by Alyssa Day
"I don't think I'm willing to be fired just yet," she said lightly. "After all, it's only fair of me to give Annie another few chances to do away with me, right? And this cake is really, really good."
He wanted to shout. He wanted to haul her onto his lap and kiss the breath out of her. He wanted to drag her off to his bed and never let her go.
He did none of those things.
Instead, he took a deep breath and turned to look at her. "Well. If you insist, Ambassador. Maybe tomorrow we can go for a ride one of these days, and I'll show you my home? Do you know how to ride a horse?"
She smiled at him, and he felt it like a touch. "I can probably figure it out."
A little while later, when the dinner ended and Annie and Meggie claimed the privilege of escorting April to her room, he caught her hand for the briefest of moments before she stepped down to join them.
"It was never about the dress."
Three weeks later
April opened her eyes when the first rays of the sun peeked through the curtains of her unfamiliar room. She'd had a rough night, sleeplessness battling with periods of restless dreams and vivid nightmares. In one, little Annie was the size of a full-grown Dire Wolf, and coming for her. In the dream, a pitcher of water hadn't been enough to stop her; nothing had stopped her, and the room had filled with blood. Then the blood had turned into the blood of the men she'd killed in the battle in Florida.
Yes, she was definitely ready to be out of bed.
She washed her face and dressed, then brushed her teeth while studying the dress she'd hung on a hook after that first dinner, three weeks before. Strange how a simple piece of fabric had made Pine turn so weird on her. But then again, he'd said it wasn't the dress.
Strange how she hadn't found time to return it to Nyn. She would, just … not yet.
For the first time in a while, she wished she had girlfriends she could ask about baffling things like men and dresses and fitting in to society when she didn't have a sword or her bow in her hand. But she'd been too busy fighting to survive growing up to make any friends and now that she was an adult, she didn't know how to begin to try.
She thought she and Nyn were becoming friends, but she wouldn't test that theory by asking about, or sharing personal thoughts about, the woman's brother. Maybe Rhiannon or Lyric? For humans, they were both very strong women, from what she'd seen and heard about her. Unlike that Sunny, who was doing some job for the queen but seemed to be a ditz of the highest order.
April shook her head. Women like that gave the rest of them a bad name.
She glanced out the bedroom window in time to see Pine No-Last-Name heading down the path toward the stables. Perfect. They'd been too busy touring Europe by car and meeting other leaders of supernatural groups to have had time to ride. And today, with a day off, she'd had enough of hanging around here thinking about her feelings. Poseidon would be appalled if he could see his new warrior now.
She headed out, happy to see that nobody else was up yet, or at least nobody was wandering around the halls, so she didn't have to make polite conversation. She always enjoyed meeting new people and hearing their stories, but now she needed a day or two of silence to calm her introverted soul before she ventured forth to any new social situations. A long, peaceful horseback ride should do the trick, even if she had to ignore the fact that her pulse was racing from the idea of it—the idea of seeing Pine again.
"It's not like we didn't spend the past two weeks in the car together," she muttered. And every day, they'd grown closer. He was fiercely intelligent and calmly powerful. Pine never felt the need to puff himself up or proclaim his alpha status to the world. He was happy to work as part of a team, especially with her. She'd even started to think she could do this ambassador job after all, and she'd definitely seen how important it was.
Yesterday, on the drive back, he'd even admitted he'd been wrong about a detail regarding the Irish vampires.
Gods, but he was gorgeous. And she'd really, really loved hearing him admit that he'd been wrong. So many men had a problem with that one. It was easier for her, of course, since she was wrong so infrequently.
She was still laughing at her undeserved smugness when she reached the stable. Pine walked out leading a large mare with deep brown coloring and a white star on her forehead.
"Good morning, Ambassador," he said, that slow, sexy smile spreading across his face. "Coffee?"
"None yet, I'm afraid, Alpha. She's a beauty." She reached out and let the mare sniff her fingers and then stepped nearer to whisper Atlantean endearments into the velvety ear.
"Yes, she is," Pine said, but when she looked up, he was looking at her, not at the horse.
Warmth rushed into her cheeks, so April bent her head to the horse again until it passed. She wouldn't let him fluster her, and she wasn't quite ready to flirt with him. "Is she for me?"
Pine, who wore jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved black sweater and looked far too sexy for her peace of mind, nodded and shoved his hair out of his face. "Yes, if you like her. I'll go get Minotaur and then show you how to saddle Darling, unless you want me to do it for you. I just thought, knowing you, that you'd want to do it yourself."
She grinned at him, both because he was just so damn hot and because he had horses named Minotaur and Darling. "Let me guess. Annie named the horses?"
"When she was a few years younger," he said with a rueful smile. "I'm just lucky they're not Fluffy and Cuddles, which is what she named the kittens."
"Kittens? Wait. How is it that the kittens—and the horses, for that matter—are so at ease around you? I know that animals can recognize shifters, especially the predators, but Darling here acts like you're any normal human." It didn’t make sense. She'd never before seen a horse that was willing to be within a thousand yards of a wolf shifter.
"We've been breeding horses here and just outside Inverness for hundreds of years, and by 'we' I mean the pack. They've all been bred to be sturdy and calm, especially around us. I'd never have flighty horses near the kids, and as you may know, horses are magnets for kids, whether they're allowed to be at the stables alone or not."
"Annie again?"
He sighed. "She's kind of the ringleader. But so many of her friends died in the Transition …" Pine looked down at his hands and she could see a muscle in his jaw jump.
"That you can't deny her anything," she said, finishing his thought.
"Exactly. I'm not sure if that makes me a good uncle or a horrible uncle, but it is what it is. We could have lost her, but we didn't. So, I let her have a little leeway--"
"To murder visiting ambassadors--"
"To be a child for just a while longer," he corrected, but he was smiling again now. "Stay here, and I'll go get that saddle, and then we'll have a quick riding lesson before we get started."
After he disappeared back into the stable, April shook her head and talked to Darling. "Men. They just want so much to be helpful. This one is a big softie, though, no matter how dangerous he is in battle. May I ride you now, girl?"
The horse moved a bit closer and April lightly leapt up onto her wide back and then leaned down and patted the long neck. "Thank you, beautiful one, for your gift of service. I promise to find an apple for you."
"So, the first rule of riding a horse is--" Pine stopped in the doorway with his arms full of leather and metal and rope and stared up at her in disbelief.
"The first rule is not to burden the creature with all that human contraption and nonsense," April finished for him. "Darling knows full well what I'd like from her, and she has agreed to accept my request. I need nothing more."
"You've ridden before? Of course you've ridden before." Pine put the bundle of saddle and accessories down on a table outside the stable door. "Is there anything you can't do?"
She thought about it for a minute while he went to get Minotaur, a tall, chestnut stallion. Whether it was his usual custom or just his pride showing, she noticed he'd chosen to ride bareback, too. When Minot
aur pranced up next to Darling, April finally nodded.
"Yes. I can't walk in high heels. Race?"
In a totally unfair move, she didn't even wait for his answer before she clucked encouragement to Darling, and they were off.
7
Pine whooped, filled with a completely unfamiliar emotion, but he didn’t even try to analyze it. It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful woman had challenged him to a race over hills and trails he'd roamed for his entire life. This time he'd claim the forfeit he'd asked for during that battle nearly a month ago, now.
He grinned and leaned low over Minotaur's neck, giving him his head. This time he'd duck if she tried to punch him.
They raced over the beautiful signs of spring in the highlands. It was still cold at night more often than not, but blooming plants and newborn lambs told the world that yes, indeed, spring was nigh. It was his favorite time of year, and he was more than pleased to share it with April.
Well. If he could only catch up to her, he'd be pleased. "Minotaur, speed, my friend."
The stallion stretched out on a long straightaway and slowly but surely pulled even with April, who rode like a dream of flying, as if she and the mare were twin halves of the same wild spirit. When she saw him she laughed and slowly drew Darling to a canter and then to a walk. When they reached a stream, they dismounted to let the horses drink, and April perched on a rock overlooking the water.
"It's so beautiful, your home," she said, turning her face up to the sun. "You were lucky to have grown up here. Were your parents the alpha pair?"
It took a moment for her words to register, because the sight of the sun on her bright hair, on the pale, luminous skin of her face, stole his speech.
"I—yes. They were. Until only a few years ago, actually, when my Da lost his battle with cancer and Ma followed him soon after. Nyn said she died of a broken heart, after fifty years together. She didn't know how to live without him."
April's eyes flew open. "I'm sorry. I know … I know how hard that can be. My parents died together, too, although it was something they brought upon themselves," she said, so bitterly that he was afraid to ask her about it.
"I'm sorry," he said instead, and she lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
"They brought it on themselves. They decided that Atlantis was boring, so they managed to smuggle themselves through the portal and started an illegal fight club somewhere in Eastern Europe, always coming home with bruises and broken bones sometimes. They angered the wrong people, though."
She looked away from him, then, so he couldn't see her face, but he clearly heard the pain in her voice that she tried to hide. "One day they never came home at all."
"How old were you?" They hadn't ventured into personal topics on their trips, but it hadn't been because he hadn't wanted to talk to her about more than treaties and borders. He'd just been careful not to cross her borders until she allowed it.
April blew out a breath. "Does it matter?"
"It matters to me." He sat down on the rock next to her, carefully not looking at her, and took her hand. She tensed, but didn't pull away. Instead, she sat quietly and looked out over the sparkling water while the horses cropped at some new grass nearby.
"I was six years old, and I had no one."
His hand involuntarily tightened around hers, but he forced himself to relax his fingers. Six years old. A baby, really.
"But it was Atlantis, right? Don’t they have programs to take care of--" He stopped, unsure how to continue.
"Orphans? Sure. But I didn't know about them, and my parents' friends were more worried about getting in trouble over the smuggling and the fight club than they were about one dirty, starving kid running around stealing food and sleeping in hidden corners. I finally found friends, and their parents took me in," she told him, a smile touching her sensual lips. "Lucas's mom became like a mother to me. But as wonderful as they are, there's always that feeling that you're a guest in someone else's home, even when they want to adopt you."
"Did you let them? Adopt you?"
She pulled her hand away and stood, walking over to Darling. "No. No, I couldn't quite bring myself to do that. I had nothing left of my heritage but my name, and I wasn't going to give that up. Stubbornness or stupidity, I guess. I grew up clutching that hurt to me; that I was the one nobody really wanted."
Pine followed her, drawn as if steel to her magnet. "For me, it was the other side of the same coin. I grew up as the heir. The alpha-in-training. Everybody wanted to be my friend, if only on the surface. Some girls, even … well. A few of them pretended to care about me, but it was never about me, if that makes sense."
He stopped, realizing what he was doing. Wanted to punch himself in the mouth. "Ha. Poor little rich boy. What a joke. You tell me your painful truths, and I whine that girls wanted to be with me for my money. I'm a fool."
April swung around, and he saw no condemnation in her eyes. "No. Don't say that. We all grow up and live with our own pain, and I learned a long time ago that I have no monopoly on it. Not being able to tell who your true friends are is just as hard as having none at all. At least when I did make friends, I knew they had no ulterior motive. You didn't have that."
A harsh reality he'd told nobody welled up in him and ripped its way out of his throat. "I still don't."
"You don't?"
"I still don't have any friends that I can completely trust to only want to be my friend for me, not for what I can bring them."
April froze, her fingers moving gently in Darling's mane as she plaited flowers into it; an odd choice for such a warrior woman. It made him smile.
When she finished, she took a step toward him and placed her hands lightly in his. "Pine. Here is my truth, today: You do, now."
It took him a moment, because he was lost in the realization that she was touching him of her own initiative and volition, but then understanding bloomed within him on a wave of warmth that swept through his body. She was telling him that she was his friend.
She was his friend, and the gods themselves knew that she wanted nothing from him. Not money or power or position.
She was his friend, and his heart, shriveled and cold and dead for so long, tentatively started to open to the sunlit warmth that was April.
"I want to kiss you," he confessed, but he made no move toward her. For now, friendship was enough. Was more than enough.
Was everything.
"I know," she said lightly, glancing ever-so-swiftly at his lips and then away. "I might even want to kiss you, too, sometime in the future. But for now, let's be content at friendship."
"You have no idea how content I am." He shouted out a laugh and then swung her into the air.
Luckily for him, she laughed too instead of flattening him or shooting him.
Warrior, he told himself.
Friend.
He carefully put his friend back down on the ground and swung up onto Minotaur's back. "I bet it 's time for lunch, and then maybe we can get in on the soccer game. Everybody plans on Saturday afternoons. You'll love it, except the rules are more like guidelines."
She grinned and leapt lightly onto Darling's back. "Werewolf soccer? I love it already."
"We prefer wolf shifter," he told her, pretending to be offended.
She laughed at him, and he loved it.
He clucked to Minotaur, and then he and his friend rode leisurely back to find lunch. Suddenly, he was starving. Apparently happiness worked up quite an appetite. He even felt like whistling. Or singing. It was ridiculous, but he hadn't felt truly happy in longer than he could remember, except for scattered moments with Annie. He hoped this amazing feeling would last forever—or at least for a very, very long time.
Instead, it only lasted ten minutes.
Then they found the first two dying shifters.
8
April jumped down off her horse and dropped to the ground next to the first man. His clothed body was covered with blood, and someone—or something—had gouged huge re
nts in his shirt and pants. She felt his neck with no hope at all but the faintest flutter of a pulse whispered against her fingertips. "He's alive!"
Pine was already checking the second man, who was in much the same shape. "So is Perry, but he doesn't have much time. There's too much blood here. If we don't get them medical help, they'll both die." He made a quick call to the clinic on the property and demanded immediate transport and a medic.
"Doesn’t the shift help them heal?" She didn't know enough about shifters, and she wanted to bang her stupid head against a rock. Instead of flirting with Pine, she should have been studying his people. Doing something useful.
"Yes, but I can't force them to shift when they're this close to dead. The stress of the shift would finish the job." Suddenly he jumped up and swore, scanning the area. "They might be near, but the damnable thing is I can't smell what did this. There's a scent, but it's like nothing I've ever encountered. It's as if a boulder and a lit match both rolled over them and all around the grass here."
April froze, her blood turning to ice in her veins. "Demons," she hissed, almost afraid to say the word. "Pine, that's the scent of demon."
She could read the doubt on his face and said a few choice words herself, but in ancient Atlantean. "Damn it, I'm telling you, this is the work of demons."
"April, there haven't been demons in Scotland in hundreds of years, maybe even longer. I don't--"
She cut him off. They had no time for doubt. "Fine. You keep a lookout. I have a small bit of healing magic; I'll do what I can."
She forced the anger and fear out of her mind, closed her eyes, and called to the goddess to listen to her plea and give her strength to help these men. When she opened her eyes again, Pine was staring at the blue light streaming from her spread fingers and down into and around the wounded man. When the gashes on his skin sealed themselves enough for him to be safely moved, she moved carefully, staggering a little, over to the second man and repeated her prayer. By the time he, too, was healed enough to move, she felt as if she'd been the one injured. Healing took so much out of those who only had a small touch of the magic.