by Leigh Evans
Why do Weres always go for the neck and humans always go for the head?
He squeezed. I squeaked.
Merry leaped.
She went, as per her custom, for his cheek. A flash of whipping vines, then pincers pinched his flesh. “Merde!” His sharp hiss feathered my hair. I had a brief moment of hope, but his rear of surprise didn’t greatly interfere with his desire to choke the ever-living life out of me. He could rear and throttle simultaneously—the man had very long arms.
Oh crap. Spots were forming. I’m fading.
“What’s going on?” I dimly heard someone say.
“Nothing,” lied the Frenchman. Through his near-blinding flare, I got a hazy impression of high cheekbones. The scent of blood—not mine—bloomed between us.
“Who’s there?” A Spaniard.
“I believe it is Hedi Peacock,” answered the guy squeezing my neck. He leaned so close that Merry’s looped chain tickled my chin. “I suggest a temporary truce, mademoiselle,” he whispered. “Perhaps you’ll ask your amulet—it is sensible to words, yes?”
I grunted, my vocal cords too abused to squeeze out words.
“Then I would be gratified if you would ask it to release me?” he inquired softly. The squeezing-python sensation eased a tempting fraction—the implication clear. Air was on the other side of compliance.
Someone spoke up in the background. “Shall we call for reinforcements, St. Silas?” A Russian, sounding amused.
“I have everything in hand,” he replied.
“Let him go, Merry,” I whispered.
My amulet reluctantly released her pinch-hold, then wetly dropped from his cheek, still pulsing a purple-red light of her own. Immediately, the choking pressure around my throat was removed.
Air. Sweet Goddess, air.
“Now, as to your flare,” St. Silas continued in his silky whisper.
I’m still flaring?
“I am an Alpha and I cannot allow you to defy me much longer. It is not done, you understand? And so, your defiance will end here, and that which you seek—for I am sure you have come here for a good reason—will never be discovered by those on the Great Council.”
“I have things to show you,” I rasped. “Things you need to hear.”
“Then put out your flare,” he said in a hard voice.
It seemed like a loss to comply, and I needed a win, or at least a draw. There was only one option left: I stiffly turned my head and directed my flickering flare to the wall. From my perspective, it wasn’t a surrender, it was a cessation of direct fire.
The wall colored green while my tear ducts streamed.
He laughed softly under his breath. “You are a very rude woman. We will both extinguish flares at the same time, agreed?”
Speech was beyond me. With a curt nod, I closed my eyes.
Goddess. I slumped against the wall. Could eyes smoke? Blindly, I knelt to pat the ground, searching for the iPad. I heard the crack of knees—so, the French Were had some cartilage issues—and a cloud of Alpha stink surrounded me. “Is this what you want?” he asked. The weight of Knox’s tablet settled on my thigh.
I don’t like smelling other Alphas. I don’t like having their essence coat my skin. That intimacy belongs to Trowbridge, and no other wolf.
I rested my head against the wall and breathed through my nose. My head ached, my sinuses throbbed. I pressed my fingers over my eyelids.
I had a roomful of Alphas to face.
“Allow me to help you to stand, Mademoiselle Peacock,” he offered.
Like hell.
Walls are multipurpose things. They hold up structures, they’re useful to have sex against, and dammit, this one would do to help me spider-walk myself to a standing position. When I was more or less upright, I counted four Mississippis, then turned to face St. Silas.
* * *
The Frenchman was a surprise. Like most mated Weres, he didn’t show his age. Plus, he was francophone cool—the type of French Canadian male who can wear a battered leather jacket at any age, and look supremely urbane and elegant. Blue eyes, some facial hair—but a nice scruff, mostly dark though patched with sections of white. About a week past due his layered haircut, but he evidently had a very good barber.
Astute, though. With eyes that revealed no inner thoughts.
His weren’t streaming tears.
“After you, Ms. Peacock,” he said, with a courtly wave.
I blotted my face with my sleeve as I passed him. When I walked into the suite proper, I was assailed by quick impressions, coming at me fast as a handful of confetti thrown in my face. This was no committee meeting. The opulent room was too empty. The scent signatures too distinct for a mass of wolves. And there was a curious flatness of smell.
Trowbridge listed in a silk-covered chair, set in the middle of the room.
“Hey,” he slurred. The flare he’d attempted to summon at the sight of me was brief and short-lived—the tiny flicker of a lightning bug against the backdrop of very dark night.
“Hey,” I replied.
Somewhere between here and the Peach Pit, he’d been given a change of clothing: a gray hoodie and a pair of jeans that would fit a man far heavier. He wore no T-shirt under that sweatshirt, and there was a rust-colored stain smeared across his chest. More blood bloomed on his knuckles. Another caked and broken line of it ran from the corner of his full lip to the edge of his chin.
Mine.
Déjà vu. I’d been here before. Threat circling my battered Trowbridge. But this time, I wasn’t duct-taped to a kitchen chair.
And I was not helpless.
“She shouldn’t be here,” said Reeve Whitlock.
My gaze jerked to the wolf, who stood to the right of my man, gripping the blade he’d brandished at the Peach Pit. And all the other bits and pieces of information? The perplexing absence of witnesses and jury. The guard with his gun. The French Alpha. All those other threats blew away. Specks of gray confetti gusting in the wind.
Hurt him.
My magic sprang from me. It hurtled across the room, aimed for the center of his chest.
Take his black heart. Squeeze it in your grip until it beats no more.
Intuiting that something wicked came his way, Whitlock sucked in his gut and did a half spin, effectively reducing the strike zone to a much narrower profile. Instead of skewering him, my magic grazed his ribs.
Hit him again.
Before I could snap my wrist, he slashed at us with his blade—the wide sweeping arc of a blind man. A lucky swipe. It severed the long thin coil of glittering green light neatly in two. And with that, my green serpent, so abused, so overused, broke apart into a cloud of shimmering green iridescence.
I inhaled sharply in shock. My own heart—so cold, so focused—slamming inside me. My magic was too tired to re-form, too spent to reshape, but my nostrils had picked up a saliva-inducing layer of copper over woods, wolf, and enemy.
My inner-bitch—she of the tucked tail—now knew the possessive satisfaction of resting teeth on the nape of her meal.
She slipped her leash. “I am hungry for a hunt.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’d scented blood so many times. Oozing from skinned knees, hidden under cloth bandages, leaking from plastic-covered meat trays. I’d understood it not by the quiver of my nose hair but by my reaction to it. Howling horror—Daddy’s stomach is torn open! Blunt pain—Mummy is gone. Weeping despair—don’t cut my Trowbridge again!
But now … oh Goddess, now.
It was a multilayered missive to the animal within me. We could smell what Whitlock had eaten, we could sense the faint metal tone of his hidden fear, we could taste the brine of his loathing. We knew him on the most basic level.
I sank into a feral crouch. I could feel the stretch of my lips, the air on our exposed front teeth.
The hunt. We leaped.
Whitlock turned to face our attack, his face split with a lupine leer.
I’d forgotten about the knife
.
My mate hadn’t. Trowbridge lurched upward—the guy with eight beers and a couple of hot dogs tucked under his belt who dimly perceives the arch of a home run overhead. With more luck than skill, he managed to snare my waist as I soared past him.
Momentum carried us. We hurtled over his chair, and I hit the floor with a bloodcurdling howl. Trowbridge toppled heavily on me, his body covering mine.
Trapping us. Holding us back. My inner-bitch’s frustration exploded. Growling and moaning, we arched under our mate. Teeth snapping, claws raking at his broad shoulders.
“Eaasssy.”
I think that’s what he muttered. Hard to make it out. I was überbitch and his face was buried in our hair … Our hair? I froze under him, registering the fact that I was hovering on the brink of a change. A real change. My spine—it was suddenly too short. While my rib cage—oh heavens—it was getting tighter.
My skin. It’s crawling. Goddess, is it moving? Will I become my wolf here? Now? In front of them?
Our enemies were threatening shadows in the periphery of my vision. No. I couldn’t be vulnerable in front of them—naked as a newly birthed pup.
I whimpered. Help me, Trowbridge. Help me push her back.
His scent wove around me, reeking of sun potion, and of dried blood, and of dull, unfocused anger. But there—love and anguish too. And now, fear. Not for him, but the same sort of nagging worry for me that I’d sensed on his skin before we’d made love.
“Eaassssy,” he breathed again.
Trowbridge. The start of all my “mines.”
The heavy pounding inside my chest eased, searched for unity with the rhythm of his. Pulses melded and settled.
Till two hearts beat as one.
A tear snaked down my temple. With a dark wordless mutter, he pressed a kiss to the tiny hollow between ear and jaw. He turned his head so his cheek rested on mine. His breath warmed the sensitive whorls of my inner ear.
“What took you so long?” he mumbled.
I lifted my lids. Stared into glazed blue eyes. His pupils were too dark, too wide.
My magic curled over his unprotected head. Curious and covetous, it licked at the sweat coating his forehead. Tiny sips. Testing and tasting.
“Whazzat?” he asked, his brows pulling together.
I stroked his jaw. “Just me.”
“Don’t want you here.”
Sharp hurt. I stiffened under him again.
“Can’t watch them hurt you,” he said thickly.
“Hush.” I pressed my fingers to his mouth, sealing it. “Can’t you see I’ve come to rescue you?”
He shook his head, widening his eyes with obvious effort. A strained and shaky grin. “Coming for you. Trying to come for you. But I’m so—”
“Hammered,” I filled in. My gaze hungrily roamed over him. The most handsome man in this realm. “You okay?”
“Been better,” he muttered. “They’ve got plastic.”
“What?”
He nodded to the floor. My gaze followed his, and my gut suddenly clenched. Indeed, the Great Council had plastic. A large sheet of it, heavy gauge, about the size of a large area rug, spread over the hotel’s wall-to-wall.
Some trial. Some open court of inquiry.
“Separate them, Mathieu,” I heard St. Silas say. Then some dumbass—male, wearing a nice watch—tried to do just that. He leaned into our space and tried to pry my mate off me. Freakin’ idiot. Talk about pulling a hungry dog off his favorite bone. Trowbridge, though hovering on edge of the twilight zone, was still an Alpha.
Holding his mate. Worrying about “the plastic.”
Trowbridge rolled off me and snatched up the glass objet d’art on the nearby coffee table. Before I’d risen to my knees, Trowbridge was standing behind Mathieu. Breathing hard. The piece of glass flummery broken in two, its jagged edge pressed meaningfully against the dumbass’s jugular.
Ralph let out a beacon of white light. An Asrai “Come on.”
There was a sharp intake of breath—which I swear came from the corner where no one sat—then a veritable mélange of voices and threats erupted.
Whitlock, having righted himself, shouted, “You want proof that she’s Fae? She tried to use her magic on me. Look at my ribs! Look at those amulets!”
Trowbridge threw out a promise of his own. “I’ll cut him!”
And other voices—their volume rising but somehow distant. No one was there. The room I’d expected to be full of Alphas only held three. Who was talking? Where were the voices coming from?
Merry shone, fire bright, as I scrambled to my feet.
Voices. Angry voices. Who was watching us? Were they protected by a ward of invisibility?
Oh hell no. Been there. Done that.
We have to get out of here. Now. Trowbridge had a fierce flare. Why hadn’t he used it? My problem-solving skills stretched as I tried to figure out exit strategies that included disarming a guy with a gun while supporting my mate as we lurched for freedom.
I could raise another flare, couldn’t I? Hang the burning eyes. Screw the stabbing socket pain. I can do this. No. I will do this. If we both fired up our flares at the same time—
“I will handle this,” said St. Silas.
The babble behind us bubbled for a moment longer, then silence fell. A heavy one, ripe with expectation that was far more frightening than the disembodied voices that had unnerved me a minute ago.
The soft wisps of hair on my nape bristled.
St. Silas spread his hands. “Bridge, this is beneath you. Release Mathieu. He is a good soldier and I would be grieved to lose him in such a manner.”
Plastic crackled as Mathieu—presumably the wolf with the neck about to be slit like an envelope—shifted his weight uneasily.
“Want your word,” said Trowbridge, breathing heavily.
“What do you want?”
“No pain. Promise me she feels … no pain.”
Oh Goddess. There’s that word again. I tugged his arm, ever so lightly because his balance was obviously crap. “Seriously? That’s what you’re bargaining for? That I won’t feel pain? People have been promising not to hurt me for days. I always end up in pain. Couldn’t you have bargained for a long life, filled with kids and prosperity?”
“Shhh,” he said. Not a soft shush. More of a “Son of a bitch, for all that is holy, cease talking!”
“Trowbridge,” I replied. “I don’t like the way this is going. Let’s say we get out of here. What say we start backing toward the door?”
Trowbridge weaved on his feet, thinking it over.
“Where will you go?” St. Silas inquired of my mate. “Leave this room and you are no longer the accused, you are the hunted. You will be run to ground, I can promise you that. And then? Sadly, I cannot promise that she will feel no pain. Bridge … you are an Alpha. Your days as rogue are over. You are held accountable to us now.”
“I know what I am,” he growled.
St. Silas sighed, then shrugged and said to the other guard, “Louis, shoot Ms. Peacock in the leg.”
Quicker than a ladybug facing a can of bug spray, I scuttled behind Mathieu.
“You promise me!” Trowbridge shouted, his neck red. “Give me your word!” I could smell my lover’s sweat. Feel the faintest tremble in his limbs as he fought to keep himself standing on two feet. He let out a thread of air through his teeth when I snagged his waistband and hauled upward.
“Very well,” said St. Silas. “She will not feel pain.”
Trowbridge sighed. “Good.” Without further warning, he sent Mathieu spinning toward St. Silas. My lover reeled on his feet, equilibrium lost. All that kept him from sinking to the floor was my grip on his jeans.
Weres. They’re so heavy.
And my hands? They’d been abused. But letting him fall to his knees in front of them—whoever they were? No. This shall not pass. Even if my arms began to tremble under the strain of managing six feet of muscle and man.
Merry hot against me.
Hold.
My cable of magic saw the problem through my Fae’s eyes and solved it for me. She streamed back to us, and did a lap around his lean waist—a safety belt of fluorescent green—then knotted herself around my wrist.
“That you again?” Trowbridge muttered.
“Yup.”
Merry belayed up her chain, made a short leap to Trowbridge’s shoulder, and sat there. Belly facing forward, her light a color I rarely saw—purple-red in the center, bleeding outward into fiery orange. With an expressive shudder, she untwined two vines. They did a circle over Trowbridge.
“Jesus,” he slurred. “I really hate this sun potion shit.”
* * *
Impasses are exactly that. Little time-outs while people talk with their eyes. I could tell that Trowbridge was using his—St. Silas’s gaze rested heavily on him, engaged in a wordless communication with my mate.
Meanwhile, I had things to say to Whitlock.
I’m going to kill you.
Soon.
Chin lowered, Whitlock sent me his own death glare. I glowered back. The burn in my eyes intensified, and I saw the answering flicker of Alpha light in his.
“Merde,” said St. Silas. “Reeve, extinguish your flare.” There was hidden steel in those soft tones, and perhaps a history there too because Whitlock’s jaw hardened with resentment.
But, after the faintest pause, the leader of the NAW complied. The small flame that lit his blue iris died, and I was left staring at a man who looked human and was not, who smelled of Were and threat, and who I knew, without any doubt in my heart, meant to see this day finished with me and my mate rolled into a neat package of plastic.
I’ll kill you first.
“Louis,” said St. Silas, “reset the chair for the Alpha of Creemore. And find another for his consort.”
“Reeve Whitlock is lying,” I said for the benefit of all who listened. “Neither Trowbridge nor I have had anything to do with the trade of sun potion.”
“Make her go,” said the unseen Russian, his tone bored.
My grip tightened on Trowbridge. “Who is that?”
St. Silas squeezed the bridge of his nose, then walked over to the desk. He pivoted the laptop resting on it.