o 35b0a02a46796a4f (29 page)

“You mean the one where he pukes if he gets too far away from me?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cade said. “That problem I thought I wouldn’t mention since it makes the alpha -a little—” He wiggled his hands next to his head.

“Ape-shit?” Alex murmured.

Cade choked. Barlow growled. Alex grinned. When she poked him with the proverbial stick she felt so much more like herself.

“What did you find?” Julian demanded.

“I…Well, it’s…” Cade took a deep breath, let it out, then reached for two clean petri dishes. “I’d better show you.”

He set the glass circlets next to each other, then went to the refrigerator in the corner and returned with two test tubes of blood. Alex read her name on one and Barlow’s on the other.

Her chest hurt, and she realized she was holding her breath. She wasn’t going to like this.

Cade set the tubes in a stand, uncorked them, then took an eyedropper in each hand and filled it with blood. He Julian waited in the main room. His hair was a mess and dripped a few drops of hers into the petri dish on the right; then he met her gaze and Julian’s. “Ready?”

Neither of them answered.

Cade sighed and squeezed the rubber on the other eyedropper. A bead of Julian’s blood seemed to fall in slow motion toward the petri dish on the left. Alex had enough time to wonder what experiment Cade could possibly have done with their blood in
different
dishes; then the drop hit the glass.

And immediately
leaped
into the other one.

Utter silence reigned. Alex glanced at the left dish. Not a mark on it. The right dish held a tiny puddle of blood, all the drops merged into one.

Maybe she’d been mistaken. Maybe Cade had dropped Julian’s blood into the right petri dish and not the left at all. Her eyes deceiving her made a lot more sense than blood hopping through the air.

“Do it again,” Julian said.

Cade nodded and pressed his first finger and his thumb together around the rubber bulb. This time, two drops of blood fell.

And two drops of blood arced from one petri dish to another.

“That’s impossible,” Alex said.

“I thought so, too,” Cade replied. “Until it happened.”

“What does it mean?” Barlow asked.

“I’m not sure. But—”

“You’d damn straight better find out,” Barlow snapped.

Cade’s eyes narrowed. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“Not confiding in me, obviously.”

“You weren’t
here,”
Cade ground out. “Or if you were, you weren’t answering your door.”

“Why didn’t you walk right in? It’s always open?’

“After the two of you were doing your mating dance in the center square, then making out in the front window? I draw the line at walking in on that.”

At least their plan had worked. Everyone thought they’d been horizontal bopping all night.

Except for the rogue. Who’d somehow known they’d be in Awanitok.

“One problem at a time,” she murmured.

Cade and Julian ignored her. They were too busy staring into each other’s eyes like alpha wolves ready to fight.

“Hey!” She grabbed their shoulders. They both jerked away and snarled at her. She let them go, holding her hands up in surrender. “We all want the same thing.” She pointed to the petri dish. “An explanation for that.”

Julian rubbed a hand over his face. He seemed so tired. Cade went back to the table and pulled out two more clean glass dishes.

“I got to thinking that I’d never compared anyone’s blood before I compared yours. And that maybe this reaction was common.” He lifted one shoulder. “Maybe it has to do with the fact that Julian made us all?’

“That would make sense,” Alex agreed.

“You’d think.” Cade went to the refrigerator and brought back several more test tubes filled with blood. He dropped the blood of someone named Barclay into the right dish and Julian’s into the left.

Nothing happened.

“Faet!”
Julian said without any real heat.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed.

Cade looked at them both and lifted a brow before he reached for two more dishes and shoved the others out of the way. He dropped the blood of another werewolf onto the right and the blood from a completely different test tube than Julian’s into the left.

The one on the left boogied through the air and splashed on top of the quivering drop on the right, turning the two separate droplets into a puddle of one. Cade lifted the two mystery donors and turned the labels front and center.

“I thought you’d want to talk to them yourself,” he said.

“You thought right,” Julian agreed.

Julian didn’t wait for Alex to join him. He knew that she would. Cade came along, too. Julian didn’t try to stop him.

They made their way to the EAT Café. The was

already place packed with customers.

“You,” he pointed to Rose. “And you.” He pointed to Joe. “Come with me?’

Julian tramped up the steps that led to the apartment over the café, going through the unlocked door in front of Alex and Cade. The three of them waited in silence for Rose and Joe to turn over the register and grill to their employees, then join them.

They appeared scared witless. Julian had been a little

harsh. Before Alex had shown up he never would have noticed.

“Sit,” he ordered.

Alex made an impatient noise to accompany the scowl she aimed in his direction. “Don’t worry,” she said to the older couple. “He won’t bite you. Again.”

Rose smiled without her usual spark. Joe didn’t bother.

“What have we done?” Rose asked.

Julian opened his mouth, then shut it again. How was he supposed to explain this? He glanced at Cade, but his brother had never been very good at explaining things so anyone could understand them.

“If one of you goes on a trip,” Alex began. “Does the other one feel. . . strange?”

The worried expressions on both their faces smoothed out. Rose laughed a little. “Oh, that,” she said.

“What?” Julian said between clenched teeth. The worried expressions returned.

“Quit scaring them!” Alex ordered.

If possible, Rose and Joe appeared more concerned. Rose put her hand on Alex’s arm. “Don’t yell at the alpha, child.”

“Yeah,” Julian said. “Don’t yell at the alpha.”

“Bite me,” she muttered.

“Again?” Julian drawled.

“Oh!” Rose lifted her hands to her cheeks, then- stared back and forth between Julian and Alex. “I see.”

“See what?” Alex and Julian demanded at the same time. Cade had retreated to the window, staring out at the street, and while he was obviously listening, he was pretending not to.

“You’re mates,” Rose said, then turned her adoring gaze to Joe. “Like us”

Alex stiffened. Julian did the same. Each studiously avoided looking in the other’s direction.

“Explain,” Julian demanded.

“You know, Julian.” Rose patted his hand fondly. “You were there?’

“He was where?” Alex asked.

“He was there when Joe almost died.”

Now Alex did glance at him, but Julian refused to return the favor. Mates? This sounded bad.

“Go on,” Alex said.

“Joe volunteered for the army. He was a bit old, but he felt like he should serve his adopted country.” She paused and beamed at her husband. “He loves America so much.”

“I do,” Joe said in a thick Italian accent. “It’s-a true.”

Alex’s eyes widened. She’d probably never heard Joe speak, only sing, and when he sang, not much of an accent.

“He was hit at Gettysburg—”

“Whoa!” Alex held up a hand. “He was a soldier in the
Civil
War?”

Rose shrugged and spread her hands.

Alex turned to Julian. ‘What in hell were you doing there?”

“I’m a warrior,” he said. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again and stared at the floor as her cheeks flushed.

Well, he
was
good at that, too.

Rose gave a strangled cough that sounded very much like a stifled laugh, and Alex’s head came up, eyes snapping. “What did you do, Barlow? Hire yourself out to the highest bidder?”

“I don’t fight for money?’

“Then what do you fight for?”

“Whatever is
worth
fighting for.” Julian glanced at Rose, needing to shift the subject back to what they’d come here to learn. “I’m not seeing how my saving Joe from dying on the battlefield leads to—” He couldn’t say it, so he just twirled a finger to indicate that she should go on.

“Joe was dying and you—”

“Why Joe?” Alex interrupted. “Why not one of the thousands of other guys who died there? Or why not
thousands
of the guys who died there?”

“What would I do with a thousand werewolves?” Julian muttered.

“Make an army.”

He narrowed his eyes. “And what would I do with an army?”

“Rule more than Barlowville. You could rule the whole damn world.”

“Ruling the world is highly overrated,” he said. “All I’ve ever wanted is my own little corner.” He turned again to Rose. “Continue.”

“You saved him; then you came to see me.”

Julian’s mind drifted to that long-ago day. The heat. The blood and smoke. The scent of gunpowder and death.

Why had he volunteered t fight again?

Oh, yeah, because he was good at it. And he hadn’t wanted to see the Union die. Before Gettysburg, it had been.

He could have told the Yankees that when you invaded someone’s homeland, the invadees fought so much harder than the invaders. Unless you were a Viking. They just kicked ass all over the place.

The Yankees definitely weren’t Vikings—except for him and Knut. Speaking of which—

“Has anyone seen Neil?” The name Knut was using

These days.

Rose and Alex stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Joe, who had met Neil the same day he’d met Julian and Cade, understood the connection.

“He’s fishing,” Joe said. “Or maybe it was hunting.”

“Has been for a few weeks now,” Cade murmured.

The question was: Had Neil been hunting elk? Or Inuit?

It hadn’t occurred to Julian to tally the village and discover who was missing. Werewolves came and went. They weren’t prisoners. But he didn’t like it that Neil was away. He didn’t like it at all.

“I took Joe to see Cade first,” Julian said.

“But gut-shot is no good.” Joe shook his head sadly as if he was talking about someone else’s gut and not his own.

“Cade was there, too?” Alex glanced at Julian’s brother, who nodded but continued to stare out the window.

“Neil also,” Joe said.

“Who in hell is Neil?”

“The only other Viking, besides Cade, that I made like us.”

Neil and Julian had joined the Northern forces to fight. Cade had joined to heal.

“Cade was an army doctor,” Julian said. “That day he’d just gotten back from visiting an Iroquois woman. He always talked to the healers in every culture we.. . visited.”

“Sometimes it helped,” Cade said. “They knew local herbs. Back then, that was all we had.”

Julian waited for Cade to take over the tale, but when he turned again to his window—what was so blasted interesting out there anyway?—Julian continued. He felt better when he was talking. When he was talking about the past he wasn’t thinking about the present.

“Like Joe said, gut-shot is gut-shot.”

“Why didn’t you magic him back to health?”

“The only way I can heal a human is with a bite.”

“So you bit him.”

“He wanted me to.”

Julian had liked Joe. Hell, he still did. He’d never regretted saving the man’s life, and he couldn’t say that about every werewolf he’d made. Anyone could become damn annoying after a few centuries.

“I don’t see how this is explaining. . .“ Alex moved her hands in a semicircle to indicate Joe and Rose, her and him.

Julian didn’t, either. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to.

“Once Julian saved Joe’s life,” Rose continued, “Joe brought him to me?’

“Why?” Alex asked..

“We’re soul mates. Joe wasn’t going to leave me

behind.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “You made her a werewolf so they could be together?”

Julian shrugged. “Why not?”

“I insisted,” Rose said. “So did Joe. Without each other eternal life would have been hell?’

“It didn’t bother you that another human being would give their life for your immortality?”

Rose frowned. “Of course it bothered me. But Julian took care of that. He found a very—”

“Bad man,” Alex finished, staring at Julian all the while.

“Yes!” Rose agreed. “I’ll always be grateful to him for assuring that Joe and I would be together forever.” She grasped Julian’s hand and squeezed it. “But we discovered that being soul mates as humans meant we were mates as werewolves.”

“What does that
mean?”
Alex asked, her voice a little louder than necessary. Neither Joe nor Rose had ever been deaf, and they certainly wouldn’t be anymore.

“Wolves mate for life, child. Some humans do, too. And when you have humans that are soul mates and werewolves that are mates, you have the strongest bond of all.”

“I tried once to leave her,” Joe said. “Just-a to go to wine country and choose a few places to do business with.

Before I even reached the cave where we rest, my stomach cramped. I could-a not move. I thought that I would die of the pain.” He gazed at Rose, everything he felt evident on his face. “I have never tried to leave her again.”

“Why would you want to?” Rose murmured, and kissed him.

“This is nuts,” Alex murmured. “I don’t even
like
you.”

Rose
tsked.
“That’s not true!”

Alex stood so close to Julian he could touch her, yet his stomach roiled and his head ached. That he
wanted
to touch her, would apparently always want to, was no doubt the cause.

“How did you know you were soul mates?” he asked.

From the first moment we met, we knew there was something special between us,” Rose said.

“Love at first sight?” Alex let out a relieved breath. “That definitely wasn’t us.”

“No.” Joe laughed, the sound as joyous as his songs. “Not love at first sight. At first sight we fought like cats in a sack.”