The Minotaur's Kiss

by Erin St. Charles

  Diana hadn't prepared for this situation. She put on her bra, hooked it, and went looking for her panties, lifting the bed covers, with no luck. Probably not wearable, anyway. She retrieved a fresh pair from her dresser and slid into them, then stepped into the blue jeans. She wiggled them over her hips, then looked up to see Mac waving the red satin panties with a wicked grin on his face.

  "Looking for these?"

  "Hey!" she hissed, grabbing at her underwear as he held them just out of reach.

  He tucked them into his jeans pocket. "I'm keeping them." Diana felt her face flush with embarrassment. But she also felt pleased that he even wanted her panties.

  Mac, Diana, and her mother spent the afternoon chatting over vegan Chinese food delivered by drone. Her mother would only be in Dallas for a couple of days, and she'd be staying with Vanessa and the twins. Her mother made approving noises when Diana showed off her new home improvement projects but gave Diana the side eye at the sight of the claw foot tub whose rim still rested on the rotted floor of the guest bathroom. All the while, Diana waited for the other shoe to drop. After several days of Omni messages that went unanswered, her mother had come to visit with an ulterior motive in mind. There was something up with the woman, and it was clear her mother had no intention of revealing it unless it served her purpose. Whatever it was, Diana was sure she didn't want to discuss it with Mac there. Diana stewed over this the entire time her mother carried on with her idle chit-chat.

  "So, what brings you to Dallas ma'am?" Diana watched Mac, who didn't make eye contact with her mother but rather spoke to the food in front of them. Leona raised an eyebrow at her daughter.

  "I do sometimes like to visit my children, even if one of them insists on dodging my Omnis."

  Diana made an excuse. "I've got a new assignment, and I really need to be focused on work right now."

  "Where have I heard that before?" Leona set down her chopsticks. "Your father was exactly the same way. Always the workaholic. But, I like your new man. Maybe he's a keeper?"

  Diana looked at her mother as if she'd grown another head. "Mom!"

  "You're not getting any younger. One day you'll look up, and all the good ones will be gone." Leona gave Mac a pointed look. His stoic expression was in full force now. He was watching carefully to see how this interaction was shaking out. Diana spoke up again before either Mac, or her mother said anything more.

  "So, Mom. What does bring you here?"

  "Well I did try to call you to let you know, but you didn't answer my calls. I'm getting married."

  "Oh. Wow." This was the last thing Diana expected. She didn't even know her mother had been dating. She rolled the idea of her mother remarrying around in her head. "Is that a good idea?"

  Mac blinked and looked at Diana as if she'd gone crazy. Her mother gasped and dropped the chopsticks, which bounced on the kitchen table.

  "Excuse me?"

  Diana sputtered, shocked at herself. "What I mean is -"

  "It's been fifteen years, Diana."

  "Mom, I'm sorry."

  Leona gave her daughter a stern look. "Your father's been gone for fifteen years. Everyone else knows this. You're the one who can't move on."

  There followed an uncomfortable silence. Diana felt as if she were caving in on herself. Worst of all, while her mother's eyes flashed with anger, Mac gave her a sideways look.

  "I'm going to go stay with your sister and my grandbabies." Leona stood, gathered up her bag, and picked up the dirty plate. She placed the dish in the sink and turned to look at her daughter and Mac.

  "It was good to meet you, Mac." Mac stood up quickly and offered Leona his arm.

  "Let me see you to the door ma'am." Leona allowed herself to be led away. Diana sat at the table, looking at the abandoned meal. She felt like crying.

  She heard the front door close and Mac's heavy footsteps approaching. She stood up quickly and began to clear the table. "So, now you've met my mother." She set about the work of stacking the dishwasher and putting the food away. "I'm not usually that rude to her." She smiled tentatively, eyes darting to the floor, the table, the kitchen sink. Anything to avoid the pity she expected she'd see in his eyes.

  He stopped her in the motion of wiping the table. He took her into his arms and held her, his burning scent intensifying. She resisted, but his arms were firm around her. She gave up the struggle and succumbed to self-pitying tears, while he held her.

  "Shhhhh..." He stroked her back, his voice rumbling in his chest as he soothed her.

  "I know this is really stupid. Of course she would want to remarry." Her voice broke on the last word. Wasn't that the sort of thing people said when a divorced woman gets married again? Did people say things like that about widows?

  Mac held her and rocked her until her sobs died down. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and they walked awkwardly down the hall to her bedroom. He stripped, undressed her, and placed her in the middle of the bed. He climbed in after her, his chest to her back, his strong warm body holding her, sheltering her.

  "It was a long time ago. He worked the brothels of Back of the Yards." It had been her father's job to protect the working girls there.

  "He and his partner were enforcers for the Chicago PD. One of their clients went missing, and an informant gave them a tip about where they could find her. Daddy didn't want to wait for backup and went into the situation alone. They never did find the perpetrator. I guess it was really his own fault."

  She thought of her father. His larger-than-life presence, sandy red hair, and red freckles.

  "He didn't die right away. We got to visit him in the hospital before he passed." And Diana hadn't been inside a hospital since. She knew it wasn't rational, but they felt like places to die. "I was fifteen years old."

  Mac continued to stroke her hair and soothed her as her tears dried up, and she fell into a heavy sleep.

  Chapter 29

  Wednesday, September 27, 2079. Morning.

  "What's with the thousand-yard stare?" Bubba leaned against the doorway of Mac's office. How the fuck did the wolf sneak up on him like that? Diana had him so fucking twisted...

  Mac sighed. "What do you want, Bubba?"

  The wolf eyed the bull, looking offended, and launched into a monologue while Mac's eyes unfocused and his attention drifted. There hadn't been an inspection all week--apparently, all inspections are surprise inspections scheduled at random, and the amount any one field supervisor had in any given four-day work week could be anywhere from zero to sixteen.

  Mac and Diana had had ten that first week, but only two this week. Mac suspected the lighter load meant Jaslene's fertility rite would happen soon, and Jacob wanted to make sure the two of them had enough time for focus on it when the time came.

  While he appreciated learning more about Diana, her subsequent crying jag had embarrassed her, and she'd responded with emotional distance. He had hoped to stay the night with her after the meeting at Pantheon and their afternoon of lovemaking, but after her mother left, Diana wanted to be alone again. Damned confusing, especially since they'd confessed their love for each other.

  The next morning when he'd picked her up for work, her defenses were up again, dark circles under her eyes and her glorious auburn hair pulled back from her face in a severe bun. He had wanted to take her into his arms and let her know that it was okay to be vulnerable, that he wanted her to lean on him. His kind was programmed to resist emotional entanglements, and Mac ran true to his programming, or at least, he had since his transformation. He wasn't sure he was equipped to be her emotional rock.

  On the other hand, her revelation about her father's murder made him see her in a new light. Her father had been a protector who took care of the working girls in the red-light district, just like Diana--and just like Mac. Her choice of career and the zeal with which she pursued it made sense.

  He kicked himself now for his impetuous semi-marriage proposal. In his mind, that was how their relationship would progress, and when
she'd said she loved him, it just came out. She was the right woman for him. She was the only woman for him. They would work out their relationship in the end. He just had to figure out how to get her to open up again.

  He shook off these thoughts and attempted to focus on Bubba and whatever the hell the wolf was going on about.

  "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

  Bubba rolled his eyes. "I'm trying to tell you about the case."

  Mac leaned back in his chair and waved Bubba into the office. "Close the door."

  Bubba engaged his Omni and showed Mac surveillance footage of the missing woman stepping out of the Glide and onto the platform, wearing a trench coat and platform shoes. All seemed normal, but when Bubba skipped ahead to the street-level video of the Glide station, no one seemed to be leaving the station for several minutes--not until the next Glide arrived thirty minutes later.

  "She got off her shift at 5 AM and took the Glide home. That early in the morning, there weren't that many people around to see anything," Bubba continued. "I went there myself. I didn't see or scent anything unusual." Bubba was an experienced tracker with a highly developed sense of smell. The wolf often bragged that he had a bionic nose.

  "I went to Woodland Creatures and talked to the ladies there who know Julie," Bubba continued. "Did you know she usually commuted with another girl there?"

  Mac listened as Bubba explained that Julie rode the Glide with Marjorie Banks, but the other woman had called in sick.

  "You wanna know what's interesting about Ms. Banks?"

  The two men stared at one another for a moment, Mac waiting for Bubba to say something. Mac crossed his arms over his chest.

  "What? What's interesting?"

  Bubba sighed. "Marjorie is a dead ringer for Julie."

  Now that was interesting. Mac sat up in his chair. "Really?"

  "Yep. Julie is a faun. Marjorie is a full human, but people used to mix the two of them up all the time," said Bubba, looking pleased with himself. "So, my theory is--"

  "Someone snatched Julie, thinking she was Marjorie?"

  "Exactly! And that got me thinking about Marjorie--"

  "Why would anyone want to snatch a bar girl?" Mac put in.

  "That's what I thought. So I looked into her, but there wasn't much to find. She was raised in an orphanage, but once she graduated out of the system, she fell off the face of the earth, so to speak. There aren't any official records for her until she started working at Woodland Creatures about three years ago."

  "An orphan? Is that important?"

  Bubba paused, eyebrows raised in incredulity. "You really don't know?"

  Mac crossed his arms over his chest again. "No. What?"

  "She was in the concubine program," Bubba declared as if that explained everything.

  Mac shook his head in confusion. "What?"

  "Candidates submit an application as early as age eighteen. If they are accepted, they move into the Pantheon dorms and receive a stipend. They stay until they are chosen. If they aren't chosen after ten years, they leave the program."

  Mac remembered Diana mentioning that the grooming process for concubines could take several years. "So, Marjorie left the program?"

  "Yes. Some former candidates get married or have careers, just like anyone. I asked Marjorie whether she had been part of the program and she said yes. Her family is gone, and she doesn't have any close friends."

  Mac thought about this for a few moments. "The kind of person who wouldn't be missed."

  "Exactly!" Bubba said again.

  "Have there been any others like her--"

  "Twelve. In the past two years, twelve women disappeared and aren't accounted for. All over Texas and Oklahoma. All had been part of the concubine program--as far as I can tell--and all of the women didn't have any close friends or family to miss them. Or to report them missing."

  Mac let this sink in. "So what's next?"

  Bubba scrubbed at his short hair, looking frustrated.

  "What happens is nothing, for me. With twelve victims, this goes to the Major Investigations Unit."

  Mac nodded in acknowledgment, though he knew Bubba had to be disappointed.

  "It's fine," said Bubba, looking for once, not at all his usual cocky self.

  "When you went to the Glide station, did you scent the changeling?" Mac was hoping to change the subject, he realized because...he was trying to make Bubba feel better.

  Bubba shook his head. "We aren't engineered to scent them. I've heard rumors some full humans with the trait that allows them to scent any shifter--including changelings."

  That made sense to Mac. The gods bred wolves to protect them from other shifters and from humans. Since the changeling hybrid initiative had been abandoned, there was no need to program shifters with the ability to scent changelings.

  Mac thought about Diana's reaction to the smell of the creature morphing into a facsimile of Julie Wheeler. Diana had shared her unique scenting abilities with Mac only, and the bull now weighed telling Bubba about the burning garbage scent of the changeling Diana experienced. It wasn't his secret to tell, and he could see no reason to share this with Bubba--at least not yet.

  "Any idea why some...humans... can scent them?" Mac tried to sound casual, but still tripped over the word "human."

  "I said 'full humans.' Meaning non-hybrid humans." Bubba gave Mac a curious look.

  "Full humans, then."

  "Some full humans already had the ability to detect certain scents, even before the gods came here spliced human and shifter DNA. "I guess it's just a trait they didn't breed out."

  Mac was not raised in a shifter family, and all of this lore was new to him.

  "Why would the changeling go to Julie's house?"

  Bubba shrugged. "Hell if I know."

  The men sat in silence for a few moments. Then Bubba spoke again.

  "One more thing--Marjorie was once a concubine candidate."

  Mac blinked at the other man and sat up in his chair. “Talk about burying the lead."

  "She didn't make it that far in the program. I'm told blondes were popular that year, and Pantheon had more than they needed."

  "Well, aren't you full of surprises? How would you know that?"

  Bubba made a show of looking nonchalant. "I have my sources, my friend."

  Mac twisted his mouth. They weren't exactly friends. Mac didn't have many--or any--friends. Too much work, with very little return. Over the years, he'd learned to be sociable in a way that didn't require too much emotional investment, and had developed a group of close associates, other enforcers he'd worked with in some capacity. He and his acquaintances got together once a week to shoot pool.

  "Now that we have that out of the way, what about Vanessa?"

  Mac drew a blank. "Vanessa?"

  "Your girlfriend's sister?"

  Mac glowered at his not-friend. He wanted to keep Bubba away from Diana, and that would include keeping him away from Diana's family. He did not trust the wolf, who was a known ladies’ man. Mac was pretty sure Bubba would not ever hit on Diana. Surely the wolf knew that he risked grievous bodily harm at the hands of a jealous, protective bull should he even think of flirting with Diana. But what if he tried to seduce Diana's sister, a vulnerable single mother of two young children? What if he broke her heart? How would Diana react to that?

  "Did you know the Miller women are not very interested in male attention? Vanessa won't return my calls."

  That sounded familiar. Mac saw no reason to respond to this.

  "Maybe she's just not interested in attention from you," Mac said. "Stay away from Diana's sister."

  "I'm not going to do anything to her. I really like her!"

  Mac gave Bubba the side eye. Bubba probably liked all the women he bedded.

  "I'm finally starting to make progress with Diana. I don't want you screwing things up by seducing her sister. I asked her to marry me," Mac admitted.

  Mac thought about Diana again, brooding over his situation wit
h her. Mac had tuned out Bubba's blathering as his mind worked over the time he'd spent with Diana. The world fell away as he pondered what to do next. Mac was suffused with a loving glow and whatever Bubba had just said to him did not penetrate, so Mac was confused by Bubba's expectant expression and gave him a noncommittal response.

  "You think so?" said Mac.

  "Mac? Did you just hear what I said?"

  Mac's eyes rolled out of his peaceful reverie to focus on his irritating friend.

  "No. Was it inappropriate?"

  "I said, 'That's good, seeing as she is carrying your baby.' "

  Mac looked at the wolf, disbelieving. "What did you say?"

  "How on earth would you know anything about that?" Mac could only think of one way that Bubba would know that. Thinking of Bubba and Diana together propelled Mac over the edge of his desk, his hands aimed at Bubba's throat to strangle the life of out of him.

  Bubba sat up in the chair, looking alarmed. "Mac this isn't what you think!" he exclaimed putting his hands up in a "don't hurt me" gesture.

  "So what do you think I think?" said Mac, getting to his feet. "When you tell me that my girlfriend is pregnant?"

  "I'm a wolf! I can smell everything, even pregnancy hormones. Why didn't you tell me you were hittin' the kitten?"

  Mac propped his elbows on his desk and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. Did she know that she was pregnant? He thought about the interaction over the past few days. They had made love two weeks ago. She probably didn't even have symptoms yet.

  He tried to imagine her reaction to this news, and all of a sudden, he felt short of breath. Mac leaned back in his chair, dumbfounded. Pregnant? He sat there for long moments trying to wrap his mind around the idea of Diana being pregnant. And then he tried to wrap his mind around the idea of himself having a child. He found that while he could imagine himself having children with Diana in the abstract, the reality of the situation gave him pause.