“I’m fine. I was thinking about that man back there. My company may work with Riaz—so any rogues that they find that need someone beyond a healer to look at, we do, even though it’s not a morgue—but you guys aren’t humans, therefore, you don’t have the exact laws and rules that we do.”
“Meaning you’re not used to dealing with dead bodies on a daily basis,” she said softly, giving me a sad look. “Are you going to be okay?”
“He was your friend, or at least your Packmate. I should be the one asking you.”
She met my gaze again, and unlike most wolves, I didn’t feel the need to lower my eyes. I didn’t think that was because she wasn’t as dominant, though. There was a presence to her, a force. But I didn’t need to lower my gaze at all, to bow to her dominance or feel afraid, as if I needed to show that I wasn’t trying to threaten her or intimidate her.
“Spencer was a Packmate, and I didn’t know him well, but I have lost friends. I’ve had to help pick their bodies up from the battlefield and help them be laid to rest with dignity.”
“I’m sorry. Were you at the wars with the Centrals?” I asked, thinking of the battles that had happened between two warring Packs over thirty years ago. Now, not all of those wars and battles between Packs were common knowledge. I was close enough to the Starlight Pack that I knew more than others.
Kaylee snorted. “I was an infant during most of that, but thank you for not asking my age.”
I winced. “A lot of the Starlight Pack wolves that I work with are either your age or nearly five hundred. It’s hard to tell when you’re a human. You know?”
“I can’t usually tell the exact age of a wolf either, sometimes there’s an age and a presence to them, but other times they surprise you by being a humorous dorky person who is nearly four hundred.”
“So you must be referring to the time when we humans found out wolves existed.”
She nodded. “That, and the other skirmish with the Aspens.”
“I’m sorry you lost people.”
“Thank you. It’s never easy, and we still shouldn’t be losing people after all this time. But my job is to make sure that we can find the people who are lost before it’s too late.” She swallowed hard, and I wanted to reach out, to tell her that I was sorry, but I had already done that, and that would make it more awkward.
“Anyway, while Spencer’s family is here, his Pack is with the Redwoods, up north with me. So, I will talk to my Alpha and his family to see what I’ll do next.”
“I’ll help you with whatever you need,” I said.
“You found him, and I should probably apologize for tossing you to the ground.”
My cheeks heated and I shrugged, rubbing the back of my neck with my hand. “No, it’s fine. It did look a little odd me standing over him like that.” I swallowed hard again, my stomach rolling.
“So, you’re working with the rogues? I mean to find them.”
I nodded, grateful to go back to what I was good at. Science. Talking about science—not so much because that would require talking to other people and especially a beautiful woman, and I wasn’t that great at that, but I was learning.
“Come on, Rio said that they would be moving Spencer in here, and then we can take some blood samples and see what I can do. I’ll treat him with the utmost respect.”
She let out a small growl, then I froze.
“I know you will because I’ll be standing beside you the whole time. The others may trust you, but I don’t know you. You seem nice, and while I do apologize for throwing you on the ground, I would do it again and again at that moment. My Packmate is dead. I don’t know you. I don’t know this Pack. And while I am grateful for how kind you are being, I want to know what happened.”
I nodded, swallowing hard. “I want to know what happened too. The problem is two-fold. There are rogues that are increasing, at least from what Riaz said. I don’t have the data on that, to tell you the truth.”
“Okay.”
She wasn’t going to give an inch, and for that, I respected her. I wasn’t Pack, I didn’t need to know the ins and outs, but I needed to know enough.
“The other problem is these bite marks. There is something being injected into them or attacking them that isn’t like anything I’ve seen. Maybe you have, as there isn’t just a nice Pack archive I could look up research and problems that have arisen in the past.”
“Yes, because putting up all of our illnesses and weaknesses for the government to see seems like a great idea,” she said dryly.
“First, I’m not the government. Second, I would never share that information outside of this group.”
“There are ways to get information out of people, Jason.”
Why did this woman saying my name like that do things to me? There was something seriously fucking wrong with me.