In the Shadow of the Wolf 3 - Splintered Lies (10 page)

The memory of his last run a few days before flashed through Nick's mind. He'd returned to the clearing he'd shared with Joe the night before they broke the case. Joe's scent had filled the small open area. The moss crushed where he'd made his bed. Evidently Joe was using the same spot and had been there just a few short hours before. Nick had howled for him, but Joe never answered. Nick hadn't gone out since that night, because he knew the clearing would draw him like a magnet and Joe's rejection hurt far worse than a bullet in his chest.

"The boys could go with you if you don't want to be alone. Corbin loves to show off for Mark, it would be a good hunt." Sam continued talking over his shoulder as he walked down the hall towards the stairs. All the bedrooms except Nick's were on the second floor.

Nick shook his head before realizing Sam wouldn't see him. "No, I'd rather go alone, thanks though." Nick turned back to his room. He hadn't realized he meant to go until the words were out of his mouth. No doubt he'd come home as lonely as he'd been since he first regained consciousness and learned Joe was gone, but the thought of fresh meat drew him. Maybe fresh air and a full stomach would help him sleep, if he curled into the mossy hollow that smelled of Joe.

Sliding glass doors set in the back wall of Nick's room opened directly into the yard. He stripped out of his clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and stepped outside. He slid the door shut and shifted. A cool breeze sifted through his fur and the night smelled crisp and clean. Corbin huffed a questioning breath as Nick passed the back yard. He didn't pause letting his silence carry the message he wanted to be alone.

"I'm glad Nick's going on a run, Core. I wish he'd just get over that asshole." Nick heard Mark grumble and Corbin's yip of reprimand before moving out of range even for his wolf ears. Nick agreed with Corbin. Joe and Mark needed to grow up and get over whatever adolescent 'he's mine' they were stuck in over Nick. Nick was Joe's and Mark needed to get that straight in his head. Although Nick supposed the matter was moot if Joe never came home.

Hours later, panting with exertion from his run, stomach full of the rabbit he'd flushed out of the bushes, Nick made his way to the small clearing. He stopped for a long drink from the cool stream taking a few minutes to bolster his courage. He knew Joe wouldn't be there but his scent filled the brush around the stream. Joe had marked the area as his own. Nick wondered when Joe had shifted last. He knew living as a wolf simplified life, brought the need of survival to the forefront and everything else seemed less important. Spending too much time as a wolf was just as bad for their kind as spending too much time human. Balance was the key to their wellbeing—something too many people and wolves often forgot.

The clearing was empty, as Nick had known it would be, but the hollow smelled of Joe and turning three times Nick settled onto the soft moss huffing out his pleasure at being surrounded by the smell of the wolf he loved. Tired from running and sated from the first meal he'd actually enjoyed Nick yawned and dropped his nose to his flank, eyes closing. He slept and dreamed mixed up imaginings of a wolf and a man but both with the common thread of longing and need for what he had lost.

Fingers rubbing behind his ears woke Nick after he'd been asleep for only a few hours. He blinked sleep out of his eyes and lifting his head found himself snout to nose with Joe. Joe looked as shaggy as his wolf. His hair uncut and an unkempt beard darkening his jaw, his eyes were sad. Nick registered nothing except Joe's presence A flash of disbelief transformed in the blink of an eye into delight. He shifted mid-lunge for Joe and knocked him flat in a tangle of arms and legs.

"Joe," It seemed the only thing Nick could say. "Joe."
"I'm here Zander. I'm here." Joe didn't try to move out of Nick's clinging grasp, just the opposite, as he tried to pull Nick closer. An impossible feat unless they intended to share one skin.
"Are you going to stay?"
The question hung between them unanswered as Joe buried his face against Nick's chest. "Shhh, no talking. Not yet."
Nick tensed and then relaxed. He understood Joe might not be ready to rejoin society, or do more than just share the same space for a little while. Joe coming to him was huge and as much as Nick wanted him back, wanted all of Joe without any more waiting, he knew they might be a long ways from having that. Rolling onto his back, Nick tugged Joe with him, tucking him against his side, Nick cradled Joe's head against his chest and let him listen to the steady, healthy beat of Nick's heart.
The sound seemed to soothe Joe and he relaxed, his hand curled over the scar on the other side of Nick's chest. Nick didn't react, though he rarely let anyone even see the raised angry flesh marking his brush with death. He lay still as Joe traced the marred flesh with one finger. Nick ran a soothing hand up and down Joe's back, idly counting vertebrae as he did. Joe's reaction to Nick's touch was evident against his hip and he pressed closer, leaning to kiss the angry scar hidden by the night and the almost dark moon. With a hand along Joe's jaw Nick guided him into a tender kiss. Joe's fingers dug into Nick's ribs when their tongues slid together. He pulled back out of the kiss panting.
"How bad is it?"
Confused Nick tried to bring him back into the kiss. "I'm fine, completely healed."
Joe held back. "No, the mess I left behind, how bad is it? Rob and Dan… everything." His voice sounded rough and hoarse as if he'd become used to not speaking.
"Oh, I thought you said no talking." Nick's attempt to tease Joe into a lighter frame of mind fell flat and he sighed. "I'm sure it's not as bad as you think." Nick sat up and crossed his legs. Facing him Joe followed suit, and their knees bumped. Faces cast in shadow by the dim starlight Nick still cocked his head trying to make out Joe's expression, failing that he brought Joe up to date in as few sentences as he could.
"Rob resigned from the force. They didn't ask him to. After everything came out about Senator VaughnHyland, I don't think they knew what to do with any of us really. On one hand we are all heroes and on the other… yeah what a fucking mess. Rob and I covered for Jamie and Dan. Jamie came out smelling like a rose, I swear that kid is part cat the way he always lands on his feet. They were ready to let Dan keep his job, but he quit too. As for me, I've been remanded into the care of The Home for Wolves at Risk, until such time as it's been determined how badly events have affected my ability to take care of myself."
Silence fell between them. Nick reached out and touched Joe's knee. Joe hooked their index fingers together. Nick thought the stir of lust he felt at such a simple action a little extreme.
"What in the hell is The Home for Wolves at Risk?"
Nick chuckled. "Doug and Sam's house. Jamie's been hard at work, he has a new cause."
"He's not saving cats anymore?" Joe sounded so hopeful and so much like his old self, that Nick laughed out loud.
"You wish. He's just added troubled wolves to the list. He's the founder for a movement he's named 'Integrate, not assimilate'."
"What does that mean?" Joe's thumb rubbed the back of Nick's hand sending goose bumps up his arm, nearly stalling his brain.
"Um…I…" Nick turned his hand over and Joe's thumb traced his palm. "I don't know."
Joe chuckled and linked their fingers.
"Think hard."
"What happened to you in the waiting room started it."
Joe barked a harsh laugh and his fingers left Nick's. "I lost my shit. That's what happened in the waiting room."
Regretting the loss of Joe's playful caress Nick didn't withdraw his hand, instead he turned it over, cupping Joe's knee. "Exactly. Your trauma led Jamie to the conclusion wolves aren't being integrated into human society. It's more like we are being assimilated. Pretty much the same thing bat-shit-crazy Chase was doing, but a lot more subtle."
"I don't understand." Joe pulled away from Nick's touch and into the shadow.
"We don't have to talk about this now." Nick tried to inch forward but when Joe moved back keeping his distance Nick froze.
"Tell me."
"The senator was very good at disappearing his connections to Ardenvale, the inhibitor, all of it. For a while it looked like we were all going to down for killing the wrong guy, even though he was the right guy."
"What happened?"
"They found his journal. Chase Vaughn-Hyland was an old fashioned boy who wrote in his journal every night. That's where he confessed all his secrets. He was there when the wolf killed his brother. Later the same wolf shifted and saved Chase's life from some human kids who had him cornered. He came to the conclusion shifters as people were good, the wolves were bad and shifting is the problem. It blurs the line between humans and animals. His entire life was dedicated to the goal of eradicating shifting." Still unsure about many of the things he'd read in the bootleg journal Rob had managed to acquire for them to read, Nick felt odd talking about it at all much less trying to explain. "Until the… situation that caught up with him, the senator hadn't been personally involved with the development and testing. He was actually furious with the side issues that cropped up when others tried to profit early from the research, the attempts to use the drug to control wolves, and then the stupid idea of trapping us in wolf shape."
"Well that explains the extreme cleanup once they were exposed," Joe muttered. "The guy was crazy as a loon. I don't see what this has to do with Jamie's idea."
"Vaughn-Hyland didn't want to destroy shifters, exactly, he wanted to preserve what he saw as the good part, to do away with the rest, to assimilate shifters completely into the human world, to the point there was no difference at all. Which is crazy. What's not so crazy is Jamie's campaign."
"Campaign? I thought you said he had another dogood project." Joe sounded confused and Nick understood how he felt. Jamie with a cause was enough to make anyone's head spin.
"Um, well it's a little bit more than that. Because of Jamie's reasoning, Rob is running for State Senate."
"Rob? A politician?" Joe's brow furrowed as he tried to digest the idea of his straightforward alpha becoming a double-talking politician.
"He said he believes in Jamie's cause. Rob's campaign is founded on the idea of complete integration in the schools. His position is understanding comes by knowing and knowing is achieved by association. He and Jamie have already been successful pushing forward their project for hospitals to provide waiting areas appropriate for wolves. No more holding shape to keep people happy, wolves under emotional stress will be able to shift at need."
"But when we shift from wolf to human form we're naked. That's a lot of getting dressed."
"Joe, we don't care about seeing each other naked when there is hurt and need. If people don't want to see they can stay away."
Nick strained to see Joe. He sat close by, but seemed miles away.
"We are people when we aren't wolves."
Gnawing his bottom lip bloody Nick struggled with what he had to say next. Joe, the polished urban wolf about town, wasn't going to like it. Nick didn't know if Joe could deal with it at all. "We are people, we always are. Sometimes we're wolf shaped, sometimes human shaped, but we aren't human and until everyone learns that simple fact, true human and wolf integration will never happen."
"What the hell do you mean?" Joe growled crouching on all fours low to the ground, though he hadn't shifted.
"Whatever shape I have, I'm me. That's what I mean. No matter how I look I'm not a man or a wolf, not really. I don't know if I'm both, or neither, or what the hell to call myself half the time, but I have the right to be respected as myself. I should not have to change to fit a mold another species has dictated."
Nick reached out and caught Joe by the arm before he could shift and run. "If I have to adjust my behavior to get along with humans, it's only fair they change too. If we don't find an alternative to how we are doing things either we will be assimilated into human society as completely as Chase Vaughn-Hyland envisioned, or there will be a bloodbath."
"What's the answer?" Joe sounded tired. "What's to keep wolves from turning vigilante and enforcing our own kind of justice on the world? If we aren't careful we'll have an entire species of wolves like me!"
"There is nothing wrong with you." Nick jerked Joe to his feet and shook him roughly. "Don't you see? If you hadn't been trying to mourn like a human since the day you lost Mara things may have been different. Nobody could keep it together under that kind of stress for long, wolf or human. We have alpha wolves like Doug locked up in prison, instead of helping them, teaching them to focus their energy and ability to lead into something worthwhile. Wolves like him are the answer. And people like Rob who accepts us as we are."
"And what about wolves like me? Where is my hope? What will I do? Fuck, Nick how am I going to fit in?" Joe sounded desperate, torn and hopeless but Nick no longer felt the need to run singing through his muscles and relaxed slightly. Nick let go of Joe's arms and cupped his face in gentle hands.
"Stupid question."
Nick exposed his heart in the tender kiss he gave Joe. With a small sound of wonder Joe moved a step closer. Nick wrapped Joe in his arms. "You fit here, what else matters?"
For a few minutes the Joe that Nick remembered best, returned. It never mattered Nick was bigger, Joe had always been the aggressor between them. His hands slid down Nick's back urging him closer, cupping his ass and dragging their hips together. Raw lust flared in Nick despite his efforts to keep it at bay. Joe hot and naked in his arms made his blood burn.
"I love you, Nick, but I'm not ready for this," Joe whispered. He slipped from Nick's arms, shifted and disappeared into the night.

Weeks passed and life for Nick fell into a routine of caring for Kristi and helping Sam and Doug with the boys. He didn't know where Joe had gone, only that the clearing had lost all scent of him and after a while the memory of the night they'd talked took on the haze of a dream. Sometimes Nick doubted it happened at all. The afternoon sun shining in the bank of windows lining the back of the house warmed the room where Nick read Kristi a story, though the nine month old was far more interested in turning the pages than listening. Doug and Sam were out with most of the other wolves. Corbin and Mark sat together in a corner, snout to nose. Mark murmured quietly, rubbing the soft fur behind Corbin's ears. Cats wandered around the room, basked in the sun and kittens chased dust floating in the rays.