Page 2 of Silent Wolf
"I noticed your good pair of shoes is still drying from the mop bucket incident last night," Blaze said. "You shouldn't be in those flat ones all day. I got you these to replace them."
He steered her into a booth, and Stella took a seat, her face lighting up. Blaze crouched in front of her, worked the backup shoes off her feet, and then eased the new ones on while she braced a hand on his shoulder.
"Oh, Blaze, that was thoughtful," Stella said.
"Can't have my pregnant wife standing on shoes without support."
He placed a hand against the side of her belly and said something Reese couldn't hear. Stella smiled and put her hand over his.
Reese stood at the wait station with the empty glass rack in both hands until she realized how heavy it was. She put it down.
She had been married for four years, and never once had Wade done anything so sweet and thoughtful for her. When Wade puthis hands on her, it was usually to hurt her. She had decided a long time ago that men like Blaze happened to other women.
Reese set the rack down, squared it against the others, and walked back through the kitchen to the pit. She fed the machine the next tub of dishes, dropped the door, and stood inside the thundering sound.
Nell Meadows, the assistant manager, came back to drop a bus tub in the dish pit. She was a small, quick young woman who Reese couldn't help but like.
"Blaze just brought Stella a new pair of shoes." Nell leaned on the counter. "He drove two towns over last spring because she wanted a specific kind of pretzel. Isn't that romantic?" Nell swooned. "Did you know they met on mate.com? I check my matches every night. Nothing yet. But Stella found her fated mate, and it's the realest thing I've ever seen." She shrugged. "I have to keep believing it will happen for me too."
"It will," Reese said, knowing that finding a fated mate was much more likely for a wren shifter like Nell than it was for a human like her.
"I hope so." Nell pushed off the counter. "You should sign up too. Lots of shifters have human mates." And she was gone, back out to the floor.
Reese put one wet hand on her belly.
"Just us," she said under the noise. "We'll be fine on our own."
Chapter
Two
On the secondTuesday of every month, Axel removed his pack and their families' personal information from the internet.
Certain websites collected people's private data, full name, age, current home address, and the names of their relatives. They then sold that information to anyone with twelve dollars.
He went down his list one person at a time, every pack member, every mate, every parent and sibling and baby attached to Steel Protection.
When he found one of them listed, he filed the request that took the listing down, then flagged it to check again later.
Axel worked from the corner desk on the ground floor of the Steel Protection Building at 1019 Main Street. He had multiple monitors, a laptop and a tablet and coffee going cold at his elbow.
Near the front, Valeria Reynolds-Steel ran the phones with Adrian's playpen behind the desk. Adrian threw a plastic dinosaur over the rail for the fourth time that morning. Axelstood, grabbed the dinosaur, and placed it back in the little wolf's hands.
He went back to work and found a broker site with a fresh listing. Adrian Steel, age one, indexed as a relative under Dominic Steel, Fate Mountain, Oregon. Fourteen months old and already for sale. Axel filed the removal, set a recheck flag, and added the site to his watch list. Nobody was buying his alpha's son's information for twelve dollars.
He ran his own name through these sites every month too. Axel Rivers, born in Denver, Colorado. No results found. Because Axel had been scrubbing his information as long as he knew how. And he had no relatives that would put him back on these sites.
He'd been days old when someone left him at a fire station a few blocks off the South Platte River. No note, no name, no one ever came to claim him. The state named him that week. Axel, for the fire truck, because that was where they found him. Rivers, for the South Platte that ran past it. It'd been his name for thirty-two years.
His first shift came at age five in a backyard in Aurora. The foster placement ended that day. After that, his placements rarely lasted long. He kept his things where he could grab them fast because he knew he'd be leaving soon. Somewhere in Colorado there might have been people who shared his blood, but no one ever came for him.
He'd had a knack for computers since second grade. If there was a computer lab in whatever school he landed in, he would make it his second home. A caseworker handed him a secondhand laptop when he was twelve. When the state was done with him at eighteen, he taught himself to become a hacker. By twentyhe was paying rent with gray hat work and making people disappear. He was good at it.
Dom found him after Axel had scrubbed a client Dom was protecting. He and Siren traced the work back to its source, and Dom offered him a job that day. Axel had been with Savage Steel for nine years now, and it was the first pack Axel had ever belonged to.
The front door of Steel Protection opened, and Ryder and Hunter walked in.
"Blaze bought Stella new shoes and changed them for her in the middle of the diner," Ryder said. "On one knee. In front of the whole breakfast crowd. A tourist took a picture. He's embarrassing the whole crew."
