Kissed by moonlight

KISSED BY MOONLIGHT

Wild Hunt, Book 1

By: Adrianne Brooks

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Rascal Hearts

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

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Table of Contents Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Restless dreamer, Restless dreamer, If you’ve missed me, come and kiss me.

I’m the nightmare you wished away, you lost me on a summer’s day.

I’ve been haunting shadows, eating wishes, stealing smiles, I feel you when you’re not around. I’ve followed you both high and low, watched you fall into the snow, crouched on your chest to hear you scream…

If only because it calmed the need, to come and claim my tithe.

-Ballad of the Hunt

“Pack is family. We keep each other safe. Keep each other human. Pack is all.”

—Gina Parkons

Chapter One

I foiled the terrorists because they’d parked in my parking spot.

You may be thinking “huh?” or even “what the Hell?”, but it’s true.

The car blew up because it was in my parking space.

I work for a newspaper in the heart of corporate America, and as a corporate American, I am predictably irritable and unhappy on a regular basis. To appease me, the corporate American powers that be assigned me my very own parking space. I suppose they figured having a nameplate in front of a designated square of pavement would keep me from wandering into the office one day hyped up on caffeine and sporting an Uzi like a Gucci bag.

And, strangely enough, it had.

My coworkers were alive today because of my parking spot.

Hell, the building was still standing because of that spot.

And then some asshole had to go and ruin it by parking in it.

To say I was pissed would be an understatement. I was enraged, hurt, and disillusioned with mankind.

Vengeful.

Most people don’t know this, but road rage doesn’t actually go away. It gets sucked into your lungs through the rising heat of the pavement and stays there just beneath the surface of your skin. Waiting. Watching for the perfect opportunity to strike and fuck up everybody’s day.

My road rage found the perfect opportunity to rear its bitchy little head when I looked through my windshield to see what had become of my parking space. I glared at the series of numbers that made up the license plate and felt the warning bells begin to chime away in my head. My

particular brand of rage was so strong that by the time I realized what I was doing, I had already scrambled out of my Ford Explorer and stalked over to the offending hunk of metal.

Then I busted the driver’s side window in with my low-heeled pump.

The parking garage for the Examiner is close enough to the main building that it takes no more than five minutes to walk from there to the lobby. The paper had bought the small garage when it was apparent that not only did they need it for all the new employees, but that they could also afford it now that the money was rolling in in a steady stream.

My parking space sat up on the roof. By far the nicest, roomiest, and closest space to the main building. My parking space was a god among parking spaces. It kicked ass.

At the risk of sounding like a thirteen-year-old, it ruled.

So, when I busted in that window and shimmied my boobs past the glass still sticking up, so that I could set the car in neutral, I did so with a very clear idea of what it was that I was fighting for.

Because honestly, with my attention span, my rage could only drive me to do so much.

After the glass smashed I was still seething, but no longer blinded by anger. So, telling the cops I was gripped with momentary insanity when they came for me wouldn’t work because when I set my shoulder against the frame of the door and started to push forward, my thinking was as clear as it had ever been.

I was going to push this bitch of a car (because, according to my last boyfriend, cars were females and with its sleek black leather interior this particular vehicle just screamed “vagina”) off the parking garage roof.

What about the innocent people below? you may ask.

You could kill pedestrians!

Fuck the pedestrians. The pedestrians wouldn’t cover the cost of my insurance if my car got scratched or stolen simply because I’d relegated it to a poor man’s parking space.

So I pushed and I shoved and my feet (one still in its pump and the other scrambling along the ground encased in my pantyhose) dug into the hot pavement and gave me the leverage I needed to put the guilty car in question where I wanted it.

Then the bumper hit the metal railing that extended around the perimeter of the roof and my vision went red. So I pulled back, then pushed forward. Again and again until the car was rocking like a boat tossed by waves. When it reached its backward zenith, I pushed it forward as hard as I could and was rewarded when the bumper broke through the cheap barrier.

The front two tires quickly followed and in an instant that seemed to stretch out endlessly the car teetered, lost its balance, and took a nosedive off the side of the building.

On a related note, I use Google a lot.

According to Google, there are very specific requirements that have to be met before a car will blow up. It’s actually not as simple as the movies make it out to be. For instance, being shoved off the roof of a ten story parking garage should only be enough to crush the car like a bug. To blow up I would have needed to rupture the gas tank and, even then, there would have been a spark required to get things going.

So when the car, which shouldn’t have exploded, did in fact, explode, I figured I was in more trouble than I had originally prepared myself for.

So I spoke accordingly.

“Oh shit.”

****

“Phaedra Conners?”

I glanced up at the sound of my name to the woman standing before me, clipboard in hand. When no one responded right away, she glanced over the room’s occupants in rising annoyance and called for me again.

“Phaedra Conners?”

Her voice wasn’t nearly as pleasant this second time around. I froze for one more heartbeat and then cleared my throat as I came to my feet. My hands felt clammy, so I wiped them on my hips, the material of my gray slacks soft beneath my palms. The woman looked me up and down. Though there was no expression on her face to imply as much, I could tell that she found me unimpressive.

“Ms. Dawson is ready to see you now,” she said neutrally. “If you could follow me.” As she turned and started away I grabbed my purse from the floor beside my seat and hurried after her.

It was hard to keep up with her long legged stride and I found myself wondering testily how she was even able to move so fast in five inch heels, when I could barely shuffle along in three.

The Oracle wasn’t nearly as large as the Examiner had been and I found myself feeling more than a little claustrophobic as I followed Miss Attitude past the desks and cubicles that marked the personal spaces of individual reporters. As with any newspaper, the few people who were there were bundles of activity. I played follow the leader until we both came to a closed door that read:

Lynette Dawson, Editor in-Chief

The woman knocked twice on the door, waited until we heard a muffled “come in” from beyond the confines, and then walked away from me without a word. I made a face at her retreating backside before opening the door and stepping cautiously inside.

Ms. Dawson had her back to me, so I allowed myself a moment or two to study her in unabashed curiosity. She was an older woman, if the gray in her brown hair was any indication.

When I came into the room, I found her staring down a pin board that was completely covered with newspaper clippings and photographs. Her stocking feet were bare against the worn hardwood, and I watched as she lifted her foot to scratch the calf of her opposite leg. Her hair was done up in a messy bun, and the skirt suit she wore had obviously seen better days.

I had to clear my throat twice before she would turn to look at me, but when she did I was both surprised and pleased to see the sharp intelligence in her eyes. Grinning, Lynette Dawson came towards me, hand outstretched.

“Miss Conners.” Her voice was warm and her grip was firm as we shook hands. “It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you. Please, have a seat.”

I followed her suggestion willingly enough and watched as she plopped down in the creaking chair behind her desk. Her sudden weight in the chair made it roll a bit, but she swung back up to the desk with enthusiasm, elbows resting on the surface and her fingers entwining so that she could rest her chin upon them.

“So,” her brows waggled mischievously, “what brings Fiery Phaedra to our humble abode?”

I made a rude sound in the back of my throat, but tried to play it off with a strained half smile. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Why not? You should enjoy the moniker while it lasts, Miss Conners. It’s not every day that people hail you as a revolutionary.” She tapped her chin and there was laughter in her eyes.

“How did the Examiner put it? ‘A perfect example of what happens when freedom of speech is no longer a right, but a weapon to be wielded against the majority.’” She sighed and wiped a tear of mirth from one corner of her eye. “That line was a particular favorite of mine.

They were always going on about how you were trying to make a statement with your little explosion, but they never explained exactly what that statement was.”

The smile I’d been maintaining became just a tad more forced, so I finally gave it up as a lost cause.

“I’m no revolutionary, Ms. Dawson.”

“Then what, pray tell, are you?”

I sighed. Some people called me a hero, but that percentage was small. The rest of the city thought I was either a dumb schmuck who’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, or a co-conspirator.

“That really depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.” There was no amusement in Lynette Dawson’s voice. No room for fancy maneuverings. Yet again, I was reminded that it was the woman’s no-nonsense reputation that had attracted me to this place, despite the fact that many viewed it as nothing more than tacky gossip rag.

I’d spent most of my adult life handling drama. I was a fan of the sensational, the chaotic, and the strange. I spotlighted the unique, the heartbreaking, the unbelievable; I gave a voice to the masses, and, for the most part, I even enjoyed myself. It didn’t hurt that as long as the paper was doing well and I stayed on my game, I was able to make a decent living.

The problem wasn’t my work. It was my temperament. The court-appointed psychologist that I’d been seeing after the bomb incident had claimed that I lacked impulse control or something.

I hadn’t really been listening.

Jeez, you’re instrumental in the explosion of a shitty reproduction of the Mystery Machine and suddenly you’re being detained by authorities and charged with destroying public property and reckless endangerment. It didn’t matter that said van had an arsenal’s worth of weaponry and high tech surveillance equipment. It didn’t matter that the piece of junk had been carrying enough explosives to level an entire building. Sure, I pushed it off the roof of a parking garage, but imagine all the lives my petty refusal to share had saved.

I mean, come on. Where was my freaking medal?

Instead of pats on the back and congrats, I was getting hate mail and being accused of being a communist. Apparently no one was buying my version of things, which was that it had all been a big misunderstanding. According to the majority there was no way I hadn’t been in on whatever nefarious plot the as of yet unknown terrorists had planned. They had been parked in my space after all. I must have had a change of heart at the last minute and decided to do the Christian thing by getting rid of the bombs before they could enact their bloody purpose.

I knew it was bullshit, but hey. I had to appreciate the creative genius behind it. After all, it had been on the front page months ago, and for a while my face had been plastered all over three major news channels. If today was any indication, people hadn’t forgotten about it nearly as quickly as I’d hoped they had, and I mentally prepared myself for another rejection.

Ever since the car bomb thing, other newspapers had been reluctant to hire me on. Just because the police weren’t able to prove that I hadn’t been involved didn’t mean that I was innocent, and the controversy surrounding the part I’d played in the whole debacle had cost me my job. No paper wanted to employ a woman that many believed to be a domestic terrorist. Bad for sales and bad for employee morale.

I’m pretty sure that the only reason I wasn’t facing jail time was because the cops wanted to see if I would eventually lead them to any of my accomplices. That, and because I’d done my fair share of favors for a particular judge during my years at the Examiner and he’d vouched for me. In the end, I had saved lives after all.

So here I was, almost a month later. Still looking for a job that wouldn’t put my journalism degree to waste and glaring at parked cars with tinted windows because I was 99.9% sure that they were surveillance vans put in place by the Feds.

There were a number of ways that I could have answered Ms. Dawson, but in the end I simply shrugged and said, “I’m a reporter who got on the wrong end of a story.”

She regarded me for another moment or two, and then smiled.

“You’re hired.”

My eyes went wide and I gaped. “Really? Just like that?” Not that I was complaining or anything, but usually when an interview took less than three minutes it was because I hadn’t gotten the job.

“Just like that,” she said, getting to her feet and stretching the kinks out of her back. “I know your work, Miss Conners,” she continued, wandering back over to her board. “You’re good at what you do. You’d be an asset to our team. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t—”

Dawson seemed to struggle for the right words; finally, she simply used her fingers to make a circular motion in the air above one temple.

I laughed despite myself. Far be it for me to look a gift horse in the mouth but— “What about the Fiery Phaedra thing?”

She shrugged without turning around. “We’re a tabloid, Conners. Any publicity is good publicity as far as I’m concerned.”

Happiness was a hesitant warmth in my chest, and I found myself stifling giggles as I came to my feet.

“Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me. I promise I—”

She waved the rest of my words away. “You start Monday. We have staff meetings every Wednesday. Give me headlines. Proof it wasn’t a mistake to hire you. That’s all the thanks I need.”

****

That night I lay in bed watching TV, flipping from one channel to the next, when something caught my eye. A newscaster was standing in front of the Examiner and gesturing behind her to where you could see the parking deck connected to it. I got the gist of what the story was about even before I turned the volume up.

The newswoman was standing next to an older gentleman who was squinting at the camera as if it were a beast he’d never before seen. He had his hands folded at the small of his back and his suit was so crisply pressed that it was a wonder that he could move in it at all.

“—true that your employer, CEO and philanthropist, Gabriel Evans was visiting the Examiner that day?”

“Yes, it is. Mr. Evans and I were there conducting an interview when we heard the explosion.”

“Many citizens are skeptical that there was any danger at all. In fact, some are even saying that the bomb was for Mr. Evans rather than a paper that focused mainly on political and economic issues.”

I sat up, my blanket pooling around my waist. Gabriel Evans had been at the Examiner the day the car bomb went off? They must have found some footage of him or something. The man was notorious for avoiding both the cameras and the people who wielded them for a living. Spotting Evans was like spotting a chupacabra. Which is to say that it was the singularly most terrifying thing that could ever happen to you.

Especially if you were dumb enough to go after him alone. It made me wonder how Channel 8 had managed to land an interview, even if it was with one of his lackeys.

“Whether the bomb was meant for the newspaper or Mr. Evans is irrelevant. The Lumière Corporation is opposed to all forms of violence. We abhor the thought that anyone would have to live in fear, regardless of the bomber’s real intent. That is why Mr. Evans is hoping to increase the city’s security by donating over half a million dollars to the police department. These funds will allow them to hire new officers as needed, acquire new equipment, weapons, and so forth. In addition to that, the Lumière Corporation will also be financing the building of a new task force that will be designed to respond to high risk situations that other officers may not be trained to handle.”

For a split second the look of stunned disbelief on the anchor’s face mirrored my own, but she bounced back with almost no hesitation.

“That’s very generous of him, but what sort of ‘high risk situations’ are you preparing for exactly? And what do the Mayor and Police commissioner have to say about such a drastic change?”

The man’s smile was a little frosty. “You can’t put a price tag on a peaceful night’s sleep, and the Mayor and Commissioner are behind the project 100%. In fact it was their idea. As far as the types of situations that would call for a specially trained task force, the bomb incident wasn’t the first, nor the only, sign that criminal syndicates are fighting for dominance within the city limits.

Our current police force is too small and too poorly equipped to handle the crime wave. If our only line of defense is overwhelmed, then it’s only a matter of time before the rest of us start drowning as well. Mr. Evans only hopes to prevent such an outcome.”

The anchor was nodding along with the man (whose name appeared to be David Reed, if the little box below his face was to be trusted), but I was more than a little skeptical. I’d be the first one to admit that Briarcliff had its share of…mishaps. It was a lot like Sin City, or maybe Gotham City before Batman started taking out the trash. But even if we were overrun with our fair share of murder, drugs, prostitution, and smuggling, nothing about Gabriel Evans equaled “hero” or “savior.” That half a million dollars sounded like some sort of payoff, and now that I knew he’d been in the Examiner, I was convinced that the bomb had been meant for him.

Now he was creating a “special task force”? A division that would probably be full of highly trained individuals who answered solely to Evans whenever they weren’t out kicking ass and taking names.

God help us all. The man was taking over the city, and he was going to pull it off without even a token protest. I tuned back into the broadcast at the sound of my name.

“—about Phaedra Conners? There’s a lot of speculation going around that Miss Conners was responsible for the bomb’s presence there that day. Can you tell me what Mr. Evans has to say on the subject? Will people like Phaedra Conners soon find themselves with a target painted on their backs?”

My heart started beating a mile a minute. While Reed’s face was just as composed as it had been throughout the interview, there was a new hardness in his voice when he spoke.

“Mr. Evans doesn’t believe that Miss Conners had anything to do with the events that occurred. He believes that she was simply in the wrong place at the right time. Either way, no matter her involvement, or lack thereof, Miss Conners was single-handedly responsible for saving countless lives. The fact that Mr. Evans could have been included in the death toll simply makes him all the more aware of her heroism.” His eyes bored into the camera in a silent bid to drive his point home. “We are grateful for her intervention in this matter.”

And that was that. The anchor thanked him for his time, and they segued smoothly into a story about a local boy being suspended from school for attacking one of his teachers. I sat back against my mound of pillows, still staring at the screen but no longer really seeing or hearing anything. I was lost in my thoughts. Lost in the warm glow of that single statement:

We are grateful for her intervention.

It wasn’t exactly a medal or the key to the city, but it was more than I’d gotten in the month since I’d pushed that car off the roof. I knew that I was no hero, but it was still nice being confused for one.

“I didn’t always howl at the moon. I used to be a housewife.”

—Kestril Winters

Chapter Two

Six Months Later…

You know those people who go to work and they’re completely satisfied with their lives?

The ones who feel a sense of personal satisfaction from walking through the doors in the morning because they know that they made the right decision?

I’m not one of those people.

The only thing that kept me functioning like a regular human being was a grim satisfaction that at least I didn’t work in customer service. The only thing I disliked more than tabloids were people. Somewhere along the line, I’d developed a deep, burning dislike for the human race. There seemed to be no cure.

“Good morning, Phaedra.”

I grunted in response and walked just a little faster. Obviously I didn’t look harried enough if my coworkers were still trying to engage in early morning small talk. Or at least, that’s what I liked to think. More than likely they were just all aware that I couldn’t look busy because I was never working on anything interesting.

In some respects that was all Dawson’s fault. I presented her with really good ideas when we had our meetings every other week, but she always shot them down. You see, tabloids were complex creatures.

They survived on a strange mixture of facts, gossip, and wild speculation.

The trick to being successful in them was to sniff out a story, no matter how faint the scent, and run with it. I had been working for Dawson for nearly a year and not once during that time had I been able to come up with anything that lived up to the woman’s standards. I was used to working for a more conservative paper. Writing articles about the AIDS epidemic in Africa and the declining morals of today’s youth.

The Oracle focused more on which famous actress was anorexic, what business mogul was suspected of doing cocaine, and whether or not some politician was sleeping with underage prostitutes. And let’s not forget the occasional conspiracy theory to lighten things up. For instance, I’d never forget the time I was sent out into the field to capture footage of Bigfoot.

Not only did Bigfoot never show up, I couldn’t work for a while after I’d spent that night unwittingly huddled in a pile of poison ivy. Suffice it to say that we hadn’t had enough material to properly highlight Mr. Foot, but we did give it the good ol’ American try.

In addition to chasing urban legends, we also touched on scandal both inside and outside of the city limits. Yet, even though the possibilities seemed endless, I had yet to find a story good enough to make me stand out.

Hell, I couldn’t even come up with a piece interesting enough to be considered human interest and it had been months since Dawson had trusted me with anything more complicated than the obituaries. Wednesdays came and went, and time and time again my thought-provoking ideas were shoved beneath the bus of kinky sex tips and over-dramatized horoscopes.

In short, life was shit.

That more than anything brought my shoulders down the second I stopped in front of the meeting room door. I was late, but it didn’t really matter at this point. A fact that was proven rather quickly when I barged into the meeting and no one even bothered to look up.

“Sonya? Did you have something you wanted to add?”

Mentally sighing, I took my regular seat and pulled out my iPad. I liked to take notes, hoping to play around with story topics of my own in my free time, as well as to compare our final product with what the competition came up with. It was a process I started at my last job that helped determine whether we were rising or falling in popularity and to determine if that shift had anything to do with our ideas or the execution and timing of those ideas.

“Yes, actually.”

I glanced up from my IPad and had to fight down a scowl. Sonya Jackson had what I used to have. She had clout at the Oracle, which meant that any ideas that came out of her mouth were treated like gold. She was young, pretty, and full of potential, and I despised her with every fiber of my being. Or most of my fibers. Other than the fact that she was actually taken seriously, she seemed like a decent sort.

“Why hasn’t anyone done a story on Evans?” Sonya continued, eyebrows rising in challenge when the room fell collectively silent. “Just last week he was under investigation for embezzling and yet this week he’s having dinner with the chief of police and his family and buying another house.”

Dawson shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “That doesn’t mean—”

“Three months ago,” Sonya continued stubbornly, “three women were found stumbling down the Boulevard naked and covered in dirt—”

“There’s no proof that they actually worked for Evans,” Another reporter, Michael, spoke up quickly.

Sonya snorted. “Speculation is more than enough. Even without some wild conspiracy theory, his name comes up everywhere. Money laundering, human trafficking, kidnapping, murder. And please. Let’s not forget his infamous task force of muscle-bound idiots.” The room seemed to wince as one and Sonya threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “Holy hell. Is the man off limits or something? We’ve gone after the mayor on less.”

Dawson regarded the other woman silently while murmurs broke out around the room.

We all knew she was right, but none of us wanted to be the one to agree with her aloud.

I drummed my fingers on the table and considered the young woman seriously. No one wanted to take on a story about Gabriel Evans. Most of us knew the rumors of what he was capable of, which was the precise reason why none of us wanted anything to do with it. Personally, I didn’t have a death wish, but as I watched Sonya glare around at each of us in turn, and noted Dawson’s mien of displeasure, my brain did that thing that usually meant I was about to make a decision I would immediately regret.

“Why the hell not?”

Everyone turned to stare at me.

Yup. Immediate regret.

Too late to back down now.

“I think someone should do a story on Evans,” I said, leaning back in my seat. “What do we have to lose? If he’s legit, there’s nothing to worry about, and if he isn’t—”

I shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Georgette, an older woman sitting across from me frowned. “If he is hiding something he’s not going to appreciate being under a spotlight.”

Mark nodded, his voice turned musing. “True, but if we play our cards right, by the time he figures out what was going on it’ll already be front-page news.”

“And any retaliation will just make him look bad.” This from David, a rookie in comparison to everyone else in the room, but a kid with a lot of potential.

I looked up in time to catch Sonya’s eye and was surprised to see the glint of approval there as the conversation picked up. I turned away and picked up my iPad again, listening with only half an ear as everyone began bouncing ideas off of one another. Many were conflicted about the best way to go about interviewing Evans. In the twelve years he’d been unofficially running the city, not once had he ever agreed to speak to the press.

His peons always passed on any public comments he wished to make and he never went to any of the fancy social gatherings that were the bread and butter of socialites: judges, lawyers, moguls, and aspiring politicians. In addition to that, no photos of him had ever been released, and to my knowledge he’d never appeared on either television or radio. He was a ghost. A phantom. Yet, for all of that, he cast a very long shadow and his reach seemed immeasurable.

So, we spoke as children planning mischief might. Low voiced, but breathless with the thrill of it.

Drunk off our own daring. That is, until Dawson voiced the question we’d all been avoiding.

“So, who’s going to volunteer to cover the story?”

We could practically hear Sonya’s hackles go up.

“It was my idea. My idea, my story.”

Dawson waved her declaration away as if swatting away a fly. “Too inexperienced.

Evans would eat you alive.”

Sonya’s jaw tightened. “You’re not giving my story to someone else. Not a single one of you thought to go after Evans until I suggested it.”

Point. We all swiveled to look at Dawson for a return strike.

“True. But Evans is shark, and if you go in there hungry for a story, he’s going to smell blood in the water.”

“I can get him to talk to me,” Sonya continued stubbornly, only to flinch when Dawson snorted and said:

“Men like Evans don’t confide in girls like you. They help you find your panties the morning after and then call you a cab so they don’t have to talk to you over breakfast.”

Ouch.

Unfortunately, I could see Dawson’s point. Sonya may be one hell of a reporter, but she was all blond hair and dark blue eyes. Not to say that her looks were a definition of her skill, but when it came to powerful men, shady men, they often found it impossible to trust a beautiful woman.

They could lust after beauty, but lust didn’t necessarily equate to lowered defenses. I had a feeling that women were not a weak spot for Evans, and looking at the fire in Sonya’s eyes, I

knew that he’d be able to peg her from a mile off. Something about her just screamed “journalist.” It was sort of like how some people just looked like cops or military, even when they weren’t in uniform. No, if we were going after Evans, then we had to hit him and hit him hard.

Go big or go home.

Anything less would only come back and kick us in the teeth, assuming we had any left after Evans’s goons were done with us. In order for Sonya to get anywhere with Evans she’d have to work on him long term, and the idea of pimping her out for a story didn’t sit well with me no matter how much I disliked her. No, if we were going to get some dirt on the guy, we had to go in and dig it up ourselves. He wouldn’t be handing us the noose that would be used to hang him.

Dawson wasn’t done talking, but I sort of drifted out of the conversation. After all, I already knew where all of this was going. I’d reached the conclusion about five minutes beforehand.

“Our best bet is to send someone in undercover. Sonya, you can work on the story, but I want you behind the scenes on this thing. If it blows up in our faces, I don’t want it to be because you were so green that Evans was able to sniff you out. We’ll pair you with someone with some experience, someone who can work under Evans’s nose and gather information. We may even be able to get some video or photos out of it. If nothing else, an eyewitness account will make whatever we found all the more enticing.”

“Fine,” Sonya snapped, her voice stiff with anger. “I’ll do it. But on one condition.”

“Honey, you’re not exactly in a position to make demands. I’m only letting you stay on the story out of professional courtesy. You and I both know it would be out of your league otherwise.”

Sonya shrugged, “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I should just pay the Daily a visit and see if they wouldn’t be more…appreciative.”

The room practically froze over. The Daily was a competing paper and it had been hell keeping up with them the last few weeks. Before we used to be two steps ahead, but now we were struggling to not to cover material the Daily had already headlined. If our sales dropped any lower there would need to be cutbacks, and let’s just say that I knew where I stood in the hierarchy.

Dawson’s face was set in such hard lines it was almost as if she were carved from marble, and when she spoke her voice was trembling with outrage.

“Diane wouldn’t let you touch something like this with a ten foot pole and you know it.

You’d be in the exact same boat.” Diane was the Daily’s equivalent of Dawson.

Only meaner.

Sonya seemed unconcerned.

“Probably. But I bet they’d get to it before you did. So it’s pretty much a win, win.”

“Fine.” Slamming her coffee cup down on the conference table, Dawson crossed her legs and glared across the room at the younger woman. “What do you want?”

“I want to choose my partner and have full control over the investigation.”

“You can choose your partner and write the article.”

“The partner, the article, and a two page spread.”

Dawson sucked in a sharp breath, but her smile was indulgent.

“Headline story, one page, and you can design the layout.” She took a sip of her coffee.

“You can even have your name come first in the byline.”

“Deal.”

I had to restrain myself from clapping, but mentally I congratulated the girl. A front page spread was impressive from a resume standpoint. It was like being the quarterback of writers. Even if the story itself bombed and wasn’t nearly as juicy as we all hoped it would be, Sonya had pretty much guaranteed that both she and whomever she worked with would be the ones receiving the accolades. And if the story did blow up…

It was career making stuff.

I found myself liking her, if only a little bit.

“So, who’s it going to be?”

Sonya smiled and, to my alarm, her gaze fell unerringly on me.

“I’d like to work with Phaedra.”

“What?” I couldn’t hold the exclamation back even if I had wanted to.

Dawson was more reasonable. “Why?”

Sonya shrugged. “She has the experience and talent for it. Plus, she hasn’t worked on anything but the obituaries and the crossword since she got here, so it’s not like I’ll be taking her away from anything important. So she won’t be too inconvenienced if it all turns out to be a waste of time.”

Sonya slapped the table like a contestant on a game show striking a buzzer.

“Done,” she exclaimed, beaming when the rest of the staff writers broke out into messy applause.

My lips tightened in growing irritation. “Sorry to break this to all of you, but you seem to be forgetting something.”

Blank expressions all the way around. I rolled my eyes and indicated my own face with flair.

“Fiery Phaedra? My face was plastered all over the place for weeks until that cult story shoved me off the front page. Some intrepid YouTubers even got the surveillance footage of me shoving the car off the roof and made a music video montage out of it.”

“Where are you going with this?” Georgette asked, frowning.

“Yeah, I don’t see the point.” This from Avery, a reporter who’d been here longest and who was the current record-holder for front page stories.

“My point,” I began slowly, “is that I’m no good for undercover work. Everyone already knows I’m a reporter, and after I got arrested for trespassing after the Bigfoot debacle and Dawson bailed me out, I’m pretty sure the fact that I work here is also on record somewhere.”

Dawson shrugged and began rocking her swivel chair.

“Well, we can fix that easily enough.”

“Oh really?” This should be good. “How?”

She grinned at me. “Simple. You’re fired.”

****

You know those people who are completely and utterly shocked when they get hired on as a personal assistant/secretary to the most powerful man in the city? The type of person who was confident that they wouldn’t even get past the application process on account of the fact that they have an extensive police record and a shady psychiatric evaluation?

Turns out, I’m one of those people.

I woke up the morning of my first day and had to calm an instinctive burst of panic. If they found out what I was up to…if they realized that I was funneling information to Sonya and that I was still (unofficially) an employee of the Morning Oracle I could die.

I wasn’t even exaggerating. I was 87% positive that Gabriel Evans could, and would, have me assassinated. It almost made me back out. Almost convinced me to drop the idea of a story altogether and simply work for Evans for real. His benefits package was much better than the Oracle’s and I was being paid a hell of a lot more. But there was this…I don’t know what to call it really.

Something reckless in me wanted to see it through. Some wild-eyed little creature that lived beneath my skin urged me on. It was the voice that made me go faster than I should when I

drove. It assured me that I would make the green light, even if common sense cried out that I wouldn’t. It was what had sent me pushing that car over the edge. It was what had made me pull the trigger on my tranq gun the night I’d hunted “Bigfoot” (thereby encouraging said landowner to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law).

And it was that creature, that demon of recklessness, that brought a maniacal little grin to my face even as my stomach twisted at the thought of being found out. I knew I should back out. The odds weren’t in my favor.

But that was what made it fun.

I gave myself a little shake and squashed the smile as soon as I realized it was there. Then I rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. The process of choosing an outfit was trickier than usual. For one thing, I couldn’t dress as casually as I normally did when heading in to work. Instead I found myself critically eyeing the way the gray pinstriped pantsuit fit my frame. It was hard to describe my body type. I didn’t have much up top, but I was pretty curvy from the waist down. I didn’t like the way the button-up suit jacket emphasized that. I’d need a trim soon; my black hair was past my shoulders now and combined with my straight bangs and ice blue eyes, I resembled a pin-up model. I eyed my dark hair and pale face, decided I could probably rock the vampire look, and gave up primping as a lost cause.

No point in wasting any more time in the looks department. When I met Evans—dear god I was going to meet Gabriel Evans—I wanted to make sure that I was as innocuous as possible. With that thought in mind, I sent my reflection a quick kiss and sashayed my way out the door.

The drive to the Lumière Corporation took about twenty minutes. I could have taken the less scenic route, but I wanted to arrive at my new job with my wallet, all my major organs, and all four tires still in place.

I knew I was probably expecting a lot, but hey.

I liked living large.

By the time I stepped out of the elevator and onto the twenty-first floor, it was around 8:00 a.m.

Right on time.

Commence mental back patting.

The pace at the L.C. seemed chaotic in comparison to what went on in the Oracle. I knew the company dealt with stocks and bonds and international mergers, but business had never been my strong suit. Thankfully I wasn’t here to punch numbers or bully execs. I would just run some errands, file some paperwork, and try to keep my head down while spying shamelessly on every aspect of Gabriel Evans’s life.

Fun, fun.

There was a little bounce to my step as I threw myself into the fray. I sidestepped interns, mail room lackeys, and more than one pencil pusher, but no matter where I looked I couldn’t seem to find Janice.

Janice was the woman whose job I would be taking. Janice was in her mid-thirties and as pregnant as the day was long. She was due for maternity leave and the only thing standing between Janice and freedom was my three days’ worth of training.

So there I was: dressed, on time, and eager to learn.

The only problem?

No Janice.

“Excuse me?” I grabbed the sleeve of the first person that passed me. He was an older man, salt and pepper hair seeming to defy gravity as his hairline receded while his beer gut had long since lost that fight.

I smiled up at him and laid on the charm.

“Could you help me? I’m a little turned around.”

His eyes had narrowed down to suspicious slits as soon as I had pulled him to a halt, but at the sight of my smile he shifted the stack of folders in his arms and relaxed.

“New, aren’t you?”

I nodded, projecting relief and just a tad bit of embarrassment. “Afraid so. I was supposed to be meeting Janice today so she could start my training but I can’t seem to—”

His bark of laughter interrupted my explanation and I had to stop myself from snapping at him.

“They didn’t tell you?” At the look on my face he answered his own question. “Obviously not. Janice went into labor a few days ago.”

Damn.

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

He shrugged, and I could see the desire to get on with his own business begin to take hold.

“No idea. Your best bet is to head up to the top floor and go from there. That’s where Evans keeps his office and where Janice usually worked. They should give you some leeway since it’s your first day and all, but I hope for your sake you learn fast.” He started walking. “Fair warning: The Beast has been untamed for almost a week now. Tread lightly.”

Hold up.

“Do you mean ‘Beast’ as in absent a Beauty?” I called after him, “Or ‘Beast’ as in—”

“Three numbers, bad temper, makes a cameo appearance in Revelations? That one.

Definitely that one.” He threw the words over his shoulder and waved a hand in farewell as he disappeared inside the recess of a cubicle.

“Good luck,” he called cheerfully, and I scowled at his pitiful excuse of an office for a full minute before I turned on my heel and headed back to the elevators.

“Why hide who you are? Wolf or sheep there’s no shame in giving in to your nature.”

—Lana Ray

Chapter Three

The top floor was silent. Eerily so. After hearing someone compare my new boss to the Beast of the Apocalypse, I was a bit more cautious about meeting him. I examined the space around me carefully. Unlike the other floors, there weren’t different departments to take up extra space.

There was just an empty desk sitting in the middle of the room and behind it were large double doors that were currently closed. The walls looked as if they were made from bamboo, and a stream with no discernible source acted like a moat spanning the perimeter. The noise it made over the rocks that had been carved into the marble floor was soothing, and for a moment I let myself admire the simplicity of the space before venturing any further within it.

“Hello?”

My voice echoed in the sparsely furnished room and I felt exposed somehow. I hurried to the set of double doors behind my new desk. I knocked, lightly at first, and when that got no response I tried the handle.

Beyond the door was an office fit for the most notorious man in the city.

Two sides of the room were made of nothing but glass. They showed a breathtaking view of the city. I imagined that you could watch the sunrise on one side in the morning and watch it set on the other side at night.

The room was twice as large as the one adjacent to it. The floor was made out of black marble, and against the far wall sat an antique writing desk. There were couches set along the eastern wall. They were angled so that whoever sat in them would be able to enjoy the view offered by the floor to ceiling window. In the center of the room, hanging from the ceiling, was a floating electric fireplace. All black chrome and sparkling flame on coals. On the west side, was a great table, empty now, but worn from repeated use.

On the back wall near the desk was another door, and instantly sensing a chance to snoop, I hurried towards it. My heels clacked hollowly against the floor despite how softly I tried to step, and feeling more than a little exposed I reached out to open it.

I’d barely even turned the handle before the knob was jerked out of my hands as the door was pulled open from the other side. I took a step back and regarded the man who filled up the doorway.

He was broad shouldered and wide through the chest. Like a small mountain dressed in black, he sort of towered there before me, expression blank and blue eyes cold and hard. I saw that he could possibly be handsome if his mouth weren’t so pinched.

And maybe if he stopped scowling so much.

But it wasn’t my job to critique the man’s temperament. Though as far as first impressions went, I was unimpressed.

“Who the hell are you?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he dismissed me by the simple expediency of turning his back on me.

“It doesn’t matter.” He spoke with his back to me as he worked to lock the door he’d just come through. “I don’t really need your name. After all, we both know why you’re here.”

Finished, he stepped around me and walked deeper into the main part of his office.

I pulled my gaze away from his bare feet slapping against the marble floor and tried to keep from curling my lip at his back.

“And why is that?”

“For now?” He turned and leaned his hips back onto the edge of his writing desk, arms crossing over his chest and a smirk spreading across his face. “It’s to bring me a cup of coffee.”

“Size? Flavor?” My voice was without inflection and I saw his lips twitch in wry amusement.

“Surprise me. I don’t care what you get, but I only drink the stuff from the Starbucks across the street. I’ll give you ten minutes. If you’re not back by then I’ll be leaving for the Jensen meeting without you, and you won’t have to worry about coming back in tomorrow morning.”

I opened my mouth to say something rude, but he gave his watch a significant glance, and fuming I marched away. Ten minutes? It would take me almost as long just to get out of the building and across the street. And god forbid there be a line. It’s not like the hundreds of other people who worked in the business district would want a cup of coffee to start off their day or anything. Evans had set me up for failure, and the worst part was that he knew it.

I stood there, silently outraged, and he waved his hand as if shooing off a pet.

“I suggest you hurry. The clock’s already started.”

“Of course.” My voice was stiff, but I really couldn’t drum up much courtesy at the moment. Feeling like an idiot, I hurried as quickly as my pumps would let me out of both rooms and back to the wall of elevators.

I knew, in the back of my mind, that descending into hell would be less torturous than riding the elevator down to the first floor. I knew that. My heart just didn’t believe it.

An elevator that was slower than Clinton’s southern drawl?

Seven minutes.

Racing through the lobby and across a busy intersection?

One minute.

Busting into Starbucks like an avenging angel and being recognized instantly as Fiery Phaedra by twelve patrons and four employees?

Timeless.

“We don’t want any trouble.”

I looked into the pale face of the woman behind the cash register, pondered the status of my moral code for a moment, and then smiled. Leaning both arms on the counter, I got in real close and confided, “Then I think you had best hurry up and get me two espressos before I remember that I have a temper. Sound good?” She nodded, wideeyed, and my smile grew bigger. “Smart girl.”

Moral code? Hah.

And to think that I’d been afraid that my status as a domestic terrorist would never benefit me. Never say never, am I right?

Feeling evil villain powerful, I hefted my two free cups of coffee and hightailed it back to work. The good news was that it had only taken me ten minutes to get the coffee. The bad news was that it was taking me nearly twenty just to bring it back.

For some reason though, after ruining that barista’s day, I was practically glowing with good humor. My situation still sucked but it was all in how you looked at things. I’m sure I could finagle my way into keeping my job somehow. After all, they knew I was a rebel when they hired me.

Plus, Janice was probably in the nursing phase, so talk about temporary job security.

So when I waltzed back through the front doors of the Lumière Corporation, I was humming.

Granted, that was before I saw the man collapsed in the center of the room. I stopped in my tracks and my heart did this funny little thing in my chest that told me I was terrified, but too nosey to get out of harm’s way just yet. I was just too engrossed in the sight before me.

The man was surrounded by a number of guards and from what I could see of his clothing, he must have been a businessman. There were three or four other men trying to push past the barricade the guards had created with their biceps, but they weren’t having any luck. Understandable since the businessmen lacked the sheer size of this company’s on-hand security.

To be honest, the stand-off in the lobby wasn’t really the strangest thing. The fact that their man down was covered in blood and not moving? Yeah. That was cause for alarm.

My eyes darted around the first floor and to my shock, I realized that I was the only person who had stopped to see what was going on. Everyone else was going on about their business as if nothing untoward had happened. That reaction, more than anything else, let me know that the group of men arguing with the guards were as new to this place as I was. Visitors, then, from another company. They probably had something to do with the “Jensen” that Evans mentioned meeting at the end of my time limit.

I heard a strange sound. A bass rumbling that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Instinct had my eyes tracking the noise, and when my gaze met the culprit, the muscles in my legs twitched with the automatic urge to run. Like the other man, this man was also covered in blood. The main difference was that the blood on this man obviously wasn’t his own. It practically covered the front of his gray Armani suit. The suit was perfectly pressed, and the way the material fit his form, it was obvious that it was a custom job. His shoes were gleaming beneath the lights, pristine despite the blood splatter.

Slowly, my eyes rose to study his face and something about the fear I felt shifted. It didn’t disappear, but there was another, softer element added to it that kept me from screaming. The bottom half of his face was smeared red, but it was his eyes that demanded my full attention. They were amber. A dark, rich amber like a warm drink on a cold night. Wide eyes framed by dark blond lashes and a strong patrician nose.

Despite evidence to the contrary, there was no malice in his gaze or demeanor. He looked at me, head cocked slightly to one side and brows drawn in honest confusion and just absorbed. That’s really the only way to describe it. He absorbed me. And as I examined him in turn, I saw a lock of unruly blond hair fall into his face and had to fight the insane desire to reach out and brush it back.

It was that urge to touch him, the urge to draw closer, that finally snapped me back. This man, despite his good looks and apparent good breeding, had attacked someone to the point where they were nothing more than a still body in the middle of the room. The way the blood coated his mouth made me think he’d bitten the man, but that couldn’t have possibly been the case.

What sort of person goes around biting people unless they’re high off of bath salts…?

Hmm.

I gave the stranger another quick glance out of the corner of my eye, noted with alarm that he had begun to move closer, and promptly turned on my heel to hurry away. With visions of cannibalism and mayhem dancing in my head, I high-tailed it to the elevator and punched the button for the top floor with enough force to hurt. For good measure, I punched it a couple hundred more times, just to make sure it got the message, since there was obviously a short circuit somewhere considering the fact that the doors. Wouldn’t. Close.

Ah.

That’s better.

As soon as those metallic walls began to slide together, I breathed a shaky sigh and collapsed back against the wall. I looked out into the lobby and noted with a curious case of trepidation that the guards who had been encircling the now weakly groaning man, had all turned as one to look in my direction. Under their regard, I straightened to my full height and stared silently back. As the doors slid shut, I saw one of the security guards lift a small black device to his mouth and speak into it.

Then they were blocked from my sight and I bit my lip, my mind working furiously. Some part of me realized that the coffee was sloshing past the lid and scalding my hands. Some part of me realized that I was trembling, but I was thinking too hard to take note of it.

I don’t know how long I stood there before I noticed him. Honestly, I don’t even know what it was that finally drew my attention. There was no sound, no sense of another person inside of the small space along with me. He didn’t touch me or move. He shouldn’t have been there, but he was, and one second I was staring down at my hands and the next I was looking up, turning my head enough to glance at the space behind me.

He just stood there, watching, amber eyes alert with curiosity, while the blood cooled and dried on his face. His hands were loose and easy at his sides, but there was an air of expectancy around him. A promise of perfectly controlled, carefully aimed violence.

Of destruction hidden behind charm.

I felt hunted.

There’s a moment in everyone’s life when something so…unexpected happens that all you can do is close your eyes and wish it away. As if, by making it disappear from sight and denying the reality of it, you can convince yourself it wasn’t happening. Only, when I opened my eyes and looked again, not only was the monster still there, but he had come closer.

I whipped back around and tried the out of sight out of mind thing again. I stared at the seam between the elevator doors until my eyes ached, and hoped desperately that the doors would open.

Then his nose brushed against the back of my neck, and screeching like a rejected warrior woman, I swung around and slapped him in the side of the head with my tall espresso. The extra

foam went everywhere, and I hissed as the hot liquid scorched my hand. Even so, I was readying the second cup for an up close and personal meeting with Mr. Bath Salt’s nuts when I realized that he had yet to react to the first assault. I may as well have splashed him with an icy cool beverage for all the notice he took of it.

Weird. I could have sworn that drink was scalding.

But he stared down at me, a 6’2 wall of confusion and hurt. Not a “I have first degree burns on my face” kind of hurt either. But a “why did you hit me, I thought we were friends” kind of hurt.

“The hell?” The expletive was more breathless shock than full bodied outrage, but at the sound of my voice Bath Salts Cannibal Man grinned at me.

That grin?

It was devastating to both my heart and my biological clock.

Just for the record.

“You see me.”

I snorted, rubbing my still stinging hand on the side of my pants and trying not to laugh at how absurd this all was.

“Sorry to break it to you darling, but you’re kind of hard to miss.”

God. I had just called bath salt boy “darling.” Damn him and his dimples.

He must have taken my grimace at my own weakness for something else, because he sort of slumped, instantly contrite. “Apologies, little fox.”

I blinked at him. “For?”

Uncertainly, he said, “Being hard to miss? Scaring you? Making you spill your coffee?” He shrugged, and suddenly, there was a spark of amusement in his eyes. “My mam taught me that a smart man apologizes first and asks questions later.” He ducked his head so he could look at me eye to eye. “I have been hailed for a number of things, little fox. My intelligence just happens to be one of them.” The way the corner of his mouth twitched, the way his dimples deepened as his smirk grew, was a threat. I could see the danger I was in, and I looked down before he could smile at me again. We were too close now for such an act to be anything but an automatic K.O.

I would not be charmed by a man who literally had blood on his hands. I opened my mouth to speak, but even if I’d known how to respond to him, the doors sliding open again would have wiped every other thought from my head.

Here was freedom, here was help, here was—

“Gabriel? What are you doing out of your room? I thought we talked about this.”

The man I’d met earlier was staring at the two of us in growing annoyance. He was wearing shoes now and a suit jacket, presumably in preparation for the Jensen meeting.

“I took it upon myself to meet the newest member of our team.” Gabriel licked the back of his hand, and, with a laugh, held it out as if for inspection. “Look, Marcus. She brought me coffee.”

He tapped his chin with his index finger and winked at me. “I find myself quite charmed.”

I watched as annoyance morphed into rage, Marcus’s pinched face growing even more foreboding as he noted the spattered coffee, foam, and blood stains on the man he’d referred to as “Gabriel.”

Gabriel.

As in my new boss.

As in plot twist.

Slowly, I turned to Gabriel Evans, CEO extraordinaire and man-eater and offered up a shaky smile. “Phaedra Conners, Mr. Evans. It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

“Believe me, Miss Conners—” He stepped up beside me and spoke against the shell of my ear and there was a growl in his voice, “—the pleasure was all mine.”

Amused, he took the remaining coffee cup out of my hand as he slipped past me off the elevator. Numb, I side-stepped a fuming Marcus and followed quickly behind.

“If you live among wolves you can’t just act like a wolf. You must be one.”

—Richard Peirce

Chapter Four

Gabriel Evans walked like a man used to being followed. He never looked to see if we were behind him, he simply assumed that we were. The arrogance of him, the sheer ego, was almost palatable. I felt as if I were a lesser mortal tramping in the wake of a king, and the only thing that made that particular pill easy to swallow was that Marcus clearly noticed it too.

The only difference was that Marcus, for all his bluster earlier, seemed more used to following than leading. Not as interesting as everything else that I’d gathered today, but still worth noting for future reference. Speaking of which, I loved how I’d been here less than an hour and I was already drowning in dirt. The only problem was that none of what I would see today would be caught on camera.

I was supposed to be setting up the hidden cameras and microphones today and scoping out other employees to see who would be the most likely to blabber about Evans. All of this was prime material, but I wouldn’t be able to use any of it without some proof to back it up. Otherwise it would all be my word against theirs.

One of the downsides to using me in this investigation was the fact that no one would believe a word that came out of my mouth. I wasn’t exactly prime witness material, so everything I saw had to be backed by something concrete.

I was still chewing on that little nugget of unfairness when Evans led the two of us into his main office. Marcus closed the door behind us and I followed Evans’s lead and sat on one of the couches in the far corner. Marcus made a move to sit as well, but Evans looked at him with a raised brow that made him pull up short. With an irritated sigh, the other man backtracked to pour three drinks at the wet bar on the other side of the room.

Evans turned to me and smiled.

“I hope you like brandy, Miss Conners.”

“Even if I didn’t, I’d still drink it. Given the circumstances.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Of course. The excitement downstairs must have been an unwelcome surprise. It’s certainly no way to spend your first day.”

Marcus sat our drinks on the coffee table and as Evans reached forward to grab, his eyes landed on the dried blood on his palms. He stilled, no longer the courteous host but a statue made of flesh and bone. If I hadn’t known any better I would have said that he’d forgotten that he was still covered in the stuff.

Evans looked at me, eyes growing wide and face flushing bright red. He almost looked… embarrassed? Guilty? Whatever the emotion, it had him jerking his hands back to himself and sitting a bit more stiffly in his seat. It made me revise my earlier opinion. Maybe he hadn’t forgotten the blood was there. Maybe he’d simply never noticed it before now.

“Forgive me.”

Pretending ignorance, I lifted my own glass and took a sip. Liquor before noon?

What would my mother think?

“For?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked angrily over at Marcus as if his dilemma was all the fault of the other man. Before he could speak, I sat my cup back down and crossed my legs.

“I was hired to help you. Not judge you, Mr. Evans.” Lie. “I don’t need an apology. Just an explanation.”

Marcus’s face flushed red, but his rising color was due to temper rather than shame.

“He doesn’t need to explain anything—”

“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong.” I overrode him easily. Now that I knew he wasn’t the head honcho I could enjoy the sense of vicious satisfaction that arose from annoying him. “If I’m going to talk down Jensen and his representatives,” I continued, taking a wild stab in the dark, “—then I need to know what I’ll be dealing with.”

Evans blinked. “Talk them down?”

I nodded, slowly as if with a toddler. “Of course. Am I right to assume that you were the one who attacked the man downstairs?”

Marcus whipped around to stare hard at his employer, and I had to fight down a smile as the tips of Gabriel Evans’s ears turned beet red and he looked away. Fidgeting in his seat, he admitted almost grudgingly, “Yes.”

“Jesus, Gabriel.”

“I had my reasons,” he snapped, and the look he sent towards Marcus lacked any trace of apology or disgrace.

“I’m sure you did,” I soothed. “I just need to know what they were, so that we can take appropriate action.”

He regarded me solemnly for a long moment, and then with a sigh, nodded.

“Penelope Jensen works for Alder International. For years she’s been trying to convince me that a merger would be beneficial, but it’s only been recently that I thought to give her claims any credence.”

“Why?”

Sparing a brief glance for his hands, he regarded me levelly.

“They have something I want. My technicians haven’t figured out how to recreate their discovery, so the only way I’m going to get my hands on it is if they decide to play nice and share.”

I frowned, spidey senses tingling.

“What is this item exactly?” I asked, knowing before the question had even fully formed that I wouldn’t be getting a straight answer. His eyes darted to one side and his lips tightened. It was a split second tell, but a tell nonetheless, and I filed it away even as he lied to my face.

“I have many hobbies, Miss Conners. Alder International is simply another method of indulging those whims.”

Nodding as if I believed him, I took another sip of my brandy. “I see. And what happened downstairs?”

Straightening in his seat, those amber orbs seemed to intensify. As if a flame had been lit in their depths, and without thinking, I shifted further away.

“A simple misunderstanding,” he said finally, carefully choosing his words.

Hoping my disbelief was obvious, I just looked at him, waiting him out.

“I lost my temper,” he finally admitted with a smile.

“Why?”

“It turns out that they had a Trojan Horse among them. A liar.” The smile became more of a baring of teeth, “I don’t like liars.”

Confused enough to look to Marcus for an explanation, I repeated, “A Trojan Horse?”

Marcus smirked. “There’s a certain…faction that doesn’t approve of the work we do here.

They’ve been attacking us one way or another for years now. They probably had a mole in Alder who saw an opportunity to finally meet the infamous Gabriel Evans and take him down.”

“Only I got him first.”

“Why didn’t you just ask security to escort him out of the building or something? And how do you know that this man was even working with these people?”

“They call themselves Huntsmen. We learned how to sniff out their members as time passed.” Though his words were mild enough, there was an undercurrent of amusement in his words that brought the first real smile I’d ever seen to Marcus’s face.

I was right. He was almost handsome when he smiled.

“The reason why I didn’t bother calling security is because they wouldn’t have dealt with the situation with the amount of violence that it deserved.”

Whoa.

That kind of casual brutality stunned me. But it also drove home the situation in which I’d placed myself. If I hadn’t been terrified of what would happen if I got caught before, I certainly was now.

“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them if I were you Conners.” Marcus chastised, misinterpreting my expression for one of pity. “The Huntsmen were responsible for your run-in with the police a few months back, if I recall.”

I was a little ashamed to admit that it took a while to sift through all of my run-ins with the police and hone in on the incident he was referring to. I could take full responsibility for all but one and I felt my jaw drop as it came to me.

“The Huntsmen planted that car bomb?”

Outrage. That’s what I was feeling. Those people had been instrumental in ruining my life. If they hadn’t gone and planted explosives where they had no right being, I would have gotten off on much lighter charges. Hell, I’d still be allowed to cross state lines and board major airlines. You never knew how much crossing a border really meant to you until the right was snatched away and bashed against the rocks of broken hopes and dreams.

“The bombs were probably just a part of a much larger arsenal. They were tracking me that day, and thanks to you, they were unable to use some of their more deadly toys,” Evans grew strangely solemn. “We haven’t always been so lucky.”

Trying to swallow past the sudden lump of nervousness in my throat was hard, but I managed.

“Have you ever…lost anyone?”

Again came that terrible stillness, as if he’d been turned to stone. It was Marcus who answered.

“Several,” his voice was gruff. “It was one of the reasons why we decided to fund the formation of the new task force. It hasn’t eradicated the problem, but the attacks have become less frequent now that the police have the extra help.”

This was not at all what I had been expecting. If it was true, then Gabriel Evans was a lot less sketchy than I’d always assumed. There were still a lot of unanswered questions, but it seemed, from what they were telling me, they were victims rather than shady criminal overlords.

If I were the kind of woman without trust issues I may have believed them.

There are two sides to every story, however. If I could get my hands on one of these Huntsmen, I’d bet they’d have something equally juicy to tell. When I looked up from these musings only to see Marcus eyeing me, I shifted guiltily in my seat. Suddenly understanding how Evans must have felt under my earlier regard, I decided to cut him some slack.

“How sure are you that the rest of the men sent over from Alder aren’t also Huntsmen?”

“Very,” he growled.

Holding up a placating hand I nodded. “Ok. I get it. Were you still hoping for a merger?”

He and Marcus exchanged a brief look, before Evans met my eyes and nodded.

I grinned.

“Then I think I can help.”

****

Fun fact about people: Everyone has a secret.

Something they want kept buried.

A skeleton knocking on the walls of their closet.

It’s the best part about investigative journalism. The dirt digging.

It took a little research, a few phone calls, and a quick trip to a sketchy part of town to get it all together, but by the time I’d gotten what I needed Evans had managed to convince A.I. to send another group of representatives.

They agreed under two conditions:

That they be allowed to bring their own security.

That they’d be meeting directly with Evans and not a subordinate.

I didn’t see a problem with it, but I advised Evans to make sure that Penelope Jensen was also present at the meeting; once all the terms were agreed to, we convened in Gabriel’s office. Even with the three people from A.I. and three security guards, there weren’t nearly enough of us to fill up all the seats at the overly large conference table.

Seated at the head of the table, Evans looked perfectly at ease while the rest of us, Marcus included, seemed dwarfed by the sheer space. I was afraid we’d have to yell to be heard, but thankfully the acoustics in the room were nothing to sneeze at.

“What’s all this about?” Penelope Jensen spoke up almost as soon as Evans took a seat. “You don’t honestly think we’d listen to anything you had to say after what you did to Fredrichs this morning?”

As she spoke, I pulled a small digital recorder out of my purse and set it on the table. Then I shrugged. I’d asked Evans to let me lead things and he seemed content enough to do so.

Curious.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jensen,” I began, “but I’m afraid I don’t know who Fredrichs is.” I could only assume that he’d been the guy who’d gotten his ear bitten off before passing out, but no need to rehash the past. “I am, however, close friends with Georgina.”

At the name, she frowned, looking to her companions for clarification. I almost felt sorry for her. Penelope Jensen was an older woman, refined, poised. Her steel gray hair was cut into a flattering pixie cut and sources told me that her husband, Judge Jensen, was hoping to run for governor one day.

Fortunately for us, sources told me a lot of things.

Sources had big mouths.

“Please. This should explain everything.” I pressed play on the recorder and watched, emotionless, as Jensen’s complexion turned an alarming shade of puce. For a moment the room was silent, but for the hoarse pleas and moans coming from Judge Jensen as he was rammed from behind by Georgina, the six-foot tranny ho (I just called her Genie). The silence lasted until someone choked. It was Evans, and whatever struggle he was waging with himself lasted only until Judge Jensen’s orgasm had him singing a warbling, breathless rendition of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid before he dissolved into outright raucous laughter.

I stopped the tape and Jensen looked at me as if she’d very much like to bury her stiletto in my eye. Smiling, I asked sweetly, “Does your husband often sing Disney when he comes?”

“There’s no proof it’s him,” she snapped. The attitude told me that he was indeed a fan of the Disney musicals. Eh. Not that I was judging. Some people were more “spank me, daddy; pull my hair” than “it’s better down where it's wetter.” But in the end, all of it was the same thing.

Dirty talk.

I shrugged. “No proof it isn’t, either,” I told her, not unkindly. “And Georgina can be very convincing when she wants to be. Things like this have a way of making life…difficult,” I warned her. “Aggravated assault charges are like that too. Unnecessary trouble.” I sent a significant glance towards a still laughing Evans, before raising a brow at Jensen.

Then, popping the recorder open, I took out the mini tape and slid it across the table to her. “You can keep it. I have copies.”

Jensen’s jaw tightened, her teeth ground together, and her icy blue eyes spit rage.

“Where’s. The damn. Contract.”

Jackpot.

“No one ever sheds a tear for the wolf. Not anymore.”

—Sinclair Morrison

Chapter Five

“I like not being in jail,” Evans’s comment was slow and golden with pleasure.

“Jail likes not having you,” I assured him, feeling rewarded when he turned and smiled at me.

“Miss Conners,” he said slowly, stepping all up in my personal space to grip my hands in his own, “that was cold, calculated, and devious.”

“Thank you,” I said, truly touched.

“No, thank you.” Lifting my hand, he pressed warm lips against my knuckles, his eyes trained on me the whole time. It brought on a little shiver that I hadn’t felt in a long time, and, to my surprise, I felt heat rushing to my face.

The dimples appeared, but before I could swoon at the sight and make an ass of myself, Marcus cleared his throat. Funny. I’d completely forgotten that he’d been standing there the entire time.

Shooting him a look of pure irritation, Evans released me.

“I’d like to take you out.”

“Like. For dinner?” I squawked. Jeez. I’m so smooth.

He laughed. “Yes. For dinner. As a thank you. You have no idea how important this was.”

He was right. I didn’t know. And the reminder that I’d been planning on digging the information up somehow at a later date, took away a lot of my pleasure at being asked out. Going out with him, being alone with him, liking him, was wrong on so many levels, even if I was just who I was pretending to be.

“There’s no need for thanks,” I told him, unable to squelch the disappointment in my voice. “I was just doing my job, Mr. Evans.”

I’m not sure what expression came over him at that, because I’d already turned my back on him to gather my purse from the now abandoned conference table. But if the uncomfortable way that Marcus shifted was any indication, it wasn’t at all pleasant.

“Fine,” he said, his voice overly careful. “Another time then. And please, call me Gabriel.”

From most men it would have sounded like a polite suggestion. From Gabriel Evans it bordered on an outright order. It was all about inflection I supposed. I swung my purse strap over my shoulder and turned to him with a smile.

“Of course. And you can call me Phaedra.” I wrinkled my nose. “‘Miss Conners makes me sound like an elementary school teacher.”

My attempt to lighten the mood fell flat. He just looked at me, amber eyes quiet and thoughtful, and head cocked to one side.

“Phaedra,” he breathed, voice like music against the syllables of my name. Turning it into something magical and unfamiliar. “Phaedra.”

Hearing him say my name like that, as if it were something sweet to roll around on his tongue and savor, had me shivering again, and wide-eyed I found myself looking to Marcus for help.

“Come on, big guy,” he said, slapping Evans on the shoulder and bringing him out of whatever spell he’d fallen under. “The lady is heading to lunch, and you and I have another meeting to go to.”

It was like someone offered a kid a puppy and then told them they couldn’t touch it. His expression was a paroxysm of disappointment, before he sighed and straightened his shoulders.

“Enjoy your lunch Miss—” Hesitation. Then, mischief and a naughty, naughty smile.

“Phaedra.” He purred darkly.

My back went ramrod straight, and my nose went in the air, but no matter how quickly, or stiffly, I moved, I couldn’t get the sound of his chuckles out of my head or make the

red fade from my face. I marched out of his office wondering if I could somehow convince Dawson that I wasn’t a coward for canceling the investigation because the mark made me react like a pre-adolescent girl with a crush.

****

“Do you ever notice how everything that you’re supposed to stick up your vagina is all in one shelf?”

The old woman bypassing the aisle I was currently standing in turned her head enough to glare at me before continuing on.

“Will you focus?” Sonya snapped, her voice an irritated warble in my ear. I stopped examining the condoms, tampons, and douches long enough to roll my eyes at my cell.

“Oi. Tame that shrew. I don’t have time for your attitude. I’m trying to engage in a friendly conversation,” I said, turning to wander off, only to pause with a sigh of disgust. “Correction, I told Sonya, my gaze burning holes in the baby diapers and infant paraphernalia directly adjacent from the contraception and vibrating sex rings. “Things that go in your vagina and things that come out of your vagina? All in the same aisle. It’s like this in every store. Every time I go to buy tampons I know everyone who sees me is wondering whether I’m pregnant, horny, or in need of some good old fashioned feminine wash. It’s actually really stressful.”

“Phaedra.”

She sounded exhausted. Poor thing. After a final grimace at my surroundings, I moved on.

“There’s not really anything else to tell,” I assured her, wondering for what felt like the hundredth time where these people kept the chocolates. It was basic human fucking rights to keep all sweets within arm’s reach of patrons. Or at least in their direct line of sight. What sort of sicko designed a pharmacy this way?

“And you really couldn’t get anything?”

I understood her frustration so I allowed my voice to soften. “I searched the office while they were at some meeting and there was nothing. They have a second room, but I couldn’t get past the lock. The only hard evidence I have is that Judge Jenkins is a freak in the sheets. Not exactly what you were hoping for, but it’ll sure as hell give me a chuckle or two. Along with a quiet sense of satisfaction.”

“Damn.” The expletive was without heat, and silently, I echoed the sentiment. “We need to get those cameras and microphones up ASAP.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” I said, my spirits lifting as I stumbled upon the holy grail of candy aisles. “What’s the status on that anyway?” I asked, filling my little hand basket with caramel filled goodness.

Sonya laughed, but not like she was happy. “Turns out Mark is using them for some investigative report on the plastic surgery of the rich and famous. We won’t be able to get our hands on any of it until he’s done.”

“You’d think our story would take precedence.”

“He called dibs.”

“Prick.”

“Don’t I know it.”

We both sighed at the same time, and, satisfied with my spoils, I headed up to the cash register. “There’s something I want you to look into,” I said finally. “There’s a group calling themselves the Huntsmen running roughshod over Evans and his people. How about you see what you can dig up on them for me?”

I’d been chewing on this bit of information every since Evans and Marcus had told me about them. While I’d love nothing better than to do the digging myself, I knew Sonya would appreciate something more hands on. Plus, I had no idea how deep she’d have to go to get anything good, and if Evans caught me anywhere near the Huntsmen…

Let’s just say I was fond of both of my ears and leave it at that.

I couldn’t afford even the slightest rumor of dishonesty. I needed him to learn to trust me, but we also needed more leads. I wanted to know why a group of self-proclaimed rebels had made Gabriel Evans their target. What had he done to make them hate him so much?

Sonya was brimming with as many questions as I was by the time I’d finished filling her in on what I knew. Her voice was tight with excitement, and I found myself smiling a little as I parked my car in front of my building.

“I’ll start working on it tonight. I know a guy in the police department who may be able to give me a few names. It won’t be much, but it’ll give us a start.”

“Sounds great,” I told her, phone pressed between ear and shoulder as I struggled to unlock my front door. “Keep me posted.”

We hung up without saying goodbye and with my newly freed hand, I was finally able to get into my apartment with my bag of junk food still intact. It was Friday night, and I was ready to roll myself in my favorite blanket like a tortilla and eat until my self-esteem got off its high horse and came back down to earth. I’d noticed I’d been a little cocky about fitting in my size nine jeans again and figured a bag of bite sized Twix, a large Snickers, and two Danish pastries would put me in my place.

The second I stepped through my front door I knew something was wrong. When you live your life a certain way, when things are always in one place, it’s easy to notice change. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have noticed that my living room window had been opened recently, or the fact that my desk had been rifled through, the papers just a smidgen askew, but I made my living noticing details that others missed.

I went over to the side table stationed by the window and readjusted the lone orchid on the surface. I liked the leaves to face a certain way, so that when you looked at the plant from any point in the apartment, you’d be able to see the myriad of colors that made up its center. Someone, or something, probably the wind from the opened window, had disturbed the plant enough that it had been knocked crooked in its jar.

I didn’t appreciate it, but had expected it. You don’t work for powerful men without spiking the interest of their enemies. Luckily for me, I’d cleaned out anything of importance long before I’d started working for Evans.

Still, as I pet my orchid I looked out into the darkness beyond the window, and wondered if maybe, just maybe, the ones who’d been here earlier were still out there. Watching.

Just in case they were, I gave them the finger before turning away.

My nightly routine was a simple one. Strip and change into an oversized shirt I’d stolen from an ex-boyfriend. Put my hair into a bouncy top-knot and drag my blanket into the living room so I could watch TV until exhaustion got the better of me. After turning on the television, I plopped on the couch with my bag of junk food and gorged.

The best part about eating by myself is that I no longer had to worry about who may or may not be staring at me in unabashed horror. Some women snored, some were super clingy, and I was a messy eater. It may not seem like such a bad thing, but you say that to the many dates that had to witness me pick lettuce out of my hair or wipe ice cream off my forehead. For me food wasn’t just sustenance, but an artistic medium, and as I licked the desecrated remains of baked goods from my fingertips I thought to myself, “This. This right here is probably why I’m still single.”

That thought led to another.

“I wonder what Evans would say if he could see me now.”

I remembered the wild sound of his laughter from the meeting with Jensen and snorted.

Wincing when strawberry cream filling went up my nose.

When I talked to the police an hour later, I kept that part to myself.

The part where I wasn’t shot because I was digging Danish out of my nose like I was searching for buried treasure. Whenever I see people digging up their noses in their cars or offices, I always wonder why they think no one can see them through the glass.

It isn’t blacked out or anything. It isn’t a two way mirror. You should automatically assume that anything you do can be viewed by the hundreds of people passing you by on the other side of it. At the time, I still wasn’t sure if I was being watched through my own window, and I certainly wasn’t about to close the blinds in case they were, since that would be a sign of weakness. So when I got food up my nose I ducked down on my couch without thinking to get it back out again.

That’s when the first bullet came through the window and took out my honey bun.

Granted, I didn’t know that at the time. I was giggling at something on TV and doing my best impression of an inch worm in my tortilla style blanket wrapping, so I could stuff my face into

an open bag of powdered doughnuts on the other end of the couch. My head was buried in powdered sugar, so I didn’t see the honey bun, which had been left on the coffee table, take the bullet meant for me.

I didn’t hear anything either. Just a soft popping noise that I attributed to the show I was watching. When I finally reached out of my cocoon to grab the honey bun, the last of his people and my final victory, all I could do was stare at it in confusion.

“This is a bun,” I told the room at large, twisting the wrapped sweet first this way and then that.

“This is not a doughnut,” I continued, finally growing suspicious. “Buns…don’t have holes.

Doughnuts do.” My eyes narrowed to slits. “There sheems to be a dishturbance in the forsh.”

Note: I don’t know why I talk like Sean Connery when upset. I just do. Deal with it.

The next bullet sent the honey bun flying out of my hands and into the heart of my television screen. I didn’t bother screaming, I just moved.

Growing up in a bad neighborhood, it was instinct to flip over the arm of my couch and onto the floor. Without the TV, the room was dark and I could see the red of the sniper’s light traveling unerringly in my direction. I was still wrapped in my blanket though, so there was this breathless moment of panic when I was unrolling myself that I felt, rather than saw, that red light blazing against the middle of my forehead before I managed to scramble free and lunge out of the way.

The next shot took a nice little hole out of my hardwood floor, exactly where my head had been, and discarding the last of the blanket, I army crawled into my kitchen and huddled on the other side of the refrigerator.

I was scared.

Really, really scared. I let myself have a minute or two, let my head rest against the cool side of the refrigerator, before I acknowledged the facts my brain was throwing at me.

1.The shooter had a silencer and probably night vision, if they way they could find me in the dark was any indication.

2.They were methodical. They’d waited until I’d gotten home and settled down before taking a shot at me.

3.They probably weren’t the same people who had searched my place. If they had been, what had been the point of leaving when they could have simply laid in wait and killed me then?

4.I was suspected of being a domestic terrorist. There were Feds parked outside of my building.

That was all the encouragement I needed to make a run for it. Keeping low, I headed straight for my front door. I grabbed the doorknob and screamed when the next bullet had it shattering in my hands. I jerked back, but just as quickly reached out again. Sticking my hand in the gaping hold that had been left behind, I threw the door open and practically fell out of my apartment.

Then I ran, and I didn’t stop running until I felt fresh air on my face and pavement beneath my bare feet. I searched the street, eyes darting, searching, for the one car that had been there consistently for weeks now.

There.

Dark windows, perfect paint job despite the neighborhood, and parked close enough to see anyone who comes or goes.

My heart soared.

I don’t know what I would have done if the two men I’d startled hadn’t worked for the FBI. Maybe I would have crawled into their backseat anyway, made some new friends. But luckily, the agents who glanced first at one another and then at me, seemed happy enough to have me there, despite the fact that their cover had been officially blown. Since I sure as hell wasn’t going back into my apartment, I buckled my seat belt and smiled.

“You boys wouldn’t mind giving me a lift to the police station would you?”

They looked at one another again, and the one in the driver’s seat shrugged.

“Not like we’re doing anything else.”

His partner shook his head in disgust.

“I don’t think this is what Elijah meant by ‘watch.’”

Starting the car, the first man looked over his shoulder at me. “You got any of those tasty cakes left?”

To the mutual disappointment of all, I shook my head.

Human flesh is an endless wonder to me. Food or fucking, it doesn’t matter. I’m always hungry for it.”

—David Finland

Chapter Six

“Why would someone want you dead, Miss Conners?”

I groaned against the surface of the interrogation table and tried not to start cursing. They’d asked the same question more than a dozen times now, but my answer had yet to change.

“I don’t know? My charm? Good looks? Winning personality? The possibilities are endless.”

The Agent sitting on the other side of the table put his hands up in a show of surrender.

“No need for snark, love. I’m just trying to get the full picture. This was a professional job. They had the money and the training-”

“But not the aim,” I interrupted lightly.

The Agent grinned and his fingers intertwined as he leaned towards me.

“Maybe he had the aim,” he said, voice as low as if we were co-conspirators. “Maybe he had the shot, but never took it. Maybe, the only reason you’re still alive is because they have a reason to keep you that way.”

I leaned across the table as well, my own voice lowering to match his. “Then I guess the question you should be asking is why would someone want me alive but scared?”

“That,” he sat back, “is an excellent point.” Picking up his pen, he began to twirl it between his fingers. For the first time since the two agents had brought me in, the questions took a significant change.

“How do you like working for Gabriel Evans, Miss Conners?”

I stiffened, but answered easily enough. “Don’t know yet, it’s only my first day.”

“Only your first day and yet you’ve already met the CEO and President of A.I.” His brow quirked. “That’s pretty impressive for a newbie.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I bit my bottom lip and shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“I think it’s a little bit more than that.”

I glared at the agent, displeased with where all of this was going. I’d come to the police station because I hadn’t known what else to do. I’d expected to have to make a statement to a police officer, and that had indeed been the case. I hadn’t expected to be detained by the same men who’d given me a ride in the first place.

It was nice getting to know the agents who had been watching me since the car bomb, but I would have appreciated a full night’s sleep much more. Especially since I had work in the morning.

The man in question had been the first agent. He was as tall as his partner was short, and he was blessed with ink-black hair that seemed to fall in perfect waves. It matched his Arabian good looks. There was something about him that seemed out of character with the severely starched lines of his suit and easy manner.

His partner was a lot older. A sour-faced man with gray hair and glasses that seemed too large for his thinly jawed face. He was just as carefully dressed, but he seemed stiff and uncomfortable in his clothes. As if he would rather been in jeans and an old t-shirt than a tie and pressed slacks. I would have felt sorry for him, but personally I was comfortable in my nightshirt, no bra, and police issued sweats.

“Am I being charged with anything?” I asked.

The first man, Agent Liam, shook his head. “We’re not detaining you, Miss Conners.”

“Really? Because it sure as hell feels like it.”

“Do you have anywhere else to be? It’s not like you can go back home? The police have cordoned it off.”

“It’s called a hotel.”

His partner, Agent Benson, tsked, his head shaking from side to side at such naiveté.

“You’re smarter than that, Conners. What if your new friends decide they want to do more than scare you? They’ve already proven that they can get to you at home, a hotel would be a walk in the park.”

I could see where all of this was going. If I didn’t have somewhere “safe” to go, the agents could keep me here all night. Simply by claiming that they couldn’t, in good conscious, let me leave when my life was in danger. I did not feel like sleeping in an interrogation room.

“I need to make a phone call.”

****

I couldn’t call Sonya. Staying with her was too risky considering what we were doing.

Especially since she was looking into the Huntsmen angle. Since I didn’t have any friends, and had given up the hope of a family as soon as I’d gotten out of the foster system, there was really only one option.

“Phaedra Conners.” He sounded pleased as punch to hear from me, and I tried not to shiver at the sound of his voice. It wouldn’t be good for the officer who was currently letting me use his desk phone to see just how strongly I was reacting to Gabriel Evans.

“To what do I owe the pleasure? Change your mind about dinner? I’m delighted, but I’m afraid I don’t know any restaurants close by that are open at one o’clock in the morning.”

This was awkward.

“I was sort of hoping you could send someone to pick me up?”

“What’s wrong?” Almost instantly he shifted from easy flirtation to concern. It was sort of flattering. “Where are you?”

From where I sat, I could see the holding cell on the other side of the room. Turning my head, I waved uncertainly at the men currently handcuffed to their seats who were still waiting to be booked. The bald one with the dragon tattoo on his skull was the only one who waved back.

His name was Jack, and we’d become friendly acquaintances considering how often the two of us ended up in prison.

“About that…I-uh-I sort of need someone to come down to the police department.”

“Do I need to bring bail money?”

“I didn’t mean that you—” I sighed, “No. I don’t need bail.”

“Be there in five.” He hung up before I could say anything else. By “I,” I hoped he meant that he was sending some lower level office worker or something and not coming down to get me personally.

I held out on that hope, right up until the moment I saw him step into the precinct. He had on black silk pajama pants, a housecoat, and on his feet were a pair of Tasmanian Devil house slippers.

He was adorable.

After speaking briefly with the woman behind the front desk, he turned unerringly in my direction and beckoned me over. I got to my feet, but the sound of Agent Liam’s voice pulled me up short.

“Is this the ride you were talking about?”

“Sure is,” I told him smoothly.

“And you’re sure Evans’s little lackey will be able to keep you safe?” I thought I sensed genuine concern, but decided that it must have been a part of my imagination.

Looking at Evans I couldn’t help but relax for the first time since I’d been shot at. There was a quietness to him. Different from the charming playboy of before. It reminded me of the first time I’d seen him in the elevator. It was that same nameless something that had drawn me to him despite the blood on his face.

Turning back to Agent Liam, I reached out and shook his hand.

“More than sure. Thanks for your help earlier.”

He returned the handshake with a careful strength. “No problem.” His smile was lopsided, “You ever need anything else, you know where to find us.”

I laughed, “I’ll remember that.”

By the time I’d made my way over to Gabriel, he was staring at the agent with narrowed eyes and a curled lip. I patted his arm lightly as I passed and was rewarded when my touch dragged his attention away from the other man. I didn’t know what it was about Liam that had irritated him, and I was too tired to try and figure it out.

We left the police department and headed to his car in companionable silence. It wasn’t until I’d settled into the passenger seat of his red 2013 Viper that he spoke.

“What happened?”

I thought about lying, but figured the truth was my best bet. If anyone could keep me safe it was Evans, even if the reason I was in danger was also his fault.

“Someone shot up my apartment.”

He made a dangerous, unhappy sound in the back of his throat and I tried to appear very small in my seat.

“I’m not taking you home,” he snapped. His tone was bossy enough that it raised my own hackles.

“I’m not asking you to,” I barked back. “I just needed the cops to get off my back about police protection and I didn’t have anyone else to call.”

Admitting that I didn’t even have someone to crash with was painful, and for a moment an awkward silence filled the car as he acknowledged the fact that I was alone.

“Look,” I began, suddenly feeling defeated, “can you just drop me off at a Motel 6 or something?”

“Where’s your car?” he asked, not bothering to comment on my request.

I frowned. “It’s back at my place. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll ask Marcus to help you get it.”

“Thanks, but I’ll need a ride to and from work in the meantime,” I reminded him. “The motel is too far away from the office for me to walk there.”

“A motel may be, but the company apartment buildings are only a few blocks away.”

I blinked, struggling to see him through the dark interior of the car.

“What are you saying?”

His hands tightened almost imperceptibly around the steering wheel. “You can’t go home and a motel is out of the question. I’ll set you up in one of our spare apartments until all of this blows over.”

The Lumière Corporation had bought and renovated an old hotel a few years back.

They kept it for Board members and their families, as well as employees who came for business from out of state. It was also useful for those international clients who came visiting for various reasons. It kept them from having to worry about paying for a hotel room or renting a car while they were in the U.S.

Rumor had it that these apartments were more like penthouse suites than your generic housing community, and I couldn’t stop my jaw from dropping at the thought that he was just going to give me one.

“I couldn’t—I mean, you can’t—” Again I was at a loss for words. I couldn’t come up with a good argument off the top of my head as to why I shouldn’t take the apartment. Even if the attack hadn’t been made by the Huntsmen, the only other enemies I’d made recently had been the Jensens. And even that had been done to help Evans.

He owed me sanctuary. Why was I surprised that he was actually giving it to me?

“Then it’s settled.” Sounding smugly satisfied, he pressed the gas and we flew into the upper echelons of society at almost ninety miles an hour. About half an hour later, I found myself standing in the center of my new, albeit temporary, apartment. It was double the size of my place and a hell of a lot nicer. There was a lot of stainless steel and exposed beams. Suddenly my life was an episode of House Hunters and I had a budget of $300,000 dollars. It was enough to give me an HGTV hard-on.

Evans, meanwhile, didn’t bother asking me if I liked my new accommodations. He could see the truth of it written all over my face.

“I’ll send Marcus to pick you up first thing in the morning.”

“And where are we supposed to be going?” I asked, running my fingers across the butcher-block countertop in the open concept kitchen.

“He’ll take you back home so you can pack…” He seemed to struggle for a moment. “… things,” he finished finally. Lamely.

“Things?”

I could hear the shrug in his voice. “You know. Whatever it is that women use to survive from day to day. Girl things.”

Thank god. I’d worried about what I was supposed to do for clothes and a toothbrush, but had dreaded the idea of going back home by myself. When I turned to express my thanks, I found him standing less than a foot away. He’d done it again. Gotten past my bubble without even the idea of a sound to betray his presence. It was darker in the kitchen than in the living room, since I had yet to turn on a light during my exploration. So when I looked at him, something about seeing all of that lean muscle towering over me made me feel as if I were trapped in one of those dreams. The kind of dream in which some shadow lover does wicked, dirty things to you before vanishing with the rise of the sun.

It didn’t help my delusions that there was just something about him…

There was a heat to him, something dark and smoky that drugged the senses and left me trembling and dazed. A heat that caressed the flesh like fingers and stirred something hungering and achy to life from the very center of my being. Was it just his proximity that made me react this way, or was it the look in his eyes and the way the shadows teased the strong lines of his face and jaw?

Maybe it was his proximity, or maybe it was just the fact that we were alone for the first time since I’d met him. No matter the reason, it didn’t take me long to reach a terrifying conclusion. I was lusting after Gabriel Evans. I wasn’t just reacting to a handsome man after a dry spell, or fixating on the forbidden.

I just wanted him.

Not so pure, but very simple.

“Mr. Evans-” I spoke without thinking about what I was going to say, or how I would disperse the sudden tension in the air. I’m sure I would have figured something out if he had given me the chance, but he sort of exploded at the sound of his name.

In a blur of movement, he had me backed up against the counter I’d been examining.

Hips pressed flush against hips, the heat that had only teased me before now a searing brand where the hard length of him pressed against the soft promise of me.

His hands came up, and I gasped, growing still, either in anticipation or in fear of his touch. I wasn’t sure if I’d say no if he did put his hands on me. But he didn’t. At least not right away. Instead, his hands simply hovered, cupping the air on either side of my face as he leaned in and pressed his nose against my skin.

For a moment we were cheek to cheek. All I could feel was his hot, moist breath caressing my eardrum and the rough slide of his five o’clock shadow against my mouth.

“Gabriel,” he breathed, face rubbing against my own as if memorizing my features by touch alone. “My name is Gabriel.” His voice deepened and my thighs clenched, inner muscles clutching at nothing as that smooth baritone seemed to fuck every vowel and consonant that it uttered. “It’s the only name I ever want to hear come out of your mouth. Say it.”

“Gabriel.” His hips pressed forward, and my head fell back of its own accord as his erection pressed against something small and sweet.

“Breathe it.”

“Gabriel.” It escaped on a sigh as his teeth nipped my earlobe.

“Moan it for me.”

I obliged; I couldn’t help it. It was only when he growled against the side of my neck in pleasure that some semblance of common sense tried to return.

What the hell was I doing?

What the hell was I letting him do?

Even if he were really my boss, this would be so wildly inappropriate it wasn’t even funny. Pressing my hands against his shoulders, I tried to shove him back. At first he didn’t even so much as budge, but then sanity seemed to return for him as well, because he flew back from me as if stung.

“I—” His eyes were wide, his face pale, and his shoulders hunched. He met my gaze only briefly before jerking his own away and down. “I’m sorry, Miss Conners.” His voice was so stiff, so formal, that it actually stung a little.

We stood there, me staring at him, him staring at the floor, before, with a bitter little smile, he inclined his head and said, “Goodnight.”

He was to the door before I could find my voice again.

“Phaedra,” I told him. “Just Phaedra.”

Back still to me, he stiffened for a heartbeat. Two. Then, a rueful chuckle.

“Phaedra,” he agreed. The smile that he sent over his shoulder was softer, more intimate, than all the ones before. “Goodnight Phaedra.”

I swallowed. “Goodnight…Gabriel.”

Then he was gone.

I stood there in the half-lit apartment for what felt like a very long time. No matter how tightly I wrapped my arms around myself I couldn’t seem to erase the chill that his absence had left behind.

For the first time since agreeing to this whole mess, the task before me felt daunting.

****

As was quickly becoming the norm, my interaction with Marcus was marked by long intense silences, a couple of dirty looks, and your occasional snide comment. So, in essence, we were actually getting along famously.

It wasn’t until he was dropping me off at my car after helping me pack up some things from my apartment that anything of note happened.

“You don’t have much family do you?”

I straightened almost immediately, forgetting the duffle bag I’d been trying to stuff into my trunk. The look I sent him was filled with the appropriate amount of venom.

“If by ‘much’ you mean ‘none at all,’ then no. I don’t.” A fact I was sure he was perfectly aware of, since it was as much a part of public record as my criminal history.

Sighing as if he’d rather be anywhere else, Marcus stuffed his hands into his jean pockets and leaned against the side of my car.

“There’s nothing wrong with being an orphan,” he told me. “Gabe doesn’t have any parents either.” He paused and his voice turned harsh. “The difference between you and Gabriel is that someone actually wanted him.”

I jerked back as if he’d struck me.

“I don’t mind if you two want to share some bodily fluids every now and then, but that’s as far as it’s ever going to go,” he continued, his eyes hard and cold as he watched me.

Searching to see if the barbs he threw were drawing blood.

My lips tightened and I crossed my arms over my chest to hide the rage that had whitened my knuckles. “Last time I checked, Gabriel wasn’t some simpering virgin, so why are you playing the overly protective papa? Not that I mind. It’s cute, in fact. But I don’t think he’d appreciate you sticking your nose in his business when it’s really none of yours.”

He snarled at me, a throaty, angry sound that had me taking a step back even as he advanced.

“I’m doing you a favor. We may not be blood, but Gabe is family and I’m not the only one who sees him that way. Some of them aren’t nearly as forgiving as I am when it comes to little girls who like playing Gold-Digger. And believe me, love, compared to them I’m a goddamned Tickle Me Elmo.”

I couldn’t even enjoy mentally picturing Marcus giggling in hysterics every time someone poked his belly. I was too busy trying to bury the hurt his words had caused. I was angry, yeah, but a small part of me, the part who was reminded every holiday and birthday that she was an orphan, wanted to cry. I wanted that. Someone who would look out for me. Who would commit violence for me.

I bet it would be nice to not have to fight my own battles for once.

“Hey,” his voice was an unwelcome intrusion to my thoughts, “are we on the same page or not Conners?”

I shrugged as if I could care less. “Oh yeah,” I assured him. “I’m even a couple of paragraphs ahead.”

Getting into his car, his lips tightened in annoyance. I could have sworn I heard him mutter “smartass” before he revved his engine and drove away, but somehow I couldn’t enjoy the title as much as I usually did.

“The moon is my god now. I dance for it, I pine for it, and if it asked, I would kill for it.”

—Gemma Watson

Chapter Seven

The next few weeks were uneventful.

Whenever I was around Gabriel, I did my best to keep my distance both emotionally and physically. Whenever he tried to get me alone, I found some reason to leave or only showed up when I knew for a fact that he had someone else in the room with him. I wasn’t avoiding Gabriel because Marcus had warned me away. I was avoiding him because I wanted more than anything to do the exact opposite.

Everything about him fascinated me. From the way he moved and spoke to the quick, almost deadly, way his mind worked. I actually enjoyed seeing him get one over on another company no matter the project in question and finally, after what felt like ages, I found myself looking forward to coming to work. Gabriel challenged me in a way that Dawson never had, and even more appealing, after the incident with Jensen, he began to depend more and more heavily on my insight.

I didn’t even mind being sent on the occasional errand, since it gave me some much needed space away from Marcus. Though admittedly, the other man, who I’d come to learn was actually the head of Gabriel’s security detail, hadn’t bothered me since our little talk.

Everything was going smoothly, at least from a professional standpoint. I hadn’t heard from Sonya since I’d told her about the attack on my apartment. I was ashamed to say that by the time I saw her name come up on my caller ID three weeks later, I’d actually forgotten what I had been sent there to do.

“There’s nothing here,” I told her, leaning against the door of the handicapped stall at Lumière. It was true. I’d searched whenever I could and had called in my favors. After all of that, I had little more than what I’d started out the month with.

Speculation.

“The only thing I’ve managed to find out is that he’s adopted, Marcus is his foster brother, and that he shares ownership of Lumière with six other people.”

“Were you able to get any names?”

“They’re shadows. I don’t even know if they’re men, women, or aliens. The only reason I know they exist at all is because I overheard Gab—Evans and Marcus talking the other day.”

She groaned, but brightened almost instantly. “Well, your luck sucks, but mine doesn’t.”

I refrained, barely, from calling her something nasty. Any progress was good progress at this point. Especially since it didn’t look like I was getting anywhere on my end unless Gabriel slipped up somehow.

“Tell me.”

“Well—” her voice lowered in sudden nervousness, “—I was actually hoping we could go somewhere and talk. I don’t want to say too much over the phone.” She paused for a beat. “Plus,” she added slyly, “I have a little surprise for you.”

My pulse quickened, and all of a sudden I was all hunting instincts and restless energy

“Does this surprise happen to start with a ‘spy’ and end with a ‘camera’?”

“I wouldn’t know you very well if it didn’t.”

“Hot damn, girl, I like you better and better every day.”

Since it was my lunch break, we agreed to meet up at a little diner about two blocks from my new apartment so I could still grab a bite to eat. Bob’s Burgers (no relation to the television show) was a throwback to the golden points of the 40’s and 50’s. The waitresses were required to dress according to the fashion of the era, which mean a lot of faux bangs, pearl necklaces, and bright red lipstick. He even had an old fashioned jukebox and booths covered with red vinyl.

What made BB’s so great wasn’t the fact that it strived for authenticity, but that it kept things modern and fun. Some of the wait staff may have been dressed like Stepford wives and pin-up girls, but they were boasting such a wide array of tattoos and piercings it was like a photo shoot for BAMF monthly. The jukebox was filled with Kesha and Bruno Mars, and the black and white television in the corner over the smoothie bar was playing HBO originals rather than Leave it to Beaver.

Which means it was a physical effort to pry my eyes from the TV (currently showing a re-run of Game of Thrones) long enough to look around the restaurant in search of Sonya. I found her easily enough. She was sitting in a corner booth and giggling with the host, a young man who was a strange mixture between the Fonz from Happy Days and a sultry-eyed James Dean.

Which meant that I forgave the giggling and hair twirling easily enough, especially when she sent the man on his way without fuss once her eyes met mine. I slid in the booth across from her and groaned in approval when I saw my plate. I’d had her place my order for me, and for an

instant, I simply let myself bask in the lovely aroma of freshly made fries and a burger thick enough to bitch slap my arteries into whimpering submission.

God bless America.

“Spill.”

The fact that she wasn’t offended, or surprised, over the lack of pleasantries probably meant that Sonya and I were a lot more alike than I’d thought.

“The Huntsmen are being led by a woman names Jessica Pearson.” Reaching into the messenger bag sitting in the seat beside her, she drew out one of those grade school folders that people buy their kids from Wal-Mart when the school year starts. I eyed the colorful depiction of the Avengers on the front, while I stuffed my face with cooked cow and raised an eyebrow at what I could see of her from over my sesame seed bun.

Shrugging, she slid a picture across the table towards me.

The woman in the frame had long dark hair, and a smooth, olive-toned complexion. Her dark brown eyes were nearly black, and she sported these bold Latino features that would have made her a shoo-in for almost any soap opera.

“Jessica Pearson is a forty-two-year-old human rights activist who used to freelance as a computer programmer. Pearson was arrested about ten years back for causing a public disturbance when she wandered into St. Mary’s Cathedral with a gun screaming about the ‘eradication of demons in human flesh.’”

I rolled my eyes. “Overdramatic much?”

Sonya snorted in agreement. “Exactly. Anyway, she fell off the radar for a while, only to resurface a few months ago when she was charged with aggravated assault of a Lumière employee. Which is strange considering who Mrs. Pearson used to work for.”

Gabriel Evans.

Sonya bobbed her head in excitement and said in a singsong sort of voice, “Cue dramatic music sequence.”

I obliged her with a garbled, “Dum, dum, dum,” as I stuffed more French fries in my mouth, amused when she whipped the first picture away with a flourish only to replace it with another.

Then I actually looked at the picture, and nearly choked to death. If she hadn’t slapped my hands away from the glossy 4X6, I would have smeared my lunch residue all over it.

“Marcus Evans,” she told me gleefully, yet again jerking the picture out of my reach when I would have snatched it away. “If Pearson is the brains, then Marcus is the muscle. He’s been

supplying the group with weapons and intel for months. Ever since his predecessor, Aubrey Reed, disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Can you say Jane Doe?” My voice was bitter.

Sonya nodded sadly. “I sure can.”

I stared at the picture of Marcus for a long time, mind racing. A part of me wanted to march back to the office and rat him out to Gabriel, but that part of me wasn’t looking at the big picture.

The rest of me was.

Why would Gabriel trust the word of a stranger over that of a man he’d literally grown up with? Especially when I told him how I’d come by this tidbit of information.

Grabbing a napkin, I wiped some of the carnage off of my face. “So,” I said slowly, “either Marcus is playing two sides, or he’s doing exactly what Gabriel wants him to.”

Frowning, Sonya swiped a fry before I could deprive her of her hand. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it,” I said, tugging my plate closer and huddling protectively over it. Like an inmate, or maybe a hobo. A waitress passed by our table and eyed me carefully. I ignored her. “Forming a new task force, getting the police chief and the mayor on his side, and pretending to be some benevolent savior? You can’t play at being a hero unless there’s already a villain wandering around.”

“But what would be the point?”

I shrugged. “Most likely it’s all a smokescreen. They found military grade weapons in the car that blew up back in February. We’re talking about an underground terrorist organization. They had to get the weapons from someone willing to deal under the table and who could provide what they needed in bulk.” I shook my head as I continued to turn the puzzle pieces over in my head. “Which means gun smuggling.”

“Gun smuggling, human trafficking, kidnapping, murder.” Sonya’s lip curled, “Gabriel Evans sounds like a real catch. I’m sure his mother would be proud.”

Ketchup and mustard oozed over my fingers as my nails bit into the burger I was holding. I could feel my face starting to tighten in annoyance, but I shook it off. Why was I getting so offended when I’d been the one to put the idea in her head in the first place?

It was crazy, but I just couldn’t reconcile the Gabriel Evans I knew now with the faceless monster he’d been before. It was easy to place sins at the door of a man you’d never seen laugh. Easy to judge someone who’d never picked you up from jail at one o’clock in the morning. Easy

to hate the man that everyone thought he was when he wasn’t one of the first people to ever make you feel wanted.

It was as if I were thinking of him as two different men. One was the guy I liked and the other was the one that made the inner journalist in me salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

This line of thought was making my brain hurt. Time for a subject change.

“Were you able to dig up info on any of their other members?”

“Negatory,” she told me. “I do have a date with a certain enforcer next week though.”

My eyes widened. “How did you manage to pull that off?”

She grinned and gave a little half shrug, as if convincing the humorless Marcus Evans to go out with her hadn’t been the least bit difficult.

“I can be very charming when I put my mind to it.”

I laughed, “I’m sure you can.”

“I’m hoping he’ll let me join their little group. Or at least give me a tour or something.”

Waggling her eyebrows she reached out and stole another fry. This time I allowed it.

“Who knows? By this time next week you may not be the only one working undercover.”

She was so obviously pleased with herself that I couldn’t bring myself to voice the doubts that had begun to rise. Marcus was dangerous, but I had to trust that Sonya

knew what she was doing and would be able to take care of herself. If something seemed off, I’m sure she had enough common sense to get out.

Looking at the clock mounted on the wall behind the cash register, I cursed.

“I have to get back,” I told her, reaching into my purse and slapping down a twenty. “Tell the waitress to keep the change.”

“Hold on.”

I stopped in the middle of sliding out from my side of the booth and looked back. Pulling a small paper sack out of her messenger bag, she grinned at me. “You almost forgot your surprise.”

Taking it from her with all the reverence I would have reserved for the Holy Grail, I clutched the sack to my chest and beamed.

“Thanks.”

She nodded and waved me off, pulling my abandoned plate to her side of the table so that she could finish off what I’d left behind. I walked out of BB’s glowing, and once again determined to find a story.

****

Contents of my Goodie Bag

•Several small cameras no bigger than the tip of my pinkie finger

•A voice recorder hidden inside the body of a pen

•A camera that looked like a pendant necklace

•A lock pick

•A stun gun

•A USB that would allow me to save and access all the data from my spy stuff

•A half-eaten Kit Kat bar

This was some real life James Bond shit, and I couldn’t wait to try them all out. I got back to the office long before my lunch was scheduled to be over. I’d scheduled Gabriel to have a late lunch

so that he could go over some paperwork with his lawyer, after that I’d set up a meeting with his Board of Directors concerning some policy changes, followed by a mid-afternoon appointment with Miss Lin, the bad-tempered Asian with magic guru fingers of relaxation and happiness.

I didn’t like talking to Lin because she could test the patience of a saint, but the woman’s massages would make a mass murderer poop rainbows. It was the only reason I put up with her shenanigans.

What all of this boiled down to was that I would have plenty of time to hide my new toys. I placed a couple in Gabriel’s main office, one in the elevator, and held on to the rest until I could find a chance to slip them into his inner office. In the meantime, I grabbed the voice recording pen and rolled it beneath the locked door. Hopefully one of the men would pick it up thinking they’d dropped it or something. Either that, or they’d step on it and crush it to bits. In which case I hoped the Oracle kept the warranties for all of their gadgets.

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled on the necklace, finished off the Kit Kat, pocketed the stun gun and USB, and declared myself done. Just in time too, because I had no sooner adjusted the necklace at my throat than Gabriel and Marcus stormed through the door.

Gabriel’s face was flushed with color and Marcus looked more sour than usual. I could only assume that they’d been arguing, but as soon as the two men caught sight of me they made a visible effort to relax.

“Phaedra,” Gabriel began, voice striving for normalcy and failing miserably. Thoughtful now, my eyes narrowed. “You’re back early. I thought you’d still be at BB’s.”

This surprised me. I had mentioned my preference for BB’s about a week and a half ago. At the time he hadn’t reacted to my mention of the restaurant’s supremacy over all others, but he must have been listening after all.

“I…uh…I had some paperwork I needed to work on, so I decided to cut my lunch a little short.”

At my words he and Marcus exchanged looks and a muscle began to work in Gabriel’s jaw.

Curious.

Leaning back in my swivel chair, I propped my feet on the edge of my desk and folded my hands over my abdomen.

“Speaking of, what are you two doing back?”

I had the satisfaction of seeing Gabriel shift nervously where he stood, while Marcus scowled at me. They looked at one another again, before Marcus spoke up and I was reminded that these two had been raised as siblings.

“Something came up. Gabriel and I are going to be out of town for a few days. We were just stopping by to pick up a few things.”

My feet came down with a crash, but neither one of them paid me any mind as they walked past me and into Gabriel’s main office.

“What sort of something?” I called after them, unaccountably annoyed that I hadn’t been told anything about it. Gabriel hesitated and turned back.

“It’s personal,” He paused and a brief smile touched his lips and made his eyes sparkle.

“A family emergency. We’ll only be gone for two or three days.”

“But—”

His hand lifted as if he wanted to touch me, but obviously thinking better of it, he let his arm drop.

“Think of it as a vacation.”

“I guess that means you don’t need me to come in?”

“You guessed right.”

I nodded solemnly even as my heart soared. I now had three days to get into that inner office and plant my little goodies. I sighed to cover my rising excitement.

“I guess a break wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive the tragedy,” he said dryly. “Cancel my plans for the rest of the day. After you’re done with that, you can go ahead and head on home.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said cheerfully. “Did you need me take care of the travel arrangements or—”

“No.” I jerked back at the bite in his voice and he cleared his throat with exaggerated care before trying again. “No, thank you. Marcus and I can handle it.”

“Of course.”

He opened his mouth as if to add something more, but only sighed instead. Shoulders slumping, he turned without another word and went into his office after Marcus. The closed door seemed to mock me and the dull sense of loneliness that had begun to fill me at the thought of not seeing him for three days. Ever since I’d started I hadn’t gone longer than a few hours without at least talking to him. There always seemed to be some chore that needed my attention, even on the weekends, which I was supposed to have off.

If I didn’t know any better I would have said that I would miss him, but that couldn’t be right. It was probably just excitement. After all, I planned on getting into his inner office even if I had to scale the side of the building and come in through a window like a ghettofied SWAT team reject.

Picking up the phone on my desk, I dialed a number and sat back with a smile.

“Lin,” I cooed when she picked up, “you old Japanese harpy. Turns out Evans won’t be able to make it to his session this afternoon, so I’m going to need our deposit back.”

“I’m not Japanese, pale-faced slut.”

I tsked. “Sorry. Is this because I didn’t say ‘hello’ first?” I struggled to recall what I knew of the language. “It’s ‘ohayō,’ isn’t it? Isn’t that how your people say hello?”

“I’m not Japanese!” she screeched, and I had to slap a hand over my mouth to muffle my laughter. “Every time you call I have to put up with your shit. One of these days I kill you and stuff your body in my blender. Feed it to my kids. Teach them what American trash taste like.”

“Whoa there, tiger. What’s the matter, Mae Lin?” I asked, as if honestly concerned. “Find another cobweb in your vagina this morning?”

“At least I don’t have to send entire rescue party up there to bring back the men I sleep with.”

“Call me a ho one more time,” I snapped, growing real tired of her sass. “Do it. I dare you. I hear one more ho insult come out of your mouth and I’m going to crawl through this phone and go Jackie Chan all over your wrinkled Asian ass.”

That’s when shit got real.

“Jackie Chan!? I bring Jet Li! You want Jet Li!? He make your Jackie Chan cry like a little bitch.”

“Eat a dick, old woman.”

“How can I when you already take them all?” She made a sound like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, and for the next two minutes I continued to exchange vicious insults with a seventy-five-year-old grandmother, who I was pretty sure used to be a member of the Chinese Mafia (See that? I could learn).

Life was good.

Especially when she called me a fat, pasty-skinned she-demon and agreed to return our thousand dollar deposit. I called and rescheduled the rest of Gabriel’s appointments for the next three days in high spirits. While none of the rest of my calls were as entertaining as Lin’s, by the time I was ready to go home I was practically humming.

The lock pick in my purse was calling my name and I soothed it with promises of breaking and entering and illegal trespassing. If there’s one thing I understand, it was the need to cause mischief, and I’d been on my best behavior for far too long.

Mischief is what makes the world go round. Without it, nothing would ever get done.

—Deidre Hollow

Chapter Eight

When doing something illegal I liked to hum the song from Mission Impossible beneath my breath. It was my version of “Whistle While You Work,” and it made the lock picking aspect of the evening go much more smoothly. Granted, I’d never been very fast with picking a lock, and the one that Gabriel had on the door to his inner office was more advanced than I had given it credit for. Luckily, I wasn’t in a rush.

It had been a simple matter to make my way back through the building after hours. My security clearance as Gabriel’s personal assistant meant that entering my employee ID and fingerprint got me through pretty much any locked door. A cheery wave and bag of doughnuts for the night guard and I was in, as simple as that. By far, the hardest part of my night had been the ache in my knees from kneeling in front of the lock for so long.

It was all worth it when I heard the soft “click” that meant I’d gotten through. Grinning, I stuffed the lock pick back into my oversized purse. Reaching out to turn the lock, I paused as something reached my ears.

It sounded like…voices?

Scrambling now, I got to my feet, my hand clutching my bag against my chest to keep the contents from clanking around and giving me away. Halfway back across the room, I heard the door separating my office from Gabriel’s open. Cursing beneath my breath, I changed direction and stumbled in the dark until I found the conference table. I’d just hidden beneath it when the lights flickered on.

“It’s almost time. Is everything ready?”

Gabriel.

I felt myself pale.

“Security says the last of the stragglers came in about half an hour ago. The alarm is set, the cells are locked, and the task force just arrived to help deal with the Specters.”

Specters?

Cells?

Above and beyond my concern over those two phrases however, one thing that Marcus had said made alarm bells start going off in my noggin.

Task force.

Gabriel’s specialized task force was patrolling the building. Even if I could make it out of the office now, how the hell was I supposed to make it past them? For a moment, all I could do was sit there and curse Gabriel and Marcus Evans for being a pair of no good, dirty liars. If they had just gone out of town like they were supposed to, I could have infringed on their privacy without all this added stress.

From beneath the table, all I could see of either man were their legs. I was as far back as I could get without coming out at the other side, so I had no concerns that they would see me. Especially since it looked like they were heading towards the inner office without any hesitation. They’d almost reached the door when one pair of legs stopped. I’m ashamed to admit that I recognized who said appendages belonged to, and his voice confirmed it.

“Do you smell that?” Gabriel asked, voice lowering.

His question brought Marcus to a standstill, and I froze as the other man inhaled deeply.

“Yes.” The words were a growl, a hungry little rumble, as if he’d caught a whiff of his favorite meal on the air.

My nails bit into my palms and I held my breath.

They might have gone on standing there for an eternity, both eerily still, bodies tense, if the emergency lights for the fire alarm hadn’t begun to flash. They blinked once, twice,

three times. Blood-red eyes in the corner of the room. The flash was enough to drag Marcus, at least, from whatever it was that they’d scented in the room.

“Shit.” He began to move again and this time he made it to the door without distraction.

“Come on, Gabe. They’re almost here.”

If I had expected Gabriel to be as easily distracted as his brother, I was obviously mistaken. Instead of following Marcus through the door (he didn’t seem to notice that it had already been unlocked), Gabriel had wandered even closer to the conference table.

I watched his footsteps approach. Noted the silent way he moved as if he were floating on air rather than simply putting one foot in front of the other.

“Gabriel!”

A beat of silence passed, and in that moment all I could hear was the sound of my pulse racing in my ears.

“I think I’m going to hunt tonight.”

“You can’t-”

“I wasn’t asking permission.” Gabriel’s voice was cold, and I imagined Marcus flinching back at the sound. When he replied, he sounded stiff, almost formal.

“Then I’ll accompany you.”

“No.”

“I insist.”

“I won’t shift, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Marcus snorted, “I’d be more worried if you didn’t shift. Especially tonight, of all nights.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure about this?”

Gabriel’s chuckle was dark and smooth. Sin given a sound. “Positive.”

“Fine. I’ll see you in the morning. Good hunting.”

“Thanks.”

I listened as Marcus finally stepped back into the inner office and shut the door. I heard the lock engage, and some of the tension bled out of me. One down, one more to go. Only, when I looked back towards where I’d last seen Gabriel, he was no longer there. Cautious, I moved forward an inch to see if he’d simply traveled beyond my sight, but he was nowhere. The room was empty.

The fact that I couldn’t see him anymore was enough to give me the chills, and trying to keep quiet, I crawled backwards. Hoping to come out at the other side of the table so that I could at least have the window at my back.

He had me before I knew he was even there.

One second I was sneaking my way towards freedom, and the next, something grabbed me by the ankle and jerked me out from beneath the table. Opening my mouth, I took a deep breath to scream, only to choke when Gabriel slapped a hand over my mouth and loomed over me.

I was laid out flat beneath him, my breathing fast and ragged, and adrenaline coursing through my blood like the sweetest drug. I looked into his eyes from less than an inch away, and as I watched, he slowly raised his free hand to his lips.

“Shhh,” he breathed, gaze unblinking.

I nodded quickly and he took his hand away from my mouth. His amber eyes seemed bright. Too bright. They glistened with fever. His skin was flushed, and I’d remembered just how hot he’d felt in the brief moment we’d been skin to skin.

He shook his head, and his expression was sad. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

There was something strange about him tonight. A restless, eager energy. As if he couldn’t bear to stay in one place for too long. Even as he straddled me, I could feel the way his fingers clenched and the way the muscles in his thighs bunched and quivered like a runner waiting for the shot.

His eyes though…they never strayed from my face. The longer he watched me, the richer the amber in them grew and the darker the world became. I stared into his eyes, and it was as if they were all there was. My vision began to darken around the edges, and all I could see was a long dark tunnel and those eyes at the end of it, calling me home.

I don’t know what it was that he heard. It was too faint for me to catch. I know the lights flickered in the room before going out and casting us both in darkness. In that instant he froze above me, head lifting, and body tensing until he was nothing more than corded muscles and brutal focus.

I drew in a shaky breath and tried not to whimper.

When he looked down at me, all I saw in the darkness of the room were those glowing amber eyes, as rich as old blood and flickering like flames.

“Run.” His voice didn’t even sound human anymore, but I didn’t need him telling me what common sense had been screaming at me to do for the last five minutes.

Then, between one heartbeat and the next, he was gone.

I heard something chuckle in the deeper recesses of the room. A sound like sandpaper on baby’s flesh or broken bones running through a woman’s hair. I wanted to look. I almost needed to look. To see what sort of‌thing, could make a sound like that. What sort of monster could conjure images of death and bloodshed during a fit of mirth.

But something told me not to. That whatever it was in the room with me was better left to nightmares and horror stories. So, for once, instead of giving in to my insatiable curiosity, I did the smart thing.

I ran.

****

I didn’t have an explanation for what had gone on in the office, but then again, I didn’t need one. All I needed to know was that some Twilight Zone shit was going down, and I did not want to be in the middle of it.

Here’s the thing.

I’m not dumb.

As a journalist I’ve heard some pretty fantastical stuff during the course of my career, and as a child of the 90’s I’d grown up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and reading all the Harry Potter books just like everyone else. My generation was the poster child of freaky occurrences and preternatural phenomenon.

You don’t have to keep shoving evidence in my face before I get the picture.

Conversations about “shifting” and “hunting,” coupled with glowing animal eyes and super fast reflexes?

If it looked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, then guess what?

It was a probably a goddamned werewolf.

So I ran, and I didn’t look back. I ran until I hit the wall of elevators, and instead of waiting around for one of them to ding open and allow me entrance, I bypassed them all and took the emergency stairs instead. Now, I know in most horror movies this would be the point in which the bad guy would enter the stairwell and try to slaughter the heroine that sought safety there.

Turns out you can learn a lot from horror movies, because that’s exactly what happened.

In my haste to escape the office, I’d completely forgotten about the task force that had been let loose inside the building. I made it down two flights of stairs, tripping over my own feet in my desperate need to move faster, and faster still. When I made it to the third floor landing, I stopped so quickly I stumbled and fell back on the steps I’d just stepped off of.

On the landing before me stood a wolf.

It. Was. Massive.

Its head came up to my chest, and its paws were so big they could slice me open with a single swipe. At the sound of my sudden approach its hackles had gone up, so when I met it face to face it was already ready to go for my jugular while I was still reeling from the sight of it. It didn’t growl or bark. In fact, it made no sound at all. It just stood there, silent and ready, canines exposed and dark red tongue licking along its chops as if it could already feel my bones crushing between its teeth.

A man stood beside the wolf, decked out in all black tactical gear that matched his partner’s jet black fur as if they’d color coordinated on purpose. But the man wasn’t the one openly snarling at me, so I paid him no mind. Granted, the 9mm in his right hand was probably cause for concern.

But one disaster at a time.

I saw the wolf’s muscles tighten, and then it was leaping across the space that separated us. I cried out and threw myself out of the way, but it hadn’t been aiming at me. It had been aiming for the thing behind me. I turned just as the two collided, and to my rising horror it was the wolf who cried out in agony.

The thing on the steps just above me was a creature of fractured light. Its edges were too soft. More smoke than flesh. It was ever changing and stretching out of the corner of your eyes as it tried to form some semblance of a body. Its eyes were stretched, bottomless pits that sucked up all the light around it so that the space in which it stood was nothing more than a trembling emptiness where only silence should have been. I couldn’t make out a mouth at first, but as soon as the wolf made contact with the thing, the creature opened its jaws, shadow flesh clinging and ripping apart from itself to reveal a hungry, gaping maw that made something young and vulnerable in me begin to scream.

The wolf couldn’t pull away from the creature, in fact, the more it struggled the thicker the shadows grew, growing and crawling over the now whimpering wolf’s flesh, until it was covered in an oily sheen that seemed to breathe. A second skin with a mind of its own.

Soon the creature had an ally, and the wolf, now coated in chuckling shadows turned on both the man with the gun and me with hell blazing from its yellow eyes.

Cursing, the man in tactical gear opened fire on both wolf and shadow creature. I only stayed long enough to see that the bullets never hit their target, wolf and creature disappearing into the dark recess of the stairwell as if they’d never been.

I came down the stairs so fast I was essentially falling, and I leapt past the task force member just as something reached out of the shadows to his left and pulled him screaming in with it. He got off another shot or two that ricocheted in the stairwell, before I heard flesh tear, wet and thick.

Silence reigned but for the desperate little whimpering I couldn’t help but make as I continued my flight down the stairs. Now that I knew what they could do, what they could hide, I flinched at every shadow, muffled a scream at every creak of the stairs, or moaning sigh on the air.

Dimly, I could make out the sounds of gunfire and howls from lower floors, but I couldn’t focus on it right then. The only thought in my head was that I had to get out of the stairwell before whatever had snatched that man snatched me too.

So I pushed through the next door I came to, almost sobbing in relief when I fell into a hallway flooded with light. To my left came the sound of gunfire, and even as I watched the lights in the ceiling begin to flicker and go out one by one. To my right were elevators, and without further thought, I dove for them and punched the down button. I pressed the button over and over again, my breath hard and fast and my skin tightening in terror.

Each time I looked over my shoulder, the lights had gone out for yet another foot of the hall. In my eyes the hallway became the jaws of some great beast. Coming closer and closer and swallowing the world in its wake. In the darkness, all it left behind were those eyes. Some of them even blacker than the dark surrounding them and others the blazing yellow of the wolves.

The closer the dark came, the louder the growling grew; I didn’t know whether the fourlegged animals were fighting for or against the shadows. All I did know was that pretty much everything in this building was willing to eat me at this point.

Three feet, two, it didn’t matter.

The black was moving faster now, and I pressed myself flush against the wall, my finger ripping at the elevator button and my voice rising on a scream.

Two feet, one.

The fluorescents directly above me flickered once and then died with a sigh, and all around me came the bloodthirsty howls of predators who’d just found their prey.

“Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Everyone.”

—Gabriel Evans

Chapter Nine

A ding.

It had never before sounded so sweet or meant so much.

I fell within the relative safety of the elevator as the doors finally slid open. Scrambling on the floor in my haste to get away from the shadows that reached for me from within the now dark hall.

The lights in my temporary sanctuary hummed ominously.

“Close,” I hissed it, staring daggers at the elevator doors, and wishing I could get up to push the button that would close them faster, but knowing that something would grab me if I did.

“Close damn you, close.”

The doors began to slide shut, but before I could breathe a sigh of relief one of the shadow people lunged through the opening.

It couldn’t come in very far because the lights were still on, and the darkness behind it began to pull it back. But its claws dug into the floor of the elevator, ripping through the metal as if it were butter. Its mouth opened and that awful emptiness I’d felt before began to suck at me. Pulling me like a vacuum against my will, so that no matter how fast my feet scrambled or how desperately my fingers clutched at the railing inside the cabin, something kept pulling me irrevocably forward. Dragging me inch by inch until that greedy salivating mouth was nearly wrapped around my foot and my mind was blank from the fear of it.

Then a wolf ripped its way from the darkness and threw itself into the elevator beside me. It slid in the small room until it got its bearings. Then it was turning on the shadow creature. Ripping it from the dark and tearing into it with a ferocity that made my insides quake. Darkness flew about the elevator like blood, sliding down the walls and sticking to the wolf’s jaws as it consumed the yowling creature. The sound the shadow made was like dying dreams and grief made eternal. I turned away until it stopped with a final brutal clash of jaws through meat.

The doors dinged shut and for a heartbeat all was silence and the sick stink of human terror.

My terror.

I found myself huddling in a corner, my fists held up defensively. I was shaking so hard I could barely sit still. The wolf snarled at me, an angry, offended sound, before walking in a brief circle, and settling back on its haunches. It took three floors before I was calm enough to notice that something about this wolf was very different from the one I’d seen before.

For one, it was smaller. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a hell of a lot larger than any dog I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t the size of a small pony either. Which was a vast improvement.

Like the other wolf, it was as black as night, but whereas the other animal had been flesh and blood, this one was like the shadow creatures. Soft and smoky around the edges as if it could simply blow away. I was half convinced that if I pressed my hands against its side, where its fur danced along its body like black flames caught in a wind, that there would be nothing solid to stop me from pushing through to the other side.

Its canines were very real however, a fact it proved in the next second when it yawned, as if bored by my perusal. I met the animal’s eyes, and the deepest amber stared back at me. Not yellow, not black, amber.

I’d know those eyes anywhere.

“Gabriel,” I said, voice without inflection even as relief washed through me with all the icy force of a river. My bottom lip began to tremble, my expression crumbled, and to my shame, I started to cry.

He came up to me, and instinctively I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his ruff. He was warm, solid, and as soft as down. I gave a shuddering sob into that thick coat and the scent of pine, soil, and wood smoke filled my nostrils.

Then the confines of the elevator warmed as he began to shift. The black smoke that made up his body coalescing and gaining color until he knelt there, hard, naked, and steaming against me.

“Shh,” he murmured, strong arms wrapping around my waist and large hands stroking along my spine. I shivered, but this time it wasn’t from fear. Funny how quickly my priorities shifted once a naked man was introduced into the equation and my life was no longer in immediate danger. “It’s all right. Just calm down.”

Sniffling pitifully, I placed my chin on his shoulder and tightened my arms around his neck. Feeling like a nasty old man, I took advantage of my position to glance down the golden toned length of his back to the top of the twin globes of his ass.

Mm. Mm. Good.

Before he could realize I was being a lecher, I pulled out of his embrace and wiped the evidence of tears from my face. I always hated crying. The weakness it represented.

None of my foster parents had ever treated me any differently because of my tears and I had gotten out of the habit of shedding them. Especially in front of strangers.

Apparently sensing my sudden unease, Gabriel looked away from me and stood. His averted eyes were all the permission I needed to drink in the sight of him. His skin was golden from hours spent under the sun, and there didn’t seem to be an ounce of fat on him. The muscles in his arms and legs were sharply defined and coated in a light dusting of light blond hair. There were four vertical scars across his right pectoral that were faded white with age.

He had these muscles in his abdomen that drew the eye downward to where his bells and whistle dangled, thick and heavy, from between his legs. Some men, when naked just looked a little… depressing with all of their clothes off. As if they were made vulnerable once you caught sight of the crown jewels. Then there were other men, a blessed few like Gabriel, who seemed stronger. Larger without clothes, as if the weight of cotton and silk had been a cage they were all too happy to step out of.

The sight of him there, the raw, animal possibility of him, made my mouth go dry and I felt lust pool liquid heat between my thighs. I must have made some sound, because he looked down at me. I don’t know what look was on my face, but it seemed to please him to no end. Amber eyes still trained on me, and darkening by the minute, he stretched the kinks out of his arms, and I purred like a kitten at the play of strength beneath skin.

The small space felt too hot, as if there wasn’t enough air in it for the both of us, and I found myself shifting in clothes that suddenly felt too tight. He watched me until something caught his attention beyond the elevator and I dragged myself from the fog of dirty thoughts I’d been trapped in to use my own senses as well. It took me longer to notice, but eventually it came to me.

Like faint music, the howling rose and fell on a cresting wave. Filling the air and making it shiver.

We were nearly to the ground floor, and the closer we came, the louder the howling became until it echoed in the limited boundaries of the elevator. I watched him as his head fell back and his eyes closed, body tensing as he absorbed the sound. Drinking it in and letting it ride over his

skin until the edges of him began to grow soft and dark around the edges. As if the voices of the other wolves were enough to make leave his human form behind.

I looked at the panel above the doors in slowly rising panic.

The seventh floor. Six more and those doors would open again, and once again I’d be face to face with God knows what.

“It’s all right,” he said again. I looked back at him and realized that my breathing had grown heavy. “The specters are gone,” he soothed.

“How do you know?”

His chin lifted to indicate the howling beyond. “They told me.” He smiled. “Singing of their victory.”

I sighed, relief making me slump against the wall at my back.

“Go team,” I said weakly, and he chuckled. But just as quickly as it had started, his amusement abruptly died. His eyes widened and he glared down at me as if finally realizing something awful.

“You’re human,” he told me. Like it was some big surprise.

I nodded. “Sure am. And you’re a werewolf.”

He lifted his shoulder in a half shrug, “Eh. I guess you could call it that.”

“Wait-What?”

“The pack can’t control themselves very well on full moon nights. Especially around humans,” he said musingly.

For a moment I was still caught on the idea of him not technically being a werewolf, but then what he said finally sunk in.

“What are you saying?” My voice sounded breathless. No wonder. As soon as I thought I’d crawled out of the frying pan, he threw me into the fire.

“I’m saying that they’re going to try and rip you apart.”

That was around the time I started hyperventilating.

“Calm down,” he laughed, reaching down to grab me by the shirt collar and pulling me to my feet. “I’ll fix it.” Shoving me against the wall, he stepped into me and lowered his head, voice rumbling like thunder. “Make it all better.” Nose brushing against my neck, he breathed me in. The same way he’d done all those weeks ago after getting me out of jail.

Then his mouth was on me, teeth nipping at my bottom lip and his hands fisting in my hair as he jerked my head back. His knee slid between my legs, pressing upwards until I could feel the heat of him pressing hot and firm through my jeans. His erection pressed against my other thigh and my lips parted on a moan at the feel of him.

Then his tongue was there, stroking, thrusting, forcing me to participate in a dance that left me reeling. His hands traveled down, nails running lightly over my throat and along my breasts, my nipples hardening beneath my shirt. I shifted against him, restless and desperate and those hands became claws. Not beastly claws, but man claws that ripped at my clothes, pulled me apart, and left my skin shaking and bare beneath the air.

Gabriel pulled away from my mouth, only to sink his teeth into my neck. I cried out and my vision went dark, the walls of my sex pulsing, throbbing. All I felt were hunger and need, and I desperately clutched my fingers into his hair and held him close. His mouth a hot, wet cave against my skin, teeth sending pulsing shots of pleasure through my body until the strength in my legs gave out and all I could do was sob.

Then that sound again.

Intrusive this time.

A cheery little ding, and then the doors were opening.

I looked over Gabriel’s shoulders into a sea of darkness. Trapped within that darkness like hundreds of stars, were glowing yellow eyes. The pack sat in the rafters, on desks and tables, crouched in the railings of the floor above, and watched from every corner of the huge lobby.

It was a sea of fur, black, brown gray, white; they filled every inch of the room. Some were still human true, still dressed in their tactical gear and brandishing their guns as if they were claws and teeth, but the rest had long since given in to the beast inside of them. As soon as they saw us, the howling ceased. Then the grumbling started, angry little yips and barks that made the hair on my arms stand on end.

Gabriel wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and his voice was a warning growl against the shell of my ear.

“Keep your head down, and don’t. Make. A. Sound.”

It was almost too much: the change from panic to lust, to fear all over again. It took me a shaking moment to get my legs working again, and I had to swallow several times before I nodded in agreement. I wanted to fix my clothes, cover myself where Gabriel had pulled my clothes away, but he didn’t give me a chance. I let him lead the way from the elevator. When it looked as if I would hesitate, his hand tightened almost painfully on the back of my neck and he jerked me forward to stand beside him.

Once clear of the elevator we stood there, silent before the pack as their rage continued to crest around us. They crowded closer and closer, snarling and snapping their jaws as if desperate to take a chunk out of the human in their midst. But despite their frenzy, as soon as Gabriel began to move past them they parted like Moses with the Red Sea. From the corner of my eye, I saw

the large beasts look between Gabriel and I, cringing away when they made eye contact with the man at my side only to raise their hackles as soon as they turned their attention to me.

Numb, I did my best to keep up with him, too frightened to move any faster and unable to lag behind. The wolves came at me, sniffing and snapping at my ankles and fingers when they thought Gabriel wasn’t looking. But no matter how close they came, they never made contact. In fact, as soon as most of them were within sniffing distance they shook their heads in confusion and shied away.

I heard multiple noses working, getting a whiff of me and drawing my scent and Gabriel’s in deep. They were so worked up that I’d expected them to rip me away from Gabriel at any moment. But whether it was his hand on my neck, or the scent of him on my body, they made no move to take their aggression to the next stage.

We were halfway across the room, halfway to the front door and freedom, when all of that changed.

I’d done a pretty good job of avoiding eye contact with the animals around me, but then I felt something cold and wet brush against my upper arm. I turned my head with a start, and standing beside me, nose on my arm and eyes on my face, was one of the wolves. I’m sure he was only curious about me, but as soon as my eyes met his some sort of hunting instinct must have been set off, because in the next instant his jaws were snapping around my arm, teeth sinking deep and skin tearing while I screamed and struggled in his grip.

The heat of Gabriel’s hand disappeared from the back of my neck and then he was there, his fingers dipping between the animal’s jaws and prying them apart until I could pull my arm loose.

Only he didn’t stop pulling once I was free. Cold rage suffused his features, sending the amber to swell and drown out the white of his eyes. He paled, and his lips drew back from lengthening teeth, canines snapping as the muscles in his arms and shoulders worked. He ripped the bottom half of the wolf’s jaw apart and threw the bloody part into the inner depths of the room, grinning madly when the part of the pack it had landed amongst fell upon it with hungry yips.

The wolf he’d mangled collapsed at his feet, paws clawing the air as its pain filled cries joined the cacophony. My arm had grown numb, and I reached over with my still working hand to touch

the wound with gentle fingers. I stared down at the blood that coated my hand and felt the world shift ominously beneath my feet. I wanted to pass out, I probably needed to pass out, but I had something else to worry about now. The wolves surrounding me caught the scent of my blood and it seemed to overpower whatever protection Gabriel’s lingering odor had leant me.

Their heads lowered as one, their eyes grew heated and hungry, and their ears went flat. They stalked me, more and more of them separating me from Gabriel. My mind went blank, and I clutched my bleeding arm against my abdomen as if I could protect myself from the bloodthirsty

mass. My eyes practically flew from one wolf to the other, and I found myself turning, turning, turning, trying to keep them all in sight as they surrounded me and failing miserably.

I looked over at Gabriel, and he must have seen what I was about to do written all over my face, because the last of the animal bled away and concern filled his eyes.

“Don’t—”

But it was too late; I turned on my heel and ran.

They practically tripped over themselves coming after me. The entire room moved like one giant beast, a beast with a single goal and purpose in mind. I never would have made it to the front door if Gabriel hadn’t done something. I probably wouldn’t have cleared three feet, but he made a sound. Part human, part animal, a growling roar that stopped every wolf in the room in its tracks, claws scrambling uselessly on the hardwood as they fought for traction.

I’d almost made it to the door when one of the men in the room brought me down. I struggled, feet scrambling and fingers clawing at the face above me until I drew blood and he jerked from me with a hiss of pain. His fingers tangled in the necklace around my neck, and I sobbed, half convinced I was well and truly caught. Then the chain snapped, necklace coming away in the man’s fist and I was away. Getting to my feet and running.

I ran, and ran, and ran, and when I finally burst through the doors of Lumière Corporation the lonely rise of Gabriel Evans’s howl was the only sound to accompany my mad flight into the night.

“I live for the hunt. Fear makes the meat taste sweet.”

—Juliet Baker

Chapter Ten

I didn’t know where else to go, so I headed for home. Back to my cheap, bullet-ridden apartment with my stuffed animals and empty refrigerator. It wasn’t even 11:00 p.m., so there were plenty of people to stare at me as I made my way through the city streets. I’d lost one of my shoes back at L.C. and all too soon my toes grew numb against the continued abuse of slapping against cracked concrete. My lips felt numb, but I suspected that had to do with the amount of blood I’d lost.

Under the streetlamps and glaring headlights of oncoming cars I saw that there were two deep punctures, and several long lines of torn skin to commemorate my first werewolf attack. I wondered if I’d shift now, start howling at the moon, and chasing cars and postmen in my free time. The thought earned me a hysterical giggle and I stumbled drunkenly on the sidewalk. I bumped shoulders with another passing pedestrian and he shoved me away. I stumbled, hitting the wall of a nearby bookstore and laughing as I sank down beside it.

In the back of my mind I knew I was probably going into shock, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to care. Sure my arm was mauled, but I was alive. I’d met a fucking werewolf. How many people could say the same?

I was still chuckling when shadow loomed over me. Bleary eyed, I looked up into the familiar faces of Agent Liam and Agent Benson.

“Have you ever met a werewolf?” I demanded, and the two men glanced at one another.

Agent Benson frowned.

“Hairy beast, goes on a rampage once a month, preys on the weak and innocent?”

I nodded and he shrugged, holding up his hand to show off a simple gold wedding band.

“Married one.”

Well I’ll be damned.

“Cut that out, Patrice is an Angel for putting up with you for as long as she has.” Liam snapped.

He reached down and I flinched as he wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me to my

feet. My head lolled against his shoulder and the world spun. “There you go. That’s it.

Now let’s get you to a hospital.”

“That,” I slurred, my finger poking him in the chest for emphasis, “is an excellent idea.”

****

Almost two weeks passed before I finally found myself standing in my old, and previously underappreciated, apartment. I’d spent a few agonizing days in the hospital. Other than stitches and a few shots, they’d also had to give me a blood transfusion to replace all I’d lost. I’d been really weak afterwards, so they’d allowed me some time to recuperate before they gave me a clean bill of health. None of my blood work had screamed “future lycanthrope,” so I’d pronounced myself in the clear for that as well. The reason it had taken me so long to get back home was because the police wouldn’t allow it until I’d given a statement, and I refused to return to the company apartment Gabriel had given me.

So I ended up staying in a hotel, until finally I broke down and agreed to talk.

“What happened the night my partner and I found you, Miss Conners?”

“I got attacked by a dog.”

“We found traces of your blood in Lumière. Care to explain that?”

I shrugged and had to bite back a curse when the once automatic movement sent agony shooting through my bad arm.

“Some people can’t control their pets,” I finally managed, and Liam just looked at me in rising disappointment.

“Why would someone bring their dog into a place like that?” Benson barked, exasperated. I shook my head in mutual confusion.

“Rich people,” I said, as if that explained everything. As if some society matron’s purse poodle had leapt from her Louis Vuitton and almost severed the bone in my arm in a fit of wild puppy angst.

Liam reached out and wrapped my hand in both of his.

“We know you’re protecting him,” he said, “and, believe me, you don’t have to.”

“I’m not protecting him,” I said stubbornly, even though, technically, I was.

Liam shook his head. “Then you don’t have to be afraid of him.”

I scoffed. “Afraid? Of him? Never.” True. Why was that true?

Liam made a strange garbled sound, like he wanted to yell at me but stopped himself just in time. “Then why can’t you just tell the truth?”

My brow rose and I massaged my aching arm with my free hand, wishing desperately that I was back in my shitty little hotel so that I could pop a few pain pills and go to sleep.

“Why are you so convinced that I’m not?”

A few hours later they released me, and a few days after that they declared my apartment safe once again. I knew they didn’t believe that any more than I did, but they also had no evidence that I was still in any danger. They had other cases to work and none of the manpower to dedicate to some has-been reporter with a dog bite.

Now, standing in the middle of my living room once more and breathing in the scent of cheap potpourri, I wondered what I was supposed to do with myself now. I couldn’t go around crying wolf. They’d put me in a straight jacket and lock me away. If I was going to reveal what I’d seen, I’d need proof. Hard, irrefutable proof, and the only way I was going to get it was if I waltzed back in to Lumière and got my hidden cameras back.

Remembering the lost necklace, my hand rose to brush against my throat.

Even if they hadn’t found the cameras and destroyed them by now, how was I going to face anyone in that building? I wasn’t sure how many of the wolves in the lobby that night had been employees out “hunting” those shadow monsters (or specters), and how many had been Gabriel’s special task force. Every time I passed someone in the halls or went to another department to collect paperwork, I’d have to wonder if they had been there that night, hungering for blood. My blood.

Talk about stressful work environment.

No, I couldn’t go back. Not even to pick up the cameras. It was one of the reasons why I’d been avoiding phone calls from Sonya. I knew that eventually, I’d have to tell her that

I was done with the investigation. The problem was that I’d yet to come up with a good enough reason as to why she should let it drop too.

Now, head aching, I dropped my purse in the middle of the floor and wandered back into my bedroom. Pain killers and my favorite pillow were whispering my name and promising a night without dreams.

****

A few days later, there was a banging at my door.

I’d told Dawson and Sonya that I’d been in an accident and wouldn’t be able to help with the case for a while. It had given me a temporary reprieve while I searched for an excuse to call the investigation off. When I wasn’t racking my brain or eating in front of the television, I was

sleeping and nursing my poor abused arm. None of the bones or ligaments had been broken or torn, thank god, so mostly I was just dealing with a lot of muscle pain. I’d had no idea how often I used the muscles in my left arm without ever thinking about it.

Thank god for pain killers, otherwise I’d never be able to do the exercises the physical therapist had insisted on for a full recovery.

I was doing one of the said exercises, my muscles spasming as I worked to curl my hand into a fist around some dumb stress ball, when the banging started. I flinched, a lot jumpier these days, and dropped the ball.

I watched, irate, as it rolled beneath my sofa.

“Shit,” I said, to the remains of my television.

Then I got up and shuffled to the door. I don’t know who I expected to see on the other side of it. Sonya maybe, or even one of the ever so charming federal agents. I did not, however, expect to look up to see a pair of amber eyes and charmingly tousled blond hair.

I went to slam the door in his face, but he ducked through the opening before I could finish the move. I found him standing behind me and eyeing my living room in blatant distaste.

“You live here?”

“What do you want?”

I found myself taking a step back when he turned to look down at me and I saw the anger in him.

“I came to see for myself.”

“See what?” I asked, hesitant.

“If it was true.” He stepped closer and his head canted to one side as he examined me.

A scientist with a bug beneath a lens. “If you really…” A muscle in his jaw worked and he turned away. Examined my apartment once more with unabashed criticism.

“Why haven’t you bought a new TV? Don’t I pay you enough?” He did, but that was neither here nor there.

“It’s ‘paid’ not ‘pay’. As in past tense. As in I don’t work for you anymore,” I told him.

Then, “Gabriel,” I said, coming up behind him and clutching his arm before I could consider what I was doing. “What’s going on?” I asked softly, somehow unsurprised when he failed to brush off my touch as I’d half expected him to.

Instead he stood, back to me, for a long, breathless moment, and then sighed.

“Where’s your laptop?”

“I’ll get it,” I told him, feeling as if a storm was brewing and I was standing beneath a tree with a lightening rod and neon sign that read “Hit Me.”

I brought my laptop back into the room and set it on the kitchen counter. I watched, tense, as Gabriel sat down at one of my barstools and typed an address into the search engine, fingers flying over the keys. Then the webpage was opening, and I watched in growing horror as the newscast played out in high definition.

It was a video of what had happened the night I’d been bitten. From the angle I knew it had to be the necklace camera. First, it showed Gabriel hovering over the camera when he’d pulled me from beneath the conference table. Then it cut to my mad dash down the stairs only to run into the task force member and the wolf at his side. Any of the footage containing the shadow men had been cut out, so while the viewers could clearly see Gabriel Evans changing from wolf to man, they didn’t see him save my life beforehand.

The last clip, was the most chilling. It showed the lobby as I’d seen it that night. Filled to bursting with ravenous wolves, eyes shining eerily in the dark.

When the footage was done, it switched to an anchorman who looked appropriately serious.

“Is this proof that werewolves exist or just a clever parlor trick? This video, shot by an unnamed source, has gone viral literally overnight. Experts have yet to be able to debunk the footage and in just a matter of days, millions of people from all over the world have begun to flood the area in hopes of either proving or disproving the presence of werewolves. While half of the city is stocking up on silver bullets and wolfsbane, the rest are crying foul.”

The scene shifted and suddenly I was watching Governor Harris shake his head in disgust at the camera. “Werewolves?” he snorted, “What next? Bigfoot? The Loch Ness monster? If I got worked up every time some kid with a camera said they’d found the missing link, my last two heart attacks would have killed me already.”

Back to the anchorman. “But others have a very…different take on things.”

The scene shifted again and now I was looking at the anchorman sitting beside a nervous looking young woman.

“You say you’re a werewolf? Is that correct?”

She nodded robotically, eyes flashing at the camera and wrung her hands together in her lap.

“What’s it like being a werewolf, Gina?”

She calmed visibly. “Safe.”

“How so?”

“It’s because, as a wolf, you have Pack. You don’t need family or friends when you have Pack. Pack is family. We keep each other safe. Keep each other human. Pack is all.”

And on it went, the scene changing as the anchorman interviewed one self-proclaimed werewolf after another:

“I didn’t always howl at the moon. I used to be a housewife.”

“This is a great opportunity to raise awareness of the relationship between man and beast. I hate being considered a villain, but society needs one. No one ever sheds a tear for the wolf. Not anymore. In a world filled with sheep, of course you’d see me as a monster.”

“Do I believe humans and my kind can coexist? No. If you live among wolves you can’t just act like a wolf. You must be one. If you’re not another predator, then you’re just prey.”

“How have I changed since becoming a Were? Well my priorities are different. My beliefs.

The moon is my god now. I dance for it, I pine for it, and if it asked, I would kill for it.”

And on and on it went.

My breath escaped in an explosive sigh of disbelief.

“Sweet, buttery baby Jesus,” I said, “don’t you guys have like a public service announcement you can release or something? Where’s your publicist? Your agent?

Anyone who can juggle the shitstorm this is turning out to be.”

Werewolves giving interviews. It would have been brilliant if any one of them had been coached on how not to make their race come across as mindless, cannibalistic monsters. And former housewives.

“I can only do so much,” Gabriel told me, staring unblinking at the computer screen.

“The wolves you saw were not from my pack. I don’t know them. If I’d been able to stop them before they went on air, I would have. Though,” and here his voice grew cold, “if I hadn’t been betrayed, this would never have been an issue.”

Holding up my hands, I backtracked in a very literal sense.

“Hold on there, Fido. Before you start pushing Timmy down any wells, how about you let me explain?”

He looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh at me or strangle me.

“You have five minutes,” he decided finally, and I blew out the breath I’d been holding.

“It’s true that I went there to snoop,” I admitted and winced when he huffed angrily.

“But,” I continued loudly, “I never got anything good enough to build a story off of. That’s why I went back to the office that night, to see what sort of dirt I could dig up.”

“I suppose I ought to offer congratulations then. Once you admit to shooting the video, they’ll be tripping over themselves to hear your story. This is front page stuff, Miss Conners. I bet the rights for the movie will be worth millions.”

I disliked hearing him call me “Miss Conners” about as much as I disliked the undercurrent of hurt I heard beneath the heavy sarcasm. Knowing that he thought I’d betrayed him, and that the thought caused him pain did awful things to my blood pressure and I found myself scowling at him for no good reason.

“I didn’t release that tape.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you lying?” he asked doubtfully.

Snorting, I came to sit beside him at the counter. “If I were, I would have started a hell of a lot sooner.”

He seemed to accept this, if the way he relaxed in his seat was any indication.

“Look,” I continued, “one of your guys took the camera off of me that night. I wouldn’t have been able to leak the footage, because I didn’t even have it.”

I was about to say that I wouldn’t have done something like that anyway, but since I wasn’t so sure, I didn’t bother. If anything, Gabriel seemed to buy the idea that I would have, but couldn’t more than if I’d said I could have, but didn’t. Go figure. I guess he knew me better than I’d thought.

Closing the laptop, he moved it away and put his elbows on the counter, face resting in his hands as if his head were aching. I sympathized.

“Who would have done something like this?” he asked, quietly broken at the thought of one of his own turning traitor. “Who would have revealed us to the humans? Why? What would they have gained from it?”

I almost said it. Almost put his name out there. But Gabriel raised a good point. It was one thing for Marcus to work for the Huntsmen. It was a completely different thing to reveal the presence of werewolves to the unsuspecting public. What could he possibly gain from revealing the fact that werewolves existed when he was, in fact, a werewolf?

Or was he?

It had been a man who’d snatched my necklace that night. A man. I hadn’t been attacked by a wolf. At the time I’d assumed that he hadn’t shifted into a wolf because he hadn’t wanted to. But what if it had been because he couldn’t?

“The task force,” I began carefully, “Are all of them Weres? Are all of them a part of your Pack?”

“Yes and no,” Gabriel answered. “They’re members of the pack, but not all pack members can shift. Some have lost the ability. Why?”

Partial truth couldn’t hurt. “I was just thinking. The man who took my hidden camera wasn’t in wolf form. I was wondering if that had been done by choice.”

Slowly, Gabriel lifted his head and turned to me. He looked flushed, almost happy, and I realized it was because I’d given him something he hadn’t had before. A lead.

“No. The full moon forces the change. Only the Alpha can fight the pull of something like that. If the man who did this could change, he would have.” His grin was very wolfy.

“Which will make him considerably easier to find.”

“When the Alpha calls…you come. It’s that simple, and that complicated.”

—Geoffrey Giggs

Chapter Eleven

Gabriel wanted to go hunting for the traitor right then and there, and he wanted me to come with him.

I said no (insert expletive) way.

He laughed at the refusal, however, and simply carted me along anyway. According to him I was still his personal assistant, and if I wanted to earn my more than generous paycheck, then I had better start assisting.

I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of his car, arms crossed over my chest, and staring out the window as he sped down first one street and then another, a smile widening across his face with every speed limit he broke.

It wasn’t long before I realized that we weren’t heading to L.C. In fact we weren’t even staying within the city limits.

“Where are we going?”

I wasn’t very good at silently fuming, and my curiosity got the better of me sooner rather than later.

“I have to call the pack together. But with all tourists in town looking for werewolves, it isn’t safe to bring them to Lumière anymore.”

“Hmm,” I murmured. I tried the silence thing for another few minutes, and then gave in to something that had been nagging at me for a while now.

“Are you a werewolf?”

“What?” he laughed, sparing me a quick look before turning back to the road.

“That night? I said you were a werewolf and you said ‘I guess you could call it that’.

What did you mean?”

“Officially I am a Were.”

“And technically?”

“Technically, I’m what you’d call a Hell Hound. Which is a werewolf. Only, evolved. Like a Pokémon.”

Dum, dum, dum.

I had two options. I could handle this like an adult, or I could open the door and roll out of a moving car. My arm gave a warning twinge, and I decided to go along with it.

“O-Kay.” I began, “What’s a Hell Hound?”

Silence filled the interior as he considered his next words.

“Long ago, the Seelie and Unseelie courts of Fae brought together their greatest warriors to form a hunting party. Nobody knows who the first victim of the hunt was, or what they’d done to offend the Sidhe. All anyone knows is that once these Sidhe tasted blood, they liked it too much to stop the hunt. From then on they went after the guilty, the innocent, men, women, children, and everyone and everything else in between.

Their favorite prey, however, were other supernaturals. The problem was that hunting supernaturals was a lot harder than running down some poor human farmhand.”

Taking a deep breath, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel before continuing.

“They caught the first Hounds while they were wondering the shores of the River Styx.

The others they made by cursing some of the men and women they’d caught when there were more Hunters than Hounds.”

He considered that for a moment, and smiled slightly, “When you think about it, I guess those were the first Werewolves. Anyway, when the Seelie and the Unseelie courts went to war, they found that they couldn’t recall their warriors home.

“They’d broken ties with the Fae living within the Sithins and became a law unto themselves.

For centuries the Wild Hunt was a story people told to frighten their children. Eventually the Hunt grew to such strength that whenever they rode, the call of the Hounds could drag the spirits of the dead from their graves. Until the people caught between the Hunt and their intended victims couldn’t tell whether the Riders were men, Fae, beast, or Specter.”

Specters. I shivered, massaging my aching arm and huddling a little deeper in my seat.

“So you were one of these Hounds? You helped lead the Wild Hunt?”

He nodded and his gaze looked far away, older somehow as if he’d aged when I hadn’t been paying attention. “Eventually, the Masters of the Hunt were driven mad and we deserted them.

They can’t ride without us, and they’ve sent Specters to search during the full moon ever since.” He scowled. “It makes hosting Pack events awkward.”

“There are more of you. More Hounds.” My voice was flat.

“Yup. Twelve at last count. All Alphas of our respective packs. Weres seem to like us.”

He shrugged and threw me a smile, dimples flashing. “Probably because of all this rippling sex appeal.”

I rolled my eyes and he laughed.

****

“This is dumb.”

“Your opinion has been noted.”

“And ignored.”

“Vigorously ignored.”

I sighed, loudly, and looked up in time to see him shake his head. We were trekking through the underbrush of Briarcliff National Park and had barely gone a mile before I started breathing hard and sweating like a weighty streetwalker in June.

“Are we there yet?” I groaned.

“Almost.”

“How long?”

“Another hour.”

I spit in the dirt and started cursing in every language I knew and a few I didn’t.

“Five minutes,” he amended with a laugh, and fuming, I fell silent.

As promised, five minutes later we stepped into a clearing. I collapsed in a heap at its edge and watched as Gabriel walked into the center and turned a slow circle.

He seemed calmer, more content out here in the woods than I had ever seen him in a boardroom. Wearing a white t-shirt and a faded pair of jeans, hair like golden fire in the sunlight and eyes closing in bliss, I wanted to…I don’t know.

I wanted to consume him, pull every part of him into me. It wasn’t that I loved him, or even that I was obsessed with him. It was more as if I knew, on a cellular level that we should be together.

In Plato’s dialogue, The Symposium, Aristophanes tells how some human beings were originally born with four arms, four legs, and a head made of two faces. They had wanted to conquer the Gods and Zeus tore them in half as punishment. Ever since, humans have lived in agony, constantly searching for the other half of themselves.

Their soul mates.

I wasn’t such a romantic that I believed Gabriel and I were soul mates. I’d outgrown such thoughts a long time ago. But it was either that, or I was beginning to seriously consider cannibalism. If given the choice between the two? I’d hope for the cannibalism.

It would be less complicated.

His head fell back, his lips parted, and taking a deep breath, he howled.

Music.

That’s what it was.

It was nothing like the howl I’d heard before. This was more of an invitation than a threat. A ballad of loneliness instead of a show of strength and dominance. It silenced the creatures in the woods around us and marched to the sky. Sailing, sailing, beyond and away.

The howls that followed were ripe with jubilation.

“We’re here, we’re here,” they seemed to say, heralding their owners like quicksilver on the wind. Their owners followed soon after, leaping into the clearing in twos and threes. I hadn’t expected them to come so quickly, and I found myself stepping back, hiding behind the trunk of a tree. I could still watch the proceedings, but it eased the instinctive panic I’d felt at the sight of the Pack gathering. My arm throbbed, a warning cry, and I gritted my teeth, head resting against the trunk of the tree as I tried to swallow down rising nausea.

As before, some of the Pack had shifted already while the others were still in human form.

In minutes the clearing was filled with business suits and sundresses, gleaming teeth and fur, denim shorts and wagging tails. They were beautiful, milling around. Jumping and leaping upon one another like giant puppies, human and animal alike. Mock battles broke out and I saw more than one wiggling behind as one wolf prepared to leap upon another.

They greeted Gabriel like some long lost brother, or some beloved father figure. They swarmed him, hugging, kissing. Licking his hands and face, rubbing their bodies along his legs. It was if they couldn’t get enough of touching him, of having him touch them, and if he hadn’t jumped upon a nearby boulder with a laugh they would have buried him beneath the weight of their adoration.

I had to blink and turn away for a moment, my throat going tight. Was this what family looked like? Love? Even if they were only with one another because of some magical mumbo-jumbo, what they had was real.

More real than anything I’d ever had, anyway.

Once I had myself under control, I turned back to watch the gathering of the Pack. There were about a hundred of them or so, and Gabriel looked out over the masses with a practiced eye.

Finally, he held up a hand and slowly but surely, they settled down one by one.

“I called you all here today in light of the events that have taken place recently.” Wolf and human both crouched in the grass where they stood until Gabriel was surrounded by a mob of attentive eyes. A preacher with his congregation.

He lifted one eyebrow and leveled a stern eye on every single one of them.

“I hope I don’t have to tell any of you that I won’t approve of interviews.” Several members shifted uncomfortably and Gabriel frowned at them all. “Indulging the media only fuels the fire. If we’re going to make this all die down, then we can’t afford to encourage this.”

“But…what if we don’t want it to die down?” This from a young man near the back of the group. “What if coming out is a good thing?”

While there were murmurs of agreement from some, the others snapped and snarled a denial. Gabriel shook his head.

“Coming out is fine, if that’s what you want to do. The problem is that not all of us are ready to burn that particular bridge. If some reveal themselves, they’ll need the backing of the Packs. Not only to keep them safe from the glory seekers and Were-killers like the Huntsmen, but to help police anyone who decides to integrate with the humans.”

“Not all of us need babysitters,” retorted a snide female voice.

Gabriel snapped his teeth in warning, and I saw the speaker flinch back.

“Don’t be a fool. How safe do you think the humans would be with us running wild on a full moon night? And the full moon isn’t our only obstacle. Victoria,” he snapped the woman’s name, and she ducked her head in shame, “if I remember correctly, weren’t you the one who shifted last year in the middle of a school day? If I hadn’t been there to ‘babysit’ you, your first grade class would have been a few Crayolas short of a full box.”

He tapped his chin in thought. “What was it that set you off that time? Oh, right. You got dumped.” A significant pause. “Again.”

The teenager at her side snickered. “Want some ice for that burn?” she whispered, and several people laughed. The woman grumbled something beneath her breath, but otherwise remained silent.

Gabriel glared at her for a second or two longer, before returning his attention to the Pack at large.

“Coming out, when and if we decide to do so, needs to be a unanimous decision between Packs. It should be well-planned and carefully executed. This? This is disorganized, it’s messy, and in the end, it’s a recipe for disaster. Agreed?”

They did, and pleased, Gabriel grinned at them. Their pleasure at his approval was almost palpable. It made me feel slightly better knowing I wasn’t the only one made weak by that smile.

“Good. Which brings me to the reason we’re all here today.” His face darkened and collectively the Pack grew tense. “It seems that someone sold us out to the press.” His gaze hardened until the amber in his eyes was like ice.

This revelation was met with outrage and narrowed eyes.

A young woman in the front row, who had been eyeing Gabriel a little too much, came gracefully to her feet.

“I thought it was the human woman, Phaedra Conners.”

“She tells me she had nothing to do with it.” He sighed, “At least, almost nothing.”

Fair enough.

What followed was a barrage of denial.

“But why would any of us betray the Pack?”

“Who would have done something like this except for the human?”

“Why would you believe anything she has to say?”

Gabriel looked at the speaker and said very simply, “I just do.”

That quieted the naysayers down for a moment, but then one lone voice rose above all the others.

“The only reason you trust this human so much is because you have feelings for it.”

Marcus. Stepping out of crowd, he marched to the front until he stood face to face with his brother.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gabriel seemed neutral enough, but there was a storm brewing in his eyes. It promised thunder and lightning.

“It means,” Marcus answered, voice loud and clear, “that we can’t trust your judgment when it comes to the Conners woman. What proof do you have that she’s innocent?”

“What proof do you have that she isn’t?” came Gabriel’s knee jerk response. We both winced at the same time and I could only assume that he was thinking of the other hidden cameras, as well as my recent stint at the Oracle. “Scratch that,” he said instead, growing frustrated with the line of questioning. The man had an awful poker face. “She’s innocent because I said she is.”

“When did this become a dictatorship?” Marcus asked, voice reprimanding.

Gabriel snorted and folded his arms over his chest. “Well, it sure as hell ain’t a democracy. You can have your own opinions when I tell you to, and only then when I tell you what they are.”

That little statement?

Didn’t please the masses at all.

The atmosphere in the clearing seemed reminiscent of Marie Antoinette before the beheading, and before I could think about what I was doing, I stepped out from behind my tree and made my presence known. As soon as I came within sniffing distance, heads began to turn. A sea of not-so-smiling faces all aiming in my direction. Then, one by one, eyes began to glow. Blue, green, brown, gray, or hazel it didn’t matter. By the time the entire pack was glaring at me, my presence had caused all of their eyes to shift to that bright, dancing, yellow of their wolves.

I cleared my throat.

“Hi,” I said, ‘cause I’m lame like that and watched Marcus smirk at me.

“Look who’s here. The human came to defend itself.”

“Not too bright is she?” Someone whispered in disbelief, and I heard several muffled chuckles.

Gabriel glared at the source of the noise and the laughter died down as if the offenders could feel his eyes burning holes in their backs.

“Phaedra,” he said quietly, walking through the crowd to come and stand beside me.

“Go back to the car.”

“You’re not handling this well,” I said, shaking of his grip.

“And how are you going to help me handle it any better? You’re not exactly the picture of diplomacy. In fact, in the dictionary beneath the word ‘diplomacy,’ your face is listed in the antonyms.”

Not having looked in a dictionary in years, I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not, so I floundered for a comeback before settling with, “You invited me,” I exclaimed and watched him wrinkle his nose in the cutest show of self deprecation I’d ever seen.

“Admittedly bad planning on my part.” His hands went to my shoulders and he forcibly turned me around and began to push. “You were right. I was wrong. This was dumb.

Now please go home.”

“Wait a minute,” Marcus called out, and I slipped away from Gabriel before he could finish shoving me from the clearing. “The human being here may actually work in her favor.”

Jaw working, Gabriel turned slowly back to face the pack. Several members stepped back at the look on his face, and I didn’t blame them.

“What grand scheme have you come up with this time?”

“No scheme,” Marcus assured him, the very picture of innocence. “Just Pack law.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes heavenward as if praying for patience. “Here we go.”

“Pack law states,” Marcus growled, angry with the dismissal, “that any member accused of a wrong-doing has the choice of a Trial—”

Yay!

Trials were good things. Trials were fair. I could talk my way out of trial.

“—by combat.” He finished and the live studio audience in my head went “Aww.”

“She’s not Pack,” Gabriel said, stating the obvious in my opinion. But Marcus simply shrugged.

“Then she dies.”

“Damnit Marcus—”

“No,” Marcus snapped, overriding Gabriel’s outrage. “The human is a threat to the pack.

We eliminate threats.”

“But she isn’t a threat,” Gabriel said, exasperated, and I nodded quickly in agreement, coming forward to stand at his side and clutch his hand with my own.

“Yeah,” I said, sounding young, “I’m no threat.”

“You spied on us.” It was a statement, not a question, but I nodded reluctantly anyway.

“You lied to us,” Marcus continued, “And you reported us to your human media.”

“Well, when you put it like that—” Whatever I’d been about to say was drowned out by all the noise the crowd was making. I couldn’t understand individual words or phrases, but I got the general idea. They wanted my head. But Marcus wasn’t done with me yet.

“How do we know you weren’t working with the Huntsmen that day at the parking garage? Hell, you may be working for them even now. Giving us up to the humans. How many more Were-killers do you think are going to come out of the woodwork to support your cause now that they know who and what we are?”

Then it clicked.

It had been Marcus. He’d taken the necklace and released the video. But to what end? Was it all as he’d said? To recruit more men and women to join the hunt against Werewolves, or was it for a deeper, darker purpose? I couldn’t fathom turning on my own family this way, not for any reason. So it was hard to dredge up motives for why Marcus could have been doing so. Was it simply because he was a defective Were? A wolf who couldn’t shift?

I turned to Gabriel. Maybe I would have told him my suspicions, or maybe I would have simply denied the charges and left it at that. But he was already looking down at me. His hand had grown slack in mine, and I let him go and took a step away.

I’d gone diving one summer after graduation. I’d gone as deep as I could go, and then, just to be daring, I went a little deeper. From my vantage point, I’d been able to see the bottom of the sea floor and all the creatures that had lived within.

I had come upon it suddenly.

The shelf.

It was like the world had just dropped away. Like God had been building a road and forgotten a step. Beyond the shelf, the sea had darkened from blue and sea green to

black. I remember floating there beside it, too petrified to swim any further. It was quieter there at the shelf, as if all the big things, all the scary things, were buried so deep that you couldn’t even hear them screaming anymore.

That’s what Gabriel reminded me of when he went to that deep, still place inside of himself.

Sometimes I thought he would never come back up from it. As if he liked it better there. I could tell just by looking at him that he was in that place as he looked down at me, and suddenly I was no longer as confident as I had been about telling him the truth. Nothing had changed since the last time I’d spoken to Sonya. Not really. Gabriel had no reason to believe me over Marcus. Over his brother and pack member. If anything, he had even less of a reason to support me than I’d originally thought. If he took my word about Marcus, then Marcus would have to participate in the whole Trial by Combat thing.

Even if he wasn’t killed during the trial, revealing what I knew would sow discord among the pack and take away Gabriel’s only remaining family. In fact, Gabriel may very well decide that it would be easier for everyone just to blame the human, the outsider, and let me die.

But then again, if I kept my mouth shut wouldn’t I be endangering the entire pack by not revealing that Marcus was working for the Huntsmen?

These were the thoughts that were running through my head, but while I debated the pros and cons, Gabriel had already reached a decision.

“Fine.” As soon as he spoke any noise among the pack ceased. “You’re right. If the human is a threat, then that threat must be eliminated.” My stomach plummeted and the Weres around me cheered. “But,” he continued, voice rising to be heard over their excitement even as he searched my face, “I won’t allow you to kill an innocent woman.”

“You just said she was a threat.” Someone called out angrily, and Gabriel’s lips peeled back revealing that his teeth had begun to lengthen and sharpen in his mouth along with his rising frustration. Nervously, the speaker cleared his throat, and added, “Alpha, sir.”

“I said,” Gabriel spoke on a sigh as he fought to find patience, “that if she was a threat.

If. We’ve yet to determine whether or not she’s guilty.”

There was a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest that I sort of liked. I wondered if this is what the Grinch had felt like when Cindy Lou Who had believed in him. It wasn’t exactly a declaration of innocence, but it was more than I’d ever gotten before. He was willing to trust me, despite evidence to the contrary.

That felt nice.

Then Marcus spoke up and messed up my vibe. “And how do you propose we determine her innocence?”

“The same way we would judge a member of the pack.”

Trial by Combat.

Sonofabitch.

“Discipline has to be dealt out ruthlessly. Wolves are big, dangerous. If we aren’t going to behave, you have to prove that you can make us.”

—Silvia Cobb

Chapter Twelve

“This is dumb.”

“Be quiet.”

“My life never used to be this hard before I met you.”

“Says the domestic terrorist.”

“Even that was partially your fault,” I pointed out, but not like I was angry about it or anything. He conceded the point with a stiff nod of his head. “But before all of this, before Hell Hounds, and werewolves, and werewolf hunters, my life was pretty simple. It was pretty bitchin’ actually.”

Confused, he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Bitchin’?”

“Yeah. You know. Bitchin’. Good. Awesome. Rad. Cool. Can be used as an adjective or noun. Bitchin’.”

“Oh.” A beat of silence. “It’s a strange phrase.”

“I like it. It gets the point across. Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I never wanted any of this. I never wanted to participate in a death match—”

“It’s not a death match. Officially anyway.”

“—with a werewolf who wants to get in your pants,” I continued, ignoring him.

“Yvette doesn’t want to get into my pants.”

“Yvette wants in your pants so bad the seams of your jeans are melting. If glances were touches, she’d be pregnant with your puppies by now.”

He burst out laughing, but I was too busy sulking to enjoy it.

“Will you promise me something?” I asked finally.

“Anything,” he said, and he sounded more serious than I’d expected.

“On my tombstone, make sure my epitaph reads ‘Here lies Phaedra Conners. She didn’t choose the Thug Life. The Thug Life chose her.’”

He mulled over this for a full minute before asking quietly, “The Thug Life. Is that like ‘bitchin’?”

My lips tightened. I felt very gangsta in this moment. Not sure why, since I was pretty sure I was about to get my ass handed to me. Literally and figuratively.

“The bitchinnest,” I answered and he nodded, albeit doubtfully.

“As long as it fits, it goes on there,” he assured me. “And even if it won’t, we’ll circle the rest around the sides and back or something.”

“Or buy a bigger headstone. I don’t want a ghetto headstone.”

He didn’t argue about being the one delegated to handle my funeral arrangements. He simply grunted an agreement.

“No ghetto. It’ll be made of marble. Or maybe quartz.”

All I could do was look at him and blink.

Then, shaking my head, I turned away.

White people.

Excluding myself of course. I was a pretty awesome white person if I did say so myself.

Belatedly, I realized that it was probably this kind of behavior and thinking that kept me from having friends. That and my overpowering need to antagonize old Asian women. I was trying to decide whether or not I was a closet racist when Yvette Reed finally walked into the center of the clearing.

Short notice had naturally dictated that we hold the trial in the same place they’d held the meeting. I suppose it made sense. At least they wouldn’t have to travel far before burying my body in some remote location.

We were surrounded by remote locations.

In all honesty, they’d tried to be as fair as possible. Yvette, the woman I was supposed to fight, was the only member of the pack who was both my height and weight. Gabriel had taken things a step further and forbidden Yvette from shifting into her wolf form, so when I looked over at

my opponent it was to see a blonde-haired woman of medium build with pretty blue-gray eyes.

The eyes and the sassy bobbed haircut were the only soft things about Yvette, however.

Whereas I’d dedicated a fair portion of my 150 pounds to body fat, she’d obviously decided to turn hers into human-shredding muscle. She looked like she could crack me over her knee if I got too close, and mentally I counted all the stories I’d ever read in which a werewolf still possessed super-human strength even while in human form.

The final count was all of them, in case anyone was wondering.

Not for the first, or last, time I glared daggers in Gabriel’s direction. I was feeling a lot more inclined to tell him about Marcus at this point, but knew it wouldn’t change anything if I tried to point fingers now. Why was telling the truth always so hard?

The only thing that made me feel better about this was that Gabriel was the one standing beside me. The rest of the pack had grumbled angrily at this show of obvious support, but had grown silent with a well placed glance from their Alpha. He was so sexy when he went all head werewolf.

Anyway, here were the rules of my “unofficial” death match.

Death Match Rules (Amended for Humans)

1.Stepping out of the “ring” (circle of spectators) was a foul, and the offender would be forced to continue the fight while suffering a penalty of some kind.

2.The fight cannot be stopped by an outside party.

3.An outside party cannot assist the fighters in any way.

4.The winner, if a Were, was allowed to eat the loser.

5.The winner, if a human, was allowed to leave with his/her life.

6.If it came to choosing whether one of the fighters lived or died, the Pack would decide their fate. (Sort of like how the Gladiators used to do it.)

7.Otherwise, the winner is determined by whoever was left alive by the end of the fight.

Brutally simple. I liked how they didn’t give me the option of eating Yvette if I won. I thought that sort of thinking was a little narrow-minded, but I hadn’t made the rules. I also noticed that

they didn’t give the female Were a handicap in light of my bad arm. It wasn’t as if I could have won the fight with two working arms, but still.

Now that Yvette had come forward, I suppose that was my cue to step out as well.

Nervous, I looked over at Gabriel. Hands at the small of his back, he didn’t look back at me, but instead seemed to sense my attention on him.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, as confident and self-assured as always.

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it. The Hound in me tells me so. No details. Just that you’ll be all right.”

It was odd, but this actually calmed me. I suppose when you saw a man rip apart a spirit from the underworld for you, then you pretty much trusted his word when it came to this sort of thing.

Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and walked forward to meet a leering Yvette. As soon as the rest of the Pack had finished surrounding us, silently marking out the perimeters of the arena, Gabriel nodded his head at the two of us.

I think that meant “start.”

I looked over just in time to see Yvette come for me. Body laid low to the ground, she moved with a lithe grace and animal-like intensity. She hit me hard and low, and I came off my feet with her arms wrapped around my knees. She lifted me up and I waited for her to slam me back on the ground, but she never finished the move. In fact, she let me down and set me gently on my feet. Then she stepped away, hands in the air. I blinked, stunned at this sudden turn of events.

Then I followed her gaze and saw that she was staring at her Alpha.

His eyes had bled over with Amber fire and he was letting loose a low, continuous growl.

When he realized everyone was looking at him, he glanced around, obviously confused by the sudden silence.

“What?” He looked at Yvette and frowned. “Why’d you stop fighting?”

Yvette cleared her throat, shifted her feet, and sent me a quick glance from beneath her lashes.

“Well?” Gabriel asked, impatient with the delay.

After a brief hesitation, she nodded and came for me again. I stood in place, knowing I couldn’t get out of the way in time, and tensing as I watched her arm come back, claws sprouting from human fingers like blades.

Her claws were an inch from my face when the growling started up again. She pulled back instantly, her momentum driving her past me in a swirl of blonde hair. Together, we all turned to look over at Gabriel. He was glancing around, looking at the sky, the trees, his own feet.

Anywhere but at us. Even if it had been believable, the fact that his eyes were still fully amber would have given him away.

Considering, I looked between him and Yvette, and a grin spread across my face. Suspicious, the other woman scowled at me as if she already knew what I planned. Walking up to her, I grabbed her by the chin, turned her face first this way and then that, and then slapped her across the face. Her head whipped to one side and her lip split. Eyes blazing, she turned back on me in a flash, canines growing in her human mouth and a snarl rippling through her body like tremor.

She barely got within an inch of me this time before Gabriel barked a vicious warning.

Screaming in frustration she turned away, hands fisted in her hair and rage making her body shake. The pack, meanwhile, was having a heyday, making their own displeasure obvious. I saw Marcus walk over to Gabriel and whisper something in his ear.

A moment later Gabriel’s face morphed into a picture of outrage and his voice rose in disbelief.

“Impartial? I am impartial.” Marcus leaned in, whispered something else, and Gabriel crouched where he stood and sulked. “Fine.” Waving his brother away, he spoke without looking at any of us. “Yvette you’re allowed to lay hands on the human.”

Taking a deep breath, Yvette smiled, inclining her head in thanks to her Alpha. I was probably the only other one besides Yvette that saw Gabriel look at her and very slowly, very deliberately, bare his teeth in warning.

Clearly flustered, Yvette faced me once again, hands loose and ready at her sides. I met her eyes, and for the life of me, I couldn’t help but laugh. I tried, but I couldn’t stop the laughter. It took me over, filled my chest, and made my stomach ache with the force of it.

The laughter surprised her at first, and I could see her face work as she tried to stay angry and willing to fight, then she snorted. The snort became a chuckle, and then she was bent over and cackling there beside me.

Our mirth was contagious, and soon more and more of the Pack were lost in amusement. Marcus looked at all of them, and his mouth tightened in anger. He pushed through the men and women that stood around him, coming towards the two of us as if he were more than willing to do Yvette’s job for her.

I straightened, body going rigid. Before he could reach me, a shot rang out and the dirt around us exploded in a shower of grass and rocks. Another shot split the air, and I looked up in time to see one of the Weres collapse, the bullet ripping through one side of his head to come out the other. Some of the pack were already taking off, the others morphing from their human forms to move more easily through the woods.

I was still stunned by what had happened when Gabriel came up from behind me, grabbed my arm, and jerked me into a run all without breaking stride. I heard engines rev and more gunfire as we both darted through the stand of trees. Around us, wolves were escaping in leaps and bounds, their bodies nothing but streaks of color through the foliage, their steps silent but for the occasional rustle of leaves on the forest floor. The trunks of the trees around us exploded with gunfire, the bark ricocheting through the air.

My breath came hard and fast and my chest ached. It was obvious that I was slowing Gabriel down. The rest of the pack was barely visible through the trees ahead now. I could hear cars crashing through the brush and every now and then the pained yip of a wolf reached my ears.

I stopped, yanking my arm out of Gabriel’s grip and struggling to breathe past the terrible pain in my chest.

“Can’t. Keep up,” I gasped, hands on knees. I waved him off. “I’ll hide. You run.”

His jaw clenched. Bouncing on his heels he looked between me and back where we’d come from, where the sound of engines was quickly growing louder and louder.

Lips tight, he shook his head.

“Won’t work. They’ll catch you.”

“They wo—”

“They will,” he spoke, tone implying that he would brook no argument.

“Yeah,” I admitted, lamenting my awful lack of upper, lower, or mid-body strength. I sat at a desk all day. Who the hell actually expected me to outrun men with shotguns and semi-automatics? “They probably will.”

“Come here.” Pulling me towards him, he looked down into my eyes and kissed me. It felt oddly businesslike, and when his tongue brushed against my own something sizzled on my skin. It felt like I was being bitten by thousands of tiny little mouths, like I was bathing in liquid flame. It ended as quickly as it had begun, and when he stepped back, my eyes widened and I gasped on a tide of smoke.

I felt like an actress in a winter fresh gum commercial. All tingly and refreshed. My arm even felt better. As if it had been healing for months rather than a few days. I felt like I could run a marathon, hunt some bison, or come up with a cure for cancer.

I grinned at him, fairly fizzling. “Wow. What did you do? Am I high?”

His smile was easy, despite the rising cacophony that now surrounded us. I knew I should be worried, the cars were practically on us now, and I could hear the voices of our attackers as they

marched through the woods. But for whatever reason, I just couldn’t care. I only had a wild joy in my heart and all my attention was focused on Gabriel.

“I mark you,” he said, voice growing urgent as men I could only assume were Huntsmen stepped into view. His hands gripped my forearms and tightened, forcing some of the euphoria back so that I could focus on what he was saying. “Before Pack and man alike, I mark you. From this moment forward, my enemies are your enemies, my allies your allies. When you raise your voice in need or loneliness, in joy or sadness, the Pack will come. Do you accept your place as my mate?”

In the back of the crowd, I saw Agent Liam talking to the woman I recognized as Jessica Pearson, the Huntsmen ringleader and I made a terrible realization.

The werewolf hunters and the government were working together, and Marcus had used my footage to lead them both to the Pack and to Gabriel. That knowledge brought me down to earth as nothing else could have.

When I was silent for too long he shook me, nails digging into skin while men and women in army fatigues surrounded us and attempted to pull us apart.

“Do you accept? Phaedra,” he breathed, pressing me close, “I can’t do anything for you if you don’t. I can’t keep you safe. Not against this.”

“I accept,” I sobbed as the soldiers finally managed to rip him away from me. My arms were jerked behind my back and one of them pressed their knee in the back of mine, so that my legs buckled. I was brought to the ground and cuffs were slapped around my wrists.

Beside me, I watched the people dressed in camo (obviously not military) begin to beat Gabriel to the ground. His skin started to soften around the edges, his wolf coming to the forefront, but with a soft buzz Jessica Pearson pressed a stun again against the side of his neck. She shocked him twice more while I struggled in my own bonds, and when the Alpha had finally been brought down, she looked over at Marcus and smiled.

“Good work, Evans. I knew we could count on you.�

Marcus smirked, and for the first time I wished that I could shift into a wolf, if only so that I could rip him to shreds.

“A curse. Sometimes, that’s all it is.”

—Patrick Knowls

Chapter Thirteen

I rejoiced when the world ended. I wasn’t sure why. In this place, it always came back.

Reality was always there, waiting for me, watching for me from the corner of the room like a demon hell-bent on sewing nightmares. It got to the point where when I opened my eyes again, only to see the harsh fluorescents of the interrogation room still shining above me, it was all I could do to keep from breaking down into tears.

The worst part was that no matter how badly things were going for me, I knew for a fact that they were worse for Gabriel. I knew because they had us locked in cells that were separated not by concrete walls, but by bulletproof glass. I could see what they did to him, and even worse, I could feel it, thanks to my connection as his Mate.

I felt every cold touch, every broken bone, and bleeding wound. I felt them shatter his kneecaps while he lay strapped to a table and I felt the agony multiply tenfold when his body healed the damage in minutes.

They had him manacled to a wall by a collar, and they brought him his meals inside dog bowls while on the other side of the glass, my captors allowed me to eat from fine china.

The first few days he refused to eat. It was only after they started severing limbs just to watch them regenerate that his body finally broke down and cried out for sustenance.

I remember watching him look at me first. The shame that twisted his gut and turned the food into ash in his mouth, even as he continued to shovel it in with his hands. That day, I refused my meals. And the day after that, and the one after that. Instead, I went into a corner of my cell and turned my back on the proceedings going on the other side of the wall.

I sat there, staring at gray concrete, body rocking while it danced to the echoes of Gabriel’s pain. I didn’t have to see to know what was going on. We both knew that. But he seemed able to handle the experiments a little better when he knew that my eyes weren’t upon him.

The sad part about it all? It wasn’t the werewolf hunters who were in charge of him. The agents had told me that the werewolf hunters couldn’t be trusted with him. Something about them not taking his health into consideration.

They weren’t hurting him for fun. At least, I didn’t think so. It was all to get results. To see how fast he could run, how fast he could shift, how much damage he could take before his wolf came screaming to the forefront.

They were gathering data about Weres, and Gabriel had been chosen as their guinea pig. Agents Liam and Benson listened to suggestions from Marcus and Jessica, but didn’t allow either of them to step through the door of his cell.

So they visited me instead.

In a nutshell? We didn’t get along. I found myself bruised and bloody on more than one occasion, and whenever I sat in my cell, nursing a bloody nose or cracked rib, Gabriel would sing for me.

Not in the traditional sense. We couldn’t hear one another through the glass, but, thanks to the link between us, I could feel his words rather than hear them. They appeared to me like pictures in my head. His singing wasn’t done in the language of men, but in the language of wolves. I came to learn that even the slightest nuance could change the meaning of a particular call.

It wasn’t all about dominance, but also about your intent. The emotion that you put behind your voice before you raised it to the sky. To Gabriel, the howls he sent to me along our bond sounded like words, but all I saw were dark winter nights and towering pines, as he sung in that way that only a Were can do.

Sometimes, when I craved the sight of him, I would stand before the glass wall, hands on either side of my head, and watch him. Trapped by his collar, he’d crouch there in his own cell in the darkness, the only sign of life the glow of his eyes through the heavy veil of the night.

On those nights, I could feel his mind race. Images would tumble through my brain faster than I could make sense of, but eventually I caught up. Eventually, I trained myself to see the stories he was mindlessly telling me, over and over in a bid to keep himself sane.

He was showing me the Wild Hunt. Teaching me of the mad Fae and bloodthirsty hounds they’d trained. I learned that each of the hounds had a gift. A talent. Something the Sidhe would give their wolves when they were particularly pleased with them.

Gabriel had originally belonged to the Master of the Hunt, which was why he’d been charged to lead the group on the nights they wished to run down their chosen prey.

I learned that others in the hunting party knew him as Ghost. He showed me how he could fade away, disappear like smoke only to reappear leagues from where he’d started. How it had been his duty to cloak the presence of the Wild Hunt on the nights that they ran so that they could disappear and reappear wherever they liked. Riding from the very skies like a host of rebel angels or all the riders of the apocalypse.

The most important information I learned, was that Gabriel had to avoid the full use of his power, because giving in to that part of himself would only call the Sidhe down on all of our heads. To me it explained why he hadn’t already escaped from this place, but not why he hadn’t gotten away while he still could have.

In his memories I saw Specters sucking the life from the innocent, the guilty begging for their souls, and all around him, me, us were the faces of screaming children.

Gabriel…Gabriel couldn’t stay here. With every day that he spent chained to that wall, he lost another piece of himself. Another piece he’s spent thousands of years trying to build after he’d escaped from the Sidhe. Eventually, the last of what made Gabriel human and real would disappear all together and then the Huntsmen and the Feds would have exactly what they’d been expecting when they’d captured him.

A monster.

****

At first they kept me around for questioning.

“How many Werewolf Packs live in the San Francisco area?”

“Who are the Alphas?”

“How many people follow Gabriel Evans?”

“Can a werewolf be made?”

“How do you kill them?”

“What makes them weak?”

“How many of them have you met?”

“What are their names?”

“Where do they work?”

And on and on it went. I suspected that Marcus had already provided answers for the more intimate questions concerning the identity of his pack members. Which meant that they were probably tricks to see how much I knew, or if I could be counted on to tell the truth. But I wasn’t even inclined to lie. Instead I sat there, stone faced, until the round of questions was done for the day and the Agent left. Sometimes it lasted hours, sometimes it lasted only minutes.

But then they realized that I was better at acting as leverage than I was at playing twenty questions. The day started out like any other. I woke up in my cell, already mentally exhausted and shaking with nerves. Sleep was more of a fond memory in this place. There was too much

violence soaked into the air and walls for anything but nightmares to exist. So I usually slept in fits and bursts, checking on Gabriel whenever consciousness returned, if only to reassure myself that he was alive and well.

That he was still there.

I always expected him to disappear now. To fade away when I wasn’t looking and damn the consequences of alerting the Sidhe. It made me even more terrified of his deep silences than I had been. They were reminders that he was only around because he chose to be, though why was still a mystery.

Rolling off the cot they called a bed, I went over to the sink basin in the corner of the room and tried to wash my face. The water coming out of the faucet was cold enough that rinsing my face with it was enough to erase any lingering dreams of sleep. I was shivering over the sink, and was thinking fondly of my abandoned apartment, when the door to my cell opened and Marcus and Agent Liam walked in. It still threw me, seeing those two standing together, but I suppose eventually I’d have to get used to the idea that I’d been tricked.

Agent Benson and Liam hadn’t been tailing me because they thought I was a domestic terrorist. Like the Huntsmen, they’d thought I’d been working for Gabriel ever since I’d thwarted the attempt on his life with the car bomb. The Huntsmen had planned on capturing him that day and the contents of that van had held everything they’d needed to do so.

The only reason someone hadn’t been inside of the van was because they’d needed backup when Gabriel had realized he was under attack and had faded out of sight. He’d been right beside them the entire time of course, but thanks to his abilities as a Hound it had been like he’d disappeared into thin air. The Huntsmen had panicked, sending the rest of their team out to try and locate him, and in that small window of time I’d wandered in and pushed their Mystery Machine to its death.

I would have killed to see a group of men in tactical gear and camouflage paint walking back to their bad guy headquarters in disgrace, but alas, I’d been busy explaining myself to the police at the time.

Apparently the FBI had been suspicious about the presence of Weres for years now.

They’d developed an interest in Gabriel, and while they hadn’t been working directly with the Huntsmen, they hadn’t disapproved of their methods either. Now, thanks to me and my camera, both sides had the evidence they needed to reveal Weres to the world, though I suspected that their motives for doing so were very different from one another.

The Huntsmen wanted them eradicated. They wanted to be heroes in a world united in the fight against the Big Bad Wolves. They were fanatics, pure and simple, and Marcus was just using them.

I had yet to figure him out.

The Feds meanwhile, were easy enough to understand. Based on the questions they’d asked me and the experiments they’d put Gabriel through, it seemed pretty obvious that they wanted what the Weres could offer. Hunting instincts, long lives, increased stamina and intelligence, loyalty, super reflexes and strength. Sounded to me like the recipe for the perfect soldier. Not to mention what it could do for the public at large if they could learn to reproduce a Were’s healing capabilities in humans.

Now that the Weres had been outed, it would only be a matter of time before people began reporting sightings of them all over the world. The ones that the government couldn’t hunt down would probably volunteer to have their stories heard, just like those poor shmucks that had been featured on the news. By refusing to keep something like this a secret, the government could say that they were handling the problem. Keeping the public safe, while all the while using the Weres to further their own goals. And any Werewolf who cooperated would simply be lifted up as an example to draw in other wolves.

“Look how convincing we can be. How kind, how benevolent, how forgiving.” They could say, “Look how great our country is, that even a monster can call himself a Patriot.”

Then of course, the little issue of dealing with Werewolves would work wonders when it came to distracting the country from all of its other problems. Wars, dirty politicians, gun control and increased violence? Pshaw honey, don’t you know we have Werewolves running amuck? They’ll eat our children, rape our women, turn our boys. They’re probably prowling around in our backyard right now. Health care reform and a recession? Please. Spare me. There are worse things to worry about. Scarier things. Things with sharp teeth and fur coats.

Oh yeah.

I could see the big picture, and it was plastered on the front page of every major newspaper in bold and italicized font. Give the country an enemy, a common fear, and see how quickly they unite against it.

This was the kind of thing I thought about during my captivity.

Conspiracy theories.

It was probably unhealthy, but it sure as hell helped the time pass more quickly.

Wiping my hands down the sides of my jeans to dry them, I grinned a greeting at the two men and shook my head in wonder.

“Well, don’t this beat all?” I said, laying it on thick. “Company. I haven’t had company in lord knows how long.” I glanced around my cell and shrugged sadly, making a big show of trying to fix my hair. “Sorry I’m such a mess, but I wasn’t expecting anyone to stop by. I would offer you

some coffee or something but,” I raised a brow in challenge, “I don’t have any. Or any cups for that matter. Or any shits to give, now that I think about it.”

“Cute,” Liam said, looking honestly amused as he came further into the room. Marcus stayed silent, instead stepping aside to lean against the frame of the now closed door.

“I try.”

I examined both men carefully, but there was no real way to tell why they’d come. They’d both perfected their own version of a poker face, and while one was smiling amiably and the other may as well have been carved from stone, both were unreadable. I didn’t like being in such close quarters with two men. Two dangerous men. At least when Jessica had come with Marcus there had been a female presence to mitigate his instinctive violence. Jessica was the devil I had grown to know; Liam was currently a mystery.

“What brings you boys here today?”

Marcus growled softly at being referred to as a “boy,” but Liam just kept on smiling.

I was beginning to not like that smile.

“Why, we came to see you of course,” he answered.

I shook my head, “But why?”

“The pleasure of your company,” Marcus deadpanned.

Shocked, I could only stare at him.

“Did you just make a joke?” I finally managed.

“I can be funny.”

“Uh, do you see anybody laughing? Making a joke and being funny are two entirely different things, sweet pea.”

Marcus was reduced to growling his displeasure once more.

“Actually,” Liam said, ignoring us both, “Marcus and I were hoping you could help us solve a little problem we’ve been having.”

My eyes narrowed. “What sort of problem?”

Agent Liam shrugged as if it were no big deal, but I felt the hair on my nape rise in trepidation.

“It’s your friend, Mr. Evans,” he began, sounding contrite. “He hasn’t been nearly as….forthcoming as we’d hoped. He seemed like a reasonable man, so we don’t understand why he isn’t cooperating.”

“Might have something to do with being chained to a wall and cut up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey,” I confided, but Liam merely tsked.

“Now, Now. None of that. You see, I thought the same thing at first, then I realized that you, Miss Conners, have been treated with the utmost respect.” His brow furrowed, “And yet you haven’t been very cooperative either.”

“How can I cooperate when I don’t know anything?”

“Oh, I think you know plenty. Marcus here tells me that his Alpha, excuse me, former Alpha, has gone through a lot of trouble to keep you safe.”

“And you believe everything that Marcus tells you?”

He laughed outright at that. “I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. But the thing is that I’ve seen proof of it, Miss Conners. You forget, I’ve been tailing you for a while now, and ever since you started working at Lumière, Gabriel has been following you nearly as closely as my partner and I have. In fact, we nearly tripped over him a time or two. And if I remember correctly, wasn’t it Evans that picked you up from the station the night the Huntsmen took a shot at you?

“Men don’t do that unless they’re trying to get something, or they’ve already got it.” He pointed a finger at me and then swung it over to where Gabriel was watching the proceedings on the other side of the wall, and then back again. Like a pendulum. “I’m guessing you two are somewhere in between. Some heavy petting and soulful glances, but no slide into home plate. Not yet anyway.”

“We’re not like that,” I said, stiff-lipped and angry. “He’s not like that.”

“Maybe he isn’t. But you are, aren’t you Miss Conners? You understand how this game is played don’t you? When a man wants something from you, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep you around until he gets it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a ring on your finger or his dick in your mouth. Or both. Sure, Gabriel’s part wolf, but on the inside, at the core where it counts, he’s a man.” All congeniality melted from his face. “And for better or worse, you seem to be the one he’s set his sights on.”

“Even if that were true,” I began, keeping my words slow and careful, “why would it matter to you?”

“Here’s the thing. Some of my colleagues believe that Gabriel is a lost cause. That we should cut our losses and hand him over to our lab technicians for research. Others, myself included, think

differently. We believe that with the right motivation, Gabriel can still prove to be an invaluable asset to the U.S. Government.” The look he leveled on me made me feel very small, very fragile, and I shivered. “We just need to find out what makes him tick. What gets his hackles up.”

A low rumble filled the air and my heart sunk. It was Gabriel, and I didn’t have to turn my head to know his eyes had begun to burn like amber fire. Liam grinned at me.

“That’s where you come in, Miss Conners.”

Then, before I could so much as flinch, Marcus was on me. Hand wrapped around my throat, he swung me out and away from the wall so quickly that my feet barely touched the ground. Then, lifting me up, he slammed me down into the unforgiving concrete and pressed his knee into my chest to hold me still.

Not like I was going anywhere, slamming me into the floor had pretty much knocked loose all my sass, as well as a large portion of my consciousness. I lay beneath Marcus, brain throbbing and blackness edging my vision while my lungs struggled to keep me breathing.

“Are you all right, Miss Conners?”

I couldn’t see Gabriel, but something told me that if I could just play it off, maybe we’d be all right.

“Never better,” I gasped, enjoying the way anger darkened both of their faces. “I always imagined that this is what summer in the Hamptons would be like.”

Ok, so maybe I had a little sass left.

Snarling, Marcus pressed his knee deeper into my chest, bones ground against one another and the pressure built to something excruciating and panic inducing. I felt like

the walls were closing in, like I was going to be crushed, and it killed a small part of me not to allow the instinct to panic like an animal free reign.

Instead, I bit my lip until I tasted blood and waited for unconsciousness to take me.

When he saw what I was doing, Liam waved for Marcus to let up. The Were hesitated for a fraction of a second before complying, long enough for me to know that he wasn’t as obedient as Liam would try and have me believe.

“Let me try,” Liam said, just as calm as ever. Marcus placed his hand around my throat, a collar that trapped me as effectively as steel, while Liam straddled my waist. My breathing hitched, and my eyes flew to the ceiling. Unwilling to watch what he was about to do once I saw him pull the knife from a sheath at his side.

“I used to deal with prisoners like you all the time,” I found myself focusing more on the sound the blade made as he slid it across the floor at my side than what he was actually saying.

“They thought they were special. Individuals. But they weren’t. When they’re fighting for something they truly believe in, you’d be surprised just how many people can withstand torture.”

Using his free hand, he began to inch my shirt up a little bit at a time. “They weren’t particularly strong-minded, or strong-willed for that matter,” he confided, his fingertips like ice against my adrenaline fueled skin. “They weren’t martyrs or heroes, and they hadn’t gone through any training designed to resist what we threw at them. What made them so hard to break, was the stubborn belief that they were right. That what they did, what they suffered for, was right.”

He seemed confused by the very idea, even now. From the corner of my eye the knife glinted beneath the overhead light, and on the inside I started to cry.

“In the end, they all learned the same lesson.” He leaned over me, and whispered against the shell of my ear. “Pain, Miss Conners, is pain. And if you aren’t careful, it becomes all you are and all you will ever be.”

Then he cut me.

He sliced into the meaty part of my stomach, and then pressed his fingers deep into the open, dripping wound he left behind.

I screamed, and Gabriel finally lost it.

It had been important to make it through this. To show that they couldn’t use me against him. I knew once I heard the sound of screaming metal from his cell after Liam hurt me that we had both failed this little test miserably.

He didn’t howl this time. In fact, he didn’t make any noise at all. The first indication any of us had that he’d broken free of his chains at all was the tap, tap, tap of his nails against the glass. Together, we looked towards the sound.

Gabriel stood in his cell, manacles still tight around his throat and wrists just as they should be. The only problem was that the chains were no longer connected to the wall, and Gabriel was flush against the glass, his eyes burning a deep, putrid, yellow-like sickness or poison, and his nails scraping along the surface of the glass as if he could cut his way through, but wanted to play with us all first.

He grinned at us, a maniacal, mad-looking smile that somehow revealed rows and rows of glistening fangs, and his head canted to one side. It was stupid, but my heart actually clenched at the familiar gesture, even as he blew gently against the glass and wrote three lines in the steaming cloud of condensation he left behind:

Little Pigs

Little Pigs

Let me—

“—come in,” Liam finished reading aloud and no sooner had he done so than the lights flickered in both cells. When we next looked, Gabriel had disappeared, leaving nothing but his sing-song request to echo mockingly in our minds.

Then I realized something.

I was shivering like a leaf in the wind, as terrified as Marcus and Liam, when I should be remembering one very important fact:

I wasn’t dinner. I was his mate. The wolf wasn’t coming to get me; he was coming because of me. I was the only one in this little trio exempt from the ass whooping that was about to go down.

It was hard to do, but somehow I managed to relax.

“Where the hell did he go?” Liam whispered. Marcus didn’t bother answering, instead stepping back from me and eyeing the glass with a curled lip. I followed his gaze and felt something twist in my gut. The words written on the window seemed to be smoking, and for a moment I was confused by what I saw.

Then I realized why it was so strange. One by one, each letter Gabriel had written was disappearing into smoke. Smoke that drifted in the air on my side of the cell rather than his. Soon all three of us were surrounded by it, a thick vapor, a warm fog that seemed to breathe. I felt as if I was surrounded by something living, and I realized that the room

was growing darker, lights straining to retain their brilliance beneath the weight of the fog that just seemed to grow thicker and thicker.

The lights flickered. Off and then on again, and I saw it. A hunched figure in the corner behind Marcus, eyes still shining a putrid yellow. He was barely discernible through the fog, but his focus was unwavering as he watched his foster brother. I couldn’t say that he was more animal than man in that moment. I’d never seen an animal whose bones stretched the confines of their skin, or whose limbs seemed disjointed, as if they were used to be bigger, used to being more.

No, I couldn’t say he was an animal. That would have been too tame a word for the thing that was carefully stalking the two men in the room with me. Getting closer and closer with every flicker of the lights, like some nightmare crawling freely through the world.

The last image I saw before closing my eyes was of Gabriel finally rising from his crouch. He rose up behind Liam, a huge black shadow that seemed to touch the ceiling, indistinct around the

edges. His gaze was an empty abyss, and when he opened his jaws and breathed death against the back of Liam’s neck it was darkness that brushed against the unsuspecting man’s skin. Gabriel breathed the darkness in, it seeped from his skin, he was made of it, black smoke held together more by an idea than reality.

I think I whimpered before my eyes snapped shut. My entire body trembled as I lay there, waiting. Too hurt to rise to my feet and too frightened to push the issue. But the scream I’d been expecting never happened. Instead, when I opened one eye to update my brain on what was happening, I saw Gabriel looking over at me. He still stood behind Liam, but he no longer hovered over him as if he were about to unhinge his jaw and swallow him whole. The other men hadn’t noticed him yet, as if they were unable to see or feel the threat he represented.

But I saw him just fine.

I saw his eyes flicker with humanity, the Gabriel I knew shining through. Saw his body condense and reform into something sane and right. The whole time he was bringing himself back, he watched me, until finally he stood there, naked and tired, guilt written all over his face and amber eyes wary.

Then and only then did he lift whatever power had been shielding him from the others.

Liam and Marcus “discovered” him at the same time, and it was all the Agent could do to keep Marcus from attacking his former Alpha with claws and teeth.

“We had a deal,” Liam hissed, shoving Marcus away and resting his hand on the butt of the gun that rested in his shoulder holster. “You hand over Evans, and we help you gain control over your little pack. Well, congrats. You’re Alpha now, but that means that Evans is ours. You lay a paw on him and we wipe you all out.”

“What about your research?” Marcus snarled, eyes still trained on Gabriel as he brushed past the two arguing men to come to me. “What about your werewolf army?”

Liam shrugged. “Turns out we don’t need that many of you alive after all. Amazing how frugal budget cuts can encourage you to be.”

By this time Gabriel was at my side and I sighed as he knelt at my hip. His head lowered, and for a crazed moment I thought he was going to go all Hannibal Lector on me.

But no.

Not exactly anyway.

Instead of teeth I felt his tongue against the wound Liam had made. As I lay there, he began to lick the blood away and beneath the rough glide of his tongue I felt the skin begin to knit back together.

This whole Mate thing?

Best health plan ever.

All too soon the feel of his mouth, the feel of his tongue, and the burning promise of his breath against the sensitive skin of my stomach had my mind wandering to other things. It was only when I felt Liam and Marcus turn their attention to us that I was able to snap out of it.

Knowing the type of abuse that both of us would be in for if anyone found out that Gabriel could heal me, I pulled him up and against me. Wrapping my body around his, I clung to his neck and fake sobbed. Catching on, he wrapped his arms around my waist, sliding my shirt down over my now smooth skin as he did so. Even though it was meant to be artifice, I really liked having him there, wrapped around me. Holding me like he cared.

It would have been all sorts of romantic if Liam hadn’t walked over to us and kicked Gabriel in the side.

“Get up, mutt. Nice trick with the glass, but it’s time to go back to your cell.”

Gabriel growled without releasing me or raising his face from where he’d buried it against the side of my neck. I clutched him a little tighter and my “sobbing” got a little louder.

“Just leave them.” Support from an unexpected source. Marcus sounded more exasperated than understanding, however. “We have other things to do today.”

Liam was quiet for what felt like forever, before I finally heard him sigh in agreement.

My muscles relaxed.

“Fine,” he said, “I learned what I came here to learn.”

He crouched down beside us and his voice lowered. I don’t know why he bothered whispering, everyone in the room could hear him just fine.

“I’ll be back for you though,” he told Gabriel. I felt him tense against me and my nails dug into his back as if I could pull him even closer than he already was. “Now that I know what it takes to make you talk, you, me, and Miss Conners are going to be the best of friends.”

He stood and stepped over us on his way to the door. Marcus followed. Before he left, Marcus turned to look back at us, offering a final bit of advice.

“I wouldn’t try your little disappearing act again. The Huntsmen have a new toy they’ve been dying to test out. We may not be able to see you, but we don’t need to see you to hurt you.”

Then they were both gone.

I listened for the sound of the door locking, and when it reached my ears, I sighed shakily into Gabriel’s mop of curls. Even his hair looked beaten, and something fierce and snarling came to life in me.

I couldn’t let them hurt him again. He’d managed to reach me and the least I could do was protect him now that we were together. Even though our audience was gone, neither Gabriel nor I thought to move away from one another. Within minutes I heard the soft, even sound of his breathing. Using his gift must take a lot out of him. Not to mention that I could count the number of times I’d seen him doze off on one hand.

I would have preferred it if we’d done this on the bed, but I wasn’t heartless enough to wake him just to make him move to that pitiful excuse of a cot. So instead, I lay there, hands soothing down the muscled expanse of Gabriel’s back. I didn’t sleep. I just stared at the wall and let my mind work.

By the time morning rolled around, I had a plan.

I just hoped it would work.

“Don’t complicate things. Life is simple. When the world hands you lemons…you eat them.”

—Lettie Arnold

Chapter Fourteen

There was a woman who brought us food. Well, who brought me food. It had been a while since anyone had given Gabriel a plate to eat off of, or a fork and spoon to eat it with. When I handed him my breakfast that morning, he stared down at the scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and lone waffle as if he’d never seen them before.

“You eat it,” I told him slowly, pantomiming with an invisible fork and spoon. I groaned to show that my fake meal was delicious. “Food good,” I reiterated. “Eat food.”

Sending me a long-suffering look, he shook his head.

“I’m perfectly aware of what food is, Phaedra.”

Oh.

“Then stop glaring at it like it owes you unpaid child support,” I snapped, trying to ignore the way my face reddened. He snorted, but complied, shoveling the food in his mouth with an enthusiasm that put my own eating habits to shame.

“So,” I began, “you want to get out of here or what?”

I figured since he’d already slipped up and used his gift, then it wouldn’t hurt to use it to escape. To my disappointment, he shook his head.

“I haven’t used it in a few hundred years. I’m out of practice. Plus, I couldn’t take you with me even if I was at full strength.”

“Why not?” I grumbled.

“Well. You’re human,” he told me simply. “What I do is like pulling cells apart. If I broke you, I wouldn’t be able to put you back together again.”

On that note, he went back to his breakfast, leaving me to imagine that lovely scenario.

At one point he looked up at me with smeared cheese from the eggs on his face and I felt it. That shiver. That quake. That nameless something that told me I was in love. My upper lip curled in distaste.

“Damn,” I thought, “he got me.”

“What’s wrong? What did I do?” Suddenly self-conscious, he set down the now empty plate and gave me the old puppy dog eyes.

Guaranteed to melt the heart of any woman.

Reaching over, I wiped the egg from his cheek with my thumb and sighed. “Nothing,” I said irritably. “You’re just too damn cute.”

Earnest worry morphed into smooth swagger in an instant, and I was almost relieved when Liam stepped into the room so that I could look at something other than all of that smoldering sex appeal.

“I’ve been thinking,” I spoke before Liam could open his mouth. For this to work I couldn’t really afford for him to get too distracted by Gabriel. This was about getting us out there.

Liam blinked at me, then turning to speak softly to someone out in the hallway, he came fully into the room and shut the door.

“Really?” he said, indulging in curiosity. “This should be interesting.”

I chose my next words carefully. “It’s occurred to me that you and your Huntsmen are thinking too small.”

His eyes narrowed and I felt Gabriel stiffen beside me. “What are you talking about, Conners?”

I smiled, “Have you ever heard of a creature called a ‘Sidhe’ Agent Liam?”

Regarding me levelly, he wandered deeper into the room so that he could lean against the window that separated Gabriel’s old cell from mine. I didn’t plan on letting him go back in there.

“It’s a fairy isn’t it?”

I nodded, “For lack of a better term, yes. A very ancient breed of Fae. My classic lit teacher used to talk about them all the time. There are two types of Sidhe, the Seelie and Unseelie.

They live on a different plane than us, and the only way to reach their world is by entering the Sithin. It looks like a giant mound of dirt, but as we all know, looks can be deceiving.” I sent a smile in Gabriel’s direction, begging him silently to go along with me.

I’m pretty sure what he’d done the night before constituted as using his power. Even now, the Wild Hunt could be tracking him down. If they were, I didn’t want to be locked in a cell when they found us.

But if we could use the FBI and the Huntsmen against them…

You know what they say. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, but he’s too busy beating the ass of the other guy to bother paying attention to me. Classic Art of War stuff.

“What does any of this have to do with me?”

“It could be nothing,” I said, “Or it could be everything. It just depends on how you look at the big picture. I’m just trying to tell you what I know.”

“And what do you know?”

“I know that the Sidhe were responsible for creating the first werewolves.” I didn’t bother mentioning that it was because they’d cursed random humans whenever they’d needed extra hounds during their hunts. I saw Liam’s interest spike visibly and I hid a smile. “I also know that they’ve had no reason to bother coming to this world. Until now.”

“Explain,” he barked. I could see his mind working, still dissecting the news that the Sidhe knew the secret to creating Weres.

“Well, you have one of their pets,” I indicated Gabriel with a nod of my head. “They’re going to want him back. They probably won’t be pleased why they find out how you’ve been treating him.”

Liam snorted derisively. “Let me guess. You expect me to let you both go all so I can gain the goodwill of a bunch of Tinkerbells?”

“I’ve seen that movie,” Gabriel spoke up suddenly. “My masters are nothing like the tiny woman in the small dress. They also don’t secrete fairy dust. They would eat you and yours alive.”

“Is that a threat?’

“It’s a fact,” Gabriel spoke with the same blunt honesty that he reserved for most everything. He wasn’t boasting or exaggerating to try and frighten Liam. He was simply telling the truth as he understood it.

“You don’t expect me to believe-”

“You want the secret to creating Weres?” Gabriel interrupted. Liam hesitated, but finally nodded. “The Sidhe can give you that.”

“Why don’t I just turn a bunch of you loose? I’m sure I’ll have my pick of new recruits from among the survivors.”

Gabriel shook his head in disgust and I felt as if we’d switched places without my realizing it.

“That’s just a myth. Being a Were isn’t like having a virus. You don’t catch it from a bite or a scratch and we don’t pass the curse along to our children, in the event that we have any.”

Growing frustrated, Agent Liam began to pace.

“You’re lying,” he stated finally. “Otherwise you would have died out a long time ago.”

“That’s true, but I’m not lying. The curse is just that. A curse. It’s magical in nature. The moon chooses who changes. If the magic in you is strong, you shift, and if the magic is weak…” He shrugged helplessly and I finished the sentence for him.

“If the magic is weak, you turn out like Marcus. A defective wolf. All bark, but no bite. I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for is it?”

“No,” he spoke absently, “It certainly isn’t.”

Gabriel and I let him stew on this new information for a moment. When I knew the time was right, I nodded for Gabriel to start in on him again. He did so without a second’s hesitation.

“We all want something, Agent Liam. I’m sure with a little negotiating we can reach some sort of compromise.”

“Say I let you go,” Liam mused, “where does that leave me when it turns out that you’re both lying?”

“We’re not lying,” I said.

“And I’m supposed to believe that? Even if I did, what’s to keep me from simply using you as leverage? The Sidhe tell me what I want to know and I give them back their dog in return.”

“Remember what happened last night?” Gabriel asked quietly. “That was child’s play, a parlor’s trick compared to what the Sidhe would do to you. They have ways of tracking down what’s theirs and they’ll find this place sooner rather than later. When that happens, you won’t get the chance to offer a trade. They’ll just come in here and take what they came for. In the end, even if they leave you alive, you’ll still be left with nothing.”

There was such conviction, such coldness in his words, that even I felt the hairs on my arms rising and goosebumps breaking out over my skin. I watched the insidious seed of doubt began to sprout in Agent Liam’s throat worked as he tried to swallow. I saw him give in to the inevitable before his next words could confirm it.

“Why would they help us? Why would they tell us what we wanted to know about how to create your kind if force is out of the question?”

“You catch more flies with bees than honey.”

Liam blinked, and I shook my head. Damn. Things had been going so smoothly, too.

“What?” Liam asked, and I placed a hand on Gabriel’s arm as if he were a senile old man.

“What he meant to say was that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

“Of course,” Gabriel patted my hand in gratitude. “What she said. If you give the Sidhe something they want, something they can’t get on their own, then they’d be more than willing to tell you whatever you needed to know.”

“What could we possibly offer them in exchange?”

Gabriel fell silent, and his hand tightened almost painfully on my own. I could see the muscles in his jaw working as he thought, and even as I watched his eyes darkened. When he glanced over at me, I knew it was to reassure himself about whatever bomb he was about to drop.

“There are a number of fugitives of the Sidhe hidden away in your world,” he began.

“The Sidhe can no longer hunt them down like they used to, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want them back. If you gave them just one of these fugitives…”

He let the sentence trail off, but Liam seemed to get the idea. Avarice made him ugly, and he took two quick steps towards us in his rising excitement. “Who are they? Where are they? How do we—”

“There’s only one way to hunt down an enemy of the Sidhe,” Gabriel interrupted him quietly, looking down at our joined hands as he continued. “Only one way that the Seelie and Unseelie courts would view as honorable.”

“What is it? What do we need to do?” Liam snapped when Gabriel had grown silent once again.

“You have to call for the Hunt.”

The Wild Hunt. Oh God.

I spoke without thinking. “But you can’t. They’ll—”

“I no longer recognize them as Leaders of the Hunt,” he told me, voice soothing. “And neither do the others. If we called a Hunt together in this world, we would be operating under our own authority.”

“Isn’t that just as dangerous?” I whispered, and he nodded.

“A Hunt without a Master to lead it can be…” he blew out a shaky breath, “a mistake.” I somehow got the impression that he had made the understatement of the century. He continued, “Which is why I’ll be the only one doing any actual hunting.”

There seemed to be a lot of holes in his plan. So many, in fact, that I wasn’t sure which one to pick at first.

“But-”

“You’ll be my rider,” he said, overriding whatever protest I’d been about to make. “One rider, one hound.” He said the words as if they were intimate. As if they were a promise.

The rest of his words were aimed at Agent Liam, though he went back to staring at our hands. “We’ll track down our prey and hand them over to you and your men. That will give you the leverage you’ll need against the Sidhe.”

“What do you get out of it?” Agent Liam sounded suspicious and I was reminded that he was man of some intelligence. But only some. He was no match against the wide eyes of innocence that Gabriel leveled on him in response to his question.

“Why, our freedom. And of course, a promise that your government will sweep this entire Werewolf fiasco under the rug.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because you won’t be needing the Huntsmen to search out and capture any more Weres.

Your alliance will be with the Sidhe, in which case secrecy will be your friend. Don’t want people finding out that their government is turning innocent bystanders into Wereanimals.

Make this disappear, lie low for a few years, until people forget about it, and during that time you can do whatever you damn well please in the privacy of your own backyard.”

When he still looked unconvinced I gently added, “Letting Werewolves exist will only make things more complicated for you in the long run.”

Gabriel and I were both tense as we awaited Agent Liam’s decision. But in the end, I suppose we didn’t have anything to worry about. Liam wasn’t an idiot and Gabriel and I were a hell of a team when it came to making deals.

There was really only one answer to what we offered, and Liam gave the right one.

“Get some rest. You’ll need it for the Hunt tonight.”

Kids are more wolf than human. They understand the basics. The essentials. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and fight when all else fails. I can really get behind that kind of mentality.

—Phaedra Conners

Chapter Fifteen

“Are we going to pick their names out of a hat or what?”

“I’m sure one day you’re going to make perfect sense to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Who are we tracking down? Who’s the lucky bastard we’re going to be chasing through the woods?”

“We’re not going to chase anyone. There’re only two of us, not enough to flush anyone out or block off all the escape routes. No, if we’re lucky our prey won’t even know we’re there until it’s too late.”

I swallowed nervously, dancing from foot to foot as the cool night air brushed against me. I was wearing a military issue body suit. It was the only way I could describe the camouflaged tactical gear they’d provided for me back at the holding facility. In addition to my new threads, they’d also slapped

some sort of metal device around my ankle. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to help track my movements during the course of the night. I hadn’t had a chance to try and pick it yet, but from the looks of it, it seemed pretty sturdy. Gabriel had a collar that was supposed to act the same way, and saw him fiddling with where it rested on his neck on more than one occasion.

Brushing a stray bit of hair from my eyes, I watched Gabriel crouch before me. They’d released us in the same park they’d abducted us from, and even now I could see the black van that had transported us idling in the parking lot. Waiting while Gabriel got his bearings and prepared to shift.

So far I still didn’t know the name of the person we were hunting, and suspected that it was likely to stay that way. The closer the time came to go after them, however, the more significant the change I sensed in myself. There was an element of excitement swimming just beneath my skin. It was like I could feel every cell, hear every nose, smell every scent in the world around us. I wasn’t just hopping from foot to foot because of the cold, but because I wanted to run. To chase something and bring it down with hands and teeth and instinct.

I felt like a live wire, something electric and dangerous, and I knew if I was close to bursting out of my skin that it must be ten times worse for Gabriel. You wouldn’t guess it just by looking at him however. He seemed calm, collected, even at peace. As if he were right at home and the thrill of the hunt was as familiar to him as breathing or shifting between forms.

I knew when he was ready. I could feel it in every cell of my body. I felt his bones begin to melt into one another, to lengthen, harden, and break. Even the feel of his skin melting away was a visceral sensation. As if it was happening to me personally. I felt, as much as saw, the fur sprout along his body, and soon I was looking into Gabriel’s wolfy form.

He huffed a greeting at me, shaking his coat as he settled into his new body. Hesitant, I reached out and touched him and let my hand rest against the crown of his head and enjoyed the banked warmth that caressed my skin. His eyes glowed bright and he pressed himself into my touch, enjoying the contact.

The van honked its horn and Gabriel pulled away. Nipping at my fingers without making actually contact. Taking that as a sign to get a move on, I followed in his wake as he took to the surrounding woods.

At first nothing happened. He just wandered in circles, sniffing the ground and investigating whatever caught his interest. He chased a chipmunk up a tree, tried to engage me in a game of fetch with a fallen branch that was too heavy for me to throw, and on more than one occasion I had to kick him away before he peed on my leg in a bid to mark his territory.

All of that, and not once did we engage in any activity that resembled a legendary hunting expedition. If anything, I felt like I was walking an annoying, albeit lovable, Doberman. Currently trying to dig a hole to the center of the earth and hacking up a clump of grass he’d just eaten, Gabriel seemed like the least dangerous mammal I’d ever met. I was probably better prepared for action than he was.

I wondered what sort of person we were going after. What sort of man or woman could have caught the attention of the Sidhe? What if they were female, young? Innocent.

They probably had no idea what was happening or why they would be tracked down. In my mind, I gave them a gender, a face, a name, a history, and when next I blinked back

into reality it was to realize that Gabriel had vanished. I could hear him crashing through the trees ahead and without thinking further I took off after him.

What on earth had gotten in to him?

One Rider, one hound.

Isn’t that what he’d said earlier in the day? As his “rider” if I couldn’t focus on our prey, maybe that meant that he couldn’t either. With that thought in mind, I allowed my earlier excitement

free reign. Our target was still an unknown, but now, as our intents linked, a name began to travel down the length of the bond connecting Gabriel and I. The name of the girl we hunted.

Asrai.

It thrummed in my blood, pounded away in my head like a second heartbeat, filled my lungs until all I could do was lift my head and sing it to the sky.

Asrai, Asrai, Asrai.

Gabriel’s answering howl met my ears and I laughed, jubilant and wild. Free.

I felt free.

I never wanted the Hunt to end.

I didn’t have to see Gabriel to know where he led. It was a call, a silent urging to choose this path over that one. A demand to move faster and faster still, to leap over logs, duck beneath branches and cobwebs, and skirt like a dancer around dips and holes in the ground that would have tripped me up. I could see the terrain through his eyes, so that it was like I was traversing the same area twice. Once as him and once as myself.

It made me blind to the fact that I was still human. That I had limitations and weaknesses.

When he finally let me pull up short, I collapsed on the ground. A convulsing, broken thing as my lungs fought to keep me breathing and my heart ticked away like a bomb ready to burst. My feet churned up the earth and my back arched. I wrapped my arms around myself, nails biting into my elbows as my own body fought me. For a moment I was afraid I was going to die, and to this day I don’t know how long I lay there trying to

recover. Time was marked by how often I turned on my side to vomit and dry heave before exhaustion finally brought me to unconsciousness.

I awoke to Gabriel licking the side of my face and making low, worried canine sounds in the back of his throat. I reached a shaking hand up and sunk my fingers in his fur, comforted by the smell of him, a mix between the Gabriel I knew and the Beast I didn’t. With each worried swipe of his tongue, I felt some of the agony in my body disappear. Ten minutes later, I felt good enough to try and get to my feet and from there Gabriel led me to what he’d found.

Looking through the stand of trees, I gazed across an empty expanse of land to a house. I wasn’t sure how many miles we’d run, but the house was far enough out of the city limits that its neighbors were few and far between and its backyard stretched for a good acre or two.

It was a quiet little two story, brow-beaten, but obviously well lived in. The lamps in the house were shining warm and bright through the windows. They were having some sort of party.

Dozens of people milled past the windows, drinking and laughing. But they weren’t the ones who drew my attention.

There was a swing set in the back of the house. It looked forlorn, as if the owners had meant to place other things around it but had never bothered. Now, swinging alone in the night, was a girl.

She was about seven years old, brown hair in a no-nonsense pixie cut that swung with the momentum of her swing. She wore a tattered pair of jeans and a hoodie, and she looked pale beneath the moonlight filtering across the yard.

I spoke her name on a horrified little sigh.

“Asrai.”

****

“She’s a little girl.”

Gabriel simply looked at me.

I knew his silence shouldn’t irritate me. He was still in wolf form; technically he didn’t even have the vocal chords necessary to form human words. But he could at least bow his head in doggy shame or something. Play dead maybe.

It might have appeased me.

“We can’t hand her over to Liam and Marcus.”

Lifting his hind leg, he scratched behind his left ear and I turned away to pace, fingers running through my hair. This wasn’t happening. There was no way in hell I was going to trade that kid’s life for our safety. Gabriel must have known how I’d react, so why had he chosen Asrai as our intended victim? He’d spoken as if there were dozens of people on the run from the Sidhe. He could have picked any one of them.

But he hadn’t.

Turning on my heel, I stalked back over to where I’d left him and glared down into his upturned face.

“Why?” It was a simple enough question, but it seemed as if he’d been waiting for me to ask it. He rose to all fours with a stretch and then trotted behind me. Placing his snout into the middle of my back, he started to nudge me forward. Confused at first, it took a few more head butts for me to understand that he wanted me to go to her.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

He responded to my doubt with an annoyed snap of his jaws, so I hurried off. He didn’t follow me, but instead sat just inside the tree line and watched as I made my way towards the child.

She was still swinging when I came upon her, and I saw that her eyes were closed, head tipped back so that she faced the sky. I remember doing the same when I was a kid. It had felt like flying. It made me reluctant to interrupt, but a glance down at the blinking light of my ankle bracelet reminded me that speed was of the essence.

“Asrai?” I called, voice drifting soft and hesitant on the wind. She didn’t stop swinging, though I felt her focus sharpen as she became aware of my presence.

“It’s been a long time since anyone knew me by that name.”

Her legs swept out and she began to climb just a little bit higher. I circled around so that I could see her face more clearly. Standing right in front of her so that each time she sailed forward her feet came within a hairsbreadth of my face.

On her backwards glide, she opened her eyes and looked at me. For an instant her gaze was brown in the weak light, but even as I watched, her eyes lightened. Changed, until I was looking into a blue as bright as my own.

But the change didn’t stop there. Her brown hair darkened, lengthened a little, until the strands were jet black. I stared, as right before my eyes the child changed. All of a sudden I was looking at a miniature version of myself.

“She could be my daughter,” I thought, amazed by the change.

My biological clock perked up, sensing weakness, and ruthlessly I squashed the thought before I started to wonder what a child of Gabriel’s would look like.

“How did you do that?” I asked, for lack of anything better to say.

She shrugged and closed her eyes once more. “It’s just a glamour. You learn a few things living within the Sithin.”

I opened my mouth, closed it again, and blew out a breath. How to begin?

“Asrai, do you remember the Hunt?”

If she was a fugitive, she must have been on the run at some point. She must have come across the Wild Hunt long enough to understand that this world was her only refuge.

“I remember.” Her voice was without inflection, but some of her glamour faded as her concentration slipped. She was half Mini-Phaedra and half stranger.

“Why were they after you?”

I didn’t have time to move out of the way when she let go of the swing’s arms and launched herself at me. A part of me actually braced myself automatically, ready and willing to catch her. When her weight hit me, the force of her momentum knocked me off my feet. I slammed into the ground, the sound of the still rocking swing reaching my ears.

Before I could so much as ask her if she was all right, her hands had come to rest on either side of my head and my vision shattered like broken glass.

Beneath her touch, beneath her magic, I was no longer Phaedra Conners.

Instead I was Asrai the Lightbringer. A Sidhe of mixed blood, all at once Unseelie and Seelie, and heir to the throne of both courts.

I was sitting at the hearth in an old cottage and outside the wooden shutters the wind howled like something sick and dying. It was the first sign that the Hunt had been set loose. When they rode in full force they brought storms, leveled forests, and could reorder the very fabric of time itself.

Only the mad, only the broken, lead the Hounds and their Riders.

I watched the scene unfold in Asrai’s memories.

The Wild Hunt was a threat and her father was sending her out of the Sithin. It wouldn’t help, though. The Hounds could track you anywhere. Some ran for years without ever managing to break free of the Hunt.

“What will I do if they find me?”

Her father paused, the clothes he’d been packing away wrinkling in his clenching hands.

His shoulders looked tight, and Asrai had to concentrate to calm her racing pulse.

“You will run.”

“Forever?”

He continued stuffing clothes in the already bulging rucksack and shook his head. “Only until I can come for you.”

“When will you come?” she whimpered, trying to be grown up, but afraid that she was failing miserably. He came to her, kneeling before her place at the hearth and holding her face between his hands. He was warm, his hands so big that practically engulfed her face. His touch, and the knowledge that it was probably the last time she’d see him, brought the tears she’d been fighting to overflow.

She rubbed her cheek against his work-roughened palm, eyes squinting beneath the tears and her own hands rising to clutch at his wrists.

“You’re my brave girl aren’t you?” he said, kissing her childishly plump cheeks and smiling when she nodded in earnest. “The Hounds won’t come for you. Gabriel will make sure of that. But in the meantime, I need you to be strong. Can you do that?”

“I-I guess,” she sobbed. Surging forward, she buried her face against his shirt, unobtrusively wiping tears and snot against the expensive material. “But why do I have to g-go?”

“Because the Hounds are leaving, love, and I need you to go with them. When the Riders learn about you, when they realize that you’re the only one who can disband the Hunt, they’re going to come for you and they’re going to kill you.”

“Why can’t someone else do it? Make the Riders go away?”

He sighed and pulled her into his lap. Already six, she was almost getting too big for such treatment and he groaned theatrically beneath her weight.

“They’re too strong,” he explained slowly. “Too strong for either Court to control anymore.”

“I’m not strong. I can’t stop them either,” she explained sadly, as if the news would come as a shock to him.

“Oh but you are, and you can,” he assured her. “I’m strong, your mother’s strong, and you’re the best of us both.”

Abruptly, the vision ended and I came to with a gasp. Asrai was crouched beside me now, body arched like a cat and fingers digging into the foliage at her feet. Gabriel stood a few feet away. Human once again, the light from the full moon shone off golden flesh and shadowed his face so that his eyes seemed brown in the weak light. He held up his hands, moving low and careful, eyes downcast in a show of submission and the child calmed.

“Gabriel,” she said, and his lips quirked, eyes still trained on the ground.

“You recognize me?”

She sniffed the air, lips parting as she pulled in his scent.

“Your magic tastes the same.” Straightening, she crossed her arms over her chest and shuffled her feet. “And your eyes haven’t changed.”

Aching and tired, I rose to my feet, brushing wet leaves from the back of my pants.

“How long have you two known each other?”

Gabriel came up beside me and picked a twig from my hair.

“We were never formally introduced,” he hedged.

I jumped as Asrai slipped her hand into mine, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at Gabriel standing so close.

“It’s been a long time, Hound.”

His smile was tender, and he reached out to brush a stray bit of hair from her face. When she flinched away from his touch he drew back as if she’d struck him, his face collapsing in hurt.

“Centuries,” he agreed finally. “It’s been centuries, little Queen.”

“Centuries huh?” I repeated doubtfully, looking down at the little girl for confirmation.

She smiled up at me, fingers tightening around my own.

“I age a little differently than the children you’re used to.”

Not the strangest thing I’d ever heard.

“Gotcha.”

“We have to go,” Gabriel said softly, grabbing my hand to lead me back to the woods.

Since Asrai didn’t seem inclined to let me go, she was pulled along too.

“Gabriel? We talked about this already. I’m not—”

“We’re not taking her back. We’re leaving.”

My mind went blank for a minute. Then it hit me.

“As in Briarcliff?”

“As in the whole damn state.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

“I can’t just up and leave.”

He stopped walking and turned on me, eyes glittering dangerously and the heat of him scorching my skin.

“What’s keeping you here? Friends? Family? No? Then it must be job security you’re worried about. I’m sorry if saving your life is interfering with an illustrious career writing obituaries.”

I looked away, the world turning blurry and indistinct through the tears that had filled my eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Despite the apology, he still sounded angry and my lower lip wobbled dangerously.

“That was mean,” Asrai scolded, patting the back of my hand and giving Gabriel the evil eye.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again, only this time he sounded sincere. “I’m just…” he growled low, and scrubbed a hand over his blond curls until they spouted in all directions. He looked like a daffodil.

I snorted, and Asrai pressed her face into my side and giggled.

“Briarcliff isn’t safe for any of us anymore,” he said, struggling to explain his loss of temper. I nodded in understanding, but refused to budge when he went to pull me along again.

“It isn’t safe for you.”

“I know that.”

“We need to leave, Phaedra. I have to get you, Asrai, and the rest of the Pack out of town before the Hunt arrives.”

“You say that you and the other Hounds turned on your Riders? That you’re no longer leading the Sidhe.”

He nodded.

“Then…that sort of means that there is no Wild Hunt anymore. It’s just a bunch of crazy Fae trying to get their dogs back.” I let that sink in. “You and the other Hounds, the other Alphas, are the real threat.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” But he seemed doubtful.

“Doesn’t it?” I asked gently. “The Riders have no power over you anymore, but you’re still running scared. Tail tucked between your legs.”

“The Masters of the hunt—”

“Former,” I corrected, finally growing angry. “They’re not the masters of anyone or anything. Not now and never again.”

“Asrai. The Pack.” He wasn’t arguing. Just talking out loud. Listing the casualties that could arise from a stand against the Mad Sidhe.

I straightened. “We’ll keep them safe,” I said, feeling confident that we could but not sure why. “This is your city. This is my home. I won’t leave it.”

Defeated, he bowed his head. “And I won’t leave you.” He rubbed his jaw and I noticed the stubble darkening his cheeks and chin. The bags beneath his eyes. My heart ached for him.

“The Riders.” Asrai spoke up, a tremble in her voice. “You’ve never seen them before. I have. They’re…there’s nothing else like them. They are nightmares made real.

Bogeymen sent to frighten children. Even other monsters are afraid of them.”

“I’ve seen scary.” My words were for her, but my gaze was trained on Gabriel. For a heartbeat I looked at him, but it was the shadow beast I saw. The thing made of darkness and death that lived within him, hungry and waiting. “I’ve seen scary,” I said again, “And I think my nightmares will give yours a run for their money.”

A charged silence and then Gabriel sent me a lopsided grin. I smiled in return, and Asrai shook her head at us both.

“I’m supposed to kill the Riders of the Hunt. It’s all anyone ever talked about. The savior who would defeat the Mad Sidhe. But I can’t kill anyone. I can’t even pass the third grade. How can I be a savior if I never make it out of elementary school?”

—Asrai the Lightbringer

Chapter Sixteen

The great thing about Bob’s Burgers was that none of the staff judged you. When you wander in at 2:00 a.m. accompanied by a little girl and a grown man who was wearing the Examiner like a loin cloth, then lack of judgment was both essential and refreshing.

It didn’t hurt that most of the night shift were female or that Gabriel looked like a GQ model who’d lost his way. Hell, when he ordered a strawberry milkshake I was examining his bare chest with as much pleasure as our poor, flustered waitress. Asrai, dear, sweet, prepubescent creature that she was, was the only producer of estrogen in the restaurant with two good brain cells to rub together. She regarded the rest of us with a look of disgust children her age seemed programmed with. I’d asked her during our walk how her guardians would react when they found her missing and she’d responded with, “They won’t remember I was ever there in the first place.”

Her words had hurt something deep in me and I wondered how many times she’d had to do that. Live with a family only to wipe herself from their lives when she was prepared to move on. Now I was glad to find an excuse to ignore what a band of misfits we were. Like every other woman in BB’s, I was busy having eye sex all over Gabriel’s chiseled man parts.

I enjoyed myself for a minute, maybe two, before my brain overheated and my head slammed onto the Formica tabletop.

Tentatively, Asrai spoke up, “What’s wrong with her?”

I turned my head so that I could glare at them both through my bangs. Just as I suspected. Robust, healthy, and not the least bit winded.

“I’m old,” I answered the little girl with a sneer, my muscles already bitching at me from overuse.

“Old and grossly out of shape,” Gabriel corrected, ever willing to help.

“Shut. Up.”

“Someone’s cranky,” said sassy Miss Asrai. Gabriel laughed at the look on my face.

“Well, excuse me for being the only human at the table. Trekking through the wilderness for hours made me realize I’m not as spry as I once was.”

Gabriel tried to stifle the snort, but I heard it anyway. Even if I hadn’t, his raised eyebrow and his next words clearly expressed what he thought of me. “You? Spry? That’s cute.”

My inner Sean Connery picked that very moment to get bitchy. “Prepare for an ash kicking of epic proportions.”

He blinked.

“Did you just whip out Connery in the middle of an argument?”

This was awkward. I scratched my chin and regarded him, suspicious of his reaction.

“Maybe. Though, granted, it was more of a disagreement than an argument.”

He didn’t respond at first, but soon he was scowling and shaking his head in denial.

“What?” I asked, still bitter about being out-exercised by an eight-year-old.

“Nothing. It’s just. You’re just…” Words seemed to fail him momentarily. Then, “You’re just too damn cute.” He said in wonder, and I felt my heart stop. I was wondering if he meant it the same way I had, but before I could follow that line of thought too closely, a shadow fell over our cozy little booth.

At first I thought it was the waitress with our milkshakes and curly fries. It would have been nice if it had been.

“Sonya?” I gasped.

Shock wouldn’t even begin to describe how I felt in that very moment. I hadn’t seen her since she’d given me the spy equipment, but from the change in her we may as well have been out of touch for years.

Her blond hair had been cut almost to the scalp, and she wore the army fatigues as if she were more comfortable in their roomy confines than she had ever been in her Prada heels and brand name clothes. A gun rested in the holster at her hip, and her mouth was a tight line of displeasure as she glared down at us.

She looked like a completely different person.

She looked like a member of the Huntsmen.

Our waitress appeared at her back, tray laden with our orders. Clearing her throat, the woman placed a hand on her bony hip and blew a perfect, pink, bubblicious bubble in Sonya’s direction.

“Scuse you,” she said. Her nametag read Lottie.

The two women stared each other down, before, with a tinkling laugh that shocked us all, Sonya shook her head in apology.

“Sorry,” she said, still smiling as she plopped down beside me in the booth. “I sort of got carried away. Hey,” she nodded at Gabriel’s strawberry milkshake as the waitress set it carefully before him. “Can I get one of those?”

Eyeing her warily, Lottie the waitress nodded, set out the rest of our drinks and fries, and wandered off. Asrai, unconcerned with the turn of events, dug into her chocolate shake right away. I was too busy gawking at Sonya. I knew we’d talked about infiltrating the Huntsmen, but I hadn’t known until now that she’d be able to pull it off.

The girl was better than any of us had given her credit for.

“Are you here to drag us back to our cells?” I asked, amused as she snatched the bowl of curly fries out from under Gabriel’s hand. My voice was light, but I was only half joking. Across from us, Gabriel’s eyes began to darken in warning.

Sonya nearly choked on her first fry.

“God, no. I actually came to warn you. When you two never showed up at the rendezvous point, Liam sent a bunch of the Huntsmen out to search for you. Most of them are still out scouring the woods, but I figured you’d be where the food was. Since BB’s is the only restaurant open this time of night, I left my recon team and hauled ass over here to check things out.” She grinned, curly fries sticking out of her mouth like fried fingers reaching for freedom. “Am I good? Or am I a damn good?”

She’d followed the food. Was I really that predictable?

Since I wasn’t flipping out, Gabriel began to relax by slow increments, concentrating once again on his milkshake and eyeing the steadily disappearing basket of fries as if he were looking for the injured gazelle.

Sonya nudged me, leaning in close to whisper. “Who’s Mr. Tall, blond, and nearly naked?”

This time it was my turn to smile. “Gabriel Evans,” I stated, smug.

Her eyes widened, dark blue saucers in her heart shaped face.

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Holy ovaries, Batman,” she breathed.

Yeah. I understood that reaction all too well.

“Oh wow,” she gushed, speaking to Gabriel directly for the first time. “You’re not at all what I expected.”

“Really?” He pulled out that practiced smile and all of a sudden he was Mr. CEO. Dressed in a suit or not the man knew how to wear class better than some people knew how to wear their own skin. I wonder how long it had taken him to perfect that little trick.

“Oh yeah,” Sonya was saying, “In my mind I pictured you as some dictator. An asshole with a hard-on for power. But you’re a sweetie pie. Handsome too. I didn’t know you’d be so handsome. I mean, the second I saw you I dropped an egg.”

Sweet buttery baby Jesus.

“What?” Gabriel looked at me in confusion. Surprising, since even little Asrai started cracking up between scoops of chocolate. “What does that mean?” he asked helplessly.

“It means she saw you and started ovulating.” I explained. No point in sugar coating it.

At my words his face flushed scarlet, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at his look of helpless embarrassment. That’s when something occurred to me. If I hadn’t been staring right at him, hadn’t noticed the way his rising color contrasted so sharply with the silver collar around his neck, I may have completely forgotten that we were still wearing our trackers. Maybe the fact that we had been walking for hours without incident or recapture had made us lax, or

maybe the Hunt had distracted us. Either way, when the alarm bells started going off in my brain, they did so with full force and I found myself surging to my feet.

“Sonya,” I said, “why are the Huntsmen searching the woods?”

She shook her head, confused.

“They’re searching for you.”

“No.” Damnit. This couldn’t be happening. Not when I was the one who convinced him to stay. “We have trackers on. They know where we are. Liam and his men could have picked us up at any time. So why are they in the woods?”

I met Gabriel’s eyes and saw that he’s come to the same realization as I had. His face drained of color and his lips thinned.

“I don’t know,” Sonya said thinly.

“Where does the Pack meet now for full moon nights? Where do they turn?” But I already knew the answer before he spoke.

“The park.” He looked as sick as I felt. “The Pack would have gathered at the park. It’s the only safe place they have now.”

****

“Why?” I seethed. “Why would they go back there, knowing it’s where we were taken?”

I’d left Asrai with Sonya back at BB’s with strict instructions to head to my apartment if they didn’t hear back from us in a few hours. Sonya let us use her Camaro, and once again I found myself in the passenger seat while Gabriel broke every traffic law known to man.

The only reason why Gabriel wasn’t driving stark naked is because Sonya had an extra set of fatigues in the backseat. Whereas they had been roomy on Sonya, they barely fit him. But at least the funny section was no longer the only thing standing between me and Gabriel’s dangly bits.

His foot pumped the gas, but for the first time I wasn’t silently praying for him to slow down. Instead, I was bouncing in my seat and wishing that Sonya’s Camaro was just a little bit faster. I don’t know why I was so invested in the safety of the Pack. As far as I knew I’d never met any of them, and what interaction I had with them had been overshadowed by violence. I shouldn’t care what happened to them…but I did.

I felt responsible for them, and besides that, I knew how important they all were to Gabriel. That alone would have been enough to turn me into an ally of the Pack no matter our rocky start.

“Lumière was so essential to the Pack because it doubled as a bunker. A safe house for Weres. There are rooms hidden throughout the building that have been built specifically to hold us during the night of the change.” I thought of his inner office, and was glad that I’d never managed to see the inside of a room that doubled as his prison once a month.

“With so many of us living and working in the city it was the only solution to keep us from running wild through the streets. Now that Lumière is under speculation, the next, and only, option is the park. It’s big enough for all of them and has enough wildlife to keep their wolves from wandering back into the city in search of fresh meat.” His jaw tightened. “Going back was a risk, but it was one they were probably willing to take.”

“This is all my fault,” I moaned.

“Not all of it. Just some.”

I looked over at him and saw a dimple flash in his cheek. “You can make it up to me later.”

I swallowed nervously and looked away.

The speedometer hit 90 mph and continued to climb.

Once we were near enough to the park, Gabriel killed the lights and parked on the side of the street. We couldn’t afford to let the Huntsmen hear or see us coming. I still had no idea how many of them there were and suddenly I wished we’d stayed with Sonya long enough to get some intel.

I got out of the car at the same time Gabriel did, and it wasn’t until I’d gone a few yards that I realized he wasn’t behind me.

“What’s wrong?”

He was leaning back against the hood of Sonya’s car, arms folded across his chest. He beckoned me back and I came, eyes narrowing at the look on his face.

“Phaedra,” he said, soft, sweet. There was regret in the way he said my name, and I shook my head adamantly.

“I’m coming with you.”

“You can’t.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Sure I can.” He sounded so annoyingly confident that I bristled.

“How?”

“You like Superman?”

I shrugged, “He lacks the boyish charm of Spiderman, but he’s all right.”

“I’m like Superman.”

I rolled my eyes. “This should be good. And who am I? Lois Lane?”

A solemn shake of his head, and then his hands were tangling in my hair. “You’re kryptonite.”

The admission was made against my lips and my resistance packed its bags and left the vicinity. When his tongue demanded interest, my head tipped back and I gave it to him. It felt like forever since he’d touched me like this, and the feel of his mouth, his breath, his hands, was like coming home. Like I hadn’t known how to breathe right until he taught me.

The kiss stole my thoughts and heart and it was only as he pulled away that I was able to find both again.

“Stay here,” he said, leaning his forehead against my own.

I swallowed, my chest aching. “What happens if you don’t come back?” My throat got tight at the thought. He finally managed to tug himself away with a sigh.

“If I don’t come back, go back for Asrai and call the other Alphas. Tell them you’re my mate and ask for sanctuary for you and the girl. They’ll protect you until…”

“Until what?”

He shrugged and for the first time began to look more helpless than brave. “Until the Sidhe come and they can’t protect you anymore.”

I’d boasted about our chances of survival when I’d thought Gabriel would be there to help fight against the Mad Sidhe. Without him I was no longer so sure, and I felt nerves spring to life in the pit of my stomach.

“What will happen to Asrai if the Riders find her?”

“They’ll kill her.”

“And me?”

He swallowed and looked down. “They’ll probably kill you too. For being my mate. Or they may just turn you into a Rider. For fun.”

Expressionless, I stared at him until he met my eyes again. “Then I guess that means you better come back.”

Straightening, he nodded. “I guess it does.”

Tossing me the keys, he stripped out of his borrowed clothes. Shifting before I had time to ogle any of the good stuff, he took off down the road, the moonlight casting his fur in shades of purest black.

Then, there was nothing left for me to do but wait.

You choose your allies with care and your enemies with abandon. It should probably be the other way around.

—Leo Valentine

Chapter Seventeen

I was lying on the hood of the car, face turned so that I could watch the way the horizon burst with colors as the sun made its slow ponderous climb into the sky. The world was all yellow and pinks, oranges with streaks of midnight blue. I watched the sun until my vision went white beneath its brilliance, and then I closed my eyes and admitted a truth I had known for hours already.

He wasn’t coming back.

I’d kept track of him most of the night through our link. But it was different understanding the information I was receiving when he was in wolf form. The visions, the emotions that I knew came from Gabriel were all jumbled and strange. I felt a spike of some sort around four in the morning, and then everything went muted. It was like he’d shut down things on his end so that all I felt were spurts of him.

It was enough to tell me he lived, but that was it.

“I should probably leave,” I thought. Gabriel had been captured along with the other members of the pack. I should do what he said and get Asrai. Ask for sanctuary from the other Alphas.

Or better yet, we should just leave town.

Run away while we still could and let the wolves deal with their own enemies. What could we do anyway?

Correction: What could I do?

Asrai was some sort of mega-Sidhe. A mini Queen. If I left her with the Alphas they’d have their savior. The Lightbringer who would one day defeat the Hunt.

Arai the Lightbringer.

Gabriel Evans the Werewolf.

I was just Phaedra Conners.

Human.

Powerless.

I wouldn’t be able to save anyone. Not against what they would be facing.

“I should leave.”

Only this time, I was thinking Briarcliff and not just the immediate area.

But one obstacle at a time.

Getting to my feet, I got into the car, cranked it, and drove away.

****

I don’t know how or why, but an hour later I pulled into the parking lot of the Oracle. I sat in the car, fingers clenching on the steering wheel, and just stared at nothing. Just as I hadn’t made a conscious decision to drive there, I got out of the car and hurried into the building without really thinking about what I was doing

I stepped into the newsroom and was nearly bowled over by the amount of noise and activity. It was much different than the last time I’d been there. For one thing, the room was nearly full to bursting with Weres. There weren’t wolves digging through the trashcans or anything, but I could recognize the signs. It was in the way they stalked through the room, the way they crouched on the balls of their feet in the middle of the room and eyed the interns like they were walking bags of meat.

The glowing yellow eyes in their human faces was also a pretty big clue.

“What the hell?” I whispered. Immediately every Were in the room turned to look at me, as if my muttered words had been some sort of signal only they could hear. The humans in the room didn’t notice anything at first, despite the marked drop in the noise level. But then, one by one, they turned to follow the unflinching gaze of the Weres.

“Phaedra?” It was Sonya. Dressed in jeans and a simple button down, she hurried through the room to stand before me. Her face was flushed and her now short hair was as messy as it could get, random strands sticking up like porcupine quills all over her head.

“Thank God you’re all right.”

I was still looking at the wolves over her shoulder. Was it just my imagination or had some of them begun to come closer?

“What’s going on?”

Sonya’s face closed down. “You don’t know.”

It was a statement, so I didn’t bother nodding. I simply looked at her.

“It’s all over the news.”

“Sonya.” It was hard to stay patient with her, but somehow I managed it. “What happened?”

“In my defense, you don’t have a cell. It’s hard to keep people updated when they don’t have cell phones. You should look into that.”

“Maybe the Feds will reimburse me for the one I lost when they kidnapped me. Now spill it.”

She bit her lip. “It might be easier if you saw for yourself.”

There were several televisions scattered around the room. Each one was usually tuned into CNN or whatever local news channel was on at the moment. Since the televisions were always on silent, it was easy to forget they were there.

Sonya led me towards the closest wall mount. We stayed close together as the Weres around us began to form a path to clear our way, muttering amongst themselves as I passed. Grabbing the remote from an empty desk, she turned up the volume until the announcer’s voice filled the room. I knew everyone must have already seen it, but the room settled down as others stopped whatever it was they were doing to watch the national broadcast.

“…the slaughter of dozens of innocent people? Who is Gabriel Evans? Why would officials just turn a blind eye to his crimes?”

The camera panned over to zoom in on the face of the man the anchor was interviewing, and the floor seemed to drop out from under my feet. I clutched Sonya’s arm and tried not to snarl right along with the rest of the Weres when Marcus shook his head sadly on camera.

“Money may not be able to buy happiness, Robert, but it can certainly buy clemency.

Gabriel Evans is a mob boss in a pressed suit. There are dozens of accounts of murder, kidnapping, and human trafficking, but not once has the Briarcliff Police Department investigated any of the allegations. It may have something to do with the half a million dollars Gabriel ‘donated’ to the police force.”

“Judge Jensen, you and your wife were victims of Evans. What do you have to say about this recent turn of events?”

The camera panned again, and I was looking into the faces of Judge Joseph Jensen and his wife Penelope. Unlike when I’d first met her in Gabriel’s office, Penelope wasn’t running the show today. Instead, she tried her damnedest to look old and fragile in her seat next to her husband. Joseph, meanwhile, was every inch the respectable Judge.

Clean cut and radiating offended disapproval.

I didn’t know if I wanted to give the couple an Oscar or choke them with one.

“Well, to be honest, I’m not surprised,” Joseph said. “The man tried to blackmail my wife and me just to close a business deal. We’ve suspected for a long time about what sort of man Evans truly was, so the fact that he murdered all of those people…” The judge shook his head, and his mouth worked as if he wanted to spit the taste of Evans’s name out of his mouth.

Penelope sniffed and grabbed a tissue from the table, wiping away the tears that appeared like magic in the laugh lines at the corner of her eyes.

“Those poor people.”

Joseph patted her hand in a show of comfort.

“Werewolves are a danger. A menace. They caught the massacre on tape for Christ’s sake. What more proof do we need before the politicians in Washington get off their asses long enough to take action?”

“The debate the last few weeks has been that Werewolves are just like the rest of us,” Robert, the anchor, countered. “Are you saying that we need to eradicate them all because of the actions of just one man?”

“Of course not,” Marcus said, “Gabriel is an Alpha. The pack, the men and women who follow him, do so out of fear and necessity. They can’t survive in this world without a strong hand to keep them under control. But if the Alpha is corrupt, then that affects the entire hierarchy. It’s like cutting the head off a snake. We don’t need to punish the many because of one person. We just need to erase the threats and appoint men and women we can trust to act as replacements. It’s the only way to coexist.”

“Who do you consider threats?”

“It’s the Alphas that make up the current regime. The only reason there’s been so much violence and public panic this past month is because the Alphas who lead the packs just aren’t doing their jobs. Or worse, they’re encouraging and even rewarding the bad behavior of their packmates. Gabriel Evans may have been the first Alpha to get caught, but I promise you he isn’t the only one out there getting his hands bloody.”

“Wouldn’t undoing their current system cause even more chaos? And how do we, as humans, choose the right people to lead a bunch of bloodthirsty Weres?”

Marcus opened his mouth as if about to drop a name, and then shook his head in self doubt.

“That isn’t for me to say. It would be a job for the government. Once the bill goes through to have any confirmed or suspected Weres contained and tagged, the powers that be will be able to take the time they’ll need to choose appropriate leaders to keep them in line.”

I didn’t hear anything else after that. I lowered myself to the ground, my fingers a punishment as I fisted my hair in my hands. Burying my face between my knees I began to rock.

This was because we’d broken our end of the deal. This was how Liam retaliated.

We should have run.

I should have let us run.

Though, none of this would have ever happened if I’d stayed away from Gabriel in the first place. One thought kept spiraling through my head, over and over and over again.

“My fault,” it wailed, “this is all my fault.”

****

“You all right?”

I shook my head and Dawson snorted.

“I told you, you should have added more brandy. Who the hell drinks coffee straight anymore?”

“Um, I don’t know,” Sonya snipped. “Non-alcoholics?”

“You’re this close to getting fired.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

I stared down into the dark recesses of my mug, enjoying the steam that caressed my face. After my breakdown earlier, the Weres in the room had surrounded me. For a while they wouldn’t allow anyone, even Sonya to touch me at all. It was only when Georgette and Mark brought Asrai back in from breakfast that the Weres made way.

The little Sidhe calmed me with cool hands and soft words spoken in a language I didn’t understand, but knew in my blood and bones. She got me up from the floor and into Dawson’s office.

Now I found myself drinking spiked coffee while a Sidhe, my sort-of boss, and a woman who was alarmingly close to being my one and only friend, filled me in on the latest news in Briarcliff.

When I was up for it, Dawson had Sonya show me the tape that had been mentioned on the broadcast. It showed a wolf, as big as a small pony, tearing through a group of Huntsmen like they were nothing. Then it shows the wolf changing, and the man who stood in his place was a panting and blood splattered Gabriel.

“He killed all of them,” Sonya said, mouth tight with disapproval. “Every last one. I can’t get in touch with any of my superiors or any of the recon team from last night.”

“It wasn’t him.”

It looked real enough, but the one and only reason I knew that Gabriel wasn’t the Were who’d killed all of those hunters was because of the size of the wolf. Gabriel in wolf form was impressive, but I’d noticed that first night that he was significantly smaller than the rest of his pack. Whether it had something to do with the finer distinction of being a Hell Hound was irrelevant. The fact was that someone had doctored the footage and released it. That meant that either the Feds had a Were who could shift in their employ and they’d had the Huntsmen killed for a reason, or that a member of Gabriel’s pack had gotten caught on video slaughtering the men who’d helped kidnap Gabriel.

Either way, it looked bad.

“How did they get this?” I asked finally.

“Ever since the big reveal, we’ve had wannabe Werewolf hunters pouring into town,” Dawson said.

Sonya smirked. “Only the term ‘Hunter’ has taken on a new meaning.”

“What do you mean?”

“If tourists aren’t trying to shoot a Were and mount their heads on their walls, they’re taking their pictures and asking for autographs.” Dawson rolled her eyes. “Not to mention the fact that Briarcliff now has a couple hundred more registered sex offenders.”

I gaped. “The Weres are assaulting humans?”

Sonya laughed. “Nope. It’s the other way around. We’ve got furries walking down main street, hookers with dog collars and leashes, and your random housewife looking for some wolfman lovin’.” She waved away my disbelief. “It gets better. There’s a dating site. Love Me by Moonlight.”

“Ew,” I deadpanned. “Is that the best they could come up with?”

“It was either that or ‘Fangs For You.’”

“I guess sounding sappy is better than sounding like vampire porn,” I conceded. The banter was doing more to settle me than the coffee had, and I found myself leaning forward as we talked. Asrai had fallen asleep in Dawson’s desk chair and I figured the kid deserved some rest after the sort of night we’d had.

“What’s this about a bill being passed?”

Sonya winced. “I forgot that you’ve been out of commission for a while. We learned about it two weeks ago. They’re saying that Weres are a danger to the human race and that they need to be quarantined and tagged for everyone’s safety.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Well, the Weres out there agree with you.” I turned to look at the wolves still roaming the office.

“Is that why they’re here?”

“They started showing up about an hour ago, when the broadcast first aired.” Sonya reached out and took my hand. “They came to defend Gabriel.”

Speechless, I could only look between her and Dawson in astonishment.

“They want to everyone to know the truth. Apparently everything that made Gabriel look like a member of the Sopranos was just him being Alpha. He wasn’t making people disappear, he was training newbies. Oh, and remember when we all thought he was running a drug cartel? It was Wolfsbane. He distributes it all over the country to help other Weres control themselves so they won’t flip out and start eating people.”

Dawson continued the explanation smoothly. “After they realized what was going on, they came straight over. They want to explain to the world what sort of man Gabriel is.

How their Alphas aren’t monsters. If they can tell people their side of the story, prove that they aren’t animals, it may be enough to keep the bill from going through.”

“But why here?” It was all I could think to say. It was a good question though. The Oracle was by no means the biggest, or most influential paper. If the Weres wanted to speak for themselves why come to us?

Sonya and Dawson looked at one another, but it was Asrai who spoke.

“They came because of you,” she spoke on a yawn. “You’re Fiery Phaedra. The woman who thwarted the Hunters and saved his life. Now that they’ve scented you and know that you’re his mate, you’re the only one they’ll trust enough to talk to.”

“You know this how?” Sonya asked.

Asrai settled more comfortably in her impromptu bed, skinny legs curling beneath her and plump face already growing slack again with exhaustion.

“I can just tell,” she grumbled, eyes closing. “It’s how I knew Phaedra would help me. It’s why I showed her my secret.”

Thoughtful, Sonya stared at the child for a second longer before looking back to me.

I shrugged, pretending ignorance. I trusted Sonya, but I didn’t want anyone else but Gabriel and I to know just how important the child was. It was just safer that way.

Meanwhile, Dawson was looking at me and rubbing her hands together in glee.

“Exclusive interviews,” she said. “Conners, I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

“Is the camera on? Are we rolling? OK. We’re rolling…Do I look all right?”

—Yvette Reed

Chapter Eighteen

Go big or go home.

It was a phrase I lived by.

When I realized that Weres would be coming from all over the state just to tell me what it was really like to be a Were, I sat Dawson down and started working on a plan for an hour long television piece.

“There’s no way I can tell everything there is to tell in one article. Plus it’ll be more effective if the people can see the men and women about to be condemned to modern day concentration camps. The Oracle is just too small to reach the kind of audience this story deserves.”

“I assume you have an idea for the budget?”

“Gabriel has deep pockets. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind dipping in to them for a good cause.” Assuming he was still alive to care.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and pushed the thought away.

Not long after that, Dawson and I parted ways. She needed to start calling in favors from friends with network access, and I had a couple of things to take care of on my end.

I hefted Asrai out of Dawson’s chair, surprised by how light the girl was, and left Dawson and Sonya to flesh out the details. It was still chaotic in the main room. New Weres kept showing up in droves, while the ones who’d first arrived refused to leave. I glanced around until a familiar face caught my eye.

It was Lottie. The waitress from BB’s.

I hurried over to her and I would have sworn that she was still chewing the same piece of gum she’d been smacking on last night. The pink bubble mounting her lips stretched past its endurance and popped in greeting.

“Hey,” she said, growing soft at the sight of Asrai asleep on my shoulder. “How’s the little Fae?”

At the look on my face, she tapped the side of her nose with her index finger. “The nose don’t lie. I knew what she was the second you three sat in my section.”

My arms tightened around the girl, but I didn’t back away.

“I didn’t know you were a werewolf,” I said lamely.

My version of small talk.

She shrugged. “I got turned earlier this year. I used to work at the Examiner. I didn’t even know what was happening until Gabriel showed up and explained it all.” She smiled, and the expression was tender. “He said investigative journalism was probably too high stress for a newly turned Were.”

Another piece in the puzzle. She’d been the reason he’d been at the Examiner that day.

Funny how life worked. I would have questioned her further about what happened that day, but there was no point.

“I need your help,” I said instead.

“Oh really?” Another bubble burst, and I felt my nerves start to fray around the edges.

“Gabriel’s been taken. I need to get him back.” I looked around the room.

“Then go get him.”

“I need help,” I said, voice growing hoarse with desperation. “I can’t do it by myself.”

“Then you don’t deserve to be called his mate.”

I jerked away, stung. “Excuse me?”

“Look.” Bubble pop. “A pack is only as strong as its Alpha and an Alpha is only as strong as his mate. Saving him is your responsibility.” Bubble pop. “Besides, we can’t help you without permission from our Alphas anyway. Interfering in another pack’s business is a big no-no.”

Shit.

She blew another bubble, but before she could pop it I grabbed it out of her mouth and shoved the sticky wad into her hand.

“Thanks anyway,” I said sweetly, feeling strangely satisfied when shock kept her from responding. Ok, so there was an army’s worth of Weres hanging out in the Oracle, but none of them would be willing to help me.

Not without permission.

Gabriel’s instructions came back with a vengeance.

I had to call the Alphas.

****

Asrai was sitting on the counter in my kitchen eating a bologna sandwich. I’d put some cartoon on the TV and angled the screen so that she could see it from her perch in the kitchen. Meanwhile, I sat on the edge of my bed, door open so I could see her, and the cordless phone from the living room clutched in my lap.

I’d just called Sonya and had her talk to the Weres still loitering in the Oracle. According to the information she’d gathered, there were members from at least four different packs. Which meant that I now had four names and four numbers for four Alphas:

Leo Valentine

David Finland

Juliet Baker

Ruthy Jennings

David and Juliet never picked up the phone. Ruthy hung up at the sound of my name.

There was only Leo left, and I stared down at the raised buttons of the phone. A part of me expected more disappointment. It was the part that still hoped for some sort of break that had me dialing the number Sonya had found.

The phone rang in my ear, and I found myself watching Asrai as she stared, captivated, at the television. The phone clicked and a male voice filled my ear.

“Hello,” he said. I was expecting to have to listen to another voicemail, so I stayed silent.

Waiting for Leo Valentine’s automated message to play out.

“Hello?” the man said again, growing confused at my continued silence.

I mouthed a curse.

I was talking to a real person.

“Mr. Valentine?” I said, hesitant but polite.

“Yes?”

“My name is Phaedra Conners,” I began. He didn’t hang up and I hesitated. None of the Alphas had let me get this far before and I didn’t really have speech prepared.

“Phaedra,” he said, rolling my name like he knew me. “I’d thought I’d hear from you sooner.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

He laughed. “It’s perfectly all right. You’re only human after all.”

“Yeah. About that.” I pulled my legs beneath me on the bed and wondered how to proceed. Then I decided that my best bet would be to just come right out and say it.

“How many of your wolves can you send to help me rescue Gabriel?”

“None.”

“Let’s try that again,” I started, voice growing low and dangerous. “How many of your wolves can you spare to assist the Mate of Gabriel Evans?”

“Oh,” he laughed, clearly pleased. “So the rumors are true. Nice to know that Gabriel has finally settled down.” He laughed again, and his next words were spoken as if he was imparting something confidential. “You do realize that wolves mate for life, don’t you Miss Conners?”

I cleared my throat. I hadn’t thought that part would apply to Gabriel and I, and I didn’t have time now to worry about what it would mean down the road.

“You never answered my question, Leo,” I reminded him, figuring if he could skip the formalities I could too.

“Hmm,” he murmured thoughtfully. “I can give you six.”

“Just six?”

“It’s six or nothing Phaedra,” he said shortly. Then his tone lightened. “Much better than going in alone.”

He was right. Six was better than my measly one.

“Fine,” I snapped. “Have them meet me at the park by nightfall.” I had no idea where to find the facility where Gabriel and I had been kept, but the park seemed to be the common denominator.

If nothing else, the wolves I’d be working with tonight should be able to follow Gabriel’s trail.

“Done,” He sounded darkly amused by my demands and I found myself bristling.

“Anything else, my dear Phaedra?”

“I’m not your dear anything,” I told him, temper getting the best of me. Then I remembered he was helping me, and grew slightly less hostile. “Thanks though.”

“My pleasure,” Leo purred.

I hung up on him.

One problem down, one more to go.

I looked out at Asrai and saw her rifling through the refrigerator in search of more food.

I thought about how I had to go in there and ask a centuries old Fae if she was emotionally mature enough to stay home alone. If nothing else, the conversation should be an interesting one.

****

I parked just as the sun was setting. I’d been told that my car had been kept in the company parking garage for the last month, so I’d been able to give Sonya back her Camaro. The feel of the steering wheel under my hands, the windshield with the crack in the corner, and the shady heater were all familiar. It surprised me how much I’d missed my car, and I resolved to never be kidnapped again.

I couldn’t see any other cars besides mine, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the wolves hadn’t arrived yet. I got out, enjoying the cool air on my skin and moved around to sit on the hood and wait. Twenty minutes passed, then an hour, and still no sign of the help Leo had promised. I waited another hour and then gave it up as a lost cause.

No one was coming.

I guess I was on my own after all.

Not sure what I would do if I actually found him, I set off into the park. I may not have been a born tracker, but I could follow the faint vibrations from the bond that Gabriel and I shared.

Whatever he’d done last night to make the signal not as strong, had me stopping several times during my search. It was as if the bond were a radio station and I was driving through an area with bad coverage. It was filled with static, and in some places, it disappeared entirely.

The first time I lost it, it felt as if something were tearing out of me, razor wire in my veins. For a brief, unforgettable moment I thought Gabriel was dead. Then I stepped to

the side, and the bond snapped back, shaky, but accounted for. It happened several more times, at which point I decided to try and head in another direction.

I found that no matter where I went, the strength of the bond never increased. It didn’t tug, it didn’t vibrate, and it didn’t grow hot or get cold. It just was.

“This isn’t working,” I grumbled, growing frustrated with myself. It had sounded like a good idea in theory, and without the Weres there to help, it had been the only option I’d had to track down Gabriel. Now that my plan was a bust, the only other thing I could do was wander the woods until I stumbled over a Fed.

I was preparing to do just that, when I saw it from the corner of my eye.

The shadow in the woods.

The darkness among the trees deeper than the night around it.

The pitiless eyes.

Yawning mouth and a laugh that left the taste of razor blades and blood in my tongue.

I went very still, shaking too hard to move. Blood like ice and legs like lead.

It was a chore to walk. To lift my feet and move forward. I couldn’t look at it. Couldn’t acknowledge it or the terror would send me running. So I just kept moving. Kept walking through the night with shadows dancing on either side of me and the eerie laughter of the specter drowning out the sound of every other creature in the forest.

There came a moment of stillness.

A moment so still that all sound stopped and the very wind held its breath. The trees quit their whispering and the leaves beneath my feet didn’t so much as whimper with the steps I took. When the first shadow touched me, it felt like ice. Like death on a caress. It brushed across my arm and the limb went numb. Falling limply at my side. Around the numbness pain traveled, razor spikes tearing deep into my skin so that I screamed, clawing at myself and cursing. Anything to make the sensation stop.

The next touch came in on the tail end of the last. Gripping my neck in tight icicle claws that choked my scream off with a gurgle. I tried to do it anyway, tried to make some sound as agony ripped into my brain and shredded my vision in black but nothing came out. I tried again, again, and again, nails digging into my hair and tugging at the strands as the pain traveled deeper. Fingers invading, nails scratching at my insides, picking me apart and leaving me empty. I tried until I felt something wet dripping out of my mouth onto the forest floor, and when I inspected it with shaking hands it was blood that I found.

Then, and only then, did I run.

I crashed through the underbrush, stumbling and striking trees, hands searching the world before me. The darkness on me, the darkness in me, was traveling, swimming in my bloodstream, coating my skin, laughing at me.

I ran through the forest, silent and clumsy, the smoky tendrils of the specter wrapping me up and swallowing me down. I was a mix of pale skin and oily darkness. Then the darkness ate the last of me, wrapped tight around my body, and brought me broken to the ground.

I lay on my back, unable to breathe, suffocating on the nightmares in my throat. The only thing still untouched was my eyes. I could still see.

Still see the rocking canopy of the trees above my head.

Still see the eyes as black as any hell watching me from between the branches.

Still see the specter as it left its perch and fell into me, exploding like ashes cast to the wind as we made contact.

Merged.

Became one thing.

Before, I was Phaedra.

After, I was Nothing.

****

I weave through shadow like music.

This body is fun. Weaker than a wolf’s, but agile.

And young.

So young. At least, compared to how long I’ve been around.

I like it.

Once upon a time, I had a body of my own. Many, many, many years ago when I lived.

Before the Black Plague made me sick. Made me dead. I’d had a son. I’d had a wife.

I’d worked as a…butcher?

A baker?

No, a candlestick maker!

Laughter. Hell wrapped in an alto voice, and the grass beneath the human’s feet curls, blackens, and turns to ash. Black snow like a red carpet. A yellow brick road colored with death and disease. The creature that rides the mind of the human known as Phaedra Conners rejoices in the destruction. Screams its pleasure to the skies and crouches to rub the evidence into its skin. Glorying. It is only a sharply worded command from its masters, the Mad Sidhe so far away, that brings it back on track.

Find the wolf, find the wolf, find the wolf. They growl, it is a mantra, a ballet with no song. The Specter dances anyway.

Find the wolf and bring it back.

“I can do that,” it hisses and the air around it screams.

Oh yes, I can do that.

When you become a Were, everything changes. I don’t want to be a vegan anymore. I want to eat them.

—Mathew Dupree

Chapter Nineteen

Leo Valentine didn’t like surprises. He also didn’t like humans. By definition, that meant that he shouldn’t have liked Phaedra Conners. The problem was that just like everyone else, he’d been keeping up with her antics ever since she’d earned the moniker “Fiery Phaedra.” He’d watched the news each time a grinning anchor told Briarcliff that Conners had been arrested yet again during some random human interest piece. He’d read her dramatically depressing obituaries in the Oracle, and had enjoyed the Bigfoot scandal as much as everyone else within the city limits.

Whether she knew it or not, Phaedra Conners had slowly become the quirky poster child of Briarcliff. Her name was in the stories they told newcomers and in the conversations held around dinner tables. No one in their right mind would hire her, but they liked to brag about the fact that she’d turned in an application. That she was now the mate of Gabriel Evans seemed right somehow. Two opposites made whole.

Usually he liked to stay out of the business of other Packs. If it had been anyone else he would have refused to send aid. He certainly wouldn’t have come himself. But it was Fiery Phaedra who had called him and he’d been fond of Gabriel for more years than he could count.

It was why he found himself wandering through Briarcliff National Park, four of his strongest wolves stalking beside him as they sniffed the air. Following the day old scent of Gabriel Evans as if it were the whispered promises of a woman and they were nothing but love struck men.

He could have waited for the human, for Phaedra, but had decided against it. It was one thing to like her; it was something else entirely to lead her on a hunt. Gabriel was still one of their own and Leo couldn’t afford to endanger their mission because of the clumsy fumbling of a human woman. He and his men could find and save Gabriel much more quickly by themselves. Leo was confident that when he finally met Phaedra face to face, he would do so with her Mate at his side.

They were close.

He could feel it in his bones.

That secret knowledge among carnivores that told them when prey was close. When it was trapped and screaming. A few more feet and he could even hear Gabriel. Hear his heartbeat, hear his breath, hear his power struggling against the leash he’d bound it with when he’d crossed out of the Sithin.

Leo had understood, but had refused to do the same. Instead, he’d cultivated his gifts as a Hound. Perfected them. Their old masters would be back one day, and when that time came he and the rest of the Hell Hounds would have to be ready to fight. Granted, it had been eons since he and the other Alphas had escaped from the Sithin. At first Leo had been vigilant, but somewhere along the line that vigilance had worn off. These days, he doubted he’d ever see another Sidhe again.

From the corner of his eye he thought he saw something move beyond the trees. One of the wolves, Jeffery, froze misstep. His hackles raised, his lip curled back from gleaming teeth, and his eyes burned bright and yellow.

Slowly, Leo knelt beside his friend. Placing a placating hand on the back of the Were’s neck. His touch ordered silence, calm, and the Were struggled to obey. The other three were a little slower on the uptake. Which was to be expected, since half of his Pack had never hunted in the wild before. The world wasn’t like it used to be. There were so few places for a Pack to run these days, that most Weres were more used to living in the city than roughing it in woods. They had the instinct but not the experience, and it made the ones who had grown up fighting on rooftops and alleyways vulnerable to the danger that could lurk beyond the tree line.

What surprised him wasn’t that they hadn’t noticed the Specter, but that the Specter didn’t rip them limb from limb as a result. Instead, it stood directly in their path, watching the three Weres curiously until they noticed it and came to a startled standstill. There was something odd about this particular Specter. There was life in its eyes, femininity in the way it stalked towards them, careful and quick.

“Find the wolf,” it whispered and the three Weres closest to it convulsed like dying things. “Find the wolf,” it repeated gleefully, voice growing louder with each repetition and the black caves of its eyes shimmering like flames. “Find the wolf.”

There was only one lost wolf that Leo could think of.

“Gabriel?” He felt like an idiot the second the question left his mouth. You didn’t talk to Specters. You killed them before they could kill you. But Leo couldn’t place his finger on what made this one different from all the rest. He’d tried scenting the creature, but it smelled the same as every other Specter he’d ever come across. Like ice and something rotting.

To his surprise, it nodded in response.

“Gabriel.” Its voice went soft, almost…was that longing? “Find Gabriel.”

“I’ll be damned,” he breathed in wonder. “It talks.” He’d never met a talking Specter.

Even when he’d Hunted with the Sidhe, the specters in their party had never spoken. It made the creature less alien to know that it understood the human tongue.

“Jeffery,” he said after a moment, “take point with our little friend here. Hernandez, Tony, and Quentin? Watch our rear.”

Jeffery wasn’t the only one who sent him a look of doubt before following his instructions. Leo knew what he was planning was insane, but figured that he could handle the Specter if the creature suddenly turned on him and his men. In the meantime, they now had some much needed help to bring back Gabriel.

Not that he and his wolves couldn’t infiltrate a high security government facility, he thought a few minutes later when they stepped into the clearing and saw the building in question.

But hey, a helping hand was always nice.

Leo wasn’t big on planning. With Weres, creatures that ran on pure instinct, planning was usually a waste of time. Their minds knew when to strengthen the ranks where they were weak and when to retreat when things looked bad.

Taking down an enemy as a unit was second nature. So he didn’t bother holding his men, or the Specter, back when they saw the building. He just sent them forward to enact their damage and hoped for the best. If nothing else, his second in command had clear instructions to contact their allies from the other packs and come for him if he didn’t return. He shouldn’t have come on this hunt in the first place, but found that he had grown tired of being stuck in a board room.

Ripping things apart was much more fun than talking business.

****

Elijah Walker had been working with the paranormal division of the FBI for only two months before he was relocated to Briarcliff. He hadn’t expected to be using the training he’d received from Quantico for security detail, but he was determined to make the best of it. For almost a year he’d studied all he could about werewolves, vampires, selkies, and banshees. He’d perfected his skills as a sharpshooter and had practiced enough hand to hand combat to be considered the top of his class. Despite his qualifications, he and the other Agents had been overlooked in favor of the Huntsmen who had been partnering with the Feds to corral the paranormals in Briarcliff.

At least, that had been the case before the Huntsmen had all been executed.

According to Agent Benson, the Huntsmen had different goals than the FBI. They’d wanted to kill supernaturals, while the government wanted to capture them. That they could use the deaths of the group for the benefit of the government had just been a bonus.

Their search for supernaturals had started in Briarcliff, but it wouldn’t end here.

There was so much untapped power in the world and if they hoped to harness it all, then they needed to start off with some sort of advantage. The Weres would give them that.

Working as a glorified security guard may have been an insult to his training, but now that the Huntsmen were gone, Elijah could finally see the benefits. No longer was he reduced to watching security footage all day or patrolling the perimeter of the base. Now he was inside, in the holding cells below ground where all the action was. He would finally be allowed to meet his first Werewolf, and the excitement sent his heart racing.

Each cell was nothing more than a cage made of glass. Granted, the glass was strong enough to stand against tornados and bullets, but it was still glass. That was why, in addition to the cells themselves, the entire floor was equipped with a little device that the Huntsmen had been developing for when they’d wanted to keep their captives alive.

The device emitted a high pitched noise that only the Weres could hear. Depending on the key in which the frequency was set, the noise could drive the Weres to do almost anything. Elijah’s new job consisted of finding out which key generated what response. So for the last twenty-four hours he’d been experimenting with various members of Gabriel Evans’s captured pack.

He’d learned the following:

A—Unconsciousness.

A Sharp—A forced shift

B—Uncontrollable violence

B Flat—Fear

C—Hunger

C Sharp—Death

The results had been fascinating and he hadn’t even gone through all the keys yet. He wanted to see how the Weres would behave if he combined notes. He wondered if he could make them eat one another if he combined D minor with B. However, after the last note had killed off a Were who could have easily been mistaken someone’s grandmother, Agents Liam and Benson had told Elijah to take a break.

He was excited to begin again tomorrow. If he could perfect the use of the Huntsmen’s device, then they would no longer have to worry about how they would get the Weres they captured to cooperate with their demands.

Apparently Weres were big on sound. It was how they communicated with one another, and in the case of the Alphas, how they gave their Will, or power, physical manifestation. Elijah had heard stories in which a group of Alphas could howl for a star and bring it crashing down from the heavens. According to legend, they could sing the sun to sleep, the dead to rise, the oceans to walk like giants, and storms to rage across the lands. He wasn’t sure how much of the stories he actually believed, but figured that there must at least be a smidgen of truth to them.

Especially considering the amount of funding the division had received in order to capture the Alphas of Briarcliff. Obviously the stories must not have been completely true if his superiors really believed that bulletproof glass was going to hold the infamous Gabriel Evans.

But Elijah supposed that’s where the device came in.

When the facility was locked down at night, it was set to play random notes if any of the Weres stepped from their cells. An agent had to enter his credentials in the pen pads outside of the cell he wished to enter in order to bypass this measure.

In short, nothing was getting out of this place without approval from the higher ups.

Getting in however, was another matter entirely.

It was around 10:00 p.m. when Elijah heard the first alarms go off.

At first he thought it was just another drill. They had them every now and again. It was supposed to prepare them in case the Weres decided to lay siege to the facility. None of the Agents had taken it very seriously though. According to the recon Agent Liam had done, the wolves of Briarcliff did most of their fighting in on Wall Street. They certainly weren’t the masters of the wood that urban legend had made them out to be. In fact, Elijah was pretty sure that as a former boy scout, he possessed more knowledge of how to survive in the outdoors than your average Were.

So while the sound of the alarms weren’t much of a surprise, learning that they were actually under attack certainly was. Unlike some of his fellow agents, he didn’t panic.

Instead, he pulled out his standard issue side arm, and looked out across the rows of

cells. He wanted the wolves to come. Craved it even. It was one thing to train to fight the supernatural. He wanted to put all that he had learned into practice.

And what better way than to put down the sniveling mutts coming to save their friends?

Chuckling, Elijah Walker turned to make his way up to the first floor, checking to make sure that there was already a silver bullet ready and waiting in the chamber of his gun as he went.

****

Gabriel Evans was a big fan of silence.

Silence soothed his savage beast.

Silence is what made the world go round.

Most Weres would disagree. They were always talking, yapping, growling, howling.

They were always making so much noise. “I am here” their useless prattling seemed to say. “Don’t forget me. I exist.”

He supposed that he could understand them on a certain level. He had spent so many years in the background, barely existing, that his own kind had nicknamed him “Ghost.”

He may as well have been dead and gone. Gabriel had known for a long time that the other Hell Hounds who shared the title of Alpha thought of him as a bit strange. A bit off.

But it was like the humans said.

Never drag a book by its cover.

Or was it never judge a brook by its color?

He couldn’t remember.

Old adages weren’t exactly his strong suit.

What he did know, was that he was no ghost. He was not invisible. He was not unseen. He was not dead. Even when he’d been partially faded, when his abilities had made him shy away after attacking the Huntsman in his building that day, she had been able to see him.

To look him in the eye and feel him.

It had been like magic.

Like finding a home port when he’d been lost at sea for far too long. Even his adoptive mother, who had claimed to love him, had been unable to lay eyes on him when his magic had demanded otherwise. It wasn’t as if he’d been fully using his ability. If they had really wanted to, they could have seen past the shield of his glamour.

But they hadn’t.

Only Phaedra had ever been able to do so, and she’d pulled it off without even trying. As if she’d been searching for him long before they first laid eyes on one another. He’d seen many things in his life, both strange and wondrous, but Phaedra Conners was by far his favorite.

Shame that he’d had to go and get kidnapped.

He hoped she’d found his final farewell dashing.

Heroic.

When she wept over the memory of him, years from now as some old decrepit human, he hoped that their parting was cast in the soft glow of nostalgia. That to her age-addled mind, he appeared a golden Adonis or majestic Hercules bidding her the type of farewell best suited to star-crossed lovers.

Yes, he liked the thought of her being heartbroken and lovesick very much.

Not that he was going to continue to enjoy the company of Agent Liam.

He’d gotten what he’d come for after all.

Information.

Information about what the government wanted from his kind and whether or not his second in command and foster brother could truly be trusted.

Oh yes, he’d gotten all the information he could stomach on that front.

But even though he planned on leaving soon, and taking his Pack with him, that didn’t mean that he’d be seeing Phaedra again. It was why he was currently doing his best to kill their bond.

She had been right. It was time to stop running. To fight. If he didn’t he’d spend the rest of his considerable lifespan hiding from the Fae. But standing up to the Mad Sidhe wouldn’t be easy.

He liked many things about Phaedra, the first and foremost being that she was alive.

If he could help it, he’d like to keep her that way. And staying with him, fighting his battles, would pretty much guarantee the opposite.

But he really, really wanted to see her again.

He whined, a low, sad sound in the back of his throat, and huddled against the walls of his prison. The collar at his neck dug deep and he had to fight away the urge to snarl and tear at his own skin in a bid to get the damn thing off.

No.

He had to stay calm.

Captivity could breed madness, and Gabriel couldn’t afford to lose control.

When he lost control things died, and he’d had his fill of screaming when he’d worked for the Sidhe. Though when he thought of Agent Liam, of Marcus, he couldn’t help but believe that adding a few more bloody notches to his belt couldn’t hurt. Just for old time’s sake.

Suddenly, he straightened in his shackles, eyes going to the ceiling and head cocking curiously to one side. It was faint at first, but there was no mistaking that sound.

Alarms. And beyond that? Howling.

One voice in particular rose up above the rest, and in his pleasure Gabriel found himself laughing out loud.

“Leo Valentine,” he whispered hoarsely into the dark confines of his cell. “You old bastard. What took you so long?”

“He was right, the woods are lovely. Dark. Deep. But I’m all out of promises. I have nothing left to keep.”

—Ruthy Jennings

Chapter Twenty

“Fee, fie, foe, fum.” I never finish the rhyme because my prey tries to flee at the sound of my voice. I enjoy catching them.

One by one by one, they all fall down.

I rip apart a human male and it’s like tearing the wings off a butterfly. Only the human is more fun because I can hear the sounds it makes while it dies.

“What the hell was that thing?” A hoarse cry. Full of terror. I hum in pleasure and electronics burst like overworked eardrums.

“I don’t know. But it came out of the dark. We need more lights.”

“More lights, more lights,” I mock, crawling along the ground, inch by inch, vertebrae twisting and jaw unhinging. My belly craves food.

Human flesh.

Human pain.

Human suffering.

It all tastes the same.

The one I have my eye on smells ripe and ready. A fruit juicy and bloody red on the inside. Veins like pulp and bones like sugar.

The Sidhe struggle to rein the Specter in. So far away, the creature is hard to control.

But its masters only have one goal in mind, and they make that very clear.

“Find the wolf,” I grumble, bitter at the thought of a lost meal. Lights flood the hall and I take refuge in the shadow of the human I’d been about to eat. Maybe I will be allowed to feed once the job is done.

Find the wolf.

The thought rings through my brain. Louder and louder as the Sidhe repeat their orders. I will find the wolf. I will hunt the wolf, and I will drag it kicking and screaming back to our masters trapped beneath the Sithin. For now, I will watch. Wait. Enjoy the sight of the Weres I arrived with ripping through the first line of defense the humans have erected. When the wolves tire, when they miss one of their enemies, only then will I reveal myself long enough to kill. I must control myself. Taking the wolf will require most of my strength.

Blood sprays across a nearby wall, a rainbow of red mist. This time it is not the Mad Sidhe that pull the Specter’s mind from feasting on the carcasses the Were’s create.

The voice that forces it to behave is both familiar and strange.

Find Gabriel, the human female snaps, her grip on the Specter’s mind strengthening with each moment that passes. The Mad Sidhe can’t hear her, but they can hear the Specter’s all too eager agreement.

“Find Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel,” I cackle. I am delighted with the company in my mind. It gets lonely in there, in the dark. It’s nice having someone to talk to. Most of the humans I possess simply fade away. Too weak. All of them, too weak. “Find Gabriel,” I coo, and the human female buried deep within my thoughts is pleased.

****

The humans are on the run now.

They scatter like leaves in the wind. No direction, no tether, only fear to guide them.

The wolves have taken out most of their numbers and I have done the rest. I swallow the lights as soon as they think to turn them on. The electricity from their machines is tasty too.

Like candy on the tip of my tongue. In the world below, the world of the dead, I used to gorge myself on flames. Lightning didn’t taste as sweet, but packed twice the punch. The voltage the humans seemed so proud of was nothing but a light snack in comparison.

Without it to power their little trinkets they cannot communicate with one another. They cannot tell the others that danger comes. Then it’s too late and danger is there. Tearing through flesh and howling of their triumph.

The wolves have always been fun to watch.

So messy and loud.

Like furry children.

The human whose shadow I ride is scrambling through their fortress. Running down stairs rather than risk being caught in the moving coffins they call elevators. I would have left him, stolen his shadow and taken his soul along with it, but the woman tells me to stay. That maybe he will bring us to the one we both seek.

Gabriel.

And he does. Oh joy, oh breathless rapture, he does. It’s all I can do not to whip down the hallway to reach him first. To touch him. To swallow him whole. The woman holds me back again. Together we watch the man walk past rows and rows of cells. Each one holding a Were. It is towards the back, in the last cell, that we see who we’ve come for.

Gabriel looks up at the man and there is a smile on his face.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asks and the Specter chuckles. The lights flicker ominously and Gabriel’s eyes dart to them before falling to rest on what he can see of Agent Elijah Walker’s shadow. He frowns, but the Agent is too busy talking to notice.

“I don’t know how you did it, how you brought them here, but call them off.”

Gabriel hesitates, wondering if he should warn Agent Walker of the danger he’s in. Then he remembers what the man did to his wolves. He remembers that he is one member short now, and he settles back. Almost gleeful at the prospect of what the Specter will do to Walker once it tires of playing follow the leader.

“Sorry,” he says with a shrug and a devil may care grin. He is not sorry at all, and they all know it. “There’s really nothing I can do.”

The human is enraged, scared; I can feel it vibrating through his shadow and into my skin.

My stomach growls, twisting like a wild, angry thing. The man steps forward, grips the bars with both hands and the threat in his voice is born of a deep, and all consuming hatred.

“Call. Them. Off,” he hisses, and the Specter convulses. So hungry. “Do it now, or I’ll play a little song for your Pack that will have them dropping like flies.”

Gabriel growls, face momentarily contorting into something monstrous and dark. Just as quickly, he is under control again and he sends Agent Walker a sly look from the corner of his eye.

“Something tells me that if you could have, you would have done it already. I don’t think you have the clearance to play with your little toy when your masters aren’t watching.”

His eyes grow dark and his smile is a quick baring of oh-so-sharp teeth. “Don’t make threats you can’t follow through on. It just pisses people off.”

“You shit-eating son of a bitch.”

Rage, rage, rage. The human is angry and I am fascinated. Slowly, I begin to separate myself from the man’s shadow. The other Weres in the cells around us press themselves close to watch the scene unfold. Yipping in excitement as I continue to grow behind the human. Stretching higher and higher. I am the tower of Babel and the human nothing more than rubble. Still talking, but unable to hear. To understand.

“The next time the scientists cut you apart, I’m going to be there. Standing over you. I’m going to piss on your insides. Watch you drown in it.”

I’m not the one who loses control. It is the woman, the one who has been rising in my mind ever since I took her body. At the man’s words violence pulses from the woman like a beacon and she is taking control. Shoving me away so that she can rip into the man’s shadow as I’d considered just a few moments earlier. Darkness on darkness. It clings to us with greedy fingers. Even if I had wanted to release the human, I cannot. On the inside, in his human shell, he is just like me.

Damned.

Unforgivable.

Like calls to like, and the woman and I rip the man’s shadow from the mooring of his body. The violence of the action dragging everything that is Elijah Walker out along with it. The woman is horrified, and her concentration slips as she shies away from what she’s done. She doesn’t know what to do with a man’s soul in her hands, with his shadow dripping like ink through her fingertips.

She doesn’t know.

But I do.

My jaws unhinge, and I consume the essence of Elijah Walker in the span of a single heartbeat. His soul screams on the way down, but that’s all right.

He is still tasty.

****

“Found you,” I say, pleased that the Sidhe are pleased. At the sound of my voice, the Were, the wolf, the Gabriel cocks his head to one side. Horror suffuses his face.

“Phaedra?” His voice cracks around the name as if it made from broken glass. He looks like he is bleeding on the inside from the utterance of it.

“Found YOU!” I crow instead. I don’t know how to answer the question in this pain. It makes me think of my dead wife from long before. I don’t like the feeling, so I ignore it.

He clears his throat.

“Yes. You found me.” He holds up his hands and I see that there are chains encircling his wrists. There is even a collar. A collar. Weres are not dogs. The sight confounds me.

“Now you just have to get me loose.”

“More work,” I growl. Fingers growing like claws as my frustration builds. “It’s always more, more, more.” I slash at the bars and they melt beneath my violence like sand.

How can they restrain anything at all?

“I FOUND YOU! I found the wolf.” I scream at him, at the Sidhe, from beside the door’s remains. I hate this world. Hate being trapped in skin. Hate breathing air. Hate having a beating heart. Death is simpler. If everything was dead, the world would be a better place. My fingers dig into the human woman’s scalp and I began ripping at her hair, so frustrated I could eat her down with that I had eaten….

What had been his name again?

I was so hungry.

My wail is echoing, sad, and the lights finally stop fighting me and die.

The darkness makes me feel a little better.

But only a little.

I snarl at the amber eyes still watching me, and the Were’s expression is both stern and understanding.

“I know you’re tired,” he tells me, and rage begins to boil in the darkest recesses of my thoughts. “I know you’re hungry. You must have worked very hard.”

My mouth twists bitterly, but I nod anyway.

“Yes,” I say. It doesn’t matter what I’m agreeing to. All of it’s true.

“You just have to do this one thing,” he continues, his voice hypnotic. I step into the cell.

“One little thing, and your done and we can go home. Back to the Sithin.”

Home.

A curious notion. Home.

I don’t ever remember having a home, but the word is a familiar one. A strangely comforting one. I make my way to the Were’s side and I am reaching, grabbing a hold of the shackles that bind his wrists. But before I can tear them away, his fingers are entangling in my own. He is pulling me forward, off balance so that I collapse into his lap. The power in me sprouts, builds, roars, but before I can lash out at him his mouth is pressing against my own.

Huh.

He pulls back only long enough to say, “This is going to hurt.” Then he is ripping me apart and all of the world goes dark.

****

Gabriel loved science.

It had a certain grace that magic lacked.

A certain finesse.

What made it so romantic in his mind was that there was so much untapped potential.

So much of it still unexplored. When he first came to the human world he’d devoured everything he could find concerning the subject. The results had been fascinating.

Science didn’t explain what he and the other Hounds could do, but it gave him a better understanding of his gifts. The others thought he was ignoring his magic, but that was the complete opposite. He was just giving it a name.

He knew, even as he allowed the atoms holding him together to split apart, that what he was trying might not work. But if he didn’t try something, then the Specter would wipe Phaedra away, assuming that it hadn’t done so already.

Letting himself fade was easy. Some said that it was like exploding, like dying, like being reborn again. He’d heard all of the comparisons, but for Gabriel there was only one way to describe it.

For him, using his gift was like breathing.

One second he is solid.

He is real.

The next he is nothing,

But,

The world is a collection of thought, a kaleidoscope of flashing color where before there was only darkness. Even as a wolf he cannot see with such clarity. Cannot see a person’s breath escaping on the air like a moth or their skin like thousands of tiny particles, each with its own special brand of energy and life.

These particles are what he grabs a hold of. What he slips in between and pulls apart. They struggle at first, screaming and reluctant to be separated from one another. But they give up the fight soon enough. Her skin is the first to fall away, an old dress being discarded. He moves

through everything else quickly. Internal organs, veins, ligaments, bones, blood cells.

Inch by inch he breaks her down and sends her floating into the ether.

He grabs for her soul last.

The Specter is wrapped tight around her, black tar swallowing a dying bird. He can hear the tiny sounds of panic she makes, or fear, as the Specter continues to grow stronger.

It makes it easier to pull them away from one another. The Specter is buried so deep within her that he has to shred her just to erase the last trace of the creature.

Then he leads her, broken and sobbing, after him into the light.

When they are safe, he works on pulling the piece of her back together.

He starts from her soul and works his way up. Brick by brick, holding her together with his will alone when she would have fallen apart. His mind stretching for miles in every direction just to bring the parts of her that had wandered too far away back home where they belonged. To him it takes forever to rebuild her, but in actuality, the process only lasts a minute or two. He doesn’t have to work nearly as long or as hard to make himself solid once again. If using his power was like breathing, stepping back into reality was like holding

His.

Breath.

“He is where Angels fear to tread.”

—Phaedra Conners

Chapter Twenty-one

I came back to myself with a scream.

Glancing around wildly, I saw that I was still on my back in the middle of the woods.

Everything else was different from what I remembered last. For one thing, the Specter that had been stalking me seemed to have disappeared. For another, the building where Gabriel and I had been detained at before was at my back.

The most significant difference had to be the fact that Gabriel himself was sitting next to me, smiling as if his sudden and unexplained appearance wasn’t in the least bit strange.

“Hi,” he said happily.

“Hi.” My own voice was weak by comparison. He looked me over and his eyes narrowed.

“Are all your parts working?”

I gave the question serious thought and shrugged lightly.

“They seem to be doing all right.”

He blew out a relieved breath and I tried not to feel too suspicious about his line of questioning. So instead, I focused on what was bothering me the most about my situation.

“Were we just abducted by aliens or something?”

“No. Why?”

“Because I can’t remember the last few hours. Call me crazy, but my first assumption is always alien abduction.”

“Don’t worry. You weren’t abducted.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“You were possessed though.”

I gave him the stink-eye and he shook his head in wonder, as if too tickled by the sight of me to be offended by my dirty looks. Finally, curiosity got the best of me.

“Was I Linda Blair possessed or Amityville Horror possessed.”

“Little bit of both.”

I groaned.

“Great,” I grumbled, accepting his hand as he helped me to my feet. “Just great. I didn’t hurt anybody did I?”

The pause was barely perceptible before he shook his head.

“Of course not,” he said, and I relaxed. Something dark and squirming in me told me it was a lie, but I dismissed the strange sensation as nerves.

I was just about to question him further, when something exploded. Heat consumed me as the force of the blast lifted me off of my feet and threw me like a rag doll. I hit the ground rolling and by the time I stopped I was so dizzy I couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down.

There was a ringing in my ears, and I stumbled and fell as quickly as I gained my feet.

Gabriel knelt beside me and there was soot smeared down the side of his face. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him past the ringing. His face contorted and he grabbed me by the shoulders. Since I couldn’t hear him, he reopened the bond and forced the words through the link between us.

For a moment it was like a limb had been returned to me. A part I hadn’t known was missing. It felt good to feel him, strong and clear, on the other end of our bond. Then his words hit me and all pleasure faded beneath a wash of fear.

“Leo must have made it to the holding cells. But if the pack steps out of their prisons—”

That was when I heard it.

It was faint at first because it wasn’t intended for me. The only reason I could hear it at all was because Gabriel could. It was a single note, buzzing in his head like bee searching for its next meal. He couldn’t escape it, couldn’t shake it, and he knelt there for a handful of seconds, shaking his head as if to clear it of the invasion. Then the note seemed to burrow into his brain.

It flipped a switch in him and suddenly he was writhing on the ground before me and screaming with no voice. Claws sprouted from his fingertips as he scratched at his face, his chest, his stomach, tearing skin and drawing blood in a bid to dig the note out of his body and destroy it.

Only…

Only this wasn’t some enemy that he could defeat with strength and cunning.

It was a musical measure.

An annoying one, but still nothing more than a note. At least to me it was. But as I watched Gabriel I realized that to the Were’s it was as dangerous as silver bullet.

Through Gabriel I could feel the rest of the pack, screaming and struggling to ease the unbearable pressure in their minds. For now they were helpless, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when gunshots began to ring out from the inside of the facility.

Gabriel growled. I felt the sensation deep in my blood. That rolling, grumbling, rage that seemed to fill him and soak into the night air. He began to get to his feet, to struggle back towards the facility and to his pack, but the note grew sharper and he fell, vomiting on the ground. He rolled there, snarling and struggling against an attack I couldn’t see or stop.

Then he got to his knees, and to my horror, began to beat his head against the forest floor.

Over and over again until he started to grow soft and dark around the edges. Until night began to bleed out of his skin like blood and the continued growl rising up from his throat was like a physical touch.

I felt it when his hearing sort of fractured, took a backseat to the agony in his mind. Only then was he able to straighten to his full height and began to lope back towards the now burning facility.

I got to my feet to follow him, not sure how I could help, but determined to try anyway.

We were nearly upon the building, the flames that ate along the north side shooting towards the sky like dancers dressed in silken scarves, when the doors burst open. The Pack poured out in twos and threes, moving so quickly that it was hard to tell how many of them had already shifted and how many were still in their human forms. From behind them I heard more gunshots go off and the sound of fighting.

“Leo,” Gabriel breathed, steps quickening.

We were standing on the doorstep of the facility when the note stopped. For a sweet moment in time all was silence. I was relieved until I looked up and over to see the sick horror on Gabriel’s face. We both turned to regard the members of his pack just as another note, different from the last, began to dance through the air. The effect on the Were’s was instantaneous and only Gabriel seemed unaffected. Whether that was because of the beating he’d given himself, his status as Alpha, or the simple fact that this time the notes were specifically aimed for the weaker of his pack didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that one by one the Pack filling the clearing around the burning building, twisted as one to pin both Gabriel and I with piercing yellow eyes. There were footsteps behind us as Agents began stepping from the building. Gabriel grabbed my upper arm and together we retreated to the center of the clearing. Out of the fifty or so Agents that stepped outside, only

three of them escorted captive Weres before them. Agent Liam and Agent Benson came out last, and standing between them, head bowed and bloody, was a Were I’d never met before.

Gabriel’s shock filled me, and from his mind I grabbed a name.

Leo Valentine. They’d caught his friend.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

I glanced around us.

Weres at the front and sides, and gun toting FBI agents in the rear.

We were effectively surrounded.

As we watched, Agent Benson fiddled with something, a tiny looking remote and the note currently enthralling Gabriel’s pack grew louder and louder still until even I was grinding my teeth against the nails on chalkboard sound.

That was when the Pack attacked.

Gabriel grabbed my hand and whipped me away just as pair of jaws snapped where my legs would have been. Two steps back, and he was twirling me around, out from under the viciously swiping claws of two male Weres. He stopped, dipped me with one arm, and used his free hand to punch the woman who’d been about to grab me from behind in the throat.

It wasn’t until he whipped me back upright and wiggled his eyebrows in blatant suggestion that I realized that we were dancing. Or rather, he was making saving my ass look like a routine from Dancing with the Stars.

Yeah, I thought breathlessly, I love this guy.

We two stepped out of the way of a charging wolf and Gabriel spun me. I watched him leap, stepping onto the Were and walking across him as if he were a tightrope. He landed beside me and pulled me close, arm wrapped around my waist and face an inch away.

God, he was dashing.

I giggled like a schoolgirl, and from over his shoulder saw Agent Liam snatch the device from Benson’s hands in a rage. Liam pressed something and now there were two notes instead of just one and something shifted. Gabriel snarled at me, eyes bleeding to full amber before he gave his head a sharp shake and snapped out of it. He looked at the hundreds of Weres stalking around us and I couldn’t help but look as well.

There wasn’t just mindless violence in their eyes now, there was hunger. The ones who’d managed to keep his or her human form shifted until we were surrounded by a sea of fur on all

sides. Some of the Agents laughed, a few were talking amongst themselves, but it was Agent Liam who caught my eye and held it.

Before they’d been attacking individually. Frantically. Without thought. But that wasn’t how wolves hunted. They hunted as pack, as a group and when the time was right they brought their prey down together. They’d forgotten that, but now I saw them sending one another looks. Coordinating, strengthening the weak spots in their formation until any chance of escape Gabriel and I had was erased.

It was an ocean of yellow eyes, a sea of death back-dropped by the dancing flames and the treetops touching the horizon. I looked over at Gabriel, feeling the change in the air, the threat and hunger for blood. They’d been clumsy before, but I don’t think Gabriel would be able to dance out of danger this time.

He was smiling. I don’t know why I wasn’t more surprised by that. I watched him tip his head back, eyes closing as the moonlight touched his face. A wolf howled and then they came for us as one.

Single minded and deadly in their focus. His grin was wild, his skin bleeding around the edges as the wolf in him struggled to get out. He stalked forward to meet the first wave of attack.

One of the wolves leapt for his throat and he grabbed the animal by the forelegs and spun, throwing it away like trash to crash into the wolves on the other side of me. Another wolf darted forward, low and fast. When it careened into Gabriel with its jaws wide, he stuck his fist in the animal’s mouth. It struggled, whimpering around his wrist, unable to bite down and unable to pull away. Gabriel shoved his arm deeper, smiling madly, eyes alight with amber fire. Grabbing the Were’s snout he ripped the top of the animal’s head off and let it collapse at his feet.

The Pack hesitated at the sight, but it didn’t stop them from coming for us. Slowly, Gabriel turned in a circle, surveying the still advancing Weres coldly. Then his knees bent and the air seemed to shudder around him. His back arched and he threw his head back in a battle cry that drowned out everything else and rose to the heavens on shuddering wings.

That cry?

It shook the very ground.

The wolves froze.

Silence reigned and Gabriel surveyed his pack once again. His upper lip curled back.

When he spoke, he did so softly, but there was no denying his authority of his words.

“I am Alpha.�

That was it. Three words. But it had them sitting back on their haunches. Eyes averting and tails tucking between their legs. Leo Valentine, still caught in the grip of the Agents looked at the

unanimous show of submission; Gabriel standing in the midst of them like some avenging, amber-eyed God, and laughed incredulously.

“What the fuck just happened?” This from one of the Feds.

“Is it broken?” Asked another.

The men and women who’d come out of the facility turned to look at Agent Liam for an explanation. He didn’t notice their attention at first. He was too busy jabbing the buttons on the device in his hands. The air filling with random note after note. A cacophony of sound. No matter what he did though, the Weres ignored it. There was only room for one song in their minds, one voice, and it was Gabriel’s.

Agent Liam’s hair was in wild disarray and through Gabriel I could smell the stink of his fear fouling the air. Beneath the fear, however, was rage. Hatred. Dark and consuming.

He was like a wild animal caught in a trap, which made him even more dangerous than he’d been before. He threw the device to the side in disgust and pulled out his firearm, arms shaking as he stalked forward, as if coming closer would punch the bullet he so desperately wanted to fire more cleanly through Gabriel’s flesh.

“What are you?” Liam barked. His arms steadying as he aimed down the barrel of his gun.

Gabriel cocked his head to one side and his smile was a flash of brilliant white.

“You know the answer to that.”

The human’s lip curled. “Why don’t you spell it out for me anyway?”

Gabriel tsked. He took a step closer to the group of humans and the pack followed.

“There are things that go bump in the night,” he said, eyes trained on Liam, but words for all of them. Fear was a perfume in the air. “Things that lay in wait beneath beds,” he continued voice hypnotic and mocking. “They skulk in closets. Hide in shadows.” He licked his lips and his head lowered so that he could regard them from beneath his lashes. “Then, there’s me. I am no bogey little human, I am no nightmare. I am so much more than that. I am fear and I was named of Angels.”

Agent Liam roared, eyes bright, crazed, and pulled the trigger.

The shadows that had been drifting from Gabriel, the part of him that made him so much more than your everyday Were, had him disappearing in a swirl of black smoke.

He appeared directly before Agent Liam, and as I watched, he pulled the man close and ripped out his throat. The man fell in a spray of arterial blood and Gabriel wiped the blood from his chin with the back of one hand.

He met my eyes and I could feel the same thoughts that had occurred to me swim to the forefront of his brain. We were at war now with the government and letting the remaining Agents go would simply guarantee that they came back for us, harder and faster than ever before because now they knew what we were capable of.

They had to die, and Gabriel wanted me to be the one to give the order.

Not because he couldn’t, but because this was the choice I’d made. To stay. And if I was going to stay and fight, if I was going to be his mate, then I had to start acting like it.

There is a law of the wild and it is written in bloodshed and unmarked graves.

I shuddered and I knew he could read the knowledge in my eyes. Feel it in our bond.

I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t cross that line.

He opened his mouth to do it for me, only no words came out.

Instead he stared down at the blossoming red stain on the front of his shirt and fell to his knees.

I felt the bullet tear through his internal organs and my head whipped around, searching desperately for the source of the gunshot, even as I pushed through the pack to reach his side.

I saw him through a haze of red.

Marcus, standing at the tree line, lowered his rifle and met my eyes. Then, blowing me a mocking kiss, he disappeared into the woods, six of Gabriel’s wolves in hot pursuit. The agents chose that moment to scatter. If I had been in my right mind, I would have told them not to run. That running makes them chase you. But I had nothing left in me, nothing to give a group of humans that had wanted us all dead or in chains.

Us.

Humans.

When had I started thinking like that? When had I started thinking of myself more as a member of the Pack than as a human being?

Didn’t matter now.

Nothing mattered now but reaching him.

I slid to his side, my hands already reaching, searching, smearing in his blood before I’d fully registered the sight of the bullet hole. My breath was coming too fast and there were spots in front of my eyes. Leo came to my side and he was saying something that couldn’t register through the blind, animal panic that was filled my mind.

“I can help.”

The voice was sly, foreign, but at the same time strangely familiar.

“Help, help, help. I can help, I can.”

The voice was coming from within me, and in my mind’s eye I saw something, a shadow on my soul. A dripping, screaming nightmare with a smile like death and a voice like razor blades.

The Specter.

Gabriel looked up at me, and I saw a spark of recognition in his eyes.

“Thought-thought I killed you,” he choked, blood filling his mouth.

The voice in my soul cackled, clearly pleased with itself, and beside me Leo shied away.

“How can you help me?” I asked it, and Gabriel’s eyes closed in defeat.

“Don’t,” he whispered. Already knowing that it was no use.

The bond told me what common sense had already noted.

He was dying.

I was running out of time.

So I ignored him and his warning and the Specter inside of me grinned and drug its claws across my soul. The world went dark as the knowledge filled me. In my mind I saw them. Saw them riding, hunting, running. The world bowing at their feet and the sky breaking beneath the sound of their horse’s hooves. The Specter showed me the Wild Hunt of old, the Hounds as they once were.

Then, with just a word, it gave me the song I needed to call them to me.

The Call of the Hunt ripped through me, a tidal wave, a collapse of will and reason. Sanity was beaten back, chaos reigned, and in the span of a heartbeat I died a thousand small deaths.

I opened my mouth and howled.

****

They came.

The Hounds of the Hunt.

They came from all over Briarcliff. Dragged from their beds, out of restaurants, from their jobs and friends. Leaving their cars in the streets and their spouses in their beds. They answered the Call blindly, running down sidewalks and leaping over cars. They came in twos and threes, eyes

wild and wild grins splitting their faces as old instincts took over. Their voices filled the night sky, joyous and strange. Leo, closer than the eleven other Alphas, was dragged to his feet by the Call and he raised his voice in harmony. The sounds melding and feeding off of one another.

To me, the Call was like putting my soul in my mouth and unraveling it with just the power of my voice. It shook the world on its axis and as the Alphas burst from the woods to reach Gabriel’s side, I saw them as they truly were.

There were three children that came hand in hand. To my eyes they appeared as some great three headed beast. The song spinning through my thoughts told me that they’d guarded the door of the Underworld before they’d been recruited for the Wild Hunt. When they shifted, their wolves magnified the energy of the others. If left to their own devices they could grow larger than most skyscrapers and consume every star in the sky.

Cerebus.

A lithe young man followed on the heels of the triplets. He was storm, a lightning strike, the tremble of the earth was woven into his skin. His howl rose pure and sweet, something steady for the childish sopranos of the three children to build off of.

A woman was next, her bright red hair a corona around her dark face. She was a word, an utterance, a scream in the dark. She walked in whispers, a thousand different languages rising from her like the wings of some great beast.

And on and on it went. I saw each of them, and the Call let me know them all.

They had been hiding for centuries, and as I looked among them I noticed a common thread. Each of them had a thread of Gabriel’s power woven into them. A piece of him that connected him to each and every one of them.

He’d been protecting them this whole time. Hiding their presence from the Mad Sidhe with a gentler, subtler, version of his gift. As he weakened, died, the threads began to fray. Their shield was falling, and, thanks to the Specter inside of me, I could feel the Mad Sidhe rejoice at the sight of the rest of their lost Hounds.

“No,” I thought at them, the Song making me fierce, protective where I had no desire or right to be. “They’re mine now,” I found myself telling the Sidhe. “One Rider. Many Hounds.”

Halfway across the world, trapped in another dimension, they screamed their denial, their rage, and blood began to drip from my ears in a steady stream.

Leo reached down to place a hand on my shoulder and when I looked at him he was a human torch, a supernova of explosive heat and punishing flame. I thought of the explosion from earlier and shook my head in wonder.

“Go,” he growled, voice drug over burning coals.

“But Gabriel—” I started. He pulled me to my feet.

“We’ll take care of him, Rider,” he told me, the title strangely formal. “But you can’t stay.”

I followed his gaze to see the Hounds forming a circle around us. They watched me, eyes of the brightest green, the deepest blue, the darkest black. I was reminded by all of those eyes that these were no ordinary Weres, and finally, I nodded my consent.

I looked down at Gabriel once more and what I saw nearly stole my breath.

The Call of the Hunt let me see Gabriel for what he truly was. What he would have changed into that day when Agent Liam had cut me in a bid to get a reaction. I saw him as a Hound of imaginable size. He wasn’t made of flesh and bone, but the screaming bodies of the damned.

Thousands of men and women formed his arms, his legs, and his muscular torso. His teeth, made of bone, were the size of tree trunks and the earth was left dead and rotting beneath his paws. The gaze of the Hell Hound was a pit. Empty. In its depths, I found purgatory.

Then it whimpered, a purely animal sound, and the vision faded.

Whatever he was, whatever inner demon he fought to control, there was no changing who he was on the inside. Who he chose to be. Hell Hound or Werewolf, to me he was nothing more than Gabriel Evans.

I looked at Leo out of the corner of my eye.

“He lives,” I told the other man, and his lips quirked in a smile.

My words were an order and we both knew it.

He inclined his head.

“Of course, Rider. We’ll make sure of it.”

I nodded, and left the Hounds to work their magic.

“We know what you did there, in the dark.”

—Gabriel Evans

Chapter Twenty-two

I was sitting in a booth at BB’s when Sonya slid into the seat next to me.

“Hello, stranger,” she chirped to Asrai. The child giggled and nodded a quick greeting. I wasn’t sure whether or not Fae could get brain freezes, but, considering the speed in which Asrai was sucking down milkshakes, I was expecting her head to explode at any minute.

Her eyes grew heavy-lidded, and voice growing sultry to match, she looked at the man sitting next to Asrai and purred, “Hello, Gabriel.”

He cleared his throat, face flushing before he hid behind his menu.

“Hello,” he mumbled. He’d taken it seriously when I told him that Sonya started ovulating at the sight of him. In his wolfy mind he already had a mate, so the idea of causing that reaction in another woman was abhorrent to him. Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to look the reporter in the eye. Sonya thought his reactions to her made him even more adorable, and I suspected that the power of being able to make Gabriel Evans shift uncomfortably in his seat was going to her head.

I’d have to talk to her about it later, but for now I let it go.

Partially because Gabriel could take care of himself, but mostly because it was funny.

Two weeks had passed since the showdown with the Feds. Since then, nothing else had happened, but it was like waiting for the lightning to strike when you smelled ozone in the air.

You knew it was coming and waiting for it made the hair on your arms stand on end.

I almost preferred getting shot at by overzealous Huntsmen to waiting for the other shoe to drop.

While the Feds hadn’t retaliated, we did notice that the government’s push to get the Were Bill passed was becoming even more aggressive. I had a sick suspicion that it wouldn’t be long before known Weres were detained in camps and tagged like livestock. As long as they felt safe again, the human race wouldn’t care what happened to them after that.

The wolves had never located Marcus after he’d run off that night. Another enemy to watch us from the shadows. The morning after the Hounds had saved Gabriel I’d gotten a call from his new secretary. I was informed that my services would no longer be needed, but that Mr. Evans

expected me to meet with him for lunch every day at noon, assuming my obligations to the Oracle weren’t too demanding.

Speaking of the Oracle, Sonya and I were swamped with interviews. It would take a while to set up things for the television special, and in the meantime we occupied ourselves with interviewing different Packs from all over the city. It had made us a lot closer and Sonya had gone from being sort of friends to maybe besties.

It was nice, and every now and then Sonya invited herself along to my lunches with Gabriel. Today was one of those days.

I sighed, eyes scanning the menu in my hands without really seeing anything.

In addition to everything else we had to worry about, I was starting to develop an anxiety disorder waiting for the Sidhe to make their move. Gabriel assured me that we’d be all right. Even if they knew where all their Hounds were, it would be a while before they managed to break free of the Sithin. I guess he was right. They had been trying to cross over for a few hundred years now, it wasn’t like they were suddenly going to slip free from the Fae world just because I’d sent them a metaphysical middle finger.

I hoped not anyway.

Gabriel and I had thought that if nothing else the patrols from the Specters would increase.

Short of breaking out, getting one of the Hounds to enter the Sithin was the only other way to free the Mad Sidhe. We’d all had dinner last week and I’d had a chance to meet the other Hounds one on one. I knew that none of them were going to be paying any visits to the Sidhe willingly, which left kidnapping the only other option. If we stayed vigilant as far as the Specters were concerned, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

That was the theory anyway.

But if the fallout from the government was like a storm, the threat the Mad Sidhe represented felt a lot like drowning. Sometimes I could feel their intent through the Specter still clinging to my soul like a parasite, and it was enough to wake me up screaming at night. As far as my new inner voice was concerned, the Specter inside of me seemed almost content. Even if it wasn’t trying to brainwash me on behalf of the Fae, I wanted the little guy gone. Sonya said she knew an exorcist and I was trying to build up my courage to call the guy. Gabriel thought I was being ridiculous, but he wasn’t the poor shmuck in danger of projectile vomiting pea soup.

“Why do you even bother looking at the menu?”

Speak of the devil. I looked up and narrowed my eyes at him from over my menu.

“Because this is America, and I have the right to choose whatever I damn well please to eat.”

“You always choose the same thing though,” Asrai piped up, and I scowled at her.

“Snitches get stitches,” I warned caustically and Gabriel snorted.

Sonya rolled her eyes at me.

“You do realize you’re the whitest white girl I know right?”

I grunted in annoyance and went back to perusing the menu. Gabriel shook his head and leaned back in his seat, throwing a companionable arm around Asrai. He had become Asrai’s new guardian, and living together seemed to give them an ease with one another they had lacked their first meeting.

It made me feel strange seeing them together like that.

I wasn’t jealous that the child was getting his attention. It just made me feel sort of homesick. As if I were watching a family I was meant to be a part of live their life and grow without me.

With a gasp of delight, Asrai finished off her third chocolate milkshake and shoved the empty glass away.

“Hey, Phaedra?” she asked.

“Yes, dear?” I answered absently.

“Can you and Sonya take me shopping today?”

“I’d do it but I have a meeting to get to,” Sonya and I looked at one another. “I’ll give you one of my credit cards,” Gabriel added when the silence at the table grew thick.

“Yes, please, and thank you; I would be delighted to take you shopping little girl,” Sonya’s answer was immediate and enthusiastic and Asrai beamed. I put my menu down and folded my hands together on the table.

“Why?” I asked. That was me. Continuously suspicious.

“Well, Gabriel says that I can start school in a few weeks.”

“I just have to finish up some paperwork proving I’m her legal guardian and get her enrolled.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” We had declared war against two very powerful groups and he wanted the most vulnerable, and perhaps the most important, member of our team to attend elementary school? I didn’t have to voice my concerns out loud. Gabriel could feel them.

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” Asrai answered primly. Gabriel nodded, gaze meeting mine.

“Yeah. What she said.”

“Why can’t you just home school her?” I asked, and Sonya raised a brow at me. “You have something against public schooling?”

“There’s nothing she can learn at a public school that we can’t teach her from the privacy of our own homes.”

“And who would teach her?” Sonya asked, clearly amused. “You?” When Gabriel remained silent, I nodded.

He sighed as if pained by the thought of some great task he had been entrusted with. “I can give you three reasons why that’s a bad idea,” he said.

“Oh really?”

“Spell onomatopoeia,” he challenged, and my mind went blank. “Don’t make up words,” I snarled.

“It’s not made up, Phaedra,” Sonya whispered, and I my nose wrinkled. “Can you use it in a sentence?” I asked desperately.

He shook his head and held up a finger. “There’s reason one.” Shit. I could see where this was going.

“What’s the square root of 62?”

Panic had me floundering and my mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.

Another finger joined the first.

“Reason two.”

Sonya’s laugher filled the restaurant and I slammed my hands down on the table.

“Damn it. I’m a journalist, not some math genius vocabulary guru.” I snapped flustered, “God invented spell check and calculators for a reason.”

“Fair enough,” he conceded, obviously trying not to smile. “One more. What’s a conjunction, Phaedra?”

Goddamnit.

“Um,” I was sweating now. Didn’t I watch a video on this in like the second grade or something? Conjunction junction, what’s your function? I hummed the lyrics to myself but the part of the song that actually explained the purpose of a conjunction eluded me.

“It conjunctifies…stuff?”

A third finger popped up, sealing my fate, and I thumped my head down on the table in shame.

“Here’s her school supply list,” I reached out and grabbed the folded piece of paper he slid to me blindly, my ears burning in embarrassment.

“I’ll come by your place and pick her up tonight after I’m done with work,” he told me, and I nodded without looking at him. Thirty minutes later, we were finishing up lunch when he handed me his MasterCard and tousled Asrai’s hair in silent farewell.

He inclined his head politely in Sonya’s direction and she chuckled. It was only when he met my eyes that a hint of mischief worked its way into his gaze.

“See you later, Kryptonite,” he said with a grin, getting to his feet and throwing on his coat. I mumbled something unintelligible, my face hot, and he walked out of BB’s whistling.

Sonya nudged my shoulder and I looked up to see both her and Asrai looking at me with strangely knowing eyes.

“What was that about?” Sonya asked suggestively, and I shoved the finger she was poking into my side away in irritation.

“Nothing.”

“No, that was something all right.”

Asrai sighed loudly. “Guys. Get your priorities straight.”

I frowned, then I saw that she was staring at the credit card in my hand and it all made sense. She was absolutely right. Out of the mouths of babes.

“Ladies,” I said solemnly, all of my worries and doubts from earlier nothing more than distant memories. “We have work to do.”

###