I’d taken pains not to leave the grassy sward previously. No wonder a root stretched beneath shoulder, questing, questioning. The Guardian slept, but not fully. Our intrusion had caught its attention.
Not now, I murmured silently, using the thread of a link between us. Like my pack bond, the link allowed communication. Unlike the pack bond, it couldn’t be used to force obedience.
Still, the root hardened into stillness beneath my back even as I reared upward. The Guardian wouldn’t protest our intrusion. It trusted me, for now.
Which was good, because I still had Ash to deal with. My fangs were bared and my growl was deep menace. Earlier in the evening, I’d been reining in my attacks. After all, my challengers were pack mates. Our matches were more game than fight.
But Ash had twice used subterfuge against me. He hadn’t paid attention to Kale’s presence. He’d acted like he was challenging for the role of Alpha.
So I treated his ambush as a true attack.
This time, when I pinned him, I didn’t stop with a growl. This time, I marked him, fangs slicing through the fur then skin of his chest in a gaping X.
It was the external sign of an alpha’s displeasure and Ash knew it. Shifting beneath me, his naked human fingers cupped the bleeding flesh. “Tara....”
I didn’t bother to shift and speak. Just sent my words to him down the pack bond. “Alpha. You’ll call me Alpha.”
His mouth tightened. We were friends. We didn’t stand on ceremony.
Make that past tense. We had been friends. Now, not so much.
The rest of what I said, the pack should hear. So this time I did shift upwards. Ash had ended up on his hands and knees but I leapt as I transitioned, coming to rest on the earth barefooted but upright. Toes pressed into leaf mold, taking strength from the Guardian. Roots bit into my skin, reminding me of my duties in exchange.
“You will apologize to the Guardian,” I ordered, keeping alpha command humming in the air until Ash bent over. He squeezed his chest wound with shaking fingers. Dripped blood onto the churned-up soil.
In response, the Guardian subsided. Roots slid out of my feet to suck up the gift. Broken flower stems straightened.
“Is it enough?” Ash murmured. Unlike me, he couldn’t feel the Guardian’s acceptance. Probably hadn’t noticed the flowers break or mend.
I nodded and Ash’s fingers eased, the whiteness of his face easing along with them. He didn’t comment on the pain, however. Instead, he wiped one red hand across the bare skin of his thigh and extended it to me. “We’re good now. Right, Tara?”
“Alpha,” I corrected a second time, voice hard. After tonight, friendship with Ash would be an unearned indulgence. A chink in our clan’s cohesiveness. One we could ill afford.
Raising my voice to ensure all onlookers could hear me, I added: “You fought with dishonor so you are barred from further Beta challenges.”
“But....” Ash started.
Speaking over him, I continued. “You may still challenge, but if you do so it will be for the role of Alpha.”
His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Just speaking now could be construed as a challenge.
And Alpha challenges, as we all knew, were fought to the death.
THE ALPHA DIDN’T LINGER and gossip, so I left the pack to discuss implications among themselves. Back at the mansion, I wiped dirty feet on a much-used door mat. Grabbed a robe from the free box and pulled it around me as I padded up to Kale’s door.
There was a light under the crack, but he didn’t answer when I knocked. “Kale?” I said rather than banging my fist a second time. “It’s me. Tara.”
“You mean Alpha,” he answered from the other side of the barrier. His voice was muffled as if he was muttering into his covers. He likely hadn’t meant for me to hear.
“May I come in?”
This time, he said nothing. Instead, I heard the click of a metal switch. The light beneath the door winked out.
That was a no as obvious as if he’d yelled it. Still, I stood listening for one long moment. Got down on my hands and knees and sniffed beneath the crack.
There was no salty scent of tears. Just annoyance. Teenage temper.
And, as I listened, Kale’s breathing slowed and evened. He wasn’t so upset that he’d stopped falling asleep the minute his head hit the pillow. I’d removed him from the challenge field in time to ensure he continued reacting like a cossetted human child.
So I left him there, promising myself I’d make things right between us in the morning. I headed up a long flight of stairs to my empty tower. There, I slipped into my bed, above and apart from the pack.
Chapter 7
The next morning, tightness gathered behind my eyes when Kale refused to speak with me. I’d cleared enough of my schedule to drive him to school, and for the entire fifteen-minute commute I tried tweaking his tail the way my childhood nurse used to. The trick had always worked on me. Tease, tease, tease...and soon enough I’d turn and nip. She’d accept my angry words, then I’d tell her what was wrong and end up crying in her arms.
Kale was a sturdier specimen. His lips remained sealed for the entire drive and he disembarked without once meeting my gaze. His shoulders stiffened as he walked up the steps to the school building. Even his nods to friends appeared forced.
So I’d flubbed that one. The kid in my charge arrived at school just as upset as when he’d subsided into his pillow. No wonder the tightness behind my eyes built into a throbbing headache during the drive back to pack central. No wonder I snarled at Ash when he met me at the factory entrance with a steaming mug in one hand.
“You missed breakfast, Alpha.” His eyes stayed on the ground, but he held out my usual peppermint tea along with a plate of syrup-smothered pancakes. The gesture needed no explanation. It was an apology for yesterday and a hope that I wasn’t ditching our daily breakfasts the same way I’d shut down his chance at becoming Beta.
Unfortunately, it was an apology the Alpha couldn’t accept.
“I don’t have time.” As I spoke, I tried to brush past him. But he stepped into my path.
Bad move. The pack couldn’t afford me to ignore the slightest hint of challenge from someone who had crossed the line once already. Not here in plain view of half the clan. Not while scratches and scrapes on all of us reminded them of last night.
The throbbing behind my eyes sped up, but I ignored it while using lupine speed to strike the plate and mug out of Ash’s hands. Then I stepped into the shattered ceramics, grinding shards beneath my feet.
“Don’t tempt me,” I growled.
I was in his face. Far too close for comfort.
And Ash shriveled. One moment he was my friend. The next, he’d become a subordinate werewolf accepting a rightful smackdown. “Alpha.” His voice was a thread. “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me.”
“Forgiven.”
But not forgotten. I didn’t rest a hand on his shoulder. Didn’t call him by name.
Instead, I continued on my aborted trajectory. Swept past murmuring shifters and humans on the factory floor. Their voices bit into my headache like thorns into the center of an injured paw pad. Perhaps that’s why I only realized halfway to my office that most of them weren’t murmuring about me and Ash.
“...buyer.”
“Do you think he’ll....?”
“Of course he can afford it. Did you see his car? Wow!”
My eyebrows shot up, the sharp pain at my temples lessening for one split second. Despite everything, it appeared Willa had come through with her task of lining up a potential glitter purchaser.
“Alpha,” my secretary called as I swept into my antechamber and past his desk. “There’s....”
“Someone in my office? Willa and a potential buyer?”
His eyes widened as if I was a fortuneteller. “Willa said to warn you. She said you weren’t aware of the morning meeting.”
I smiled, letting my teeth lengthen to lupine proportions. “And you’
ve warned me. Good work.”
My secretary straightened, his inner wolf glowing. I pushed open the door...and walked straight into Rune.
HE CAUGHT MY SHOULDERS. To steady me, I assumed. Still, my wolf should have reacted to the memory of his powerful alter-ego. Should have bristled with warning. After all, his palms were far too close to my throat.
Instead, she—I—leaned in closer. Sniffed for the persimmon aroma that was strangely absent. Relaxed into the reality of Rune’s presence even without the seductive scent.
In response, one of his hands rose to brush across my forehead. As if he could feel the pain there. When the fleeting touch faded, my headache was gone.
“Ru—” I started. Then I remembered that the door was still open and that Willa had to be invisible but very much present on the other side of his broad shoulders. “Butch,” I corrected even as I forced reluctant feet to take two long steps backwards. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m interested in glitter,” he murmured. And to my combined pleasure and chagrin, he reached out a second time.
His hand—so warm—flicked something off my cheekbone. Without the pain of a headache to distract me, my breath caught as our skin collided. The mote of glitter sparkled in the sunlight like the human imagining of faery magic.
But faery magic was nothing like glitter. Glitter was ephemeral. Deals with the fae were firm and reliable, demanding and unwilling to bend.
Faery magic mandated that an Alpha’s libido was irrelevant. So I hardened my voice as I turned away from Rune. “Don’t overstep.”
“You know each other?” Willa asked, invisible behind me as I closed the door more firmly than I needed to. As I took a deep breath and forced human guardedness to mute my wolf’s enthusiastic response.
“Unfortunately,” I answered, the word a growl. After all, I shouldn’t be glad to see Rune. Shouldn’t have been careful about his true name either. Willa should know it. Should have the power to stop this half-fae, half-werewolf in his tracks.
Still, I didn’t call him Rune, even alone with my trusted Beta. “Butch,” I informed Willa, “is here under false pretenses.”
And that’s all I needed to say. A blade was at Rune’s throat, Willa’s hand steady as her full focus turned on the invader. “Other packs are using humans now to do their spying?”
“He’s a wolf,” I corrected.
Willa leaned in closer, the gesture so ominous it would have made anyone in the pack but me descend into a whimpering pile of goo. Rather than biting, though, she sniffed.
And why did that make me jealous? Just because her nose was near the soft skin at the crook of Rune’s neck?
“He doesn’t smell like a wolf,” she informed me.
I raised one eyebrow and Rune shrugged. He hadn’t taken his eyes off mine, never mind Willa’s knife and her threat to his unprotected jugular. “Sleight of hand,” he murmured.
Abruptly, persimmon infused the room.
Chapter 8
My knees weakened. It was as if all the scent he’d bottled up—using what? fae magic?—had been released at once.
And with that release came a burst of sexuality so extreme my mouth watered. Literally filled with digestive juices.
I swallowed, reminding myself I was simply hungry. Perhaps I should have grabbed those pancakes after all rather than slapping them out of Ash’s hands.
There was no food here, though. So I addressed my Beta. “You may go, Willa.”
“Alpha.” Her knife remained at Rune’s throat. “I didn’t realize earlier, but he has a sword scabbarded beneath his shirt. This wolf is a danger to the pack.”
He wasn’t though. Rune might be sneaky and relentless, but he’d sworn on his true name that he meant no harm to our clan.
“Willa,” I repeated, her name a warning.
She bowed her head rather than testing me. Her knife disappeared into her clothing. “Alpha.”
The door closed behind her. Then we were alone.
“You should sit,” Rune murmured. While I was facing down Willa, he’d pulled out the comfortable chair I kept by the window for stolen moments of serenity. Had twisted it around so it faced the room, an invitation to collapse into its softness without leaving either the door or Rune at my back.
The chair was my solitary consolation on hard days, but I didn’t sit there when others were present. Instead my norm was to settle myself behind the desk, a barrier and a reminder that I was Alpha.
Still, the office chair—imposing and uncomfortable—was ten feet further away and my legs were strangely shaky.
So I entered the space Rune vacated. Sucked in another dose of persimmon while letting myself fall into the softness of my comfy chair.
The cushions warmed me, but not quite as much as contact with Rune had. I watched as he paced back and forth across my office. Every motion was that of a dancer. Perfection. Beauty. My inner wolf hummed approval. Quieting her, I still caved to her wishes. “If you want the job of Consort, it’s yours.”
For a moment, Rune froze, then he shook his head. “That’s not why I’m here. As I suspected, the fae have chosen your pack as a source of power.”
My jaw clenched. Of course he was here on his wild-fae hunt. Rune’s presence had nothing to do with the Consort application. Nothing to do with the way my body came alive whenever he was near me.
Oblivious to my disappointment, Rune strode across my office yet again while providing further information. “I’m not even certain this is one of the fae we’ve been hunting, actually. The magic embedded in your glitter is weak, more like a Betweener trying to break through into the human world than like someone who crossed at Samhain. Either way, if they latch onto your pack bonds, they can suck up far more than you’ll care to part with.”
The Guardian would keep other fae out, so I wasn’t particularly interested in Rune’s doomsaying. Still, my curiosity was piqued. “Betweener? What’s that?”
Rune paused, facing away from me. The back of his neck, I noted was approximately as tense as mine felt. “There are three ways to cross over from Faery,” he informed me. “You can flee without the Queen’s consent, in which case you end up in limbo. Between. You use up most of your power making even that half crossing, so it takes a long time to gather back enough to work your way to earth.”
Which should have been all the answer I needed. But persimmon drew more questions out of me. “And the other two ways?”
“The Queen can release you from her service, which is the rare best-case scenario from a fae perspective since you don’t lose your magic and end up fully on earth. Or, option three, fae can take matters into their own hands and cross at Samhain. They end up on earth also, more able to make trouble than Betweeners but weaker than if they’d been given the Queen’s blessing.”
As Alpha, I should have cared only about the danger to my pack. But the question I asked didn’t come from the Alpha. “And you? Were you born here or did you cross over?”
Rune turned to face me. “That information is need-to-know.”
HIS VERBAL SLAP MADE me want to slap back harder. Instead, I reminded myself of pack priorities and demanded: “Your proof that this is happening in Whelan territory?”
Even as I asked, my analytical Alpha side was proposing scenarios. Was that why Ash had turned so uncharacteristically sneaky? The hope that my friend’s dishonor was due to fae manipulation was tantalizing, so I squashed it. Raising one eyebrow, I stared Rune down until his hand slipped into his suit jacket.
I expected him to withdraw a knife. A gun. Some sort of weapon. So I had my own dagger raised by the time Rune’s hand emerged cupping something small and shiny.
Not shiny like metal, though. Shiny like glitter. There were three of our sample vials nestled in his palm.
Now it was Rune’s turn to raise his eyebrows. But I didn’t sheathe my dagger. Just jerked my chin, a silent demand that he explain himself.
“Glitter samples,” he informed me. “Willa provided th
em.” He removed the stopper from one, dislodging a cascade of tiny particles. “Smell.”
He was in front of me so fast, I barely had time to bring the knife up. His knees struck the floor, which should have lowered my defenses. After all, he was ceding the high ground.
But my wolf was so much weaker than his wolf, even here where I should have been burgeoning with alpha dominance. Instinct sent my dagger point digging into the soft underside of his chin.
And...Rune simply ignored the threat. Hefted the vial and repeated his suggestion. “Smell.”
As if I could smell anything other than his persimmon. The signature aroma had faded to more normal levels when he was distant. Now, so close, the sweetness became heady. I found it hard to catch my breath.
Anger at my own reaction made my left hand jerky as it snatched the vial away from him. “Back up,” I growled.
He didn’t rise, but he did settle onto his heels. Six inches now separated us. Enough so I could push past the persimmon and sniff at the vial.
There was nothing unusual about the glitter. It smelled very faintly of the cornstarch Natalie used to create the biodegradable base layer. Of mica and binder and glue crafted together during her endless hours in the lab.
I shook my head and Rune cocked his. “You can’t sense the wrongness?” he prodded. “Slimy. Like fish left out in the sun.”
“No.”
“Part of my fae heritage then.” For the first time in our short acquaintance, I noted displeasure on his features.
No, that wasn’t quite true. When Megan doused me in milkshake, Rune’s face had pinched the same way. I just hadn’t learned to read the signs so soon after our first acquaintance.
Despite myself, I softened. I was quite familiar with regretting traits that formed the base of one’s own character....
But before I could say anything to that effect, my phone erupted into a geeky song about the sun and nuclear fission. Natalie’s ringtone. A reminder of responsibilities that didn’t allow me to empathize with a half-fae invader.
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