Goliath.
The giant.
“Midas.” Abbott buzzed around like a mosquito. “Midas.”
“I’ll not fight again,” he whispered, the taste of an old accent on his tongue. “I’m done with the arena.”
“You don’t have to fight.” Abbott rested a light hand on his shoulder. “You’re home. You’re safe.”
The veil of the past parted, and Midas saw beyond it to the present, to the den lit up and welcoming.
The sight did nothing to warm him. He was cold to the bone. Even the full sun failed to thaw him.
“Six weeks,” he bargained softly. “After that, I can sign up for another magical lobotomy.”
Otherwise, the numbness would pervade his thoughts during the courtship, and he would forget why he wanted Hadley in the first place. Want. No. It was time to be that honest at least. He needed her. He was just waking up, and hers was the hand shaking his shoulder. He couldn’t go cold on her, or he would lose her. He might lose her anyway. There was no telling how long he had before his mental state deteriorated, leaving him the gibbering mess he had been prior to the partition.
Ford was an honorable man, but he wouldn’t let Hadley slip through his fingers twice.
“You’re coming unraveled,” Abbott pressed. “You can’t afford to wait.”
“Once Hadley sees me as I am, she’ll run.” Midas lurched forward, unwilling to let his mother find him like this, to know the moment they had all been waiting for had finally arrived. “It won’t take six weeks.”
A sigh moved through Abbott. “Where do you want to go?”
“To the Faraday.”
Together, they cut a path through the woods to the SUV parked on the shoulder of the road. Abbott was allowed his privacy on pack land, but he was required to bring his retinue if he left the safety of those guarded borders.
They hadn’t reached the vehicle before the two guards assigned to him appeared and unlocked the door.
“I have sweats in the trunk.” Abbott hustled to beat them to the task. “I keep a few pairs on hand.”
“Gwyllgi bring their clothes through the change.”
Though his were MIA, and he doubted he wanted to ask how or why or when that happened.
“Apprentice potentates are harder on their wardrobes.” Abbott tossed a folded pair of sweats. “Try those on.”
Midas checked the label then noticed the design. “Hadley gave you these?”
The OPA logo stretched down the leg. These were the sweats they kept at their HQ for guests, a pretty word for the ugly truth of the abuse survivors they sheltered and helped get back on their feet.
“A half dozen pairs.” He rubbed at his mouth, but his smile stuck. “A mix of men’s and women’s, enough to clothe the entire OPA team. Seemed prudent considering how often she’s a patient of mine lately.”
Aware he was being watched but not caring in the least, Midas brought the fabric to his nose.
Disappointment swept through him when her familiar scent eluded him. The detergent used to launder these wasn’t the same as what she used at home. She must have taken them straight from a locker and passed them on to Abbott.
“Put them on.” Abbott climbed in the SUV. “I have two patients to see today if you’re dismissing me.”
“I am.”
Midas stabbed his legs through the soft fabric, faded from use, and yanked the pants up over his hips.
“Are you going to tell your mother?”
“Are you giving me a choice?”
“Tisdale will contact Natisha,” Abbott said grimly. “She won’t risk you backsliding after all the progress you’ve made.”
Natisha was his mother’s closest living gwyllgi relative. Gwyllgi as in faeborn. She was a healer of legend, a rare white gwyllgi, and a fae to the bone. Her fur color was the reason he had gambled on Bonnie Diaz, hoping he might have found a healer of Natisha’s skill without her morals. Or the lack thereof. Natisha cared for her warg-tainted offspring about as much as the dirt between her paw pads, but she was willing to bargain. Always willing to bargain. For the right price.
Mom knew Natisha’s true name. It had been passed down from alpha to alpha in whispers since their line was established. She had used its power only twice. Once after Lethe brought him home, and now she would again. Whatever the debt, it was his to pay, but she wouldn’t see it that way. She was his mother, and she loved him too much to haggle, even when the price demanded asked everything of her.
“You would give anything to save this child?” the ancient croons. “Including all future children? The daughter with eyes like yours? The son with your smile? The—”
“Yes.” Tears stream down Mom’s cheeks, but she doesn’t flinch. “Save my boy, damn you.”
Save, not heal.
Healing him wasn’t an option. The two halves of his nature had been in conflict for decades, the wounds on his soul left to fester. The predator in him had stolen his human body every chance it got, afraid of its weakness, its brokenness. And the man had stomped down on the beast until it lurked in the far corners of his mind, prowling, waiting for any opportunity to overwhelm him.
The drive to the Faraday gave him time to think, but his mind ran in circles, torn between the sins of his past and the fragile hope for his future.
“Thanks,” he told Abbott, lingering before he shut the door. “I’ll be in touch if I change my mind.”
“You won’t,” he sighed. “Your potentate has rubbed off on you.”
Oddly proud to hear him say so, Midas strolled into the lobby as if it were normal for him to arrive to work barefoot and shirtless. The whispering began soon after, shock over his scars the loudest, followed by sighed feminine appreciation. He ignored both on his way to the elevator and rode up to Hadley’s floor. Safe in the knowledge she wasn’t home, he let himself into her apartment and curled up on her futon.
He fell asleep with his face in her pillow and her scent in his nose.
Eleven
Dusk brought unhappy realizations with it, and there wasn’t enough café mocha in HQ to caffeinate me out of my funk. Trust me. I tried. I cried uncle around the fifth cup. Now I was grumpy and wired. I was almost home, where I could try again if I so chose, and probably would, but I didn’t expect better results.
Working at the mall was out. Big surprise. How long before I had to give up my kiosk and sell off my business? I was paying more in rental for my six square feet of space than I was earning. The dream of my own little empire was nice and all, but I couldn’t afford to stay in the red for much longer, and if I couldn’t do both as an apprentice, then how could I juggle everything after I became the POA?
Linus had worked two jobs in addition to his nighttime crime-fighting gig. Don’t ask me how. He had been a full-time professor at nearby Strophalos University, one of the best para colleges in the country, though he was on sabbatical now. He also dropped in from time to time at the Mad Tatter when he got an itch to be artsy.
Yet here I was, fumbling my one mundane job and not doing so hot with the other, considering Bishop was MIA.
He never would have taken on fieldwork had I not required supervision, forcing him to leave the safety of HQ. He would have been a desk jockey until he retired probably. He certainly wouldn’t have gone down in the sewers with us if I hadn’t bribed him with flamethrowers.
Basically, if not for me, Bishop would be okay. Ford too. But it was easier to beat myself up over Bishop since he was the linchpin in the team, and I already thought of myself as responsible for them.
The only silver lining from where I was sitting was, well, where I was sitting.
I hadn’t wandered off last night. That made two in a row, the start of a winning streak.
Please, please, please, with a cherry on top, let that one bad day be the end of it.
Shoving business woes out of my head, I let myself into my apartment to grab fresh clothes since I had bummed a pair of OPA sweats to wear after hitting the drop point
to deliver the goo, and I almost had a heart attack.
“Midas,” I yelped. “You’re—you’re—in my bed.”
Perhaps not quite as scandalous as my brain made it out to be, since futons were glorified couches, but he was half-naked. In my apartment. Without my permission. And he was half-naked.
That last part was worth repeating.
“I should have asked first,” he grated, his voice rough with interrupted sleep. “I’m sorry.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I kept my eyes on his face while he rolled toward me. “This is becoming a habit for you.”
“I’ll buy you a new lock,” he offered, eyes still shut. “Will that work?”
“You’d keep a key, and then Bishop would borrow it to have his own cut, and then he’d duplicate it for Linus. I might as well save you guys the money and keep the same old lock. A new one would only matter if it kept people out.”
Midas grunted and pushed into a seated position.
“Don’t let me interrupt your nap,” I protested. “You keep right on sleeping. I’ll dress and be on my way.”
Eyes cracking open, he took note of what I wore. “Where are you going?”
“To find Bishop and Ford.” I dug out fresh clothes. “I would say you don’t owe me an explanation for the hangover vibes you’re throwing off, but this is my apartment, and you did let yourself in.” I entered the bathroom and started changing to hide the worry I couldn’t wipe off my face, but I left the door cracked. “Well? What’s up?”
No immediate answer came, but I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t expected one after Abbott froze me out.
“This falls under things you can’t tell me, huh?” I stomped on my sneakers then did what I could for my hair. “I can respect that.” I ducked out, dressed and ready to go. “I won’t push for details you’re not ready to give, but I will insist that if you can’t explain yourself, that you ask permission before invading my space next time.”
“I can do that.”
“Good.” I snapped my fingers at him. “Are you coming or what?”
“Just waiting for my invitation.” A faint smile bracketed his mouth. “Let me go change.”
“I’ll be down in the lobby.”
“You want to come up?”
From any other guy, I would have filed it away as a pickup line. Then I would have laughed and blown him off as I sprinted for the elevator to escape. But Midas wasn’t any other guy, and I couldn’t picture him hurting me, let alone molesting me. “Sure.”
He stood and stretched, his muscles flexing and shoulders popping, and I had to wipe drool off my chin.
Midas was too pretty. Way too pretty. Fairytale prince amounts of pretty.
The only thing that brought his looks back down to Earth, in my mind, were the wicked scars knotting and twisting in silvery pink vines over his vital organs. They made him flawed. They made him real. As curious as their origins made me, I didn’t ask. He wore his past on his skin. I kept mine hidden beneath it. How we coped didn’t mean a damn thing if we had to stop and explain it to everyone who asked.
An air of expectation surrounded him. The barrage of usual questions must be old hat.
“Well?” I snapped my fingers. “This was supposed to be a pit stop. I don’t have time to wait for you to set your hair in curlers or get fresh highlights. You’ve got to get dressed, and we’ve got to get gone.”
Midas padded into the hall, his gait stiffer than usual, and it preyed on me that he had gone through something last night that left him raw enough to seek solace in my apartment but not enough to confide in me.
I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t…
Damn it, I did care.
And it terrified me.
We rode up to his floor, and I got a waking view of the area the pack called their own. Seeing it up close, I couldn’t decide if it was that much nicer than where I lived, or if they took better care of their things than the average tenant.
He let me into his apartment using a keypad I noticed all the locks on this floor had instead of keys.
“The code is four-six-one-three.” He held the door and let me enter on my own. “Now we’re even.”
“You don’t live here, though.” The view from his windows was spectacular, but the space echoed, and there was a weird smell coming from the kitchen. “You stay at the den. This is like giving me the code to your office.”
“I don’t have a lock on my door at the den. No one does. All you have to do is knock.”
“I’m sure getting to their prince would be that easy. Just walk up and say I’m here to knock on Midas’s door, and they’d let me through.”
“For the next six weeks, they have no choice in the matter. No one can keep you from me, or me from you.” He smiled at that, a tiny, happy thing. “I would also prefer you call me beta or heir. Not prince.”
I filed away his preference, but I made no promises to honor it. Ribbing him was too much fun.
“An all-access pass,” I mused, recalling I had accused Ford of wanting that very thing not long ago.
“I’ll be right back.” He hesitated in the doorway to his bedroom. “Feel free to look around.”
The space wasn’t as large or lush as Linus’s apartment, but that came down to a difference in their personal tastes. Linus hired a decorator to give his space the appearance he felt it ought to have. Midas had done all this on his own, and I tried not to cringe from the plastic folding chairs circling a cooler that fit into his dining nook or the mountain of paper plates, red plastic cups, and plastic utensils still in their boxes and bags that cluttered the counter.
Before he shut the bedroom door, I noticed he was sleeping on an inflatable mattress with loosely organized piles of clothes that appeared to be sorted into tops, bottoms, underwear, and socks on the floor.
I checked the fridge and found it empty. The trash, a thirty-gallon lopsided affair, overflowed with takeout containers he had crushed down again and again instead of replacing the bag. The smell almost bowled me over, and I didn’t get how he could stand it with his keener senses. Except for the whole never-staying-here thing. That might explain it.
This bachelor pad belonged to a college kid, not the son of an alpha.
Midas emerged dressed in faded jeans, a wrinkled tee, and scuffed boots. “Well?”
“I would say this place needs a woman’s touch, but really it just needs a touch period. Why keep it if you don’t use it?”
“I come here when I want to be alone.” He surveyed his domain. “I don’t need much to be comfortable.” He stared after the folding chairs, the kind you brought to sit on the lawn for baseball games. “Ford bought all this from a sporting goods store. The mattress is all I need.”
“Ford uses this place too?”
“No.” Midas tore his gaze from the nook. “He just hates to think of me sitting up here alone.”
“Even though this is where you come to be alone.”
“Gwyllgi suffer from pack mentality.” He raked his fingers through his hair and called it done, and it worked for him. And for me. “It’s hard for some to believe alone means alone so much as it means alone with friends.”
“The burden of being the pack prince,” I teased, laughing when he grimaced. “Everyone wants a second of your time.”
“It must be the same for you.”
“I’m living under a microscope.” That was true on several fronts without giving away too many details. “People are more interested in pointing out my mistakes.”
People meaning me.
Any lapse in attention, and I heard the same refrain that had haunted me since childhood.
Not enough, not enough, not enough.
“Linus?”
“No.” I surprised myself coming to his defense so quickly. “I mean, yes, but not like that. Linus is all about constructive criticism. He’s a good teacher. I can see why the professor gig suited him so well.”
Midas exited his apartment, and I followed, noticing he didn’t do mor
e than pull the door shut.
There was nothing worth stealing in there, but I still rocked back and mashed the lock button for him. He watched, the edge of his mouth curling, but he didn’t mention it, and I pretended I hadn’t been caught. The weird urge to take care of him made me flash hot and cold.
He was dangerous, so dangerous, and I was a sucker for dangerous things.
Maybe it was a case of like being drawn to like, broken being attracted to broken, or maybe it was self-destructive madness on both our parts. His mother would have a conniption, and Linus would do that thing where he frowned down his nose at me, worried for the future trouble any real attachment might bring should my cover be blown, basically thinking fifty steps ahead of the rest of us.
We rode down to the lobby, our arms brushing, and it felt more intimate than my last kiss.
“Midas,” a breathy voice called as we entered the lobby. “Midas.”
With a sigh, he slowed, but I didn’t, and that bubble of closeness burst.
“Liesl.” He waited for a small, attractive woman to reach him. “What’s wrong?”
“Jacob cancelled on me,” she panted from her short run. “Guess we can go out this weekend after all.”
The sensation crushing my lungs in an iron fist was new to me, and I didn’t like it one bit.
Then again, I had eaten nachos out of the fridge at HQ last night. The pickled jalapeños might have been out of date. That would explain the burn rising in my throat. That or acid reflux. It didn’t have to be him, or her, or them. Together. This weekend. On a date. Causing the problem.
“Have you met Hadley?”
The sound of my name slowed me down and brought my head around. “Huh?”
Smooth. Oh yeah. Like a baby’s behind.
“No.” The young woman, all bright-eyed and smiley, thrust out her hand. “Hi. I’m Liesl.”
“Hi.” I shook to be polite, and if Ambrose twined down my arm, sniffing at her, I didn’t exactly stop him. “Nice to meet you.”
“I’m courting her,” Midas announced, then frowned when the woman swooned. “Liesl?”
“You’re courting her?”
Hackles rising, I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest in a defensive posture.
Pack of Lies Page 13