“Gav...” she started.
He held up a hand. “Ryenne, I love you but I don’t want to hear it. I came to say goodnight to Willow and then I’m off to meet Taylor. I’ll see you in the morning.” Then he marched to her mom’s bedside, kissed her cheek, and left.
Ryenne stared after him, her mouth open.
Lucien went to her mom’s side next and also kissed her cheek. “Goodnight, Willow. Let me know if you need me to bring anything from the house tomorrow.”
“I will.”
“Sleep well.” He gave Ryenne an awkward smile and went out the door.
Ryenne hurried through her own goodbye to her mom, then rushed after Lucien. “Wait,” she called to him as he got on the elevator. He reached his hand out to stop the elevator doors from closing.
Ryenne’s phone buzzed and she dug it out. It was Scotty again. She stopped moving and stared at Lucien, her finger poised over the green button on her phone. She could always call Scotty back. It was more important to talk to Lucien now, for the few minutes until the elevator reached the ground.
But Lucien had moved his hand and the door began closing.
“Wait,” she said again, rushing forward. But he didn’t wait. The door closed and Lucien was gone.
With a heavy sigh, she pushed the green button. “What’s up?” she asked.
“We found Joseph O’Brien.”
Her spirits soared from the depths of her body where they’d plummeted after Lucien’s departure. “Where?” Her voice was high and tense from excitement. “Did he confess?”
“Not exactly,” Scotty said. “He’s dead. His body was stuffed in a dumpster near where we found the car he stole to hit your mom.”
A rushing sound filled her ears and she spun in a slow circle, lost. Squeezing her eyes shut, she wondered what it meant. Had Lucien killed him in revenge? No, he wouldn’t, and he would have told her.
“How?” she asked, her voice a croak.
“His throat was slit and the wound packed with that sappy crap.”
No way. “The Fangs?” she whispered. Why would the Fangs kill one of their own?
She could feel Scotty’s shrug through the phone. “Because he botched the attempt on your mom’s life?”
Or because he’d tried to kill her at all. Her father was a Fang. Ryenne suspected he still loved her mom. Maybe he killed Joseph.
Her body got hot and itchy and her claws grew from her fingers. Had her father killed for her mom? Glancing around, she willed her fingers to go back to normal. She had to get out of here. She had to run.
“Gotta go,” she said to Scotty, then pushed her phone into her pocket.
Nothing else mattered in this moment than to get to the park, shed her clothes and her humanity, and run as a wolf and think like the beast inside her. Her wolf would help her decide what to do next.
With her mom still in the hospital, Gavin falling in love with a shifter, Lucien not speaking to her, and so many sensations swirling around in her body, there was nothing else to do but run.
And forget.
***
A run every night, exercising in the gym every morning, and multiple sessions per day with her hand or vibrator were helping to keep her wolf in check.
She felt bad for how things had ended between her and Gavin last night before his big date. So she went into the office before going to see Mom at the hospital, expecting to see him at his desk as usual, or at least still in bed—hopefully, alone.
But he wasn’t there. His bed hadn’t been slept in and his computer was shut down. And there was no coffee.
Guess it had been a good date.
She put on some coffee so it would be hot and ready for him when he got home. She sat down at her own computer to check in with the business.
An hour passed, and Gavin still hadn’t arrived.
She sent him a text: “Having too much fun?”
Another hour passed without a response. She tried calling, but he didn’t answer. She left a voicemail. “Gavin, I hope this means you’re having fun but I’d really like to know you’re okay. Please check in. Thanks!”
At least she had let her mom know why she’d be late getting to the hospital. Surely Gavin could extend her the same courtesy.
At the hospital, her mom had visitors, some friends from work. The three women sat together, laughing and talking, so Ryenne turned around and went to the Nurses Station. She asked for Dr. Nakamura but was told he wouldn’t be in until that evening.
Most likely, he and Gavin were together, extending their date. But what if something had happened to Gavin? What if Nakamura was a Fang? They could kidnap Gavin to try to get to her mom.
And Tess hated Ryenne. She could see it in Tess’s eyes. Would Tess harm Gavin to get back at Ryenne? Ryenne had no doubt. Especially now that Tess’s own brother was dead. She might be like a wounded animal that you couldn’t approach for fear it would lash out.
Gavin might not know about this latest development in the case. He wouldn’t know the kind of danger he might be walking into. Tess and Nakamura could be working together, for all Ryenne knew.
As the day passed, still with no word from Gavin, Ryenne’s fear for him and anxiety level rose, along with her anger.
In the early afternoon, Ryenne had texted Lucien and he hadn’t heard from Gavin either but suspected the same as her mom, that he was enjoying himself. “He deserves some fun,” Lucien told her, “so let him.”
She huffed out a breath. She couldn’t lay off when her best friend’s life was at stake.
“I understand why he wouldn’t check in with you,” Mom said after her friends had left, “if he chose to spend the day with Taylor. But I would’ve thought he’d at least tell me or Lucien.”
Gavin finally strolled in around five o’clock and Ryenne’s anxiety level had reached a peak.
She threw herself at him. “Where have you been? Why didn’t you contact us?”
He looked genuinely surprised by her reaction. “I told you I was going on a date with Taylor.”
“You didn’t tell us it would be an overnight date and you were taking today off.”
“Oh, so you’re angry because I didn’t work today? That I’m not at your beck and call?”
Ryenne stepped back as if he had punched her. “What? No, this has nothing to do with work. This is about you. I was worried about you.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Gavin insisted. “Taylor is a good guy, Ryenne. Just give him a chance.”
Lucien came up behind Gavin, who turned and smiled.
“Taylor is like another Lucien. He’s one of the good guys, Ryenne,” Gavin said.
“It’s not just about giving him another chance, Gavin,” she insisted. “You were gone all day, in the middle of a crisis. Mom is here in the hospital because of what Fangs did to her. The Fangs could be after any one of us or they could come back for Mom. All we’re asking is for you to let us know you’re okay. If we had known you were spending the day with Taylor, we wouldn’t have been so worried about you.”
“Really, Ryenne?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you have? You suspect him of being a Fang, too, so you would’ve been just as worried. And maybe you would have tried to triangulate my position and track me down.”
“Are you kidding me?” she asked, voice rising. “Why would I do that? I don’t even know how.” The last statement was the real reason she wouldn’t have done such a thing. Since he hadn’t answered any of her texts or phone calls, it hadn’t occurred to her. Now her anger rose to the surface. Anger at herself as much as at Gavin. She should have thought of that. She should have thought of everything. She should have tracked him down and gone after him and pulled him out of Nakamura’s arms, if she had to. “How much do you really know about him?”
“I know all I need to know, Ryenne, and if you can’t accept this relationship, then maybe you’re not the friend I thought.” He turned on his heel, pushed past Lucien, and left the room.
She started to f
ollow but Lucien stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Don’t. Let him go. Let him cool off.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” she demanded.
“At the moment, if you’re going to make me choose sides, I choose his. You’re being unreasonable. He deserves a little bit of happiness,” Lucien said.
How dare he?
“I’ll follow him and make sure he’s safe,” Lucien said. “Stay here with your mom.” He left.
She turned and stared at her mom, her mouth open. “Do you agree with them, too? Am I wrong?”
Her mom’s head tilted from side to side.
“You do. You agree with them. So, I’m the problem. I’m wrong. I’m completely unreasonable. Fine.” She stormed out, taking the stairs so she wouldn’t risk running into Gavin at the elevator.
It wasn’t yet dark enough to run in the park and it wouldn’t be for hours. But there were other things she could do. She went home and exercised and used her vibrator. But these things weren’t enough. She still wanted to jump out of her skin. Her wolf wanted to tear Nakamura to pieces. Or Tess. Or any Fang she could lay her hands on.
This was their fault, not hers.
She showered, her tears mixing with the hot water. She had lost everyone she cared about. Getting into bed, she pulled the covers over her head.
She guessed she’d have to be a lone wolf now.
TWENTY
When Ryenne woke up the next morning, she felt her usual urges, but they were muted, in a way they’d never been before. In their place was a feeling of dread and loneliness. She’d felt lonely many times over the past week while her mother was in the hospital and Lucien would barely speak to her. Especially now that Gavin had found someone.
She didn’t begrudge him his own happiness. She wanted him to be happy more than she wanted her own happiness. But she couldn’t get past what they were going through right now: the uncertainty and danger. She suspected everyone but the four of them. Anyone outside their tiny circle could be a danger, and that included Dr. Taylor Nakamura. She just couldn’t make Gavin see it and instead had pushed him away, possibly forever. It already felt like a knife to the gut. Then Lucien and her mother siding with Gavin was like twisting the knife and adding salt to an already very raw wound.
She’d been trying for days to figure out how to make things right with Lucien and had come up empty. She didn’t know how else to make it up to her mother except by keeping her safe, which was what she was doing by pursuing the O’Briens. But that had come to a screeching halt with the discovery of Joseph O’Brien’s body. The gunk in the wound meant he’d been killed by Fangs. It could be his sister and brother, or they could be lone rogues working outside the Fangs. She didn’t know.
And yesterday, she would have wanted to find out more than anything. But today, she couldn’t bring herself to care because anything she had cared about was gone.
Yesterday, she had felt everything so deeply, from Gavin’s biting words to her own urges. But now, she was numb.
She spent the day in bed, barely getting out for an occasional something to eat or drink. She ignored her phone. Somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, she knew she was doing one of the things she had yelled at Gavin for, by ignoring her phone and not letting her loved ones know she was okay. But she didn’t care because she no longer thought they cared. And if they didn’t care, then no one in this world cared about her and what she did now, so she might as well stay in this bed, in this apartment, until something changed.
Around nightfall, something changed. An idea struck her.
Grabbing her phone, she navigated to a browser and looked up an old friend. She sent him a text, then got out of bed and dressed, grabbed her wallet and keys, and left her apartment without any weapons. She thought about ordering a car but decided the subway fit her mood better.
A train carried her uptown, and she walked the rest of the way to the club. When she reached the nondescript door that opened off of an alley, she knocked in the way her friend had instructed by text. A wiry man with dark skin and dreadlocks opened the door and looked Ryenne up and down, suspicion in his gaze.
“I’m here to see Maximus,” she said.
He pulled out a phone and sent a message. A reply must have come right back because he stepped out of the way and let her in. He led her down some steps and bypassed an archway into the main room of the club, and instead took her down a corridor to the side. At the very end, he knocked on a door and walked back the way they had come.
A deep voice told her to enter, so she opened the door.
“Well, well, well, Ryenne Cavanagh. How the hell are you, bitch?” a huge man with glossy dark skin, close-cropped hair, and a wide smile came out from behind a desk, arms open wide.
“Hey, Maxi.” She stepped into his embrace and enjoyed his usual sandalwood smell. It brought her back to a less complicated time. A time when Gavin had still been her best friend, her mother was safe, and Ryenne wasn’t a shifter.
“I was surprised to get your message,” he said. “You always claimed what we do here was barbaric. What changed your mind?”
Ryenne glanced around the small office decorated in manly leather and metal and dark colors. “Let’s just say my circumstances have changed and I need a kick in the pants.”
His eyes narrowed but as a human, he didn’t have shifter senses. “You want your butt kicked? That’s a new one. Girl, I’ve got to ask. You’re not suicidal, are you? You know, some of these people are vicious.”
“I’m counting on that,” she said. “But, no, I’m not suicidal. I just need to feel something. Anything.”
His gaze softened. “How’s Gavin?”
The name was like a dagger to her heart. “He’s good, Maxi. He’s good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t want to give Maximus details that would hurt him.
Gavin and Maximus had dated about seven years ago but had broken up when Maxi’s club took over all of his time. Gavin didn’t approve of the club and had given Maxi an ultimatum: Gavin or the club. Maximus had been young and ambitious and less in love than Gavin had hoped.
Gavin would hate what she was about to do. But he no longer had a say.
“Might as well get to it,” she said. “You’re sure you’ve got shifters here tonight?”
He nodded, his gaze sharpening on her. “Every night.”
Good. She didn’t want to get carried away and hurt a human.
Gavin and Ryenne had first met Maximus when he’d hired them to do security for the club because there had been protests when he first opened.
He looked her up and down and took in her usual jeans, dark tank top, and ass-kicking boots. “You going to fight in that?”
She assessed herself. “What’s wrong with this?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”
He led her into the main room of the club and she got her first glimpse in years of the fighting ring. Unlike some places, it wasn’t a cage. In fact, there was nothing separating the fighters from the audience. The audience mostly stood around the bar or sat at tables near the mats. Nowadays, Maxi employed full-time shifter bodyguards who stood with beefy arms crossed in front of their beefy chests in various locations around the club. Patrons knew that if anyone stepped out of line or got too close to a fighter, they were out of there, and might get a dislocated shoulder to help them remember the rules.
There was a fight going on when Ryenne entered the main room, and she now understood why Maxi had asked her the question about what she was wearing. The fighters were in costumes. She hadn’t stepped foot in this place in more than five years. She didn’t know how much more professional and glamorized it had become. But all it would have done was convince her not to come here. It wouldn’t have gotten her to dress up. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind for dress-up.
“So how does this work?” she asked.
“I’ll go add you to the roster,” he said. “Wait to be called. What name do you want to
use?”
She really hadn’t thought this through. Did she want to be out, even among this small niche group, as a shifter? She was already dressed head to toe in black and it would have to do. “Do you have a mask I can borrow to cover my upper face?”
He held up a finger and sent a message with his phone. About two minutes later, the same slim young man who had let her in came in with a feline-styled black mask. She shrugged. Without a full shift, no one would know if her claws belonged to a big cat or a wolf. She’d take it.
She put it on. “Call me the Huntress.”
Maxi quirked up one side of his mouth and excused himself. She watched him go around the mat to a woman with a clipboard. He gestured toward Ryenne and the woman looked up. She was tiny with a platinum pixie haircut, a red sequined sleeveless mock turtleneck top, and black pants.
Maxi returned to her side. “You’re all set. Joely will call you when it’s your turn, Huntress. Good luck.”
Ryenne didn’t need luck.
She waited her turn near the bar. A young guy with pale skin and a dark beard asked if she wanted anything. She wouldn’t have minded a shot of tequila and a few minutes alone with the bartender. She took it as a good sign that she was starting to feel her urges again. It was an even better sign that she didn’t lean across the bar and grab him by his shirt collar.
“No, thanks. I’ll wait until after my turn,” she said.
His eyebrows rose. “You’re a fighter?”
“We’ll see.”
He filled a glass with a bubbly clear liquid from one of his hoses and placed it in front of her. “Here. At least have a club soda on me.”
She nodded in appreciation. She watched the next couple of fights, all between men, a couple of shifters, and a few humans who wanted to try their skills against a shifter. She especially watched their techniques.
Since becoming a shifter, she had fought with only her shifter side. Almost as if becoming a shifter had changed who she used to be and she’d lost her own fighting technique. She needed to find it again. Maybe it would help her find discipline and control over her urges, as well. Tonight might not be the night for discipline, however. She really just wanted a good pummeling. And maybe to give a good beating in return.
Lord of New York (Shifter Hunters Ltd. Book 3) Page 11