by Amy Star
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jane Arnold was currently sitting in a very comfortable chair, looking out over one of the wealthiest casino floors on the Las Vegas strip. She was trying to feel soothed by the sound of metal music and the soft hum of tattoo needles. As strange as it sounded, most of the time she was calmed by the combination. It meant that the tattoo parlor she managed, Midnight Ink, was running smoothly and her job was well done. Today, however, the white noise was not having its usual effect.
She stared down at the iPad in her lap and flicked her thousand-page document back about ten pages or so. It was the history of the Werebear Clan Nation. The document served as class material for the high school students of the Mezzanotte Werebear Clan.
Jane was 90% positive no one had ever intended for someone to read the textbook in the space of a few months. It was obviously meant to be studied over the course of years and her abbreviated tutoring in the subject was not enjoyable. Jane totally agreed with the student staff that helped out around the shop - school sucked.
Jane was saved from the continued torture of the political history of the European Clans by a client walking through the parlor doors. The woman was Carrie’s first appointment of the day and needed a little help being walked through the process. Jane was called in to give her opinion on the tattoo’s size and placement. Jane liked this unexpected aspect of her work. It was fun to be a part of the living art people chose to place on their bodies and Jane had a knack for putting people at ease when they were a little nervous about getting their first tattoo.
Not that Jane spoke from real experience. She knew that Xavier and the other artists had a side bet going on regarding who would be the one to do her first tat: Vincent or Carrie. Jane wasn’t stuck because she couldn’t pick an artist - she’d totally go with Vincent when it was time - but it just seemed like too much commitment at this point in her life.
She had the luck to find herself as a werebear mate to the future leader of the clan and becoming a part of the clan itself was a huge commitment as well. While Jane had never been afraid of commitment, becoming a part of an ancient and magical clan of bear-people was enough to wrap her head around. It ranked way higher than deciding if she wanted a cherry blossom on her lower back or her wrist.
Shaking her head, she walked back out front and smoothed down the back of her pink pleated skirt before sitting down again. All of the artists were engaged with clients, which meant that she had a few hours of uninterrupted study time before the current clients would leave and be replaced with new ones.
Checking her watch, she decided to play a game with herself - if she spent the next forty-five minutes studying the progression of the Mezzanotte clan from Italy to America, she would reward herself with a Diet Coke.
When her timer went off, Jane knew more about the reasons why the Mezzanotte clan split from its Italian counterpart; she could trace the creation of two laws involving family living situations; and Vincent’s father, Vincenzo, had officially been born and was written into the history books.
Tapping the home button, she decided that with the birth of her future father-in-law, she was now ready for the Coke she promised herself.
Walking into the break room, she mused about how weird it must be for Vincenzo to already be in the history books and still be the leader of the Clan. The Clan’s children were debating his early choices as a leader while he was still in office. That was just weird. Even weirder, was to think that someday she would be in one of the history books. By mating Vincent, she would eventually become the first lady of the Mezzanotte Clan and the more she learned about its history, the more daunting that task became.
Jane cracked open the Diet Coke, plunked in a red and white striped straw, and tried to focus on listing all of the good things about being mated to Vincent and becoming a part of the werebear Clan.
First, she had a storybook romance. Seriously, it was one for the ages - at least from a human perspective. There were entire sub-genres of romantic fiction devoted to the all-consuming instant passion she had with Vincent. Which is why the second reason was sex. Oh, the sex could easily rival love for first place; except that the sex was so good because of the love. Third, was the long life. So long as Vincent was alive she would be, too, and vice-versa.
Fourth was the community. As overwhelming as they could be at times, it was truly wonderful to be part of a large and caring family. Finally, fifth was the money. She was not ashamed to admit that going from broke to flush in the space of a mating was a perk of the relationship. Vincent owned a chain of tattoo parlors. Even if he only directly managed and tattooed at Midnight Ink, he still pulled in royalties from all of the others. Plus, his brother owned the Mezzanotte Hotel and Casino, in which Vincent owned two large suites to live in. Jane now had a walk-in closet full of designer duds and she sometimes just camped out in there to be alone and to enjoy the sight of such pretty things.
Speaking of pretty things, she could hear Vincent’s distinct footfalls as he headed down the hallway and into the break room. Shivers moved up Jane’s arms as she anticipated his entrance into the soothing grey and blue space. Moving so her back wasn’t to the door, she leaned a hip against the white granite countertop and brushed her long dark hair over her shoulders. Jane couldn’t help but primp for her man, it was just too much fun to see his reaction.
As Vincent walked through the break room doors, Jane felt her smile turn sultry. He filled the space standing at almost seven foot tall in a pair of black shit-kickers, his favorite pair of dark jeans and a black Henley with a few buttons unbuttoned.
But the real turn-on was to watch as his caramel colored eyes moved their way up and down Jane’s curves, their color going dark as they looked their fill. Jane knew as she ran her fingers through her hair that it would send her mating scent into the air and he wouldn’t be able to resist. Her smile turned down right satisfied as Vincent gave a low growl and he stalked his way over to give her a kiss by way of greeting.
Vincent’s hand fisted in her hair and pulled Jane’s mouth up to his. Slight pressure on her jawline caused her to open her mouth to him and his tongue swept in to claim its prize. Molding herself to Vincent’s hard length, Jane enjoyed the afternoon distraction. It was just what she needed to remind herself why this was all worth it. Because it would never be about the money, or the community, or the long life. It was always going to be about this. This man, this kiss, this passion.
Jane would live and die and study dusty old tomes until her eyes bled for this love. Pulling apart from Vincent, Jane laid a hand on his beating heart and raised one eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t you be laying ink into someone’s skin right now?”
Vincent dropped his hands so they were linked around the small of Jane’s back. “I finished my first client early. They modified the design, so it was smaller than I had originally drawn,” he answered raising one of his own eyebrows in return.
Jane rolled her eyes. “You knew it looked better smaller. That girl was about as big as a minute,” she said, putting two fingers together in an approximation of the measurement. “Covering her entire shoulder in that design would have dwarfed her, and you know it.”
Vincent sighed and dropped a kiss on Jane’s lips. “Fine, you were right. But you know that I hate to change a design once it’s been agreed upon. It messes with my chi.
Jane snorted. “And you’re suddenly an expert on chi?”
“I’ve been an expert for thirty years, I’ll have you know. I learned it by reading books...speaking of which how is the studying going? I know you have a test with the tutor later this week.
Jane broke away from Vincent, using her hair to hide her face as she moved out of his grasp. She hated that she needed to take tests on the Clan’s history as if she were a teenager again. It made her feel disempowered, though, she knew the Clan wanted to see her commitment, along with her test scores, before they would even start to accept her as the future mate of their Clan leader.
Waving the
can of Diet Coke in the air, she answered, “This is my reward for putting in some serious study time. I’ve made it to your father’s birth, which is just weird to read about, FYI. I still have a human perspective on time and it’s really throwing me for a loop to read about Vincenzo being born around the dawn of the American Revolution. Nobody should still be alive over 200 years later. I need to decompress before I can move on.”
Vincent frowned, “I guess I never thought of it that way. Are you OK, moving so quickly through it all? It’s helping politically, I’ll admit that. But I don’t want to force you through such a serious transition if you need a little more time to mentally accept it all.”
Jane gave Vincent a thankful smile. She knew that, if anything, Vincent was already fighting off worries that she was moving too slow and the commentary that she would never be good enough because she wasn’t a werebear herself.
“No babe, I’m staying strong. I just need a little more caffeine every now and then to cope. I have to head out, check your girl out of the system, and start prepping for the next round of clients. And, you need to go to your office and sort through email. You’ve got quite a few red flags awaiting your attention, and the other assistants are chirping at me to get you locked down for a special private meeting in two days.” Jane walked back to him and slapped his butt before heading back toward the door. “Love you, my mate, she called out over her shoulder before moving back to the front of the shop.
“Love you too,” Vincent rejoined as he watched her leave the room.
Reaching into the fridge, he pulled out his own Coke, full-calorie thank-you-very-much, and walked back out to the hallway heading toward his office. Passing by the front waiting room, he couldn’t help but take a deep breath of air, letting the lingering scent of gardenia fill his senses. God, he would never get enough of her. He understood now why werebears died without their mates. A connection like the one he had with Jane was all-consuming.
If she were to go away tomorrow, he would be bereft beyond consolation. How Carrie had survived when her mate passed, was something he understood even less now.
Walking into his office, Vincent flinched a bit when he saw the construction. Xavier and Jane had finally convinced him a few months ago to renovate his cramped space and give him the suite that a Clan leader required. With Valente’s approval, Vincent had broken into an unused storefront next to Midnight Ink and taken over the space entirely. This would give two points of entry to his office, one through the Tattoo Parlor and one through a separate Clan office. It also meant that he would finally get a few windows, and space for more than two people to meet.
Even amid all of the drop cloths and sawdust, he could breathe easier with more room. It didn’t mean it wasn’t the ugliest place on the planet at the moment, though.
Vincent walked to his oversized mahogany desk and turned on his sleek state of the art stereo system to a blues channel and pulled up his clan email.
Jane hadn’t lied, he had at least ten emails that were red flagged and at least twenty-five more that he needed to answer today. Sifting through a few of those that he could answer with half a brain, Vincent avoided the red flags for a few minutes and mulled over his situation with Jane.
It had been months since Jane had agreed to stay with him and start this mating process. When she had, it had seemed like their biggest hurdle had been jumped. A human had agreed to become mated to a werebear.
It was the basis of were fairy tales, a situation as fantastical as fairy godmothers who showed up and turned pumpkins into coaches and rags into ball gowns. The fact that Jane learned the truth about Vincent and his people and still wanted to stay with him had been a relief at the time. Now, however, he was seeing that the bigger issue was going to be acclimating to life together.
Well, thinking about Jane and her stress, and his stress about her stress, was not the way to go. Perhaps the red-flagged emails would be easier to troubleshoot. Opening the first on the list, Vincent felt himself go still. It was the details on the meeting Jane had said he needed to find time for.
In reality, the email was an insistence that he clear his schedule for the meeting. Just thinking about attending and shutting himself in a room with the people listed on the email made Vincent’s skin crawl. He had no idea how a group of werebears were going to keep it together through the discussion. The thought of it made him want to punch a hole through his non-existent office walls.
*
Vincent walked into the boardroom, rented on neutral territory, second in line behind his father. The rest of the board, including Xavier, followed behind him in order of age and rank. Each of the men seemed to be trying to control their bears in different ways. For his part, Vincent was controlling his breathing and trying to remember the way Jane’s hips swayed from side to side, as she walked down the long hallway at Midnight Ink. The Mezzanotte Clan were the first to arrive and the men sat tense and ready - prepared to speak civilly, but ready to fight back physically if need be, because they were about to meet the enemy.
One of the red-flagged emails had been a mandatory invitation to a meeting with the Longclaw Werebear Clan. In the past few months, the Longclaw’s Clan members had been responsible for a series of attacks on the Mezzanotte Clan. The first few were petty thefts and vandalism, but the final attack had been a house fire that had killed one of the Mezzanotte’s families. In a species that enjoyed a long life and relatively good health, the loss was devastating. At that point, Vincenzo could no longer excuse the Longclaw Clan’s antics as the work of young cubs going wild.
In the intervening months, the Longclaw Clan had been suspiciously silent, their movements contained to their own territory. The meeting request had been their first sign of diplomatic entreaty and it came mere days before the official inter-clan requested summons had to be completed.
Sitting around the generic boardroom of a small convention center in Las Vegas, Vincent checked his watch and grew impatient for the other Clan’s arrival. At one point, he opened his mouth to say something, but one look from his father reminded him of the board’s agreement to stay silent until they had heard the Longclaw Clan out. It was a smart move on behalf of Vincenzo, as most of the board members wouldn’t be able to control themselves once they started talking.
What Vincenzo and Vincent wanted to see come out of this meeting was a hint at the reason behind the attacks. For hundreds of years, the two Clans had held neighboring territories without issue. The big question was why was it happening now? What had changed?
Exactly two minutes after the meeting was to have started, the Inter-Clan guards posted outside the meeting room, opened the doors to admit the Longclaw Clan. Led by Sitting Bear and his son, Lawrence, the members filed in. Their Clan was native to the land and held many of the same traditions as the local Native American tribes of the region.
Sitting Bear was the official name and title of the Longclaw Clan leader and someday Lawrence himself would be renamed, when he took over his father’s position. Sitting Bear looked every inch the warrior he was born to be, his long hair braided and adorned with beads and bone, though his son, Lawrence, couldn’t have looked any more like a frat-boy decked out in an Affliction t-shirt and enough hair gel to constitute as an addiction.
Lawrence’s smug smile made Vincent want to jump up out of his chair and deck him. But he told himself he would follow his father’s stoic lead and wait to speak until spoken to.
Sitting Bear motioned for his board members to sit in the chairs flanking the one he had chosen at the opposite end of the table. Nodding to Vincenzo, he began.
“Hello, Vincenzo and members of the Mezzanotte board.” Sitting Bear paused here and seemed to wait for a response from the Mezzanotte werebears, but they sat silently as instructed. Sitting Bear’s face lost its mask of goodwill.
“As you know, we’re here because the Inter-Clan board requires it of us after an official complaint is logged,” Sitting Bear sneered. “And this meeting drives home the point of o
ur attacks. The Mezzanotte Clan has become too humanized. You’ve all lost your bear instincts to the money and glamor of the strip. It’s bad enough that years ago, you stole the richest land from our Clan. But now you’re squandering it - pacifying the humans rather than ruling as the superior species.”
Sitting Bear looked along the row of Mezzanotte board members with a disgusted glare. His gaze finally fell on Vincent and it looked like the Longclaw leader wanted to spit. “You, First Son, are the worst offender of them all. You dare, as the future leader, to mate a human?”
Vincent growled low in his throat, but a restraining hand from Xavier stopped him before he could jump out of his seat and attack.
Sitting Bear’s eyes noted the action and he continued, “Look, you can even be held back from the lowest ranking werebear on your board.”
He paced back up the table and addressed Vincenzo, the paraphernalia hanging from his hair clanging with every step. “I think the best thing that could happen to the next generation of the Mezzanotte Clan would be for you to lose the human. No need to dilute a bloodline that is obviously already thin.”