Fighting for Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 3) (7 page)

At last, the other wolf had shaken himself free 0f whatever was happening in his head, and he’d attacked Dane. The fight hadn’t been long, just a few rounds, some fur flying. Dane knew that it had disappointed the organizers by not being as vicious as they liked, but he hadn’t given a damn.

Afterwards, he and the other wolf trotted to the makeshift locker room together — an area behind some sheets that had been strung up. Both of them shifted, completely stark naked.

“Good fight,” the other wolf had said, stretching out his hand. “I’m Isaac.”

“Dane,” he’d said. He’d felt lit up like a Christmas tree, and was almost certain that Isaac could see the electricity humming through his body, lust and desire all wrapped up in the adrenaline of the fighting ring.

That’s when the doors had slammed open and the shouting had started. Seconds later, the Sacramento PD had burst through the sheets hanging around Isaac and Dane, guns out, and ordered them both to the floor, still naked. Dane had to talk the officers into letting them put on sweatpants and t-shirts before being hauled down to the station in handcuffs, where they’d waited in a holding cell that had looked a lot like the one they were in with Grey.

“You remember making out in the cell?” Isaac asked.

Dane looked at Grey, blushing a little.

“Of course I remember that,” he said. “We were the last two they took in for processing, so we were alone together in the cell, and I couldn’t help myself.”

“We still had handcuffs on,” Isaac said. “The cops had to beat on the bars to get us to pay attention to them.”

“When they took him away, he just shouted, ‘I’m in Rustvale!’” mused Dane. “So then I had to come looking for him.”

Isaac laughed.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“I guess,” teased Dane.

“So you stopped fighting?” Grey said.

“That was my second-to-last fight,” Dane said. “The last one I lost in about thirty seconds, and they didn’t want me on the circuit anymore, so I left and joined the police academy.”

“They let you, even after getting arrested?”

“The charges ended up getting dropped,” Dane said.

Isaac nodded.

“The fight organizer has a lot of sway,” he said. “He knows a lot of lawyers, a lot of people who can make stuff go away.”

“Does he know how to make people go away?” Grey asked.

Dane looked down at her, a shiver of danger going through him.

“Not unless we have a whole lot of solid evidence to connect him to it,” he said.

“Pete’s smart,” said Isaac, shaking his head. “Smart and careful.”

“You said Nicky owed people money,” Grey said, softly.

“You don’t get money from a dead man,” said Isaac.

The talk made Dane start forming a to-do list in his head. Tonight he was dead tired, and he was already here, in a cell, with his — with Isaac and Grey, and he didn’t think that a herd of wild horses could drag him away.

But tomorrow, he had shit to do. He had to find whoever had been at that poker game with Grey. Whether Nicky had been there before her, and left. He needed to find out who Nicky owed money to, whose toes Nicky had stepped on, who just couldn’t stand Nicky’s face anymore.

“I’ll talk to him,” said Dane, glancing over at Isaac.

He could have sworn that he saw something flicker across Isaac’s face, but he let it go.

It’s been a long day,
he thought.
We’re all tired.

Then Grey’s hand was on his arm. He had the sleeves of his button-down shirt rolled up past his elbows, and she was distractedly poking at the veins in his forearm.

“Yes?” he asked, trying to mask the shivers running up and down his entire body.

“They must love it when you give blood,” she said. “Easy to find a vein.” She had both legs on the bench, crossed neatly beneath the skirt of her sundress. Over that, she’d draped Dane’s jacket, and she leaned against Isaac, her finger running up and down Dane’s arm.

For another brief moment, he and Isaac exchanged glances.

Does she have any idea of the effect she has on me?
 
He wondered. More than anything, she looked bored and nervous — not at all like a woman who had two wolf shifters practically eating from the palm of her hand.

“Shifters can’t give blood,” Dane said.

Grey frowned.

“Really?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

Dane shrugged. “People are afraid it’ll make them sick,” he said. “Patients don’t want shifter blood, and the general population doesn’t want to think that if they ever need a transfusion, it might come from a dirty wolf.”

“
Does
it make humans sick?”

“No. It’s happened a couple of times that shifters gave blood without admitting to being shifters, and nothing’s happened.”

“So if you gave me a blood transfusion, I wouldn’t be able to turn into a wolf.”

Isaac laughed.

“We’re not vampires,” he said.

“I’m just asking!” Grey said, a little defensively. “I don’t know many shifters, but a couple of my students are, so I’m trying to learn.”

“Sorry,” Isaac said, still grinning.

“Anyway,” she said, still tracing one finger over Dane’s arm, “It’s stupid that you can’t give blood.”

“I agree,” said Dane.

“Is that why Ramirez is being kind of a dick about this?” she asked. “Because Nicky was a wolf?”

“I don’t think so,” said Dane. “I think it’s because it’s his first homicide case as Chief.”

“It might be his first homicide case, period,” offered Isaac.

“This is how he is,” said Dane. “Small town police chief with not much experience outside that. He just doesn’t want to do anything wrong, and if someone from town says they saw you do it, he’s got to at least look into the possibility.”

Grey just sighed, then looked up at Dane again with her huge blue eyes.

“I didn’t,” she said.

Dane felt that wild, almost uncontrollable feeling. The feeling that made him want to grab the bars and push them open, let her out, fight anyone and anything that might be in her path. It was irrational and totally beyond his control, but it was
there
, and it had teeth.

“I know,” he said.

Then he took his hand off of his leg and turned it palm-side up, facing toward Grey. She hesitated for just a moment, clearly unsure about this, but then slid her small hand into his big one.

He squeezed his fingers around hers, holding her hand tight.

“You’ll be out of here soon,” he promised.

They were all silent for a moment.

“You’re sure you don’t remember who was at the poker game last night?”

Grey shook her head back and forth, her hand still in his. From the corner of his eye, Dane thought he could see Isaac stiffen, but dismissed it.

“I never got names,” she said.

Then she narrowed her eyes a little, like she’d gotten an idea.

“Isaac,” she said. “Who’s the guy you were talking to tonight? He was there last night, too.”

Dane’s head snapped around, and he looked Isaac dead in the eyes over Grey’s head.

Isaac swallowed and didn’t say anything, then Grey looked up at him, and over at Dane. She raised her other hand to cover her mouth, her blue eyes going wide.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“You were at the poker game?” Dane said.

He promised me
, he thought.
He goddamn promised
.

“I meant to tell you,” Isaac said.

“Tell me what?” Dane asked. His voice went deadly quiet, and he felt almost calm for a moment, like the top of a volcano, seconds before it erupted.

“I’ve been talking to Pete.”

“That’s the guy who was also there last night,” Grey said. Her eyes were closed and her head was bowed.

Dane said nothing, but he seethed. More than anything, he felt betrayed — that Isaac could go back into fighting at all, but especially that Isaac could go back into fighting without telling him.

I thought we were mates
.

“You’re fighting again,” Dane said. His voice was dead and flat, and he could see in Isaac’s eyes that
now
, the other man was worried.

Dane didn’t get angry easily, but when he did, it was serious.

“Once,” Isaac said. “Just once, I swear, that’s all. He’s splitting profits with me fifty-fifty.”

He still had his arm around Grey, but both of them had frozen, Isaac’s muscles going rigid.

Dane jumped off the bench and started pacing the length of the small holding cell.

“I don’t care what the profits are,” he said. “We don’t need the money.”

“We always need money,” said Isaac.

“That’s not even why you’re doing it,” snapped Dane. He could feel his anger start to take on a life of its own, the wolf inside him slowly expanding into a force.

On the bench, Grey sat up straight, extracting herself from Isaac’s arm, but he barely seemed to notice. He kept staring straight at Dane, his dark eyes a mixture of guilt and anger.

“I like fighting, okay?” Isaac finally snapped, getting to his feet as well. “Is that what you want to hear? That I couldn’t just leave it behind, like you could, that doing other peoples’ taxes is well and good but there’s no feeling like getting into the ring and baring your teeth?”

“And there’s nothing quite like having your arm amputated because gangrene sets in from a wolf bite,” Dane snapped back. “Or quite like having your mate push you around in a wheelchair for the rest of your life because someone’s snapped your neck in the ring!”

That stopped Isaac cold.

“It’s not just about you,” Dane growled. “You’re not the one who has to stand on the sideline and watch someone sink their teeth into your mate’s neck, or see your mate sprawled and unconscious, okay? There’s more to this than just you, now.”

“You get this from your job!” Isaac said, his voice rising. “You get the adrenaline and the feeling of, I don’t know,
doing
things and vanquishing your foes and all that shit, and I just tell people what they can and can’t write off,” he said. “I need this. I
need
it, just one more time. You don’t understand why I need it.”

“So play video games,” Dane said. “Join the volunteer firefighters. Don’t go back into the wolf ring.”

On the bench, in the corner, Grey had made herself as small as possible.

“It’s once,” Isaac said. Now his voice was half-angry, half-pleading. “Just once.”

“You didn’t even tell me,” Dane said. “Does everyone know? The rest of Rustvale? The whole circuit? Did you tell everyone but me?”

“I wanted to tell you,” Isaac said.

“But you didn’t.”

Isaac turned, crossing his arms over his chest, and stared into the bars. Dane knew that he’d gotten the keys from somewhere in the station — he’d let himself into the cell, after all — and he could leave whenever he wanted.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “I should have told you and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Cancel the match,” Dane said.

He won’t
, he thought. Now that Isaac had promised everyone that he’d be fighting one more time, he knew that the other man would never back down.

Isaac didn’t respond, but Dane couldn’t help but push him, fury still working its way through his veins.

“Call Pete and tell him you can’t do it anymore,” said Dane. “Tell him the cops know about it now, it’s too risky.”

Isaac just shot Dane a glare, but said nothing. Dane recognized that glare: Isaac knew he was wrong, but wasn’t about to do anything about it.

Dane’s radio, in his pocket, crackled to life.

“Sorenson to evidence,” said Ramirez’s staticky voice.

Dane stalked to the bars of the cell, got out his keys, reached through and unlocked it from the other side.

“This isn’t over,” he told Isaac, then glanced at Grey, still sitting very quietly in the corner of the cell. “I’ll be right back,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”

Then he walked back through the door to the police station, beyond furious at his mate.

Chapter Six

Isaac

As soon as Dane left the room, Isaac crumpled back onto the bench, his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Grey said instantly.
 
“I should have kept my mouth shut, I was just trying to help and I didn’t think that — I don’t know, I didn’t think,” she said, lowering her eyes to the floor.

Isaac just shook his head.

“It’s my fault, not yours,” he said. “I’m the one who decided to start fighting again and didn’t tell Dane.”

There was a quick beat of silence.

“Yeah, he’s pretty pissed,” Grey said. “You told him that you stopped fighting?”

“I
did
stop fighting,” said Isaac. “But I started going to fights again, just to see the young guys who are in it now, and I
missed
it,” he said.

Grey nodded.

“You couldn’t help yourself,” she said. “I get it. There’s nothing quite like the adrenaline rush of nearly losing.”

Isaac looked at her, into her blue eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

“It’s a high,” she said. “I’ve never been in a wolf fight, but I know that kind of rush can be hard to turn down.”

She moved here from Reno to get away from all the gambling
, he thought.
I guess she knows a thing or two about being drawn to something she’d be better staying away from
.

“I guess I’m not the only one with problems,” he said.

“My parents took out a second mortgage on their house to send me to rehab,” she said, quietly. “And when they found out that I’d been gambling again, they told me that either I had to move away from Reno to somewhere that gambling was harder, or they were cutting me off completely.”

“That’s harsh,” said Isaac.

Grey just shrugged.

“It was justified,” she said. “I was really mad at first, but...” She trailed off, shrugging.

“And then you became a kindergarten teacher?”

She laughed. “I’ve been a teacher all along. Five years now.”

“And they never figured out that you’re a gambling degenerate?”

“Not yet,” she said, a smile coming into her eyes. “I love kids, and you can be a degenerate in one way and still teach a five-year-old to spell.”