by Riley Storm
Inhaling deeply at his vindication, Kincaid stood a little straighter, his shoulders no longer burdened by false accusations against his loyalty. “Tell them where I found you,” he snarled. “How I caught you red handed in a meeting with Laurent Canis.”
The name of High House Canis’ Reaver caused a stir of surprise from everyone but Kaelyn and Krawll. The Queen just stared darkly, and Kincaid smiled to himself. It was over now, he had the proof he needed, and a dozen witnesses who had heard it all. He was free.
Until Krawll began to laugh.
“Caught me? You didn’t catch me,” he sneered. “That meeting was planned. We needed to draw you out of whatever hidey hole you disappeared into after you escaped from here. It was obvious your only lead was the restaurant, so we decided to meet there, where you could see us.”
Kincaid’s blood was going cold. “Why would you voluntarily give yourself up? Expose yourself like this?”
“Admittedly, I expected you to go after Laurent.” Krawll frowned. “That’s what I was told would happen. That I would be able to escape successfully.”
Now it was Kincaid’s turn to laugh. “They set you up. You idiot. That was Laurent’s way of cutting ties with you, and you walked right into it. What an idiot.”
Krawll shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. You’re still missing something important. Which I believe makes you the idiot.”
“Like what?” Kincaid snapped, glaring at Krawll while the others just listened, soaking in all of the details of the plot as it was exposed to them.
“When our plan was first hatched, to strike back at you for what you did, we could only hurt you. Now, however, you are vulnerable. Remember, we expected you to come to the restaurant. We had the entire area under surveillance. Do you really think we would miss your pretty little accountant friend when she—”
Whatever else Krawll was going to say was lost as Kincaid leaped at him.
“Where is she?” he roared, slamming into the traitor and taking him to the ground. He hammered a fist into Krawll’s chest, then picked his head up off the ground and slammed it back. “Tell me where she is!”
Strong hands slipped around his flailing arms and yanked him upright as two of the Queen’s Guard pulled him free. Kincaid continued to struggle, but it was useless, they had him dead to rights.
“Let me go!” he roared. “I will tear this city apart building by building if I have to. Every piece of Canis will be ground to dust until I find her. The entire House will burn! If you so much as touched a hair on my mate I will lay waste to you, Laurent and anyone involved.”
Kaelyn stepped into his view, but Kincaid was only seeing red. He continued to struggle, and white fur spread along his arms as he worked himself into a fury, the change starting to overtake him.
“Pull yourself together,” she commanded.
When he didn’t, she slapped him across the face. Hard.
Kincaid fell to the ground, chest heaving as he supported himself on all fours.
“Are you quite done?” the Queen of High House Ursa asked, tired.
Kincaid shook his head, not in answer, but to clear his thoughts and allow him to regain control. Slowly, reluctantly, the bone-white fur sank into his skin as he reversed the start of the change and stood upright.
“I have to find her,” he said hoarsely with barely-recovered breath.
“If you go after Laurent Canis, you will start a war between our Houses,” Kaelyn told him. “A war we are currently in no position to win, thanks to people like him.” She stabbed a finger at Krawll.
“He has my mate.”
It was the second time Kincaid had used that word to describe Haley, and the wonder was no less. He’d known there was a connection between them, but not until he’d realized she was in mortal danger and he simply reacted without thinking had the true nature of it been revealed to him.
Now he cursed himself for being blind and not noticing it before, but there was little to be done about that. Now he must go to the safehouse and hope she was still there, that the Canim hadn’t been able to locate her, or perhaps that the defenses would hold out until he arrived.
“You will go and see if that is true,” Kaelyn said. “I will get what we need from this traitor. If we have enough to see Laurent stripped of his power, then he’s all yours. Until then, can I trust you not to act against Canis?”
“Yes,” he said, gritting out his answer, supremely unhappy about it, but realizing that the Queen was trying to help him.
Killing Laurent would bring him momentary satisfaction, but it would mean they would have to go on the run. His mate would always be in mortal danger from his enemies, and that was something Kincaid simply couldn’t live with. His job was to protect her, and if that meant trying to solve this diplomatically first so that both his mate and his House could emerge unscathed, then he would do that.
“Promise me,” Kaelyn demanded.
Kincaid stiffened, staring straight ahead, unseeing. “I promise.”
I promise, if it fails, I will wreak unholy terror upon Laurent, Melanie, and anyone who intervenes. That is my word to you, Haley.
I’m coming for you.
33
She’d talked to Dani for a long time, but eventually, she’d had to let her friend go.
Friend.
It was an odd word to her, something that had gone unused for so long in her life that it had felt strange to apply it in any context related to her own life. She had two friends now, though they were vastly different. Danielle was her friend, a person she could trust and open up to.
Kincaid was more than a friend. Just how much more, she didn’t know, but definitely more. She’d eventually come to the conclusion, with Dani’s advice, that she wouldn’t actually know more until she was able to sit down with him and talk about it.
That would have to wait until after they cleared his name and ensured she didn’t lose her job. In the meantime, Haley had to stay focused on the mission at hand, a mission she currently had no part in. Kincaid was off attempting to save it all, and until she heard from him, she was forced to stay here.
“In the basement. Locked up. By myself.” She was currently stretched out on the sole couch, staring at the ceiling, wishing there was a television. Right then, she would watch just about anything.
Being confined was driving her crazy. Being confined and not knowing what the hell was going on out there was making it even worse. For all she knew, the world could be ending, aliens invading, and she wouldn’t know a thing about it until she was forced to emerge for supplies.
She imagined exiting the basement to a war-torn reality. Buildings crumbled to dust from alien weaponry, smoke filling the sky. Overhead jets would flash past until one of them was taken out by some sort of energy beam. Nearby in the shadows, she would see flashes of movement, furtive and swift. Noises would reach her ears. Noises made by no human throat. Then they would come for her and she would be forced to run.
Easy does it with the overactive imagination.
Getting up from the couch, she started to pace, trying to work off some of the nervous energy building up in her limbs. The wait was going on three hours now, and she didn’t know how much longer she could stay cooped up in the dungeon without any sort of contact from the outside world.
You just spent an hour on the phone with Dani.
Haley needed more than that, though. She needed—
Kincaid. You need Kincaid. You want him back, you want to be near him.
“Stop it, or I’m bringing back the aliens,” she warned her mind. “We’re not doing this now.”
Sighing, she went back to the couch. There wasn’t even a radio. Just the ancient landline, the receiver barely a generation past the rotary dialer. She contemplated dialing out, seeing if she could somehow get herself connected to Ursidae Manor. Maybe she could reach the Queen and—oh, who was she kidding? As soon as anyone there realized who it was, they would either disconnect her or start doing that fancy tracking thing whe
re they located her number.
Maybe she could take a nap. That would be the perfect way to leapfrog forward in time to where something actually happened.
Getting up off the couch, she went to the bedroom and flung herself down. At least he’d had the decency to make it a king-sized bed. Haley sprawled out luxuriously, worming her way down into the covers as the foam-topped mattress sank her into its depths, almost like a cocoon of warmth.
She was dozing off, happy thoughts of Kincaid, whipped cream and something else tickling her brain when the house creaked. Angrily, she lifted one eyelid.
“What the hell took you so long?” she called lazily, just glad that Kincaid was back.
When there was no reply, she brought herself back to wakefulness and slipped out of bed. The steel panel was still in place, and nobody else was down there. Must be the steel shifting as the temperature drops at night.
No further sound came, so she shrugged it off and hopped back into bed.
A moment later, she heard a loud thump and the steel panel flew inward as explosives blasted it open.
“Excellent work, thank you,” she heard someone speak from the stairs, obscured by the smoke from the charges.
Haley slipped off the bed to the floor and then under it. There was nowhere else to hide, she was trapped in the bedroom as footsteps came down the stairs. Only one pair, she judged, but still, the only people who might be coming in here after her would be shifters. She had no hope in hell of overpowering them.
The only thing she could hope was that they were from Ursa, not Canis. At least that way, she would—probably—be treated decently.
“I know you’re in here,” the same voice called.
Haley felt a chill run down her spine. She knew that voice. It didn’t belong to anyone from Ursa. She was screwed. Royally screwed.
“Come out from under the bed, will you? You can’t be anywhere else.”
Haley stayed frozen. The person was guessing, they had to be. They couldn’t know for sure. Could they?
Someone walked over to the bed, casually lifting it and flipping it against the far wall.
“I told you dear, I know you’re in here. Now stop making this difficult.”
Haley stood up, staring her kidnapper in the eye, a hulking Canis shifter standing behind her, proof that she hadn’t heard everyone come downstairs. “You,” she said with as much vehemence as possible.
“Yes, me. Get over it.”
Then they snatched her by the hand and dragged her out of the safehouse.
34
It took all he had to stay still. To not charge across the floor of the building and attack Laurent Canis.
Kincaid stood before the Court, the ruling body of all shifters. Twelve stone chairs stood in front of him, nine of them occupied. The center three were empty. They belonged to High House Drakos, and despite the power struggles that had emerged since the great House had disappeared from the world, none of them was arrogant enough to repurpose the chairs for their own use.
To the right was the trio from High House Canis. To the left, his own Ursidae. They were the only voting members of the board. House Panthera’s representative sat to the very right, mirrored on the far side by that from House Raptere.
The twelfth chair was on Kincaid’s right, sitting apart from the other eleven. In fact, it faced the rest of the Court. That was where the Viceroy sat. Currently, it was occupied by the King of High House Canis, though Kincaid knew it should be Kaelyn, his Queen, who occupied it. She was fit for the position, unlike the old Canim King.
“Why is he here?” the Canim King—Laurien—asked with tired irritation, pointing at Kincaid.
From her chair, Kaelyn responded. “He is here because of a concerning issue.”
“Concerning who?” Laurien drawled.
Normally, Kincaid would have been irate over the casual dismissal coming from the Canim King, but his attention was solely focused forward, on Laurent, who sat in his chair with a smug smile on his face. Was he so confident in the protection of his King that he believed himself untouchable?
Kincaid was worried that he might be right. Even with the evidence the Queen was preparing to show the rest of the Council if Canis stuck together, there was quite literally nothing they could do.
To Laurent, he thought, letting a confident smile spread slowly across his face, watching as Laurent slowly focused on him. That’s right, wonder why I don’t look terrified, why I’m not panicking. Wonder and worry, you useless prick. Two can play your game.
“I bring a complaint forward against Laurent Canis,” Kaelyn said formally. “I accuse him of purposefully tampering in the business of High House Ursa, including the forceful abduction of the mate of our Hunter.”
Although Kincaid had been informed by his Queen beforehand that she would use the title to which he wasn’t yet fully entitled, to hear it spoken aloud was something else. Despite the gravity of the situation and Haley’s unknown status, he couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride at what he’d accomplished.
Now to ensure that it doesn’t end up meaning jack shit.
Because, as proud as Kincaid might be of himself, if he couldn’t share it with Haley, then it would all be for naught. He would cast it aside in a heartbeat if that’s what it took to bring her back to him safely.
“Do you have any evidence to present?” Laurien said, sitting up a little straighter at the gravity of Kaelyn’s words.
Kincaid was simply there because he was involved. He wouldn’t speak much, it wasn’t his place, but he knew that accusing a Title Holder of one House of abducting the mate of another Title Holder wasn’t something to wave away, even for the Viceroy. That was why the Queen had chosen to address Kincaid that way.
“I do.” Kaelyn motioned and one of her aides started a video playing on a screen on the far left wall. It was of Krawll.
Kincaid watched not the video, but Laurent. He watched the man begin to squirm as Krawll detailed every bit of the plan that he’d learned. By setting Krawll up to be eliminated by Kincaid, Laurent had created an enemy out of him. Krawll had only been too willing to spill his guts in exchange for a stay on his life.
The video ended and all eyes turned to the King of High House Canis. Laurien sat in his chair, no longer resting lazily on one arm, impatiently waiting for the session to be over. Now he sat upright, his thick black eyebrows knitted together as fierce jade eyes glared at Laurent.
Kincaid didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know that Laurien was verbally castrating his idiotic Reaver. There was no way around it. The King knew what had to be done.
“Do you have this man’s mate?” the King asked, his voice cold and harsh.
Laurent, by comparison, was beginning to panic. Beads of sweat rolled down his cheek and he fidgeted. “I do not!” he shouted back.
“Liar,” Kincaid hissed, speaking for the first time. He took one step forward but stopped there, visibly restraining himself from taking another stride. Now was not the time for this. They had planned for it. He couldn’t screw it up now.
“I demand that you deal with this,” Kaelyn said. “If you will not, then Ursa shall.”
Kincaid kept his face neutral only through years of experience. Kaelyn had not told him she was prepared to go that far. By announcing so publicly that Ursa would handle the matter if Laurien did not, she was essentially announcing a death threat upon Laurent’s head. If the King chose to protect him, that would mean outright hostilities between the Houses.
Ursa was not ready for any sort of conflict, not on that level. Too many had died during the uprising, and they still had to uncover the true mastermind of that plot. Kincaid stared at his Queen, urging her not to push the situation. He would handle it on his own if need be. Disavowed, stripped of all support and protection.
He would find his mate no matter the cost and save the rest of Ursa from bearing his own burden.
Fearful that he might be forced to such a position, Kincaid’s head slowly swung around
to look at the Viceroy, to wait for his decision. It wasn’t long in coming, thankfully.
“You leave me no choice, Laurent.” The Canim King drew himself up, sitting straight back in his chair. “I hereby relieve you of your position as Reaver of High House Canis and strip you of your seat on this Court. You will see to it that this man’s mate is returned to him.” Laurien glared coldly across the distance. “Now, get the hell out of my sight.”
A rustle ran around the room as Laurent fled, formal robes flapping. Kincaid tried not to snort at the sight. Most of the people in the room wore suits or, in the case of a couple of the older women, dresses. Laurent was such a pompous ass, he’d had actual robes done up to signify his position.
Kincaid watched him go, a predatory look on his face. The King may not have been happy about what he’d been forced to do, but everyone knew he’d been aware of what Laurent was doing. Kaelyn had threatened war, and he’d caved. There was no way that would be good for the relations between the two great Houses, but there was nothing Kincaid could do about that now.
Or at least… He could do nothing but find his mate, and deal with a member of High House Canis who no longer enjoyed the same protections he had several minutes earlier. Now, he was just a commoner. He was vulnerable. Once Kincaid caught up with him, Laurent was going to pay the price. It was why he’d fled so hastily, attempting to get back to safety before Kincaid came after him.
At a nod from his Queen, Kincaid left the chamber at a slow walk. His part in the business was finished, and anything else they had to discuss didn’t concern him, although Kincaid suspected all parties would probably seek to adjourn. It wasn’t often that a Title Holder was so efficiently stripped of his power against the wishes of that House’s leader.
Laurien had to be furious, and Kincaid suspected retaliation was coming.
Kincaid’s own priority was to find Haley. To free her. There was so much that had gone unsaid between the two of them, and Kincaid wanted to fix that. He needed to fix it. He desperately wished that he’d made more use of the time they’d already had together. Being open with his emotions wasn’t something that came easily to him, but he wasn’t the locked safe that many of his comrades were. It was time for him to show that to her, to show Haley that not only could he address those issues, but that with her, he wanted to.