Fighting for Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 3) (8 page)

True
, thought Isaac.

“I don’t know if there’s a cure for me,” Isaac mused.

He put his arm back around her, and once more, Grey nestled against him, her warm, soft body sending little electric shocks through him.

“Dane’s probably right,” she said. “There’s probably a more constructive way to fight the urge. Maybe you could get really into watching football or something.”

Isaac made a face.

“I’m more of the action type,” he said.

“Yeah?” she asked.

She looked up at him, and as he looked down into her eyes, he felt like he was drowning in those two perfect, blue pools.

Kiss her,
something deep inside him whispered.
That’s what she wants. She’s waiting. Just lean down, put your lips on hers...

He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything more, but he couldn’t.

Not without Dane,
he thought.
If he ever forgives me, that is
.

Instead of kissing Grey, he leaned his head back against the cinderblock wall and exhaled.

I really fucked everything up
, he thought.

The door to the police station opened. Isaac’s heart fell into his stomach, and in his arms, Grey tensed her entire body.

Dane walked in and shut the door carefully behind him.

Then he grinned.

“You’re good,” he said.

Grey leapt off of the bench, clapping her hands together, and Isaac couldn’t help but smile as well.

She looks a little like a kid herself,
he thought.

“You gonna let us out of here?” he teased Dane.

“I know you’ve got keys too,” Dane said.
 

There was still a slight edge to his voice. Isaac decided not to push his luck.

“My knives are okay?” Grey asked.

“Fine. There was some blood on them, but it wasn’t human, they said.”

“Well, they’re kitchen knives,” Grey said, sounding a little testy.

Dane unlocked the cell door from the outside and Grey was through in a flash, turning to face Isaac and Dane, rubbing her arms through her sweater. Dane’s jacket still draped around her shoulders.

It looks good on her
, Isaac thought.
It’s about five sizes too big, but it just looks right.

“Can I come out?” Isaac asked, still behind the bars of the cell.

Dane looked at him for a long moment.

“Please?”

“You’re a little more deserving of jail time,” Dane growled.

“I swear I’ll be good.”

Dane gave him a look, then swung the door open, and Isaac walked through.

They exchanged a glance. A ‘
this isn’t over yet’
glance.

“I’ll give you a ride back to your house,” Dane offered to Grey.

“See you at home?” Isaac asked.

Dane just nodded and steered Grey toward the door.

Isaac didn’t go home right away. First, he cleaned up the Chinese food takeout that they’d left on Dane’s desk, carefully snapping the containers back together, labeling them DANE SORENSON in sharpie, and washing the chopsticks, placing them carefully in the dish drain.

Technically, he wasn’t supposed to be in the police station without an escort — that would be Dane — but it wasn’t the sort of thing anyone cared about.

Right before he left, in a fit of guilt, he drew a heart on a post-it note and left it in Dane’s drawer.
 

Isaac drew terrible, lopsided hearts, and this one was no different: the left side too squashed, the right side too long. The lines didn’t even connect in the middle, and Isaac had to draw a third line, making the heart one whole shape. It was a terrible heart, and Isaac didn’t even sign his name. Dane would know who’d left it.

Dane’s desk now perfectly clean, Isaac grabbed his own jacket and finally left, driving home alone in the dark, wondering what the hell he was going to say to his mate when they got home.

They lived in a small ranch house on a couple of acres just outside of town, a place that they’d bought two years ago. It was just big enough for the two of them, and they’d gone back and forth on whether they should buy that place or rent until they’d completed their triad, and
then
buy a bigger house.

The whole drive home, Isaac’s head swirled, full of Grey and Dane. Grey was theirs. He was completely, positively, a hundred percent sure of it; sure the same way he’d been sure about Dane, that long ago night in that distant holding cell. The night that they’d been utterly unable to stop themselves, even in public.

He wished he knew what Grey thought. Humans mated in pairs, not triads, and Isaac had never really negotiated a relationship with one before.

Would she be interested in both of them? What if she only wanted one?

The thought had never occurred to Isaac before.

Well, I’m not leaving Dane
, he thought.

But I don’t want to give up Grey either
.

He pulled into his driveway, somehow feeling worse than before, every thought and anxiety swirling through his head at once.

This is why I like fighting,
he thought.
It gives me solvable problems. That wolf is going to attack me, so I have to attack him back. In a few minutes, there’s a winner.

Sometimes it hurts, but it’s easy
.

He shut off the car, got out, walked into the house, and flopped on the couch, waiting for his mate to come home. That only lasted about two minutes before he got off the couch and started pacing.

I wish I’d just told Dane,
he thought.
He’d still be pissed, but then at least I wouldn’t be a liar.

The front door opened, and Dane walked through. He had his jacket back on, and even from across the room, Isaac could smell Grey’s faint scent, floral and musky and just the tiniest bit smoky.

The two men looked at each other. Dane shut the door behind him, and Isaac crossed his arms over his chest, waiting.

Nothing. Dane hung his jacket in the coat closet, all his movements a little more precise and jerky than usual.

“Grey get home okay?” Isaac asked.

Dane walked to the couch and threw himself on it, not looking at Isaac.

“Yeah, she’s fine,” he said.

“I’m glad she’s not a murderer,” said Isaac, trying to break the silence with a little levity.

“I knew she wasn’t,” said Dane.

Isaac went silent, not sure what to say. The silence stretched out for a long time, and then finally, Dane spoke.

“Don’t fight tomorrow,” he said.

“It’s the last one,” Isaac promised.

“That’s not what I said,” Dane told him.

Isaac walked around the couch and sat gingerly next to his mate.

“I swear,” he said.

Dane looked away, his face clouding with anger.

“You didn’t even tell me,” he said. “I’m the one who’s going to be changing your diapers and you didn’t
tell
me.”

“I’m sorry,” Isaac said. “I didn’t know how. I knew you’d be mad.”

“You chickened out from telling me,” Dane said. “You’re fighting in the wolf fights again and you couldn’t even face
me
.”

“Yeah.”

Isaac had no idea what else to say. It was all true, horribly, painfully true. He’d rather face off with ten vicious, snarling wolves than hurt Dane. But he also couldn’t turn down one more final fight. Every fiber of his being
itched
for it.

“I can’t stop you, can I?”

Isaac swallowed and shook his head.

“Everything’s set up already,” he said. “I got a fifty-fifty split on profits from Pete.”

“Make sure you see the receipts. You know that old bastard is crafty and if you don’t see what he spent, he’ll try to tell you that there was twice as much overhead as there was.”

“On it,” said Isaac. He let himself smile, just a little, then looked at Dane’s face again. His smile fell.

“That’s not why you won’t cancel,” Dane said. “You won’t cancel because you miss fighting and you want to do it again.”

Isaac opened his mouth, then closed it. It was true, and they both knew it.

Dane stood and started pacing in front of the couch.

“It’s not the fighting,” he told Isaac. “It’s not even that you lied to me, it’s that I don’t think this is going to be the last one,” he said. “I know you. I think I might know you better than you know yourself, and Isaac, you’re never going to not miss it. Every night when you go to bed, you’ll close your eyes, and for a moment you’ll think of how you felt in the ring. Every time you see a fight, or smell dirty dogs, or hear people cheer, you’re going to want to be back in that ring, even if only for a moment.”

He was completely, one hundred percent right, and Isaac couldn’t think of anything to say. What could he possibly tell his mate?
You’re right, but I want you to be wrong? You’re right, but I want to
want
to stop fighting?

“Yeah,” he finally managed.

The withering look from Dane said that wasn’t good enough.

“I don’t want fighting to take you away from me,” Dane said. Now he was standing in front of Isaac, his arms crossed in front of him. “I hated having to watch you fight, thinking that one tooth in the wrong place, one bad fall, and you’d be gone.”

That’s why it’s so thrilling, though,
thought Isaac.

“Don’t you remember it?” Isaac asked. “The way it feels to be in the ring, just your own teeth and claws and nothing else? We met fighting. I know you used to love it as much as I did.”

Dane just shook his head.

“I was a shitty fighter,” he said. “You won. I lost. It was easy for me to leave. But you were good at it, you had that knack. That spark.”

Isaac couldn’t argue.
 

“You’re afraid that I don’t anymore,” he said.

“That’s not it,” Dane said, softly. “I know you do. Hell, you mow the lawn like you’re fighting it and winning.”

“But I’m not eighteen.”

“You’re not eighteen, and how long do you think you’ll be lucky for, Dane? It’s not forever. How many fighters over thirty are there in the ring?”

Isaac thought for a minute.

“Exactly,” said Dane. “They retire, they get hurt, or they die.”

“Just one,” Isaac said. “I swear it’s the last one.”

Please let me stop missing this,
he thought.
Let me stop wanting it.

“Okay,” said Dane. Isaac could tell that his mate didn’t believe him just then, but that didn’t matter.

He’ll believe me when it’s true,
he thought.

“Want to come see the match?” Isaac offered. “I know a guy.”

Dane wasn’t amused.

“I can’t watch you fight,” he said, sadly. “I’m not sure you know how it feels, watching your heart face off with a wolf.”

For a moment, Isaac imagined the situation reversed: Dane in the ring, Isaac watching. Some other wolf tearing into his mate. The thought alone made him break out into a sweat.

“That’s fair,” he said, quietly.

Dane stepped forward and took Isaac’s face in his hands so that the two of them were eye to eye.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said. “Is it really the last time?”

“I love you more than I love fighting,” Isaac said. “I swear.”

Dane looked into his eyes for a few more moments, and then kissed Isaac hard on the lips, pressing himself against the other man like his life depended on it. Isaac kissed him back, grabbing Dane around the waist.

When they broke the kiss, they were both breathing hard, and Isaac leaned his forehead against Dane’s.

“Would you really change my diapers?” he asked, half-teasing.

Dane’s face broke into a smile, despite himself.

“I’d rather you not be in diapers,” he said. “But I would.”

Isaac kissed him again, fiercely.

Chapter Seven

Grey

When Grey’s alarm clock went off at five-thirty the next morning, she felt like she’d barely slept at all. In a sense, that was almost true. After all, she’d been at the police station until midnight, and then she’d stayed awake long past then in her apartment, tidying up the mess the police had left, especially in the kitchen.

She could tell that they’d tried to put things back where they belonged, but she could also tell that if Rustvale had female police officers, they hadn’t been the ones to search her apartment. Nothing was put back quite right: photos hung a little crooked on the wall, towels were messy in her linen closet, throw pillows were tossed onto her couch haphazardly.
 

There was nothing missing, not even anything ruined, but her whole place had a pervading sense of
wrong
about it. Someone had touched almost everything in her home, had invaded her space. Violated her in this small, non-bodily way, and she didn’t like it.

Before she went to bed, she changed her sheets, then lay on top of them for hours, thinking.

One, about Nicky. She’d found a dead body and done the right thing, and someone was trying to pin a murder on her for it. She didn’t think she could blame the Rustvale Police for being careful, but keeping her in that cell? Going through all of her things? That seemed like overkill.

Two, Isaac.

Three, Dane.

Really, they fell under the same number, being mates and all. Grey wasn’t really sure about the whole triad thing. Her parents were human, she’d grown up around humans, and having two husbands or boyfriends just seemed... well, it seemed strange. What if she liked one more than the other? What if they liked each other more than they liked her? After all, they’d already been together for years, and there was no substitute for that kind of thing.

But on the other hand, they made her feel funny in a way that no one ever had before. Not her first real boyfriend in high school, not the poet she’d dated for most of college who’d written sonnets for her, not the guitar-playing guy with long hair whose shows she’d gone to in the years after college.

It was weird, the way the mated pair made her feel: buzzy on the inside, but also
safe
, totally protected. She had no idea what to make of it.

And then, her alarm woke her up so suddenly that for a moment, she couldn’t even remember where she was.