“How do you know that?”
“That vampire prime is my client.” Was, she thought moodily. She’d miscalculated Vivianne Marchetta’s reaction at her defence of the son of her competitor. And if she hadn’t, then she’d instigated one hell of mess for the vamp with her wolf neighbours.
Max shifted. Her eyes were getting better. She must have knocked her head in the accident, but she was slowly getting her night vision back. He’d bowed his head, his hands on the bars.
“Damn him,” he said, so quiet she presumed he didn’t want her to hear it.
“Damn who? Jared Gray? The Woodland lycan who caught us?”
Max shook his bowed head. “No, my father.” He ran one hand through his dark hair, his profile strong and stark against the stone wall behind him. “I thought by walking away I could, well,” he shrugged, “walk away. That I wouldn’t have to live in his shadow anymore, or be associated with whatever crap he did.” The muscles in his jaw flexed. “But it seems he’s pissed off too many people for that.”
“He’s still your father, Max.”
“And I’ll never be able to forget it.”
She rose from the bunk, putting her weight gingerly on her still-mending leg. His eagerness to shed family like a snakeskin, too tight and constrictive for his liking, infuriated her. “Maybe you shouldn’t forget it. You have a family who will support you. Do you know how valuable that is?”
Max lifted his head to glare at her. “You don’t understand.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand,” she hissed, her anger flaring to life like embers under new fuel. “I don’t understand how you can turn your back and just walk away from the people who love you. You had a home, you had a life surrounded by people who share your interests—who share your blood, and who accept you for who you are. Do you realise how precious that is? Yet you discard it so easily, like used trash.”
He blinked at her for a moment, and she tried to regain a glimmer of control to mask her anger, her pain … her envy.
“Sometimes it’s better for everyone to just walk away.”
She snorted. “That sounds like something a quitter would say.”
Max’s grip tightened on the rails, and she saw the white of bone beneath knuckles. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She nodded as she advanced toward the rails, her eyes glowing. She was fed up with dancing around lies and half-truths. “You are so right. I don’t know you or your family.” She tilted her head to the side. “And I don’t know how you can poison a patient in your surgery and not call it murder. I don’t know how a ‘mostly’ human can keep up with a vampire or a wolf at a full run, or how you could sneak into a wolf’s den and not be caught, or how I didn’t see you in the forest until you were on top of me—and believe me, I was on high alert.” She stopped when her face was mere inches away from his, her hand reaching for a bar. She hissed at the burn and immediately let go, shaking off the sting. Silver. Damn it. She peered into the silver-blue gaze that was so mesmerising, so full of light, yet hiding so much. “And I don’t know how you managed to throw lycan guardians off our scent. So yes, I don’t know who or what you really are.”
For all she knew, he was a stone-cold killer.
Max’s chin jutted forward. “Well, I guess we all have our secrets.” His voice was a low murmur as his gaze dropped to her mouth. “Why don’t we make a deal—I’ll tell you everything you want to know, if you tell me all about this kiss-and-tell trick of yours. Or why a vampire has talons.”
Vassi’s head jerked back, and Max nodded, his eyebrows lifting in curiosity.
“Oh, that’s a bit of a sensitive spot, I see.”
There was a grating noise, and the door beyond their cells swung open. A lycan carrying a lantern walked in, eyeing them carefully as more dark figures trooped in.
“Alpha Prime wants to talk with you.”
* * *
Ryder caught Vassiliki as she was shoved from behind, and he stopped to face the lycan. “Back off,” he said through clenched teeth. They needn’t be so rough—not with Vassi. Him, fine, but Vassi—they were going to take care, damn it.
The lycan smiled. “Or what? You’re not really in a position to make demands, human.”
Ryder smiled back. Let them underestimate him. “Be careful with her.”
The lycan tilted his head. “Aw, the dentist is sweet on his lawyer.” The other lycan sniggered as they shoved both Ryder and Vassiliki into motion again.
Ryder pursed his lips. There were only three of them. He could take them, but possibly not before one of them harmed Vassi. And they were right, he was sweet on his lawyer, even if she was hiding something from him, didn’t trust him, thought he was a killer and drove him crazy with her hot kisses and cold retreats.
He walked on, putting as much of his body between Vassi and the lycans as possible.
Woodland Pack’s den must be beneath the mountains. Like the Alpine den, the caves and corridors seemed clean and uncluttered, but unlike the rocky flooring of the Alpine tunnels, in this den the ground they walked upon was dirt. Following Vassi through the snow had been easy, he could hide his tracks in hers. Here, though, they left tracks. He could veil, but he couldn’t hide his tracks.
“I don’t get it.” Vassi said in a low voice beside him, his gut clenching as the sound reached in and tweaked at his libido. This was so not the time or place. The instinct to reach out and touch her, even if it was to give her comfort and protection, was hard to control.
“What?”
“Why are we still alive? If we were both out cold after the crash, they could have killed us easily enough then. Why bring us back here?”
She had a point, and all the scenarios he ran through his mind did not have positive outcomes.
“Perhaps they’re still trying to figure out a few things,” she said quietly.
Ryder shifted closer as he tried to catch her words.
“Like what?”
“Like why you would poison an alpha, for one,” she muttered.
He frowned. It was the second time she’d said it. “You keep saying that.” He did not kill Jared Gray. At least, not intentionally.
“The M.E.’s prelim report came back. Gray was killed by a dose of wolfsbane found in your putty.”
Ryder halted, only to be shoved by a rough hand in the middle of his back. He shot a dark glare over his shoulder at the lycan guardian, before resuming his journey to wherever they hell they were going inside the bowels of this mountain. “I didn’t put it there. Somebody set me up.”
Wolfsbane was a toxin. Sometimes, in extremely mild doses, it could be used to treat some miscreant conditions, but he’d found other, less lethal remedies also did the trick, and preferred to use those that didn’t have such a high mortality rate.
“Does anybody else work in your surgery?”
“No.”
“No assistants?”
“No. It’s a start-up. There’s just me at the moment. It’s hard to find assistants that can hold their own against a pain-crazed miscreant.”
“Shut up and keep walking,” that same lycan said from behind, and gave them both a push. Ryder saw Vassi’s eyes flare briefly, before she banked her anger. She stepped closer, and Ryder leaned down to catch her next words.
“What about break-ins? Had any problems with people gaining access into your clinic?”
“No.” If there was one thing he’d learned from his father, it was how to build exceptional security for his practice. He stored some drugs on the premises, drugs that some miscreants developed a craving for. Some humans did, too. Wolfsbane, though, was not one of them.
They walked out into a large cave, and Vassi paused for a moment at the number of figures gathered along the walls of the reception hall. The lycan reached out to push her again, but Ryder was faster, grasping the wrist of the lycan with a warning look.
“Don’t.”
The lycan bared his teeth. Ryder shot him an exasperated
look. “I’m a dentist. Teeth don’t scare me.” He grinned, showing his own. “I’m going to enjoy pulling yours out.”
“Relax, Winston. Let our guests come forward.”
Ryder turned to the source of the voice. The lycan lolled indolently in his chair, smiling benignly down at them from the raised platform upon which he sat. With dark, shaggy hair and a close-cropped beard, the man already looked part wolf in his human form.
“Who are you?” Ryder asked calmly. He could hazard a guess, but he didn’t want to give the alpha the satisfaction of observing his rank.
“I’m Rafe, Alpha Prime of Woodland Pack.” The lycan made a rolling gesture with his hand that Ryder presumed was meant to be courtly. The lycans gathered around the walls of the cave watched silently, tension so thick in the air it was almost suffocating.
Vassi cocked her head to the side. “You seem more of a Hugo. What do you want?”
Ryder almost smiled in satisfaction when the alpha prime blinked in surprise at her comment. It was nice to know he wasn’t the only one she renamed—although renaming alpha primes wasn’t necessarily a good survival tactic.
Rafe frowned slightly, assessing the lawyer before deciding to ignore her comment and answer her question. He gave a slow smile, his teeth bared. Ryder stiffened. Even from here, he could see the lycan’s teeth had been enhanced. The work would have been expensive, his fangs longer, sharper than natural.
“Ah, that is the question, isn’t it? What do I want?” The dark-haired man crossed his ankle over his knee. His pose was casual, but Ryder could see the sharp interest in the man’s gaze. Casual, perhaps. Dangerous, definitely.
“I have caught the Alpha Killer,” the alpha prime continued, “and I’m in a unique position where I can get anything I want.”
Ryder adjusted his stance, setting his feet apart as he folded his arms. “Which is?”
“Hmm, I haven’t decided yet.”
“He’s lying,” Vassi whispered. Ryder glanced at her. She was focused on the lycan, her expression a mask of cool indifference, but her eyes—they weren’t the dark chocolate-brown of her normal state, nor the golden or red glow when she got riled or ready to attack. No, now her eyes were black, a dark miasma of secrets and power he was just beginning to suspect she held within her.
She was giving nothing away, though, and it seemed no one had heard her but him.
Ryder turned back to the lycan. “Why are we here?” He kept his tone patient. This lycan was different to Jared’s mate, Samantha. He seemed laidback, but there was threat inherent in his pose, in his gaze … in his smile.
“You killed an alpha prime, Galen. You’re public enemy number one among all shifter tribes. Even the bears are hunting you, which is saying something.”
Ryder frowned. “I understand Woodland is in conflict with Alpine—”
“Woodland is in conflict with pretty much everyone,” Vassi muttered, and Rafe laughed at her comment.
“You have it right, counsellor. We are living in a fractious time. Woodland needs to protect its borders.” The lycan beckoned at one of the females standing off to the side, and she threw him an apple. He caught it, gazed at it for a moment, before slowly sinking his teeth into it.
Ryder again stared at the fangs. They’d lengthened, almost with a vampiric quality, yet Rafe still retained his human form. He idly wondered how the teeth would look if the lycan shifted into his beast.
Rafe chewed for a moment, then swallowed. “I want to extend into Alpine territory, and I now have something Alpine wants.” His smile was more a flashing of those intriguing teeth. “I think we can work out a trade.”
Ryder kept his expression remote. From what he’d heard of Woodland in the past, they rarely negotiated.
Rafe shrugged. “Or I could simply kill you for daring to murder an alpha prime, and nobody could touch me.”
“I’m an officer of the court, Hugo. You can’t enforce tribal law here, the court has already ruled. You must observe the legal protection both I and my client deserve, otherwise there are consequences.”
Ryder frowned. Vassi’s tone had been calm, but the words would be seen as a challenge to any alpha.
Rafe’s smile broadened, although it still didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Ms. Verity, you are in my territory now. Your court has no jurisdiction here.”
“Speaking of jurisdiction, you entered Nightwing territory to find us. Just curious—did you have permission?”
Rafe eyed her for a moment. “Of course. You underestimate how much we werefolks want to see your client pay for his crime.”
Ryder could see Vassi’s shoulders lower as her tension relaxed.
“Liar,” she breathed quietly, not moving her lips as she kept her gaze on the alpha prime.
Ryder didn’t give any sign of having heard her, although his brain was racing. If what Vassi stated was true, the lycan had broken tribal law by trespassing into vampire territory. That was quite a risk, antagonising a neighbouring colony.
“You seem very invested, Hugo. Someone would think perhaps too invested, as though you may have had something to do with Jared Gray’s murder …” Vassi wasn’t asking a question, Ryder noticed. Her tone was soft and accusing, as though she was deliberately trying to provoke the alpha.
Rafe stilled, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the vampire. The lycan rose from his seat. “You insult me, half-blood.” He stepped down off the platform. “To kill an alpha outside of tribal warfare is a crime. You’re accusing me of murder?”
“You only seem to follow the rules when it suits you,” Vassi commented innocently, and Ryder frowned. The lycan was getting angry, and she was purposely aggravating him. But she wasn’t finished. She too, folded her arms, her stance mimicking Ryder’s own relaxed pose. “It seems to me, Hugo, that if you have a beef with Alpine over territory, the alpha prime’s death would be of benefit to you.”
Rafe rumbled for a moment, low in his throat. “A coincidence—and stop calling me Hugo.”
Vassi shook her head. “I don’t think so, Hugo. Did you have anything to do with Jared Gray’s death?”
The alpha growled as he sprang at Vassi. Ryder reacted, putting himself between the alpha prime and the lawyer. The lycan landed a hair’s breadth from his feet. The wolf glared into Ryder’s eyes as the guardians dragged him back before shifting his gaze to Vassiliki, his face close to hers as he seethed at her question. “I. Did. Not.”
Ryder tried unsuccessfully to shake off the two guardians as they clamped their fists on his arms, holding him still. He stiffened, his eyes on the alpha prime, and the vamp standing her ground.
“Ease up, Rafe.” A female detached from the crowd, her tall, athletic frame moving with a smooth grace, an impassive look on her face. “There is still the question of a trial.”
Rafe turned to glare at the she-wolf, and Ryder realised the woman had earned the ire of her alpha prime with her remark. The alpha lowered his head in a nod of acknowledgment, but Ryder felt it was more of a warning than an agreement. Rafe then chuckled, his breath stirring Vassi’s dark locks. “You are an interesting creature, Ms. Verity.” He raised his head, his gaze switching to Ryder. “But I don’t wish to waste any more time. You’ll be handed over to the Alpine Pack for judgment. Ms. Verity will be given safe passage through Woodland territory.”
A muscle clenched in Ryder’s jaw. Damn it. If he was handed over to the Alpine Pack he’d be killed within minutes, and any hope of finding out what had really happened to Jared Gray, or of clearing his name, would die with him.
Vassi turned to gaze at him, her eyes still that disturbing black, her mouth tight. “You were right, after all.”
“About what?” he asked as she was hauled off down another tunnel.
“About everything,” she called back over her shoulder, and then she was gone, shoved around the bend of the tunnel, out of his sight.
Ryder frowned. Everything? He’d told her he hadn’t murdered Jared Gray, that someone was setting him u
p.
He gazed at the alpha prime who now studied him, his hands on his hips, eyes narrowed. If Rafe had tried to kill Jared Gray directly, it would have sparked a war between the packs, one that would sorely test the Woodland alpha prime’s capability of also fighting his disputes with other tribes. But if someone else killed the alpha for him, and he then presented that killer to the Alpine Pack, he could request land be given as a boon.
Could the Woodland alpha be that Machiavellian?
“Escort him back to the cells. I’ll have to set up a meeting with Samantha Alpine.” Rafe gave Ryder a little smile, then turned to stride back up to his chair, beckoning over the lone female who’d dared question him in front of his pack.
Ryder was dragged around, but a movement caught his eye. One of the lycans on the edge of the hall had moved, his head down as he skirted behind another. Ryder’s eyes narrowed as he followed the figure, ignoring the shoves that tried to push him back in the direction of the tunnel that led to the cells.
There was something about that lycan, something that teased at a memory, niggling at him with the annoying persistence of the sting of a mosquito. The lycan passed beneath a torch, the flame’s light sputtering over his features, and Ryder halted.
“Wait,” he called out.
The lycan turned, and the guardians pulling Ryder toward the tunnel stopped.
“You—I know you.” Where the hell had he seen the lycan? Everyone stilled in the room, the gathered lycans holding their breath. Ryder didn’t check, but he heard the conversation between Rafe and the female lycan halt, felt the weight of the alpha prime’s stare upon him.
The lycan dipped his head again, and the movement dragged the memory into his mind’s eye. He’d ducked his head exactly that way as he’d presented the delivery docket for Ryder to sign.
“You’re the courier,” Ryder breathed, and everything started to slide into place. The lycan had delivered his latest supply order a week ago, had even helped him carry the goods into his clinic. Including the tainted pot that had poisoned Jared Gray.
“It was you,” Ryder said, his voice strong. He turned to Rafe on his pretentious little platform. “You killed Jared Gray.”
Tribal Law Page 8