Page 8 of Alpha Awakened

“Sir?”

“Get your stuff. I’m showing you to our barracks.”

“Yes, sir,” Mitchell answered with a nod.

Ice turned and walked out of the ready room, not waiting to see if Mitchell was following behind him. Outside of the armory, he crossed the base, heading toward the small building that exclusively housed the 448.

“No general barracks then?” Mitchell asked.

“No,” Ice said as he opened the door and lead his new partner inside. “It’s not pretty but it’s home.”

“Looks good to me.”

“There’s two empty rooms.” He nodded at the two rooms with open doors. “Take your pick.”

Mitchell didn’t move to choose. Instead, he looked up at Ice. In the bright indoor light, Ice saw that the corporal’s eyes were a pale jade green with flecks of gold.

“Which one is better?”

“What?”

“Does one have a draft? Does one have an odd smell and no one can figure out where it’s coming from?”

Ice stared at him, not comprehending why the answers to his questions mattered. “They’re rooms,” he said gruffly.

Another smile, this one with a hint of cheek as one side of Mitchell’s mouth quirked up higher than the other.

“Alright then.”

He watched as Mitchell poked his head in one room and then the other before choosing the first. He’d picked the one right next to Ice’s room. They would share a wall.

“Settle in,” Ice ordered crisply.

His job done, Ice went in his room and closed the door. Corporal Mitchell could explore the rest of the place by himself.

* * *

Hazard looked around the small room that was now his own. There was a bed just big enough to comfortably fit an alpha, with plain, serviceable sheets, a blanket in non-descript gray, and a single pillow. Against one wall was an armoire on short, stout legs for his belongings. On the other wall there was a small desk and ladderback chair. The floors were gray tile, the walls white and unadorned.

He opened the door on the opposite side of the room from the bed to see a small bath with a tiny walk-in shower. The room was bare and boring. But no worse or nicer than others he’d lived in.

Ortiz had specified that on-base housing was a requirement for this special operations unit. He appreciated that the 448 was all housed together. Wolves needed that closeness to help build a pack, but far too often they weren’t given that opportunity in the US Legion. As he started to unpack, Hazard hoped that he would bond with his new team the way that wolves needed to bond.

Once he had everything stored away with standard military neatness, he checked out the rest of the 448 barracks. The gray tile floor and white walls were repeated in the common areas. The closed doors he left alone, understanding those were the private quarters for his new team members. There was a fully equipped kitchen with a scarred butcher block table and four ugly mismatched chairs. In the common area, a big, overstuffed couch, two armchairs, a coffee table made of an old door sawed in half and set on top of two packing crates, and a TV crowded the room. Like Ice had said, it wasn’t pretty but it was his home for the foreseeable future.

Hazard sniffed the air. To his surprise, the scents of the 448 members weren’t layered together in the common area. Ortiz’s sharp and minty scent and Jax’s scent of fresh grass were there but they were separate, as if they didn’t often hang out in the space at the same time. And there was barely a trace of Ice’s — a warm cedar scent that was at odds with what he’d observed of the man so far. He detected the faintest hint of an old scent, something chalky, it must belong to the member who’d retired.

He’d just finished his inspection when the front door opened and Ortiz and Jax walked in.

“Pick your room okay?” Ortiz asked.

“Yes, ma’am. And all unpacked.”

“Good. We’ll eat dinner, then you can get some sleep. You’ve earned it.”

Hazard nodded. He was tired. A meal, followed by a hot shower, and then bed sounded like the perfect way to end a long day.

Before he went to sit down, he cast a glance at Ice’s closed bedroom door. He wondered if he’d passed the captain’s test. It’d be nice to know if he had Anderson’s approval. If he didn’t have it yet, he’d have to continue doing what he’d been trained to do until he earned it.

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