NERO SAT at his desk, staring at a picture of his team at the last barbecue. He was torturing himself—he knew that. The memories were painful and wonderful at the same time. He missed them. He missed who he was when he was around them. And he really wanted to introduce them to Josh. They’d like him. They’d tease him mercilessly, and he’d probably do something to the food to turn everyone orange, and just like that, he’d become part of the pack.
Except there was no pack right now, and he was lost without it.
A knock sounded on his door. “Not now,” he growled out.
The door opened anyway, even though it was locked. Only one person could do that, and he was the last alien Nero wanted to see.
“Not now, Gelpack.”
“This is the appointed time.”
Nero frowned. “We don’t have an appointment.”
“It is the appointed time. And Captain M told me to remind you that this is the arrangement. I kept the new recruits alive—”
“Not all of them.”
“—and you must talk to me about feelings.”
“Fine. I’m feeling like you need to get out of here.”
“You need not concern yourself with my safety. In fact, Captain M said that I should offer myself as your punching bag.”
“Great idea.” Nero launched himself out of his chair, leading with his fist. He went right through Gelpack to thud painfully against the door. Then he damned himself for being an idiot, because he’d known that would happen. The vaguest residue of something remained on his throbbing hand, and behind him, Gelpack simply reformed without the fist-sized hole. Well, he’d wondered if surprise made a difference against the creature. Now he knew it didn’t.
“Fine,” he said, all the fight going out of him. “What do you want to know?”
“I wish to discuss your feelings.”
Oh, goody. “What about them?”
“Please describe them to me right now. Include as much physical description as you can.”
“I’m feeling the clothes on my body. They itch right now.” He was in his softest sweatpants, but they still bothered him. Everything bothered him right then.
“I’m feeling angry at you because I want to be left alone.” Except he’d just been alone and realized that steeping himself in misery wasn’t doing anyone any good.
“I’m feeling like my hand better stop throbbing soon or I’m going to have to shift, and I’m too tired to do that. And that’s another thing,” he said as he glared at his bed. “I’m feeling so fucking tired, even my hair needs to rest.”
“How does hair feel tired? There are no nerves in hair to feel—”
He sighed. “It feels heavy, okay? Like each hair is pulling my scalp down and I’m too tired to stay upright.”
“Why don’t you lie down?”
“Because whenever I do, I get antsy.” Fitting words to action, he stretched out on his back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Happy now?”
“I do not experience happiness as you do. That is why I am here: to learn how you experience it.”
“If I knew that, then I’d be happy, wouldn’t I?”
“Would you?”
“Of course I would. No one wants to feel crappy.”
“But you knew your hand would hurt after you punched through me to the door, and yet you did it anyway. What actions usually bring you happiness?”
Playing with his packmates. Eating a ton of burgers at a barbecue. And Mother’s potato salad. One bite of that and he was in heaven. “Killing that fucking demon.”
“And how will you feel when you accomplish that? What will your happiness feel like?”
He imagined destroying that gun-toting, neon-blooded asshole. He pictured himself ripping out its throat, shooting its head into a zillion pieces, detonating an atomic bomb on its ass. But every time he destroyed it, it popped right back into his head. He saw every detail of the emotionless, killing thing, from its dead eyes to the steady hold it had on its gun. He’d hamstring it, disembowel it, and then decapitate it before pissing on its remains.
And still it would pop up in his brain, alive and whole as it burned his entire team to ash.
“Quiet,” he said. “It will feel like quiet.”
“Thank you for your answer,” Gelpack said as his arm seemed to ooze around his body to open the door. It was a disturbing sight. “It is a common one, and so I believe I have found a pattern.”
Nero lifted his head. “What?”
“Many of your colleagues have said that happiness comes from quiet. And yet you all live such noisy lives.”
Wasn’t that the truth? “So what do you conclude from that?”
“That happiness comes from quiet and noise both, in the right balance.”
“It has to be the right noise,” Nero said. “And the right quiet.” It had been utterly silent after his team had died. He’d been in the in-between state when the blast happened. Then he’d reformed onto the scorched earth and heard absolutely nothing.
“How do you know which is the right one?”
Nero felt a cynical smile twist his lips. “By whether or not it makes me happy.” Let the Jell-O guy figure that one out.
But instead of being confused, the alien nodded as if that made total sense. “Thank you for sharing your feelings with me.” Then he opened the door and left. He should have shut it behind him, but some human protocols were lost on the alien. Or maybe it was because there was an enormous black wolf waiting who shouldered his way inside the moment the alien passed.
“Josh,” Nero said. He was about to tell him to go away, but he couldn’t quite form the words. Instead he stated the obvious. “You heard every word, didn’t you?”
The wolf dipped his head.
“You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”
Head shake, no.
“Fine.” He got up and headed for his computer. “Then you can sit right by me and watch while I see if that demon has started eating Wisconsinites again.”
It took forty-eight minutes for Josh to change back to human. Nero felt the temperature drop in the air and knew immediately what was happening. He turned fast enough to see the golden shimmer right before Josh reformed as a man on all fours.
“For the love of God, watching you at a computer is like watching a toddler trying to do advanced math. Get out of the way.” He grabbed on to the desk and hauled himself upright before pushing at Nero.
Normally Nero would refuse to vacate the chair out of stubbornness, but Josh was about to feel dizzy from shifting and needed to sit. So he jumped out of his seat and guided the man into it. And then before he could say anything, Josh put his hands to the keyboard and started typing. Nero tried to follow it, but windows kept popping up and then disappearing faster than he could follow. He gathered that Josh was coding something, but he didn’t have the skills to understand it.
“I’ll get you some soup.”
“I don’t need it,” Josh grumbled.
“Watching you learn how to be a werewolf is like watching a toddler trying to cook dinner. You’ll eat what I put in front of you or I’m taking away your screen time.”
Josh turned to stare at him, his fingers momentarily stilled. Then he nodded. “I’ll code, you get food. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Then a female voice came loud and annoyed from the main living space. “You guys know that I can code and cook you both under the table, right?”
Nero looked back at Josh, who tightened his face into an “as-if” expression. Then, as one, they said, “Challenge accepted.”
A moment later Josh went back to typing and Nero headed to kitchen. Stratos glared at him as he passed, her hand gripping a pen where it rested on Yordan’s paperwork pile.
“I can’t help you,” he said softly. “Wiz has to—”
“Fuck you,” she snapped. Then she abruptly closed her eyes and exhaled. “Sorry. I’m pissed, and I hate this. I hate everything about this.”
Nero was about to say something, but Gelpack beat him to it. He hadn’t even seen the alien in the room, but the guy straightened up from a chair and came to stand in front of Stratos.
“It is time for your appointment,” he said. “Explain ‘pissed’ to me in as much detail as possible.”
Stratos gaped at the gelatinous being, and for a moment Nero thought she would throw a punch. Instead, she stood up and got nose-to-nose with the alien. Then she bellowed, “Arg!” right in his face.
And Nero laughed—straight-out laughed—surprising everyone in the room, himself most of all. How the hell had he just found the right balance of quiet and noise?
Two weeks later, Josh blew up the lab.