Huntsmen (The Better to Kiss You With Book 2)

by Michelle Osgood

“No. I’m not getting involved in this, with them, or with you.” Ryn picked up her duffel bag. Kiara was on her feet in an instant.

  “You’re not leaving.”

  “I am. This isn’t my mess or my problem, and you don’t get to—”

  “It is your problem! We have no idea who they were after back there. It could be one of us or it could be all of us. We don’t know, and so you aren’t leaving.”

  “Back off.” Ryn’s detachment had vanished, and there was a growl of warning in her words.

  “Okay, whoa. Let’s just bring this down for a minute.” Nathan’s hand was cool around Kiara’s shoulder, and, with a snarl, she shook it off.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with you, Nathan. Let me handle it.”

  “It?” Ryn’s outrage mounted.

  They both ignored Ryn. “It has an awful lot to do with me,” Nathan argued. “If you’re talking about keeping someone here, in my apartment, without their consent. That’s unlawful confinement, or false imprisonment, whatever. If you think I’m going to let you—”

  “Let me? Do you think you could stop me?”

  “Hey!” Cole’s voice boomed, unexpected enough to create shocked silence. “Nothing is being decided yet. Everyone take a step back, sit down, and we will discuss the best plan of action. For all of us.”

  Ryn fingered the strap of her bag, and Kiara readied, prepared to stop her if necessary. But with a sigh and an exaggerated roll of her eyes to let them know she thought it was a waste of her time, Ryn dropped the bag.

  “Good. Thank you.” Cole offered her a hand. “I’m Cole.”

  “Ryn.” She shook his hand.

  If Cole was surprised to hear that name, he didn’t blink. Kiara stared at the wood of the kitchen cupboards across from her and tried to remember how her evening got so out of control.

  “Give us tomorrow.” Deanna leaned forward and appealed to Ryn. “I know it’s not fair that you’ve been sucked up into this with us—”

  “Or us into it with them,” Nathan pointed out, before dodging Deanna’s rebuking glance.

  “—but your clients will understand you taking a sick day, right? And we’ll know more tomorrow, so we can reevaluate then.”

  Ryn held Deanna’s eyes, and the rest of them waited to hear what she’d say. Finally, Ryn dipped her chin in a nod, and relief washed over Kiara.

  “I’ll call Dad.” Kiara stepped back from the table and retrieved her phone from her purse. Though it would make no difference to the other werewolves—and not much to the humans considering the size of his apartment—she looked at Nathan and gestured to his bedroom above them. “You mind?”

  “Go ahead.” Nathan ran a tired hand over his face and stared blankly at the rest of them, clearly wondering where he was going to put them all for the remainder of the night.

  Kiara gave a short nod of thanks and ascended the stairs. Settling on the edge of Nathan’s bed, facing away from the balcony and the rest of the apartment, she unlocked her phone and called her parents.

  The landline rang and rang, until the answering machine picked up and her mother’s cheery voice sounded in Kiara’s ear. “You’ve reached the Lyons’ ‘den’! Sorry we can’t come to the phone right now, but—” Kiara rolled her eyes and ended the call, not bothering to leave a message before calling again. Unlike their son, her parents were heavy sleepers, and she hadn’t expected them to pick up at the first ring. On the third ring of the second call there was a click, and her mother’s far-from-cheerful voice answered with a groggy “Kiara?”

  “Hi, Mom. Is Dad there?”

  Blankets rustled and then a light switch made a flicking sound before her mother replied, “It’s past one in the morning. I don’t know where else he’d be. Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker.”

  Kiara’s father grumbled, and Kiara heard him turn over in the bed. He was obviously unwilling to respond to her mother’s hissed “Michael.” The second time his name was used, accompanied, Kiara suspected, by an elbow jabbed into his side, he groaned. “What?”

  “Hi, Dad.” With the phone pressed to her ear, Kiara closed her eyes and felt some of the weight she’d been carrying since seeing the first tattooed axe finally ease. Her parents would know what to do, whom to talk to, how to find out what was wrong, and, most importantly, what they could do to keep themselves safe. All of them. Kiara slid down to the floor, leaned back against Nathan’s bed, and explained what had happened for the third time.

  Chapter Six |

  As she put her phone on the floor beside her, Kiara let her head fall back against the mattress. Some of her tension had eased, but she could feel the edges of it in her temples and the base of her neck. The rest of the group was still downstairs, their voices now quiet murmurs as they settled in—such as it was—for the night. She’d have to go down, tell them what her parents had said, but for now she gave herself a moment to process: seeing her ex-girlfriend for the first time since university; learning that the monsters she’d been teased about as a child were real, and even more dangerous than she could have imagined; fighting for her life and the lives of her family, but not giving in to raw wildness; making decisions for them all because somebody had to; hoping she made the right ones.

  Her hands trembled; panic closed her throat in a vise. Knowing it wouldn’t take more than a second’s attention for her packmates, or Ryn, to catch the spike in her pulse, Kiara forced herself to slow her breathing. Draw it in through the count of four. Hold it for the count of four. Release through the count of seven. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

  The meditation technique helped, and her heartbeat slowed. The voices from downstairs hadn’t paused, so if anyone had noticed they’d given her the privacy she’d sought.

  Having delayed long enough, Kiara picked up her phone and rejoined the others. She had to stop at the foot of the stairs to step over Arthur, who was golden, content, and oblivious.

  “He wants us to sit tight. He’ll contact GNAAW, the emergency line.” The General North American Assembly of Werewolves handled any emergencies or politics that might occur. They kept the existence of werewolves secret and scrubbed what they could from the Internet and from police reports. If anyone knew anything about the Huntsmen, really knew about them, not the rumors Kiara and her brother and their cousin had heard growing up, it would be GNAAW.

  “So, what? We just wait for the authorities to tell us what to do?” The sarcasm in Ryn’s voice was palpable, and she emphasized it with a curled lip.

  “Can you not?” Though she’d told herself to be patient, to act as though the other werewolf was a total stranger, Kiara rose too easily to the bait and glowered at Ryn, who had taken the time to step into the washroom to clean the beard off. Seeing the whole of Ryn’s face, bare and familiar, twisted Kiara’s heart into a painful knot.

  “Ryn’s got a point.” Nathan came from the kitchen and passed Cole a steaming cup of tea. “Is that really all we can do?”

  “This isn’t something any of us have experience with,” Jamie reminded them. “You weren’t there, Nathan, but these guys mean business. They’re not a joke, or a single dude with a grudge. They’re organized. They’re smart. And they knew what we were.”

  “Then they knew what they were getting into.” For the first time since the alleyway, Deanna met Kiara’s eyes with her own, sincere and steady. It was an apology and a show of understanding, so Kiara’s next words came a bit more easily.

  “My dad will call us when he knows more. But for now…” She shrugged and directed her next question to Nathan. “Do you have any spare blankets or sleeping bags?”

  “I have a sleeping bag in the car,” Cole offered. At everyone else’s surprised and puzzled looks, he gave an unselfconscious shrug. “Paramedic,” he offered. “It pays to be prepared.”

  “Great. Good. Yeah.” Nathan looked around the room. His normally sharp blue eyes were still
fuzzy, whether due to the late hour or the events he’d been dragged into, Kiara wasn’t sure. “You wanna grab it?”

  Cole nodded and rose from the couch, after carefully setting his mug of tea on a coaster. “Sure.”

  “No.” Kiara shook her head. “We can’t leave. We don’t know where the Huntsmen are or if they were able to track us. None of us—” She gestured to the three other werewolves. “—can leave. Not until we know more.” I’m sorry, she wanted to add, but it wouldn’t do any good.

  Ryn rolled her eyes, Jamie nodded, and Cole pulled his keys from his pocket and held them out to Nathan.

  “What?” Nathan blinked, uncomprehending.

  “If you don’t mind going instead?” Cole gave an apologetic shrug. “I’m across the road and down the street a block. Vancouver,” he added by way of explanation.

  “I can go with you.” Deanna began to rise.

  “They saw you earlier,” Jamie reminded her.

  “Right.” Deanna sank down and mouthed a “sorry” to Nathan.

  “So I’ll just walk a block, in the middle of the night, in my pajamas, to get you a sleeping bag,” Nathan clarified. “I’ll just do that. Me. On my own.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.” Patiently, Cole continued to hold out the keys. With a long-suffering sigh, Nathan plucked them from Cole’s hand and walked toward the door. He stopped at the closet to pull out a jacket. Sensing a walk, Arthur scrabbled to his feet.

  “There.” Deanna quirked a grin at Nathan. “Now you won’t be alone. Arthur will go with you.”

  Nathan gave an exaggerated sigh as Arthur skidded toward him on the concrete floor.

  “His leash is on the hanger with my coat,” Cole called. Nathan raised his hand in a thank you. He grabbed his house keys from the counter, yanked the leash from the hanger, and strode out the door with a golden retriever hot on his heels.

  “Come on.” Deanna yawned and stood up from the couch. “I know where he keeps the air mattress. If we start pumping now we should be done by the time he gets back.”

  Jamie followed Deanna up the stairs, and Cole was already moving the coffee table out of the way. Kiara stepped back, neither knowing the apartment nor feeling comfortable enough to move Nathan’s furniture—unlike her brother, apparently. She knew Jamie spent a lot of time with Nathan, as he was Deanna’s best friend, and the two of them were practically glued at the hip. She frowned, trying to decide whether the ease with which Cole was making himself at home was due to familiarity with the space, or simply because Cole was generally at ease.

  The question was another to add to the night’s long list, and Kiara decided to drop it.

  “I’m going to go out for some air.”

  “You said we couldn’t leave,” was Ryn’s sharp reminder.

  “Not out front,” Kiara clarified, unwilling or unable—she wasn’t going to examine that right now either—to meet Ryn’s eyes. “Up.”

  Cole nodded, a little too understanding. Kiara grabbed her purse and fled, picking up her boots on the way out. Putting them on in the doorway would make her feel too vulnerable.

  Once Nathan’s front door closed, she pulled on the boots. With her purse on her shoulder, and again wishing she hadn’t left her coat at the club, Kiara moved down the hallway to the stairs.

  Chapter Seven |

  She knew her way to the roof. Nathan had shown her, months ago, when Kiara and Cole had first relocated to Vancouver. He’d thrown a party and insisted they all come. Not liking parties full of strangers, Kiara had tried her best to get out of it, but somehow Deanna had popped by with Jamie for “just a quick drink beforehand,” and the next thing Kiara knew she was crammed into Nathan’s loft with her back against the wall and her beer brandished in front of her like a shield as the bass pounded through her bones.

  “Not much for crowds, eh?” Nathan had leaned against the wall beside her. Behind his glasses, his eyes were bright and his pupils blown wide as he took a draw from the vaporizer in his hand. There were two vivid lipstick prints on his cheek, one bright red and the other even brighter pink. Kiara took a drink of her beer to hide her amusement.

  “Not much, no.” She shrugged. “Everyone else is having a good time, though.” She nodded to where Cole was engrossed in a shouted conversation with Isabel and Darren, an attractive Black couple.

  Nathan hummed. “I’d worried about Jamie; she can be kinda shy, but…” Kiara followed Nathan’s gesture and snorted. Jamie and Deanna had claimed a corner of the black leather couch and were making out enthusiastically. Kiara suspected that, when they surfaced, the lipstick smeared over Jamie’s lips would match one of the prints on Nathan’s cheek.

  “You want to get some air?” Nathan asked.

  Kiara blew out a grateful breath. “Yes.”

  “Come on.” He tugged her away from the wall. “I know just the place.”

  “Well, I’ll say this for Vancouver: you can’t beat the view,” Kiara commented when Nathan led her onto the roof. Nathan’s place was close enough to downtown that the view of the high-rises lit up at night, with the mountains towering in the background, was stunning, but not close enough to downtown that the noise was unbearable. In fact, with his human senses, Nathan probably couldn’t hear it at all.

  “Why’d you come?” Nathan leaned against the edge of the roof with his back to the incredible view and looked at Kiara with eyes that were shrewd despite the weed.

  Kiara shrugged. “Jamie was here; Cole was coming. I couldn’t not.” Despite Nathan’s suspicious personality—or maybe because of it—Kiara liked him.

  “They’re important to you,” Nathan observed.

  “They’re pack,” Kiara said. That should have been enough. It helped that she liked her brother and her cousin, of course, but at the very core, it was that simple: They were pack.

  “Well, Dee is my pack.” Nathan met her gaze full-on. “She’s what’s important to me; the most important. This whole werewolf thing is beyond intense. And she loves Jamie so much that she’s wrapped up in it for good now. So you’d better protect her from this shit, okay? We were on our own last year and we could have died. One of your kind stalked Deanna. I’ve never been so scared.” He paused; his nostrils flared as he tried to get his emotions under control. “I love Dee more than anything, and if she gets hurt again I will come after you. Maybe that’s not fair, but I will. I’m making you personally responsible. Dee, she’s… she’s the best of us. You keep her safe.”

  Kiara let her gaze fall to the cityscape, and sipped her beer. “I understand.” Nathan, she thought, would make a good wolf.

  “Good.” Nathan let out a breath. “Thank you.”

  ***

  When she stepped out onto the roof, some of the tension Kiara had been holding onto all evening relaxed. Though she hadn’t been in Nathan’s apartment long, just a little over two hours, the air inside had been stifling—too many people in too small a space. It would only get worse. But out here on the rooftop, with the view of downtown a blaze of lights to her left and the unassuming, less high-rise-style housing to her right, Kiara could breathe again.

  She walked to the edge and eased a hip against the ledge. She pulled a crumpled pack of mentholated slims from her purse. They were probably stale, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  With a disgusted noise, she dropped her purse to the rooftop. Her lighter was in her leather coat—the same leather coat she’d left in the coat check at the bar. She was sure Nathan would have a lighter or matches, but the thought of going downstairs to ask was decidedly unappealing.

  “Here.”

  Kiara should have heard Ryn approach, and maybe a part of her had, a part that she’d ignored. She bent and inhaled as Ryn held the flame to the tip of the cigarette.

  “You smoke now?” Kiara asked, in lieu of thanks.

  “No.” Ryn tucked the lighter into her po
cket.

  Kiara took a deep draw from the cigarette. The cool mentholated smoke hit the back of her throat and expanded in her lungs before she let it slide lazily from her parted lips. She’d quit years ago. Mostly. Almost. But the act of smoking, focusing on air going in and out of her lungs, relaxed her. And so she kept a pack on hand. Meditation helped for a while, and she practiced yoga a few times a week, but nothing gave her the same instant sense of calm as the first familiar draw from a cigarette.

  “Why did you follow me?” she asked, looking out over the city. Oxfords scuffing against the gravel as she settled, Ryn leaned against the roof ledge beside her.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  Kiara looked over. “Yes.”

  Ryn’s hand circled the back of Kiara’s neck and brought their lips together. Kiara swayed into it; the feel of Ryn’s soft lips against hers was as heady as the smoke. Ryn pressed deeper, her tongue sliding between Kiara’s parted lips, and Kiara heard herself whimper. “For this,” Ryn kissed her again, harder. Kiara dropped the cigarette, and her hands rose to grasp the crisp fabric of Ryn’s dress shirt to drag her closer.

  “And this,” Ryn mouthed down Kiara’s jaw; her teeth sank in when she found the bend of Kiara’s neck. Kiara let out a swift, vicious curse, wrapped her legs around Ryn, and pulled her closer until the jut of Ryn’s hips dug into the soft flesh of Kiara’s thighs where her dress had ridden up.

  Kiara’s head was spinning with adrenaline, whiskey, nicotine, and Ryn. The cause didn’t matter. Kiara didn’t care. All she cared about was the heat building between her legs and the desperate, uncaring need that swept through her like a storm. “Fuck me,” she demanded, pulling at Ryn’s shirt as Ryn’s hands skimmed down her thighs to lift her from the ledge and stagger to a bench.

  Ryn’s hot hands cupped her ass through the fine mesh of Kiara’s ruined stockings and the smooth silk of her underwear. As Ryn spilled her onto the bench, those same hands tore carelessly through the hose, pushed the silk aside, and drove into Kiara. A moan ripped from her as she arced into the sensation; her fingers scrabbled for purchase against the smoothness of Ryn’s skin.