by Angela Horn
“I’m off to play with the ghouls,” the redhead said with a bright smile which reached her light blue eyes.
“I don’t know how to waitress.”
Ella snorted. “Silas really is all about the T and A, ain’t he? Well don’t worry because Sara will show you the ropes and it’s not hard on this floor. The pack guys won’t hassle you. If you smile and bend over a lot, they’ll tip you real nice.”
“What if I drop something?”
“Try not to drop it on anyone’s head. If you do make a mess, bend over and shake your ass while you clean it up and things will be fine. Good luck, Gigi.”
With this little bit of advice, Ella disappeared into an elevator. Gigi stared at the elevator the way she was just staring at Anton who was now sitting at a table with other males who weren’t as beautiful as him. Gigi knew they were watching her, but she didn’t know what to do so she waited for someone to tell her.
The door to the pack floor opened and another handsome male entered. Where Anton was dark, this male was light. Blond hair and light eyes - so light Gigi couldn’t be sure of the color - this male was a bit bigger than Anton. Both males were a little scary because they exuded a presence the way Silas did and the girls didn’t. Gigi suspected this male might be Ella’s favorite jackass named Declan.
Whoever he was, he brought more males with him. Suddenly the pack level was filling up and Gigi still didn’t know how to waitress.
Chapter Two
Declan O’Connor ran the south side of the Circle. His territory was filled with businesses which gave his pack a piece of their profits. Anton’s territory was profitable enough, yet his bottom line was hampered by the dense residential properties filling a large chunk of his slice of the Circle. Roger’s part of the pie was an odd mix of low rent residential, manufacturing, and seedier elements.
Declan seized the best part of the Circle for his pack. Only a few wars with Anton and Roger were necessary to take it and a few more might be necessary to keep it, but his prime real estate was worth all the blood shed.
In the center of the Circle, The Moon Rises hovered above the surrounding buildings. Filled with clubs, conference rooms, kitchens, and an underground parking lot for the Vamps and ghouls, the club kept expanding as Silas bought up more nearby properties. The Moon Rises was a safe haven to many, but Declan considered the club part of his territory whether Silas agreed or not.
Walking onto the pack floor, Declan sensed Anton. His gray eyes never fell on the opposing pack leader, as he moved to his pack’s reserved tables. Ignoring Anton, who was likely ignoring him in return, Declan instead wondered about Silas’s missing waitress Katia.
A cute blonde, Katia giggled a lot from under her bangs. While Declan suspected she never thought a single thing any male said to her was the least bit funny, she giggled anyway and the guys loved it. For all her cuteness and giggling, Katia wasn’t great about remembering orders and she tended to get distracted whenever another pack paid her the least bit of attention. She especially liked Roger’s pack and Silas hated when the girls showed favorites. Bad for business.
Katia was gone - missing technically, yet most likely dead. The other girls went about their jobs as if Katia never existed. Yet Declan wondered about the missing waitress. Suspecting her fate was tied to one of the dozens of predators she giggled at every night, he only hoped her death had come quickly.
Sara waved at Declan’s pack as she arrived on the floor. The blonde was a friendly little thing, but spent too much time around the Vamps and stunk of them. Wearing the club’s standard black shorts, vest, and boots, Sara looked scrawnier than Declan remembered. He wondered if she did more with the Vamps than serve refreshments.
Sara strolled towards the pack’s table and threw on a forced smile. Wondering about her sudden crankiness, Declan then spotted the reason along with the rest of the pack floor.
The new waitress.
Everyone noticed her walking the floor and the chatter in the room fell into silence. The only noise was the music from the jukebox. The new waitress stopped walking when Sara stopped. Her face remained placid, as if she hadn’t noticed how the silence was for little old her.
“Hello gentlemen,” Sara said with a bright smile despite her clear irritation. “This is our new friend Gigi.”
Gigi smiled in a way which signaled she was either totally oblivious to Sara’s anger or just indifferent to it. Unable to take his eyes off of her, Declan felt something pulling at him. Not him really, but his wolf and he told the damn thing to shut up.
In the Circle, Weres didn’t give their wolves much lip service. Sure, they enjoyed the extra strength and acute senses which came with being part wolf. This was where the appreciation ended. The wolf was the animal part most Weres pretended didn’t exist. Yet Declan’s mutt yanked on its leash because it wanted Gigi.
Looking around the room, Declan noticed how the males were salivating more than usual and not just because Gigi was hotter than most waitresses. Their wolves were howling at her which made no sense. Gigi was human so she shouldn’t be able to rile up the boys in the room like she was doing by just standing there.
Maybe she bought Were pheromones and splashed it on to get better tips? It wouldn’t be the first time a waitress used magic to make her stand out. Gigi though didn’t seem all that interested in how much interest she was receiving.
“Do you want something to drink?” Gigi asked, pen and paper at the ready.
“Of course they do. It’s a bar,” Sara muttered, her bright blue eyes annoyed.
Gigi blinked hard, finally noticing Sara’s irritation.
“She doesn’t have a clue, so she’ll be shadowing me tonight. What can I get you guys?”
Sara wasn’t in the mood to do introductions which was a plus. Declan really didn’t want his guys getting any ideas about drooling over the new girl more than they already were. Gigi was worth drooling over though.
Gigi looked like sex. No, maybe not sex, Declan decided. His body didn’t want sex when he gazed at her - studying her every curve, the strand of blonde hair which lay out of place, the richness of her dark eyes. His body wanted everything – all wrapped up in a desperate need in his gut. Declan wanted to smell her, taste her, feel the heat of her skin against his, hear her say his name, and yes, eventually he wanted to slide inside her and make her whimper with pleasure. He would enjoy every minute of it, but he didn’t screw the girls at The Moon Rises.
After Dave made the mistake of bedding Lisa, the waitress had smiled so sweetly the next night the pack had been in. Every night afterwards, her smile was just a tad less sweet until there was only bitterness in her eyes as she realized how she given her body away for nothing. Soon she stopped working on the pack level and then disappeared altogether.
When the pack males slept with the girls at the club, things became difficult for Silas who wasn’t the kind of shifter Declan wanted to make things difficult for.
Declan watched Gigi and wondered if it was her real name. Maybe Gigi was short for something? Normally a girl named Gigi would be loud in bed, lots of moaning and giggling, but not this Gigi. Declan suspected she didn’t do anything more than purr and sigh. She looked like the type of girl who was soft in every way. The kind of girl that a guy would marry or keep in a nice place and visit regularly. Not a one night stand or a quick bang like Dave had with Lisa. Gigi was the kind of girl a guy would want to keep around.
Across the room in his section, Anton was watching Gigi in his subtle way. Those dark eyes weren’t watching Gigi’s curves sway as she glided through the bodies around her. He was watching her face, noticing the same qualities Declan noticed, feeling the same need, but Anton didn’t screw club girls either. Roger would screw her, but Roger wasn’t around.
Declan noticed how every male in the room stopped what they were doing and focused on Gigi whenever she appeared from the kitchen or from behind the bar. She moved so gracefully like she was literally floating. She moved like a Vamp or maybe
a powerful witch, but Declan smelled neither on her. When she leaned towards him to pick up an empty beer bottle, he smelled an alluring richness to her scent – like hot cocoa and a roaring fire - something homey and intoxicating.
Besides her softness and rich aroma, Gigi had two other interesting qualities. One was that she made way too much eye contact. Most girls bounced and blinked, refusing to hold gazes because Weres tended to view extended eye contact as a challenge. Apparently Gigi hadn’t received the memo because she held every gaze like she was trying to read the guy’s mind. A soft gaze, nothing particularly challenging behind it, yet she stared without an ounce of trepidation.
Maybe she was on something, Declan wondered. She moved too fluidly and stared too deeply. Then there was also her passivity. When one of Roger’s guys knocked a plate off a table, the loud clatter sent Sara a foot off the ground.
Gigi though was taking an order from Anton’s table and barely noticed. She was definitely on some kind of tranquilizer, but he didn’t blame her. The Moon Rises could be a scary damn place for a human chick.
Declan knew the guys around him weren’t really talking as much as babbling while they played a peeking game with Gigi’s ass. He wasn’t listening to them anyway. His mind on the blonde and Anton and what Roger might be up to.
He even thought to Katia – the waitress whose death allowed the club to hire the luscious and possibly stoned Gigi. A part of Declan worried Katia’s disappearance wasn’t isolated. Other girls just outside the Circle had disappeared in the last few months. Some were thought to be runaways while others were believed to have died at the hands of their raging partners.
Declan always watched for patterns and he worried the pattern of missing human girls had moved away from the suburbs and into the city center. Was the creature who stole those girls now in the Circle, hunting the lovely waitresses at The Moon Rises?
Chapter Three
Anton Volkov sat in the main area of his office, staring out the front windows towards the park across the street. With one of the Circle’s Alphas missing, Anton was worried and likely so was Declan.
Maybe Roger’s plotting was Anton’s fault. There was an uneasy truce for nearly a year now, but Anton knew the truce was coming to an end. Wanting insurance, he approached Mira Petran and her clan of witches about an alliance.
Anton and Mira shared a Slavic heritage – her clan from Romania, his family from Russia. Declan’s family was Celtic, Roger’s Germanic. They would never make nice with Mira and the witch liked having her ass kissed.
Anton kissed it for months, finally giving him the alliance he needed to stand against Declan when the war came. Mira’s older son Nolan kept the alliance a secret, but her younger boy Spencer blabbed to a girl at The Moon Rises who blabbed to Ella who immediately blabbed to her Alpha. Once Declan knew, it was only a matter of time before Roger heard. Once he did, Roger left for his mysterious trip out of state.
Anton wasn’t sure what Roger might be up to, but he was happy for the Alpha’s absence for one very specific blonde reason.
Gigi.
Girls came and went at the club and they were all beautiful in one way or another. Yet Gigi set the damn floor on fire. Anton couldn’t put his finger on just what was so special about Gigi besides her ability to remind him that his wolf existed.
No matter what his wolf wanted, the accepted rule in the Circle was that the Alphas did not take mates or have children. Anton’s inability to commit was why he planned to stay far away from Gigi. She was too something and everything about her made him nervous.
The night before when she looked at him, he had been tempted to kiss her right there in front of everyone. Tempted even now, he was overwhelmed with the urge to find her and know how her lips tasted. Wanting to avoid any complications in his life, Anton planned to keep the need for Gigi in his pants where it belonged. For all her lovely qualities, she was the type of girl who made men do stupid shit and Anton wasn’t in the position to make those mistakes with a war on the horizon.
“Boss, you have to see this,” Garrison said.
Anton’s assistant was also laughing and Melanie waved for her boss to come closer to the front windows. For a few seconds as he stared out the windows, Anton couldn’t understand what he was witnessing.
Gigi ran back and forth down the street, her ponytail flying frenzied around her head. Once he realized why she was running, Anton laughed.
Cats.
At least a dozen cats were chasing Gigi. She ran up one side of the street before turning and running the other way. No matter which direction she headed, the cats followed. When Gigi disappeared up the street, the whole office craned their necks to see where she had gone.
Suddenly she was running past the office with the army of cats in pursuit. Anton heard their kitty calls, sounding in heat really, and he started laughing harder.
When Gigi ran back towards the office, Anton opened the door and pulled her inside. Shutting the door on the needy cats, he watched as they clawed at the glass, trying to find a way in through the big storefront windows. The army of cats stared inside, looking for Gigi who stood next to Anton, out of breath.
“Did you bathe in catnip?” Garrison asked.
“I don’t know. What’s catnip?” Gigi said with a calm expression, instantly looking perfectly calm as if a horde of horny cats weren’t just chasing her.
The Weres said nothing, but Anton smiled. There was no shaking his desire for her, so he inhaled her luscious scent and enjoyed her presence.
“Are you alright?” he asked, just for something to say.
“Yes, thank you. I’ve never met a cat before. I wonder if they all like me?”
“Want me to get rid of them for you?” Garrison asked, tugging off his shirt.
Anton glared at him and the Were shrunk under his Alpha’s gaze. For some reason, Anton didn’t want to rub Gigi’s face in what they were. He wasn’t ashamed to be a shifter, but Gigi was human and they could be weird when they actually saw the beast hiding inside a Were’s human facade.
“Oh, because cats don’t like dogs, right?” Gigi said.
Normally this sort of comment would irritate the Weres, but Gigi said it with such innocent sincerity, they just laughed.
“Yes, something like that,” Anton said, forcing himself to step back because her scent was making him a bit lightheaded. “They don’t look ready to give up. Would you like to sit down and wait until they go away?”
When Gigi nodded with a smile, Anton felt like he had accomplished some great feat. He was being ridiculous, but he wanted Gigi in a way he had never wanted another female. With her standing so close, she awakened both the wolf and the man.
“Would you like something to drink?” Anton asked as his wolf whined for him to move closer to Gigi.
“Oh, yes, please. I threw my sports bottle at one of the cats, but I don’t think it was impressed.”
Smiling, Anton went to the kitchen, needing a moment to calm his senses which were on fire. Shaking off his desire, he found her a bottle of water in the refrigerator.
When Anton returned to the office, Gigi was sitting at Melanie’s desk, filling envelopes while the pregnant Were sat nearby with her feet up. The males were alternating between watching Gigi and the horde of cats which were still milling around on the sidewalk.
“What is she doing?” Anton asked Melanie who was brushing her long black hair.
“She offered to help.”
Rolling his dark eyes, Anton set the water in front of Gigi who looked up from the stack of empty envelopes waiting to be filled. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Am I doing it wrong?”
“No, but you don’t work here.”
Gigi peeked back at Melanie who waved for her to continue. Anton glared at Melanie and the Were just grinned.
“She wants to help, so let her.”
Anton looked down at Gigi who stared up at him with those big brown eyes. For that moment, it was as if the world fell
away and only the two of them remained. He wanted to kiss her so badly he could already taste her, but Anton just stepped back and shrugged.
“Stop when you get bored,” he said and Gigi smiled.
Anton sat nearby, trying to concentrate, but she was too lovely and he was seriously distracted. Then suddenly a question occurred to him. A question he should have considered the second he saw those cats chasing Gigi.
Why was a horde of cats chasing Gigi?
Anton thought to ask her, but she was busy filling envelopes as if nothing else existed in the world. The cats were losing interest and only a few remained at the window, staring inside at their object of desire.
Anton had never seen animals behave so strangely with a human and Gigi was definitely human. He knew the smell of magic – from Vamps and witches to the weirdest ghouls – but Gigi didn’t smell of anything besides her lovely scent.
Humans could smell wonderful, especially women with their scented lotions and hair products. While Gigi smelled better than anyone Anton had ever met, she smelled human. Yet the cats wanted her enough to ignore the presence of the Weres. More than weird, their behavior was a little creepy.
Gigi didn’t stop filling envelopes when the cats finally gave up. She didn’t even stop when Melanie and the guys left for lunch. She just kept filling them like a machine.
Anton was glad to be alone with her, only because he liked watching her and wasn’t sure how subtle he was being with the others around. Gigi didn’t seem to notice, not reacting when the others left. Then suddenly she stopped and looked at Anton. The smile she gave him stopped his heart. The beauty of it startled him.
“Do you like working at the club?” Anton asked only because he felt stupid just staring at her.
“Yes, it’s fun and I got to cook yesterday. The witch only spit at me once which everyone said was a compliment.”