Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (29 page)

"That lying down in a dark room and smoking weed while listening to whale sounds totally counts as a legit meditation technique."

Leander squeezed his eyes shut in defeat.

No. He couldn't just let that stand.

"She did
not
tell you that," he said.

"Sure she did," New York said.

"Was she smoking up with you at the time?"

"Like that makes a difference," New York said. "Fuck you."

"Ha! She
was
," Leander said.

"Suck my dick, California."

"Just because your firefighter drug dealer friend endorses your method, that doesn't make it a legit meditation technique," Leander said.

"Oh, look at you, fucking Mister Mindfulness over there," New York said, "all high and mighty and good at visualizations and shit."

"I mean, if you spent half as much time on breathing exercises as you do on--"

"Do you want to listen to whale songs or not, asshole?" New York said.

"Yeah, okay," Leander said, following New York into the study, which was where whale song time happened. "Fine."

"I just," Leander said later, with feeling, "like, I just want to go back to spending weeks at a time in the woods doing nothing but hanging out with him, you know?"

"Mmhmm," New York said, taking another hit. He was listening, though. Probably. Maybe.

"And he was so skittish when I first met him," Leander said, "and I worked
so
long and hard to coax him out of it, like I don't think he ever understood how much deliberate work I put into that, and I'm so afraid that even when I find him again, he's going to be…"

"All fucked up?" New York suggested.

"You are not helping," Leander said, but then, quietly. "Yeah. All fucked up."

The deep and mournful sound of a whale call came through the speakers.

"You can work with all fucked up," New York said, "you're good at dealing with emotionally fucked up. You're friends with me."

"The whales sound so sad," Leander said, sudden and emphatic.

"No they don't," New York said, "it's the same whales I always play. They only sound sad because you feel sad."

"The whales are so sad," Leander went on, "like I am so sad. Like my boyfriend is probably so sad."

"Wow," New York said. "I'm cutting you off."

"I haven't even been smoking," Leander said.

"Oh," New York said, thinking about it for a moment. "Start, then?" He offered Leander the vaporizer he was holding.

Leander sighed.

It was early morning, and Leander was just dressed. He had packed his bags the night before.

"Hey," New York said, "I called you a taxi. It's downstairs." He grabbed Leander's things and started walking to the door.

"Hey," Leander said, having to hurry to catch up, "I haven't--"

New York tossed Leander's suitcases into the hallway.

"But--" Leander started.

"Farewells are difficult so I don't do them okay byyye," New York said, in one long sing song breath, giving Leander a quick half hug and then using the position to shove Leander out the door.

Leander opened his mouth--

The door slammed shut.

"I love you too, man," he called out.

It was not, after all, the first time he'd been hustled out like that. New York was inconsistent about goodbyes. New York was inconsistent about many things.

Ah. Well.

Time to go back to work.

And also the office, right, but mostly back to work as in, rescue mission work.

Which he largely did from the office because whatever, Leander still had briefs to write and deadlines to meet.

For the next week, Axton hardly slept. His werewolf body ached a little, pushed towards some limits, but it was a glad and comfortable soreness. Some exhaustion was welcome. Axton was grateful for his given assignment: staying wolf all day to make the forest seem properly populated was a relief. There were some wolves--not werewolves, but standard grey wolves--that lived in the area, so it was just a matter of mirroring their patterns and echoing them. Axton showed himself in flashes to the researchers, never letting himself be tagged, but knowing that they would soon recognize him by sight. That was fine.

His nights were spent watching over Dana, who had taken to staying in his cabin in a fit of depression. This was, Axton supposed, a pretty reasonable reaction to having to live under the rule of your father's potential murderer while closeted about your sexuality and coping with the fact that your ex was still rejecting all your advances. He wasn't too worried for Dana's overall mental health yet. Mourning periods could be helpful, and in any case, Axton knew that he usually moped for weeks over less. Granted, Axton usually moped by staying wolf shaped and doing healthy things like running down prey and surveying animal populations, but getting as drunk as possible every night was probably a valid depressed emotional response.

Probably.

Regardless, Axton wasn't going to let Dana get murdered while wasted. Dana had read him right that way, and Axton had read Jack right. Between the both of them, Dana was hardly ever left alone. Sometimes they kept close to Dru instead, but it made Axton nervous. He didn't trust the rest of the pack to hesitate to do Dru's bidding, even if it came to attacking Dana while he was down.

"That's not how it is," Jack said.

"I don't know that," Axton said.

"You could talk to them," Jack pointed out.

Axton shrugged.

Now that he was spending most of his days as a wolf, he really wasn't going to.

Eventually, people came down to check on Dana. Unfortunately, they came at night, which was Axton's usual shift. He appeared in the path in front of the twins, silent and therefore shocking. They had been able to smell him vaguely, they had known Axton was
around
somewhere, but he had smelled and heard them first and circled around before cutting them off. He crouched down low to the ground and bared his teeth.

The twins glanced at each other and then back at Axton. As one unit, they took a step back.

"Peace," said the one with her hair gathered at the nape of her neck. "We just want to know if Dana's okay."

Axton just growled, soft for the moment.

The other twin put her hand on the first one's elbow.

"He's alive," she said. "Take a deep breath. You can smell it."

"He's fucking drunk off his ass," snapped the first twin. "I can smell
that
."

Axton growled louder, and his hackles went up.

"I don't think that's our problem right now," said Twin Two, taking another step back.

The first one stood square in the path and crossed her arms, making full eye contact with Axton.

"You could at least turn back and talk to us," she said.

Axton showed her more of his teeth.

"Give us a progress report or I'm going down there myself," she said, unflinching.

"I wouldn't," warned Twin Two. "I wouldn't. May. Don't."

Axton barked and snarled, loud and threatening. This was her last warning--taboo or not, he was going to snap at her neck with teeth, and he sure as fuck wasn't going to wait for her to change shapes and fight fair.

"Give me news or I'll
take it
," May said instead.

There was a distant slamming sound, audible to their heightened senses, and then the sound of frantic running.

"Axton!" Dana shouted frantically, and they heard him break into a full sprint.

Dana skidded into view a second later, nearly falling over the assembled clump of werewolves.

Stubbornly, Axton stood in front of Dana and kept on growling.

"May! December!" Dana shouted. "The fuck are you doing?" He was shirtless and scruffy and, for a second, swaying slightly.

December shoved her way up to the front.

"Just checking on you," she said breathlessly. "We were just going."

"Oh," Dana said. His hand dropped to his side, fingers grazing the fur of Axton's neck. "I'm all right."

"Are
not
," May interjected.

Axton showed her his teeth again.

"I mean, given that clearly Ax has got this," December said. "Really, we were just going."

Axton turned and showed her teeth, too. He hadn't given her permission to shorten his name.

"I'm all right," Dana said again. "Really."

"With that half feral asshole watching you?" May asked.

"Now, don't you mind Ax none," Dana said easily, not even responding to the insult. "Just protective, is all. He's letting me mourn in peace. You know how it is."

"Yeah," December said. "You just do this sometimes. It's fine."

May, like Axton, hadn't relaxed her body language much, and she resisted when December tried again to tug her back.

"You're okay with this?" May demanded. "With him guarding you like that?"

Dana rubbed the back of his neck, but his free hand stayed at Axton's fur.

"Yeah," he said.

Distantly, Axton reflected on the fact that Dana really wasn't subtle. Given the way December glanced down at him, he wondered if she agreed.

"How bad was it?" May asked, a growl lurking in the back of her throat. "How bad this time, Dana?"

Dana leveled his ice blue eyes on her.

"You know that's between me and Dru," he said evenly.

December yanked on May's arm harder.

"We were
just going
," she repeated.

May was still locked on Dana, but December pulled hard enough to make her stumble back.

"Take care of yourself, Dana," December called out, not turning around while she dragged her sister away.

"Mmhmm," Dana said, and he easily straightened out his shoulders. "And you girls won't be reporting back to anyone, now would you?"

"Oh, fuck off," May muttered, and she finally turned to leave of her own accord.

"Never," December called out. "You know that."

Dana stood in the middle of the path, arms crossed over his chest, radiating easy calm and taking up as much space as possible. Without meaning to, Axton found this vaguely reassuring, and he relaxed his own stance and glanced back. It was a good leadership quality, projecting so much self-assurance. Dana stood confident for a moment longer, and then suddenly his shoulders slumped.

"Fuck," he said, sounding hopeless. "Ax, I thought you--" Dana stopped himself, shook his head. "Never mind what I thought."

He turned, walking back towards his cabin.

After a moment of stillness, Axton followed.

"Oh, good," Dana muttered when Axton caught up. "Company?" He held the door open and Axton trotted in.

Axton disappeared into the bathroom, where he knew Dana had left a pair of his jeans. It took him a few minutes, but he walked back out in his human shape and Dana tossed a shirt at his bare chest.

"If company's all you want, you could have let the twins join you," Axton said by way of greeting. "They clearly wanted to."

"Yeah, you seemed real keen on that, sugar."

"You could have told me to stand down," Axton said.

Dana shrugged.

"I don't want just any company," he said. "There. That honest enough for you?"

Axton scowled and slid into a seat at the bare table.

"This isn't a happy fun time visit," he said.

"Mmm," Dana said, noncommittal, opening and closing his pantry doors. "You know I'm almost out of booze?"

"Good," Axton said.

"Naw," Dana said. "Eventually I'm gonna have to figure out how to go back up there, and I should be drunk as shit and docile."

"I really don't remember booze making you docile," Axton said.

"If I was drunker, I could miss the judgy inflection in your tone and almost imagine that was a flirt," Dana said.

"Not a flirt," Axton sighed. "But it was a callback to our--history. I'll admit it."

"See," Dana said. "Happy fun time visit."

Axton crossed his arms over his chest.

"The research camp is weird," he said, getting them back on track.

"So?" Dana asked, rummaging through his fridge. "Shouldn't you be telling Dru shit like that, since he's the one that gave you the assignment?"

Axton snorted.

"All right, it was a bad joke," Dana said. "How do you mean, weird?" He came back and flopped down across from Axton, having apparently only found a box of Pop Tarts in his kitchen exploration.

"Overstaffed," Axton said. "There's almost too much activity, but a lot of it seems pretty useless."

"They're probably just blowing through some government grant," Dana said.

Axton hesitated.

"Maybe," he said.

Dana offered him a pop tart. Axton, who was back to eating basically everything now that his suicide by hunger strike had been foiled, accepted.

"Tell you what," he said. "If you really think it's weird, I'll sober up by tomorrow and check it out with you."

Axton sighed.

"No," he said. "No need. It's just lots of photographers and stuff, mostly. They're probably just bored and stuck here for a few months."

"All right, good," Dana said. "No sobering up yet."

That night, while Dana was passed out in the dirt, Axton heard the soft, brittle sound of a branch snapping.

His hackles were up and his teeth were bared, but he stayed silent. He'd heard the intrusion before he smelled it; that meant the source was standing deliberately concealed by the wind.

Was there more than one of them?

Darker than night save for the light of his eyes, Axton eased to his feet, slinking around the dead fire, shoulders in the low, predatory hunch that made them move up and down with each deliberately chosen step, like slow and sinister pistons.

Should he attempt to conceal his presence? It was probably too late for that, and besides, Axton had no need to hide. He wasn't trying for an ambush, a trap--he was there as a warning.

So he let the lowest, smallest growl begin to leak from his throat.

I'm here
, he said.
I'm here, I'm here. Take me if you dare
. He didn't need words to convey it.