Gray

He sullenly stood at the guard desk, his eyes hooded and staring straight ahead.

“What do you want?” he snapped as the figure approached him through the front doors.

The shifter, a young female, shuffled to a halt and looked around uncomfortably, obviously not enjoying being the object of his wrath.

“I was just wondering where I’m supposed to go?” she asked. “I just arrived.”

“Papers,” he growled.

She held them up and he snatched them from her hand, giving them a cursory read over. He didn’t need much. Gray knew everyone that came through. It was his job. There were only a few dozen shifters ever in Cloud Lake at any given time, so it wasn’t exactly a huge feat, but he made sure to know all about the new arrivals.

“Room 213,” he half-snarled, shoving the papers back to her and looking past her, making it clear as daylight that he was done with her and she should move on.

The young woman looked left and right at the two staircases that curved up the outer walls of the lobby, unsure of which one to take. Another growl from Gray sent her scurrying to the nearest one, more interested in getting out of his sight than taking the right one.

Footsteps padded up behind him.

“Hey man,” Hector, one of the other guards, said, his hand landing on Gray’s shoulder.

Gray spun with a vicious motion of his shoulder, throwing the arm off him.

“What?”

Hector backed up, eyes wide. “Whoa. Easy there. Friendly, dude. I’m not your enemy.”

Gray just turned around and continued to stare out the front door until Hector got the point and backed off, heading deeper into the motel to do something else. Once again Gray was left alone with his thoughts. He barely managed to suppress the urge not to destroy the oval desk that he stood behind. Mainly because he knew if he leveled it, he would be the one who had to rebuild it. Wasn’t worth that, despite the overwhelming urge to destroy something, anything.

Another shifter came in through the front doors, one of the random Cadians who were visiting Cloud Lake. They approached Gray, but one closer look at his face and they altered course immediately, heading right for the stairs and their room, whatever question or greeting they had planned dying on their lips. He didn’t care. Gray wanted nothing more than to be left alone right then.

More footsteps approached from behind.

“I thought I made it clear to leave me alone, Hector,” he snapped, not even bothering to turn around.

“You did,” a deep baritone replied tautly.

Gray spun as Andrew approached. He didn’t say anything, just stared at his boss and waited for him to speak. The gryphon shifter came to a halt several feet away from him, his eyes boring into Gray’s, taking in his demeanor and body language.

“What?” he growled.

Andrew shook his head. “My office. Now.”

“I’m on duty,” Gray said, standing his ground. “I have to man the front desk.”

His friend snorted. “Right. Because you standing there like a rabid dog barking at everyone is exactly what we need out of you.” His eyes hardened. “Get in my office.”

There was no give in his tone. It was an order, from boss to employee, not friend to friend. The severity of that reached out through the haze of anger surrounding Gray, but all it did was make him more mad that Andrew felt the need to intervene that way, instead of as his friend, or just not at all. This wasn’t his business, dammit. This was Gray’s and it was his personal life. He didn’t have to tell Andrew anything. Why couldn’t the damn gryphon mind his own business?

Something of this thoughts must have made its way to his face, because Andrew’s eyes glittered with barely contained fury. “Now,” he said, his voice ice cold.

Gray snapped up, his back straight. “Yes, sir,” he said smartly and followed Andrew back into the hotel with near military precision.

The door closed behind him, but he declined to sit, instead standing at attention behind the chairs while Andrew took a seat.

“Sit the fuck down,” Andrew snarled.

Gray shook his head. “I’d prefer to stand.”

“It wasn’t a fucking request. Get your ass in one of the chairs, now.”

Defiance bubbled up inside of Gray, urging him to tell the gryphon where he could shove it, but at the last moment he got a hold of it and decided it simply wasn’t worth it.

“Yes, sir,” he said sullenly, pulling back one of the chairs and sitting down.

The chair didn’t even make a pretense of being supportive. It simply exploded the moment Gray leaned his weight onto it, depositing him on the floor amidst a cloud of flimsy wood particles. His legs and arms erupted in a thousand tiny bits of pain as shards of wood opened minute holes in his skin as he scraped along them.

Gray began to tremble as his rage built to a towering inferno, a culmination of everything that had happened the night before and his inability to react properly to it. He stood, grabbed the second chair and flung it against the wall, watching with childlike angry satisfaction as it disintegrated as well, leaving little more than remnants on the floor.

There was a long moment of silence as he stood facing the far wall, shoulders heaving as he breathed hard, trying to rein himself in before he destroyed the rest of the office.

“Feeling better?” Andrew asked in a gentle yet slightly reproachful voice.

“Not quite. But if I add your desk to the pile, I might.”

“Go ahead. It would give me an excuse not to do paperwork for a while,” his friend said with a little laugh.

And it was his friend who replied, not his boss. The moment of tension between them was gone. Gray turned to look at him, trying to keep the anguish off his face.

“What’s going on?” Andrew asked softly.

Gray shuddered.

“I thought…I thought I had it all figured out,” he whispered. “But I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

He didn’t want to reply. Didn’t want to voice his pain, to put words to what had happened the night before. Part of him thought that perhaps if he avoided talking about it, he could refuse to acknowledge that it had happened. That he’d been wrong.

“Gray, it’s me. Andrew. You can trust me, my friend.”

The soft-spoken words slipped through the defenses he’d been building, and urged him to speak up, to tell his friend what was going on. To seek another opinion.

“I went to Kelly’s last night,” he said, the words coming out haltingly. “I chased some sort of lurker around, but he lost me in the rain and because someone yelled at me, thinking I was the peeper,” he grumbled. “After that I went over to her place.” He steeled himself. “And she was with another shifter.”

Andrew didn’t reply at first. “Were they, uh, involved, when you got there?” he asked.

Gray shook his head. “No, but, you know how you can tell that someone has a connection, that there’s something going on between them?”

His friend didn’t reply, but he nodded slowly in understanding.

“Yeah. It was like that.”

“Are you sure they were romantically together?” Andrew asked.

“What the hell else would he have been doing there at that time?” Gray shot back.

The gryphon considered that for a moment in silence before speaking again. “Who was it?”

“It was—”

Gray stopped himself with a frown.

“What is it?” Andrew asked.

“I don’t know who it was,” he said with a shrug. “Someone I’ve never seen before.”

Andrew’s head snapped up, focusing on him.

“What?” Gray looked around him, trying to figure out what was up, what he’d missed.

“You don’t know him?” he said slowly.

“No. Must be a new guy.”

Andrew shook his head. “You must be distraught about this, my friend.”

“Of course I am,” Gray snapped back. “What, did you think I was just laughing and singing lullabies over here?”

“Obviously not, you ass. But stop and think for a moment. You, Gray, the senior guard here in Cloud Lake, do not know who she was with. An unknown shifter.” Andrew snorted. “You’re so serious about your job, you always know everyone in town. But you don’t know this guy, and it’s not bothering you?”

Gray rocked back in surprise. Holy shit. It was true, he had been so wrapped up in his moping over Kelly that he hadn’t even considered that aspect. Andrew was right. Gray was heavily involved in the traffic of shifters to and from Cadia. He knew them all.

But he hadn’t known the one there with Kelly.

“How could I have been so stupid,” he breathed, angry with himself.

He went over to the pile of wood and stomped on it a few more times in disgust.

“I even chased him across half the complex!” he raged. “Right into her arms!”

Andrew rose and came around the desk to clap him on the shoulder. “It’s fine, my friend. She’s your mate. If I were put in that situation, I’d be the same I’m sure.”

Gray shook him off. “No.”

Andrew started to speak, but he cut him off. “She’s not my mate, Andrew. How could she be, if she was with someone else?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter right now anyway. If this is the same guy, I need to go back to her place, try to get his scent, and track him down. Call me petty, but shipping her new boytoy back to Cadia would bring me immense amounts of satisfaction.”

Without waiting for his boss to respond, he spun on a heel and strode from the office and out of the embassy.

It was time to remember who he was, and why he’d been appointed as the senior guard in Cloud Lake. And it was past time that Gray showed this pumped-up wannabe that he wasn’t the biggest, baddest bear in town.