by Laura Taylor
Dee swore softly to herself. “Does that happen often? That you have to kill people?”
Mark was silent for a moment. “Even once is too often for anyone’s liking. It’s only happened once since Baron became alpha. But some alphas aren’t that careful. Anyway, in modern society, there are plenty of groups who run around pretending to be mythical and mysterious – medieval re-enactment groups, people who fancy themselves druids, witches, mages – but confront a lot of them with the reality of becoming part wolf and they run for the hills. The people who take us up on the offer tend to be a different kind of desperate. Criminals looking for a second chance. People with terminal illnesses. And we get our share of computer geeks – it’s a stereotype, but it works for us. Adolescent boys who are smart, a little antisocial and with a passion for video games. It’s a mindset that embraces elements of fantasy, and for some reason they seem to accept the weird better than the people who think they really are weird. Plus, there’s the added bonus that some of them can hack any database you throw at them. Skip was an exception – and an accidental one, at that. It's not often we get a female hacker, but we rarely turn down interested women.”
The patio had become quieter while they’d been talking, a lot of people shifting into wolves and running off to chase or wrestle on the grass. John was sitting off by himself, staring into the darkness. Baron was sucking back beers like they were going out of fashion, and Dee didn’t envy him the headache he was going to have in the morning. Tank and Silas were wrestling on the lawn – both in human form, and from the jeering and cat-calls from their onlookers, Dee quickly concluded it was just a friendly test of strength, rather than a more serious disagreement.
She glanced sideways and realised that while she had been watching everyone else, Mark had been watching her. She looked away, then glanced back at him bashfully. “What?” she asked finally, when he kept watching her.
“You’re beautiful.” It had been a long time since a man had told her that, and Dee felt her face heat, caught off-guard by the blunt statement. “I know I wasn’t in the best of moods this afternoon,” he apologised, ducking his head. “It’s been a little rough around here lately. But… Look, if I’m out of line, just say so.” He looked up at her again, his eyes seeming to plead with her. “But I’m just asking for a chance here. Take some time if you need to. Wait until we know each other better. But just so you know, it’s been a long time since I met a woman like you.”
Dee still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the attention she was receiving. Mark was very different from what she was used to – not just his athletic form and wild air, but his directness was putting her off balance as well. She was used to her relationships starting with a lot of vague flirting and skirting around each other before one party or the other finally worked up the courage to say how they felt. It was unnerving, yet oddly flattering at the same time.
“I think… um… no, you’re not out of line,” she managed finally. “I think…” Oh, what the hell. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in a long while, and if she understood the shifter laws, then she didn’t have a lot of options outside the Den. And if she was entirely honest with herself, she was starting to like Mark. Rather more than she had expected to. “I think I’d like to see where this could go.”
The slow grin that spread across his face made her blush all over again, and she ducked her head, pleased, embarrassed. “Is that so?” She nodded, daring to glance up at him again.
He looked around the patio. For all intents and purposes, they were alone, the few shifters lingering nearby caught up in their own conversations and paying them no mind.
“Then could I…?” He leaned towards her, and it took Dee a moment to realise what he intended. She licked her lips reflexively, a tiny movement that suddenly had his gaze riveted on her mouth. And then he was leaning towards her, a slow, deliberate movement that gave her plenty of time to pull away.
She didn’t. Instead, she leaned forward, meeting him halfway, and the kiss was everything she had imagined from a man like Mark – warm, firm, the taste of him wild and sublime and male in a way that she suspected she could very quickly come to find entirely addictive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dee was in the kitchen in the morning, waiting while Faeydir ate breakfast on the mat at the end of the room. The wolf had woken up hungry, eager for a raw steak, and Dee, who’d been anticipating a plate of toast and eggs, had been a little startled as she’d realised all over again what it really meant to have a wolf living in her body. Equal time for both of them, and that included meals. Weeks of living in the cage with Faeydir refusing to come out at all had given her a lopsided view of what this new life would really look like.
She wasn’t complaining though, as she watched Faeydir’s progress with the meal, because it gave her time for a little reflection on last night. The ceremony. The Chant of Forests. And Mark.
She still couldn’t quite believe she’d kissed him. Men like that simply weren’t interested in women like her.
Except that Mark clearly was, his curiosity about her genuine, his affection cautious and yet passionate, and the whole idea was leaving her rather off balance. The kiss had been perfect, warm and firm, part heated desire and part playful teasing, followed by Mark sliding his fingers through hers and a long, intimate chat, until Tank had come along, his white wolf standing out against the dark. With a whine and a bounce, he’d invited them to come and play.
Faeydir was just finishing the steak when a shriek sounded from the first floor, and the thud of angry footsteps came hurrying down the stairs.
Raniesha appeared in the kitchen doorway, her furious presence demanding the attention of every person there, and she held up a handful of shoes. Three pairs of high heels, in black, silver and pink… and Dee’s eyes opened wide as she realised that each of them had been thoroughly chewed by a set of canine teeth.
“Who did this?” the woman demanded, her face red, her eyes promising a slow death to whoever was responsible, and inside Faeydir’s mind, Dee cringed. Though she hadn’t been told specifically, she was fairly sure this kind of behaviour was against the rules of the Den, and surely there would be consequences for whoever had-
Dee paused, looking around the room in surprise at the rest of the shifters, expecting to see faces clouded with indignation on Raniesha’s behalf, or possibly with guilt from those responsible, but instead she saw… amusement. Eating his breakfast at the table, Alistair coughed, a clear cover for a chuckle. Choosing a box of cereal at the far end of the kitchen, Skip’s face turned red and she buried her head in the cupboard, mouth clamped shut to avoid laughing. Next to Dee on the mat in wolf form, John let out a snort. And then Silas walked in the door, no doubt curious about the fuss, saw the shoes in Raniesha’s hand, and quickly covered his mouth with his hand. Alistair was the first to break, letting out a strangled laugh, and that did it for everyone else. The room erupted in a burst of laughter that only made Raniesha more furious.
“Who. Did. This?” she asked again, but the laughter only increased.
Mark was the next to arrive, followed quickly by Kwan and Aaron, who burst into laughter as they saw the problem.
But Mark wasn’t laughing. Instead, a sardonic gleam appeared in his eyes, and he took one shoe from Raniesha, examining it carefully. “Looks like we have an untrained dog on the estate,” he said smoothly, and Raniesha snatched the shoe back, her glare intensifying.
“If you had anything to do with this,” she said coldly, but Mark quickly denied the accusation.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said, his expression perfectly serious, and Dee couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. “But you know the way it is around here. Strays, half-breeds… better keep the rest of your shoes locked up, if you ask me.”
“Fuck you,” Raniesha spat, then turned on her heel and stalked away.
The laughter died down after a minute or two. Once Faeydir had finished eating, Dee shifted, with Faeydir announcing the
fact with a short yip. In this part of the house, announcing a shift was mandatory, partly a simple courtesy, partly a security measure – unexpected shifting tended to alarm people, as it generally indicated an emergency. The only places inside the manor exempt from the requirement were the foyer, or inside a bedroom.
Faeydir was as curious as Dee about what had just happened, so she sidled over to Mark who was pouring himself a cup of coffee. He winked at her as she approached.
“Did you do it?” Dee asked quietly, sure there were plenty of subtleties to the situation that she was missing.
But Mark shook his head. “Me? No.”
“But you know who did?”
Mark glanced around the room, then tilted his head, inviting Dee to follow him outside, snagging his coffee on the way. They went out through the back door that led from the kitchen onto the lawn, and he turned to face her. “I may have heard a rumour or two,” Mark said slyly.
“But why would anyone do that?”
“Because Raniesha insulted you at the welcoming ceremony.”
That was news to Dee. “She did? I mean, I know she objected to me joining the Den, but other people did too. So why pick on her?”
“She implied you were a half-breed, that you’d brought shame on your bloodline. I know you don’t understand all the nuances of our culture yet, but what she said was extremely rude. And I suppose some of the people here were inclined to make a statement about that.”
That whole fuss had been for her? A strange display to defend her honour? “But how does chewing up her shoes prove anything?”
“It’s a backwards sort of insult,” Mark said, looking amused all over again. “The worst insult shifters can throw at each other is to call someone a dog. From a wolf’s perspective, domestic dogs are considered to be quite stupid, not able to strategise or look after themselves, just dumb animals following orders. Calling someone a half-breed implies there’s common dog in their bloodline. Chewing up her shoes is something only a dog would do, not a wolf, and certainly not a shifter-wolf.” He grinned. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but the gist of it is that Raniesha called you a dog, so someone decided to behave like a dog and chew up her shoes, but because of what she said last night, Raniesha becomes the butt of the joke, not the wolf who did the damage.”
It made a twisted kind of sense, and Dee grinned despite herself.
“So who did it?” she asked, curious to know who would have gone out of their way to repay the insult.
“Can’t say,” Mark said mysteriously. “But let’s just say that you and I weren’t the only ones to take exception to her comments last night.”
Back in the kitchen a short while later, Dee was finishing her cup of tea while the rest of the Den drifted in and out of the room, seeking out breakfast or coffee, more than a few of them still suffering the after-effects of last night’s party. But George lingered by the door awkwardly, and it was only when Mark nudged her and nodded pointedly at the man that Dee realised what was expected of her. He was waiting for her to challenge him to a status fight.
The very idea of fighting another wolf made her more than a little nervous, but she’d have to trust Faeydir to take care of that side of things. She was a capable wolf, after all, who was very much in favour of a round in the boxing ring.
Self-consciously, she stood up and stepped towards the older man. “I challenge you to a status fight,” she said briefly, and George looked almost relieved at the news. The rules of the Den stated that any planned fight had to be authorised, and supervised by a more senior wolf – both for safety, if anything got out of hand, and to verify the truth of a change in status. So Dee turned to Baron, who had just wandered into the room. “Baron? Do George and I have leave to fight?”
Baron looked up at her blearily, no doubt only having got out of bed a few minutes ago. “Bloody morning people,” he griped, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Wait a minute. Just let me get some caffeine sorted, and then you’re good to go.”
Minutes later, out on the lawn, a crowd gathered quickly. Any status fight in the Den tended to draw an audience. In higher ranking fights, Dee had been told, it wasn’t uncommon for bets to be placed as to who would be the winner. In this case, though, everyone was assuming Dee’s win was all but a certainty, and the spectators were only really there to confirm that the fight had actually taken place, rather than for any particular interest in the result.
Watching from the sidelines, Baron nodded. “Proceed.”
Dee retreated, letting Faeydir take over. The wolf assured her that she knew how to fight, and once George had shifted, the two of them faced off, both eager to get this over with.
“Begin,” Baron announced, and Faeydir needed no more encouragement than that. The scuffle was brief and rather mundane, if Dee was honest about it. George put up a token resistance, then conceded defeat, lying limply on the grass, and there was brief applause from the crowd.
“Dee now outranks George,” Baron announced, as they both returned to human form, and George gave her a nod and offered his hand for her to shake. Neither of them was injured, the whole thing having taken only a little more than two minutes.
“Thanks,” George said, and it was hard to know whether he meant for taking it easy on him, or for getting this out of the way so quickly.
“No problem,” she replied, then immediately felt Faeydir stir as she spotted the next wolf in line, a middle-aged man called Eric. The wolf was nudging her insistently, so she approached the man and said, “I challenge you to a status fight.”
Eric merely shrugged. “Fine. Baron?”
“May as well, while we’re here,” Baron said. “But I’m getting hungry, so don’t think you can go challenging every wolf who’s bothered to get out of bed this morning,” he said, half in jest, half in warning, and Dee nodded.
This time, the fight was more serious, Eric putting up genuine resistance, as opposed to the token fight she’d had with George. He wasn’t the fittest wolf, tiring quickly, but was certainly not willing to just lie down and give up. But Faeydir was younger, stronger and more determined to win, and in less than five minutes, Eric was lying still on the grass, his surrender assuring Faeydir of one more step up the status ladder.
Back inside the house, Faeydir had more things to do, important things, as far as she was concerned, so Dee allowed a shift and Faeydir set about exploring the house. While Dee’s tour had been largely a visual one, Faeydir needed to get to know the manor by scent, to find out who spent the most time in which rooms, to see which rugs she could lie on, and which should be left for more senior wolves.
They started with the foyer, a fascinating room with hundreds of footsteps coming and going, a reminder of the scent of everyone who lived in the house. The library was next, the books old, the smell of them musty and comforting, and Faeydir learned that Caroline was an avid reader, her scent on more than a dozen of the thick volumes. John, too, liked to read, though he spent little time in this actual room.
Next was the dining room, with the long table where everyone had dinner. Faeydir came upon a new scent here, one that was fading with time, in a seat about halfway up the table. Luke, Dee reminded her. He died before we arrived. This must have been his seat.
He had been a warrior, Faeydir informed her, his scent one of a strong male, without any trace of fear. A great loss for the wolf-clan.
The next destination was up the stairs, Faeydir decided, but they’d barely set foot back in the foyer when Caroline came striding out of the kitchen, pulling her up with a commanding word. “Faeydir! Come here. I need to talk to you.”
Faeydir tilted her head quizzically. It wasn’t often the alphas wanted to talk to her, she mused. More often they wanted to talk to Dee, while pretending Faeydir didn’t even exist. So, despite the sharp order, Faeydir went, curious to know what had got the alpha’s attention.
Inside the library, Baron was pacing the room – Dee was coming to realise that it was a rare moment when he was sitting d
own and relaxing. “This is for Dee as well,” he said abruptly, when he realised who had just walked in the door. “But it affects you both, so I don’t suppose it matters what form you’re in.” He hesitated. “Do you even understand human speech?” he asked of the wolf.
She did, picking up something of an instant translation through Dee’s thoughts, but for a moment she was baffled about how to communicate that to a human.
Move your head up and down, Dee instructed, and, miffed by the idea, Faeydir did, and was rather pleased when Baron returned the gesture, and said “Good.”
“Do you want to sit down?” Caroline asked, gesturing to a rug, and Faeydir did, lying down sphinx style as she waited for Caroline to pull a chair over. “We’ve had a call from the Council,” she began as soon as they were settled. “They’ve sent through a request which they’ve gone to great pains to stress is entirely optional. So please understand there is absolutely no obligation for you to agree with this. But at the same time, I’d like you to understand that it’s a very serious request and that you would be doing Il Trosa a great service if you agreed.” That sounded ominous. “The Noturatii have been kidnapping shifters from across Europe,” Caroline went on, while Baron continued pacing the room. “Five have gone missing so far, and everyone’s had to step up security because of it. The Council is doing everything it can to find them, but…”
“But we think one of them must have been used as your sire,” Baron took over. After seeing them at loggerheads so much, it was odd to see the two of them finishing each other’s sentences. And their sudden truce convinced Dee, more than anything else, of the severity of whatever it was they were going to ask.
Faeydir cocked her head. She had never met her sire, a thing of great sadness for the wolf, and it apparently held a significance both to her and to Il Trosa that Dee didn’t yet understand.