Page 7 of Were-Geeks Save a Kitten

Kit snorted then let his brogue go full force. “What crawled up your ass and died? I was trying to do something nice.”

“Nice?” Yordan curled his lip. “You’re the combat coordinator for seven packs. You don’t do nice. You can’t do nice, or they’ll walk right over you.”

Damn, the guy was grumpy, and Kit wasn’t in the mood to keep coddling him. He was trying to be nice, but the gloves were coming off.

“You mean like you did?” he challenged. “Walking away when I specifically told you to wait?”

“Fuck yes,” he said as he started drying off. “You ought to assign me to shit work for a week for that.”

Grumpy and self-aware. Odd how that combo was really sexy.

“And what would that accomplish?” Kit returned. “I’ve got puppies for the shit work. You’re just spoiling for a fight.”

Yordan dropped his hands on his hips. “I’d fucking respect you, that’s what. Instead, you brought me lunch and a beer.”

Well, that was putting it bluntly. So much for his Yordan fantasy. Kit pushed to his feet. Time to be a hard-ass. But before he could slam the bastard across the room, Yordan kept talking. Apparently, he’d built a whole list of criticisms and was not going to be stopped from letting it fly.

“And what the fuck are you doing giving a guy in the motor pool the rest of the day off? Chess tournament?” He rubbed his face. “Oil Slick runs a tight ship,” he said, referring to the motor pool alpha. “I’m surprised you’re still standing after undermining his authority that way. You see a problem, you let the alpha deal with it. You don’t go around his back and undercut him.”

Kit nodded, the heat in his gut rising to a dark simmer. “And did you see Oil Slick in there?”

“Doesn’t matter—”

“Oil Slick had a nervous breakdown two months ago. He retired from Wulf before he got out of the hospital. Now he’s working for mundanes in Florida, keeping all the old geezers’ cars running, and soaking in the sun.”

He could see the news caught Yordan by surprise. “Retired? He’s younger than I am.”

“Yeah, he is. And his hair turned gray one week into the black hole crisis.” He jerked his chin at Yordan’s short blond crew cut. “How much white you got in among the golden brown there?”

“None of your fucking business,” Yordan muttered, though Kit could tell it was reflex rather than attitude. “Who became alpha after Oil Slick?”

“We’ve had a couple, but it turns out, it’s not so easy managing werewolves and big, expensive machinery. Right now, it’s Stick.”

“Stick! As in Stick up his Ass? Aw, hell—”

“Yes, Stick because we needed the machinery fixed, and he can fix anything mechanical in this whole place.”

“He also couldn’t see a packmate melt down if he were standing in hot lava!”

Kit tilted his head back and arched a brow.

Yordan huffed. “Which is why he sucks as an alpha. The guy in charge has to understand his people. It’s not about getting the job done. It’s about getting the people to do the job!”

Kit felt a smirk slip into his expression. Yordan didn’t realize it, but he’d just sealed his own fate. And that smirk made Yordan’s color rise.

“Which is why you interfered and gave chess dad the weekend off.”

“Uh-huh,” Kit drawled.

“Why does the motor pool keep losing leaders?”

“A fairy accident a day keeps the leaders away. It’s brutal, waiting every day for the disaster hammer to drop.”

He heard his brogue seep into his phrasing. Normally, he kept strict control over his accent at the predominately American company. He couldn’t eradicate it completely, but he’d mostly gone Midwestern flat in his intonation. Except around Yordan, apparently. Something about bantering with him had Kit relaxing his guard.

“There’s an accident every day?” Yordan said, shaking his head. “You oughta stop that.”

Kit pushed to his feet. Damn, he was close enough to Yordan that he felt the moist heat of the man roll into his nostrils and fog his brain. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like Yordan was the kind of guy to want an illicit bump and grind in the shower, even if Kit could get past the ethical complications of that. So, that meant he was going to have to go hard alpha on the man, which was so not his favorite thing to do.