by Radclyffe
You worry too much. Sylvan’s thoughts held a hint of laughter and the pride that ran in the blood of a long line of Alpha Weres. With no hint of a limp, Sylvan strode to the two cowering rogues who knelt in pools of blood and submissive urine, their heads bowed, limbs trembling. Drake and the hunters had killed the other rogues, leaving these two alive to bear witness to the outcome of the challenge and to spread the message that Sylvan was alive—not only alive, but deadly and without mercy.
“Tell your masters the Alpha of the Timberwolf Pack says these streets are mine. This city, this territory is mine. If you sell drugs to poison my wolves, I will come for you. If you threaten my Pack, I will come for you. If you break the laws of my Pack land, I will come for you. The challenge is issued.” She kicked the lifeless corpse of the rogue whose throat she had torn out. “And I will not be as quick as I was with this cur. Now go.”
The two hesitated for an instant, then spun around, still on their knees, and crawled out of sight. Within seconds, the sound of fleeing footsteps echoed through the cavernous building. Sylvan turned to Niki, her second and the leader of her centuri.
“Burn it.”
“Yes, Alpha,” the auburn-haired Were said. Smaller and fuller-breasted than Drake, Niki’s muscular body was a fighting machine. The Pack imperator, Sylvan’s enforcer, she lived to protect Sylvan. “Andrew—get the Rover. Jonathan—the accelerant is in the compartment under the floor. Max—take Jace and patrol the access road. We don’t want this mongrel’s lieutenants taking us by surprise if they come looking for him.” She spat on the naked body of the dead rogue.
Jonathan, one of the newest centuri, rushed off with Andrew. Max, a craggy-faced, shaggy-haired Were, grunted his assent and loped away with Jace, a lithe blond female and Jonathan’s twin.
Sylvan slid her arm around Drake’s waist. “Happy now?”
Sylvan was trembling, and Drake instinctively drew her as close as she could without appearing to be supporting her. Watching Sylvan dominate the rogues aroused her even more than the fight, and she hadn’t thought that possible. Her skin tingled with pheromones and shimmered with sex sheen that mirrored Sylvan’s. Her clitoris pulsed and her sex clenched rhythmically. Her inner muscles pounded, and her sex glands, the olive-sized nodes buried deep at the base of her clitoris that produced the unique Were sexual neurotransmitters, were hard and ready to burst. “I won’t be happy until I have you alone and under me.”
Sylvan laughed. “Not until I’ve had you under me, and I’ve come in you.”
“You’re not strong enough for that yet.”
“I was strong enough a few hours ago.”
Drake needed Sylvan so badly her blood burned. “That was before you had to fight, and now you’re injured again. We’ll wait to tangle until you’ve shifted and finished healing.”
“I’m strong enough to take my mate.” Sylvan nipped Drake’s neck, her bite searing through Drake and making her hips jerk. “And I’m going to come on you very soon.”
“I’m ready.”
Sylvan kissed her, her hand in Drake’s hair, tilting her head back. She thrust her tongue deep into Drake’s mouth, her kiss a claiming, a demand—hot and hard and furious. Heat flared in Drake’s belly, tightening her clitoris, filling her pelvis with blood and victus, the Were life-essence. Her glands pulsed, and she growled into Sylvan’s mouth.
Niki said from behind them, “The incendiaries are set, Alpha.”
Sylvan’s blue eyes shimmered to wolf-gold and bored into Drake’s with the promise of their mating. “Do it.”
Leaving the centuri to ignite the blaze, Drake and Sylvan headed out to the heavily fortified black SUV. Drake filled her lungs with the cool, clean scent of the night—animals in the brush, pollen on the breeze, fish in the nearby river. Life. “I want you in the infirmary as soon as we—”
“No.” Sylvan stopped and gripped Drake’s shoulders. “I told you that’s not what I need.”
“I know—”
“No, you don’t.” Sylvan yanked Drake close, her mouth against Drake’s throat. “You. I need you.”
Heat roared through Drake’s blood, spiking her clitoris so hard she almost came. She needed to claim Sylvan as badly as Sylvan needed her. She ached to touch her, taste her, and know in her bones that Sylvan was alive and well and hers. Groaning at the surge of need, she pressed against Sylvan, rubbing her bare chest over Sylvan’s. Her nipples hardened, her breasts tensed, and her skin sparked. Her claws and canines extruded. Before she surrendered to the mating call, she pulled away, whimpering at the painful separation. “No, you’re injured. We shouldn’t—”
Sylvan snarled and her face shifted, the starkly beautiful planes edging into the sharp edges of her wolf. She was an Alpha Were, and denying her was dangerous.
Drake caressed Sylvan’s chest until Sylvan’s taut muscles eased. Too softly for anyone else to hear, she whispered, “Don’t snarl at me, love. You don’t scare me.”
The corner of Sylvan’s mouth twitched. “That was one of the first things I noticed about you when you were still human. You should have been afraid. Even now, you should be. But you never have been.”
“I love your fury. I love your strength.” Drake ran her fingers through Sylvan’s hair. “I love your power. I’ll never fear it.”
“But you won’t let me control you, either, will you?”
Drake opened the rear door of the Rover and they settled onto the benches bolted lengthwise to the sides of the compartment. “No.”
Sylvan laughed.
*
“I’d like to speak to Detective Jody Gates, please,” Becca Land said when the phone at police headquarters was answered by a laconic voice she recognized as the night dispatcher. For crying out loud, was he the only one who ever worked nights?
“Like I told you last time, lady, she ain’t working. And no, she ain’t called in for the five messages you already left. Maybe you should take the hint.”
Becca flushed. As if. “My interest is professional—” And why was she explaining something that was no one’s business to a man she didn’t even know? “Can you tell me when she’s scheduled—”
“She was due in at twenty-two hundred. Yesterday. She’s late.”
By about twenty-four hours. “Surely you have procedures for—”
“Her lieutenant don’t seem too worried. Maybe she should take the hint and look for another kind of work.” He snorted. “Don’t really need Vampire cops, now do we?”
A click was followed by empty air. Becca stared at the silent phone. Since when was it okay for city officials not to even pretend to hide their prejudices against Praeterns? Or had the discrimination always been this blatant, and she was just now noticing? God, she hoped she hadn’t been that blind.
This plan to track down the elusive Detective Gates wasn’t working—time to try something else. She’d been watching Jody’s town house almost nonstop since someone shot the Were Alpha there following a meeting with Jody. Jody had given her own blood to revive a dying Were guard and nearly died herself. Talk about a huge scoop, and she hadn’t called it in. She’d been right there—really right there. Kneeling in blood and praying that someone didn’t die. She’d held off reporting the shooting because she didn’t have the bigger story—she wanted to know what was behind those gunshots. And if she reported an assassination attempt on the U.S. Councilor for Were Affairs, the AP would bury the city in TV newscasters and there’d go her chance at the real story. Nope, something big was brewing and Jody was her best source. Sort of a sad statement, considering how the Vampire detective wasn’t speaking to her at the moment, but hey, a reporter worked with what she had. Detective Jody Gates. God, what a pain in the ass.
She didn’t even like the damned Vampire, but she hadn’t wanted to see her die either—or whatever living Vampires did before they reanimated as Risen Vampires. She hadn’t even known that a Vampire could die from giving up too much of her own blood, but then who knew what the rules were anyhow
? It wasn’t as if the Vampires—or any of the Praeterns—let humans in on their secrets. Well, okay, maybe that was understandable, considering that humans had done a pretty good job of wiping out the Praetern species something like a millennium ago, and they’d all gone into hiding and hadn’t resurfaced until two years ago, when Sylvan’s father more or less announced to the world, “Hey, everybody, there are a whole lot of preternatural species who have been living among you for forever, and we are tired of hiding.” The great Exodus had pretty much turned the world upside down, and humans, outnumbering the Praeterns by thousands to one, weren’t so sure they really wanted to share living space with species like Vampires and Weres who just might consider them prey, or the Fae who had all kinds of magical powers, or the Psi who might be influencing minds, or the Magi whose incantations and spells and wizardry were better weapons than anything humans had been able to construct. Humans, despite their numbers, often built their cultures based on fear, as Becca came to realize more every day.
Well, she wasn’t afraid. She was pissed off. She’d tried to help Jody—she’d offered her blood—and what did she get for her efforts? Jody had practically tossed her out on her ear. She’d left Jody’s house, but she wasn’t going to stay gone.
She was an investigative reporter, and she wanted to know who had taken shots at someone as high profile as Sylvan Mir, and while she was at it, she wanted to know what was going on with the mysterious girls who were showing up in ERs with deadly fevers no one wanted to talk about. Not quite true. Someone wanted to talk about them because he—she thought it was a he, she couldn’t really tell from the muffled voice on the phone—had been calling her to tell her about these cases. Why? Why did someone want to alert the press to these infections? Were they, as the caller claimed, instances of Were fever being transmitted to humans? If that was true, she needed to alert the human population. Didn’t she? Wasn’t that her responsibility—to report the stories that made a difference, to expose the dangerous secrets that ultimately cost lives? She hadn’t written anything about it yet. She told herself it was because she didn’t know enough, but how could she know enough if no one would tell her anything?
Feeling like a stalker, she’d waited and watched and waited some more, from before dawn the day before until well after sunup, for Jody to return. When the Vampire hadn’t shown, she’d figured Jody was spending the daylight hours somewhere else, and she’d gone home for a few hours’ restless sleep, then back on watch before sundown. As the hours passed with still no sign of Jody, she’d started to worry. Maybe Jody hadn’t recovered from nearly bleeding out, or the Vampire equivalent of it. Maybe Jody was at the hospital, although come to think of it, she’d never seen a Vampire patient in the ER. Like Weres, they didn’t seek conventional medical care. After giving the Were her blood, Jody had said she’d needed to feed. And she’d said to Sylvan Mir, You may not thank me when your centuri wakes up hungry. I need to be there when she does. When I’ve taken care of my needs, I’ll come.
Becca pulled her laptop from underneath the front seat and ran a Google search on Sylvan Mir. She’d read enough exposés and editorials about the Were Alpha and the Adirondack Timberwolf Pack to have a general idea where their Compound was located. After scanning a few articles, she clicked Google Maps and punched in the coordinates on her GPS. Time to hunt. First stop—the private headquarters of the most powerful Were Alpha in the Western Hemisphere.
About the Author
Radclyffe has written over thirty-five romance and romantic intrigue novels, dozens of short stories, and, writing as L.L. Raand, has authored a paranormal romance series, The Midnight Hunters.
She is an eight-time Lambda Literary Award finalist in romance, mystery, and erotica—winning in both romance (Distant Shores, Silent Thunder) and erotica (Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments edited with Stacia Seaman and In Deep Waters 2: Cruising the Strip written with Karin Kallmaker). A member of the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame, she is also a 2010 RWA / FF&P Prism award winner for Secrets in the Stone. Her 2010 titles are finalists for the Benjamin Franklin award (Desire by Starlight), the ForeWord Review Book of the Year award (Trauma Alert and writing as L.L. Raand, The Midnight Hunt), and the RWA Passionate Plume award (The Midnight Hunt). She is also the president of Bold Strokes Books, one of the world’s largest independent LGBT publishing companies.
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Firestorm by Radclyffe. Firefighter paramedic Mallory “Ice” James isn’t happy when the undisciplined Jac Russo joins her command, but lust isn’t something either can control—and they soon discover ice burns as fiercely as flame. (978-1-60282-232-0)
The Best Defense by Carsen Taite. When socialite Aimee Howard hires former homicide detective Skye Keaton to find her missing niece, she vows not to mix business with pleasure, but she soon finds Skye hard to resist. (978-1-60282-233-7)
After the Fall by Robin Summers. When the plague destroys most of humanity, Taylor Stone thinks there’s nothing left to live for, until she meets Kate, a woman who makes her realize love is still alive and makes her dream of a future she thought was no longer possible. (978-1-60282-234-4)
Accidents Never Happen by David-Matthew Barnes. From the moment Albert and Joey meet by chance beneath a train track on a street in Chicago, a domino effect is triggered, setting off a chain reaction of murder and tragedy. (978-1-60282-235-1)
In Plain View by Shane Allison. Best-selling gay erotica authors create the stories of sex and desire modern readers crave. (978-1- 60282-236-8)
Wild by Meghan O’Brien. Shapeshifter Selene Rhodes dreads the full moon and the loss of control it brings, but when she rescues forensic pathologist Eve Thomas from a vicious attack by a masked man, she discovers she isn’t the scariest monster in San Francisco. (978-1- 60282-227-6)
Reluctant Hope by Erin Dutton. Cancer survivor Addison Hunt knows she can’t offer any guarantees, in love or in life, and after experiencing a loss of her own, Brooke Donahue isn’t willing to risk her heart. (978- 1-60282-228-3)
Conquest by Ronica Black. When Mary Brunelle stumbles into the arms of Jude Jaeger, a gorgeous dominatrix at a private nightclub, she is smitten, but she soon finds out Jude is her professor, and Professor Jaeger doesn’t date her students…or her conquests. (978-1-60282- 229-0)
The Affair of the Porcelain Dog by Jess Faraday. What darkness stalks the London streets at night? Ira Adler, present plaything of crime lord Cain Goddard, will soon find out. (978-1-60282-230-6)
365 Days by K.E. Payne. Life sucks when you’re seventeen years old and confused about your sexuality, and the girl of your dreams doesn’t even know you exist. Then in walks sexy new emo girl, Hannah Harrison. Clemmie Atkins has exactly 365 days to discover herself, and she’s going to have a blast doing it! (978-1-60282-540-6)
Darkness Embraced by Winter Pennington. Surrounded by harsh vampire politics and secret ambitions, Epiphany learns that an old enemy is plotting treason against the woman she once loved, and to save all she holds dear, she must embrace and form an alliance with the dark. (978-1-60282-221-4)
78 Keys by Kristin Marra. When the cosmic powers choose Devorah Rosten to be their next gladiator, she must use her unique skills to try to save her lover, herself, and even humankind. (978-1-60282-222-1)
Playing Passion’s Game by Lesley Davis. Trent Williams’s only passion in life is gaming—until Juliet Sullivan makes her realize that love can be a whole different game to play. (978-1-60282-223-8)
Retirement Plan by Martha Miller. A modern morality tale of justice, retribution, and women who refuse to be politely invisible. (978-1- 60282-224-5)
Who Dat Whodunnit by Greg Herren. Popular New Orleans detective Scotty Bradley investigates the murder of a dethroned beauty queen to clear the name of his pro football–playing cousin. (978-1-60282- 225-2)
The Company He Keeps by Dale Chase. A riotously erotic collection of stories set in the sexually repressed and therefore sexually rampant Victorian era. (978-1-60282-22
6-9)
Cursebusters! by Julie Smith. Budding-psychic Reeno is the most accomplished teenage burglar in California, but one tiny screw-up and poof!—she’s sentenced to Bad Girl School. And that isn’t even her worst problem. Her sister Haley’s dying of an illness no one can diagnose, and now she can’t even help. (978-1-60282-559-8)
True Confessions by PJ Trebelhorn. Lynn Patrick finally has a chance with the only woman she’s ever loved, her lifelong friend Jessica Greenfield, but Jessie is still tormented by an abusive past. (978-1- 60282-216-0)
Jane Doe by Lisa Girolami. On a getaway trip to Las Vegas, Emily Carver gambles on a chance for true love and discovers that sometimes in order to find yourself, you have to start from scratch. (978-1-60282- 217-7)
Ghosts of Winter by Rebecca S. Buck. Can Ros Wynne, who has lost everything she thought defined her, find her true life—and her true love—surrounded by the lingering history of the once-grand Winter Manor? (978-1-60282-219-1)
Who I Am by M.L. Rice. Devin Kelly’s senior year is a disaster. She’s in a new school in a new town, and the school bully is making her life miserable—but then she meets his sister Melanie and realizes her feelings for her are more than platonic. (978-1-60282-231-3)
Call Me Softly by D. Jackson Leigh. Polo pony trainer Swain Butler finds that neither her heart nor her secret are safe when beautiful British heiress Lillie Wetherington arrives to bury her grandmother, Swain’s employer. (978-1-60282-215-3)