When my face falls, she laughs, then throws in a handful of chopped carrots. “Oh, you are easy to tease. Relax. It’s beef stew.”
Her laughter and smile make my wolf purr and other part of me rise. I pull out a chair and sit down, where she can’t see how fucking easily she stirs me and my wolf.
“Want to tell me about the fight?”
“Not a fight exactly. They said some things about me. All true.”
They. Before it was one woman, now it’sthey, plural. “What things?”
She pulls out the other chair and sits. “I want you to teach me to do what you do.”
For a moment, I flash on Marla sitting right where Angel is now, asking me to teach her how to infiltrate. I thrust the image from my head. Angel’s not Marla.
“What I do? Cooking?”
“I’m being serious, Garrett. I want to learn everything you do as a retrieval expert.”
My hackles shoot up and my back straightens. I’ve been down this road before with Marla. If I had never trained her, convinced her to work in the cookhouse or with the kids instead, she’d still be alive.
“No,” I say with absolute finality.
“I need this, Garrett. I’m a disaster as a shifter. You’ve seen it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“After you rescued me from the truck. I noticed your wolfglancing at every paw print I left in the snow, but you never said anything.”
“You were injured, unable to focus.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make excuses for my lack of skill. I’ve been with your pack for nearly a month. I’ve healed enough for you to see how I move.”
“There’s no need for stealth inside our territory.”
“You don’t get it, those are skills I should still have. Look at what happened with little Alex. I should have been able to walk out onto that ice and reach him before he fell in, but I didn’t know what I was doing. The ice cracked that much faster because of me and he nearly died. Because of me! Do you understand what that’s like?”
Flashes of Marla’s bullet-riddled body upon the funeral pyre pop into my head. “I know, better than anyone. Which is why I’m not going to teach you my skills.”
She leans back, putting distance between us. “I thought I could count on you.”
“I won’t contribute to your death.”
“I nearly lost a six-year-old. And it’s more than him. Do you know how the WSSO caught me?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t want to stir up memories of that day, of what happened to you… and your pack. But I’m listening, Angel. Anything you want to tell me, I’m listening.”
She takes a deep breath, wiping at the tears. “I was on a supply run with one of our scouts. Ronin. He was driving the truck while I tallied up the receipts and did some paperwork on the ride from town. We were a few miles from camp when a tree fell down on our truck. It was scary, but not something we thought twice about given the heavy rains. We both got out, gathered up the perishables and figured we’d send back some of the teens to collect the rest of the goods when we got back to camp.
“We didn’t know what was happening at the time. Not until the first shot nearly took Ronin’s head off. So many shots. I don’tremember dropping the packages or shifting… just running. As fast as I could. Instinct said to run home, to safety. Except it wasn’t safe. The scent of death and humans reached me long before I entered camp, but I wasn’t thinking straight. Panic drove me and I ran right into mayhem. WSSO guards walking from body to body, shooting the few that moved or moaned.”
“I don’t know how long I stood there, in shock before I ran, or what got me moving again. I can’t even tell you what direction I took. My wolf must have been in control at some point, but maybe not… I still don’t know, but I recall thinking if I took to higher ground, a place where humans couldn’t follow, I’d survive. My pack trained the scouts and border guards to be light on their feet, not leave tracks or any physical signs the enemy can track, even how to use the wind to their advantage… but they didn’t train the rest of us, especially not the women. I’d been assigned to supply management. Learned everything from budgeting to how to make shifters happy when I had to say no to their requests. None of that helped me survive, Garrett. Even though my wolf took the most arduous path we could find, they still caught me. With a fucking taser and a net dropped from a helicopter.”
“I’m so sorry, Angel. For all of it.”
Anger quickly replaces tears. “I’m tired of being the one someone always rescues. The next time someone comes for me, I don’t want to be helpless. I don’t want to be shoved into another fucking dog cage and used to trap innocent shifters. If you’re not willing to teach me how to do what you do, then…” She swallows hard. “I guess I’ll have to ask Damien if someone else will train me. Even if it means formally becoming a border guard to justify them spending the time training me. Mason said his mate is a border guard.”
“Takara used to be, before she had kids, and for the White Wolves, same birth pack as Hayden. It’s a very different culture down there.” As I’m talking, my Angel’s expression grows moredistant. She doesn’t think I’ve heard her, that I’m taking her seriously.
I lift her onto my lap and hold her tight. “Baby, I promise you no one would ever fucking touch you again.” The border’s not the place for her. She may have the drive to learn, even acquire the skills, but she’s not a loner, or a fighter. She belongs with other shifters, where she lights up. And with the recent activity along the border, I’d rather have her near, where I can protect her… at least until I teach her what she needs to stay alive.
