“Thing is, I can’t help but think about something the captain said. She said you were so damned desperate to be punished.”
“That’s bullshit. I don’t—”
“I know. I think she’s wrong too.”
What?
“I mean, she has a point. Survivor’s guilt can lead to a twisted need for punishment. Makes sense.”
“Not for me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think too.” He stretched his arms out behind his head and leaned back. “You really don’t seem like a masochist to me.”
“Don’t go psychoanalyzing me. I’m likely to put a knife through your thigh and laugh while you try to learn how to shift without bleeding out.” He flashed an evil grin. “When you die, I’ll call it a training accident.”
Josh snorted. “Yeah, not scared. Now back to how the captain has you all wrong….” He dropped his hands down by his sides. “I’ve been reading your case files.”
“What the fuck were you—?”
“Research, remember?”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to be looking at!”
Josh flashed him a happy grin. “Well, without you to stop me, I looked at whatever I wanted to.” He sobered. “You were the alpha of the best Wulf, Inc. team. And like every good alpha, you spent all your time focused on the pack. Its needs, its lacks, its strengths.” He gestured around at all the reading material in the room. “Is any of that for you? What part in here is you and what part is all about the pack?”
None of it. It was all the pack. Even his interest in physics had started because Wiz liked to call them intellectual Neanderthals. No one else cared, but Nero didn’t like his team being deficient in anything. Plus, he had enjoyed learning about science in the purest form. Forget magic. That was just woo-woo shit that he left to the fairies. Even biology was messy in his mind. He was all about force, mass, gravity. Physics in its pure state. Astrophysics, when he could wrap his mind around it.
And chemistry too, though most of it was beyond what his high school class had taught him. Which brought him right back to the guy who was looking way too comfortable in his bed.
“Where is this going, Josh?”
“You’re not trying to get punished. I think you’re trying to be the captain who goes down with his ship.”
“Then I’m a little late. It already sank.”Liar, liar.The truth was that he still hoped to save his team. Hell, he planned on it.
“Yeah, that’s the problem. You’re a captain without a ship. Or an alpha without a pack. That’s why she assigned you to find the new recruits. She’s hoping you latch on to us and stop mourning them.”
Josh’s gaze landed on the stack of pictures Nero’d thrown in the far corner of the bedroom next to the bathroom. Framed images of his pack from barbecues to birthday parties. He hadn’t kept a lot of photos. He wasn’t snapping pictures with his phone every two minutes like Pauly, but he had a few. Except that everywhere he looked in his bedroom, in the mansion, even out in the woods, he remembered them.
So he’d thrown the pictures in the corner in an attempt to run from their accusing stares. He didn’t need to see their faces to remember that time was running out. That if he didn’t figure out an answer to magical fire, they really would die.
Seven weeks. That’s all the time he had to find an answer, and ten days of that were already gone. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t see a solution. Which meant it was all on the new recruits who—at the moment—didn’t know their noses from their tails.
And he didn’t need all those damned pictures reminding him of what he already knew.
“I won’t move on,” he rasped. “Not yet.” Because they weren’t completely dead yet. Not until his seven weeks were up. “And you need to—”
“Defeat a magical fire burst. I know. But sometimes not thinking about a problem is more helpful than the full-out attack. And I’m not going to go back to it until I say my piece to you.”
Nero surrendered to the inevitable. Josh wasn’t going back to science until he got this—whateverthiswas—off his mind. “Fine. Talk.”
“Captain M thinks you need to bond to us.”
“Not happening.” It couldn’t. Because every time he looked at them, he remembered his team. He saw Laddin and thought about how Cream had been the last to join their team, but he’d latched on to Coffee and they’d been inseparable afterward. He talked to Stratos and remembered that Mother had a mouth on her that could make Pauly blush. And that was saying something. Everything reminded him of the ones who had been his life for the past five years. How did he stop thinking about that? And how could a bunch of puny geeks push out feelings so strong that they were both the steel that threaded through his spine and the force that was going to break him into a thousand pieces?
They couldn’t. No one could. And it was unfair for Captain M to ask them to.
“I just got one question for you, and then I’ll leave you alone. Promise.”
