Erzsebet narrowed her eyes. “You’re the only one who’s playing games, brother. I’m not a pup anymore. Stop following me around.” She tried to shoo him out of her way, but he wouldn’t budge.
“What else am I supposed to do?” Hunter felt his anger rising. “You’ve been acting strange, secretive, and I don’t know what’s going on with you anymore. I wanted to make sure you were okay with the Vamps being in the area and so close to home.”
She hugged herself, then as if noticing what she’d done, she dropped her arms to her side. “I’m fine. I don’t have to cross paths with them or anything.”
“It doesn’t bother you that they’re in town? We haven’t been this close to them since leaving Hungary.”
She lifted a shoulder nonchalantly. “I told you that I’m fine, Hunter. What do you want me to do, break down and cry?”
“Of course not, Ezie. But after they killed Mom and Dad you had nightmares for years. And now there’re Vamps practically knocking on your door you can’t blame me for wanting to check in on you.”
“That happened over a hundred years ago. I’m learning how to cope. I can’t go running to you every time a Vampire comes to town.”
He couldn’t get the memory of holding Erzsebet in his arms, helping her through one of her flashbacks of being trapped in the cave out of his mind. He’d spent countless hours talking her down from anxiety attacks. He’d moved them from Hungary to a place where there wasn’t a Vamp clan, just so she wouldn’t run into any and have a regression. He frowned at her. “But you can if you need to.”
“And you once accused me of being clingy. Sheesh.” She rolled her eyes. “Do you really want to know what’s going on in my life, Hunter?”
He crossed his arms. Finally, he was getting somewhere with her. “Yes.”
She cocked one side of her mouth into a smile. “I’m being an adult,” she whispered playfully.
Hunter ran a hand down his face, feeling the three days’ worth of facial hair that really needed to go. “You may be an adult, but you’re still my responsibility.”
“Until I find a mate,” she pointed out.
He stilled. “Is this what this is all about? A mate? You haven’t…?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, but soon. I can feel it.” She had a gleam in her eyes that the younger pups had when they were starting new relationships. She was in love.
He pulled back his shoulders and narrowed his eyes. Erzsebet may have only been a few years younger than him and well past the mating age, but there was a part of him that would always see her as that scared little girl whom he’d promised his father to protect. “Who is it? I’ll have a talk with him.”
She pushed him and maneuvered around him. “No. I don’t want you talking to him. It’s my business, not yours.”
“It is my business when someone is sneaking behind my back trying to claim my sister. Give me a name. Now.” He growled low in his throat.
“No.” She walked away from him.
Hunter started to follow her but stopped short when he saw Asha standing in the entranceway to the conference room, watching their exchange.
He blew out a heavy breath. “What?” He hadn’t meant to sound so gruff, but that was the way it came out.
The stunned look in her eyes quickly disappeared. “Andras just called. He’s ready for me.” She straightened her shoulders. “I was going to ask you to escort me.” She waved her hand in the air. “Never mind. I’ll wait here for you to call someone else.” She turned around.
“This isn’t over, Ezie,” he yelled after his sister’s retreating back. “We’ll finish this later.”
Erzsebet ignored him as she left the room.
Hunter reached Asha and caught her arm. Sparks erupted on his fingertips where he touched her bare skin. Her arm went rigid and she stared down at his hand.
She doesn’t like to be touched.
He quickly released her, when all he wanted to do was trail his hand up her silky skin, letting her know that touching could be good. “Sorry about that. I’ll take you.”
She glared at him. “Are you sure? You don’t have any other women to follow around?”
He looked back at the empty door that Erzsebet had stalked through. “Erzsebet isn’t a woman,” he muttered.
When he turned his attention back on Asha, she had an eyebrow raised. “You could’ve fooled me.”
Hunter thrust his hand through his hair. “What I mean is that she’s not that kind of woman. She’s my younger sister.”
Asha opened her mouth in an ‘O’.
He waved toward the exit. “If you’re ready now, I can escort you.”
She followed him out of the door, falling in step with him.
“So, are you going to arrive hours before the Vamps, I mean, the Vampires, er, your employers every day?”
“Yes. Since I don’t have the luxury of being able to stay up all night and sleep requires me to leave earlier than them, coming in early allows for me to put in the same amount of hours. This way, I can pull my own weight.”
“Your own weight?” he asked in amusement. “You’re human—no one expects you to work at the same pace as a Vamp. Hell, I couldn’t even do that. I noticed how fast they were typing last night. I could barely make out the movements.”
She gave him a sideways glance.
The Vampires did expect her to keep the same pace as them. He shook his head. “I don’t know why you humans are always so fast to throw yourselves at the Vamps’ feet. What is it? The promise of wealth? Beauty? Immortality?”
“Why do you care?” Irritation laced her voice. “Are you jealous that humans would rather service the Vampires than the Wolf-Shifters?”
“Do you think that I’m really jealous?” He snorted. “Not hardly. I don’t need a human following me around, being my flunky, in order to feel good about myself.”
Her steps faltered. “I’m nobody’s flunky. Maybe we should just stop this conversation right now. The research that I did on Wolf-Shifters didn’t include you being judgmental assholes.”
He blew out a breath. “I’m not judging you. I’m just wondering why a girl like you would allow Vamps to use her. You seem to have your life together. You’re well educated, with degrees. Don’t you know that as soon as you outlive your usefulness they’ll drain you dry or worse yet, wipe your mind and leave you as a ward of the state?”
She stiffened. “You don’t know anything about me or them.”
“I know plenty about them.” They are stone cold killers. “And I feel sorry for you. You’re living in some kind of warped fairy tale that’s going to come crashing down around you one day.”
She stopped in her tracks and swung to face him. “Fairy tale? You actually think that my life is filled with unicorns and rainbows? Not hardly.” She stabbed his chest with her finger. “Clarissa may not be perfect, but she’s all I have. My degrees? She paid for. Without her, I wouldn’t be who I am today. We’re family.” She peered at him through the slits of her eyes. “So get over it already.”
Never one to back down from a fight, he faced her and growled low in his throat. She growled back.
Hunter blinked a few times, trying to process what had just happened. While the man knew that she couldn’t have possibly known that she’d issued a mating challenge by growling back, the wolf did not. He bucked for control.
Hunter shook his head and backed against the wall, putting distance between him and Asha. “No. Not right now.”
His wolf sent him flashes of him nestled between Asha’s thighs. When the pictures projected in his mind, they played like a slow-moving movie. He could not only see his hips thrusting, he could feel the tightness of her pussy. The wetness of it.
A tremble ran through him and rumbled across his cock, making it grow.
Hunter squeezed his eyes shut, fighting for control that he was losing fast.
Take her.
Not here. Not now.
Another picture flashed in his mind.
This one of Asha running her nails across his back, leaving red welts in their wake.
He was undone.
“Um…what’s going on here?” Trudy’s voice came through the fight raging in his head.
“Get her away from me. Take her to Andras,” Hunter bit out.
“Right-O. Come on. Let’s give Hunter some space,” Trudy said.
“W-will he be all right?” Asha asked.
“Eventually.”
As soon as he couldn’t hear Trudy and Asha’s footsteps anymore he staggered to the first unlocked door he found and went inside. There he sat in the dark and had a heart-to-heart with the wolf battling for control. He explained all the reasons why this human couldn’t be their mate.
Chapter Five
While Asha let the woman lead her down the hall and away from Hunter, she kept looking over her shoulder, witnessing Hunter slumped against the wall, muttering to himself and shaking his head.
When the woman rounded the corner and started down another corridor, Asha turned to her. “What was that all about? Was he about to change?”
“I would say battling a change.” The other woman glanced at her. She was about five-feet-six, taller than Asha, and wore her brown hair pulled away from her face, displaying pretty, light-green eyes. “He doesn’t want to.”
“Why not?” Asha frowned. “Was he going to hurt me?” She should’ve known better than to growl back at a Wolf-Shifter. They weren’t as dangerous as Vampires, but predators just the same. She’d lost control, which ultimately, in the world she was immersed in, could’ve meant her death. She wouldn’t have displayed that kind of dominance around Clarissa. Clarissa would’ve taken off her head where she stood.
The woman’s mouth rose into a smile. “Hurt you? Um…no.”
Asha went quiet as they made their way past a couple walking in the opposite direction. The couple smiled and greeted the woman and the woman greeted them back.
“Is changing on premises not allowed?” Asha asked, after they were out of earshot of the other couple.
“It’s allowed and encouraged, but this is a business, and while most of the employees are Wolf-Shifters, they prefer to do all their shifting outdoors where they have plenty of space to run free. One could hardly get any work done shifting at their desk.”
“Most? Do you mean everyone here isn’t a Shifter?” Asha had just assumed that since Dark Wolf Enterprises was a Shifter-owned company that everyone was a wolf.
The woman extended her hand to Asha. “Trudy Farkas, human. I’m mated to Kristof. And Lajos, the Head of Security is mated to my best friend, Meisha, who’s also human. There are a handful of other humans here. They aren’t mated to the Shifters, but are friends of the family.”
Asha’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe her ears. A human mated to a Wolf-Shifter? Paranormals stuck with their own kind—that was what she’d learned over these years.
She shook Trudy’s hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Asha, but I prefer Ash. Also human.”
Trudy released her hand. “Ash, I like it.”
Ash lifted a shoulder. “It’s pretty mundane.”
Trudy looked at her slyly. “Trudy is short for Gertrude. I would’ve preferred a mundane name growing up.”
Without meaning to, Ash twitched her nose in distaste. When she caught what she’d done, she said, “Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
Trudy had a contagious smile and Ash found herself following suit. “Think nothing of it. I win in the ugly name department.”
Trudy led Ash through the main lobby where a receptionist sat and people were coming in and out of the front doors to another corridor. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked.
“Sure.” Ash braced herself for the question that she already knew was coming.
“How did you end up working for the Vampires? I didn’t even know that they existed until a few months ago when one kidnapped me. He had planned to torture and drain me dry. He wasn’t very…nice.”
Ash let out a hard breath. First Hunter and now Trudy.
Ash had gone on plenty of jobs with Clarissa and no one had ever questioned her relationship with the Vampires before, and Ash had never felt the need to explain why she chose to be with them. She understood their reputation, and most of it was based on truth, but it was seen as an honor to be chosen as a protégé. Yeah, it wasn’t easy catering to a four-hundred-plus-year-old woman with the strength of ten elephants and the fickleness of a cat, but a lot of humans had jobs that they hated and they still went to work every day for the health insurance alone. In Ash’s case, her retirement benefit was power, strength, independence and longevity.
Ash crossed her arms over her chest and put more space between her and Trudy. “You can think what you want, but why I’m with them is my business, not yours.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. I know that not all Vampires are the same, just like all humans aren’t the same. I was just curious is all.”
Ash pressed her lips closed.
When she didn’t answer her, Trudy continued to talk. “A lot of humans don’t find themselves involved in the paranormal world. Like, for me, I was hired by Kristof to audit the accounts. Long story short, Kristof’s wolf imprinted on me and here I am.” She shrugged on the last sentence.
Ash pulled her eyebrows together. “What does that mean, ‘His wolf imprinted’?”
“Um, in order for a Wolf-Shifter to claim a life-mate, both the man and wolf must have a…connection, I think is the best word, to their partner. But it’s the wolf who does the imprinting, binding all three souls together.”
“The wolf, man and mate.”
Trudy nodded. “Correct.”
They didn’t talk as Trudy led her down another corridor. It was quieter in this part of the building and it looked to be abandoned. Paintings and family portraits hung on the walls, and the plants in large pots lining the hall were well taken care of, but they didn’t pass anyone else or hear the hustle and bustle of a thriving work place as she did in the other parts of the building.
Trudy stopped in front of a closed door. She was just about to knock when Ash tugged on her sleeve.
“Um, Clarissa found me eleven years ago.” Ash lifted a shoulder. “Well, saved me would be the more appropriate word, and took me under her wing.”
Trudy gave her a thoughtful nod. Ash could only imagine what the other woman was thinking—that Vampires were vicious, self-centered, egotistical, uncaring, cold, ruthless and didn’t care for anyone but themselves, and Trudy would’ve been right. But for some reason on that night Clarissa had not only spared her, but had taken care of her like only a mother would’ve.
“Where did she find you? If I might ask?”
“I was living in a junk yard. The latest foster home wasn’t working out and I thought living on my own was a better option than going to the girls group home.” Although she wasn’t sure why she was having diarrhea of the mouth and spilling her guts, Ash continued, “I have no misguided fairy tales about what Clarissa and the others are and what they can do. I’ve witnessed…things…first-hand.” She lifted her chin. “But I’ve made a choice and I’m seeing it through. One day…my life will be different.”
Trudy gave her a warm smile. “Sorry for prying. You were right, it wasn’t any of my business. I’m sure there’s people out there who are wondering what I’m doing with a Wolf-Shifter.”
“It’s okay. You were curious, just like I was curious about your circumstances here.”
Trudy reached out and slipped her hand into Ash’s. Ash flinched from the touch then quickly tried to recover by fighting against the urge to pull away. She’d learned long ago that touches often came with pain, either emotionally or physically.
“Let me know if you need anything during your stay. Maybe on one of these days when you arrive earlier than your employers, you and I can have a late lunch or coffee?”
Ash tried to push the fact that Trudy was touching her aside. She’d
never had a friend before. Not a real one. A long time ago, at one of the foster homes, she had thought she’d been making friends with one of the other girls, but that had ended when Ash had been moved. For that very reason, there was no purpose in making friends with Trudy, either.
She plastered a half-smile on her face. “Thank you. That would be wonderful.”
After giving her hand a squeeze, Trudy let go and knocked on the door. Ash immediately stuck her hand under her armpit.
She was just trying to be nice, Ash kept telling herself. The good thing about being with the Vampires was that they rarely touched her. If she were never touched again, Ash would be happy.
“Come in,” came a loud voice from the other side.
Trudy opened the door, revealing a large spacious office. But what caught Ash’s attention was the man sitting on the opposite side of the impressive desk. If she hadn’t known that Andras Farkas was the Alpha, she would’ve guessed it immediately. His dark, piercing eyes settled on her and she felt the power behind them. Andras was a handsome man with olive-toned skin. She could almost imagine the wolf within. It would look like the man, strong and powerful.
I shouldn’t look him directly in the eyes.
She dropped her gaze to the floor.
This will make for an awkward conversation.
She moved to focus on his right ear.
Better.
Where had those random thoughts come from?
“Hello, Ms.…?”
“Just Asha. Ash is fine.”
Ash ignored the questioning raise of his eyebrow. She’d long ago foregone her last name. She didn’t need an attachment to the father she’d never known or the mother who preferred drugs and men over her own daughter. One day, when she officially joined Clarissa’s clan, she would have a last name to give her, but that day wasn’t today.
“Ohh, one name like Madonna or Cher.”
Ash turned toward the speaker. A woman who she hadn’t noticed at first was lounging in a chaise positioned by a bookcase on the opposite side of the office.
“Hey, Katalin,” Trudy said to the woman. “This is Ash, she’s working with the Vam—”
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