Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (27 page)

“Thanks.” His voice was softer, less
agitated. “My family did that when I was in the hospital. I mean,
when we weren’t wolves.”

Echo turned her head, which put her mouth
right against his ear. Teasingly, she asked, “Shall I chew on
it?”

“Nah, that’s okay. But if you want, I’ll chew
on yours.”

Echo chuckled, wondering if he meant it.
“I’ll pass.”

DJ re-settled himself, and then his strong
arms wrapped around her and held her tight. His breath was warm
against her throat, his hair velvety against her cheek. His scent
of salt and flame filled the air. Echo breathed it in, imagining
that they lay beside a campfire, under an open sky.

“How’re you doing?” she asked.

“Better. I’m sorry I dragged you into my
crazy world. It must’ve been exhausting. Just what you needed
tonight, huh? You were in combat too.”

“Not like you.”

“Sure you were. You got hit. You could’ve
died.”

Echo rested her head on his shoulder, letting
her eyes close. Everything was red behind the lids; she could turn
off the lights, but getting up seemed an unimaginable effort. “I
didn’t kill anyone.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes a difference.” His hand
cupped the area between her shoulder blades, where she always felt
most tense and had the hardest time working it loose. DJ kneaded
the muscle until it softened beneath his fingers, and the dull ache
went away.

“That feels good,” Echo sighed. His touch was
such a comfort to her that, for the first time that night, she
realized how much she’d needed that.

“Any time.”

He went on rubbing her back and shoulders,
massaging the tight places until they relaxed. He even dug his
thumbs into the base of her skull and gently rocked it from side to
side until the tension released in her neck and face. It was only
after he finished that it occurred to her that he easily could have
snapped her spine with that grip. No matter how exhausted she was,
her reflexes should have screamed out a warning. But she hadn’t
felt the slightest bit of alarm. And now her jaw didn’t ache.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Echo was so
tired that her voice slurred.

“Used to have a girlfriend who was a physical
therapist.” His words too were half-articulated, hard to
understand.

“What happened to her?”

She felt him shrug. “I deployed.”

His hands moved from her head to her neck,
searching for tightness, then to her shoulders and upper arms. She
felt as if she was floating above the bed. When he came to her
waist, she thought with vague regret that he was done, and now he’d
take his hands away. Instead, he returned to the area between her
shoulder blades, rubbing in slow, gentle circles until she drifted
into sleep.

***

Echo usually woke up in an instant, with none
of the lazy transition between dreams and waking that Charlie told
her was the best part of sleep. But that morning she awoke in slow
stages. First she was simply aware of being warm and relaxed and
cozy. Then she recalled that she’d been on a mission the night
before, though not what the mission had been, and spent some time
dreamily contemplating how odd it was that she felt rested rather
than drained and depressed.

Then she recalled the mission, and its
aftermath. Only then did she register that she was in bed with DJ,
with her arms wrapped around him and his around hers, pressed as
close together as it was possible for two people to be. Even their
legs were tangled up. His head rested on her shoulder, and she
could feel his warm breath on the hollow of her throat.

She opened her eyes, careful not to move and
wake him. He had to be exhausted. This close, she could see all
sorts of details one normally didn’t notice: the length of his
eyelashes, the elegant sculpture of his collarbones, the strands of
black hair growing out over his forehead. Echo hoped he wouldn’t
cut his hair. He’d look good with bangs. They’d call more attention
to his beautiful dark eyes.

Either she’d moved or he’d somehow sensed
that she was watching him, because DJ woke up.

“Hey.” He smiled at her lazily, clearly still
half-asleep, and lifted his hand to toy with a lock of her
hair.

DJ’s eyes focused and his hands twitched as
he woke up completely. His expression shifted from dreamy
contentment to tenderness to, abruptly, shock and dismay.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “I did it. I
already
did it. There’s no take-backs now.”

He rolled away from her and buried his face
in the pillow.

Echo sat up and put her hand on his back,
concerned. “You did the right thing. DJ, if I was in so much pain
that I’d beg an enemy to kill me, I’d hope they’d have the
compassion and the courage to do it.”

DJ’s shoulders shook under her hand. He
didn’t make a sound, but the pillow was probably muffling his sobs.
Echo felt completely helpless. She sat there and rubbed his
shoulders until the shaking stopped and he mumbled into the pillow,
“Thanks, Echo. I think I’ll take a shower.”

Before she had a chance to reply, he leaped
out of bed and bolted into the bathroom.

The water ran for a long time. But when he
finally emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist, he gave her a
small but genuine smile. “Sorry about that. I’m all right, really.
Just a bit shaken up. I need to talk to the pack, though. Tell them
why I did it.”

“Be careful what you say. There’s bugs
everywhere.” Reluctantly, Echo added, “I guess you could bring the
pack here.”

“I don’t want them in here.” DJ gingerly
touched his arm. It was less swollen than it had been the night
before, but a wide black band wrapped around his upper arm. More
bruising extended over his shoulder and past his elbow in shades of
blue and purple. “I’ll be discreet. Not DJ-discreet, actual
discreet. Shower’s yours.”

Echo also took a long time in the shower,
thinking about the made wolves and the mission, about mercy killing
and doing the right thing and the glistening drops that had clung
to DJ’s muscular chest when he’d stepped out of the shower. Water
poured over her in an endless stream as she recalled the smile that
lit up his face when she liked a song he played, what it had felt
like to wake up in his arms, and how he’d stood in the lab with his
fist pressed to his mouth, radiating absolute trust that she would
rescue him.

When she’d been suffocating from Amber’s
touch, she’d felt no more fear than if it had been a particularly
unpleasant training exercise. Her lungs had screamed at her to
panic. But her mind had promised her that DJ wouldn’t let her
die.

When she returned to the bedroom, music was
booming from the tiny iPod speakers. Unusually, it was a song she’d
known before she’d met DJ, “Jesus Walks.” She sat on the bed beside
him to listen. The background chant had a military cadence, and she
wondered if that was what he liked about the song.

When the last notes faded away, she remarked,
“I didn’t know you listened to Kanye West.”

“Oh, sure. Mainstream doesn’t mean bad. But I
wanted to play that as… a tribute, I guess.” He jumped up before
she could ask him what he meant. “Let’s get some coffee.”

They met Charlie at her apartment, and filled
her in on the mission. Echo hadn’t meant to tell her about DJ’s
breakdown, or at least not in front of him, but DJ said, “I started
to come unglued at the hospital, but Echo hustled me out of there
so I could have my meltdown in private. She stood by me and took
care of me while I was pretty much out of my mind— and that was
after she’d been in combat all night and had to be treated for
anaphylactic shock. Your sister is the best.”

Echo avoided Charlie’s eyes. The plot to
attach her and DJ had worked, Echo supposed, but it made no
difference. Charlie had already outlived her predicted lifespan.
She could have five years left— she could have ten years! When
Charlie died, DJ would be long since gone.

“She’s the best of the best,” said
Charlie.

Echo was certain that Charlie knew exactly
what she’d been thinking, but she didn’t know what Charlie felt
about it. Lots of different things, probably. Let one feeling in,
and you ended up with hundreds banging down your door.

Let yourself truly feel what it meant to take
a life, and you ended up knocked down like a house of cards.

She stole a glance at DJ. He was swinging his
legs and pulling threads out of the sofa cushions, but that was
just his usual overflowing energy, not the desperate agitation of
the night before. He’d managed to stack his cards back up. She
hoped he’d be more careful next time. Or maybe she could coach him
on how not to feel.

DJ picked up Charlie’s book. “What’s
this?”

“
The Devil Duke’s Deception
,” Charlie
replied.

Echo pushed her thoughts aside and examined
the book. The cover displayed a heaving-bosomed woman with a death
grip on the ankle of a sneering man on a rearing horse. “She’s
going to yank him off his horse.”

“Right into her arms!” Charlie agreed.

DJ inspected the wild-eyed horse. “That is
not a happy animal. I hope he runs away and finds some nice mare
for a happily ever after.”

“That’ll be the sequel,” Echo suggested.
“
The Happy Horse’s Homecoming
.”

Charlie glanced at her watch. “We need to get
going if we want to catch the pack. They’re never in the cafeteria
after ten.”

In the cafeteria, the pack was finishing
their breakfast in dead silence. Emmett had a bandage taped to his
head. Guadalupe glanced up, and her gaze fixed on DJ.
Simultaneously and without exchanging a word, the others looked up
too.

Echo was standing so close to DJ that she
heard the tiny crack as he forced his tensed shoulders down.

“You want us to wait at a table?” Charlie
asked. “Or come along?”

DJ looked from Charlie to Echo, who hadn’t
offered because it had never occurred to her
not
to go with
him. “Come along, if you don’t mind. I could use the moral
support.”

The pack never stopped watching him,
unblinking and hostile, as they approached the table. Out of the
corner of her eye, Echo saw that the entire cafeteria was riveted.
News traveled fast around Wildfire Base.

“There’s something I want to tell you.” DJ
deliberately glanced around, reminding them of the ever-present
bugs. “I was in the pack sense with Match.”

All of the pack but Emmett were former
soldiers or law enforcement, trained to underreact. There were no
dramatic gasps or exclamations. But their quickly-suppressed
expressions of guilt and anger told Echo that they understood
exactly what had gone down.

“So I know how he felt when he died,” DJ went
on. “I want you to know that he didn’t die afraid or alone or in
pain. The way I did it—” He gritted his teeth, then continued, “I
know it looked brutal. It— It
was
brutal. But in the old
days, it was how a wolf would have wanted to die. You can ask
Emmett. It’s called the hunter’s death.”

Guadalupe broke the ensuing silence by
inquiring, “How’s your arm?”

“It hurts,” DJ replied. “But there’s no
permanent damage.”

As calmly as if she was discussing the
weather, Guadalupe said, “I should’ve gone for a head shot.”

Echo barely stopped herself from taking a
swing at her. Instead, she slammed her fist down on the table.
Plates jumped, and Amber’s glass of orange juice tipped over. “I
will fucking kill anyone who hurts my partner. You all got a pass
last time because you were out of your minds. But anything you do
in the future, I’ll assume that you meant it.”

“Thanks, Echo,” DJ said, looking pleased but
unsurprised. Turning back to the pack, he added, “That goes for me
too, of course. But about Match... I killed a member of your pack.
As a pack, you all tried to kill me, and I was wounded. Wolf
justice says we owe each other heart’s blood. That means we have
the right to ask something of each other. Isn’t that so,
Emmett?”

Emmett scowled, but nodded.

“You all take your time and think about what
you want to ask of me,” DJ went on. “But I want the same thing from
all of you. Dr. Semple recorded what happened to Justin in the
hospital. I want you to sit down and watch that video, from when
Justin arrived to when she pronounced the time of death. Set aside
a day. It took seven hours.”

Echo stole a glance at Charlie. Her sister’s
lips were pressed together, bloodless and white.

“What happens if we refuse?” Push asked at
last. “Do we duel?”

DJ shook his head. “If you refuse my request,
then I refuse yours. That’s all. And I’m making it individual, not
everyone in or everyone out. Any one of you who watches that video
gets to ask me for something.”

Amber spoke for the first time, her blue eyes
cold. “Can I ask you to cut your own throat?”

“No major physical harm to himself,” Emmett
said automatically. “Minor is allowed, like a beating or a shallow
knife cut. No permanent marks on the face, neck, or hands. No harm
of any kind to others. No sexual coercion, no bond coercion. No
requests likely to cause him to go to jail or ruin him financially
or break up a relationship. Anything else is up for grabs. This
isn’t about destroying his life. It’s a chance to get reparations
or make him feel some measure of the pain he caused.”

The pack stared at Emmett.

“There’s a lot you haven’t told us, isn’t
there?” Ty remarked. His voice was casual, but he watched Emmett as
if he was peering through a sniper scope.

“This is born wolf stuff,” Emmett said
defensively. “You’re made wolves. I didn’t think it applied.”

“Wolves are wolves,” DJ said.

“I’ll do it.” Ty spoke more to his pack than
to DJ when he went on, “I’ll let you know what I want from you when
I figure that out. But I think you’re right. That video is
something we should see. Match was our responsibility.”