To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

Present day, Washington, US…

“This is what you’re going to do,” Trenton hisses in the man’s ear. “When the healing wolf gets here, you do not speak a word about me and Kyle being here or that baby will be dead long before any sort of sickness can take it and you’ll be known forever as a traitor. Understood?”

“Yes,” he whispers.

“And you?” Kyle shakes the woman a bit to get her to stop staring at the baby in his hands and pay attention. It had been all too easy to spin a pretty tale to the babysitter and get the baby all to themselves to hold hostage, lying in wait to lay out their terms when the parents came home. Negotiations have gone well thus far, and then all that’s left to do is snatch the wolf and get it out to the other boys who will pull up with the car during the meeting and get in position.

“I understand, but-but my daughter is still going to be healed right? That’s how you’ll know who the wolf is?”

Kyle rolls his eyes. “The baby will be all better by the time we get the wolf outta here.”

“What if...what if it’s not obvious? What if you can’t see it happening, how will you know you’re got the right wolf?”

“Oh, we’ll know. The bosses say we’ll know it when we see its eyes, no mistakin’ it.” Trenton grins at his comrade. “We’re in for a real treat boys.”

Present day, Washington, US…

Slate is more unsettled about this visit than he’s letting on to Gray, but what he told her is true. He’d exhausted all his options for backup. He told Asher he’d remain in close contact as long as possible. Asher’s job is remote tech support, so he’s just sitting in his room right now, but he’s usually on calls almost all shift so he doesn’t have a ton of attention to spare.

His dad left town yesterday for another check-in with some alphas from further east and won’t be back for another two days, so he’s largely unaware of what’s going on. Slate had texted him before he and Gray left pack territory that they were heading out to this assignment an hour away from home, but he’d purposefully left out some key details. Namely, the fact that this outing may be riskier than they’d originally thought.

At the end of the day, all they have to go on is Asher’s gut feeling--which Slate puts a lot of stock into, but that’s not exactly something that would stand up in trial. It would unequivocally appear as a slight to Alpha DeMarco, the great-aunt of the baby they’re going to heal, if they reneged on their deal.

If anything goes wrong...Slate will just have to be enough.

Still on the road? comes from Asher just as Slate is pulling off the freeway.

For another five minutes, Slate shoots back. He can feel Asher’s nerves mounting with every update he receives, but the best Slate can do is remain calm and push those feelings down the bond as best as he can.

He hears a buzz from his right and sees Gray lift her hips out of the corner of his eyes to slip her phone from her back pocket. “Sara?” he takes a guess.

“Yeah,” Gray mumbles, fingers already flying. After a moment, she shuts off the phone. “Yeah,” she says again, “wanted to know if we’d made it yet.”

“At this point, we should be live tweeting to the whole state,” Slate mutters.

Gray laughs and Slate badly hides a grin at the noise. He finds so many things about her endearing. She has been deeply damaged by her past and yet has managed to grow so much just in the time Slate has known her. Slate thinks the process of becoming human again was probably much harder than she ever let on and yet here she is, a beautiful woman who walks the world with much more grace than Slate.

She bravely confessed everything that had happened to her three years ago and has told Slate about a lot of her childhood as well. It hasn’t slipped past him that she doesn’t really talk about the time she spent as a wolf, but he figures those wounds might be too fresh to have fully processed. He can relate to her in many ways, but he has no concept of how the brain changes without the influence of a pack or a family.

Finally the GPS tells Slate to make one last turn and he slows onto a quiet residential street with modest homes. When he pulls over in front of a light blue stucco house, Gray asks dryly, “Is it time to inform the masses that we made it unscathed?”

He quirks a brown and offers her a smile with half his mouth. “As long as you’re not traumatized by my driving then I think it is safe to report we are unscathed.”

Gray rolls her eyes as she pulls her phone out. “You drive like a grandma. I’d be much more likely to die of boredom than anything else.”

He grins at her now, something that has come easier and easier around her, and slides out of the car. When he rounds the front, she’s there waiting for him and he wraps an arm around her shoulders and kisses her temple briefly before approaching the front door. He sends Asher a flash of the outside of the house, making particular notice of the address number next to the door. Asher and Sara know exactly where the house is anyway, but he knows the visual confirmation will be appreciated.

“Ready?” he asks Gray as they come to a stop on the porch.

She shoots him a nervous grin. “As I’ll ever be.”

Slate has time to knock three times before the door is wrenched open suddenly and a slightly manic looking father stops to stare at them with wide eyes and a grin just a touch too wide to be genuine. “Hi,” the man breathes. When he sees Gray, standing slightly in front of Slate, his smile becomes a tad more sincere. When his gaze drags up and back and he sees Slate, his smile freezes on his face and his eyes go impossibly wider. Slate ignores it.

This isn’t Slate’s rodeo so unless Gray signals that she needs help, he’s happy to let her lead the ship. He turns to her in deference. Her eyebrows lift as she leans back to take in the man before them. He paints a striking picture, looking to be every inch the harried, struggling young father. If Slate had heartstrings that existed for other people, they might be tugging. As it is, he feels sympathy, having been through the trying process of raising a newborn, but other than that, he’s indifferent.

“Hello,” Gray answers diplomatically before the pause becomes uncomfortably long. “Are you Kellan Freeman?”

“Yes,” the man nods like a bobblehead. “Yeah, that’s me.” He turns halfway to face the house. “Em? The...the wolves are here!” he stutters awkwardly.

They hear a door open and close and light footsteps down the hall. When a woman pokes her head around the corner, Gray waves. Slate nods.

“Hi, I’m Gray and this is Slate. We’re here to help.”

Gray’s smile is soft and caring and her words match. Whether people realize they’re looking for it or not, they always feel much more at ease when a person’s body, voice, and words align. Any sort of dissonance between word content and body language is very unsettling. Everything Gray is telling them right now is comforting and it’s obvious they feel her sincerity.

This is why Slate lets her handle things. He’d probably just ask for the baby and be in and out in five minutes. Boom. Job done, mission accomplished.

“Hi Gray, Slate,” Emily smiles, though her eyes are pinched with nerves. Slate supposes anyone would be, if their baby’s health was in danger. “Come in, come in.”

Kellan stands aside and lets Gray file in, Slate trailing closely behind. Emily leads them into a cute little family room with a large TV on one wall, an L couch, and a recliner as the most prominent fixtures. A bit nice for the average young couple, Slate thinks.

“Please, sit,” Emily invites, gesturing to the couch.

Gray sits and Slate settles next to her, close enough that their knees touch, but nothing to give away the more intimate nature of their relationship.

“Um, how was the drive?” Emily asks shakily as she sits as far from them as possible.

Gray and Slate exchange a glance. When Kellan sits, Slate takes a mental snapshot of the couple and sends it to Asher along with a short, all good so far.

“Good, that’s good,” Emily says in response to whatever Gray had answered while Slate’s head was elsewhere.

When the silence drags awkwardly, Gray clears her throat. “Can you tell me a little about your daughter? Crystal?”

Interestingly, both of them tense up at the mention of their baby. “Crystal, yes,” Emily laughs nervously, Kellan having apparently turned to stone. “She’s four months old, been sick for going on five days now. We’re...very concerned.”

Gray frowns sympathetically, but Slate is becoming very concerned himself. Something isn’t right here. He decides the time for niceties is over and that they need to do their work and get out as fast as possible. “Where is she?” Slate asks very directly.

“Oh!” Emily says like she’s spooked by the mere sound of his voice. “Um, Kellan will go get her.” She elbows her husband sharply and he jumps out of his stupor. Slate realizes he had been staring at him. Hard. Slate can only assume it’s at the scars. It’s par for the course when Slate goes out in public and he understands. They are quite jarring.

Once his attention has been drawn to it, he realizes Emily’s gaze flits to him more often than the situation really warrants as well. When Kellan returns, it’s with a weeping baby. The poor thing seems almost too tired and unwell to cry properly.

Kellan seems to make a half effort at trying to get her to stop crying, but his focus is elsewhere. His eyes keep dragging back to Slate’s.

Tears gather in Emily’s eyes as she gently takes Crystal from Kellan’s arms and lays her against her own shoulder, rocking and bouncing in a soft, slow rhythm. She shushes her baby quietly and presses her face into the baby’s thin shock of fair hair, a few shades lighter than her mother’s.

And this is what tugs at Slate’s usually nonexistent heartstrings. He almost rolls his eyes at his own predictability. It’s always the babies. What a softie.

He stands and reaches out but doesn’t come closer. “May I?”

Emily freezes in place, but Kellan looks relieved, like he’s had a question answered--or he just wants his baby healed and for this meeting to be over as soon as possible just like Slate does and he’s looking way too deeply into things.

Emily slowly thaws and kisses Crystal’s head before gliding over to Slate, beginning to look relieved and comforted herself. “Here she is,” she murmurs as she gently places her daughter into a stranger’s arms.

Slate cradles and rocks her for a few moments before noticing that she keeps lifting her head, as though she’s tired of laying down and wants to sit up. Slate adjusts her until he’s got one arm under her butt and one holding her stomach so that she’s sitting with her back to Slate and facing the rest of the room. As Slate continues rocking, her cries turn to whimpers, fading into minimal fussing.

Realistically, Slate has done very little. It’s more likely the baby is just distracted with the new people in the room, turning her head and staring deeply at Gray, then at Slate, and back at Gray over and over. Still, he gets immense relief and pride that he could help this sweet child feel better, if only for a few moments. He doesn’t forget that the real miracle worker here is Gray, but he likes the knowledge that he’s still got it.

“Oh my gosh, she’s already feeling better,” Kellan says with awe. “That was so fast.”

Realizing he thinks Slate is the healer, he looks at Gray with an inquisitive eyebrow, deferring to her judgment as to how to handle the misconception. However, when he turns his head, Gray is smiling softly at Crystal, clearly enamored.

Feeling Slate’s gaze, she looks up and meets his eyes, smile turning impossibly fond. She shakes her head a bit and looks back to Crystal. “She is, isn’t she,” she says almost to herself.

Then she reaches out a hand and caresses Crystal’s chunky leg with the back of her right hand, using her left to reach up and stroke the back of Slate’s neck once or twice before the pain starts fading in. It’s a full body ache, but it’s faint and only lingers for moments. He feels a bit woozy for even shorter, not even enough to rock him. He supposes there’s only so much pain a baby can retain, and even then, infant’s immune systems are much less developed and less equipped to fend off illness than adults so it makes sense that Slate and Gray’s systems cope with the sickness much faster.

All in all, it’s rather quick. When Crystal’s mouth drops open and her head droops to the side, Slate gently lowers her back into the crook of his arm and lets her drift into her own little dreamscape. The sleep is probably much needed, for both baby and parents.

Speaking of, he looks up at the parents and they look...odd. Emily’s crying silent tears, hand covering her mouth, looking...distraught. “Thank you,” she chokes out. “And...and I’m so--”

She’s cut off by two men--also werewolves, based on the incredible speed they use--emerging from both the doors on the left and right. Normally, Slate would be able to dispatch them before they ever had a chance to fit their claws to Gray’s neck, and his own, but the baby…

He freezes with Crystal in his arms for just a moment too long until some idiot goon is breathing down his neck. “Alright, wolf,” the guy spits, “here’s how it is: you do what we want or your girl and the baby go bye-bye.”

Kellan gasps and takes half a step forward, hastily protesting, “No, you said she wouldn’t be involved!”

“Shut up!” the man holding Slate at claw-point admonishes with an undercurrent of pleasure and the power he has. “You’ll get your baby back as long as the wolf comes with us quietly.”

Slate realizes two things at once. One being that the Freemans set them up and that he had willingly brought Gray into a trap. And the other being that they think Slate is the healer.

Slate is able to turn his head just enough to see Gray, who’s being held in much the same way, tips of claws pressed against her skin. But what takes his focus is the look on her face.

For just the briefest of moments, she looks...relieved. She must have made the same connection–that they’re going to let her go and take Slate instead. It’s not a betrayal. Rather a confirmation of what Slate knew all along. He’s a protector from the top of his head to the tips of his toes and that’s what he’s meant to be.

Gray, for herself, turns her head to look back at him and gasps in horror as she sees his face shut down and realizes exactly what was written all over her face and exactly how he interpreted it. It was a passing moment, but it was enough.

Slate tries to communicate to her that he forgives her, that he accepts whatever comes as a result of this, that it’s not her fault, that he knows his purpose in life. That he’s happy he can keep her safe.

“No, no you don’t have the right--ah!” Gray tries to protest, but it’s too little too late. The man behind her wraps his hands around her neck with blunt hands, obviously issuing a warning.

“You think you can trick us?” The man scoffs. “You think you can outsmart us? Huh?”

The man behind Slate twitches his clawed hands so that he draws a few beads of blood at Slate’s jugular. It’s chilling.

“Shut up, Kyle,” he chides. “They know they’ve been had. Seems a bit pansy romantic of the boss to say we’d know the healer by his eyes, but they do seem pretty soulless. Little creep with his ugly scars and creepy eyes. We’ve got him now.”

Slate closes his eyes against a rush of emotion as he conjures an image of Gray in his bathroom this morning, blinking pretty chocolate eyes at him, contacts having just covered up that deep gray gaze in a shield of normalcy. He’d tugged on a lock of her hair and told her she looked strikingly like her sister, that she was beautiful. She’d grabbed his hand and kissed his palm before whispering that she and her sister both looked like their mom, that Gray thought she might have been the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen.

That hurts.

Kyle chuckles menacingly. “Time to get this show on the road. I’ll hold this one here while you take the healer out.”

Slate’s goon digs his claws into Slate’s back, eliciting a pained groan at the surprise burst of pain. “Move it, wolf.” He starts the painful process of guiding Slate through the house with claws embedded into skin and muscle, pausing momentarily to call out, “Yo, Devin! Come grab the baby. Don’t hand her off until we’ve got the healer secured.”

Just as they pass through the front door, another guy comes up to them and takes the baby from Slate, silent except for the volumes his dirty smirk speaks as he passes by. Slate mostly feels numb, resigned--no, it’s not resignation. He feels...acceptance.

The next moments pass by in flashes as two other men emerge from the black SUV that had parked in front of Slate’s car sometime while they were inside. One of them pats Slate down roughly, taking his phone, wallet, and keys and tucking them away somewhere.

Then he’s having cuffs put on his hands, which he could normally break out of with minimal struggle, but by the irritation he already feels on his wrists, he can tell they’re made of silver. Werewolves won’t die by a silver bullet unless it’s to the brain or heart, but they generally all have a bit of an allergic reaction when it comes in contact with their skin.

The only way this has affected Slate in the past is that he knows not to buy silver jewelry for his sister and to avoid silver belt buckles, so he wasn’t aware that they also seem to dampen some of his strength. He tugs on the cuffs and finds that they feel much sturdier than normal cuffs should. He supposes they’d be stupid not to have a way to restrain him.

As one of the men punctures all four tires of Slate’s and the Freeman’s cars, Slate finally has enough sense to send a short reel of images to Asher. The remaining men from inside the house hustle out and jump into the car.

The last thing Slate sees when he turns to look out the window as they drive off is Gray standing, visibly shaking on the Freeman’s lawn. They’d never been able to bond communicate before, but he feels a voice in his head that is unmistakably hers say thickly but firmly, We’re coming for you. No matter where you go, we’ll find you. I promise.

Whether that’s true or not, Slate doesn’t much care. He’d hate it if he couldn’t be around to continue keeping his family safe, if he couldn’t see Sara’s baby girl, if he couldn’t see Raven and Sage and Forrest grow up and settle into themselves, if he couldn’t be the one to share the strength of Asher’s moon gift for the rest of their lives, but...he’d done all he could. He’d kept them all as happy and healthy as he possibly could in his twenty-five years of life.

And that’s all he ever wanted.

END PART I