Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Lucas

"Oh, slumming with the losers today, Adams?" Garrett asks as he steps into the kitchen at the Company 417 firehouse.

Garrett is a supervisor of sorts. He's a sergeant but the ranks here don't really matter. I don't mean that ranks don't matter in the fire department. I just mean that in our particular circumstances, the ranks don't really matter. Company 417 is a unique firefighting company. It's the only one in the country, in fact.

Garrett is a gorilla. That's not a description of his appearance. He's an actual gorilla, a shifter. Everyone here at Company 417 is a shifter. We have wolves. We have lions. We have panthers and tigers. We have two horses. We have a dragon. Dragons are interesting and never stay long. They're drawn to firefighting for some reason.

The world doesn't know about dragons yet. Hell, we didn't know about dragons until a few years ago. The rest of us came out to humanity a few decades before that.

I'm a bear.

"You're the asshole who got me to volunteer for the damned inspection work," I say.

He chuckles. "Because you desperately need to learn how to talk to people."

I groan at that and say, "If you really want to do something to help me, why don't you bring the damned coffee pot over here and fill my cup."

He laughs and refills my mug. "How long do we have you?"

"Two/three for a while. Two days here and three as a fire inspector. Only for another two months. Any more than that, and they have to put me through additional training even though I know everything. The exception goes away."

"Are you going to do the training?"

"Hell no. Maybe when I don't have the body anymore to keep up with the firefighting."Since we remain in our prime far longer than pure humans, that really means nothing. "No way, though. I don't like this crap."

Garrett laughs. "You don't like anything."

"That's not true. I like when I'm alone with a cup of coffee free from fucking monkeys."

"Monkey. Oh, wow. It's not like I've never heard that one before. Besides, you're way behind the times. Nobody argues about that anymore. Cladistically,?apes are monkeys. You think you're being a smartass but you're not even being smart." He says it in a singsong, teasing way.

"What the hell does claw dicksly mean?"

"Cladistically. It means descended from the same ancestor in biological terms. You should have spent more time with your nose in a book instead of in the jar of honey."

"Whatever, Baboon."

"Hey now!" he says, "that's a real insult there." It isn't, of course, and he laughs. "Seriously, though, does this fire inspector thing suck so badly?"

Immediately, that girl's face flashes through my mind. Madeline Charles. She has the most beautiful face imaginable. Her eyes are striking and perfect whether she's being sweet and kind or absolutely prepared to kill me.

"Too much drama," I say, "but I'll survive the next few months, I guess."

"You know, if you need to go wild on your two days, just let me know. I'll work around your days here."

"Thanks, man." It's a pretty damned breathtaking thing to offer me, actually. Go wild. That's a way shifters describe shifting into our animal form in order to deal with the stress of being human.

Shifting clears away a whole hell of a lot of the crap in our heads and makes things a lot easier to handle. In general, any of us might take a few hours every four or five months, whenever we're really dealing with something. Of course, we shift more often than that. But in terms of shifts designed just to be the animal, that's going wild.

Vic, a lion, pokes his head into the kitchen. "Anybody got time to do a kid tour?"

Garrett says, "We can both do it. Start them in the garage." Vic disappears and Garrett says, "Come on, Yogi. Your picnic basket awaits."

"Whatever, banana mouth."

Yeah, shifters tend to use elementary school-level insults with each other. Don't ask me why we do that.

I follow Garrett out to the main garage. I drop my pristine coffee mug into the sink on my way. I never got my coffee and I don't know what effect that will have on me while I'm trying to handle a bunch of kids.

I'm not much of a kid person, to be honest. I have some nieces and nephews, all that good stuff, but I never gave it too much thought.Of course, my nieces and nephews are bears. My sister is a bear. All female bear shifters have shifter cubs. So, even though my brother-in-law is pure human, my nieces and nephews are bears.

And that makes them easy to handle. Bears are solitary creatures not too interested in interaction. I like that. Why would I want to deal with kids? I haven't met the right girl so why would I think so much about kids?

Of course, having that thought brings the girl to mine. Madeline's face flashes again, and I grit my teeth. I really don't need a distraction right now.

"Hey, everyone, I'm Garrett and this is my fellow firefighter, Lucas."

I wake up to the fact that there are about fifteen little kids around five or six years old now staring in my direction. I grunt and raise my hand at them. "Hey there."Garrett gives me a look and I shrug. Not good with kids, okay?

Especially a bunch of them like this. They all start trying to ask questions at once and then, they want to touch everything. My eyes dart everywhere at once.

Garrett starts his spiel about our uniforms and what happens when an alarm goes off. We get dressed in our gear and the little guys get excited to try some on for themselves. I notice one little guy is getting lost in a pair of pants. I help him stand in just one leg, and he smiles. "Wow, you guys are like trees. These are huge!"

I laugh and start to growl. "I am big as a tree and I can do anything!"

He laughs. "You're fun!"

Wow, that's a first. I'm serious. He might be the first person in all of human history to call me fun. I help him out of the pants and carry him over my shoulder to the group. They're about to get on the ladder truck. Garrett gives me a little smile and I feel like sticking my tongue out at him. I guess these kids are getting under my skin.

"Who knows the difference between a fire engine and a fire truck?" I ask.

The kid on my shoulder says, "Engines put fires out. Trucks rescue people from the fires."

"That's right," I say with a laugh as I lift him up and set him down next to the truck. An engine has hoses and tanks of water and we use it to put fires out. But the trucks carry ladders and equipment for saving lives."

I lift two of the little guys into the cab at once and they giggle like crazy. My phone buzzes. I set them down on the seat and give Garrett an apologetic look. "I have to check real quick. I need to make sure it's not something about the inspections."

He waves me off. "Don't worry, I'll watch your kiddos for you."

I fake laugh. "Yeah, right, cause I'm such a big daddy." I frown. "Wait, that didn't work."

"Oh no, man, that worked perfectly."

"Yeah? Well, fu…" I remember the kids just in time and finish lamely with, "…gettahboutit." Garrett smirks and I walk off. I don't feel like giving him any more material to razz me about later.

I pull out my phone and see that the message is from the girl from yesterday.

Again, I see her, pretty as can be and even prettier the angrier she got. I also remember how close I was to shifting right in front of her or even dragging her off into the woods and shaking her around a bit. I'm kidding, of course. Shifters don't do that kind of shit.Well, they don't do that kind of shit lightly.

But she is a lot to handle, that's for sure.

And now she's texting me.

I read her message, fully expecting her to start her tirade again, so I'm pleasantly surprised to see her apologize and thank me for being willing to step in like I did to help her out. She tells me she wants a chance to explain things and asks if I can come by her house to talk.

I read the address and whistle. Yeah, that's a very nice area.

I think about blowing her off and saying that I just have too much going on, which I do, but something stops me. I guess I figure this message shows she's not completely unaware of how out of line she was yesterday. I mean, it couldn't have been easy for her to apologize and ask for help from someone she sees as a threat to her passion project.

I figure I may as well hear her out.

Yeah, I'm full of shit. I want to see her for reasons that have nothing at all to do with an explanation.

I compose a quick response, but I hesitate to press send. I don't like getting involved with things like this. It just manages to make work, and life, messy.

The kids are laughing and I look over to see they're all in a line trying to hold the hose. Garrett is swinging it around from the back and they're dancing around and giggling more. Damn, they do look adorable.

I sigh. Why the fuck not?