roy. “Did you go rescue them without me?”

“‘Fraid so,” Roy said. “I’ll introduce you. There’s coffee inside.”

“If there’s
coffee
…” That seemed to satisfy DJ.

Laura looked at him curiously as he hurried up the driveway, every movement suffused with cheerful, restless energy. DJ wasn’t as small as she’d first thought when she’d seen him next to Roy; medium height, but wiry rather than burly. He was younger than Roy, in his mid to late twenties, boyishly handsome and with very dark eyes that didn’t seem to miss a thing.

If she hadn’t known who he was, she might have taken him for a graduate student, or maybe an athlete in some quirky sport like parkour or Ultimate Frisbee. Unlike Roy, he didn’t look as if he had seen too much, done too much, and been in combat for far too long; he looked like the sweet, innocent boy next door. She wondered if there was a touch of the con artist in him.

Roy introduced DJ to the pack, scent names and all. He concluded, “And this is Laura Kaplan. Lemon Meringue.”

DJ gave her a respectful nod. “So
you’re
Roy’s mate! You must have nerves of steel.”

“What do you mean, ‘mate?’” Laura asked. Mr. Torres had used the same word, but she hadn’t thought much of it at the time.

“Didn’t my folks mention that? Werewolves mate for life. Once you fall in love, you never fall out. Doesn’t mean things always work out, but if you break up, it won’t be because you don’t love each other.” A flash of sadness crossed DJ’s mobile face. “Even before they meet, mates are drawn together. They get impulses to go somewhere—”

“I had that!” Roy exclaimed. “I hiked about a hundred miles, over mountains, to get here. To get to Laura, I guess. Even before she got here herself.”

“Yeah, it can work like that. And once a pair bonds, if they’re separated, they can sense when their mate is in danger.”

“I had that too! I wish I’d known that was what it was. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“Yeah. It’s not much fun. But it comes in handy.” For the first time, DJ fell silent when no one else was speaking. He shot a furtive glance at the pack, then at Roy, then back to the pack.

Russell cleared his throat. “We were going to go apartment hunting, remember? And I want to buy some clothes, too. Most of our stuff got torched—”

“You mean, you torched most of our stuff,” said Miguel.

“Who’s coming?” Russell went on.

The pack promptly stepped toward him. Laura glanced at Roy to see if he wanted her to take off too.

Roy put his hand on her arm. “I think you’ve got enough clothes.”

Keisha smothered a giggle. As she went off with the rest of the pack, DJ called after them, “If any of you want a tactical vest, I brought three of them!”

“Dibs!” Nicolette shouted back.

DJ laid the bundle down on the driveway as the pack piled into Keisha’s car and drove away. Roy and DJ stood looking at each other in a silence that Laura could already tell was uncharacteristic for DJ, if not for Roy.

Laura thought of DJ telling Roy that if he was forced to take a medical discharge, it might be for the best. She thought of DJ screaming at Roy to live as he lay bleeding to death, with the helicopter burning behind them. And she thought of the ambush that had put DJ in the hospital for a month and given Roy wounds from which he’d never fully recovered. She wondered if DJ had managed to slip through with all but his body unmarked, or if he had his own scars and was simply better at concealing them.

“DJ…” Roy said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry too,” DJ muttered. “I never should’ve said that to you. In my entire lifetime of opening my big mouth when I should’ve kept it fucking shut, that took the fucking cake.”

You were right,
Laura thought, but knew better than to say so.

There was a long silence.

“You were trying to help me,” Roy said at last. “I wish I’d let you.”

DJ rubbed his chin, inspecting him. “Seems like you got help somewhere. I know you went through hell, not having a pack, but you look a lot better than the last time I saw you.”

“No shit,” Roy remarked.

DJ gave a dismissive flip of his hand. “I didn’t mean better than dying, obviously. Better than when you got in the helo. Better than when I got out of the hospital. Actually… better than all of last year.”

“You can credit my nerves-of-steel mate for that.”

“Can I?” DJ’s dark eyes met Laura’s, all joking gone. “Thank you for what you’ve done for Roy. I owe you. If there’s ever anything I can do for you—
anything
, any time—just say the word. I mean it.”

For the first time, Laura caught a glimpse of the man Roy had told her about, who had carried him dying from the wrecked helicopter and risked everything in the hope that he would live.

“Roy wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,” Laura replied. “He told me what you did for him. I owe you too. If there’s ever anything you need from me, you’ve got it.”

DJ grabbed her hand and shook it, smiling again. “Deal.”

Roy shifted uncomfortably. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

DJ hefted the bundle and followed Laura and Roy inside. He ditched it on the sofa and sat down with them at the table, where he carefully divided the migas platter into thirds, gave a longing glance at the rest of the platter, then tipped exactly one-third on to his plate.

“I’m done,” Laura said, wondering where he planned to put all that food. Maybe superhuman strength required superhuman eating to sustain it. “You can take the other third.”

“Thanks, Lemon Meringue,” replied DJ, helping himself to a second third.

“You can call me Laura.”

“Have you heard from Marco and Alec?” Roy asked.

DJ hurriedly swallowed a mouthful. “They’re fine. And as soon as I heard from my folks that you were all right, I tipped them off privately.”

“Thanks,” Roy said. “And thanks for searching for me. I wish I could have gotten through to you sooner. But where the hell were you before you started looking for me?”

“Oh, boy.” DJ tapped his knife idly on the table. “That is one long story. And a lot of it isn’t mine to tell. There’s someone else I should check with before I give you any of the details, because a lot of it involves her and I don’t think she’d be crazy about me telling anyone, well, anything about her, really, without asking first. Do you mind, Roy? Lemon Meringue, do you?

“Can you not call me that?” Laura asked. “It’s like a code name invented by the world’s girliest four-year-old.”

“You’ll get used to it,” DJ replied cheerfully. “Like I was saying, Lemon—can I call you Lemon for short?”

Roy nudged Laura. “Now you see what I had to put up with.”

“
No
,” Laura said firmly. “That is, not unless you also call Roy Guinness. Every single time. Without error or hesitation.”