The three kids on the porch screamed and threw up their hands as the red wolf in the bushes bolted for the front door of the King family home. Candy went flying and kids scattered as the wolf pushed past the youngsters and went straight for Edward’s throat. At the last second he was just barely able to throw up his arms to block what might have been a fatal bite for anyone else.
“Edward, what on earth are you doing?” Tisha came running into the foyer from the direction of the front room.
Edward was ever mindful of the presence of Alaina Ariosa right behind his mother. It’s not like he could just belt it out now, could he? “It’s just a stray dog, Mother. I’ll have him under control in just a minute!”
Of course, this was while Edward had one hand wrapped around the red wolf’s right-side from and back legs at the same time. With the other hand he reached desperately for anything he could use to incapacitate the powerful beast. His fingers brushed the cord of a lamp on the hall table and he grabbed hold of it.
Tisha’s shriek of indignation did not stop Edward. “Not my lamp! That is a Tiffany lamp!”
“Screw Tiffany!” Edward shouted as he yanked that cord right out of the wall so hard that the lamp bounced crazily against the wood floor before the colored glass shade shattered into a million pieces.
Armed with the cord, Edward began winding it around the snarling wolf’s legs. The animal was huge and strong. If Edward had not been a shifter himself he would have had no prayer of managing to get a hold of the animal, much less manage to try and tie it up.
The snapping jaws were inches from Edward’s face. He flung his whole body on the enormous beast. Pulling hard on the cord, he grabbed one more front let to add it to the bindings. The fight was incredible. Edward felt the one free back leg raking the back of Edward’s thigh repeatedly as he struggled to keep the creatures down on the floor.
“You could help!” Edward ground out.
His mother was too busy cowering with her friend Alaina to be of any help at all. Fortunately for Edward, the ruckus had brought at least Jason running downstairs to see what was going on.
“What the hell?” Jason called out from the top of the stairs. “Who is that?”
Edward was panting with the effort of whipping that cord around and around three of the beast’s legs. “No idea, but could I get some help?”
Jason joined the fray and put all of his weight on the back end of the wolf. He managed to get that one leg to stop raking Edward with its claws and suddenly Edward was free to try and grab hold of the mouth.
“Hold him!” Edward shouted right before he let go with both hands and wrapped them around the wolf’s snarling muzzle.
It was like trying to hold a crocodile motionless. Jason was bearing all of his weight on the back end and Edward had a hold of the mouth. They had to get this animal to stop. And Alaina’s whimpers were not helping. The woman was staring wide eyed at the shifters fighting and Tisha wasn’t doing a damned thing to try and get the woman out of the way.
“Mother!” Edward tried not to sound too vicious. That would just create another argument. But it was a little difficult to be kind and chipper when you were about to get flung to the ceiling by a wolf so powerful that it made your big brother look like a pansy. “Could you please take Alaina with you into the kitchen?”
“Why? I want to watch!” came the answer.
Edward was now officially tempted to let go and tell the beast to eat his mother. “Get. Out! Now!”
“Fine!” But Tisha did not sound at all pleased. “But you had better not break anything else?”
Wham! The Chippendale hall table was swept right off its spindly little legs and landed in a heap of splinters on the floor.
“He is replacing that!” Tisha said with all of the indignation of someone who is very fond of their stuff though they have never had to pay a dime for it. “Take it outside, boys!”
But that was not the wolf’s goal and it had been obvious from the first moment that the animal badly wanted inside the King family home. As Tisha finally disappeared with Alaina in tow, the red wolf managed to slip loose from the lamp cord bindings. It exploded from the floor and sent both Jason and Edward flying across the room. The brothers slammed into the wall and the wolf was already heading for the stairs.
It was in Edward’s mind to just let the animal go. They would never figure out what it wanted or what its goal was until they let it make an attempt to reach that goal. Right? But before Edward could even suggest it, Jason was on his feet diving toward the stairs like a football player trying valiantly to stop the winning touchdown.
Jason’s knees hit the stairs with a hard thud. His upper body landed dead center of the wolf’s midsection and pinned it painfully to the ground on the uneven surface of the wood staircase. The carpet runner was Jason’s only traction. He braced his boots against the fluffy floral print and pushed off.
“Oh shit,” Edward whispered as the sound of fabric tearing reached him.
Jason now had his arms looped around the wolf’s body and was attempting to drag him back down the stairs while dodging the snapping, flailing head. Unfortunately for Jason, the carpet runner was now moving underneath him and his opponent and gravity was dragging the whole thing downstairs.
The wolf’s head thumped against a stair as they began their descent. Edward grabbed hold of the now loose end of the carpet runner at the bottom of the stairs. It was still attached, but it was flopping around as though it were about to come completely off the stairs entirely. One good tug and it would come crashing to the bottom in a heap.
“Hang tight!” Edward called to Jason.
Putting every ounce of his strength into the task, Edward yanked that length of carpet so hard that both Jason and the wolf spun down the stairs as though they were on a ski slope. They hit the ground hard in a heap.
Edward reached in and grabbed his brother. Yanking Jason out of the way, Edward used the loose carpet runner to bind the wolf like a big burrito. Around and around it went until nothing but the snapping head was exposed. The creature was flailing and struggling, and soon Edward knew the change was coming because the animal’s nose was getting shorter and shorter and suddenly its claws were not scratching the wood floor. They were slowly receding into his paws even as that reddish brown fur was returning back into his skin.
“He’s shifting!” Jason said eagerly as he pulled himself back to a standing position. “Keep ready. He may try to bolt!”
But the shifter wasn’t going anywhere. By the time the change was finished he was lying on the floor wrapped in carpeting and panting at the ceiling. He was dressed in simple black cargo pants, boots, and a black T-shirt. He looked as though he had been out trying to play spy in someone’s yard. His hair was that same reddish brown as his coat and his facial features looked vaguely familiar to Edward though he could not place them.
“Holy shit,” Jason whispered. “Do you see it? Edward, do you see it?”
Edward finally turned and curled his lip at his younger brother. “See what?”
“He looks like Dad!” Jason said reverently.
Edward had not even had a chance to process that when he heard a soft knock on the front door. “Um, knock knock? The door is open so I came in, but I’m a little confused as to why there is a man wrapped in a carpet in your stairwell. Is this some weird Halloween prank I’ve never heard of? There’s candy scattered all over your front porch as though you boys have been terrifying children with the sole purpose of stealing their goodies!”
Eleni. Eleni was here. Dammit, of course she was! That was why Tisha had wanted Edward to come down in the first place. Edward needed to be ready to answer the door for Eleni.
“Uh, I’m not sure what’s going on here,” Eleni continued. “But is my mother all right?”
“Yeah. She’s in the kitchen.” Edward swallowed and tried to seem normal. What in the hell was normal right now? He could not have begun to speak on that topic at this point. His world was upside
down and going downhill fast.
“Thank you.” Eleni cast one more look at the mystery man. “Let me know if you need any—well, I guess help.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Edward offered Eleni an awkward little wave and a smile. “Just keep our mothers in the kitchen and out of the hallway and I will owe you big time forevermore.”
Eleni tossed a chuckle over her shoulder and then disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. Edward felt like a complete and total imbecile as he struggled to figure out how he was going to explain all of this to Eleni. But perhaps that didn’t really matter right now. The only thing that did matter was figuring out who in the hell this shifter was and why he was wearing their father’s facial features.
“So do we take him upstairs or what?” Jason asked Edward. “We can’t really interrogate him down here, right? And Orion’s room is already trashed.”
“I guess that’s where we go then.” Edward pointed to the feet. “You take that end. I’ll take the front. And we’ll just hope he stays somewhat passed out until we get upstairs where we have help in case he gets pissy.”
“Pissy.” Jason continued to grumble as he hoisted the stranger shifter’s legs up onto his shoulder. “That’s rich. The guy busted into our house, went postal, and tried to rip our faces off. Then he destroys some of Mother’s furniture and stuff—and you know we will hear about that again—and now we’re supposed to be careful with him?”
Edward could not fault his brother’s irritation. As they struggled to maneuver the guy around the landing at the top of the stairs without clocking his head against the wall, Edward had the sincere thought that he would have almost rather beaten the man’s skull in and avoided all of the questions. Just bury the body out at the ranch and forget about it.
But you need answers.
Yes. They did need answers, but as the shifter began to moan once they started down the hallway toward Orion’s suite, Edward wondered how much he really wanted to hear the answers. The guy was obviously a wolf shifter. He didn’t seem to have a pack because he certainly wasn’t part of theirs. They didn’t have any knowledge of another shifter pack within the Dallas area. And this kid was wearing Mac King’s face. That seemed to suggest that Mr. Joseph Orville hadn’t been so far off in his accusations against Edward’s father.
“Who the hell is that?” Zane was poking his head out of the suite at the end of the hallway. “I was looking to see if Jason had figured out what was going on. This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.”
“Hey!” Devon shouted from inside Orion’s room. “Is that Jason? What did Edward break? Did his mommy spank him good for it?”
“Really?” Edward muttered. “That’s honestly how you think it works?”
Zane ducked back and held the doors out of the way as Edward and Jason eased their carpet-bound prisoner into the bedroom. “Damn. Did you guys actually pull the runner off the stairs? Do you have any idea how pissed off Mother is going to be?”
“Yes, I have some idea. She’s in the kitchen with Alaina and Eleni. How about the lot of you shut up and help us figure out how this guy just bounded into our house in the body of a red wolf?”
Dead silence. There was nothing but dead silence. Edward and Jason dumped their human cargo on the floor face up. Zane and Devon stared at each other. Orion was the only one who gave any outward reaction that he’d heard Edward’s words. But Orion only started laughing. That wasn’t a good sign. Had he known about this all the time and never said anything?
“Orion?” Edward frowned at his brother. There were a lot of things to admire and respect about Orion King, but lately most of them had been tangled up in all the reasons to hate Orion and it did not feel as though things were getting better. “Orion, would you shut up and just talk? What do you know? Are you saying that you know who this is?”
Zane smacked their eldest brother right on the back of his head. Orion’s head snapped forward. He was sitting on the end of his ruined and half-destroyed bed with his naked legs hanging over and his body barely perched on the edge of the mattress. He didn’t look well. His skin was sallow and he seemed to have shrunk just a little. It wasn’t the same man they had known even a few months ago when they had been together at their father’s funeral.
“Stop acting like an ass,” Zane grumbled. Then he looked up at Edward. “You’re saying this guy is a shifer?”
“Yes.” And Edward was getting the distinct feeling that their unintentional guest was not actually passed out. He was play-acting. “He is a shifter. I just want to know how he came to be one.”
Jason grabbed the guy’s reddish brown hair and lifted his face. He peered at his closed eyes for a moment. “I think we could probably just ask him.” Then Jason actually used two fingers to spread the man’s eyelid apart. “Oh yeah. Totally awake.”
Zane kicked the guy’s foot with his boot. “So? What’s your story?”
The man opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m a lone wolf. My father never married my mother. He sired me and then came back every year to take me out and teach me about the shifter life.”
Edward swallowed back the bile that threatened to overtake him. “And who was your father?”
“My name is Gemini King.”
“I’m sorry, did you say Gemini?” Edward could not believe that his father would have allowed his bastard son to be named for a constellation. They had special meaning in the shifter communities and generally indicated an oldest child.
“Who cares if his name is Gemini?!” Zane exclaimed. “Did I just hear him say King?” Zane pointed at the stranger. His eyes were so big that they were about to bug out. “Your last name is King?”
“Yeah, it’s a little hard to come to terms with the fact that your father was anything but perfect, hmm?” Gemini King looked around the suite that Orion had destroyed. “But then when you’re born with a silver spoon shoved up your ass maybe you have enough money and power to believe whatever you want.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Diana shifted from foot to foot at the front door of the King family home in University Park. The neighborhood was filled with huge houses, and this zip code was often associated with some of the most expensive real estate and the most affluent people in Dallas society.
Of course, right now the neighborhood was a hot Halloween destination there in Dallas. After all, who didn’t want to drive to the richest neighborhood in the city to go trick or treating? Logically that would be the best way to get good candy, right? And every kid knew that the whole point of Halloween was to find the best hook-up for full-sized candy bars. There were bands of kids walking up and down the sidewalks and hurrying up to front porches emblazoned with carriage lamps and tasteful Halloween decorations. There were no gaudy blow up Frankensteins here, which might have also been a statement about just how stuffy this neighborhood was beneath the glitz of exterior lights and the immaculate landscaping. Diana spotted princesses alongside goblins, witches, ghosts, pumpkins, and so many super heroes that she did not even recognize most of them.
Oddly enough, the King household had their front lights on but had not one trick or treater on their porch. At first, Diana wondered if the King brothers were playing some game where they scared children away. Then she considered that the kids were so terrified—and rightfully so—of Tisha Olivares-King that they just didn’t come up here anymore. But when Diana spotted the shrub completely ripped out of the flower bed just to the left of the walkway she began to realize that there was something else going on here. The closer she got to the porch the more candy she saw scattered around too. Someone’s discarded super hero cape was caught on the newel post of the porch. The steps were covered in the sticky remains of stomped caramels and chocolatey nougat from the candy bars that had once filled the wrappers now mashed to the porch floor.
“There’s no blood,” Diana whispered.
That had to be good. Right? For a moment she considered turning around and walking back to her car. But to what end? She w
as going to wind up investigated for assault because there was some shifter running around Dallas scaring the crap out of people and making a regular nuisance of himself. The Kings were the only shifters that Diana knew of. Ergo she intended to make sure they realized that this was as much their problem as it was hers.
With that renewed sense of purpose, Diana pushed the doorbell for perhaps a moment or two longer than was strictly necessary. Then she stood back and waited. It took absolutely forever for someone to come to the door. Diana was reaching for the bell to ring it a second time when the ornate wood and glass front door swung open to reveal a young woman backlit by the dramatic foyer lights.
“Oh!” The young woman’s eyebrows shot up and her lips parted in obvious surprise. “I suppose I was expecting kids wanting candy.”
Diana barely managed to summon up enough breath to murmur a comprehensible response. “That’s a reasonable expectation.”
The sick feeling in Diana’s gut was expanding until she almost had to turn away and leave. She knew this young woman. Eleni Ariosa. This was the young woman who had been the subject of that horribly awkward conversation with Edward and the Orvilles in Diana’s office just that morning.
Had it been that morning? It felt like a million years ago. Diana realized now that she had been waiting all along to find out that Edward was lying. Why? Why was she so convinced of his being less than she thought? That didn’t seem very productive when she was so physically attracted to him.
“Can I help you, Diana?” Eleni was hanging on the front door almost as though she were trying to prevent Diana from slipping past her into the house. Did they all believe that Diana was nothing more than some creepy stalker girlfriend?
Diana cleared her throat. “I’m surprised to see you here, Eleni. Don’t you and your mother typically spend your time with Embry and her husband, Joseph Orville?”
The barb hit its mark as intended. Eleni’s dark eyes widened just a fraction and there was a very tiny crack in her mask of impassivity. Eleni had always been absolutely gorgeous. Her sister was the same way. Embry had the fuller figure, but Eleni had that exotic olive skin and the brown almond-shaped eyes that were tilted up just so at the corners. Her body was lush and round, and in school Diana had always felt like a bit of beanpole next to girls like this one. They seemed to attract the boys with their voluptuous chests and ample hips. Then there was all of that long, dark silky hair too.
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