Page 30 of Lone Wolf
Salem pulled out a chair and lowered himself into it. Not too awkward yet; he seemed to be carrying the baby well. Damian watched him with a weird sort of hunger eating at his insides. The memory of the night that pup was conceived was branded into his mind and he regretted painfully having missed all the parts of this pregnancy that had happened since, and all the ways he’d failed to be a good alpha to this omega.
“Damian?” Oscar said pointedly and shoved a chair out at him.
Damian sat and stared across the table at Salem.
For the first time since they’d walked into the room, Salem looked up at him. “Damian? That’s your real name?”
He nodded.
The omega breathed out, long and slow, his nostrils pinching with it. “You look more like a Damian, I guess, than a David. That should have been my first clue.”
“I’m sorry,” Damian blurted.
Interestingly, Salem waved that off. “Things happen, I’ve come to terms with it.” He turned solemn eyes on Damian. “What do you want to do?”
Surprised into dumbness, Damian looked to Oscar, the back at Salem. “I don’t know.” He turned to Oscar. “What are our options?”
“Don’t talk to him, Damian. Talk to me. I’m the one with your pup in my belly.” Ah, there it was, the anger he’d expected Salem to be carrying.
Helplessly, he said, “I didn’t know,” though he was aware it wasn’t much of an excuse.
Salem made a small, frustrated noise and laid his hands flat on the table in front of him, so much tension in those joints and tendons the air should have crackled with it. “I need to speak to him alone. Please give us a moment,” he said, not looking at either of them.
“Me? Or…” Damian watched the omega closely for some clue.
But Oscar, it seemed, had read the other shifter more clearly than Damian had. “I’ll be right outside that door,” he said as he stood up.
“Listening, no doubt,” Salem bit back.
“Of course,” Oscar told him. “What else would I be doing?” He looked at Damian. “He’s got teeth, that one. Watch him.” But he patted Damian on the shoulder in something that felt weirdly like solidarity as he passed by.
Salem bared the aforementioned teeth at the human’s back as Oscar went out the door, then turned that same ferocious expression on Damian.
CHAPTER THIRTY
My heart had leaped into my throat at the sound of the opening door, and the busy courtyard in front of me had disappeared beneath my nerve endings throwing up memories of our one night together. Yes, it was him. It had to be—I turned away from the window as my body shivered in delighted recognition and I was suddenly raring to tear his clothes off and fuck his brains out right on the table here. Let Oscar listen in on that, the prick.
“Why in all the Barrenlands,” I said, instead of begging him to come over here and kiss me, “did you bring yourself and your fucking alpha sperm into my house during my heat? I know it was on purpose, Oscar told me you have to take some sort of drug for that to work. Did it amuse you, thinking of the chaos you’d cause here when the omega you fucked turned up pregnant? Did you never think of what it might mean to me?”
He stared at me like something had sucked his brains out. Though given the bruises on his face and the cuts on his hands, maybe it had. “It wasn’t that,” he finally said, and his voice sent a thrill through my body. “Anytime I have to work around shifters, I have to disguise my scent. I didn’t even stop to think about it—I’ve been playing the human for so long it’s not even a question. I’m dead, you see. A ghost wolf.”
I sat back in my chair, puzzled. “What does that mean?” My brain went into overdrive, trying to figure out if it was some sort of mythological reference, or even a television show?
Damian looked down at his hands and began picking at a loose strip of skin that was peeling off one of his knuckles. “I was in the army, and they offered me this job. It was good money, for me, and for my family. They promised to make sure my family got my military pension, the full pension, not just the five years I’d been in. And we’d already lost Dad, and Val, because we were just too damn poor. But I had to give it all up—my pack, my family. They couldn’t afford me having any ties. So they faked my death.” He looked up at the window and, despite all my efforts to harden my heart against him, I could have wept for the sorrow and loneliness in his expression. “I do get to keep tabs on my family. They seem to be doing well.”
“But you’re still all alone.” The anger I wanted to scorch him with evaporated, or perhaps found another target. I glared at the door and yelled, “Fuck off and get a coffee, you damn prick. You don’t need to listen to this.” That Oscar guy laughed and if I borrowed from my wolf, I could hear when they’d all moved away from the door. Good, because this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have with prying ears. Bad enough the pup was going to hear it, but it wasn’t like I could just send him or her off to play yet.
My conversation with Oscar through the night had made me angry. Not for myself—I’d recovered pretty well. But for the absolute and total advantage that they’d taken of Damian. And what the humans wanted me to do? Throw myself at him to save Damian from getting his throat slit.
Once I was sure the humans were out of earshot, I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned at Damian. “The gist of it is, this pup is already half an orphan, right? I can’t bring you home and yell, ‘Look, I found him!’”
For the first time, I saw the alpha in him. “I made the agreement, I can’t back out of it without my family back in Montana Border losing out.”
Yeah, I could see that, and all the things he was very carefully not mentioning. Like, I was pretty sure that if Damian decided he wanted to go back to civilian life, no matter how much that Oscar said he liked him, that civilian life would be pretty short. Why did alphas always seem to get themselves into these situations?Because they think they’re the only ones who can fix anything.The complete stupidity of it all made me angry, or maybe that was the backache from sitting in this unbelievably uncomfortable chair. So I got mad about the only thing I could: Montana Border.
“You’re from Montana Border? I’m surprised you could get yourself to cross into Nevada Ashes when I think about what your pack has said about mine.” He winced and I regretted it almost immediately. “I’m sorry,” I apologized after a moment. “That was uncalled for.” I needed to remember he was as much a victim as I was here.
He shrugged. “I can’t say I didn’t have my fantasies when I was a teenager, or believe what the elders said. You probably wouldn’t have liked me too much when I was younger. Even six months ago. But you do what you need to in order to survive, right? I shouldn’t make judgments based on that. Nothing you do kills people. I wish I could say the same.”
