Page 38 of Lone Wolf
“Down here,” Oscar said, leading us to a door at the back. Damian nodded to the human sitting in the kitchen and only then did I notice the one standing casually in the door to the living room, like he’d been there the whole time. It kind of spooked me, but Damian seemed to know him as well and I realized this was the team he worked with, which led to the realization that these were the humans who, three days earlier, were going to take him out into the desert and shoot him. I filed that information away to think about later, because it was just a little too big to handle now.
The door opened onto a set of stairs, at the bottom of which was another door and an apartment, one with no windows and gray concrete for walls.
“Safe house,” Damian explained. “Super safe, super soundproofed. No one will know we’re here, but you can’t leave until you’ve had the pup.”
“Yeah, I get that.” I wandered away to explore this place I would be living in until we’d had our baby. It was long and narrow, the door giving onto the living room, which blended seamlessly into a rough kitchen with a mismatched dining set pulling double duty as a place to eat and a countertop to work on. The bedroom door was right across from the kitchen sink, with a bathroom just beyond it and then another room with computers and screens and racks of shelves filled with cryptically labeled boxes.
I heard the bathroom door close and turned to find that Damian had followed me down the hall. “Just Oscar, cleaning up,” he said, reading my thoughts.
I nodded. “What was that, out at the cars?”
He shrugged. “Something to do with Oscar’s part in the program I’m with, and coming into the Alpha’s squad to poach shifters. I don’t think the Alpha approves of this,” he explained, with a wave of his hand that took in everything—the house, the men upstairs, the smell of weapons that filled the air.
“Ah.” I moved past him to look in the cupboards. Practically bare.
“Make a list,” Damian said. “I’ll go for groceries.”
“It’s almost curfew,” I said.
He reached out and pulled the tabs off my collar. “You won’t need these anymore. And curfew doesn’t exist for us now.”
Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Somehow that seemed a bigger thing to get used to than everything else that had happened.
Damian dug around in a drawer and handed me a small notebook and a pencil. “Whatever you want.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “This isn’t the enclave.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the bathroom door, then pulled me close. “I swear that nothing bad will happen to you. On my life and on my mother’s ashes. I made Oscar swear too and I believe he means it.”
I didn’t say it, but I couldn’t help thinking that it didn’t matter if we believed him, only if Oscar could be trusted.
He laughed at me, a sudden happy sound. “Your face…” He shook his head, then cupped my face in his hands. “Will you trust me on this? I know I fucked it up pretty badly with you, but I knew what he was going to do each step of the way. I just…” He shook his head. “Without pack—withoutyou—I didn’t care enough to try that hard to stay alive.”
I leaned against him and raised my mouth for a kiss. He gave me one, and for some reason, my heart gave a funny skip and jump, like it had just realized Damian was mine. “Fine. But if you want to keephimsafe fromme, then you need to keep him in line.”
“Ha,” he said, and chased my mouth with his. “I don’t know. I kind of enjoy watching you two spar with each other. Breaks the monotony, you know?”
“God, Damian, you really are a sucker for punishment, aren’t you?” Oscar said from the bathroom door. “Thought you guys kept your omegas under your thumbs. Or paws. Whatever.”
I snorted. “Maybe in Montana Border. But he brought home a Nevada Ashes boy. It’s a totally different wolf.”
“So I’ve been informed,” Oscar said, waving his phone about. “Quin just gave me the same warning. Like I didn’t figure that out in the whorehouse.”
I don’t know what Damian saw in my face, but he spun me around and pointed me at the cupboards. “List, now. You,” he pointed at Oscar. “Either go upstairs or stop poking the omega.”
“You do realize I’m your superior officer, right?”
“In this, I’m your specialist. Just stop, okay?”
“Okay.” And just like that, Oscar…stopped and wandered off into the living room where I heard the creak of the springs in the old couch as he sat on it, and then the television came on.
“List, Salem,” Damian reminded me.
“Grouch,” I complained, but did as he asked. We’d both be hungry in the morning; I should do something to prepare for that. They were going to let him stay for a while, right? I hadn’t even asked. “I don’t know if this is enough,” I told him as I handed him my hasty estimate of things we needed. “I don’t even know what you like to eat.”
“I can get more later.” He hesitated, then leaned in to kiss me again, as if he couldn’t quite believe he had the right. I’d have to do something about that later, I supposed. “You rest,” he murmured, stroking the hair back away from my face. “I’ll probably be a couple of hours. The guys will leave your stuff down at the bottom of the stairs, but they won’t come in here.”
That was something of a relief. “Do you think I could take a shower?” I asked him. I still felt like a guest in his home, or someone’s home. Not mine, yet.
