I opened the door to my office and ushered Marcus inside. “Somehow I don’t think the loss of one mutt from his cause has had a big impact on him, emotionally.”
“Don’t use that word,” Marcus’s whole face darkened. He pulled back his lips, revealing his sharp canines.
“OK, OK, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was a sensitive subject.”
Marcus slumped down in a chair. He started pulling the leaves off my African violet. “What did he talk about, then?”
“The annihilation of the human race, the unification of all shifters, endless insults upon my intelligence … you know, the usual stuff. He wanted me to come over to his side, and convince Ryan to come over to him, also.”
Marcus tapped his fingernails against my desk. “Interesting. That almost sounds like the talk of a desperate man.”
“That’s exactly what I thought. But maybe that’s what he wants me to think.”
Marcus shook his head. “Remember, Isengrim is a wolf. He’s not known for his cunning. That’s fox territory. Let me guess, he tried to sell you on some kind of promise of being an alpha fox in his new pack hierarchy?”
“Yeah. I didn’t understand a lot of it. I gather shifter dynamics are quite complex.”
“Wolves place a lot of value on the order of things, on being the alpha, the one in charge. To a female lycanthrope, his offer would have been downright irresistible.” He snorted. “I told you, Isengrim’s not exactly smart. He can’t see that power wouldn’t appeal to a human female. He’d have done much better to threaten the lives of your loved ones.”
“He did that, too. The threat holds little weight with me. My parents were killed in a car accident five years ago.”
“Well, aren’t we the tragic panda,” Marcus smirked, the faint lines of wolfish whiskers flicking across his face. “Don’t underestimate Isengrim, Princess. He’s almost certainly going to win this war, but he’s pretty easy to outthink, if you’ve got a fox’s mind on your side.”
“Does he know why Ryan is having the exhibition?”
“No, and neither do I.” He growled. “Although I have my suspicions. Perfect Ryan Raynard couldn’t stand to remain in the shadows any longer. All that talent and good looks hidden away in Raynard Hall? It just won’t do. He had to reveal himself, to bask in the praise of his adoring public.”
“You are awfully bitter about Ryan.”
“I have my reasons.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask. A lump had formed in my throat from all this talk about Ryan. I needed a distraction. I needed to work.
Unfortunately, all my work had to do with Ryan’s exhibition. I just couldn’t win.
Marcus paced the room while I drafted Ryan’s biography for the catalogue. I’d studied his career for so long, I could practically recite his career history and artist statement from memory. When I had something passable, I checked my emails. Kylie had sent me a note from the library.
I’ve booked us a hotel room for the night. Hopefully Miss Havisham will be OK to fend for herself. I’ve found a ton of information at the library. I’ll tell you all about it tonight. Stay safe.
The hotel was on the high street, above one of the larger crystal and tarot card shops.
I told Marcus about the hotel room. He licked his lips. “Excellent. I hope she’s booked herself a separate room, or we’ll keep her up all night.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m talking about your end of our little bargain, Princess. The deal is, I protect you from Isengrim and his shifters, which I have done admirably so far, and you become my mate. I’d like to cash in my end of the bargain tonight, and vulpine mating rituals can get quite … heated.”
I snorted. “That’s not the deal at all.”
“I was there. I think I remember what I agreed to.”
“I agreed to give you a child, Marcus. I agreed to give you the child you wanted. I didn’t say anything about becoming your mate.”
“How are you going to have a child if we don’t …”
“Kylie does some temp work at a fertility clinic in a nearby village. I will give you my eggs, and you can find a crazy, freaky chick who wants to have a vulpine baby – I bet there’s an internet forum for that sort of thing – and Kylie will jab my fertilized eggs all up in her snatch, and you have your child and I get to keep my figure.”
“That’s not the deal!” Marcus howled. “That’s not mating. If I don’t claim you as my own, it doesn’t count–”
“Take it or leave it, mutt.”
He bared his teeth at me, his eyes flashing angrily. “Don’t call me that,” he hissed.
“Get out of my office, Marcus. I’ve got work to do.”
I sent my interns down to hang the exhibit. I wasn’t ready to see Ryan’s paintings, not after what he’d done to me. Instead, I went to the bathroom and put on my new underwear. It made me feel stronger, like I was donning a suit of armour.
I spent the afternoon talking to the press, sending out invites to the opening, and tweaking the wording on the exhibition programme. The photographer had processed three of the images so far (they took a long time), and I sent those on to my press contacts without even opening the files. I heard a knock on my door. It was Kylie.
“Lunch time,” she smiled, setting down coffee and Cornish pasties on top of a stack of paperwork, then dumped a huge stack of books on my desk.
“Look at you, getting your learning on.”
“It turns out the library has quite an extensive occult and mythology section. I hit the jackpot,” she said, holding up a book called Therianthropy.
“What’s that?”
“Everything you ever needed to know about shape shifters,” she said, flipping through it, her blonde curls bouncing around her animated face. “It’s a fascinating read, let me tell you. There’s even an entry about Crookshollow.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“It’s mostly the same old stuff, about witches congregating here during their sabbats. Apparently, Crookshollow forest was the place you went if you were a witch looking for an animal familiar, and there are several historical accounts of villagers seeing foxes and cats and wolves and deer turn into humans. The thing is,” Kylie closed the book, “I don’t know what I’m looking for, because I don’t know what you want.”
“What do you mean? I want to make it through the night without having my throat split open by a shape shifter.”
“I think I’ve found some things we can use to keep them away from us. If we shifter-proof the hotel room and our flat – there are some charms and herbs and things, and we have Marcus as a bodyguard for now – we should be safe. But Alex, you’re caught up in this shifter battle now – Isengrim is going to keep coming after you, whether or not you are part of Ryan’s life. So what do you want to do? Do you want to help Ryan?”
“No … I mean, yes. I don’t know.” I rubbed my temples. “He lied to me, Kylie. Whether he’s got feelings for me or not, that’s a fucking shitty thing for him to do. But this is bigger than Ryan and I – Isengrim’s shifters have killed people, and they’re going to kill more if we don’t stop them. I can’t just sit here and watch that happen, and if helping Ryan means saving lives, then that’s the right thing to do.”
“So you do want to help Ryan stay alive and save his exhibition?”
I nodded. “In order to save humanity, yes.”
“Because you love him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve barely known him for forty-eight hours, and I don’t even like him right now. This is so much bigger than Ryan and I and … whatever brief thing we had. I just don’t want him to get hurt.”
“Because you love him. You loved him even before you met him, Alex. You loved him because he was the man behind those paintings.”
I balled my hands into fists under the desk. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Let’s just agree that I’m keen to help him stop the shifters, and for him not to die, as long as it doesn’t fuck up my life in any way. Now,
what did you find out?”
“OK. Well,” she flipped open to one of her bookmarks, showing me an old cave painting, “it seems that shifters have been interacting with humans for thousands of years. And they have these–”
“We can skip over the history lesson for now, Ryan filled me in. Is there anything useful in there about killing a shifter, especially a powerful wolf that could tear you in half with a shake of his head?”
“It depends on the species of shifter. For example, according to Japanese legend, when fox-shifters live for a long period of time … more than fifty years, they grow another tail. A shifter over a hundred grows a third tail. If you cut off their tails, then they have to obey you.”
“I don’t want to be close enough to them to try to cut off their tails.”
“Right. Of course. Well, there’s a long-held belief that werewolves can be killed if they are pierced with a silver object, such as a bullet or a knife. But according to this author, the element iridium is much more effective. If a werewolf so much as touches it, it will poison their blood in a matter of seconds.”
“That’s interesting. That could be something.”
“What is iridium, anyway?”
I flipped open my browser and Googled the word. “It’s an extremely hard, brittle metal, and quite rare, too. It’s used in growing high-quality single crystals for electronics, as a chemical catalyst, and as a component in spark plugs. Historically, iridium was used to create fountain pen nibs, and for the creation of the pigment, iridium black, used for painting porcelain … oh, I remember now! When I did ceramics in art school, we used an iridium glaze to create black images on pottery. I’ve probably got a jar of the pigment in one of my art boxes back at the flat.”
“That’s good. We’ll need to go back to the flat to get it, though.”
“Tomorrow, during the day, after we’ve tested our anti-shifter charms at the hotel. Thanks so much for this, Kylie. I’ve got a lot to finish up here, but why don’t you go downtown and see if any of the occult shops sell charms or crystals or spells or whatever to ward off werewolves and shape shifters?” As I talked, I squeezed Clara’s protective charm under my desk. I would have loved to have gone to her for advice, but I didn’t think it was appropriate, given what Ryan had done. I assumed she didn’t know about this other woman, this Melissa.
“I’m on it,” Kylie slammed shut the book. “Don’t work too late, Alex. I don’t like you being here with just him for protection.” she jabbed a finger at Marcus, who was trailing down the hallway behind my two interns, looking rather sorry for himself. “He doesn’t seem like much protection to me.”
“I agree. But right now, he’s the best I’ve got.”
5
Marcus followed me around for the rest of the afternoon like a lost puppy, trying to convince me to sleep with him. This made it difficult to get my work done, which made me snap at him in frustration, which made his erratic shifting even more pronounced, which meant he had to hide in my office with the shades down so no one else would notice the fact he’d sprouted a bushy red tail. Which meant that Belinda kept casting me knowing looks as she passed me on the way to the coffee machine. At this rate, it would be a miracle if I still had a job after the Raynard exhibition opened.
By 7pm, I’d had enough. The building was starting to clear out, and I knew once there weren’t any people left at Halt it would cease to be safe for me to walk about freely. Even after our enlightening talk this morning, I still had no clue what Isengrim was planning, or whether he was even concerned about watching me anymore. But I didn’t want to take any chances, and I was beginning to have serious doubts about Marcus’s ability to protect me.
Kylie called to say she’d shifter-proofed the hotel room, and asked if she should come to pick me up. I didn’t want her to go out again at night, and I had Marcus with me, so I told her to stay put. I called a cab to take us to the hotel.
“You’re taking a huge risk, Princess,” Marcus complained as I shut down my computer and locked the office, “leaving the exhibition unguarded all night like this.”
“Isengrim hasn’t seen the exhibition. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in what it actually contains, only in its existence as a catalyst for his war. He doesn’t know–” I stopped, realising I hadn’t told Marcus what Ryan was planning.
“He doesn’t know Ryan’s hidden messages in the paintings, messages only the shifter community will understand.” Marcus finished.
“Excuse me?” Panic clawed at my stomach. How did he know?
Marcus smiled wickedly. “Those two insipid interns of yours came in handy after all. They wanted me to help them hang the canvases, so I took the chance to peek at Mr Raynard’s masterpieces. His little hidden code is blatantly obvious to any shifter.” He frowned at me. “Don’t look at me like that, Princess. I’m on your side, and not just because you’re going to be my mate.”
“I’m not–”
“Look, if I’m going to protect you, you’ve got to trust me. I’ve been with Isengrim long enough to see that his new world order isn’t going to change anything for me. I’m always going to be what I am, and Isengrim is never going to give a mutt like me any power within the pack.”
“Then why have you stayed with him?”
“I have to think about my own protection.” He tapped his head. “I know things, and that’s useful to other people, like Isengrim. If I’m useful, I won't be killed.”
He grinned again, an unsettling smile that revealed rows of canine teeth. I looked away, but despite Marcus’s strangeness, despite his erratic shifting, my gut said he could be trusted. Unlike Ryan, nothing he’d said or done so far had turned out to be a lie.
“Isengrim hasn’t seen the paintings,” I said. “He didn’t even seem that interested today. He just talked to me, then left.”
“Are you sure? The gallery is open to the public today, and the only thing stopping someone peeking into the Raynard exhibit is a single locked door. Do you really want to leave the exhibition unguarded overnight?”
“We’ve doubled security at the gallery now that Ryan’s paintings are on the premises. It will be fine.” But even as I said it, my chest tightened with fear. Don’t let Marcus get to you. He’s just trying to frighten you, for his own means ...
“I think we should stay here, instead, just the two of us, order in some fried chicken, crack open a bottle of wine …”
“Urgh, whatever. Just walk me to the cab.” I stepped outside, and Marcus followed behind me. I stopped short when I saw the shadow standing in front of me.
Leaning against one of the steel pillars flanking the entrance to the Halt Institute, looking casually sexy in black jeans and last night’s leather jacket, was Ryan. His face showed none of that causal arrogance he usually assumed. Instead it was drawn with worry, dark circles appearing beneath his penetrating brown eyes. Seeing him like that bent my resolve. I wanted badly to run into his arms, to kiss that sadness from his eyelids. But how could I, when it was he who had done it to himself? Him and his lies.
Ryan strode across the entrance toward me. “Alex, you have to listen to me.”
Behind me, Marcus growled, low in his throat.
I turned my face away, not wanting him to see that he had upset me. “I don’t have to do anything, Ryan. Except right now I have to get to my hotel, before one of your shifter friends decides to take a swipe at me.”
“Alex, you need to listen to me. You can’t do this–”
Marcus shoved him roughly. “Don’t touch her. She’s under my protection.”
Ryan snarled. “She can’t be under your protection. She’s going to be my mate.”
“She is not.”
“She is,” Ryan said quietly. “Look at her neck.”
Marcus pulled the collar of my shirt down, revealing the swollen bite against my white skin. He threw back his head and howled, an inhuman sound filled with pain. His fingers against my neck shifted into claws, and I shrunk away from the sharp
nails that threatened to bite into my skin.
“You,” Marcus spat at Ryan, his face contorting with his rage. “You have to have everything, don’t you? She doesn’t even want you, and yet, you have marked her so no one else can take her. You were always so selfish. You always had to be the best.”
“I am sorry for the pain in your life, Marcus.” Ryan said quietly, taking a slow step toward us, his hands raised in supplication. “But she is my mate–”
“I’m not your mate,” I screamed.
“She doesn’t even know what this mark means,” Marcus growled. “That’s so romantic, Ryan. You’re such a gentleman. You marked her and you don’t even tell her what it means.”
Ryan didn’t say anything, but I read the truth in his eyes. When he’d bitten me, he’d laid some kind of claim over me. I was his, even though he already had someone.
I shook my head, trying to make some sense of it all. “No, I do not accept this. You already have a mate. I had the pleasure of meeting her this morning.”
“I can explain about Melissa–”
“That’s nice. I don’t want to hear it. You are to release me from this bond, right now.”
Ryan’s eye darkened, and he stepped toward me. “I don’t take no for an answer. We’re destined to be together, Alex. I won’t let–”
“Don’t you dare shove that back in my face now. I gave you a chance, Ryan. I trusted you. How do you think it feels to wake up and discover her in your bedroom, when no one else was supposed to be in the house? How did she get past your mother’s protective charm, unless you helped her? Were you hiding her in the wardrobe? Does she have a spare key?”
“Wait—” He tried to speak, but I held up my hand to silence him.
“Save it. I don’t want to know. Goodbye.”
Marcus stepped forward, inserting himself between Ryan and me. I could see the features on his face elongating, shimmering between shifter and human. He stepped back on one leg, ready to pounce.
Crookshollow foxes box set: The complete fox shapeshifter romance series Page 13