Johnny stood, wrapping a hand around the nape of Taylor’s neck and hauling him out of the office. Gasps and shouts bounced down the corridor, but Taylor only growled and flung his arms out like a kitten shadow boxing.
The colours in his brain lit up at once, swirling together until all he could see was red. Red. RED.
Johnny snarled, shoving him forwards and manhandling him down the corridor. They bumped along the wall, all shoulders and elbows as they almost toppled over a water dispenser and sent a potted plant out of an open window. Luckily, all of upper management were out for meetings that afternoon, otherwise they’d have probably lost more than their jobs.
“Easy,” Johnny said, palm growing heavy on the back of Taylor’s neck. “Easy.”
He squeezed, like he used to when they were teenagers. When Johnny was just the lanky black kid who’d moved from Cameroon, and Taylor was the angry gingerproblemchild with no friends.
“Fuck you,” Taylor growled back.
Johnny let out a tense laugh and twisted Taylor’s arm behind his back, dragging him down to the locker room in an arm restraint so perfect that even the College of Policing would have been proud. Taylor thrashed, but by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs the fight was draining out of him.
The stench of stale sweat hit him like a wet sock to the face, and the rows of blue metal lockers shuddered as Johnny walked him to the end of the line—to numbers 336 and 337. He shoved Taylor into them, the cheap metal buckling against his back.
They stood there for a moment, forehead to forehead, chest to chest, the heat rolling off them in the air-conditioned basement.
“Get a grip on it,” Johnny growled, squashing their noses together.
Itbeing Taylor’s anger, his inability to regulate his wolf’s rage when it clouded every part of his judgement. Usually, when he was at work and the uniform was on, he could turn his anger inward, store it all up in those Kevlar plates for when they let loose in woods. But out of it… not so much.
Grounding, grounding, grounding. Ground yourself, Taylor Campbell, and if you can’t, find someone who will.That was what the therapist had told him when he was nineteen, in that stuffy office with the lumpy sofa. Well, grounding sounded great and all, but even balloons needed someone with enough mental clarity to tie the fucking string.
“I wanna run,” Taylor snarled, pressing his face into Johnny’s, daring his wolf to come to the surface.
“Not a fucking chance. You shift now, your wolf will take over and you’ll end up tearing up half the fucking police station.”
“I won’t,” Taylor said, letting out a long breath. As much as he hated to admit it, he had his dad’s temper. “I promise I won’t lose it.”
Johnny stared at him, their eyelashes practically tangling, they were so close. Johnny’s scent was sharper, more bitter than usual which meant he was stressed to high heaven.
Johnny wasn’t wrong—it’d happened before. When they were teenagers he’d ripped up the park at the back of his nan’s house. Steaming and feral after his daddy had punched him in the mouth and broken one of his fangs.
After, Johnny’s mum—an omega no taller than five feet—had looked Taylor’s dad dead in the eye and said, “We’re moving to West Newton, and we’re taking your son with us.”
“Nail polish or bracelets?” Johnny finally said, still trapping Taylor against the locker.
“Ngh. Neither,” Taylor mumbled.
“You ain’t running, big boy, so what’ll it be?”
“I saidneither.”
Taylor shoved Johnny away, making him stumble back and hit his legs on the bench that ran between the rows of lockers. Taylor made a break for it, rounding the corner into the shower block. It stank of cheap shower gel and stale semen, because night shifts in West Newton really werethatboring.
Groaning, he gripped the edge of a sink, running his palm around it and concentrating on the cold, smooth porcelain. “Fuck. Fucking fuck, FUCK,” he shouted, slapping the mouldy tiles and glaring into one of the hazy mirrors.
He barely recognised himself. The arrogant, cocksure persona he’d carefully curated over the years was nowhere to befound. His reflection did not smile back at him, did not grin, or smirk, or wink in a way that had everyone wrapped around his little finger.
No. The Taylor who looked at him now was drawn, overly pale, and the bright ginger hair he’d inherited from his mum was dull as brick dust. And his eyes… Fucking hell, his eyes looked dead. Just two flat orange discs that had once been the bright amber of his wolf’s.
Shit.
When had he stopped taking care of himself? When had he stopped taking the job seriously? He ripped off his stab vest and flung it against the wall.
“What the fuck are we gonna do, JP?” he said, stalking back into the locker room. “They took our guns.”
Johnny didn’t look up. “I know,” he replied, voice soft as he straddled the bench. He had a cluster of plastic pots between his knees and was separating a handful of beads into each of them. Taylor knew what he was doing. Acting all cool, trying to draw him in so he’d focus on something else.
