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We rode to the crime scene in eerie silence, sword squeezed between my knees and the rest of my body pressed up against the door. I hated being so timid, but hungry eyes lingered on the back of my neck. And every time I opened my mouth to speak, the musk of alpha werewolf coated my tongue like moss. No wonder I clamped my lips together over incipient words every time I considered breaking the ice.
Meanwhile, my star-ball-turned-sword throbbed against my pant legs, sucking heat out of the air and forming ice crystals atop everything it touched. Twice, Gunner turned the heater up a notch, and each time he eyed me with probing consideration. In response, I used the most fox-like offensive imaginable. Despite flicking glances in the predatory alpha’s direction, I made sure to be looking out the window every time he returned the favor.
Finally, though, the vehicle ground to a halt just off the edge of the highway, the buffeting wind of a passing tractor trailer shaking our SUV like a leaf. This wasn’t a legal place to park. But if a highway patroller dropped by, I could imagine Gunner smiling his way out of probing questions as easily as Liam had recently gotten me off the hook.
Despite our precarious parking space, the werewolf behind the steering wheel seemed in no hurry to open his door, and the shifters behind us knew better than to disembark before their boss. “It won’t be pretty,” Gunner informed me when we’d been sitting there long enough that my sword was beginning to create a rime of ice on plastic surfaces nine inches away. I swiped at the dashboard as unobtrusively as I could with one finger, smudging frost into water. Then I reddened as my seat mate raised his brows at the dampness coating my hand.
Before Gunner could remark upon the inconsistency, though, a mutter emerged from the peanut gallery behind our backs. “He has to warn girls first,” one noted.
“Of course he does. Otherwise, they’d run screaming as soon as he unzipped his fly.”
I blinked, opened my mouth...and tasted amusement replacing the former aggression in the air. Gunner’s underlings were making dirty jokes about their boss now...and he wasn’t tearing them to bloody pieces with his bare hands? Perhaps I didn’t understand werewolves as well as I’d thought I did.
And despite everything, I found myself playing along. “I can handle ugly,” I answered, blinking aside enticing mental images with an effort. No matter what his pack mates were insinuating, Gunner’s warning had referred not to portions of his own anatomy but to the rotting body of a corpse. “If,” I added, remembering my priorities, “it’s part of the job.”
“So you want it now?” Gunner’s scent twisted, lightened, teased my nostrils with the humor of yet another double entendre.
“I need it,” I countered, then reddened as the murmurs from the back seat grew even more lewd. I might have been playing along earlier, but I hadn’t meant my final sentence in that way. At least not consciously....
Rather than trying to pry my foot out of my mouth, I pushed open my door without regard for passing vehicles...or for whatever laws of shifter hierarchy were keeping everyone else penned up inside. And for half a second I allowed myself to bask in the flow of cold air across hot cheeks, to imagine what it might feel like to be part of a pack that teased each other with such blissful simplicity while still guarding each others’ backs.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t a werewolf. And an innocent sister depended upon my protection both today and always. So I inhaled deeply and took in the more far-flung aromas flowing toward me beneath car-exhaust fumes. Tinges of blood and even less savory bodily fluids slapped me in the face within seconds, reminding me why I was here.
Whatever Liam had been saying about “unscented” apparently didn’t apply to decomposing corpses. Shrugging, I headed down the steep slope toward the stench of death.
***
THE BODY WAS STUFFED beneath an overpass, subtly illuminated by the vehicle lights Gunner’s pack had left on when they left their SUVs and cars. And at first glance, it looked like a homeless person had merely succumbed to the elements. Our noses, however, told us a different story entirely.
“See the baking-soda bomb?” Gunner pointed up to the bridge above our heads, where a splintered black trash bag fluttered in the breeze. Every now and then, a few white particles drifted off its otherwise pristine surface, joining the scent-leaching compound that blew around our feet like desert sand. This was a shifter-specific cover-up, a sullying of evidence that only a being with super-powered nostrils would dream of. No wonder the local pack leader’s representative considered the crime his personal duty to investigate.
“Smart move on the killer’s part to counteract his scent,” I agreed, trying to make a good impression as I picked my way through drifts of white powder on my way to the corpse’s side. Because even though crime-scene investigation didn’t top my list of potential professions, I was willing to showcase relevant cleverness if that’s what it took to keep Kira enrolled in her fancy private school. “Let me guess. The bag was attached to a string that could be pulled from a vehicle’s window after he covered up the rest of his trail?”
“Yep,” Gunner agreed, joining me as I padded closer to the victim. Even with eddies of baking soda filling the air, I could smell my companion’s personal aroma now. Pine needles and ozone and dew-dampened granite, as if the male by my side embodied the type of forest I wished I could set Kira loose to frolic amidst.
I must have inhaled a little too deeply though. Because I snorted up a blend of dust and death so intense that I started sneezing wildly enough to draw tears from my eyes. Perhaps the universe was trying to tell me something....
“Alright?” Gunner asked, his hand landing lightly on my forearm. Earlier, the male had seized me so violently I couldn’t get away, ripping at my sweatshirt like a boy tearing away wrapping paper on Christmas morning. But now, strength flowed from his skin into my own, the mere touch burning with so much heat it made me shiver in protest.
And even though instinct begged me to lean into the werewolf’s tantalizing body, eyes on the back of my neck promised that nearby shifters were judging both of our actions. So I took a step away from the alpha’s warmth instead. Swiped tears off my cheeks almost angrily.
Then I skipped over any explanation for my weakness as I peered more carefully at the waiting corpse. I was here to do a job. Might as well get it over with.