“Forget Cooper,” Brooks said. “What are you going to do about Mason? Are you planning to keep your distance?”
Max shook his head, not shocked Brooks had changed the subject. The senior corporal was one of the peacemakers in the Pack, always making sure things didn’t get out of hand, which could happen easily enough. They were a close pack, but with a team full of alphas, fights could break out at any time. In fact, they frequently did.
“Hell no,” Max said. “Lana and I are going out tonight.”
Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at him in surprise. Even Tuffie seemed shocked.
“Two dates back to back with the deputy chief’s daughter?” Trey let out a low whistle. “Lana must be pretty frigging special.”
Max’s mouth edged up. Saying Lana was special was an understatement. When they’d kissed last night, it had been hard to keep from completely losing it. He’d never had the urge to bite a woman’s neck while making out, but with her, the desire was definitely there. She tasted so good he wanted to eat her up.
Then there was the way his body had reacted to those kisses. It almost bordered on scary. He’d gotten hard as a rock within seconds and stayed like that until taking a cold shower this morning before leaving for work. He’d laid awake the entire night staring at the ceiling and reliving how amazing it felt to have Lana in his arms. He was getting excited all over again just thinking about it.
“I don’t think you need to reply to that question,” Cooper said with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure we already know the answer.”
Max looked at his pack mates in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Around him, his teammates chuckled and shook their heads.
“Your eyes are glowing and your canines just popped out,” Brooks finally explained, still grinning. “And if those two things weren’t a dead giveaway, your pheromones would be. It smells like you’re close to blowing a gasket.”
Zane squirted more gun cleaner on the rag in his hand. “Don’t be embarrassed. You’re still young. You’ll learn more control once you’ve finished going through puberty.”
Max grunted, opening his mouth to come back with a witty reply and nearly sliced off his tongue on his fangs. Damn, he hadn’t even felt them extend. Abruptly, what Brooks had said about him being excited hit him.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Embarrassed, he tried to shift the major boner in his uniform pants into a more comfortable position. That worked about as well as could be expected. There really wasn’t any way to get comfortable when your dick was as hard as a crowbar. When the guys only laughed harder, he bared his fangs at them and growled.
Brooks glanced up from the M4 he was cleaning. “So, this thing with Lana must be serious if she’s getting to you this fast.”
Max nodded since denying it would have been a waste of time. “Yeah, I guess it is. I’ve never met anyone like Lana before. All it takes is a smile from her and my heart starts to beat out of control.”
“You make any headway on figuring out what kind of werewolf she is?” Trey asked, curious.
This morning, Max had filled in the team medic on the conversation he and the other guys had at DPD headquarters last night, specifically the part about Lana not smelling quite like any beta they’d ever run into before.
“Unfortunately, no,” Max said. “I started to doubt my nose, so I asked her some question to see if I was right about her being a werewolf at all. She admitted she can eat whatever she wants and not gain weight and that she can stay awake for days at a time and not get tired. Then just when I was sure she’s a werewolf, other evidence contradicted the theory.”
“What do you mean?” Brooks asked, slapping his M4 back together and putting it through a function check so fast Max could barely follow his hands.
Max tossed his rag on the table, then carefully began reassembling his own weapon. He didn’t want to be so distracted by thoughts of Lana that he ended up putting his carbine back together without the firing pin installed correctly.
“Her nose doesn’t work right,” he said. “Three or four times during the date, she admitted she couldn’t pick up scents that were blatantly obvious to me. She has the same sense of smell any normal human would have.”
“Maybe her nose was damaged at some point, like Hale’s,” Brooks suggested. “That might explain it.”
Max doubted that. Hale Delaney had the most god-awful sniffer in the Pack. His nose really served no other function than to separate his eyes and give his cool sunglasses someplace to rest. But his nose was nonfunctional because he’d had his face smashed in by someone’s fist before he went through his first change. The damage had been so extreme that even being turned into a werewolf hadn’t healed it.
“I didn’t see scars to make me think that might be the case. Besides, like I said, she can smell stuff. She said the pizza smelled good, and the cheesecake, too. She simply doesn’t have a werewolf’s ability to pick up subtle scents or anything at a distance.”
“I’m guessing she didn’t flash any fangs or claws either, right?” Diego asked.
Max shook his head. “Definitely not. A werewolf’s sense of smell isn’t the only thing she’s missing, either. She also can’t see in the dark.”
That earned him a few raised brows and a head tilt from Tuffie. Sometimes it seemed like that dog understood English better than Max did.
“We were walking toward the front door of her house last night and a skunk scurried across the lawn a few dozen feet away,” Max explained. “It was dark, but you couldn’t miss it. Lana didn’t see it at all.”
