They both turned and spoke with one voice. “Yes!”
“Then get out of my way!”
It took a moment for them to figure out what he meant. Sometime during their yelling match, his father had opened the garage door and was waiting to back his truck out, but Nero’s car was blocking him.
“Right away, sir,” Nero called. Then he hauled open his car door.
Josh rushed to the passenger side of the car and made it inside just as Nero turned the ignition. “You can’t do this without testing.”
Nero backed out of the driveway while Savannah and Bruce watched from the lawn. But then he had to pause on the street for Josh’s dad to back out and lead the way. And in that pause, Nero turned to Josh. His tone was level, his jaw firm, and his eyes hard.
“I’m going to do this with or without your shield and hoodie. So, do I wait for it? Or do I head straight for Wisconsin now?”
Josh cursed under his breath. And then he cursed even louder when he realized that Nero was waiting for his answer.
“Fine!” he huffed. “Wait for my dad to make two of them. We’ll go together.”
“Bullshit. You’re not trained.”
“And you’re not thinking straight.”
Nero acknowledged that with a grunt. Then he spoke, his voice low. “I’ve waited six weeks and five days.” He looked at Josh. “I know this doesn’t make sense to you. I can’t explain further, but the longer we wait, the worse it gets. So I leave tomorrow morning, no matter what.”
Josh winced. He could feel the determination in Nero’s tone. There was definitely something the guy wasn’t saying. Something important that had colored his every action since the very beginning. “It’s reckless to go out there alone and unprepared. I’ve read your mission reports—this isn’t you. You’re all about safety with your pack.”
Nero didn’t answer, and as the miles sped by underneath the wheels, Josh put the pieces together.
“You don’t think they’re going to let you in on the kill, do you? You think they’ll give the task to someone else.”
Nero shook his head. “No one else is going to drag paste-covered shields into combat, Josh. Or wear a hoodie. No one but me.”
“They will if they’re ordered to.”
Nero shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a limit to what some of them will do.”
“I don’t care. That’s not your call and you know it. So what is really going on? Why does it have to be you, right now, taking stupid risks?”
Nero didn’t answer. And as they took the last turn before they hit his dad’s factory, Josh realized the truth. Nero hadn’t answered because he couldn’t. And yet he was still stubbornly, stupidly determined to go into the fight. Which meant his trainer, his lover, and his best werewolf friend was really fucked-up in the head.
“You need to tell me the truth,” Josh said slowly. He invested all his passion, his determination, and hislovein his words. Nero had to know that he was serious. “You will tell me what’s really going on right now or I will delete the specs and destroy the shield. I’ll erase everything and you’ll have nothing.” He stared at Nero and saw the guy’s clenched jaw. “You’ve blown up my life, destroyed my relationship with my family, and I still fucking love you. So you will tell me what’s really going on or I’ll do whatever I have to, to make sure you survive. And if that means destroying the specs—”
“Do you know what the number-one rule in the Wulf, Inc. handbook is?”
It took a moment for Josh to pull back from his tirade, and even longer for the words to make sense in his brain. “We have a handbook?”
Nero glared at him. “No, of course we don’t have a handbook. We’re werewolves!”
Right. “Sorry,” he said. “You were saying. The number-one rule is…?”
“Never, ever, under any circumstances, make a fairy deal.”
Oh crap. There was good reason for that rule. Fairy deals never, ever went the way they were supposed to. Anyone who had ever played D&D knew that.
“You have to understand,” Nero continued. “My entire pack was dead, the demon had escaped, and I needed to do something. Anything.”
Cold terror gripped Josh’s spine. “What did you do?”
Nero sighed. “I made a fairy deal.”
