He chuckled and dabbed on the arnica cream.

* * * * *

Back in their bedroom, Nina stood at the dresser and looked back over her shoulder at him. “You know,” she said, dropping her robe, “aside from the insurance adjuster coming out later on, I’m free for the next few hours.”

Lex hummed in agreement as he walked toward her, dropping the towel that had been wrapped around his waist. He picked her up and took her to the bed, laying her down, following her so that his body was resting on hers.

“How is it that I want you less than ten minutes after I’ve had you?” he murmured, delivering small kisses to her lips.

“I don’t know but I’m going to stock up on that soap so you keep it up. Heh, you know what I mean.”

He laughed then and rolled so that she was on top.

She’d just dipped to steal another kiss when Cade yelled up the stairs for Lex. It sounded urgent enough that she didn’t complain, just rolled off and stayed out of his way as he pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and left the room.

She quickly pulled on some clothes, pulled her wet hair back and followed the voices into the office where Cade, Lex and several other Pack wolves had gathered and were having a terse discussion.

Lex looked up when she walked in. “Carter’s body was just found near my parents’ place in North Bend.”

Nina raised an eyebrow and went to pour herself a cup of coffee. She opened her mouth and then shut it again quickly. What could she say? Good? She certainly wasn’t sorry, but at the same time, she knew enough to know it couldn’t bode well for the Pack.

She sat on the arm of the chair Cade was in and, changing her mind, put the mug in front of him and got up to get herself another. She shot a look at Lex and held up the pot but he shook his head.

Settling back in, she realized that the warmth and appreciation she’d felt was from Cade and that she was supposed to still be pissed at him. She gave a mental shrug. She’d punish him later for fun. Now was the time for unity.

“This is clearly a message, Alpha. I know there’s something going on and we can’t deal with it effectively if we don’t know what is happening,” one of the other wolves—Eric? Derek?—said to Cade.

“Message?”

Lex turned to Nina. “He was shot in the back of the head with silver shot and left openly in Pack territory. That’s a not-so-good sign that the mafia is involved.”

“The mafia? What would organized crime care about werewolves and coffee?”

“The werewolf mafia.” Lex turned to Cade as Nina processed that one.

The werewolf mafia? They had to be kidding! It was so absurd she fought the urge to laugh.

“None of these wolves were Carter’s. We need to tell them. Derek is right. This has gone too far. The more secrets we keep, the worse it’s going to be.”

Cade sighed and nodded. Lex explained the missing virus, the laptop and the embezzlement, and the other wolves sat down in shock.

“And obviously at this point we know Carter had something to do with it. I mean, you don’t get tapped by the mob, furry or not, if you’re a nice wolfie boy from Seattle just minding your own business.” Nina thought it over.

“Yes. The real question is at this point, what’s next for the Rogues?” Lex paced the room as he spoke.

“Well, if I were them, I’d want to make sure the virus was ready. Was it?”

“We obviously hadn’t done human trials yet. We were trying to set something up with humans who had been infected involuntarily. It doesn’t happen all that often and there are ethics that need to be minded.”

Except for her brother. She wanted to remind them that Gabriel hadn’t been asked to be changed but she let it go. She nodded. “Okay. And what about the effect on wolves?”

Lex winced. “That would be some creepy shit, Nina, if we’d given it to wolves not knowing what would happen.”

“Duh. I didn’t ask if you’d gone all creepy evil scientist. I just didn’t know if you’d had any extrapolations by your scientists about what may happen.”

The other wolves in the room stiffened when Nina popped off to Lex. Lex brooked no disrespect and they hadn’t ever seen anyone other than Cade speak to him like that before. In fact, most of them acted utterly terrified of him, which made her laugh, but she’d seen enough of him to know that how he treated her and those who he was close to was very different than how he treated enemies.

Nina noticed and laughed. “Don’t worry, I still think he’s the big bad wolf. I’m just snotty, I can’t help it.”

“And you’re Second, too,” Cade said with a shrug and a grin.

“Oh yeah, I am.”

Lex groaned. “Can we not give her any ammo right now and keep focused on the problem at hand?”

Nina snickered and nodded. “Of course, darling.”

He snorted and began to pace again.

“Back to the subject,” he shot a raised eyebrow at Nina, “the researchers were divided. Some of them felt it would be harmless because it was already in our systems, the others felt it would be like a viral agent, causing our systems to turn on themselves. Obviously we couldn’t test that and endanger wolves any more than we wanted to endanger humans.”

“Jesus, we’ve just handed a potential tool of bioterrorism to the Rogues,” Dave said.

“Worse, to the mob.” Lex pushed a hand through his hair and Nina’s insides tightened at the sight. Damn man was like a drug.