Warrior Wolf (Protection, Inc 4)
“My brother,” Roy mumbled.
“Yeah, we’ll be like brothers.”
Roy shook his head, then spoke more clearly. “You’re already my brother. We’re brother Marines. So why not now?”
DJ tried to explain it in simple terms, hoping Roy was with it enough to understand. “Because we can’t stay together after this. You’ll be sent to a hospital, and I’ve got to stay with our unit. If we bonded as a pack and then we were cut off from each other, it would hurt you. It might even kill you. Born wolves can be separated from their pack for a long time, obviously, but made wolves can’t.”
DJ hesitated, eyeing Roy to see if he’d put two and two together: if he couldn’t leave his pack and his pack was DJ’s family, ten thousand miles away in San Diego, that would be the end of his career as a Marine.
They’ll end up wishing you’d let them die. The remembered voice came to DJ so vividly that it was almost as if his grandmother had whispered in his ear.
He might have to leave anyway, because of his wounds, DJ argued with the memory of Grandma Steel. And none of the other stuff you warned me about happened. He has the pack sense, so he won’t be a lone wolf who can’t bond and lose his mind from loneliness. If he doesn’t have a power, that’s no big deal. And if he has one that he can’t control, it’s obviously no big deal either or I’d have noticed by now.
With an inner shudder, DJ recalled Grandma Steel’s most horrifying story: the made wolf who couldn’t control his power to create fire, and burned himself to death.
“You’re going to be okay, Roy,” DJ said, trying to convince himself as much as Roy. “Just stay with—”
“I’m sorry, DJ,” Roy said abruptly. “I’m blacking out.”
A second passed, and nothing happened. Then his eyes rolled back, his head tipped to the side, and his entire body went limp.
“Shit!” DJ tried to wake him up again, yelling at and even slapping him, but nothing worked. Roy lay across his lap, over two hundred pounds of dead weight, his face ashen. Red bubbles formed and broke at the corners of his lips. DJ told himself that at least that meant he was still breathing.
Then the most welcome sound DJ had ever heard filled the air, the steady whump-whump-whump of helicopter blades. As the medevac helo landed, while the Blackhawks that escorted it hovered above, such an intense wave of relief washed over him that he felt like he might black out too.
The Navy hospital corpsmen ran up. Half of them started examining Roy, while the others, to DJ’s confusion, started prodding at him.
“Where are you hit?” one of them demanded.
“I scraped my leg. And I cut my arm. But it’s not serious, don’t bother with me.”
A corpsman wiped a pad over DJ’s bare chest. When the gauze immediately turned red, DJ realized what the problem was.
“It’s his blood,” DJ explained. “I carried him out of the helo.”
The corpsman glanced at DJ, then at Roy, who looked bigger than ever sprawled out on the ground. “You’re strong.”
“I’m a fucking Marine,” DJ said, exasperated at himself for distracting the man when Roy was bleeding to death. “Just get him out of here, will you?”
To his relief, they were already loading Roy on to a stretcher.
DJ went with them, answering questions while leaving out the critical “I’m secretly a super-strong werewolf and I bit my buddy to give him werewolf healing powers” part: “Maybe a surface-to-air missile, but I’m really not sure;” “Yes, we were the only survivors;” “No, no one’s fired on us here;” “No, we landed okay, he was wounded when the helo was hit;” “Oh, right, I forgot about his shoulder— yeah, that was from the crash, a piece of jagged metal wrapped around it;” “No, actually, he was conscious up until about fifteen minutes ago.”
That last one got him some surprised stares, which, to his relief, seemed to distract them from the bite wounds on Roy’s shoulder.
As he approached the helo, DJ let himself believe that everything would be all right. Roy would never do another tour of duty, but probably that was just as well. DJ would finish out his, and then he’d have to decide whether or not he wanted to re-enlist.
He was leaning toward not. More and more, he’d gotten tempted by the idea of spending time with his pack, of performing in clubs, of hunting in the mountains and the desert, of riding his Harley, and of doing it all without ever having to worry about getting blown up or shot or stress-injured, or having his friends get blown up or shot or stress-injured.
Maybe then he could meet a girl for more than a one-night stand. Being a Marine was a double-edged sword: he never had trouble finding a woman for a weekend fling, but he never found anyone he could take home and introduce to his family, either. Werewolf women sure as he
ll didn’t want a man who was never around, civilian women mostly didn’t either, and military women were never around themselves.
DJ thought about the kind of woman he’d want. After this fucking horrible deployment, what he wanted most was someone relaxing. Someone sweet and gentle and accepting and calm. Maybe a nurse or a doctor or a physical therapist: a caretaking type, but one who’d seen enough herself that his war stories wouldn’t shock her and revealing that he was a werewolf, if she wasn’t one herself, wouldn’t send her running for the hills. His family would approve of a medical professional, and considering how much DJ had done to make them tear their fur out, it would be nice if he could do something they wouldn’t hate.
She should be playful, too. Social. Energetic, or he’d drive her nuts. Uninhibited. They’d get off work and meet at a club, and he’d DJ and she’d dance, and then they’d go home together and have wild sex all night.
As he scrambled into the helo, an image solidified in his mind of the life he could have when he got back home. He’d find a job in private security or law enforcement, he’d get to see his pack all the time, he and Roy could hang out all the time too since Roy would be in his pack, Roy would get better, DJ’s pack would finally like what he was doing with his life, and DJ would find that gentle, sweet, playful, sexy, pack-approved woman of his dreams.