It was too many things in too short a time frame to be coincidence. He’d known it had to be a shifter doing this, but until today, he’d been blind to the idea that it could be his dad, the fucking clan Alpha, behind it all.
Now what the hell was he supposed to do about it? Standing against the Alpha would be foolhardy, so he had to find a way to go around him. For all of their sakes. He refused to let anyone hurt his people, not even his own father.
“Bastian, I’m heading out for the day.” One of his younger brothers, Tomas, poked his head in the door. “You want to grab some dinner?”
“No, I think home is calling my name.” So was the bottle of scotch in his kitchen cabinet.
His brother propped his shoulder against the doorjamb, a lazy smile on his face. “Good, because I’ve got a sweet little she-wolf who wants to cook for me.”
“Breakfast in bed?” Bastian arched a brow.
“If I’m lucky.” Tomas’s gaze dropped to the desk, his forehead furrowing as he caught sight of the newspaper. “The old man talk to you about that?”
Bastian snorted. “Talking isn’t the term I’d use but, yes, words were exchanged.”
“I don’t agree with him on this one either.” His brother straightened, his face falling into serious lines. He shook his head. “He’s crazy if he thinks going public is the right move.”
It was on the tip of Bastian’s tongue to share his suspicions, but he bit back the words. Starting a family feud wasn’t going to help anything. He needed more information. He needed proof. Frustration tightened the muscles in his shoulders, and he felt a headache begin to hammer at his temples again. Yep, this was definitely a night for a healthy dose of scotch. It wouldn’t fix a thing, but if figuring out your father was trying to betray his entire species wasn’t a day for a stiff drink, he didn’t know when an appropriate time would be.
“I’ll see you Monday. Have a good weekend. And enjoy your breakfast.” Pushing to his feet, he tossed the paper into his briefcase.
Tomas shoved a hand through his hair and looked like he wanted to say more, but shook his head and turned away. “Later, Brother.”
The drive home took Bastian through some of his favorite territory, and he felt a little of his tension unwind. Lush green hills and old-growth forest filled with birch, hickory, maple, hemlock and magnolia. The fog that gave the Smoky Mountains their name wound between the trees and curled up over the higher peaks in the distance. He loved it here. Clan land, wolf land. Someday his land to rule, his responsibility to safeguard. He’d understood that almost from the day he was born. Expectations had always been higher for him than for any of his younger siblings, but he’d had his father to show him how it was done, had never felt unprepared for the role he had to fill.
Until today.
He turned onto the private road that led to his house. His SUV bumped across the bridge that took him over a rushing creek. And there it was, a sprawling wooden house with lots of windows and a wide porch that wrapped all the way around. Home.
After parking out front, he grabbed his briefcase and dragged his ass inside. He’d never been so glad to see the place in his life. He poured himself a drink, pulled the newspaper out to read again and went out on the porch. A small round table sat between a pair of rocking chairs, and he set his drink down and sank into a seat. Even after picking through the article for any missed details, he didn’t find anything that would conclusively link his father to the information leak, but his instincts told him he wasn’t wrong.
They also told him that someone approached.
He lifted his face into the wind and inhaled. Wereeagle, diving in fast. He’d barely finished the thought when a flutter of wings brought the massive bird into sight.
“Patrick Aquinas.” He raised his glass in a salute as the bird shifted midair and a large naked man landed no more than a foot away. “Been a while since you’ve made it out here for a visit.”
“Wolf Beta.” The eagle inclined his head formally, his expression a smooth, professional mask.
Ah, so this wasn’t a social call. Which meant Patrick had been sent as a member of the elite werebird Messenger Corps. Birds were dogmatically impartial in all werekind disputes, which made them ideal go-betweens for official communiqués amongst warring factions. Or just for sending a missive you didn’t want anyone to know about. Taking a sip of his scotch, Bastian arched his eyebrows. “You have a message for me?”
“Two.”
“Let’s hear it.” He waved the wereeagle into the spare rocking chair. “And sit down. I don’t need you waving your junk in my face. Save it for your mate.”
That cracked the impassivity on the other man’s face, and he smirked, but took a seat. “First, your stepsister Celeste and your cousin Lyra would like to invite you for a family visit.”
Now that was interesting. They didn’t trust the phones or email for this request. He sat back in his rocker, tapping the folded newspaper against his thigh. “And the second message?”
Patrick crossed his ankles, assuming a casual pose. “My queen would like to offer you…discreet transportation.”
“Oh, really?”
He shrugged. “We do own the shifter airline.”
Bastian tossed the paper on the table between them. “Who do you think is behind all this?”
The wereeagle hesitated for a moment too long, as if struggling with what he wanted—or didn’t want—to say. “My queen has no desire to take sides in this. Birds have always been neutral and will remain so.”
“Come on, Patrick.” Bastian huffed. “We’ve known each other most of our lives. I’m not asking for the official royal decree on the matter—I’m asking for your personal opinion.”
Another long pause before the wereeagle sighed. “I think Michael and Hector are up to their necks in this shit.” His gaze sharpened. “And if I ever have proof they deliberately put my mate in danger, I will rip their throats out. That personal enough for you?”
Patrick had recently married the fox-shifter who’d been stalked by a big game hunter, and Bastian fought a wince at the reminder. His father had gotten himself, and the entire clan by association, into one hell of a tangled mess. Pissing off the eagle queen’s closest advisor was not a way to keep relations friendly between their clans. Birds might not get involved in other clans’ fights, but they were vicious when someone brought a fight to their doorstep. Not an enemy to take lightly.
“Yeah, that’s personal enough.” Bastian rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll assume because you didn’t threaten to murder me for accusing your father that you already suspected him too.” Patrick nodded to the drink in Bastian’s hand. “Got any more of that?”
“I do.” He went to get the bottle and another snifter. After pouring a glass, he handed it over to the eagle and resumed his seat. They drank in silence for a while before Bastian spoke again. “If this gets out—I mean really gets out—your neutrality isn’t going to mean dick. You’ll be up to your necks like the rest of us squabbling, non-neutral species.”
Patrick stared down into his scotch. “I know.”
It might be a mistake, and the Alpha would most definitely suspect something was up, but the fact that Celeste and Lyra had sent the messenger meant it was serious. Whether or not they suspected Michael and Hector, Bastian didn’t know, but there was one sure way to find out. And as much as it would have galled him to go to the leopards a few years back, the werekind world had changed, and he was willing to take the help anywhere he could get it.
He met Patrick’s gaze. “I’ll accept the ride.”
The wereeagle nodded easily and finished his drink. He rose and stepped over to the top stair leading off the porch. “There’s a private airstrip on the border between your land and ours. It’s used just often enough that no one would notice an extra flight going out, but not so often that you’ll need to worry about a lot of witnesses.”
It was Friday now, so if Basti
an was lucky, he’d be back before anyone noticed he was gone. “I know of the place.”
“Be there at dawn. Good luck.” The wereeagle shifted and winged away as silently as he’d arrived.
Bastian looked at the headline again and downed the rest of his scotch in one swallow. “Fuck.”
Chapter Two
Icy cold fingers ran down Barbara Powell’s spine when she reread the headline in the Times. It was the eighty-sixth time she’d scoured the article. She’d been up all night, packing her office so she could leave before any of her colleagues came to watch her disgraced departure. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. And every time she looked at the newspaper, it hit her again. There it was in black and white. Her humiliation was complete. The entire world knew her career was over and she was a laughingstock of the scientific community. Everything she’d worked for was gone in the blink of an eye. Nausea roiled in her gut and she wanted to bend over and howl in pain. But she wouldn’t do that. That was what animals did.
And it was animals who’d brought her so low.
The ice inside her solidified to utter determination. She wasn’t wrong, no matter what her colleagues said. Former colleagues. If she could prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, they’d have to believe her.
She needed something conclusive. She needed a live specimen, not just tissue and blood samples.
Her research partner crept into her office, looking as if he was going to cry. “What are we going to do?”
“I should think it would be quite obvious.” She arched an eyebrow. “We’re going to find one of them and prove our theories are correct.”
He swallowed, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing. “How will we do that? You can’t just tell by looking.”
“You’re a scientist, Hastings. Act like one,” she snapped, impatient with his stupidity, his weakness. “We’ll find one by studying them.”
It was well before dawn when Bastian pulled his SUV into the airstrip’s small gravel parking lot. He didn’t even bother heading into the corrugated metal building that served as the terminal. The scent on the air told him exactly where to go. He grabbed his bag off the backseat and headed for a small jet on the side of the runway.
“What are you doing here, Nico?” Even with his enhanced wolf sight, he hadn’t seen the leopard yet, but he could smell him so he knew the other were was near.
“Going to Arizona for a family visit,” Nico replied, appearing out of the darkness. He was tall and had an edge of the untamed about him that scared the shit out of most people. Bastian managed to keep his fangs retracted—barely—when confronted with another predator. He could hold his own in a fight, but he had no fight with this man, half-wild or not. Nico’s gaze gleamed as if he knew he made other shifters battle their own instincts to attack. “And you, Lykaios? What brings you out this early in the morning?”
“I was invited for a family visit too.” It was still a little earth-tilting that they were talking about the same people. Wolves and leopards in one family—who’d have thought they’d see the day?
Nico’s presence certainly made this more interesting. It looked like one hell of a meeting was about to take place, with representatives from the wolf, eagle and leopard clans. Such a thing was unheard of in their world, but this situation with the scientists had the potential to turn their world inside out and they needed to figure out how to deal with it.
The wereleopard arched an eyebrow. “We must be on the same flight. How convenient.”
“Who’s our pilot?” Bastian took a breath, but didn’t get of whiff of anyone closer than the terminal.
“I am.” Nico jerked his head to indicate Bastian should climb the short flight of steps to board the jet. Once they were in the front seats, Nico cast a glance at him. “When you have two fledgling eagles in the house, it’s best to know a thing or two about flying.”
“I see.” Bastian looked over his shoulder at the many empty seats in the rear of the plane. “The wife and kids aren’t coming?”
“Not this time.” The leopard began flipping switches and doing readings for the pre-flight check.
“A shame.”
It didn’t take long until they were taxiing down the runway. Gravity shoved Bastian back in his seat and the ground rushed away. They turned west, a direction not normally safe for a wolf to go. The US was roughly divided along the Mississippi, wolves ruling the shifters in the east, leopards ruling the west. There were smaller territories carved into each of those halves. The decentralized bear clans were scattered here and there. Werebirds had their mountain sanctuary in the Smoky Mountains not far from wolf headquarters. And dolphins claimed most of the Gulf Coast.
The borderlands along the Mississippi River were wild, dangerous places for shifters. It was where most skirmishes between species broke out, where werekind clinics were most needed. His cousin Lyra had served in one of those border hospitals in New Orleans before she’d married into the leopard clan. He’d visited her there once, had done what he could to tone down the violence, but it still wasn’t the safest area. It had gotten better since Hector Leonidas had retired and his sons had taken the reins of power. With two women directly connected to the wolf Alpha in the Leonidas family, the leopards were less interested in continuing the dispute. Hell, that dispute went all the way back to Zeus and Artemis wanting to make the better, more dominate shifter. A fight that should have been put to rest long ago. It was well past time that shifters stopped squabbling amongst themselves and started watching their collective backs.
Continuing to war with the leopards might put his sister and cousin in harm’s way, and Bastian had no desire to do so. Whether they now belonged to another clan or not, they were still family, and that counted in his book. Other Alphas and Betas before him might have felt differently, that a person either belonged to the wolf clan or not, and those that didn’t might as well be enemies. Bullshit, in Bastian’s opinion. His clan and his family rated equally for him, regardless of whether family members mated outside of the wolf pack. Sometimes that meant he had to deal with conflicting priorities, but so be it.
No one promised life would be easy or simple.
His trip today was a case in point. He tried to keep the tension from showing, didn’t want to let the other man see any weakness, but getting on this plane had meant turning his back on a lifetime of toeing the line with his father. Sure, he’d argued with his dad, but in the end the Alpha had always gotten his way. Bastian swallowed. If the Alpha got his way now, it could mean disaster for everyone. It came down to what mattered most, what made up the absolute core of Bastian’s beliefs. Protecting his family and his clan would always come first. He’d disagreed with his father before, but this was the first time that disagreement was so fundamental that Bastian had to break with everything he’d ever known.
He was walking a high wire and there was no safety net. There was success or there was death. He made no excuses, offered himself no platitudes. If this meeting went the way he suspected it might, the Alpha would consider Bastian’s actions treason. Michael could coerce the Wolf Council into putting Bastian to death. His best-case scenario was banishment from clan land. Forever.
If he lost.
If he won…hell, he didn’t know what that might mean. Michael being forced to do the bidding of others for once? Michael retiring just as Hector had? Who knew? Bastian took a deep breath, steeling his nerves. This had to be done. To protect his people. He might fail, but he had to try. If he didn’t, he wasn’t a man worth having as a future Alpha anyway.
He glanced at Nico. “How much did Patrick tell you about our conversation?”
“Everything.” A hard glint entered the man’s green gaze. “The werebirds have suspected our fathers for a while now. Something needs to be done, so I’m coming to weigh in.”
“Glad to have you,” Bastian replied. Nico was an expert in security and had experience living within the cultures of two distinct clans. That made his input invaluable even if he was, occa
sionally, a half-feral pain in the ass.
The leopard’s eyebrow arched as he gave Bastian’s face an incisive glance. “You know, I think you mean that.”
Bastian’s lips twisted into a lopsided smile. “Welcome to the brave new world.”
Tori glanced up as two tall men entered the lobby of the Leonidas headquarters. She had to blink a couple of times to clear her blurry vision. Four days with no smoking and she was on a killer jag of insomnia. Swan-shifter or not, her bosses were walking softly and watching her with wary gazes. Part of her was amused by that, but mostly she just wanted some sleep and the constant headache to go away. Or a cigarette. That would work too.
Sighing, she rose from her chair to greet the newcomers. One, she knew. Nico Leonidas. The other she hadn’t met before, but she knew he was the wolf Beta. He was turned to the side to speak to Nico, so she could only see him in profile, but she took a moment to look him over. Even from this distance, she could tell he was incredibly attractive. Broad shoulders that tapered down to a lean waist and sculpted ass. Long, muscular legs his pants did nothing to hide. He had the same inky black hair as Lyra, and while the cast of his features declared them family, his face was more angular. High cheekbones, square jaw. Mmm-hmm, he was a pretty piece of man-candy.
But when he turned and their eyes met, it was like a spark of electricity zinged over her nerve endings. Her breath seized in her lungs, and a shiver of pure sexual awareness caught her in its grip. Liquid heat sluiced through her body and settled in her sex. Some instinct she didn’t understand roared to life and she wanted so badly it weakened her knees. His gray eyes burned to silver and he took a step toward her. A wicked, knowing smile curled his lips, as if he understood exactly what kind of affect he had on her. There was a touch of arrogance to his expression, as if he’d seen what he wanted and knew it would be his.
Illicit Passions Page 2