Page 9 of The SnowFang Storm

So Burian wanted to nurse his insides with hot chocolate and large pink marshmallows. Cye still looked at me hopefully. I gestured to him to keep moving. “So this is a typical request from Burian?”

“They’re his favorite.” Cye nodded enthusiastically, with a slight emphasis on favorite.

Making small requests for preferred food items was normal in a wealthy, small pack like SnowFang. No reason for me to refuse to bring our resident lamprey a few dollars’ worth of his favorite treats unless I wanted to reinforce his bad status with the pack.

My knee-jerk reaction was to tell him to buy his own damn pink marshmallows, but the thing that really pissed me off was private between him and Sterling (and to an unknown but presumably lesser extent, Jun) and Sterling wanted to keep it that way. Enforcing the rules wasn’t my job. Nurturing was.

SnowFang needed nurturing, except my face didn’t appear next to the word nurturing in the dictionary. I needed to figure out nurturing. SnowFang was the most practice I was likely to get before I had my own pups. Maybe a goldfish was in order.

I’d gotten used to the discontent of various SilverPaw when my father’s leadership didn’t suit their whims (most vocally, Beta Daniel) and I’d grown up watching my parents live with the rage, discontent, and anger of wolves who felt they’d been treated unfairly, or were angry when the pack didn’t run their way.

I tapped my fingernails on the screen of my phone. Maybe I was too comfortable being the bad guy. I mulled it over as I glanced back at Hamid.

Yeah…

“Hamid,” I said.

“Ma’am?”

“Any chance you’d call me Winter instead?” Mrs. Mortcombe or ma’am made me feel like someone’s school marm.

“No, ma’am.”

I sighed. “You got described as taciturn, laconic, and pithy. How did my matrix describe me?”

He visibly balked at answering, then said, “Unvarnished, pragmatic, and adversarial.”

“Oh, I don’t know about adversarial,” Cye said, then, as he looked at me, his face sort of shifted around and he smiled shakily, then added, “But those sound like good traits for a Lu—Boss Lady.”

He spun around and marched off towards baked goods.

“So did you just get assigned, or did you get a chance to refuse?” I asked Hamid as we followed Cye.

“I am a professional, ma’am, regardless of how I answer that question.”

“So there shouldn’t be a problem with you answering it.”

“Both. I was assigned and had a chance to object. I did not object. Obviously.”

“What on Earth made you want to take this assignment?” I asked him with a laugh.

He didn’t answer.

“Oh, come on, Hamid. You can tell me the damn truth. Two months ago, I was trying to figure out how to pay the light bill while my brother drank his paycheck.”

He relented after another minute. “I wanted a more stable and long-term assignment rather than doing bespoke short-term missions. Most employers looking for long-term protection do not find me an appropriate match due to my matrix and physicals.”

“So I was probably the best offer you’d have gotten.”

Another non-reply.

I sighed. “You’re not going to offend me except by thinking I’m too stupid to figure this all out and too precious to hear the truth.”

“Yes. You were the first long-term opportunity offered to me in six years. I did not need to be told take it or leave it.” He said this absolutely deadpan.

Great. So my bodyguard was from the this or nothing camp.

“I take pride in my work, ma’am,” he added.

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