“So you’re telling me no one’s here today?” asked Cillian. “I was rather hoping to find Bert.”
“Oh, Bert’s around.” Silver nodded towards a room in the distance, towards the other end of the club. “There are a bunch of my brave—or possibly stupid—clients hanging about in the back. I’m afraid I only have a few regulars at this point.”
“Okay, thanks. Listen, is money tight?” Cillian asked, “because the pack could help you out financially, if there’s a problem…”
Silver shook his head. “I don’t care about money,” he replied. “It’s what’s happening to this city that’s killing me. This is the first time that I’ve ever felt truly settled somewhere, you know? I love London, but the place has become hostile and ugly.”
“I know. Well, it’s the last thing I want, too, which is why I’m trying to work out how the fuck we can find a way to stop the madness. Listen, you said Bert’s around? There’s something I want to ask her about.”
An amused smile took over Silver’s lips. “Yeah, she’s with the others,” he said. “She’s always here these days. Says it’s because she’s doing research, trying to recruit new members to her organization. Last I checked, she was ‘interviewing’ someone over in the next part of the club.” He nodded towards a table behind a distant half-wall, where Cillian could see that the leader of the Syndicate was busy groping some poor shifter’s chest.
“Interviewing, is it? I believe you mean she’s conducting a patented Bertie Physical Assessment,” he laughed. “Well, I could use a pectoral squeeze, so I’ll go encroach on her business. Thanks, mate.”
“No worries.”
As he slipped towards the back of the establishment, Cillian picked up Bertie’s familiar scent. As always, she was wearing some slightly ghastly musk perfume, no doubt in the hopes of arousing any shifters in her wake. Bertie’s lifelong mission seemed to be to charm as many shifters as she could get her hands on, though she always seemed to go home alone.
When Cillian had located her visually, he strode towards her table. Her victim, it seemed, was a Wolf shifter who looked baffled by her behaviour and relieved beyond words to see another man.
“Excuse me; I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Cillian said, shooting the other man a look that said I’m here to rescue you, Brother.
“Oh, it’s just fine. I have…something to do,” the man said, rising quickly to his feet and darting away like a squirrel avoiding the wheels of a car.
“Why, it’s Cillian,” Bertie said, swinging around to face him. “What a lovely surprise. I didn’t think Dire Wolves hung about the club these days.”
“Bertie. It’s so nice to see you,” he replied. “May I ask just what you were doing to that poor bloke? He looked scared out of his wits.”
“Flirting,” she laughed. “Of course.”
Cillian clutched at his chest with both hands. “Here I thought you only flirted with me, Bert. I’m sorely injured.”
“I’ll make it up to you. Sit down, Dire Wolf, and I’ll buy you a drink,” she replied.
“Actually, though I’d love to sit, I won’t drink,” Cillian replied, pulling a stool up next to hers. He stared into her eyes—a move that he knew by now was sufficient to extract all manner of information from her—and spoke again. “I’m here because I need some information. I was in Trafalgar Square earlier, and a Grizzly shifter helped me. He caused quite a stir, shifting in the midst of a massive group of humans. Man with dark hair, scar on his left eyebrow. Big guy. I want to find out who he is, and why he didn’t try to kill me like most of his mates would have done.”
“Well now, that description is a little vague,” said Bertie. “I’ll need more to go on.” She leaned forward, pressing her fingers into Cillian’s thigh. “Tell me more about him. Slowly, now.”
Cillian narrowed his eyes at her. “Something tells me you’re not at all interested in a description. You just want to watch my lips move.”
Bertie sat bolt upright, her eyes widening in mock surprise, and gasped. “I would never.”
“Yes, you would.”
“Okay, I would. In my defence, you have awfully nice lips.”
“Thank you. “
“I need more to go on, though, if you want to find this chap. Tell me more about him.”
“He was wearing a brown coat. Jumped in front of me, protected my identity when a shifter-hater came at me. That’s all I can really tell you.”
“Do you like my perfume?” Bertie asked, pressing her neck towards Cillian’s nose. He rolled his eyes, annoyed by her inability to focus. This was the price one had to pay for information from the woman, though. She always got down to business at some point, but usually it came after a prolonged period of inappropriate fondling.
“It’s very nice,” he said, taking a whiff and suppressing the cough that wanted to erupt from his lungs. “Tell me, do you know anything?”
“No,” she replied, pushing backwards and laughing as her eyes moved to something in the distance. “But I’ll bet he does.” With that, she nodded towards the other end of the room.
The Dire Wolf shifter spun around, only to see that the same man who’d helped him and Sinead in the Square was making his way over, his eyes locked on Cillian’s.
“Well, this is lucky,” Cillian muttered under his breath. “At least I think it is.” Though there was a very good chance that he’d be fighting a bear in a few seconds, and he knew it.
Apparently not yet, however. Silently, the other man grabbed a chair and straddled it, staring at the shifter.
“You’re looking for me, I’m sure,” he said. “Though I’m sure you’re aware that this is a foolish place to do it. There are a lot of Grizzlies who come to this joint who are none too fond of your kind.”
Cillian looked around, noting the number of angry yellow eyes that were staring in his direction. The Underground Club had begun to fill up in the last few minutes, and not with his allies.
“Yeah, I’m aware, thanks,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t afford to care too much, though. They’re not my concern at the moment.”
“No, I suppose they’re not.”
A man at a nearby table rose to his feet and walked over, his eyes narrowed angrily at the Dire Wolf shifter. “What the fuck is ‘e doing ‘ere?” he asked. “We don’t welcome your kind in this place, mate.”
“I’m not your fucking mate,” Cillian replied, “and I’ll remind you that this place is owned by a Wolf shifter, not a fucking Grizzly. So get the fuck out of my face while you still have yours.”
The man lurched forward as if threatening to land a punch. Bertie giggled with glee at the idea of a fight. Cillian, meanwhile, prepared his Wolf for a shift. He wasn’t afraid; taking on a Grizzly was about the equivalent of fighting a poodle. They lacked the power and strength of a Dire Wolf, not to mention the speed.
But the other man—the Grizzly shifter who’d helped him and Sinead—rose to his feet and pressed his hand into the other bear shifter’s chest.
“Not right now,” he growled. “We’re talking.”
Almost immediately, the other man backed down, his eyes losing their animalistic glow. He shot Cillian a final glare and spun around to walk back to his table.
“You seem to have a way with people,” the Dire Wolf shifter said, extending his hand. “Cillian.”
“Phairfax Hardy,” said the man. “They call me Phair. You’re probably wondering why I helped you.”
“Yes, I am. But first I want to know how the hell you got out of Trafalgar Square.”
Phair let out a laugh. He was a good-looking man, particularly when he lost the angry look. “People tend to run when they see a bear. They may yell a lot and throw their weight around, but when you confront them with a big set of fangs, they’re amazingly quick to flee. So eventually they ran. I shifted and slipped into the crowd before the cops showed up.”
“Right then. Well, I’m glad you got away. As for why you helped us…”
Pha
ir leaned in close, speaking quietly to ensure that his words stayed between them. “Because I don’t like what’s happening in this place. I don’t like that the bears came to London waging war, or that it’s led to something far worse. I came to this city looking for a better life than the one I had, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to see it ruined by my own kind.”
“Then we’re on the same page,” Cillian replied.
Phair shook his head. “Yes. It’s a fucking disaster, this. Listen, I don’t care who you are or what your déor is. My loyalty is to shifters, not to humans. I will not let them destroy what we’ve built. The truth is, I wish I could help. I want to do more. But before I can do that, I need to find my strength.”
“What do you mean, find your strength? What more could you do than what you did for us already? Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but the best thing you could do would be to talk to your mates, to help us come to some sort of understanding. If we could find our way to a truce, we’d be much stronger.”
“I’d like to do all of that,” Phair replied. “But trust me—it would be easier if I were more powerful. I could lead them, if they saw something in me that exuded strength.”
Cillian stared at him, the realization of what he was saying unfurling like a sail in his mind.
“I think I understand,” he replied. “I know what it is that you want. Listen—let me buy you a drink and we’ll talk more about this.” He turned to Bertie. “I want you to stay too, Bert. Your input is valuable.”
“Good,” said Bertie, who rose to her feet, picked up her chair and slammed it down between the two men. She sat down, turned to look at one and then the other, and said, “So, who’s buying me a drink?”
Chapter 18
By the time Brigg and Sinead arrived at home it was five p.m.
Getting out of London had taken ages. The entire city had become a sea of emergency vehicles trying to make their way from A to B, of pedestrians hurrying about, frantically trying to figure out if their city was an official war zone yet.
Sinead had watched the scene with a sort of fascinated nausea. It was her home that was tearing itself in half. The righteous and the enraged, going at one another’s throats for no other reason than because they loved a conflict. In all likelihood, neither of them really cared much about the shifters’ plight; they just wanted to fight. To get angry, to lash out.
And they called shifters animals.
She was relieved when they pulled into the long driveway of Brigg’s peaceful home, and even more relieved to step over the threshold into the safe haven, away from the madness.
“Listen,” Brigg said as he led the way into the kitchen, “I know you’re tired. I’ll fix us some dinner, then we can go our separate ways. I need to draft up a bogus report to send to Collins. He needs to think everything is going well here, and I don’t want him getting wind of the fact that we were downtown. If he hears about the incident with the Grizzly, he’ll wonder why I didn’t bring him in.”
“Right,” said Sinead as she watched him open the fridge and rifle around for food. “Of course.” That ugly feeling of empty disappointment was hitting her again, the same one that had assaulted her insides when Cillian had taken his leave. Some part of her had hoped that she could spend the evening with Brigg. Talk. Perhaps they could even sit close together on the couch. She needed his warmth right now.
The problem was that she didn’t know how to ask for it.
Irony of ironies, she thought, to want so badly to be with him after I pushed Cillian away like that. After swearing up and down to myself that I don’t want to be tied down, I’m upset because Brigg doesn’t want me by his side.
Oh, God. I’m a psycho.
After a lifetime spent wanting to be on her own, it did seem fairly bonkers to suddenly want anyone around her twenty-four hours a day; particularly two men whom she’d just met. But she hadn’t just met them. Not really. She knew as well as anyone that the concept of time was all but irrelevant to shifters. A second spent staring into one another’s eyes, reading one another’s inner animals, was sometimes enough for a bond to form. Ten seconds spent inhaling a scent, an hour of conversation.
Shifters were not human. They didn’t need months of archaic courting practices to know what was supposed to happen. Theirs was a silent mating dance, initiated with a glance, with the slightest touch of a fingertip. It was their inner animals taking control.
Her mother had once told her about meeting her father, about how she’d fallen in love with him immediately. “Shifters,” she’d said, “are different. Our animals know. When we meet our mate, we can feel it in the depths of our souls. It’s up to our human sides to learn to trust our déors, because our déors never lie.”
Sinead had always laughed cynically at the concept of love at first sight, but now she’d begun to believe in the possibility. It wasn’t that she necessarily loved Brigg or Cillian, but she’d definitely been cursed with a serious case of lust.
Brigg prepared a quick stir fry, which he brought her in the living room. Sinead realized as she registered his presence that she’d been staring into space, trying and failing to analyze her feelings for the two men. Her feelings about being in this house, about being so close to Brigg, yet so far from him.
Maybe what she needed was to spend some time with her Lioness.
But maybe it was someone else she should be with.
“For you, Lioness,” he said softly.
She looked up at him, her heart leaping when their eyes made contact. He was so delicious, so fucking edible. It was no wonder she craved him as much as she craved Cillian.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the plate from his hand. Not entirely by accident, her fingers grazed his own, and for a second she picked up the scent of his arousal in the air. She’d tested him and he’d passed—or had he failed?—with flying colours.
But he didn’t give in to temptation. Didn’t grab her, didn’t throw her onto the floor, tear away her clothes as she wanted him to do.
Instead, he nodded and headed back towards the door.
“I’ll be in my office,” he told her, his voice tight with restraint. Disciplined, sexy, crazy-making man. “Help yourself to anything. Wine, television, whatever you’d like.”
“Okay, thanks,” she called after him even as he disappeared.
She swallowed a lump in her throat as she stared down at her dinner. This was going to be a long, lonely night.
Unless she did something to change that.
Chapter 19
At eight p.m., Brigg found himself sitting on his bed, staring blankly at a flashing cursor on his laptop’s screen. Tonight had been as inefficient a work session as he’d ever had. His mind had returned time and time again to the sight of Sinead standing in the kitchen, her thin t-shirt hugging the curves of her breasts, her dark eyes staring into his, asking for something that he wasn’t sure she really wanted.
When he’d given her the dinner he’d prepared, she’d teased him with her touch, tested him. Her Lioness wanted his Wolf; of that he was sure. Just as she wanted Cillian’s. But he’d seen her mind when her fingers had grazed him. He knew that her human side was still confused, still not certain that she could or should surrender her heart or her body. She still hadn’t convinced herself that she could trust either man enough to let him in.
He knew where her fear came from. Her life hadn’t been so different from his own, after all. It had been a life of isolation, of pain. When one grew accustomed to the agony of loneliness, somehow staying alone became more appealing than love. Because love could lead to heartbreak, which was an acute, real sort of agony. At least loneliness was just a void, a vast emptiness, waiting to be filled.
Love, if handled poorly, could turn itself into a cruel, stinging wound, and that was so much worse than nothingness.
For his Wolf, none of it mattered. Emotion wasn’t even a blip on his radar. He’d picked his mate out of pure instinct.
There could be a thousa
nd beautiful women lying in wait for him, but his loyalty existed in a narrow tunnel with only one spot of light at its end. It was his Wolf’s eyes that had explored the lines of Sinead’s lips, her eyes, her shoulders, a thousand times over. His Wolf who had learned the subtleties of her scent. It was his Wolf that craved the bond that they’d begun to establish, who wanted his human half to see it through to its completion.
Sinead was the mate that he wanted. It was a simple mathematical equation, and he’d done the calculus the first moment he’d set eyes on her.
Oh, if she walked out of his life now, his déor would survive. Of course he would. But he would be miserable for a very long time, as though a leg had been amputated and he’d had to learn to walk again. He’d feel the loss acutely, though he wouldn’t entirely understand it.
But it was his human heart that would ache every hour, every minute, for her. It was his human heart that felt as though it could break if he lost her now. Of course, loss was always a risk when one gave away one’s soul.
He was mulling over his predicament when a soft knock sounded at his door.
“Come in,” he said absentmindedly, setting his laptop aside. He hadn’t focused on the screen in what felt like hours, anyhow. It was a relief to have an excuse to stop pretending to work.
The door creaked open slowly and Sinead stepped in, dressed in nothing but a white silk bathrobe. Its slick material showed everything, the curve of her breasts, the peaks of her hard nipples, the roundness of her hips. Brigg swallowed hard when he saw her. He knew her well enough to understand that she wouldn’t wander into his bedroom dressed this way, unless she wanted something.
She slipped over to the bed and sat down on its edge, her eyes focused on her fingers, which were intertwining nervously.
“What’s going on?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from betraying his arousal. “Is everything all right?”
She shook her head. No, of course everything was not all right. He knew it as well as she did.
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