Tamed By The She-Wolf

“Aunt Miriam,” Angeline called to the woman entering the kitchen.

As a child, Angeline didn’t think her aunt favored her mother very much. But as Miriam aged, not only had she grown to look more like her sister, she had developed some of the same mannerisms and quirks.

With Miriam, Angeline could almost imagine what it would’ve been like to have grown up with her mother. Her aunt had even encouraged Angeline’s love of music and paid for her lessons when her own father refused to do so.

“I gave Uncle Jimmy the inventory list, but despite the numbers now, you might want to increase the meat order for more steaks and ground beef. The full moon and Valentine’s Day is Friday.”

“Thanks for the reminder.” Miriam wiped her hand on the apron tied around her waist as she walked toward Angeline. “Did Jimmy talk to you?” she asked quietly, touching Angeline’s arm.

“Of course I did.” He brushed past them and headed to their office to thumbtack the inventory list to the bulletin board. More than once Angeline had suggested they modernize the books, but her aunt and uncle were old school and feared entrusting their tried-and-true manual accounting system to a computer program.

“Well?” Her mouth drawn in a pensive grimace, Miriam peered at Angeline with the same dark shade of blue she remembered seeing in her mother’s eyes.

“I told Jimmy that I would consider his offer, but he had to promise not to retire anytime soon.”

Miriam’s eyes twinkled with tears, and she hugged Angeline. “Thank you for putting his mind at ease.”

“It’s the least I could do for all that you and Jimmy have done for me over the years.” She stepped back from Miriam, willing her tears to stay deep in the wells. An O’Brien never showed weakness, a mantra her father had drilled into Angeline and her brothers after their mother’s tragic and untimely death.

“I should get out there and help Tessa.”

“Yes, you should. There’s at least one customer anxiously waiting to see you.” Miriam shooed her from the kitchen.

Angeline ducked into the employee room to put on her half apron and grab an order pad before walking into the dining room. Tessa finished taking an order at a table in Angeline’s section then beelined for her.

“You have two orders in, plus this one.” Tessa handed her an order ticket. “Table twenty should have their food coming out in a couple of minutes. Seventeen just went in. And have you met Lincoln, the new guy in town?”

Angeline followed Tessa’s gaze to the bistro table for two in the bar where Lincoln nursed his beer. An untouched bottle sat on the placemat across from him. Curious, but definitely not jealous, despite the little kick in her gut, she couldn’t help wondering who would be joining him.

“He’s really hot, even if he does keep company with Reed—the rat bastard.” Although Tessa had mumbled the last part beneath her breath, Angeline’s wolfan ears had heard every word her recently dumped friend had uttered.

“Lincoln is my new neighbor,” Angeline said, watching a kitchen helper deliver two steak platters to Lincoln’s table.

“Lucky you.” Tessa sighed dreamily.

“No. Not me,” Angeline said, but Tessa had already walked away.

Over the next hour Angeline had a steady flow of customers and only managed to say “Hey” to Lincoln on her way to and from the bar with drink orders. The beer and food at the second place setting remained untouched throughout his entire meal.

Periodically, she’d felt him watching her. Perhaps he wanted an explanation for her behavior this morning. She wasn’t quite sure herself. His warning that she should not expect him to become her new confidant shouldn’t have bothered her. She knew better than to expect anything from a Dogman. Though Angeline felt no obligation to provide an explanation for her reaction, she did want to let him know that she wasn’t angry at him.

Waiting for the bartender to fill a drink order, Angeline casually strolled to Lincoln’s table. The beer for his guest remained untouched. “How was your day?”

“Informative.” His eyes still looked tired and barely a fleeting smile dusted his lips. “I spent most of the time running the woods with Reed.”

“He’s a good guy. Smart. Loyal.”

“Cynical,” Lincoln added.

“He got shot by a poacher a few months ago.”

Lincoln swung his left foot out. The hiking boot concealed the prosthetic within. “A bomb blasted me out of a two-story window.”

“You still have nightmares.”

“I imagine he does, too,” Lincoln said easily. “Our failures haunt us far longer than our victories stay with us.”

“He took a bullet for Shane. I wouldn’t call that a failure.”

“The failure is in believing we are invincible.” Lincoln guzzled the last few swallows of his beer and slammed down the mug on the table. “And learning we aren’t.”

“You sound a bit cynical yourself.”

Lincoln shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “Cynicism colors one’s judgment and clouds the vision. What happened, happened. All I can do is adapt and keep going.”

“Are you waiting for Reed?”

“No.” Lincoln fiddled with the edge of his linen napkin. “I owe an old friend a steak dinner.”

“You’ve been a while. Did he take a wrong turn somewhere?”

The muscle in Lincoln’s jaw twitched. He lifted his sorrow filled gaze. “Died in the line of duty.”

Angeline’s stomach dropped, a sick feeling rose in her chest and her heart hurt as if it had broken all over again. Not for her loss but for all those who’d lost loved ones, living and dead, to the Program.

Dogmen turned their backs on everything and everyone they’d ever known. All communication with family and friends ceased. No one ever knew what became of their loved one unless they received a death notification or an injury forced the soldier into retirement, like Lincoln soon would be.

Long simmering anger ignited Angeline’s tongue. “Instead of eating and drinking with the dead, maybe your sympathies should lie with those he abandoned when he became a Dogman. And, for what? To feed his ego and die who knows where without regard to those he left behind?”

“Angeline—” Lincoln began.

“Have you called your family? Do they know what happened to you? Do they know you’re even alive?”

His guilty look answered for him.

“Unbelievable!” Angeline barely managed to keep the shriek out of her voice.

“They’re better off not knowing.”

“That’s a lie Dogman tell themselves to keep their consciences clear. Speaking from experience, it’s not better. It’s far worse than any nightmare you’ve ever had.”

Though angry and hurt by Tanner’s rejection, Angeline didn’t immediately stop loving him. Not knowing his whereabouts or his situation had been an unrelenting torture. Until one day when a sharp pain sliced all the way to her soul. In that moment, she knew Tanner was dead. He would never come home to her. He would never come home to anyone, except in a box.

Despite Lincoln’s request for her not to leave, Angeline walked away and collected the drinks from the bar. Delivering the beverages to appropriate patrons, she caught a glimpse of Lincoln making his way to the exit.

Good riddance, she thought without truly meaning it. Neither Tanner’s choices nor his fate were Lincoln’s fault.

A deep part of herself compelled Angeline to apologize for her behavior. Another part of her refused.

As a Dogman, Lincoln represented the very ideal she hated. She’d lost her first love—her only love—to the Program, and it destroyed the life they should’ve had.

Lincoln slipped out of the restaurant and Angeline’s heart clenched, a phantom ache that his ridiculous homage had resurrected. It had absolutely nothing to do with the devastated look on his face when she’d left his table.

And if she told herself that enough times, by the time she got off work she might actually believe it.

Chapter 7

“Lila!”

Lincoln wrenched himself awake before hitting the ground in his nightmare. In reality, he couldn’t remember anything past those first moments of falling out the window. His mind remained blank until the moment he woke up, alone in the hospital at the Program’s headquarters in Germany a week later, missing a leg.

Whenever he asked about his team, the medical staff would merely pat his shoulder and say that he needed to focus on his own recovery. The tight smiles and averted eyes that followed told him all he needed to know.

His team was dead. And he was to blame.

Lincoln threw aside the sheets and sat up. His breaths continued to come hard and fast and would likely continue until his heart stopped forcibly pounding from the dream-induced adrenaline rush.

Swinging his good leg over the side of the bed, he stared at his scarred stump. Life would never be the same but he refused to simply accept retirement and quietly fade into the background. Not until he finished what he started. For Dayax. And for his team, whose loyalty had been rewarded with death.

Heavy-handedly, Lincoln rubbed his stump, stinging with phantom sensations. The physical therapist had chided him for being too aggressive with the desensitizing massage. The doctors had said the same about his push for recovery. They didn’t understand that the pain distracted him from the quagmire of self-pity and gave him a definitive obstacle to conquer.

He squirmed into his knee shorts and snatched the sleeve off the nightstand. Pulling on the elastic-like fabric, he smoothed out the wrinkles until the material gloved his stump like his own skin, except for the glaring pale color that was nowhere near his naturally brown skin tone. He reached for the bionic limb that had fallen to the floor and fitted the cup onto the remaining part of his leg.

Carefully standing, Lincoln rocked on the prosthetic, allowing his weight to push out the air while his stump slid securely into place. The first steps were tentative. By the time he reached the open bedroom door, his gait became as fluid as it could be walking on an artificial leg.

The lights were on in the living room and kitchen. Even though his wolfan vision allowed him to see clearly in the dark, he didn’t want to take a chance of tripping over something he’d overlooked.

Staring into the refrigerator at the lunch meat and four bottles out of a six-pack of beer, Lincoln knew he’d have to get more substantial food soon. A creepy-crawly feeling spread across his chest. He shivered, shaking off the sensation that gave rise to a childhood memory he’d rather not revisit.

Lincoln grabbed a beer and closed the refrigerator door. Eating civilian food rather than rations and mess hall grub, and civilian life in general, felt odd. Especially since he didn’t have his team alongside him. They had done everything together. And he missed them, more than he could ever express.

The satphone on the counter chimed and an unknown number flashed across the screen. His heart suddenly beat double-time.

Lincoln picked up the phone. “Adams.”

“¿Que pasa, capitán?” The masculine voice shocked Lincoln’s ear.

His heart stilled and the blood in his veins cooled. Without heat, his muscles froze up and yet his knees felt weak and rubbery.

Phone in hand and plastered against his ear, Lincoln leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. “¿Quién eres tú?”

“It’s Damien,” the man said. “Did the fallout of that two-story building screw up your brain?”

“Damien Marquez died over two months ago,” Lincoln answered as his “screwed-up” brain tried to reconcile the familiar voice he heard to the belief that his team had perished in the explosion.

“I’m not dead, Linc,” the man on the other end of the line continued. “In case you’re wondering, neither are the others. Well, except for Lila. There wasn’t even enough of her—”

“Shut the hell up, Marquez.” The guy really had no tact.

“Now you sound like the guy I remember.” Damien snorted.

“I don’t see what’s so funny.”

“You never did.” A stark pause hung between them.

“How did you make it out of the building before it collapsed?” Lincoln asked, not wanting to give in to a mounting sense of relief.

“The blast knocked me off the stairs and I landed on the ground floor. Brax and Nico pulled me out.” The dark emotion in Damien’s voice as he spoke suggested he clearly remembered every horrifying moment. “Sam—she took care of you until the medics arrived.”

All but one member of his team had survived. One of the worry knots in Lincoln’s chest loosened.

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