Unnatural

3-1

3

Winter sun always seemed to have two primary goals: to burn my eyeballs and freeze my bollocks off. Who the hell knew something so hot could create zero temps. At least it had chased the last of January’s snow away the week before, unplugging the stoppage on our latest work schedule.

Unlike the last block of apartments we’d built, the Douglas Street plot held just enough land for a duet of semi-detached houses—which meant our usual contractor’s wouldn’t be needed to lend additional hands.

Gabriel Lewis, the youngest and newest male pack member, as well as son to Ethan’s human mate, stood beside me, as I awaited the first delivery of bricks.

Untrained for any of the regular tasks that came with building a new property, thanks to only being offered the gofer job eleven weeks earlier, he pretty much got ordered to play tag-along—and I’d been chosen to be ‘it’.

He toed the solid earth, sending clumps in an upward spray. “Nate kicked up a s**t-storm yesterday.”

I nodded. “So I heard.”

Silence resettled between us, Gabe with his hands tucked deep in his pockets, shoulders bunched high beneath his thick hoodie, and me watching one vehicle spin past after another while tuned in for the deeper rumblings of a delivery truck.

“You, er ...” Gabe sniffed deep, like he needed to clear his thoughts. “Everything, you know ...” His startling blue eyes cut toward me, the turn of his head shifting the hard-hat atop his bright blond curls. “... everything been okay for you?”

I studied him a second, unsure if he asked out of concern for my wellbeing, or concern for his own.

Gabe, not even turned twenty, had been dragged into the fray of cage fighting, too. Ethan had left the ordeal with a bruised ego and damaged emotions. I’d come out the other side no longer fully understanding my body—sometimes my head, too. Gabe, though? He got well and truly f****d up six ways from Sunday and made the hands Ethan and I had been dealt look like a slap and tickle.

Somehow, though, the kid seemed to have pulled through it just fine—on the surface, anyway.

Wanting to keep it that way, I nodded. “I’m still walking, talking ... breathing.” I shrugged. “You?”

He glanced away, his hands seeming to dig deeper than ever into his pockets, drawing his jeans along with them until they only barely clung to his hips.

Behind us, the grumble of the mixer rolled through the air, the scrape of tools, the thudding steps from the others’ boots across the compacted soil, all of them emphasising the fact Gabe didn’t answer.

For one paranoid moment, I imagined the pack’s stares aimed our way, boring into our backs, as well as heard their mutters through my mind. Gabe and Kyle together. What d’you think they’re talking about? Better keep an eye on them. As though they daren’t take their eyes off the fractured few who went through the s**t we did, like they couldn’t trust any words that might pass between us each time we got allowed a moment unsupervised.

I rubbed at my face, lifting my protective helmet as my palm swept around my nape and up over my head, wishing I could erase my obsessive thoughts with one brush.

We both lifted our chins at the chugging engine of a flatbed truck, as it slowed to a stop at the outside kerb.

A guy wearing a fluorescent vest hopped from the cabin. He rounded the front of the vehicle toward us, a sheet of paper in his outstretched hand. “Delivery for Holloway?”

“Yeah.” I took the invoice from the driver, pointed to the right. “Drop them just inside the fence.”

For the next twenty minutes, we organised the brick delivery, waving at the driver each time he swung a new pallet over the fence, until the entire order sat stacked side by side.

After we’d signed for them and sent the driver on his way, I turned back to Gabe. “You going to answer me now?”

“About what?” he asked, though his darting eyes told me he knew exactly.

“About whether, or not, everything’s been okay for you?”

His jaw twitched before his slanted half-smile matched his half-shrug. “You know, walking, talking ... breathing.”

I studied him, but his expression never wavered. “If you ever need to talk. About stuff ...” Even as I said it, I wondered how much of me made the offer for selfish reasons. Wondered if I hoped he’d come forth and admit he’d been dealing with some crazy s**t, just so I didn’t have to be the only one with kooky after-effects of being bitten by a race venomous to us and pumped with an anti-venom filled with the same crap. I nodded, as if to reassure myself of my motives. “You can always come to me, Gabe.”

“I know.” Hands returned to his pockets, he pivoted on one leg back toward the site—halting before he even took a step.

I swung, too, stopping mid-turn as my gaze followed Gabe’s.

Nathan and Dad both stood over by the last lot of footings. Hands on their hips, the pair of them stared our way from beneath their hard-hats.

“Ever get the impression you’re being watched?” Gabe asked, his lips barely moving.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “All the damn time.”

***