“Alright then.” He spoke to Lupe, not to me. “She’s your problem until Samhain. Come November, though, Athena will be mine to command.”
THAT WAS BAD...BUT a problem for the future. Because Rowan left, muted growls from the stairwell cutting off the moment he passed out of sight beyond my shattered door frame. Seconds later, two wolves entered my apartment, shimmering upward into Tank and—I assumed based on his tattoos—Ryder. Both were naked, but I had eyes for only one.
Tall. Broad. Magnificent. I took a step forward without meaning to and....
“Pack your stuff,” Lupe demanded, drawing me away from my perusal of masculine perfection even as she tossed Ryder and Tank clothes I hadn’t noticed her carrying. “Bring whatever you need for the next five days.”
Her words slapped me with the need to obey. An alpha imperative, even if she wasn’t an official pack leader. I winced, realizing that my stint as a Samhain Shifter was going to suck.
Because it wasn’t any more palatable having my legs forced into motion by a female alpha than by a male alpha. Muscles struggled against themselves. Behind Lupe, Ryder smirked as he yanked up his jeans.
He clearly wasn’t impressed by my addition as team mate. And, having survived middle school, I knew what it meant when one of the cool kids had it in for you.
The solution was to prove you were stronger than they were. Browbeat the bullies until they left you alone.
Among werewolves, power equated to alpha commands like the ones Lupe and Rowan tossed around—something I was incapable of. Instead, I aimed for the next best thing. A snappy shift.
Unfortunately, exhaustion dragged me down like glue on my paws. I scrabbled my way to humanity rather than bursting out of my fur.
A show of weakness. Ryder rolled his eyes and turned his back.
Not because I was naked either. Because I wasn’t, not really. My human tongue untangled itself while I struggled to get my arms back into the top that had twisted around my neck.
“I took the job, but that doesn’t mean I have to leave my apartment.” My voice, I was glad to hear, was firm. “My sister and her friend are coming here tomorrow for fall break. I won’t let them down.”
Although I’d be letting Harper down for sure in a week, unless something miraculous happened. Rowan wanted me in his pack, and I intended to refuse him. Which meant I’d be explaining to Harper why I couldn’t come see her. Why the alpha whose territory encompassed her boarding school was refusing me access.
Our impending separation made spending her upcoming vacation together even more important. So I stood firm, even in the face of an alpha unlikely to appreciate that stance.
Annoyance rolled off Lupe, but she wasn’t the one who answered. “Bring them along.” Tank’s face was hidden as he tapped into his cell phone. His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d spent more time focusing on the device in his hand than on dressing. “Kira’s close to their age. She said she’d keep your girls company and out of trouble.”
Lupe huffed deep and low in her throat, then turned her reaction into words. “Kira isn’t the one who makes that decision. You’ll have to wait until morning to see what Mai has to say about that.”
Another round of thumb typing. Another answer without glancing in my direction. “Mai’s awake too. She says it’s not a problem. She wouldn’t mind a brief vacation from parenting a teen.”
Mai? Kira? Mate and daughter? My clothing mishap was now sorted so I shouldn’t have felt so cold.
Ryder’s annoyed interjection was almost welcome. “We’re babysitting?” He turned back around, arms crossed. “I thought we had a single goal until Samhain. Fae. Not puppies. This is bullshit.”
Lupe pressed a finger to her lips and Ryder’s complaint petered off. Not a pack leader, huh? She certainly acted like one.
Whatever Lupe’s role, all three of us waited out her silence as she considered the two males, then me swathed in Tank’s baggy clothing. She hummed noncommittally then addressed Tank.
“You’ll deal with it?”
It, I gathered, was me. Harper. Clara. Babysitting duty.
Any attraction I’d felt toward Tank vanished as he nodded. “I’ll deal with it,” he agreed, as if I was twelve bags of groceries waiting to be unloaded out of the car.
Chapter 14
Tank’s way of dealing with logistics was heavy-handed. “Athena will spend the night here. I’ll watch her.”
“Watch her?” Ryder’s eyebrows waggled. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“Go home,” Tank growled. And I must have been tireder than I thought because when my eyes blinked back open, he and I were alone.
Alright then. I hadn’t invited Tank into my home, but this was better than packing up and leaving while my ankle throbbed like the pounding of a heavy-metal drummer. I would make the best of the cards I’d been dealt.
“There’s an air mattress in the closet.” I sucked in a deep breath and started hobbling in that direction, but Tank was in front of me. Immovable. He didn’t bring his hands down on my shoulders this time, but he did sidestep to prevent me from walking around him.
“The couch,” he rumbled, “will be fine.”
“It’s ratty. I mean, not actually ratty. No vermin. But this isn’t the cabin in the woods I always wanted.” I tended to run at the mouth when tired, and now was no exception.
Arms swept me up as Tank asked, “What would your dream cabin look like?”
One of his hands was beneath my knees as if I was a child; the other cradled my back. I was airborne. Tingling everywhere his fingers touched. And, at the same time, relaxing in a way I hadn’t since my mother died.
Perhaps that’s why I answered his nosy question. “There’d be light. Lots of light for painting.”
Tank hummed as he carried me toward my bedroom without asking for instructions. He’d already scouted it out while I was locked in the hallway, I gathered. Plus, it wasn’t as if there were many doors to choose between.
“What else?” Tank rumbled.
I tried to squash my lips shut, but they kept flapping. “A potbelly stove. The roar of a waterfall rather than traffic outside.”
Tank was silent as he lowered me onto the bed, mattress so soft it almost made up for my ankle throbbing. I blinked. How exactly had Tank managed to pull the sheets and blankets down while holding me? Everything was turning fuzzy, the weight of the day and my choices falling down on my head.
“Do you need both of these pillows?” Tank demanded.
“What?” I pried my eyes open with an effort. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep with Tank looming over me. I needed to wait until he was out in the living room then push my dresser under the door knob. The effort wouldn’t keep me safe, but it might slow Tank down in case his animal nature came to the fore in the night....
“Do you,” Tank repeated more slowly, “need both of these pillows?”
There was no animal in his eyes. Or what I could see of his eyes before he twisted his head away from me. That habitual gesture drove me crazy. I might have growled, just a little bit.
“Athena?”
Right. The pillow. I fumbled for the spare I’d bought so Harper would stop bugging me. “If you only own one pillow, you’re telling the world you want to sleep alone for the rest of your life.”
“Here,” I said, handing my sister-silencing pillow over to the first man I’d willingly allowed to visit my apartment since moving here. Of course he wouldn’t want to bed down with only couch cushions to support him. “There are sheets in the closet....”
My jaw cracked as I lost words to a yawn so intense it brought tears to my eyes. And when I wiped them away, Tank was gone.
No, not gone. His fingers settled on my injured ankle. Gentle as butterflies, they lifted my foot and slipped the sister-silencing pillow beneath it.
When exhausted, I lost my filter. That’s the only explanation I can give for the words that slipped out of my lips. “Mai is one lucky woman.”
“Mai?” I smelled Tank’s confusion one second before a huge hand settled on my forehead as gently as a cloud kissing a mountaintop. “You mean my alpha’s mate?”
Absurd as it was, his answer softened the mattress yet further. I’d forgotten, for a second, that Lupe wasn’t Tank’s alpha. That he answered to another shifter somewhere in a nearby territory.
But that wasn’t what my tired brain fixated on. Instead, it drew other connections.
Mai wasn’t Tank’s mate. Kira wasn’t his daughter.
A feather of breath fluttered against my forehead. “Dream about your cabin,” Tank murmured. “You’ll have it someday. You deserve it.”
I forgot about the dresser and the doorknob and let myself drift into the healing silence of sleep.
HOURS LATER, I WOKE to an empty apartment. Crutches leaned against my bedside, which should have chilled me. After all, it meant Tank had entered my room while I was sleeping and I hadn’t noticed. Instead, I leveraged myself to my feet, tested my ankle, then winced as swollen muscles twinged beneath my weight.
“Tank?” I called, sliding the crutches beneath my armpits.
No one answered. When I limped my way out into the combined kitchen/dining/living room, the only sign that he’d ever been there was a nearly invisible dent in the couch cushions.
Well, that’s not quite true. There were other signs when I widened my search perimeter.
For example, the reek of wolf urine in the entranceway had been replaced by the cheap chemical aroma of my dish soap. When I opened the repaired door, I discovered a metal plate on the inside of the door jamb, presumably to make it harder to kick in. And....
“Are you ready to go?”
The voice just out of sight in the hallway wasn’t Tank’s. I jumped, a bad idea with crutches. Especially when no helpful hands were there to catch me when I fell.
Luckily, the door was once again solid. I clung to the knob and got one crutch back under me while holding the other out like a weapon. “Who are you?”
Because the speaker was now visible. A well-dressed man stood just outside my door, close enough so I could smell the fur of wolf about him. He cocked his head. “You really don’t remember me? We met less than a week ago.”
I noted the elegance of the man’s posture. The darkness of his skin.
His face, like everyone’s, told me nothing. But, yeah, this probably was the fourth member of the Samhain Shifters. The one I’d spent the least time around. The one whose name didn’t match him at all.
“Butch,” I acknowledged. “What are you doing here?”
Keys twirled around his pointer finger. “I’m here to take you to camp.”
“Come back later then. I have places to be.” The list in my head was long enough to use up most of the remaining daylight hours. I needed to hit the bank to deposit Marina’s second check and figure out how much longer it would be before the first registered in my balance. A bit of shopping after that would make sure the kids thought spring break was an adventure rather than forced boredom. Then off to Highlands to gather up my sister and Clara while (bank willing) paying ahead for the rest of the school year.
Plus, I needed a bit of time to figure out whether this really was Butch. Face blindness didn’t usually cramp my style, but I wasn’t about to invite a stranger into my apartment without being utterly certain of his identity.
“Anywhere you have to go, I’ll drive you,” Maybe-Butch said, just as I’d suspected he would. He didn’t seem the type to let small matters sidetrack him from his chosen destination. Which raised the stakes—now I’d be risking my sister’s safety on my faulty ID skills.
Meanwhile, as Maybe-Butch spoke, the keys snagged on his fingers and stopped spinning. No, not on his fingers. They’d caught on the seam of the soft leather gloves that fit his hands’ shape and color so well that I hadn’t at first realized his fingers weren’t bare.
But why wear gloves inside a heated hallway? Without a coat or a hat to suggest the weather had chilled down outside?
Phantom fingers squeezed my throat, a memory of last night’s altercation. Gloves would prevent leaving fingerprints. And Rowan might not mind sending an underling to break his word to Lupe, not if it meant regaining the upper hand....
I took a step backward into my apartment...and the stranger caught the door before I could slam it in his face.
Chapter 15
“What are you doing?” Maybe-Butch had appeared deceptively slender from a distance. Up close, I could see the strength of his arms. The cat-like grace of his movements.
Whoever this was, I’d recognize him if I ever met him again.
“Packing,” I answered, turning the excuse into truth before I spoke it. If this really was Butch, I’d need to gather up my clothes and toothbrush before moving in with his boss for the foreseeable future. “It might take awhile.”
“I’ll wait inside, if you don’t mind.”
He brushed past me. I can’t explain how exactly. It’s not as if I was a slave to politeness. But one moment I was blocking the way into my apartment, the next moment Maybe-Butch was settling down cross-legged on my couch.
Now I was the one to ask: “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” He was in full-on lotus position, middle fingers touching thumbs while hands rested atop his knees. His eyes were closed.
“Meditating?”
“Very astute.”
Dismissing me, he began to hum softly. If this was Rowan’s choice of enforcer, he was a very strange one.
Still, I did my due diligence. Turning my back on Maybe-Butch raised hairs on my neck, but soon I was alone in my bedroom. There, I dug through dirty laundry until I found the business card Tank had given me. Then I keyed his digits into my phone.
I didn’t call, though. Instead, I snuck back out to snap a surreptitious shot of the man meditating on my sofa. Maybe-Butch’s eyebrows rose even though he couldn’t have seen me through his closed eyelids. My inner wolf whispered: Run.
Instead, I shut the bedroom door, attached the photo, and texted Tank. “This is Athena. Is the photo Butch?”
Tank’s answer came quickly. As if he’d been waiting by his phone to hear from me...or was hiding his face in the screen so someone wouldn’t wince at his features. “He’s your ride for the day.” A pause then, as if he’d reread my text. “Yes, that’s Butch. Why do you ask?”
“Long story,” I typed. Then, despite myself: “I’m a bit face blind. Makes recognizing people difficult.”
And why did I tell him that? Face blindness was a weakness. I’d be working alongside Tank for the next five days. I needed to keep my guard up.
But Tank’s answer had no crow of victory about it. Instead, the text came slowly, as if he’d taken a moment to google before typing out his reply.
“Noted. Thank you for trusting me. Please let me know if I can lend a hand.”
Trust. I blinked. Did I trust Tank?
I crept back out into the hall and glanced at the meditating stranger that another near-stranger had vouched for. Then I accepted the inevitable.
“Five minutes,” I told Butch, “and I’ll be ready to go.”
BUTCH WAS ENDLESSLY patient as we worked through my long list of responsibilities. He didn’t, however, put the top up on his convertible despite the cold wind that made me snuggle deeper into my sweater. So maybe that explained the gloves?
I had enough oddities of my own that I chose not to remark upon Butch’s. And within a few hours, thoughts of his affinity for gloves faded into the background.
What didn’t fade into the background was Nick, immediately apparent as we pulled into the visitor lot at Highlands. My stepfather sat on the stone wall outside Harper’s dormitory, licking ice cream out of a triple-decker ice-cream cone as if he was a kid and this was summer instead of nearly the end of October.
I must have breathed funny at the sight because Butch asked, “Someone you know?” He removed the key f
rom the ignition, flicking the metal part into the plastic base by pressing it against the steering wheel.
Fastidious. That was the word I’d use to describe my unasked-for companion. Unfortunately, the related term—perceptive—was equally true.
So I didn’t try to sidestep my relationship to the ice-cream licker. “My stepfather,” I admitted. “If you don’t mind giving me a minute....”
I’d used the same phrase all day. While picking out fresh underwear for my sister. While depositing my ill-gotten check and learning that the bank put holds on deposits containing so many zeroes. I kept expecting Butch to make some snarky comment about how many minutes he’d given me already. But he simply did that half-bow thing, the same way he’d done repeatedly throughout the day, then let me limp toward Nick alone.
“Get run over by a truck, kid?” my stepfather greeted me, jerking his chin at my crutches. I didn’t really need them, my ankle having loosened up over the course of the day. But Tank had left the crutches for me. And, anyway, it was better to be safe than sorry.
“Yes,” I lied. After all, Nick wasn’t a werewolf able to smell untruth...and he couldn’t care less about my ankle. He was here for one thing only—money. The fact that Harper expected me in five minutes made it certain that he’d get his way.
Before Nick could demand cash, though, a family clattered past us. Mother, father, daughter. All perfectly dressed. All smiling. “I love the Eiffel Tower at night!” the girl emoted, twirling into a pirouette. “Chocolate croissants! Picnics by the Seine!”
“Try not to sound so posh,” the mother chided, tucking a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear while reining in her exuberance. “There are scholarship students here. Not everyone can enjoy fall break in Europe.”
I flinched, knowing that Harper was one of those scholarship students. But, thanks to Marina, I’d no longer struggle to pay the tuition portion we were responsible for. Maybe one day I’d take my sister to Paris....
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