by R. J. Blain
The Shadow Pope hung up, and for a long moment, I stared at my mate’s cell. Shrugging, I reached for the nightstand. I couldn’t reach it, and I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to move.
When Sanders returned, he was carrying a glass of red juice. “Something suitable for you is being made. In the meantime, I come bearing a gift of vegetable juice.”
“He said I had to enjoy you for the evening.” I flopped my arm in an attempt to reach the nightstand. Smiling at me, my mate took his phone and set it aside.
Working an arm under me, he eased me upright, leaning me against him. “Is that so? And how do you intend on enjoying me? I am at your command.”
“Just stay with me,” I murmured, relaxing.
“Always,” he promised.
While I could hear Richard and Nicolina in the neighboring room, Sanders treated the bedroom as his territory, growling whenever anyone came too close to the door. The only person he allowed in was Dustin, and my mate grumbled about allowing him in the entire time.
“You need to relax, Stud Muffin. I’m certainly not going to steal your pretty little princess. She’s gorgeous, but she’s a royal pain in the ass. I’m glad she’s not mine. I don’t think I could deal with the stress. Better you than me.”
“Dustin, could we not do this right now?” my mate snarled.
“Sanders, be nice to your nephew,” I chided, although all I wanted to do was curl back up under the blankets and go back to sleep. “I have feet, and I even know how to use them. Dustin, can you please inform my mate I can walk?”
“From what I can tell, your puppy seems to be in better shape than you are. I think it’s safe for you to walk around and try to get some muscle back on those bones of yours. Watch her carefully, Stud Muffin. I really wish you damned mutts would stop thinking I’m a vet. I’m not.” Laughing, Dustin shook his head. “How many times do I have to tell you all I’m not a doctor?”
Richard poked his head into the room. “I should tell the Shadow Pope he should make it mandatory for all strong water witches to become doctors.”
My mate whirled around and growled. “Richard.”
“Relax, Sanders. I’m not going to do anything to your mate. Mine would murder me and enjoy it. A courier just delivered an envelope for you, Sara.”
I frowned. “For me?”
Without entering the room, he tossed a thick manilla envelope onto the foot of the bed. “For you. We’re dying of boredom, Sanders. Let your poor mate out of her cage so she can come socialize with us.”
“It’s not a cage,” my mate snarled.
“Sure it is, but it’s a rather nice one with good company, although there’s a certain lack of privacy,” I commented and pointed at the envelope. “It’s too much work to lean that far. Can you hand it to me please, Sanders?”
Heaving a pained sigh, he obeyed. “He said bedrest. This is a bed. You are resting on it. I was just doing what I was told.”
“I am upgrading her to hotel rest,” Dustin said, rising from the side of the bed. “Actually, I’m upgrading her to anywhere she wants rest. Can I go home now? I’d like to have a job when I get back to Vegas.”
“I’m fairly certain your boss is giving you leave,” Richard replied, glaring at the witch.
“Sure, unpaid leave. He’s a dick like that.”
“I’ll tell your father you said that about him. You know how to file for compensation. Stop whining. Go cry on Barry’s shoulder if it’ll make you feel better. Both of your Fenerec are in the same shoes, and I don’t hear them whimpering about it,” Yellowknife’s Alpha retorted, making room for Dustin to pass. “And if there’s any problems getting compensation from the Inquisition, I’ll pay it myself.”
“I’ll take you up on that, Short Stuff,” Dustin replied, bumping fists with Richard on his way out. “Find yourself a witch before your mate turns you into a pile of ash.”
“I will restrain my urges to burn him to a crisp,” Nicolina stated from the other room. “You, however, have not made the special list of those safe from charring.”
“She has a special list?” I asked.
“I sure do. It consists of one name: Richard Murphy. I can’t torture him if he’s dead.”
Richard winced. “It’s not a nice list. You don’t want on it. She has a nicer list for people she likes.”
“Your list comes with benefits no one else enjoys, Richard.”
“I like that part of that list. You should remind me of the benefits of being on the list. I have a short memory span. It lasts between two minutes and twenty-four hours.”
I laughed. “I did not need to know that.”
“Why don’t you come sit with us on the couch, Sara? It has to be an upgrade from that bed by now,” Richard said, heading into the other room. “I made the mistake of trying to leave the room earlier. I ended up with a gun in my face, and knowing the woman holding it, she’d shoot.”
“Maybe if you’d stop trying to escape, Amber wouldn’t have to threaten you,” Nicolina growled. “If I’m able to sit in here and play guard, you can, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, and eager to be free of the bed, I threw off the blankets. “Clothes, clothes…”
Sighing, my mate pointed at a suitcase on the floor near the end of the bed.
“You can thank Wendy later. They let her out of her cage yesterday to go shopping. Desmond fretted the entire time, and my brother was quite happy to taunt me about the fact he got to go outside while I stayed cooped up,” Richard complained.
“If you keep whining, I will zap you, Richard.”
“Please don’t.”
“Hey, Sara? Got a question for you, if you don’t mind,” Nicolina said, and like Richard had, she poked her head into the room without actually entering. Unlike the other times I had seen her, her hair was down, falling halfway down her back in gentle curls.
“Oh, Richard did your hair,” Sanders said, smiling at Desmond’s daughter. “Maybe I should get you to do Sara’s sometime, Richard.”
“Sure, if the jealous little bitch over there lets me. She holds my leash.”
“You’re going to pay for that later, Richard,” Nicolina promised.
“What’s your question?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you follow Mom back to the mainland? It’s been driving us crazy for days. Granted, she wasn’t really with the program when she found Father, but we couldn’t figure out why she was alone.”
Grimacing, I picked up the suitcase and dropped it on the bed, unzipping it. “Wolf-eating sharks. My wolf did one swim with them, and neither one of us wanted to do another—and Wendy was snapping at me anytime I got near her. She was like Sanders when cranky but worse.”
“I do not get cranky,” my mate protested.
“When you were a wolf, you certainly did.” Digging through the clothes, I scowled at the dresses. Without a single pair of jeans or shorts in sight, I sighed my resignation, grabbed the other suitcase, and stole a t-shirt and a pair of Sanders’s boxers. “My wolf brought Wendy’s wolf out so Wendy would stay human. I got the feeling if Wendy and her wolf didn’t like me, she would have wiped the island with my corpse.”
Nicolina grimaced. “She was a bit wild. It’s a good thing human teeth aren’t as sharp as a wolf’s, or Father would’ve been mauled—Richard, too. She was pretty pissed about something.”
“I didn’t ask. I figured when—if—she wants to tell us, she will,” Richard replied. “Still, Sara. I’m pretty damned impressed. You dealt with that really well. But why did you become a wolf?”
I shed out of my pajamas, and Nicolina’s eyes widened a bit at the casual way I took off my clothes in front of her. Arching a brow, I met her gaze. “Nicolina, I’m a stripper. If I can’t change in front of friends, I wouldn’t be very good at my job.”
“She’s very, very good at her job,” my mate stated, his tone neutral. “If you know of a way to encourage a beautiful, headstrong woman to change careers, please help. Sara, I’ll hire
you every night privately, just don’t find a new club. Please.”
Nicolina’s face turned bright red. “I did not need to know that. Richard, don’t you even think about coming in here.”
“Spoilsport,” Yellowknife’s Alpha grumbled. “You get to watch and I don’t? How is that fair?”
“Excuse me, I need to go murder my mate,” Nicolina stated, whirling around to disappear into the other room. A moment later, Richard yelped, and the sharp stench of ozone bit my nose.
With a worried expression, my mate peeked through the bedroom door. “Are you dead, Richard?”
“Slightly scorched,” Richard groaned.
I reconsidered the t-shirt and boxers, returned to dresses, and picked one at random. I pulled the knee-length sundress over my head, wiggled and tugged it into place, and headed into the suite’s sitting room. Nicolina straddled Richard on the couch, staring down at him with narrowed eyes. He twitched.
“She’s like a living Taser,” my mate informed me. “I consider myself fortunate she’s only zapped me a few times.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t attacked my father’s SUV, I wouldn’t have had to jolt you, Sanders,” she replied, reaching down to poke Richard’s cheek. “I didn’t hit you that hard, you baby.”
“I surrender, please don’t hit me again,” he replied, grinning at his mate. “I’ll behave. Look, she’s dressed and everything. Your hair is prettier.”
I touched my hand to my head, grimacing as I discovered a tangled mess. “That’s not hard to accomplish right now.”
“Richard can fix it if Sanders can’t,” Nicolina informed me, hopping off Richard to sit at his feet.
Fetching the envelope from the bedroom, Sanders offered it to me, nudging me in the direction of the room’s lone armchair. I sank on the cushion, and with a contented sigh, he sat at my feet and leaned against my legs.
“You should have seen my father. He wouldn’t leave Mom until she got tired of him clinging and bit him.” Nicolina snorted. “If he bothers you, bite him or ask me to zap him.”
“He’s fine,” I said, nudging my mate with my toe. He captured my foot in his hands, massaging me with his thumbs.
Ripping open the envelope, I pulled out a stack of papers bound together with a clip. Flipping through the pages, I realized they were call records. The identities of the owners were cut away from the copies with generic number and letter combinations replacing names and originating phone numbers. “Homework,” I stated, smiling.
“Homework?” my mate asked, twisting around and reaching for the papers.
Instead of handing over the pages, I smacked him with them. “Mine, not yours. If you want pages, you have to ask for them yourself. These are mine.”
“What are they?”
“Phone records,” I informed him with a smug smile.
Richard sat up, his brown eyes wide, brightening to yellow. “Phone records. Whose phone records?”
“Seattle pack’s.”
Laughing, Richard shook his head. “You asked for the phone records?”
“I merely suggested if they could use phone records on cop shows on television, why couldn’t we? The only people who knew we were going to the greenhouse were in Seattle’s pack. They had to contact the other pack somehow. So, phone records. I guess the Shadow Pope thought I should go through them since it was my idea.”
My mate made a grab for the papers, his eyes burning a brilliant amber. Once again, I smacked him with the sheets. “Mine.”
Whining, he relented. “That’s not fair.”
“From their Inquisition phones?” Richard asked.
“No, all of their phones. I informed him if he could marry me without my prior knowledge and do a broad assortment of other crimes, he could get phone records.”
“Your mate is ruthless,” Richard said, shaking his head. “I like her. Nicolina, can we steal her?”
“No. Father would kill us both—you for trying to yank Sanders out from under his nose, and me for letting you try it. Suffer. You can’t steal them. You had your chance years ago and lost it.”
Sanders laughed. “He almost got away with it, the rat.”
Puzzled, I stared at my mate. “Got away with what?”
“Subjugating me. He tried it once and only once. I take a great amount of joy in ribbing him over it. Not quite a match for Daddy are you, Richard?”
Richard scowled. “That’s horrifying, Sanders. Stop that.”
Pulling out her phone, Nicolina tapped at the screen a few times. “Well-aimed, Sanders. Father has been trying to get Richard to call him Dad for months without any success. He tricked Alex into it yesterday. Lisa laughed herself hoarse. She called me, snickering so hard she couldn’t explain what was going on while Father was in the background crowing his triumph over Richard’s little brother. Mom finally had to fill me in on what was going on.”
“I regret missing that phone call,” my mate replied.
“You were passed out by then, sorry. You needed the sleep.” Holding the phone to her ear, Nicolina hummed a few notes. “Hey, Father. Sara’s a hell of a lot smarter than the rest of us. Bring your people over and come see what she did. Dustin let her out of her cage.”
Without waiting for an answer, she hung up and returned her phone to her pocket. When it rang, she ignored it. “Father likes being in control of everything. It’s easier to get him to do what you want when you tell him what you want him to do and proceed to ignore him.”
“She enjoys yanking his tail almost as much as I do,” Richard said, smiling at his mate.
Within two minutes, there was a knock at the door, and Richard hopped to his feet to answer it, showing no signs of having been shocked by his mate. Wendy paused long enough to kiss Richard’s cheek before pouncing in my direction. She slid onto the armchair with me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and buried her nose against my throat. One of her feet struck the back of my mate’s head, and whining his protests, he scooted away from the chair.
“Neither one of you will apologize for anything,” Desmond ordered, coming to a halt at Richard’s side, making enough space for Alex, Lisa, and Amber to file into the room. “If you apologize again, Wendy, I’m going to go right off the deep end.”
“Our suite has been a special sort of hell I would not wish on anyone. Want to trade, Nicole? Sanders can’t be nearly as bad as Dad.”
“Worse,” Nicolina reported. “You’d think the world was ending with how he was carrying on. At least he would leave her alone for short intervals so long as one of us was standing in the doorway to watch and make sure she didn’t decide to wake up and run off.”
“How’s the puppy?” Wendy demanded, placing her hand on my stomach.
My mate made a happy noise in his throat. “The puppy seems to be fine. Sara’s a little worse for wear, but that’s nothing food and sleep won’t fix, so says Dustin.”
“I’m—”
“Wendy, please stop apologizing to everyone over everything,” Desmond grumbled. “Sara, she’s very sorry she got all territorial, she’s very sorry she snapped at you, and she’s very sorry about stealing your fish. She’s also sorry about a wide assortment of other things, including leaving you to face shark-infested waters on your own.”
“She didn’t steal my fish. I shared,” I protested. “Well, okay, there was that one fish she yanked out of my throat on the boat. That was not nice, Wendy.”
Wendy relaxed against me, softly laughing. “You were going to choke on it. You’re just like my Richard. A small enough fish comes your way, and all of your common sense dribbles right out of your furry ears.”
“Wendy!” Richard protested. “I’m not that bad.”
The way Nicolina glared at her mate promised a world of pain and suffering. “Yes, actually, you are.”
“Crap,” he muttered, holding his hands up in surrender. “Fine, I’m that bad. I can’t help it.”
“You could, but you’re too stupid to.”
Richard sighed, bowin
g his head. With a smirk, Desmond captured his son-in-law around the neck, yanking him close. “Ah, Richard. You lowered your guard at last.”
“What do you want, Desmond?”
“A simple Dad will suffice for the moment.”
“You have a new puppy on the way. You don’t need me calling you any sort of disgustingly sweet name,” Yellowknife’s Alpha grumbled, although he made no efforts to pull away from Desmond. I watched with interest, as did Wendy. “I don’t know what wicked evil you pulled on my brother, but I’m not falling for it.”
“I’ll forgive you for stealing my precious daughter out from under me if you do.”
“So, Sara,” Wendy said, pointing at the papers still in my hands. “Charles started wailing in disbelief you outsmarted them, the big Alpha males they are. What did you do?”
“We all deserve to go to our rooms for this oversight,” Nicolina stated. “Father, please stop harassing my mate. I’m sure one day he’ll call you something nice if you stop bothering him about it. Maybe.”
“But I want him to call me something nice now,” Desmond complained.
“It’s the puppies,” Wendy informed me. “Charles becomes obsessed with the perfect family image when there are puppies on the way, and it doesn’t matter whose. In the case of ours, it’ll wear off in eighteen or nineteen years. Sanders, please spare Sara from such idiocy.”
“Puppy,” my mate cooed, shuffling to take his place next to me, hugging my legs.
“So, what are the papers?” Wendy asked.
“Phone records for Seattle’s pack—all phones, not just the Inquisition lines. They’re masked so I don’t know who placed which call, but they’re dated from when Desmond told the pack we had been found up to when we went to the greenhouse,” I explained. “I just thought since they did it on television, maybe it could be done. It was just a suggestion.”
“So what are we looking for?” Wendy grabbed the papers, and I allowed her to take them. Shifting off of me and onto the arm of the chair, she flipped through them. “Nicolina was right. You have outsmarted us. It never crossed my mind to look for call records.”