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Nafisi stomped around the sterile space of her med bay while she waited for the internal scanner to finish processing. If the rangers had given her better funding, she could have had a top-end scanner, one that produced results instantly. The logical part of her brain told her she was being irrational. Unfortunately, she also didn’t care at the moment. The thought made her snarl again, and she slammed one of the cabinet doors too forcefully. JJ started at the sharp noise, lurching over onto his injured leg and letting out another heartbreaking yelp of pain.
Immediately, her cheeks burned and she rushed to the table where her patient waited. She rubbed her fingertips into the soft black of the pup’s fur. "I'm sorry, buddy. I know. He just makes me so angry." Gener had always teased her about talking to the wolves; she joked that if they started talking back, then she’d be worried. Not like Penzak, who talked to the wolves like she did, like he would any other member of his family.
She turned her focus back to JJ. Putting the cast on him one-handed would be tricky enough, she didn’t need to have her hands shaking as well.
The internal scanner pinged, and she tapped a command into the side of her exam table. The results of the scan opened in the far corner where she could rotate them and confirm her prognosis. In between moments of JJ batting at her hand, thinking it was a game, she reviewed the fracture she had felt in his foreleg. A clean break. No fragments, no splinters of bone out of place. More importantly, it occurred far enough away from the young wolf’s growth plates that they weren’t likely to have been damaged. Had the fracture been more distal, the pup’s leg might have been permanently shortened. Instead, JJ would have to deal with the indignities of getting around in a cast for a while.
Nafisi used the fingers of her injured hand to hold the pup still while she applied the moldable plastic casting. When everything was in place, she touched the activator electrode to the material, and it immediately hardened into a waterproof cast.
“There you go, JJ.” She kept her voice soothing to calm the confused wolf and stroked his head. "I promise, it’ll be gone in no time. Soon you won't even remember it was ever there."
She wished that she could say the same about Penzak. While she worked to get JJ patched up, he had thrown himself into setting up new defenses against what he felt sure would be the final push by Triptych’s raiders. Focused on the mission.
Her teeth ground together. How had she let shit get so far out of hand? When had her backtalk and snark turned into foreplay? When had that started turning toward genuine affection? She'd gotten stupid, carelessly opening herself up again, and had the door slammed in her face.
If she was honest, it served her right. She knew better than to get attached. Men. Wolves. Everything went away in the end.
She dragged the back of her hand across her face, grinding away the moisture that threatened to spill. The situation wasn’t worth her tears, even angry ones.
Once the cast was completed, she nuzzled her face into the top of JJ’s head. "Fortunately, this just might be the injury that keeps you from getting saddled with a ranger anytime soon. Trust me, you'll be thankful for that."
For his part, JJ was more appreciative of the cheek scratching and general attention and she was happy to provide. After closing the report from the scanner, she scooped JJ off the table and set him on the floor. “How's that going to work out for you?"
The pup looked unsteady and glanced at her with wide, black eyes. With no ability to bend one of his legs, he mostly held the limb away from the floor and relied on an awkward three-count gait to get around. It might be pathetic, but he could move on his own.
Nafisi could only watch for so many moments before scooping him back up again. In her head, she heard Gener reprimanding her for coddling the wolves, but she didn't care. She'd always given them her whole heart, and they still turned into damn fine wolves. Her argument had been that it was the love she gave that made them want to be heroes in the first place.
She'd been alone so long that she forgot you couldn't do the same with a human. Especially not with a ranger. They were who they were. At least she had the benefit of finding out before she'd done something truly foolish, like slept with him. She always did fall a little in love with the men who shared her bed.
She lied to herself that she only regretted the missed opportunity slightly.
JJ licked her cheek several times, then settled down against her shoulder. The trauma and commotion clearly had exhausted him, as it was barely a few moments before tiny puppy snores sounded in her ears.
She made the final pass through the med bay, checking to make sure everything was put back where it belonged, and all the cabinets were closed. When she was satisfied, she moved to the master panel to key in the lockdown code.
The lights cut out, plunging her into unexpected darkness.
Nafisi glanced around the kennel. No backup lights glowed in the dark to guide her way, so they hadn’t just cut the lights. They’d taken down all the power. Even cut her connection to the ranch’s battery system.
After tucking JJ into the sling alongside her wounded arm, she collected the pistol from the countertop. She refused to think about being thankful for Rafe’s insistence that she bring it with her, but the weight of it was comforting all the same. Apparently, Triptych had decided to give them less time than her ranger had expected.
#
BLIND FIRE STRUCK THE communications array and shut it down in a shower of superheated plasma. Rafe let out a quiet breath, glad to have abandoned it as a hiding place after his last shot. He leaned against the wind generator and lined up another target through his light-amplification lenses. As soon as the pirate moved out of cover, Rafe dropped him. Eight down.
Not that it mattered. There were too many of them. The defenses he’d had a chance to lay, mostly wire fences they’d have to cut or crawl through, would slow the raiders down. It wouldn’t stop them, and a war of attrition only worked when he had more than just himself.
As soon as his target fell, Rafe jumped to the ground and ran for a new position. Before long, they should reach his half-way fence. He’d attached flares to it to buy himself a few more valuable seconds of time, but with no word from Fireteam Alpha, all he was delaying was the fall of the ranch and Nafisi’s capture.
The thought of her ached in his chest, and he reminded himself it was better this way—with her angry and him gone. He had a command to run, at least for a few more months. If he controlled the pain, took it on his own terms, it would hurt less.
He was still waiting for the less-pain part to start up.
He scanned the few places he’d seen the Triptych raiders so far. Frustratingly, none of them seemed to be barking orders. They had to have a cell director, that was just how Triptych worked, and Rafe had to capture him. If the pirates managed to escape, the location of the ranch would get broadcast back to the Triumvirate, and it would be open season on the wolves.
Rafe crouched in a new location at the corner of the greenhouse and held his breath. As he’d expected, a burst of suppression fire raked the area he'd been hiding in only moments before. One of the vertical vanes buckled and melted under the heat, and another fell to the ground. He winced. Nafisi would have plenty of repairs that the rangers would need to pay for.
Part of him wished he had an excuse to oversee them.
Red light exploded over the area as the flare traps he’d set rocketed into the sky and began to drift back down. A dozen Triptych fighters froze in the sudden light. They must have been packed into that Percheron two-deep. Rafe’s stomach dropped at the sight of so many soldiers. Any hope he had of holding out against those numbers was a fever dream.
Rather like thinking about a future with Nafisi.
He fired, but his shot went short, kicking up dirt and rocks as his target ducked behind cover. His position blown, the raiders took charge of the fight. Screaming in unison like an unholy choir, they stood and charged toward the farmhouse.
Their battle cry was met with an eerie yip-yip-howl that sent a familiar shiver down Rafe’s spine. The soldiers froze again, and those that knew the sound had already started to run the other way. It wouldn’t help. Distorted blurs streaked across the ground, leaping up and tackling anyone who couldn’t get into cover. Plas-fire snapped from the far side of the house, and Rafe spotted the head of Fireteam Alpha—Sergeant Marcel—stalking forward with her weapon at the ready. A quick glance counted considerably more than the Fireteam’s four wolves in the attack, however. Alpha must have met up with some of Nafisi's pack after they’d landed.
Buoyed by the change in odds, he ducked out of cover long enough to drop another target.
With wolves and an experienced fireteam in the fray, the battle was effectively over. Some of the pirates surrendered, more tried to run only to discover that two legs were far slower than four. With mop up proceeding, Rafe walked over to the sergeant and took a deep breath before shaking the woman's hand. "That was more of a surprise than I was expecting."
"Sorry, sir. We would've announced our presence, but there was plenty of enemy chatter about how they thought they had you alone." Marcel pulled her helmet off and mopped the perspiration from her hairline. "We inserted quiet on the far side of the moon. Figured they might be scanning for transmissions. Sorry to keep you guessing, sir."
Rafe started to thank her again when her earpiece lit up. Marcel tapped her microphone into position. "Go ahead." After a few moments she looked at him. "Azat and Gasto said the pirates’ Percheron has developed a sudden case of exploding engine. Worst they’d ever seen. I’m afraid that bird’s grounded."
And with the communications issues on Secundus, they wouldn't be telling anyone what they'd found, either. He nodded. "Good work, Sergeant."
"Just doing the job, sir. You're the one who pieced together the intelligence that Bravo brought back and made it actionable." She glanced past him, then met his gaze. "Speaking of which, I think someone wants to see you."
Rafe dismissed the sergeant with a quick salute, then turned to find Nafisi standing with JJ cradled in her good arm. The cast on his leg wasn’t invisible, so it looked as though the splinted plastic hung in the air and disappeared into an amorphous blur.
She stepped forward. "They got them all?"
"Looks that way." He shifted uncomfortably. "With the threat neutralized, you should be safe." He held his breath, willing her to overcome his own stupidity. Please, ask me to stay.
"Oh." Nafisi stroked her fingers along the pup’s fur absently. "JJ’s leg should heal just fine."
Of course it would. She was brilliant, and she cared about the wolves in ways that astonished him. Her methods might not be field-manual orthodoxy, but she produced great wolves. And that meant she made great rangers.
He cleared his throat. "I'll have supplies for repairs sent. And an engineer platoon to get them sorted out. Hopefully a more permanent version of the communication booster as well."
She looked around the farm and nodded, as though seeing some of the damage for the first time. "That would be good.” He could hear the hurt in her voice but couldn’t figure out how to keep himself safe and bridge that gap at the same time. She took a breath and watched him. “Well, thank you, Commander."
Commander. Not even his name. Whatever moment of closeness they had shared was already slipping through his fingers. And he’d been so stupidly wrong. Putting distance between them was supposed to make this hurt less.
Instead, as she took JJ and headed back toward her house, it felt like he'd lost his wolf all over again.