“Son of a bitch,” Noah muttered under his breath, as all heads except Christina’s turned toward him.
He wanted to say it again. But damn, he’d forgotten for just a moment that everyone here—except himself and Pines—had a much higher-than-normal ability to hear.
He'd made several decisions under duress today, and he was beginning to regret them. He had no phone with which to call SAC Westerfield. And as of right this moment, it would seem he wasn't getting paid.
He was still drawing his regular Miami Bureau salary while they investigated him, so that was a good thing. But getting kicked out three days into the new assignment wasn’t how he’d imagined it going. He was certainly never going to get assigned with the NightShade division now. He reminded himself that when he’d first been offered the position, he’d turned it down flat.
He now waved off the wolf clan staring at him. He’d drunk a little more than he should have and was feeling a little dash of bold to go along with his stupid. The eyes—some hazel green, some gray, some bright blue, and a few an odd amber shade of gold—no longer stared directly at him. They didn't seem to quite let go of the embedded mistrust, though.
He sighed openly, though he shouldn’t have. It was the same mistrust that they didn't quite seem to hold onto for Christina Pines—who’d smashed his phone, ruined his job, and conned him into a situation where he almost immediately was shot at.
He shot the whiskey this time.
To be fair, he’d willingly gone with her. And he’d let her smash the phone. He’d also wandered underground tunnels and popped up in a burned-out home on a property where he knew there was likely to be some kind of Family Feud going down. He tipped his head back and accepted his own culpability in the mess as the whiskey burned its way down his throat.
It was strange now listening to Christina—who was often reticent and very standoffish—open up and talk to these strangers. Clearly, they weren’t strangers to her.
The white-haired woman suddenly seemed more than happy to answer Christina’s questions. It didn’t seem as though the five glasses of whiskey she’d drunk had affected her at all. “I left the family a handful of years ago. I ran with a pack in New Orleans for a while. We weren’t into anything good, that was for sure.” She shrugged as though the legality or morality of it didn’t matter. “Once the pack dissolved, about a year or so ago, I wandered for a while. But I heard about the family coming back here. So I came to check it out.”
“She stayed,” Will said with pride that a lost wolf had returned to his own pack.
Noah wasn’t so sure.
Several other of the wolves told similar stories, indicating that they were free to leave and live their own lives. Several of the soldiers—the ones that Noah had considered to be Will’s soldiers—had attended universities. A few had stayed close to the family, but one went to MIT. Another attended Harvard. He laughed it off. “Dual masters in poetry and English Lit.”
None of this was what Noah would have expected. This was not at all the Amish-centric style of family he'd expected. Though everyone seemed to have drunk just as much as he had, Noah now could feel the alcohol molecules running through his blood. He knew he shouldn’t ask, but he did anyway. “Are you all…?”
He let the words trail off, his whiskey glass tipping towards them one by one and nearly sloshing over the edge. No, he definitely shouldn't have asked for the second refill.
“Here? Yes,” said one of the men, Darren, as he indicated all those on the porch. “But no, not the whole—”
“Not every one of us has it,” Will interrupted, seeming to filter what was said. Noah wasn't sure if it was for Christina and him or just for his ears alone. Maybe Christina already knew or maybe they would fill her in on the details when he wasn’t around.
“The plain humans don't come out on patrol,” the old man added. “Their senses aren’t as keen. We have about three really good soldiers who each did military time. They generally lead our groups, but they weren't out today…” There was a pause full of regret. “Didn’t think we’d need it.”
Noah let the scotch light up the back of his throat as it went down. Somehow, they’d built a family compound in the middle of the Ozarks with doctors and lawyers, lit majors and soldiers. This was not what Westerfield had prepared him to find.
The heaping helping of the blame for how he’d wound up was on his own head. Still, Noah felt there was plenty of guilt to spread around. He wanted to ask Christina if they knew what she could do. But it didn't matter if they knew, because he knew, so he continued sitting on this porch, sipping whiskey.
His thoughts were skewed—an effect of the alcohol, but it was too late to stop it.
Growing up, he and his brothers had all had a few wild talents. Only as an adult had he thought to question what kind of drugs his parents might have been taking before they'd had their kids. In school, he'd been unique. During training at Quantico, he'd tried to be less unique. And in his job with Bureau in Miami, he was so unique that they’d finally written him up for it.
But, here? Here he was nothing special. It was an odd feeling
He polished off the whiskey, mostly for something to do. It was a bad decision, but he wasn’t sharp enough not to make it. So he didn't have to hand back a full glass, he turned to Christina and said, “I need to contact Westerfield.”
“Why?” Her brows pulled together and he frowned back at her before he could stop it.
“I got hired for a job. Now I've been out of contact for more than ten hours.”
They were all just watching the sunset as though they hadn’t lost someone today. As though they hadn’t killed an enemy combatant. As though there wasn’t someone out there wounded, but probably still alive enough to plot revenge.
And he was a little bit drunk.
Noah wanted to make his way back to his car, head to a hotel room, and sleep this day off. He wanted to do the things he understood how to do. Instead, he was hanging out with creatures he’d only learned a few months ago even existed. They could rip him limb from limb, and they could probably smell the decisions he was making.
Christina raised an eyebrow at him as if to say, That’s not good enough.
“Dammit, this is a job I took. Maybe you went AWOL, but I'm not intending to.”
She was looking at him still. The strange look on her face clearly questioning whether he intended to turn her in.
He would have answered if he could form a truly solid thought, but his ideas were being a little slippery. As he opened his mouth, all of the wolves suddenly turned.
Noah couldn't say he'd really ever seen human ears prick up before, but they did it. The white-haired one’s lips curled back, her very long eyeteeth looking almost vampiric in the fading light. She issued a low growl, even as Will reached out and put a soft hand on her arm. But they were all looking the same direction.
Unable to stop himself, Noah followed their gaze, noticing that Christina already had her gun pulled from the holster and that his hand was resting on the butt of his own.
In the distance, he finally saw what they must have spotted a while earlier.
Something rustled in the grass