His reasoning was cut off by Rowan’s hand gesture. “We’re not running away.”
“Have you forgotten what happened three years ago?”
I had no idea what had happened three years ago, but Rowan clearly did because the intensity of his gaze averted. A lapse in alpha dominance, one Tank could easily have pounced upon.
Instead, the scarred male glanced in my direction as if only now noticing I’d entered. The tilt of his head suggested vague interest in my presence, but—hidden from Rowan’s view—his eyes told a very different story.
Irises flashed yellow. Wolf. Alert, focused.
My own inner animal responded, pushing me into his personal space. My hands rose without my permission, seeking contact....
And Tank’s eyes shuttered. Rather than reciprocating, he twisted slightly so his hand could reach mine shielded by the back of the armchair. Something slid into my fingers, something I didn’t twist my head to look at.
After all, Rowan was focused on us, interested in our moment. He couldn’t know that Tank had just slipped me a phone.
“Whether you leave or not,” Tank continued, eyes leaving mine as quickly as they’d made contact, “Lupe requests the return of our team mate.” He was once again facing forward. Once again entirely focused on the alpha who owned the room.
“Well, of course Athena will be made available during working hours,” Rowan agreed easily. Too easily. He leaned forward, chin resting on steepled fingers. “In fact, I’ll lend you a few of my wolves to keep her company.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Tank stood, his size a shield I hadn’t realized I needed. Taking advantage of the moment, I stuffed the phone into the only hiding place available to me. The dress pushed my breasts together so tightly they formed a pocket. I could only hope the illicit item would stay put.
“Not necessary?” I couldn’t see Rowan around Tank’s broad shoulders, but I could smell the pressure of his alpha dominance. “Of course it’s necessary to send an honor guard along with Athena. After all, she’s an unmated female. In high demand.”
The alpha paused, then he angled his body until I was once again speared in his sightline. Hairs rose on my arms and neck as Rowan acknowledged me with the tiniest hint of a smile. “And it would be appropriate that Athena spend her evenings here.”
The cage I’d unwittingly walked into closed back around me. The last of Tank’s uplifting helium pressed out of my lungs with an audible wheeze.
SPENDING ANOTHER NIGHT in my cell wasn’t happening. But Tank merely shrugged. “Lupe will be here within the hour. Perhaps Athena could take a few minutes to clean up?”
I skittered backwards, cheeks reddening. The mangled dress, the grime on paws that had transferred to fingers. I’d forgotten what I looked like, but Tank had noticed.
Rowan’s eyes glinted with amusement. He liked seeing me thrown off balance. “Of course.” He pushed a button on his desk and the door opened, revealing my guide. “Take Athena to the showers.”
“Yes, alpha.”
Tank didn’t even look at me as I left.
But the phone was there, evidence that he hadn’t come solely because of a node that may or may not have changed location. Tank had been the only one aware of my plan for our vacation. I refused to believe it was coincidence that I went silent and he showed up.
No, Tank had come here looking for me. I’d never had dependable backup before. The helium returned with a vengeance.
But I needed to focus. Because Tank clearly thought it was too dangerous to face down Rowan directly. Instead, he’d slipped me the cell phone...an object I needed to get rid of before I stripped to take advantage of the showers we’d returned to.
“Do you think you could find me clothes?” I asked the woman who’d led me there, wanting to get rid of her. “Something I can work in.”
She looked dubious but nodded anyway. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I waited until she disappeared down the women’s corridor before assessing my options. I could try to flee down the tunnel I’d originally come in through...but I remembered the door grinding shut and suspected it would be neither fast nor easy to figure out how to open it. Instead, I pulled out the cell phone and powered it up.
There was no passcode, which seemed entirely unlike Tank. Or, rather, just like Tank if he’d expected to slip the phone to me surreptitiously. The screen woke straight onto a note app, which confirmed the guess.
“Your sister is fine, but she’s not with my pack,” Tank had written. “Her father came this morning to collect her. Threatened to call the cops on us if we didn’t let her go. Mentioned money he was owed. Harper seemed disappointed but not frightened. I sent two wolves trailing them to keep her safe.” Then he included Harper’s number, as if I didn’t know it by heart.
I dialed the digits...and nothing happened. There were no bars here. The underground bunker was shielded from satellites, perhaps by design or perhaps just by encircling earth.
My guide wouldn’t be gone for long, but I had to get through to my sister. I padded around the tiled shower room, hunting any hint of reception.
There. By the tunnel leading out. One measly bar.
I glanced back over my shoulder, saw nothing, then crouched and crawled inside.
HALFWAY DOWN THE TUNNEL, the call went through. “Hello?” my sister said, voice uncertain.
I needed to get out of the tunnel and hide the cellphone fast, but my shoulders relaxed anyway. Harper might sound tense, but she wasn’t hurt. “It’s Athena,” I greeted her. “Where are you?”
“Home.” The single word sounded as bleak as the prison I’d spent the last thirty-six hours in. “Dad dropped Clara off at school. She won’t answer my texts. She hates me.”
“I doubt she hates you. She’s probably disappointed.” I hated the tremor that had entered my sister’s voice, but the clock was ticking. And Harper was physically safe if thoroughly depressed.
So I stuck to the point. “Why did Nick take you home?”
“He said the school called about a check not working?” Harper’s voice rose at the end, a question she was afraid to ask.
Marina’s check. I’d meant to check on that transaction, but for obvious reasons I’d dropped the ball. “It will work tomorrow,” I told my sister, hoping I wasn’t lying. “But that has nothing to do with your dad.”
I pressed the phone closer to my ear, catching the rumble of a sports announcer in the background. I could just see Nick, sacked out on the couch munching chips and ignoring his daughter. He’d taken Harper home to mess with me. And, as much as I hated it, I could do nothing about that fact right now.
Meanwhile, through my other ear, I caught the faintest click of a door closing. Was that my guide leaving whatever room she’d entered to hunt for work clothing? If so, I needed to wrap this conversation up fast.
But Harper wasn’t done with her questions. “Dad said you owe him money too?” Her voice grew quieter and quieter. “That when you pay him, you can pick me up.”
Her last four words came out as a plea. It was the same voice Harper had used to ask for a puppy four Christmases ago.
I’d had to deny her then, and I had to deny her now. “I can’t, Harper.”
Shoes clicked on concrete. If my guide was close enough for me to hear her footsteps, I was close enough for her to hear my voice.
And yet, Harper was still talking. “Please. I know I’m only your half sister, but....” Her voice dropped into a quaver at the same moment Nick called out an order.
“Get off your ass and bring me a beer.”
He wasn’t an alpha wolf, but Harper was his daughter. Stuck in his house all week unless I sprang her from prison.
But I couldn’t. I needed to deal with Rowan and Marina and Lupe. Meanwhile, my sister was safe. I knew that. I trusted Tank to choose pack mates who would keep the fae far away from her.
Worst-case scenario, Nick would keep Harper on house arrest until I finished this job and wiggled
out from under Rowan’s thumb. The so-called vacation would be unpleasant, but my sister would survive it.
And footsteps were getting closer by the second. I wriggled out of my dress and started crawling back down the tunnel toward the showers.
At the same time, I gave my sister the only thing I could—an apology. Cupping my hands around the phone, I whispered just barely loud enough for human ears to pick up on.
“I’m sorry,” I told Harper, not certain she even heard me before reception was lost.
Chapter 30
I was in the shower, phone hidden beneath my rumpled red dress, when my guide reappeared. Yet again, her arms were full of clothing, but these were awfully familiar. Even from a distance, I could recognize the outfit I’d shucked before shifting to wolf form two days before.
“Does this mean you found my suitcase?” I asked, swiping one last time at the dirt ingrained in my skin. I’d spent most of my wash time talking to my sister, and my guide was tapping her foot impatiently. So I accepted the towel she handed me then wriggled into jeans.
It had never felt so good to pull my scuffed leather jacket around my shoulders. Especially when I slid one finger along the inside seam and felt the bump I’d hoped was still present. It was all I could do not to smile despite my guide’s disappointing response:
“I’m afraid not. I think the suitcase might have gotten lost in transit.”
As if Rowan’s pack was an international airport able to reroute my luggage onto a plane bound for the other side of the country. Still, I didn’t press the issue. Shrugging, I scooped up the dress, palmed the cell phone, then followed my guide down the hall back to my room.
There, I paused as I took in a familiar figure. “Lupe?”
The older woman nodded curtly before turning back to face the shifter beside her. He might have been one of the males who’d guarded me during my imprisonment, but if so he certainly wasn’t restricting Lupe’s movement. Instead, the power dynamic flowed the opposite way.
“It’s clear the door knob was inserted backwards,” Lupe bit out. When the male just stared at her, she elaborated. “The locking mechanism is on the outside not the inside. I expect it fixed before I return.”
He was already examining the door when we turned away, following our guide back up to the ground floor and into a banquet hall full of shifters. There, Lupe was led in one direction and me in another. My wolf, seeing the food at the only empty seat, plopped us down without my permission. It was all I could do to use a fork and knife when my wolf wanted to grab up handfuls to stuff into our mouth.
It hasn’t been that long, I chided her, trying to pay attention to the bigger picture. Hard when the warmth of nourishment in my belly tried to soothe me into complacency. Rather than letting it, I assessed the utility of nearby objects.
Salt shaker. Knife. Those would definitely come in handy. Knocking both into my lap, I stashed them one at a time in my jacket’s voluminous pockets....
“Nice trick,” observed the female shifter seated to my left.
IT WAS JASMINE, THE sarcastic phone operator. I knew by her voice, even though she looked like all the other twenty-something brunettes.
“Busted,” I answered, drawing the knife back out and using it to saw at my steak.
“What are you going to use the salt for?” Jasmine asked, not seeming bothered that I’d kept the shaker. Did that mean I could have held onto the knife too? I decided not to risk a repeat of the weapon grab.
“Slugs give me the heebie-jeebies,” I answered. Which wasn’t a lie...although I hadn’t pocketed the salt to counteract slugs.
Jasmine scrunched up her face in sympathy. “Yeah, the downstairs isn’t sealed yet. I asked Rowan why we were in such a hurry, but he told me not to trouble my pretty little head about that.”
Pretty, little head was spat out with such venom that I couldn’t help smiling. There was so much of interest in her short statement. I chose to focus on the most telling slip. “You call him Rowan.”
“It’s his name.” Jasmine paused, then she gave me the information I’d been angling for. “He’s my little brother. Seems silly to address him as ‘alpha’ when I used to call him ‘baby boy.’”
“It must be tough to have a younger brother as your leader.”
I expected her to turn coy, but Jasmine snorted then elaborated. “Some days, I wish I could shake sense into him.”
“Because of the way he treats women?”
“You mean his harem?” Jasmine shook her head, not as if she was disagreeing with me but rather as if she was disagreeing with the entire notion. “He’ll grow out of it. Or they’ll get sick of kowtowing. Either way, it won’t last.”
These words, though, weren’t firm like her earlier ones. And maybe that’s why she turned away from me. Turned back to her neighbor, leaving me to chow down alone.
To chow down...and to return to my original task of assessing the room. It was a large banquet hall, rectangular tables crowded with dining shifters. Too loud to use voices to arrow in on Samhain Shifters. Still, after a moment I picked out Lupe, then an eyes-on-the-back-of-my-neck sensation drew my attention to Tank.
He met my gaze for one split second then turned away, almost as if he didn’t want to acknowledge our connection. Or, no, as if he was pointing out Ryder without having to raise a finger.
Five tables down, the tattooed biker waggled his eyebrows at me. In reaction, the veins on the side of Tank’s neck bulged for one split second. Ignoring their half-friendly and half-not interaction, I tried and failed to pick out Butch.
Odd. It wasn’t as if a tall, elegant black guy would be easy to hide in a room full of folks with skin tones ranging from light peach to burnt ochre. So where was he?
I frowned but lost the thread of that thought as the room fell silent. “Our guests,” Rowan said, his words no louder than if he’d been speaking to the person across the table, “will be shown the utmost courtesy.”
Despite the levelness of their alpha’s voice, it felt like everyone around me held their breath in order to hear him better. Shifters who’d been eating dropped half-finished rolls and food-covered forks. Eating or not, every eye focused on Rowan.
Then, without being asked, eight shifters pushed back their chairs.
The pack bond. That had to be how Rowan was providing instructions. Because the eight split apart in perfect synchrony, two heading toward each of the Samhain Shifters in attendance.
“Are you coming?” Jasmine asked. She was one of the eight, as was a male who’d sidled past half a dozen diners to reach us. Without addressing him or waiting for an answer from me, my seat mate started in the opposite direction from where the others were heading.
Or, no, that wasn’t quite right. We were all being taken in separate directions. Rowan was splitting us up. Making sure our team didn’t have a moment to compare notes and make a plan.
Jasmine swiveled back to face me. “Athena? Don’t you want to see the garden?”
I had a feeling it didn’t matter what I wanted. That the garden was where I was going regardless.
And Lupe wasn’t arguing. Tank and Ryder weren’t throwing their weight around.
So I shrugged and made nice. “Sure.”
I SAW MY TEAM MATES occasionally over the course of the day, but we never came close enough to speak to each other. Instead, we passed by from a distance, the endless tour no less restraining than being locked in the barracks had been.
But at least there were snacks, which kept my wolf happy. Well, that’s not quite true. When we walked in the door of the gymnasium at the same moment Tank walked out of it, my wolf nearly broke free of our civilized behavior and pushed me after him.
Smells like strength, she prodded. Safety. Home.
Quiet, I responded, even though she was right.
“So that’s why you wouldn’t dine with my brother,” Jasmine observed, drawing me back to the present. I tensed, expecting a jibe at Tank’s ugliness. Instead, she added: “I can
see why.”
“You think Tank’s attractive?”
Jasmine raised her eyebrows. “Attractive? No. Powerful? Yes.” Then, changing the subject with her usual facility, she led me over to a bay of workout equipment. “Pick your poison.”
I opted to start on the only one I knew how to operate—a treadmill. My wolf, however, saw no purpose in running in place when we could be running after Tank. I had to remind her that hunts required stealth and patience. We’d barely reached a detente when Ryder entered through the furthest door.
“Time to go,” Jasmine told me, hopping off the machine that had been guiding her into strange contortions.
My wolf was willing, but I wasn’t. Instead, I wiped my face with a hand towel, giving myself a second to think.
Because the issue of guides-turned-guards had nagged me while I followed Jasmine around all day long. If Rowan never gave us a daylight moment alone then locked Tank, Butch, and Ryder away for the night, we’d be hamstrung. Left at Rowan’s mercy in order to finish our job.
Lupe, I hoped, was powerful enough to force the issue of our shared door staying open. After all, she’d managed to wiggle me out of Rowan’s grip previously. But I’d seen no evidence that the McCallister alpha would show equal restraint toward her underlings.
He certainly hadn’t treated me with much respect.
Which left me and Lupe wandering the halls tonight, hoping to find our team mates. Chances were we’d end up bursting in on random strangers. It would turn into a sticky mess.
“Athena?” Jasmine called from the far door. “Are you coming?”
Across the room, Ryder raised shaggy eyebrows.
The guys needed their own way out of locked rooms and I now possessed that solution. Because the bulging seam of my jacket hid my ace in the hole—a pair of lock picks. It felt strange to pull them out and leave them behind in the used hand towel. Because...what if I needed them? What if I was giving up my only escape from another day of eating insects and prowling the confines of a tiny cell in lupine form?
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