Lucien looked a question at her.
“I’m not that hungry.”
As a human, her reactions were different from shifters’. After action, shifters needed to eat. After sex, shifters needed to eat. After pretty much anything, shifters needed to eat. Humans had varied reactions and would sometimes forgo basic needs if their emotions or routines were disrupted.
Lucien loved watching Ryenne eat. Even before she’d been turned, she always ate with gusto. Despite mostly eating for sustenance, she liked to enjoy whatever she ate.
Now, she finished off the last bite of her burger, licked her fingers, and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. Then she pulled out her phone. “I’m going to call Scotty and tell him what happened. See if he thinks we should file a police report, but at least maybe he can look into this.”
Lucien wondered if involving the police was the right move. He caught Ryenne’s eye and gave her a questioning look.
“Seriously,” she said while the phone rang, “better to get the cops involved now, because if I ever see either one of those rogues again, I’ll tear out their throats.”
That he could understand. He could tell from her face and the sound through the phone when Scotty answered. She excused herself from the table and went outside. He could’ve listened in, what with his preternatural hearing, but he decided to give her privacy after what she’d been through today, and focus instead on Willow, who still looked pale and shaken.
He reached across the table and patted her hand. “Are you sure you don’t want to eat anything? Can we get you a cup of tea at least?”
She gave him a weak smile. “I’ll be alright. It was just such a shock. I’ve never been grabbed like that before. Now I don’t feel like going home to my big empty house all by myself.”
“You don’t have to,” Lucien said.
“No, we’ll figure something out,” Gavin jumped in. “We can all stay with you. It’ll be a party.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ryenne said, sliding into the booth next to her mom.
“Why not?” Gavin asked.
“Because the kidnappers obviously know where she lives. She needs to stay with me.”
Lucien’s low mood dropped further. He had been looking forward to helping Ryenne through her transition as a new shifter. She would need a lot of attention and he was glad to be here to give it to her. But with Willow in Ryenne’s small, one-bedroom apartment, it would put a damper on their amorous activities.
“There’s no other choice,” Ryenne said. “The Fangs know Mom’s house and they probably know our office because we’ve advertised our business, but they might not know my place. I’ve tried to stay off the radar as much as possible.”
Lucien nodded, but he wasn’t happy about losing his intimate time with his girlfriend.
Ryenne looked up, over his head, and her face brightened. He turned to see who or what elicited this response.
Two men—one white, one black—had just walked into the restaurant and were approaching their table.
“Scotty, Nick, thanks so much for coming.” Ryenne jumped up from the table and gave each one a hug.
Something about the embraces set Lucien on edge. Sure, he would be jealous of any man other than Gavin she showed interest in. But he knew in his heart how she felt about him and he trusted her not to cheat. They’d been through so much together, even in the short few months they’d known each other.
But this was different.
There was something in her posture, and the smile still hadn’t left her face even though the reason she had called these cops was because someone had just tried to kidnap her mother. A situation that definitely didn’t make Ryenne smile. She’d said herself she wanted to tear their throats out. Her hand slid down the arm of the white guy as if she were about to take his hand. She glanced at Lucien and let her hand fall away.
She made introductions all around.
“Come,” she said to the two men. “Sit with us.”
Nick, the black cop, pulled up a chair. But Scotty squeezed into the booth next to Ryenne. Lucien knew without looking that their outer thighs were pressed against each other, and the wolf he had long ago learned to control wanted him to reach across the table and grab Scotty by the neck and shake him until no part of his body touched Ryenne’s.
He calmed himself. He knew Ryenne wasn’t doing it on purpose. The wolf instincts in a newly turned shifter were at their strongest. Now that he was here, he would help her learn to control those urges, as well as take them out on him, and not on any other man.
He knew she couldn’t help it. He knew she wasn’t throwing out pheromones and signals on purpose. But he suspected that she and Scotty had a history, and Lucien didn’t much care for the looks she was throwing at Nick, someone she’d only just met.
He watched her face as she explained to the cops what had happened and gave descriptions of the two fox rogues.
“You’ve never seen either one of them before?” Scotty asked, looking from Ryenne to Willow.
They both shook their heads.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Mrs. Cavanagh? You’ve just been through a really traumatic experience,” Nick asked.
“I’m fine,” Willow answered. “I’m just glad Lucien and my daughter were close enough to help me.”
Nick had taken out a pocket-sized notepad and was writing notes at a furious pace. He looked up again and smiled at Ryenne.
It was hard not to smile at Ryenne when she turned on the charm. Her blond hair fell over her shoulders, catching a few stray beams of sunlight from the restaurant’s windows, and her face was still glowing from the exertion of fighting the rogues. Any man would want her.
Lucien resisted the urge to reach across the table and take Ryenne’s hand, making his claim on her obvious. He didn’t have a claim on her. She was her own woman and she had chosen to give Lucien her love. He would be forever grateful for that. Now it was up to him to be the better man and not let the clear interest on these men’s faces force him to do something that might push Ryenne away. He didn’t want to upset her or Willow.
“Okay, we’ll go by Mrs. Cavanagh’s house and see if we find any evidence that might lead us to their identity or whereabouts,” Nick said.
“Please, call me Willow.”
Nick smiled at her with genuine warmth. He seemed like a good guy.
“Thanks, guys,” Ryenne said. “For now, Mom’s going to move in with us so we can keep an eye on her and keep her out of the Fang’s clutches.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Scotty said. “But how do you know for sure they don’t know your place?”
“I don’t,” Ryenne said. “At least we’ll be there to protect her.”
“What about my work?” Willow asked.
“You can still go to work, Mom. One of us will accompany you there and back. You should be safe in your office. They require ID badges to get in the building, right?”
Willow nodded.
The conversation petered out then.
Until Ryenne spoke up, her gaze glued on Scotty. Lucien clenched his fists under the table. He would not lunge at Ryenne’s friend.
“Have you found out anything about my father?” she asked Scotty.
“We’ve read the case file,” Scotty said with a frown, “but there’s nothing there. They never found his body or any trace of him. Because of the amount of blood on the scene, it was assumed he’d died and the rogues dumped his body somewhere.”
Willow flinched but Scotty didn’t notice. He was staring at Ryenne.
Nick noticed. He patted Willow’s hand where it lay on the table and she gave him a grateful smile in return.
Lucien had to keep reminding himself these were good guys. They were helping Ryenne and Willow. They would help them bring down the Fangs and they would help keep Willow safe. And Lucien would have to keep his own wolf in check while Ryenne learned to control hers.
SEVEN
With Scotty and Nick looking into her
dad’s disappearance and on the case of her mom’s attempted kidnapping, Ryenne was happy to leave researching Mr. Lord to Gavin.
“I already have a thick file,” he said.
“Do you have a photo of him?” Ryenne asked. “I wonder what a multinational criminal mastermind looks like.”
Gavin shook his head. “He pops up every now and then in business news but nothing personal and no pictures. We’ve no idea if he’s married, has kids, whatever. In fact, records on him only began about ten years ago. Don’t know where he was born or what he did until then.”
“So we don’t know much,” Ryenne said.
“No, but I’ll keep looking. There’s gotta be a way to find this guy,” Gavin said.
Her mom moved into Ryenne’s small apartment and insisted on taking the couch in the living room so Ryenne and Lucien could be more comfortable together in the bedroom. At least she knew they were shifters and they didn’t have to hide when they went out to run as wolves in the park.
Sex was another matter, but they couldn’t worry too much about her feelings on it. As much as possible, they tried to satisfy Ryenne’s urges while her mom was at work and they had the apartment to themselves. But there was so much else to do. Tracking down the fox rogues, solving the mystery of Ryenne’s dad, finding Mr. Lord, and regular client work.
They tended to make love late at night, with some music playing in the bedroom as background and camouflage, and in the shower in the mornings, hoping the water would mask the sounds that accompanied their activities. Her mom never let on if she suspected why they took showers together every morning.
Another benefit to having her mom live with them was getting to eat well. Ryenne was no cook and she and Lucien would have had to eat take-out every night, but her mom wanted to be an easy house guest. They would often shop on the way home from her mom’s office and then her mom would whip up delicious meat-filled delicacies for Lucien, Ryenne, and sometimes Gavin.
One morning, when they accompanied her mom to work, Ryenne thought she glimpsed someone familiar out of the corner of her eye, opposite Mom’s office building. When Ryenne turned her head, there was no one there she recognized.
“What’s wrong?” Lucien asked, vigilant for any threat.
“I don’t know. I think I just saw a Fang I haven’t seen in months. In fact, she was one of the first shifters I knew was a Fang.”
They ushered her mother inside the building and watched her walk through security and to the elevator, then Ryenne pulled out her phone and called Gavin.
“Hey, beautiful, what’s up?” he asked when he answered.
“Remember the red-haired shifter from that nightclub a few months ago? I took her down and you called Scotty to pick her up.”
“Yeah, where I met Marco,” he said. “Tess.”
“Right. Tess. Do we know anything more about her?” Ryenne asked.
Gavin was silent for a few seconds but Ryenne could hear his fingers tapping on his computer keyboard. “No. She’s popped up in a few of our cases over the years, but we don’t even know her last name.”
“Huh. How could I have spared her life multiple times and not even known her last name?”
Lucien put an arm around her. “Like I said, you’re a softie.”
She gave him a dirty look. “Okay, Gav, add her to your list. See what else you can dig up on her and I’ll keep my eyes open. Maybe I’ll see her again and can find out more.”
Scotty had arrested Tess the night Ryenne had taken her down. Her last name, and possibly an address or other info, would be in her police record. She called Scotty. “Remember the night when Gavin called you to come pick up a rogue from the Archangel Club near Houston Street? Red hair cut in a severe bob.”
“Oh yeah. I picked her up and brought her to the precinct.”
“Did you book her? Do you have a last name on her?”
“Let me look up my notes,” he said.
She waited.
“Looks like she gave me the name Tess Michaels. She was out on bail by morning and never showed to court. When we tried to serve the bench warrant, turned out the name and address she gave us were fake.”
Another dead end.
“Why, what’s up with this Tess?” Scotty asked.
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Sounds good, gorgeous. See you soon.” Scotty hung up.
From the look on Lucien’s face, he’d heard what Scotty said. “He’s just a flirt,” she explained. “It’s nothing.”
Lucien’s face shuttered closed.
“What do you want to do about Tess?” Lucien asked and she was grateful he didn’t make a big deal out of her and Scotty. She’d known Scotty since she’d first started as a shifter hunter, and even though she still found him attractive as a man, she had no interest in being with anyone but Lucien.
To reassure the man she loved, she took his hand. “Let’s go back to the office and see what Gavin has discovered. Maybe he can find out more with her fake name.”
***
The next morning, after dropping Mom off at her building, Lucien cleared his throat to get her attention and then cocked his head toward the café down the street from Ryenne’s mom’s building. Keeping her head straight, she darted a glance to the café. One of her mom’s would-be kidnappers sat at a table, partially hidden by a newspaper, but his red hair peeked over the top. And next to him was Tess.
“No freakin’ way,” she muttered. If she confronted them, they’d run. As soon as they noticed her interest, they’d run. “Pretend to take my picture.” She handed Lucien her phone. “But make sure you get both of them in the frame.”
“Strike a pose,” he said with a smirk and a wink.
Striking a pose wasn’t really Ryenne’s thing, but she wanted it to look innocent from Tess’s point of view. She also didn’t want to block the people they were trying to photograph, so she crossed her arms in front of her chest and tilted her head the opposite way from where Tess and the rogue were sitting behind her. “How’s this?” she asked.
“Looking good,” Lucien said. When he finished snapping pictures, he leaned in and kissed her. Then he linked arms with her and walked back the way they’d come, in the direction of Ryenne’s apartment. “Now what?”
“Now, we get Gavin and Scotty on this.” She called Scotty and asked him to meet her at the office.
“Why have him meet us?” Lucien asked when she finished the call. “Why not text him the picture?”
Was there a note of jealousy in his voice? She was surprised. He’d never displayed jealousy before. “This way we kill two birds with one stone. You do know that I love you and not some other guy? And that I’m with you and only sleeping with you?”
He dropped her arm and walked without looking at her. “And do you know you flirt with him and Nick every time you see or talk to them? And that you could have just as easily sent him the picture but instead you’re creating another opportunity to see him where I’ll have to watch you flirt.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I’m not a flirt.”
“Not on purpose.”
“But you know it’s from me being a new shifter and that I can’t help my reactions, so why are you so upset?”
“Because you purposely created this opportunity to see him,” Lucien said, stopping on the sidewalk. “You didn’t have to.”
“I think you’re being ridiculous,” she said.
“Maybe I am. It’s one thing for you to not realize you’re still attracted to him, but I can see it. Okay? I’ve tried to be patient, I’ve tried to be understanding, and I’ve tried to help you get out those urges, but I can’t watch you throw yourself at other men.”
She was speechless under his heated gaze, but not the good kind of heated. His words were like a dagger in her heart.
“I need to clear my head. I’ll see you at the office later.” He turned and headed toward her mother’s office building.
“Where are you going?”<
br />
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll figure it out and see you later.”
What the hell, she thought. Flirting with the guys? She barely even knew Nick. She thought back to the first time she met Nick, when Scotty had brought him to the office last week, and her immediate physical reaction to both men. And how hard it had been to prevent herself from doing something she’d later regret.
Shit.
She had been working so hard to keep control, she didn’t realize Lucien could see the effort. Considering going after him, she decided to let him have some time to himself. Maybe it would do them both good. Anyway, she wanted to get to the office before Scotty did so Gavin could start trying to identify the guy with Tess.
As she walked toward the office, she began to sense someone following her. It smelled like fox. She whirled around but didn’t see anyone, so continued walking.
Control yourself, Ryenne. Flying off the handle at every opportunity doesn’t work. It doesn’t work with Lucien and it won’t work with quarry. She’d have to be stealthier than that. Stealthy like the fox shifters. She couldn’t tell if there was more than one. It seemed like it, but she was still new to this.
She walked another block, fast as though she were in a hurry but not so fast that it seemed like she was trying to lose them. She’d already alerted them to the fact she knew they followed her, but she could still smell them.
“Come on, little foxy,” she said in her head.
A thought struck Ryenne as she pounded the pavement to the office. If she smelled more than one fox shifter, and she thought she did, and she knew Tess and one of the rogue fox shifters had been together outside Mom’s building, then maybe Tess was a fox shifter.
She wasn’t sure if this information would help, but she thought back to the fact both had red hair. Maybe all people born as fox shifters had reddish hair. Or maybe Tess was related to the rogue who tried to kidnap Mom.
She picked up her pace so she could get the photo to Gavin sooner. Then another idea struck. She paused and dug out her phone right in front of the plate glass window of a shoe store. Opening up her phone, she went to the photo Lucien took. It was a nice shot—a perfectly framed picture of Tess and the rogue. She texted it to Gavin and pretended to tap a message while looking into the reflection of the window.
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