And that excuse was starting to sound thin and pathetic even in her own head.
A little girl came pelting out of the forest. “Sarah Beth!”
Sarah Beth? Arching her eyebrows, Tori looked around. Another woman hopped out of one of the cars that had followed her off the highway. She scooped the girl in her arms and twirled around. “Alex!”
Ajax stepped from behind a tree carrying a younger girl on her hip. She waved to Tori, who wiggled her fingers back. Both women and girls converged on the Impala. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman who held Alex, but Tori couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
Sarah Beth said, “Hey, where are you headed?”
“For a joyride in Tori’s new lemon. She’s buying coffee.” A subtle grin played around the queen’s mouth. “Sarah Beth Aquinas, Tori Haida. Make nice.”
Tori stuck her arm over the door for a handshake. “Good to meet you. Want to come along?”
“Actually, yeah.” Sarah Beth smiled. “I like a classic jalopy as much as the next Southern girl. When did you buy it?”
“Yesterday.” Tori hopped out and gave an elegant bow as she held the back door open.
Sarah Beth chuckled and set Alex on the seat, then climbed in when the girl scooted over. “Nice.”
“Bouncy seats!” Alex pumped her legs and made the springs squeak underneath her.
Ajax plopped her youngest in Tori’s arms. “Okay, let me grab the car seats out of the Suburban. It’s hard to keep eaglets strapped in, but the law says we have to try.”
The kid giggled and wrapped her fingers around the strap of Tori’s tank top. Tori jiggled her. “So you’re Ayla, right?”
“Uh-huh.” The girl nodded so vigorously she almost head-butted Tori.
“Whoa, Princess. Adjust your flight path.”
“Crashes happen sometimes,” Alex offered sagely. She’d crawled from the back to hang out the driver’s window. “But fledglings don’t always fly good. So you hafta practice. Mama says so.”
“Your mom’s a very smart lady.” Tori arched an eyebrow at the child. “And you’re in my seat.”
“Daddy lets me sit on his lap and steer.” Her eyes went huge and winsome.
“When your mom’s in the car?”
She giggled. “No.”
“Then it’s the backseat for you, munchkin.” Tori winked. “Maybe next time, though.”
Excitement lit Alex’s gaze. “Cool!”
“Coo’!” her little sister echoed.
Tori met Sarah Beth’s eyes and said, “They are just all kinds of adorable.”
“I know,” the other woman replied. “Patrick and I are hoping for one of our own soon.”
Bam, it clicked. Tori suddenly knew where she’d seen this woman before. They’d never met, but Sarah Beth’s picture had been plastered across the papers by that obnoxious human reporter. He’d outed her as a fox-shifter. Then a big game hunter had gone after her, hoping to bag the biggest game ever. Sounded like one scary-ass nightmare to Tori.
Something must have shown in her face because Sarah Beth winced and raised her chin. “I survived.”
“Good. I hope no one else has to deal with anything like that again.” But even as Tori said it, she worried that it was a false hope. If what Bastian and the Leonidases suspected was true, they might all be exposed, hunted down like animals. She prayed that possibility never became reality. If anyone could stop it, she’d put her money on those guys.
Ajax reappeared, a booster seat carried under each arm. She handed one to Sarah Beth and then went around the car to strap the other booster in. “Sarah Beth, I can sit in the back with my girls. You ride shotgun.”
“With the roof down, there’s not a bad seat in the house.” Tori slipped back in and revved the engine. It was a sad sound, but it would be much cooler once she’d really gotten her hands on this baby.
“Do you know where you’re going, Haida?” Ajax leaned forward and arched her eyebrows.
“Nope, but there’s no use being late.” Tori eased out of the parking spot and took off down the road. “But, seriously, Chattanooga has to have a Starbucks or twelve.”
“We’re not that backwoods here in Tennessee,” Sarah Beth quipped. “We need caffeine like everyone else.”
“Well, the girls need hot cocoa, not coffee.”
The rush of wind would have made it impossible to have a conversation if they weren’t shifters, but their extraordinary senses meant they could speak without shouting and still be heard. Tori glanced in the rearview mirror to meet Ajax’s gaze. “Whipped cream with that cocoa?”
“Naturally,” Ajax murmured while her girls squealed their agreement.
Tori flipped on her blinker to merge back onto the highway. “I’m sure arrangements can be made. As a kid, I preferred those tiny marshmallows, myself.”
“Of course you did.” Ajax’s mock-condescending tone didn’t manage to mask her mirth. Then she reached over the seat and tugged the strap of Tori’s tank top aside. “So…it is true. You really are mated to Bastian Lykaios. I almost accused my consort of lying through his fangs.”
Tori shrugged away from her touch, feeling exposed. For once, her glib tongue failed her. No matter how much she’d considered her predicament, she still didn’t know what to say, how to explain. If he were anyone but a clan heir, it would be so much easier.
Sarah Beth gave her a sympathetic glance before swiveling to speak to Ajax. “Well, it’s no more shocking than when you mated to Nicodemus Leonidas.”
The queen snorted. “Yeah, well, I totally called you mating with Patrick.”
Sarah Beth propped her arm on the top of her door. “Really? Because it shocked the heck out of me.”
The banter continued all the way into town, and Tori’s car made the journey there and back with no problems. It was a great day. Good conversation, reconnecting with an old friend, making a new one and being amused by the antics of the little princesses.
She could picture this as her life far too easily. Going out for coffee with Ajax and Sarah Beth and some of the other birds she knew. Working on her cars, maybe as more than just a hobby.
Having Bastian come home to her every night.
God, that sounded good. Amazing. Perfect.
Except it wouldn’t be that simple, would it? Who’d ever heard of an Alpha’s mate who was a grease monkey for a living? She sure as hell wouldn’t be his secretary. He might start thinking he could boss her around then. Nope, nope, nope.
After coffee, she took the others back and went for a quick flight with the queen and her girls—being careful not to venture into bird territory—and she loved those sweet moments of freedom where there was nothing but the wind flowing over her wings. That high up in the air, it was easier to ignore the problems down in the rest of the world, but that didn’t make them go away.
Sooner or later, she had a feeling she was going to crash.
Barbara had started with the woman identified as a fox in Nichols’s article. His notes told her exactly where the fox and her family could be found: Chattanooga, Tennessee. So here she was in this backwater little city, trying to capture a live specimen. Hastings was working to set up a lab space for them, one that was discreet and isolated. If the “clans,” as Nichols called the shifter groups, were as tight knit as he suspected, it would be difficult have a missing hybrid go unnoticed.
With Hastings busy, Barbara had to follow the fox as she came and went from town. Every day, she ended up in this parking lot. There were usually a lot of cars around, and people came and went at times that indicated they were going to and from work rather than going for a hike in the mountains.
Barbara surmised they lived here, which meant there was a significant colony of hybrids in these woods. That caused a stir of intellectual excitement within her. So many potential specimens!
She tried not to make her presence too obvious, since animals had senses that humans couldn’t match, and their studies hadn’t yet shown the
extent of the sensory crossover there might be between animals and animal-human hybrids. They might have the ability to smell or hear the way any dog or cat would.
Sitting up straight, she took note of the fox interacting with two other women and children. The little girls had arrived with a fierce-looking woman with spiked blonde hair. Barbara had seen the fierce woman once before but something about her made Barbara wary. Perhaps this one was an animal that was more dangerous than the others. A fox wouldn’t be too difficult to manage, and the other woman was almost angelic-looking. She might be even easier to deal with than the fox, depending on her species. When the group piled into an ugly, beat-up old car and drove off, Barbara slowly tailed them.
The children gave her pause. Barbara hadn’t yet considered them as an option for experimentation. But then, she also had no idea if a child hybrid had the same abilities as a full-grown adult. At what age did their animal side manifest?
The group went to a coffee shop in town, laughing as if they hadn’t a care in the world, as if no one had ever taken everything from them, as if their lives had never imploded on them. Their joy made something dark squeeze and writhe within Barbara, but she ignored it. Emotions were for weaklings like Hastings. She needed to stay focused.
The women disappeared into the woods and a few minutes later a series of loud birdcalls made Barbara look up. A group of birds flew overhead. A massive bald eagle, a swan and two smaller bald eagles. But the eagles weren’t attacking the swan—they were just flying together, swooping around in dizzying circles. That wasn’t natural behavior for animals. Birds of prey didn’t cavort with swans.
These were hybrids. It was the only logical explanation. The bald eagle was the fierce woman and the smaller eagles were her young. That meant the angelic woman was a swan. Barbara’s mouth twisted in a smile. Yes, a swan would be even simpler to handle than a fox. Predator versus prey…she’d pick the prey as a first specimen.
When the angelic woman returned alone to the parking lot, Barbara tailed her until she turned into a private driveway.
If she didn’t live in the colony with the others, maybe she’d be easier to isolate and take alive. This warranted further investigation.
Chapter Eight
Bastian’s father had to go out of town for a couple of days to deal with a squabble between two factions of red wolves in North Carolina. A relief, really. It made it easier to avoid the Alpha. There were questions and accusations in the older man’s eyes that Bastian couldn’t face. It became harder and harder to hide his anger as more damning evidence came in from the bird and leopard clans.
He strode into his house in a pisser of a mood, ready to snarl at anything that moved. Probably not the best way to come home to his mate, the one woman he hoped would stick around. But the wolf within him could feel the threat closing in around it, and its hackles rose.
Tori sat on the couch, her back resting against one arm of the sofa, totally absorbed in whatever she was doing. There was something serene in her expression that was so un-Tori-like that it gave him just enough pause not to snap upon greeting.
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I spoke to Celeste today.”
“Shit!” She startled, her head whipping around to look at him. “Scare me to fucking death, why don’t you?”
The first smile of the day creased his face. That was the Tori he knew and loved. Something squeezed tight within him and he staggered. Loved. God, yes. He loved her. The rightness of the emotion hit him with the subtlety of a punch to the gut. In under two weeks, the woman had wormed her way into his heart and taken up residence. Maybe it shouldn’t be so stunning—his instincts had demanded he claim her that first night—but he stood there staring at her like a simpleton for several moments.
“You look dumfounded.” The corners of her eyes crinkled. “What’s up? What did Celeste say?”
He shook himself out of his reverie, pushing the shock of his revelation away. “Uh… She had to do a lot of digging with her journalist contacts, but there are other reporters Michael and Hector have been talking to. Except Nichols, most laughed it off. But some of them are starting to sniff around the story after those scientists claimed to have DNA proof. This could become an even bigger clusterfuck.”
She dropped her chin to her chest. “I have bad news too. My ring of informants is admittedly small, but they found something.”
“Fuck.” Bastian jerked off his tie and tossed it and his messenger bag on the table beside the door. “Tell me.”
Rubbing a finger between her eyebrows, she sighed. “There was another set of scientists who were contacted by an anonymous man and offered hybrid samples.”
The ground tilted under his feet and he leaned back against the front door to keep from falling on his ass. “Did they take the samples?”
“No, they passed, thank God.” She flashed him a look. “But still. What if there are more? Those are just the ones we know about.”
“Fuck,” he said again, with feeling. “Did you tell anyone about this?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure how secure your office is, whether your admin assistant can overhear things, where her loyalties might lie, so I figured I’d wait and tell you in person.”
Which meant she also hadn’t called the leopards or birds about it either. The statement was telling. Her loyalties were shifting to him, whether she realized it yet or not. He almost smiled at that thought, but managed to refrain.
Her gaze leveled on him. “When are we calling the dads out on this?”
“My brothers and I spoke to the Leonidases today. Adrian, Jason and Celeste are going to fly in at the end of the week to visit Nico. My dad should be back in town by then. So that’s when we’ll do it—together.”
“Staging an intervention.” She shook her head. “That’s one way of uniting the clans.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them mentioned that the Leonidases’ visit would make a great time for her to go back to Arizona. She could just hop on the return flight with the leopard contingent. Easy. Over and done.
No. The wolf inside him reared up and snarled, and Bastian felt his fangs emerge to scrape his lower lip. He clenched his jaw and shoved the wolf down.
After pushing away from the door, he approached the couch to kiss the top of Tori’s head. He breathed in the scent of her and a band of emotion tightened around his chest. God, he didn’t want to lose her. But they’d carefully skirted talking about her remaining in Tennessee, and he couldn’t force himself to bring it up now.
His gaze dropped to her lap and he saw what she’d been so focused on when he arrived. A sketch of a new car. It was as amazing as all the others he’d seen—and he’d cajoled her into letting him see the whole sketchpad days ago. She was so talented, and that talent was wasted working as a secretary.
“I want you to design a car for me,” he said suddenly, and even he wasn’t sure where the words had come from, but as soon as they were out of his mouth, he knew they were absolutely true.
She ran her fingers over the notepad’s pages, making them whiz passed like a child’s flipbook. “You don’t want one of these?”
“These are sports cars.” He bent down to rest his chin on her shoulder. “I’m six-three, honey. As much as I like fast cars, they aren’t fun to squeeze into for the daily commute.”
She tapped the end of her pencil against the paper for long moments. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to have it made.” Or have her make it for him, but that might be pushing too far. For the moment.
After twisting at the waist, she gave him an incredulous look. “Do you know how much that would cost?”
“Don’t care.” He dipped one shoulder in a shrug. “I have money—why not spend it on what I really want?”
She bit her lower lip, something vulnerable and uncertain in her gaze. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that. In the meantime…” He caught her mouth with his and slid his hand into the neckline of
her shirt to cradle her breast. A sexy little whimper broke from her as she arched into his palm. He plunged his tongue into her mouth, the kiss as possessive as he felt. Sweeping his thumb across her nipple over and over again had her writhing for him, and the scent of her building desire was a heady aphrodisiac as it hit his nostrils. His cock was so hard he ached, but he liked tormenting her too much to do something about his own needs just yet.
She tugged on the front of his shirt. “Come down here with me.”
He grabbed her hands and pulled them over her head, forcing her to slide down the couch while he pinned her in place. The position lit a wicked longing deep within him. He grinned and let her go. For now. “I have a better idea.”
Jerking upright when he stepped back, Tori snapped, “For the record, walking away is not a better idea.”
He strode toward the laundry room. “I’ll be back and then you’ll thank me.”
“Unlikely!” she shouted, sounding seriously put out.
He whistled a cheerful little tune to annoy her further. Probably not the smartest thing he’d ever done, but he did enjoy riling her. About as much as she seemed to enjoy riling him. When he got to the laundry room, he rifled through a few cupboards until he came up with the spare clothesline he’d recently purchased. It was a soft cord that would work well for his purposes.
Ripping off the plastic packaging as he went, he walked back into the living room. She’d tossed her sketch onto the coffee table and sat there with her arms folded. “Teasing and leaving are not okay unless it’s a life-or-death situation. Serious bloodshed doesn’t even make the cut. Imminent death only.”
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