by S. M. Reine
“My dad died, and my mom’s already moving on,” Rylie said. “Am I supposed to be okay with this?”
“Yeah. You are.”
Her mouth dropped open with shock. “What?”
“You were gonna marry Seth last year, and now you’re with me. Do you think you shouldn’t be happy just because of what you did in the past?” Abel dismissed the idea with a snort.
“Seth’s not dead.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re going back in there, and you’re going to be respectful to the woman that made you.”
Considering that Abel’s mother had been an insane monster, it was awfully rich for him to be on a pro-mom rant.
“It’s none of your business,” Rylie said.
“Actually, yeah, it is, ‘cause we’re together and all now—not that you seem to remember that.” Abel glowered at her, arms folded over his chest, gold eyes sparking with anger. “Your mom might think I’m less, but that’s fine. I don’t give two fucks what some rich bitch thinks of me. But you’ve got no excuse for acting embarrassed.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” she protested.
“So why aren’t you sitting next to me? Talking to me? Shit, I’d take a few smiles from you right about now.”
“I’m kind of distracted, Abel.”
His thin smile stretched the scars on his face. They were slowly healing every time he changed into a werewolf, but the spidery imprint of old ridges still touched the side of his mouth. “You’re better than that.”
God, what had she been doing? Was she acting embarrassed? She loved Abel, giddy with the blush of obsession and proud to be with him in a partnership. But it was the same thing with Summer: Rylie didn’t want her mom to have anything to do with him, because she didn’t want Jessica judging their family.
Obviously, it hadn’t worked. Jessica was judging away. All Rylie had accomplished was hurting Abel’s feelings.
The apology wouldn’t mean anything to Abel, so she didn’t try to put her embarrassment into words. She stretched onto her toes to loop her arms around his neck.
“You’re right,” she said, and she kissed him.
He was stiff for a moment, refusing to respond. But then his hands went to her waist, and he stooped to deepen the kiss. Even with his hands remaining somewhere chaste, the way he kissed her was just as intimate as his long, burning gazes. His tongue explored her mouth with sensual familiarity. He knew exactly how to make her body heat for him, and Rylie soon forgot that they were standing outside a fifties-themed diner while her mother waited inside.
Until she smelled silver.
Abel scented it at the same time. Their lips separated, eyes falling on the parking lot. A black SUV rolled past the street on the other side.
His fingers tightened on her waist, pulling her hard against him, turning his shoulders to block her from view. “Abel,” she whispered urgently, digging her fingernails into his biceps.
“I see it,” he growled, pressing her back to the wall. The sun-warmed metal burned through her shirt. Her heart pounded as she buried her face in his chest, eyes closed. Abel craned around to continue watching the SUV.
“Is it coming around?” she asked.
A long pause. “No.”
Rylie clutched his shirt in both fists. “What are we going to do?”
He gazed down at her, eyes hot. “Stick to the plan,” Abel said. “We’ve got to get to the office.” He hesitated, hand traveling from her hip to her thigh, toying with the edge of her skirt. “I’m not going to let you get arrested, Rylie.”
A bright voice spoke behind them. “I got everything to go. Are you two ready to…?” Jessica trailed off at the sight of Abel and Rylie pressed against the wall. It occurred to Rylie that it probably looked bad—really bad, considering that Jessica had no idea Abel had any reason to try to hide Rylie from the cars on the street.
But she didn’t pull away. In fact, she snuggled against his chest, arms wrapped around his waist, and gave her mom a defiant look.
“We’ll be right there,” Abel said. His voice rumbled under Rylie’s cheek.
Jessica’s face burned bright red. She clutched the bag of food tighter and hobbled to the truck on her heels.
“You know, y’all could be sisters,” Abel said.
Rylie grimaced. It probably wasn’t meant to be an insult. “Yeah. I know.”
SEVEN
ABEL, RYLIE, AND Jessica idled at the stoplight just outside Poppy’s. Through the rearview mirror, Rylie watched a black SUV pull into the diner’s parking lot. A pair of men in all-black uniforms stepped out. She somehow doubted that they were looking for slices of the best cherry pie in the county.
They had just missed them. Barely.
Jessica was silent until Abel pulled up in front of Bert’s office. “What are we doing here?” she asked, leaning forward to peer at the sign over the door: Robert Grant Real Estate. “I thought you said we were hiking.”
Time to bite the silver bullet and be honest. “I decided to buy some property, Mom.”
Jessica’s eyes flicked to Abel. “A house?”
“Not exactly. Somewhere that I could build a house.”
Her voice sharpened. “With what money?”
Rylie rolled her eyes. Jessica knew exactly what money Rylie would be using. Her mom had never exactly been thrilled that Dad left everything to Rylie.
They climbed out of the pickup, and, with a quick check of the street—no SUVs—headed into the office. His waiting room, decorated in dark wood and leather, was clearly meant to cater to an expensive clientele. He offered water bottles in a minifridge built to hold wine; biscotti and tea waited on the table beside it. The frosted glass door leading into his office was imprinted with his name.
“Maybe you guys should stay here,” Rylie said, giving Abel another look. “Get to know each other a little? I don’t think the paperwork will take long.”
“Gonna skip the walk-through?” Abel asked.
Rylie nodded. It didn’t seem like the time to go hiking, what with the Union and Jessica. Fortunately, Abel didn’t argue.
“Sounds like a good idea,” he said, sprawling on one of the black leather couches.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jessica sat across from him, ankles crossed and purse in her lap.
The door swung open. The man who poked his head through didn’t look like the man that Rylie had been speaking to on the phone. He was built like a bear in business casual, with refined wings of gray hair on either side of his head. Rylie blinked, surprised.
But then he opened his mouth.
“Miss Gresham?” Yeah, he definitely sounded like the guy from the Beegees.
“Bert,” she said, extending her hand. They shook.
Bert’s eyes flicked to the others in his waiting room. He doubtlessly would have preferred to meet with Jessica, who looked like she belonged in such a fancy office, but he would have to settle for Rylie in her cowboy boots and floaty white skirt.
“Can I get you anything?” he squeaked. “Cappuccino? Tea?”
Rylie hated both, but she was tempted to ask for a cappuccino just to make him serve her. “No, thanks,” she said, following him into his office.
She knew that something was wrong the instant that the door clicked shut behind her. Bert kept casting weird glances at her, fidgeting with the snifter of whiskey on his bookshelf, adjusting his collar, flattening his pockets. All of the paperwork was spread over his desk, yet the air was thick with fear. Was he worried the deal would fall through?
In between his fidgeting fits, he managed to gesture at the chair. “Have a seat, please.”
Rylie stayed by the door.
“Where’s the notary?” she asked.
“She already notarized everything.”
She leaned forward to peer at the paperwork. He was right—it was already stamped and signed. Weren’t notaries meant to be witnesses? Rylie had no idea. Being an Alpha hadn’t given her any experience with contracts.
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To heck with it. Might as well ask. “That’s not normal, is it?”
“Considering the nature of this deal, I thought it might help to speed things up,” Bert said, perching on the edge of his chair. He spread out a few forms, then put his hands in his lap again. He glanced at the wall clock. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”
Rylie bit her bottom lip. She wished she had brought Abel in with her.
“I’ll take water, I guess,” she said. “I’ll grab it.”
He stood so quickly that his chair rolled away from him. “No, please, make yourself comfortable. I’ll get it.”
Bert’s smile was fixed to his face as he strode to the door, giving Rylie a wide berth. She watched him go with growing unease.
He didn’t smell like a threat. In fact, the scent of fear was extremely appealing to her inner wolf. It wanted her to drop to the floor and roll in it. Fortunately, that idea was disgusting enough to her human side that she didn’t do it. But she couldn’t quite resist the urge to trace her fingertips over the back of his chair and smell them. Her eyelids dropped closed at the heady scent of fear. The smell of a prey in the sights of a predator.
Rylie’s eyes popped open.
Did Robert Grant know that she was a werewolf?
She peered through the crack in the door to see him talking to Jessica. Abel stood by the front windows, watching the street outside. Rylie didn’t see any “We Report Preternaturals” signs. He didn’t even have the OPA emblem sticker on anything, which had become a common way for mundane humans to display support for anti-preternatural laws.
Rylie backed away from the door as he approached, pretending that she had been beside his desk the entire time.
“Here you go,” Bert said. Instead of handing the water bottle to her, he set it on the corner of the desk.
“Thanks,” she said, lowering herself to the chair. “Where do I sign?”
He had been the one to suggest that they check out the land he was selling together, so it was surprising that he readily handed her a pen without asking to go into the mountains. He wiped his palms dry on his slacks as she began to sign.
Bert seemed to flip the pages too slowly, no matter how quickly she signed. Almost like he was wasting time.
As each page turned, the tension in the air climbed. Rylie skimmed each page, reading the terms, but the words seemed to blur. She had a hard time focusing past his scent. His adrenaline was increasing, along with his heart rate.
Rylie’s pen hesitated on the last pages, which only lacked her signature, and his. The agreed figure was printed on a table at the top. “Oh,” she said, “I haven’t even paid you yet.”
He laughed. “Oh. Yes.”
“Let me go get it,” she said.
“Have your friend get it,” Bert said quickly.
Rylie frowned. “No…I think I’ll get it.”
Before he could keep arguing with her, she jumped to the door, stepping into the waiting room.
“Is it done?” Jessica asked.
Rylie ignored her and went to Abel’s side. “Something’s up,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper so that her mom wouldn’t hear. “He already had everything notarized, and he reeks of fear.”
Abel didn’t look at her. “Union’s here.” He sounded so calm that, for a moment, Rylie wasn’t certain that she had heard him right.
She swiveled to look out the window. Two black SUVs had just parked at the curb.
Her heart hammered. “This was a trap. They’re going to arrest me.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Jessica was right behind her.
Rylie shut her eyes, trying to take deep breaths.
Her mom had heard them.
“Jessica,” she began, but she didn’t get a chance to finish.
“Are those from the Office of Preternatural Affairs?” Jessica asked, stretching on her toes to look around Rylie’s head. “They’re all over the city, but I’m surprised to see them…” She trailed off, staring at her daughter hard, as if her brain had just caught up with what she had heard. “Why are you worried about the OPA arresting you?”
A surge of dizziness overwhelmed Rylie. She grabbed Abel’s arm to keep standing.
“I can explain,” Rylie whispered.
“Why would they be after you, sweetheart?” Jessica asked again, louder this time, hands clutching her purse like a teddy bear. Even as she asked the question, Rylie could already see the dawning comprehension in Jessica’s eyes.
“They’re werewolves,” Bert said, laughing hysterically from the door to his office. “Werewolves!”
Abel tore away from Rylie, crossing the waiting room in a flash. He fisted Bert’s suit in both hands and lifted him off of the ground.
“What did you do?” he roared, shaking Bert.
“Abel, no!” Rylie shrieked. It wasn’t from fear of what he would do to Bert—it was the acute awareness that this right here, with Abel holding a man two feet off of the ground, shouting in his face, would be her mother’s first impression of werewolves. Because now she knew. She knew.
Jessica backed away from Abel, shaking her head slowly. She fumbled for the doorknob.
Rylie caught her mom’s arm. “You can’t go out there,” she said, locking the door and pulling the shades. “The Union’s waiting.”
“But—”
“No, Mom!”
Abel carried the real estate agent into his office. “Tell me!” he shouted, shaking Bert again, who was spluttering incoherently.
“I saw the surveillance footage on the news—and when I saw you three having lunch at Poppy’s, I called the hotline. They told me to hold you. They said they would take care of it. That’s all I did!”
Abel slammed Bert to the desk.
“Finish signing the papers,” he growled. “And then thank whatever god gave life to a tiny-dicked weasel like you that I’m not making you sign in blood.”
“Abel!” Rylie gasped.
Bert wasn’t arguing. With his back flattened to the desk, he signed. Abel shot Rylie a look.
“Finish it,” he said.
She had no idea how legal paperwork signed under threat by werewolf could possibly be, but she signed. Everything was notarized. It was done. The land was hers.
Abel tossed the envelope onto Bert’s chair, then dropped him. “Sit,” he said in a low growl, golden eyes dangerously bright.
The front door rattled.
A muffled voice said, “This is the Union. Open up!”
Rylie slammed the inner door and locked that one, too. All four of them were confined in the back office. But how long would it last? How long would the Union try to enter peacefully before breaking windows? She could only hope that the threat of werewolves on the other side would make them cautious.
Jessica had backed herself into a corner, face pale.
“Someone needs to tell me what’s going on,” she said in a strangely calm voice, as if she had snapped, gone somewhere far beyond panic.
“Your daughter’s an Alpha werewolf,” Abel said. “I’m her mate. The government’s out to get us, and we just bought land to turn into a sanctuary where they won’t be able to find us. That explanation enough?”
“Alpha,” Jessica echoed. “Mate?”
Rylie’s head throbbed. She clutched her temples in both hands, fighting back the urge to cry. It was the wrong time for tears—she needed to think, formulate a plan, figure out how they would escape without the Union following them.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” Rylie whispered.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was a secret. And when it wasn’t a secret anymore, when the whole world knew, it was because some senator got assassinated and everyone feared us,” she said. A sob ripped from her, making her body shake. “I don’t want you to think that I’m evil.”
Jessica’s face melted into disbelief. “Oh, baby,” she said.
“When would I have told you anyway? When I stopped visiting you during t
he summer? When you stopped calling during holidays? When I sent you a wedding invitation and you never responded?”
“You sent me a wedding invitation?” Jessica asked.
Now that Rylie had started crying, she couldn’t stop. She pressed her face into Abel’s arm. He rubbed her shoulder—an awfully comforting gesture, considering he was still glaring death at Bert and growling low in his throat. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t get married. But you didn’t know that, did you?”
“Sweetheart, I never got an invitation.” Now that the first rush of shock had passed, Jessica was composing herself. It was a visible process: sweeping her hair behind her ears, tugging her shirt into place, grabbing the lipstick out of her purse. She didn’t put it on, but holding it seemed to give her strength. “When did it happen?”
“The wedding?”
“The…bite,” Jessica said stiffly.
“At summer camp. When I was fifteen.”
She paled with the second punch of shock. “Oh. When you disappeared for two weeks.” Rylie nodded mutely. “I had no idea.”
“You haven’t had any idea about who I am in ages, Mom,” she said. “Maybe ever.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Jessica’s mouth. “And you don’t know me, either. Not if you think I would care that you’re a werewolf.”
“You don’t?”
The pounding on the front door grew louder. Jessica straightened her spine, eyebrow lifted. “Of course not. You’re my daughter. You could be gay, and I would still love you.”
Rylie felt a confusing mix of relief and anger—like being gay was somehow worse than being a werewolf? She would never understand her mother.
But maybe she didn’t need to.
Jessica carried on. “And Alpha, you say? That means you’re…what, the head werewolf?”
“The most powerful of them all,” Abel said.
Hearing that coming from a man twice Rylie’s size seemed to mean something to Jessica. Her smile grew. It wasn’t a happy smile, but a proud one. “Of course she is,” she said.
The pounding outside silenced. Footsteps creaked in the lobby. Shadows crossed over the frosted glass of the door.
The Union had come inside.
“Oh God,” Rylie whispered, hugging Abel’s arm tighter. All it would take was one well-aimed silver bullet, and they’d have her.