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  He finished his shower and dried off, then got dressed. Then, he spent quite a bit longer by the sink so that he could do his hair. He had a very specific style that he wore every single day, and he would settle for nothing less. Someone once told him it made him look like Edward Cullen, as if he should be insulted that he looked hot or something.

  After getting his hair exactly how he wanted it, Moody glanced at his phone. He’d bought it for like 50 cents at a thrift shop, one which was often frequented by Shadow Claw wolves, and it had lasted longer for him than most of the newer-model smartphones had for others. Shifting messed with electronics, which was damn annoying. Credit cards stopped working. Computers glitched. Elevators lost power. Phones died. However, the less intricate a system, the more chance a device had to survive. Unless someone really needed a fancy, expensive phone, a shifter was more likely to be found with a flip phone. The basic functions were the same, just without the added annoyance of all those extra, undeletable apps.

  It was about time for him to head out to the front of the garage, where he would meet up with Isaac. Other places could be arranged for meetings, since it could be inconvenient for someone to have to come out all the way to the west side of Pensacola just to leave again. However, Moody hadn’t received any notification from Isaac that this would have to be done. He could only assume they were going to meet in the usual place.

  Maybe he forgot. Wouldn’t that be a treat? Then I could go by myself and have an easy time of it without him there to hold me back. Or, I’d just work with someone else. Either way would be fine.

  He headed out to the front of the garage, passing by another wide area much like on the second floor. However, this floor was used more for business, for essentials. Gas stoves and counters and coffee pots had been installed over along one wall, near a former supply closet that now housed food supplies. In addition to the kitchen, there was a dining area, a laundry room, a gym, a makeshift infirmary, and really anything else that a person could ever ask for. If there wasn’t specifically a room for something, the supplies for it would be available in a closet somewhere. And if that wasn’t the case, one only had to mention their desire to Destiny or Cain. The results might not be instantaneous, but there would be results.

  As it was, Moody had no use for any of those facilities today. He’d do his laundry later, maybe putting a dent in the towel problem while he was at it, and he would also eat later. His stomach was too tense for him to feel hungry right now.

  There were no windows on the door that led to the outside. Moody had never had much of an opinion on this fact. Some doors had windows. Some doors were all window. Others had none, not even a square inch of glass. Now, he found that he was angry about this. He needed to be able to see outside. He had to know if Isaac was out there, waiting for him. Why the fuck wasn’t there a window? Of all the things Destiny had thought to do to make this place like a home, he’d just so happened to neglect the idea of a front window? It was almost like a personal assault. Like this had been deliberately ignored just to spite him.

  Moody gritted his teeth, fighting against the feeling that there might be something off with his reasoning. He was mad. That was all that mattered. Nothing else did.

  He reached out, prepared to shove the door open, and that was when he heard a low murmur of voices coming from outside. Stopping in his tracks, he strained his hearing. Might be nothing. Might be something. He didn’t know why he thought that, but he did.

  “Glad it’s not me going with him,” someone said. Moody recognized the voice as belonging to an alpha named Ulysses, who he strongly disliked. Ulysses was a busybody of an alpha, always in everyone’s business, like he thought he was leader or something.

  “Me neither,” someone else agreed. Moody also knew who they were, though the name wouldn’t come right to the tip of his tongue. He wasn’t exactly the most social of butterflies. “Can’t stand him. No one can.”

  They had to be talking about Isaac.

  “Such a loser.” Ulysses spoke louder, tossing his voice into the distance as if wanting to make sure that someone far away could hear him. Not a problem for him, since at his normal volume he could pretty much be heard a mile away. “Hey! Good luck dealing with him.”

  A softer, more mellow voice filtered through the door, the speaker sounding as though they were standing a bit far away. “I think I can handle it.”

  That was Isaac.

  Which meant Ulysses and the other wolf weren’t talking about him, they were talking about Moody.

  Angrier than before, Moody shoved his hand out to smack the door open. He hoped like hell that it would bash one of these asshole alphas right on the head, make them fall on their ass so everyone in the area could laugh at them.

  Instead, the door suddenly surged inward. His wrist bent backward in on itself. Pain jolted up his arm, making him yelp and jump away. Holding his injured wrist with his other hand, Moody glared as harsh as he could through the opened door.

  “Sorry, man. Didn’t know you were in here, just standing behind the door like a fucking creep.” The apology came from Ulysses, sounding genuine at first before he realized who it was that he was speaking to. “You get hurt?”

  “You nearly severed my wrist,” Moody growled. He narrowed his eyes until they were slits, thin slashes through which the world was warped and ugly. Out of all the ugly things, Ulysses was the ugliest of them all.

  “Good.” The broad alpha snorted and pushed his way fully inside. Moody had to lurch even further back or else risk being smacked with the door again.

  “For your information, I wasn’t standing there. I was going outside. Like a normal person.”

  Ulysses didn’t even bother with a reply for that, just kept going. He went in the direction of the staircase, then mounted them three at a time.

  Show off.

  The other alpha, who Moody couldn’t place still, even though it was driving him nuts by now, wandered off in the direction of the kitchen. The smells of cooking carried faintly from there, signaling that someone had started preparing breakfast. Common courtesy was to make enough for at least a few other people, though it also wasn’t exactly considered rude to take care of only yourself.

  The other alpha was probably going to mooch off that cook’s food. Moody might have done the same thing himself had his stomach not felt so iffy. The fact that he could feel Isaac’s intense gaze piercing into him really wasn’t helping matters.

  “Are you okay?”

  At the sound of Isaac’s voice, Moody looked down at his hand. That voice could still do things to him, still make him feel things, and he didn’t want to focus on those feelings. He concentrated on his wrist instead, which he was holding so hard that his hand was turning red, fingertips going numb. His fingers felt like vices and it was hard to pull his own grip away. When he managed, he saw that he’d left white marks on his own skin. Blood rapidly filtered back in and the white marks turned as red as his fingertips.

  The pain was already fading. It wasn’t really that bad. He said, “I don’t know. It might be sprained. I should probably not go for a ride today. Sorry, Isaac.”

  Even saying this wolf’s name made him ache inside.

  “If that’s what you want to do, I’ll trust your judgment.”

  Moody bristled a little, snapping his head up. He regretted giving his full focus to the other man, knowing how hard it would be for him to pull away again. “Are you saying I shouldn’t go?”

  “I’m saying you should do what you think you should do.” Isaac lifted one shoulder in an apathetic shrug. “Don’t read anything else into it, okay? You’ll get yourself all wound up.”

  Moody looked down at his hand again, wrenching his gaze away with a guilty feeling much like despair. As much as he didn’t like Isaac now, old feelings die hard.

  In any case, his fingertips were no longer tingling, and the pain was really negligible.

  “You know what? I think I’ll be fine. Let’s go. Where’s your bike?”<
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  Isaac nodded his head over in the direction of the parking lot. “Over where I always park. You remember where that is, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Meet you on the street, then.”

  Isaac sauntered off, his hips swaying in a very sexual and confident manner. Though he didn’t want to, though he tried to look away, Moody followed the alpha with his gaze. It was safer to do so when Isaac wasn’t watching.

  Isaac moved like a predator, a stalking wolf, though right now he was in the body of a man. His skin was pale, which was really an accomplishment in a state like Florida. Moody knew from their past experiences together that Isaac was very much a night dweller, living his life in an almost backward manner. He rose around noon, slept just before dawn.

  The curves of his muscles were covered in tattoos, a rippling dance of colorful ink that made appearances everywhere on his body. His leather jacket and black jeans fit his body perfectly, giving no illusions as to his shape and form.

  Though his face was turned away from Moody right now, the omega knew its every detail intimately. He could recall everything from the brief time they had spent together. Isaac’s strong cheekbones and his powerful jawline, outlined with a well-trimmed fringe of beard. His hair was dirty blonde, golden and deep all at once, and the perfect complement to his whiskey-pale eyes.

  He was the kind of man who exuded charisma like a scent, like a pheromone, drawing in the unwitting and the foolish. He couldn’t walk anywhere without being accosted by strangers who were suddenly admirers of his very existence, on the brink of worshipping the ground he walked on. They would have done anything he asked of them, or even suggested.

  And he rejected them all.

  The fucking weirdo.

  Isaac turned around, clearly sensing he was being watched. Their eyes met. Isaac stared at him, unmoving, statuesque in his focus. His eyelids were lowered, an effortless bedroom look.

  Moody dropped his gaze in a hurry, turning away in the opposite direction so that he could fetch his own motorcycle. It was a Harley-Davidson roadster, an average hog from an okay company that tended to try to capitalize on the dreams of the downtrodden, the old, the starry-eyed. Moody had held no such illusions when he went to get his first bike, shooting down all the tempting offers that the salesperson threw his way. He eventually wore the man down, got him to show Moody where the plain bikes were. No extra features. Just good, old-fashioned steel and speed.

  Moody loved the little bike. It had never let him down and, in turn, he tuned it and took care to keep it in the best shape possible. It was the first thing he had ever bought with his own money, his first big purchase. No matter how many other bikes he had throughout the rest of his entire life, this would be the one that he would remember with the most fondness.

  Grabbing the handlebars, he kicked his leg up and over to straddle the bike. Grabbing his helmet, he buckled it under his chin. Then, he jammed his keys in the ignition and listened to the engine as it snarled to life. The rough snarl eased out into a constant, purring growl.

  Fluttering his fingers, Moody then tightened them on the handlebars. His wrist ached in an absent sort of way, there and then gone. Ignoring the pain, he moved off, turning out of the parking spot and looping back to head in the direction of the street.

  Isaac waited for him as he said he would, perched atop his sportster and looking like a fallen god. Early morning sun gleamed off his skin, turning it a shade of silvery porcelain. He wore no helmet, letting the warm ocean breeze tug at his hair.

  “You ready, then?” he asked. His voice made it seem as if he didn’t much care what the answer was one way or another.

  Moody hid the fact that this irked him. It seemed to him that Isaac, of all people, should very much care. Instead of answering, he let his engine roar loudly as he pulled out in front of the alpha.

  Isaac let him lead the way, and Moody wasn’t sure what he felt about that.

  2

  Odd as it might have been, Isaac actually enjoyed the patrol with Moody. The omega wolf was so incredibly stubborn, so firmly set in his peculiar ways, that it was fun to see how he would react in certain situations. And letting him get his way, to see him struggle to choose between delight and continued orneriness, was really what tickled Isaac the most. He never knew anyone to resist the idea of enjoying themselves before, until he met Moody.

  That had been two years ago, when Moody was just 18 and he himself was 23. However, the Moody back then and the Moody that he was today just weren’t the same people. Something had happened to change him in the time since they had been apart. Isaac wondered about it, though it wasn’t his place to go asking sensitive questions like that. Instead, he just kept his thoughts to himself during the patrol and focused on the job at hand.

  While not exactly the largest city in the world, Pensacola was still large enough to make riding around its borders an arduous task. They had to stick to the smaller streets, or else they would get caught up on the interstate and find themselves in Alabama before they had a chance to get off again. Moody led the way, constantly veering his bike around to cut Isaac off whenever he felt that his position might be threatened. Isaac knew that was the case because Moody kept glancing back at him, his eyes burning hot and wary from the shadows underneath his helmet.

  Isaac would occasionally press his advantage on purpose, making a game of it. As the hours passed, Moody grew braver, more aggressive, probably reveling in a sense of dominance that he as an omega did not often feel.

  He smiled sometimes. No matter how much he tried to hide it, Isaac was just too perceptive. He saw the way those lips quirked up at the edges, how they quivered as he fought.

  He remembered kissing those lips, claiming them with his own, taking them as they should be taken, tugging on them, sucking them. Even just thinking about it, the feel of Moody’s breath hitting his cheeks, his smooth skin, was enough to send a slow, lazy wave of warmth through his groin and up into his stomach where it became a starburst of heat. Tightening his legs on his bike, Isaac reminded himself to focus. He was doing something very important here. The safety of the combined packs were partially in his hands; as he was a member currently, that meant a great deal to him.

  The point of the patrols was to check out what might be going on with the territory. A pack didn’t just have responsibility to its own members. That wasn’t what being a biker was about, either. Bikers were white knights in disguise, helping out those who needed it, making sure that everything was as it should be. A motorcyclist might not be inclined to call the cops if some little old lady’s purse was being stolen, but they could damn sure take the problem into their own hands.

  That sort of vigilante watch system was more important now than it had ever been, especially in the face of all the losses that had come before. Something like that needed to never happen again.

  It would, though. Isaac knew that for a fact, because he had dealt with similar awful situations before. That was the reason he had come to Pensacola in the first place. Rather, the reason he had been forced to leave his home. Tragedy did not just stop at one instance, instead snowballing, gathering potency, until a breaking point was reached.

  But, today, nothing was amiss as far as the two of them could see. All wolves were in charge of keeping an eye on the every-day going-ons of the city, but this outer area was where trouble might lie in wait, brewing, and percolating. If there was anything to see, they would have seen it, scented it, or heard it.

  There was nothing, and the hours passed in peace until they ended up right back where they had started. Moody led the way to the parking lot in front of the garage, then peeled off to go his own way. After watching him for a moment, Isaac nudged his sportster over in the opposite direction to park where he usually did.

  Why does a parking garage have a parking lot around it?

  He wondered that idly while turning off his bike and dismounting. This was a thought he often had, a puzzle which he had not shared with anyone el
se as of yet. His life more or less depended on such insignificant ponderings now, since thinking about anything deeper only caused him pain. He was in a sort of limbo, caught between past and present, incapable of fully appreciating either part. He couldn’t go back, couldn’t move on. There was only life as it was right now.

  A good life, with the morning chill chased away by gentle rays of golden sunlight. The scent of salt and sand clung to every breeze, was part of every breath no matter how far a person might be from the ocean and its beaches. Too good, really. There was almost no point to it. Why bother doing anything, when it was all so apparently perfect?

  Grabbing on to the conundrum Isaac had presented himself, he turned away from his bike and very nearly ran into Moody.

  He stopped before he even really registered that the omega was there, instincts saving them from bumping together. He didn’t back away, though. A true alpha never did.

  Up close, it was hard to miss Moody’s resemblance to the popular image of the modern, sexy vampire found in hopeless teen novels. He was still very much a wolf and would never be anything else; it was just more of the look he had adopted, brooding, sullen, and undeniably appealing even to those who wouldn’t normally have considered themselves fans of that style.

  His hair was dark brown, teased to perfection before the ride and now rendered messy by his helmet. His eyes were deliberately heavy-lidded, judging everything set before them. They were the color of cinnamon, bringing spice and heat to mind. Slender muscle definition filled out a lanky, graceful body. He wore a length of thick chain around his neck, like a collar, the only bit of jewelry to accent a black t-shirt and dark blue jeans.

  Even such a simple outfit made him look like he belonged in a calendar, like he was a model at a photoshoot who had mastered the art of being naturally hot.

  This model of a wolf was just not the Moody Isaac had known in the past. The difference was both exciting and somehow disappointing. He wanted the smiles, the glimpses of playfulness witnessed on their patrol together.