The Altered (12 page)

“No?” she
tilted her head up to meet his gaze. “Because I didn’t think you
had any other kind of relationships.”

“This is
different…
he’s
different. I can’t—” Jordan broke off, well
aware of where his thoughts had been heading. He and Daniel might
have some weird connection, but he wasn’t about to label it as
something he still didn’t believe in.

By the look on
Keira’s face, she knew exactly what he’d been thinking. She
continued to glare at him for another few seconds before closing
her eyes and letting her head drop back to rest against the wall.
“I just don’t want any of us to get hurt, Jordan.”

“I know.” He
rubbed the tops of her shoulders with his thumbs.

“And I am
happy that you’ve found someone.” She opened her eyes when he
huffed at her words. “Even though it might not seem like it
sometimes. I worry about you, that’s all.”

He gave in
then and pulled her into a hug despite her protests for him to let
her go. His body relaxed, the earlier tension all but disappearing
as she slipped her hands around his waist and hugged him back.

“I like him,”
he said, the words muffled as he spoke into her hair.

She sighed
against him and then pulled back from his embrace. “But do you
trust him?”

Jordan thought
back to his afternoon in the park when Daniel had asked him the
same thing. Then, his answer had been no. But they’d spent the rest
of their time talking about everything from their families to the
change and what had happened since then. “I’m getting there.”

She nodded,
then walked over to Charlie, squeezed his hand in what Jordan
presumed was an apology, and left the kitchen.

“I hope he’s
worth it.” Charlie had his head angled away from Jordan, gaze still
fixed firmly on the doorway Keira had just gone through.

“He is.”

Only when
Charlie turned to face him, did Jordan notice the newspaper in his
hand. Not one of the daily tabloids but one of the many independent
publications that were handed out on the street.

Keira had gone
into her and Charlie’s room, and if she’d shut the door, she
wouldn’t be able to hear them. Soundproofing the bedrooms had been
one of their first jobs after moving in, but Jordan could still
hear her heartbeat. He didn’t want to start up another argument, so
he gestured to the newspaper and raised an eyebrow.

But then the
click of Keira’s door sounded upstairs, and Jordan couldn’t hear
her any longer. “Fuck, I hate full moons.”

Charlie
laughed. “You should try being me. I have three of you irritable
fuckers to deal with.” As if on cue, Sam came wandering in from the
back garden and growled at them both before slinking off in the
direction of the living room.

“She’s not
usually that bad, though. Not yet, anyway.”

Jordan watched
as Sam ignored the living room door altogether and veered off to
take the stairs, obviously in search of his sister. She must be
more affected than Jordan had thought. “Has something
happened?”

“We were
handed this on the way home from the gym.” Charlie passed Jordan
the rolled-up newspaper. “Read the back inside page, bottom
left.”

Jordan
smoothed it out and flicked past the pages containing the usual
rubbish. A lot of it was just made-up crap to mask the real stories
that were always on the back two pages. He didn’t usually pay
attention to them, but Keira picked one up each week without
fail.

“There.”
Charlie pointed to a small column with the headline “Man Goes
Missing after Night Out with Friends.”

Jordan read
the text underneath it. “Bollocks. It says two days before he
disappeared, he’d told friends he thought he was being followed.
“He looked up from the paper. “That’s the third in as many weeks.
”

“Yep. So you
can see why she’s a bit on edge.”

Reading
between the lines, there were suggestions of insider help. The
article didn’t say that exactly, but it kept mentioning the words
seen
, and
see
, over and over, and Jordan had read
enough of them to get the gist. Even if a seer wasn’t involved, the
damage had been done. No wonder Keira had reacted like she did, and
three altereds in three weeks should worry everyone. “Yeah.” Jordan
sighed and pulled out his phone. “Why don’t you go see how she is?
I’ll finish packing.”

Charlie nodded
and left.

Jordan refused
to believe Daniel had anything to do with the disappearances. For
one thing, he didn’t think Daniel would put Matt at risk by working
for these people, not to mention what they might do to Daniel
himself. Jordan had believed him when they’d spoken in the park.
No, despite Keira’s doubts, Daniel wasn’t involved in this.

Hey, we’ll
set off early in the morning, so wanted to say goodnight. The
reception is shit at the cabin
he typed out on his phone and
sent it to Daniel.

The reply came
seconds later, the phone vibrating in Jordan’s hand. He grinned and
opened up the message.

Night. Oh and
btw, I’m just taking care of that problem you left me with
earlier.

Jordan groaned
and gripped the phone so tight the case creaked.
Thanks for
that, now I have a problem too
.

Daniel’s reply
took a suspiciously long time to appear, and when it did, Jordan
had to leave the packing and hurry up to his room.

Daniel grinned
as he snapped the photo, imagining the look on Jordan’s face when
he saw it.

Maybe this
will help
.

He pressed
Send, reached over to his bedside table, and grabbed a handful of
tissues. After wiping up the mess, Daniel settled back down onto
his pillows and turned on his TV.

God
,
he’d been wanting to do that since Jordan had left him that
afternoon. He had spent the rest of his shift cursing Jordan for
leaving him with a semi that just wouldn’t go away. Every time
Daniel looked up from his keyboard, his gaze landed on the shelves
where Jordan had pinned him, and that was all it took.

He’d barely
got through dinner with Ash—thank God Matt was working late—before
excusing himself to his room. Friday night, and he was alone in his
room having a wank. Daniel couldn’t decide if that sounded
incredibly lame or like the perfect evening.

Considering
how relaxed he felt, and how he couldn’t keep the smile off his
face, he was going with the latter. He didn’t get ten minutes into
the film he’d put on before falling asleep.

“Morning.”
Daniel yawned, barely covering his mouth with his hand, as he
walked into the kitchen.

Matt glanced
up from his cornflakes and smirked. “Enjoyed your own company last
night, I see.”

Daniel felt
the heat rush to his cheeks. “You know I hate it when you do that,
right?”

“Then you
should take a bloody shower after.” Matt grinned around his spoon
of cereal, and some of the milk splashed out onto the table.

“Gross.” It
was too early to think of a more suitable putdown, so Daniel
shuffled past him and poured some cereal into a bowl. “Where’s
Ash?”

“Here, why?”
Ash answered, coming through the door and giving a huge yawn just
like Daniel’s. “Oh, did you tell Matt what happened at the library
yesterday?”

The smile
dropped off Matt’s face. “What?”

Daniel
cringed, and shot Ash a look he hoped conveyed his deep
disappointment with Ash’s timing. He could have waited until they’d
finished breakfast.

“Sorry,” Ash
mouthed and shrugged. Daniel would have believed him if he’d seemed
slightly apologetic.

“I had a few
unwelcome visitors, that’s all.” Daniel put his bowl down and
turned to lean against the counter while he explained everything
again for Matt’s benefit.

“That’s all?”
Matt practically hissed at him. “Fuck, Dan.” He gripped the edge of
the table and continued to stare at Daniel open-mouthed. “A strange
shifter basically threatens you and two suits come in at the same
time, and your response is
that’s all
?”

When the table
creaked in protest, Daniel glanced down at Matt’s hands, surprised
to see his claws boring into the wood. That was why he’d told Ash
and not Matt.

“I’m okay,
though, Matt. Nothing happened,” Daniel said softly and gently
prised Matt’s hands away from the tabletop.

Matt slumped
back in his seat, and looked from Daniel to Ash and back again.
“Why the fuck didn’t either of you call me yesterday? I would have
left work and come straight over.” He flexed his hands a few times,
and Daniel watched, ever fascinated, as his claws slid back inside
the tips of his fingers.

Ash coughed
and looked pointedly at Daniel, then nodded at Matt. Subtlety was
not his strong point.

“Jordan came
in after they’d gone, and I sort of forgot about it for a few
hours.”

“Forgot about
it?” Matt’s eyebrows shot up. “How?”

Daniel thought
back to the way Jordan had easily taken his mind off everything,
and he fidgeted under Matt’s scrutiny. Something must have given
him away, because Matt’s expression softened.

“Oh, like
that?”

Daniel
nodded.

“So you and
Jordan are a thing now, then?”

Matt didn’t
sound angry or even wary, but Daniel felt a little defensive just
the same. He didn’t know what he was doing with Jordan. It was far
too soon to call it a relationship, but it wasn’t casual either. It
certainly hadn’t felt that way yesterday. He shrugged and turned to
put the kettle on. “I guess.”

“What happened
to just being friends?”

“I don’t
know…. Stuff happened.” Daniel poured three teas and turned to hand
one each to Matt and Ash.

Matt sat there
with a knowing look on his face as though Daniel had been stupid to
think he and Jordan could be just friends. Daniel fully expected
him to say “I told you so” any second now. Instead Matt blew on his
tea and studied Daniel over the top of the mug.

“When are you
seeing him again?”

“Um, next week
sometime. We’ve not made any plans yet. Why?”

“Because I
want to meet him.”

Daniel
refrained from groaning, but only just. “You’ve already met him.
You go to his gym.”

“Yes, but that
was before.”

“Before?”

“Oh, for God’s
sake.” Ash cut in, looking thoroughly unimpressed as he glanced
back and forth between them. “Daniel, don’t get so bloody
defensive, you know Matt can’t help how protective he gets over
you. Besides, I’d like to meet him, too.”

Daniel did
groan then.

Ash carried on
regardless, turning to face Matt now. “Matt, stop acting like
Daniel’s dad, you’re twenty-six, not fifty.”

Daniel
instinctively flinched at the mention of his dad, and Ash’s face
fell.

“Shit, sorry.
I didn’t think.”

He looked
mortified, and Daniel set his mug down and walked over to give Ash
a hug. “It’s okay.”

“I
should—”

“Ash.” Daniel
crouched down in front of him and put his hands on Ash’s knees for
balance. “It’s fine, really.”

And it was.
Daniel couldn’t help the way he reacted to the mention of his dad.
It still hurt, even after all these years, but he wasn’t about to
fall apart as he would’ve done when he was younger.

Ash sighed,
and still sounded apologetic when he spoke. “Sorry. You know my
brain doesn’t function properly before at least two cups of
tea.”

“And even then
it’s not great,” Daniel teased, earning himself a smile and a punch
on the arm.

“Look, I think
what Matt means to say, in his own caveman-type way, is that we’d
both like to meet Jordan and his friends. I think under the
circumstances”—Ash gestured to the newspaper Matt had brought home
yesterday—“everyone involved would benefit from getting to know
each other better. Don’t you?”

Daniel didn’t
relish the thought of some big family-type get-together. He and
Jordan had just started seeing each other, and it felt much too
soon to get anyone else involved. He hated the thought of strangers
knowing his business. Years of keeping himself to himself had made
him wary of letting people in. Jordan was one thing, but his
friends? Daniel didn’t know much about them, except they were
altereds, but with the recent spate of disappearances, Ash was
probably right. They needed to know that they could trust each
other if Daniel and Jordan were going to give this a go.

And Daniel
wanted to.

“Yeah okay,”
he said finally, and winced when his knees cracked as he stood.
“Jordan’s away for the weekend, anyway. In fact they all are—some
full moon tension-relief thing—but I’ll ask him about it when they
get back.”

“Okay.” Ash
set his mug down in the sink.

Matt just
nodded, not looking up. He got a bit funny whenever they spoke
about the full moon. Daniel had tried to talk about it once, asked
him how he felt about having some of the changes from the pathogen,
but not all of them. Matt had grinned and made some joke about how
he wished he’d got fangs “Because that would be cool.” Eventually
he’d become serious and told Daniel it was like being stuck in
between.

Around the
full moon Matt might get slightly grumpier, a bit less tactful, but
every now and then it had no effect at all. He’d said he felt like
a fraud sometimes. He had glanced up at Daniel, eyes bright in the
low light of the living room, a wistful look on his face. “Imagine
being able to change forms—to go from being a human into a
fucking wolf
.” He’d spread his hands out wide, flicking his
claws in and out. “I think that would be amazing.”

They’d sat in
silence for a long while after that, Matt lost to his thoughts, and
Daniel trying to keep a lid on his temper. It wasn’t Matt’s fault,
and he didn’t deserve Daniel’s anger, but as far as Daniel was
concerned, Matt knew fuck all about what it was like to feel truly
“in between.” At least Matt had got some of the changes. At least
the other altereds still accepted him as one of their own.