Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(51)

When his big brother decided to try a homemade parachute, twelve-year-old Alexei had done all the research and made sure the stitches were strong, and that Brodie had a soft landing place. And when Brodie set his mind on getting a permanent tattoo at age sixteen, with ink that would last through the shift, it was Alexei who’d talked him out of the large grinning skull with one tooth.

Brodie had ended up agreeing to Alexei’s choice: a small family crest Alexei had designed in memory of their parents. Alexei, too, had gotten inked with the crest when he was eighteen. He was still too angry with Brodie to add a memory of his brother to the crest, but the two of them had been so proud of their original inkings.

“Thank the tattoo gods you were with me that day, little bro,” Brodie had said to him when they were older and having a couple of beers one lazy summer evening. “Fuck, but that skull was ugly. Etta would’ve probably taken one look at me and walked in the other direction.”

Brodie’s wolf had been a darker gray than Alexei’s, with a dot of white between his ears. His friends had begun calling him Skunk at some point in their teenage years, and the nickname had stuck with his peer group. Brodie had never minded, laughing and pretending to lift his tail as if to release a skunk’s trademark stink.

Alexei wanted to laugh at the visual, wanted to remember how much fun he’d had with his brother and, later, with his brother’s lovely, gentle mate. Etta had fit into their relationship as if she’d always been there, a slender reed of a woman who’d baked Alexei his favorite muffins and never made him feel an intruder in the couple’s lives when he visited.

If he stayed away too long, she’d call him up and order him to dinner with her and Brodie. The three of them had had such good times. He should remember those, focus on those. But without Memory’s spirit and warmth beside him, the wound felt too raw. Alexei didn’t know if it would ever heal.

Etta was dead. And Brodie had broken his promise.

Throwing back his head, he howled out his rage at the sky, howled out his anger. In the aftermath, his wolf stood on a promontory staring out at the sprawl of dark green below him, the empathic compound a small, rain-clouded glow in the far distance. In one of those cabins slept a woman who made him crazy.

She’d called him a chicken!

His wolf bared its teeth, wanting to run down and nip at her for her insolence until she apologized and petted him with words about his bravery and strength. God, the idea of it was a pounding compulsion in his gut.

Snarling, the wolf took a step back. The force of his need to go to her had managed to get through to even the wildest part of his nature, harshly reminding the wolf of what was at stake: his sanity . . . and Memory’s life.

Distance was critical.

Yet even as he turned away from the view and began to lope across the landscape again, he knew that keeping his distance would be a serious problem. He’d found her, and he would let no one hurt her. Until Memory could defend herself, Alexei would be her protector.

A howl sang across the mountains.

Halting, Alexei listened, then opened his mouth in a growl. He wasn’t the least surprised when a big, shaggy wolf with black tips to the gray of his fur loped out of the trees only minutes later despite the fact that Matthias was based out of the den near the Cascade Range.

The other lieutenant was the last packmate Alexei wanted to see; along with Judd, Matthias was one of his closest friends. Alexei had gotten blind drunk with the other lieutenant the day of Brodie’s and Etta’s funerals. Judd couldn’t drink without his Tk abilities going haywire, but he’d been there the entire time, and when Alexei wanted to fight someone, anyone, the former Arrow had put his body on the line.

Matthias and Judd had all but carried Alexei into bed and Matthias had slept in wolf form beside his bed the entire night. He knew far too much about the scars on Alexei’s heart.

Ignoring Alexei’s snarl, Matthias bumped the side of his body against Alexei’s. He was bigger than Alexei in both forms, but Alexei was more than capable of holding his own against the other man. He didn’t budge an inch at the bump. When he threatened to bite Matthias’s muzzle, the surprisingly agile wolf jumped back and dropped its jaw in a lupine laugh. Stubborn asshole wasn’t leaving.

Putting his head down, Alexei began to run. Matthias ran beside him. The rain faded a quarter of an hour into it, the clouds parting to reveal the silvery light of the moon. They were both panting under the moonlight when he finally brought them to a stop. Coincidentally—yeah, right—it was at another outlook that gave him a view over the empathic compound. Tiny cabins glowed with light below.

He shifted, then shoved a hand against Matthias’s side, the other man’s coat thick and healthy. “I told you to stay in your den.” Matthias had called him a few days earlier, mentioned he was thinking of swinging by the main den. Well aware of the reason for his friend’s sudden urge to visit, Alexei had growled at him to focus on his own den.

Judd and Hawke were already on his case; he didn’t need his closest childhood friend to come poke his big snout into Alexei’s current frame of mind. Now, said snout nudged at his ribs before Matthias folded himself down into a seated position on the outlook, his eyes on the compound below.

Sighing in defeat, Alexei leaned back against a nearby tree, and allowed the chill night air to cool down his body. He only groaned when Judd appeared out of the trees with a box of beer. “Seriously? How the fuck did you even find us?” The former Arrow was teleport-capable but couldn’t lock on to faces.