The man yelped, slapping at his clothing as it caught fire and quickly engulfed him. Several of the other alphas pulled their jackets off and began to whack at the flames but I was too busy staring at my hands in shock to pay them any attention.
“Shit! The rest of them are here!” I vaguely heard one of them shout as the sound of pounding footsteps echoed around me.
Podcast had rolled onto his knees, and I could still see the muscles in his arms and legs quaking as he tried to regain control over himself.
“Are you alright?” I asked, crouching down in front of him, reaching for his face. He flinched away from me, his green eyes hazy and wild, until he realized that it was me and not one of our attackers and leaned into my palms.
His skin was clammy to the touch and I wanted to pull him into my arms and protect him from whatever monsters he was battling inside of himself, but instead he seemed to gather up his emotions until he looked almost normal again.
Podcast pointed at my palms, a questioning look on his face.
“I don’t know what that was,” I said with a shrug.
‘It’s magic,’the voice in my head told me.
Irritation filled my gut. I hoped that he could feel how annoyed I was with him. “Yes, I understand that. But I don’tdomagic,” my voice was petulant as I responded.
‘Well, you do now.’This time the voice’s tone was full of sass.
I opened my mouth to continue to argue with him, but a pair of arms that smelled of sandalwood enveloped Podcast and me into a tight hug.
“Are you two all right?” Doc asked, his words were panicked as he slid his hands down my arms and shoulders before moving onto Podcast. He was still dressed in his work outfit, scrubs he called them, but had thrown a leather jacket over the blue material.
The sound of Rex and Bat’s voices filled the quiet left by our attackers as they hopped off of their motorcycles and hurried over to us, stopping first at Storm. He looked worse for wear as he spat blood on the ground and swiped the back of his hand underneath his bleeding nose.
“Go, I’m fine,” he said, waving them off.
Rex didn’t need to be told twice and was pulling Podcast away from me and into his arms. “PC, are you okay? Why the fuck aren’t you guys at home?”
His icy eyes shot up to my face and I saw a mixture of panic and anger directed at me. A flood of guilt filled me and I turned my face into the comfort of Doc’s chest. It was my fault that we had left the house, if I hadn’t been so hell-bent on seeing Wilde Manor we would never have encountered Tug and his henchmen.
“Not now,” I heard Doc say as he lifted me into his arms. “Wait until we get back to the house.”
I droned out the rest of their conversation, my mind still reeling from the events of the day. I was placed on the back of Doc’s bike, which was larger than Podcast’s, and was gently instructed to hang on as he pulled away from the curb and we roared back toward safety.
Chapter Twelve
“Daniel,thePearlman’sDobermanis in room two for a check-up,” Alicia, the veterinary office receptionist, called into the break room.
We shared a wince before I answered her. “All right, thanks for letting me know.”
Rocky the Doberman had been coming to our office ever since he was a puppy and was in severe need of training. He was mouthy, neurotic, and hated needles of any kind. I was the only person in the office that could handle wrangling him, which meant that I was in for an afternoon of struggling to give the sixty-five pound canine his routine vaccinations. Yay me.
I chugged down the rest of my coffee, needing all of the caffeine that I could get, and went to wash my hands.
I hadn’t really wanted to come to work today. I hadn’t really wanted to come to work all week for that matter. The past week had been one of the most interesting of my life, and that was saying something.
Ever since Juneau had fallen out of that mirror I found myself looking forward to waking up every day to show her how to use the microwave or what a television was. Despite being upset because she had been yanked out of her own time and into ours, she greeted every new day with a gusto that I envied.
It was easy to see that she’d enchanted the rest of the pack too. Wherever she went, Bat followed her like a ghost. He didn’t touch her or talk to her, but I had watched the way his dark eyes followed her movements like he couldn’t quite figure her out. I wasn’t sure if it was interest or straight up curiosity, but he was more active than he’d been since we left the Titans.
Storm and Podcast were more open about how much they liked Juneau and it was clear that they had a crush.
I had met Podcast when I was nineteen years old during leave from the Marines. Rex had brought me to Olympus, the bar that the Titans ran on the Cape. He had been silent even then, only blooming when Rex and Bat showed him attention which had been friendly at first and then something more when we returned from the military. It was easy for me to fall in love with him, he tugged on every protective string in my body. Not to mention that the adoration that Podcast could shoot your way felt like warm rays of sunshine. But even with all of that, I’d never witnessed him actively falling for someone outside of our pack before.
Even if I hadn’t been able to see it on his face, I could definitely feel it through our connection. The shy feelings of growing attraction had been filtering through the bond for the past week.
Storm was always a bit harder for me to pinpoint as he preferred to keep his end of the bond controlled and private from everyone but Podcast. Though, Ihadseen him skip a bout of rain yesterday in favor of showing Juneau his art studio in the attic. In the twelve years that I had known the guy, I could count on one hand the times that he had voluntarily done that.
