by Lillian Lark
“So, Sophia is the bait?” I ask.
But Alice is already shaking her head. “Not Sophia—”
A tap at the open van door interrupts her and we both turn. A woman stands there, body posture confident and eyebrow cocked.
“I prefer lure instead of bait. It makes me feel more important.” Her voice is a low purr, and something in my chest tugs in warning.
Alice’s face breaks into a wide smile.
“Zephyrine! I’m so glad to see you! I didn’t think Sophia would be able to convince you to help,” Alice says.
The woman, Zephyrine, smiles warmly at Alice before climbing into the back of the van and taking a bench seat. She turns to me and offers her hand.
Zephyrine’s hair is dark and shoulder-length, highlighting the golden skin on display. The shirt she wears is one that ties at the neck and leaves her arms and back bare. The exposed skin makes me want to growl but I hold in my confusing reaction.
“Call me Zeph, and you are?”
“Greg.” My voice cracks like a teenager because when I take her hand, I know.
A range of emotions moves through me, joy, possessiveness, and finally dread. I’ve experienced all of this before. The animal inside me has lost its mind. I’ve never heard of any shifters having a broken animal other than those that went completely mad. But what other explanation is there?
Shifters can go mad when they don’t find their mates. I have the opposite problem. The wolf inside of me wants this stranger but I’ve gone down this road before and it ended in two broken hearts. His and my own.
Memories of dark eyes full of heartbreak assail me and I want to run from this situation. Keep from dragging someone else down into my misery.
Asa’s eyes widen, full of hurt. “You’re leaving me? But we’re… I’m your… You said I was your mate.” I wince and wish I’d had more control over my mouth when we were in bed. I hadn’t marked him, but my wolf rode me hard when we were together. I should have left months ago when my wolf started sending signals. Started wanting to roam.
“I’m so sorry, Asa. This isn’t going to work.” The beautiful man in front of me shakes his head slowly like he’s waiting for me to tell him I’m joking but I can’t. If I stay, I’ll hurt him. I can only turn and leave.
My wolf reacts to the mysterious Zeph as if she’s my mate, the same way it reacted to Asa. I reel from this; I’ve never heard of a wolf changing its mind about a mate, but after Asa and I got together the animal started looking for something more. It didn’t care that I love Asa.
“Someone else should be the bait,” I blurt out.
Both women frown at me; Alice looks puzzled but Zeph’s face shows a mixture of confused hurt. The hurt on her face hits me like an anvil. As if I needed any more indication that she’s my mate.
“It’s not safe for you to be the lure.” I aim to smooth out the tension my words have caused. It’s difficult when I’m trying not to look at my mate, to keep from giving in to the pull and lean toward her.
“Your target has some particular tastes.” Zeph shrugs but does it stiffly. Surprise makes me tilt my head; I don’t know what she is. She carries a scent of magic, similar to a witch-born but different. Salt, sea breeze, and citrus.
“What are you?” I ask.
Alice gapes at me now. It’s considered rude to ask that question. The world is a modern place, but old dangers still exist for certain types of beings. The governing council is only made up of the most populated paranormal groups of this plane, witches and shifters. There are laws in place to stop the hunting of unique spell ingredients by nefarious means and enslavement of all groups, but the laws are relatively new compared to the age of those who hide. The rarer groups.
“None of your fucking business,” Zeph says, her tone flat and brittle.
Mouth like a sailor with the body of a siren. I try not to notice all the things I like about her, but the space in this van is small and I haven’t decided what to do.
The wolf wants her as a mate, but can it commit? Will it break her heart too? Can I even love someone else when I’m still pining over Asa? Would she even want a heartbroken mate?
I don’t have any answers. I can only blunder forward. Unless something changes before we go into the bar, I’ll have to watch Zeph put herself in danger. It’s an inconvenient time to feel protective.
“It’s stupid to have you go in there if I don’t know what your weaknesses are.” Somewhere in my brain I know this is all coming out wrong, but I can’t stop. I haven’t chased her down to mount her like the wolf wants so I’m winning in that category. A cold sweat breaks across my neck. “How do I protect you if you’re going to be stubborn about this?”
The hole I dig for myself just gets deeper from the outraged way Zeph looks at me. She gets up then, a fluid movement full of grace, and leaves the van. I forcibly check the impulse to chase her, but Alice swears and smacks my arm, so I follow Zeph out into the sunshine. She turns on me and for the second time today, I have a woman poking me in the chest. I try to focus my mind on her words instead of her electric touch.
“I don’t need you to protect me. The way I see it, Lassie, I’m more integral to this plan than you are. So, ask yourself how much do you need whatever Alice agreed was your payment?”
My lips twitch at the irony of it. I need the money to buy out the part of my business Asa owns so that we can stop being tortured by each other’s presence during every business meeting. In trying to free myself, I’ve met another that my wolf wants. Will my creature ever stop causing me pain?
Asa
The sun shines into the hotel room from the sliding glass door. I look out past the wrought-iron balcony at the view of the city buildings. The gleaming glass and old architecture try to shine back at me, to enlighten me. The brightness bathing me doesn’t sink in, neither does the tea I hold. I’m cold on the inside. I’ve been cold ever since Gregory left, shattering my heart.
“Let it be known that I think this is a terrible plan.” Mace sprawls across the fancy-looking settee while I stand at the balcony door. “I still don’t understand how intercepting Greg after the job here is better than approaching him at the bakery.”
The bakery is Gregory’s territory. I’ve tried to talk to him there before, but he just says he’s busy and locks me out. Never mind that I funded the venture. I don’t want to stalk the man at his place of business.
I see Mace flick an imaginary dust mote off the settee. The hotel is respectable for such a small city, it would probably even be considered classy to some. To me, the scrollwork and patterns lay on the edge of gaudy, but I’d lived through when many of the decorative motifs had come into fashion.
This city is just large enough to support the high population of paranormal beings that call it home. Somehow the humans here still don’t notice that their neighbors are any different, that some alleyway doors lead to otherworldly places instead of storage rooms.
We all live in secret from humans because other cities in the world don’t have paranormal populations that can look out for one another. We had all kept the secret this long, what did it hurt to keep humans ignorant? That is a different subject for a different day. Today’s subject has to do with trying to put the pieces of my heart back together.
“Your objection to this plan is noted.”
Just like I had noted it the other ten times that Mace made the declaration. I just can’t stop myself. I can’t stop trying to roll the boulder up the hill, even if it crushes me.
Two months. It has been two months since I’d come home to Gregory packing the meager amount of things he had allowed himself to leave at my house. Two months since he had apologized and left. The clues had been there. I should have picked them up.
I pick them up now. Discarded memories waiting to be put away for the change of season. I pick them up and hold them to me. I haunt myself with them and the regrets they bring. I should have known something was wrong.
Memories surface of Gregory avoiding the topic of mo
ving in together, him barely utilizing the space I had made for him in my home. There had been no public proclamation to his family. The biggest thing that should have signaled the oncoming destruction was that he didn’t bite me. It’s the symbol of a mated pair in shifters. A status symbol to carry the mating mark of the one you love.
There were so many signs, but I thought we were happy. Surely, we were happier then than we are now.
“Asa… I just don’t understand.” Mace lets some of the jovialness that permeates every space he inhabits fade. “You’re a catch. You should move on to some other man or woman,” he says it softly, almost gently.
It’s no use; the days of hungering for decadence and options ended for me when I met Gregory. Demons are long-lived. I’m younger than most, only a little more than a century and a half, but I have lived long enough to know the uniqueness of my relationship with Gregory.
Mace and I are technically soul bound to help anchor us in this plane, and I don’t feel half as close to him as I do to Gregory.
Even if I had wanted to move on, the phone call last week had strung me up with hope. It isn’t great to rely so heavily on a drunken phone call made in the early hours, but when I heard Gregory’s slurred voice say he had never wanted to hurt me I couldn’t help myself. How much alcohol does it take for a shifter to feel drunk?
It had to be a substantial amount of alcohol to keep him talking on the phone for twenty minutes. Does Gregory even remember the conversation? I don’t think he does; some of the things revealed in that call hurt, things that Gregory would have tried to shield me from if he had been sober.
Things like that I’m not enough for his wolf, that the creature is on the hunt for more. More of what? Gregory didn’t know. There are some good things that I hold close to heart and let the hope they provide grow. Things like that his wolf always thought of me as a mate, that Gregory still loves me.
So, I showed up here. I’ll admit the plan is terrible and I don’t know if it will work. Mace had provided the information that Gregory had taken a job that is happening today.
The why of Gregory taking side jobs is easy enough to puzzle out. If I were a kind person, I’d find a way to free Gregory from our business arrangement. But kindness doesn’t exist in the dark parts of my being and I’m not going to let him go.
I look back at my best friend. “I really appreciate you doing this for me. You’ve been a true friend in all of this.”
Mace had pulled me away from the worst behaviors after the heartbreak. Demons aren’t creatures that should be allowed to wallow. Destructive activities ensue. Mace and I have been friends for most of our lives. Learned our limitations together, gone to war together, and broke from the older demons as a unit.
“But you want me to fuck off now so you can whisk your baker love away?” Mace stands with a sigh. He didn’t think he would really be able to dissuade me from this.
The plan is to run into Gregory and get him to go somewhere to talk. Maybe getting a hotel room just in case the talking went well had been the epitome of reckless hopefulness, but I need to think this can work. That we can work around his wolf’s oddities. That we can be together.
Mace grabs my shoulder in reassurance. “For what it’s worth, I do hope this works for you, my friend.”
I look down at the cold tea, not wanting Mace to see my vulnerability. Knowing he sees it anyway.
The sunlight is cut off and the crash of glass breaking shatters the moment. We both shield our faces as the glass door breaks inward. The iron balcony screeches under the impact.
“Fucking hell!” Mace swears and pulls out a dagger as if readying for an assault.
The glass skitters across the tile with violence. Splashes of blood and falling feathers mask my sight at first. As soon as my mind makes sense of the mangled form in front of me, I smack Mace’s weapon down and rush forward.
Chapter 2
Moments Prior
Zephyrine
The shifter’s eyes are on me, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I flip through the brunch drink selection and adjust my seat on the barstool. Even during the day, this place bustles with beings.
This early, the tables at the establishment fill first, so the bar is almost empty. The better to see me sitting here all alone. Paranormal folk who want to get together without hiding what they are don’t have many options in this city. The lacking selection guarantees those businesses success. As long as the owners don’t get a bounty put on their heads.
The spelled earpiece Alice forced me to wear itches. It’s my body warning me of the magical item, and I focus on not scratching at it. The device will allow Alice and Greg to hear the conversation and swoop in if the situation starts to go south. Alice added some charms to it to extend range and allow it to function in the warded bar.
My kind are born from magic; we don’t take to mixing with other magics well. Just sitting in this bar starts to make my ears buzz. But using the earpiece is inescapable in this situation. Just like the eyes of the wolf-shifter are inescapable.
It took me half a second upon meeting Greg to clock what he is. Shifters are easy enough to identify with experience. Most male shifters are bigger in height and muscle mass. Oh, and that weird habit of sniffing the air.
The feeling from being around them is the most instinctual way to know. The disquieting sensation that they harness an animal nature. Greg’s eyes flashing yellow when we shook hands had some instinct in me wanting to run, even though I don’t have a prey nature. Wolf.
I don’t get out much but have liked all the shifters I’ve met. I thought, when I saw Greg, that I would really like him. The tall, broad-shouldered, blond man with darker facial hair somewhere between scruff and a beard in length had made me take a breath. He’d looked at me with those soulful eyes and I’d almost stuttered.
I would totally let that Viking pillage my village.
I check myself at that thought. I have some extended family that originates from the North who would not find that comment as entertaining as I do.
My face had been on its way to blushing until he had started acting like an asshole.
Stupid and stubborn.
My teeth grit at Greg’s accusations. It isn’t the first time I’ve been called stubborn; it won’t be the last. Just to have him say it makes my eye twitch. That his opinion affects me so much puzzles me. I just met the male; it’s crazy to put any stock in his feelings.
I’m supposed to be focusing on doing this job for Sophia, not mulling over my disappointment in the wolf shifter. It’s just that when I looked at Greg, there had been something … Possibilities. Like when a bird sees the perfect tree branch for a nest. I rub my chest.
It sounds cheesy, my sisters would tease me mercilessly if I ever said it aloud. Feelings or no feelings, something had sparked.
Then his eyes had shuttered, and he’d puffed his chest out, as if to throw around his substantial weight, and questioned my ability to do this job. Or implied it anyway. It ruffled my feathers.
I redirect my thoughts; enticing Henderson is the goal here. He should be doing his rounds soon. The plan is a simple one. Alice tried to make it as risk-free as possible. Even now Alice and Greg looked on from their spot in the booth. They had come in as a couple just after I had taken a seat.
The bar, Olympus, is heavily protected. Wards restricting the magical activities of patrons have been laid into the very decorative tiles of the floor, creating a lovely design of circles that sizzles with purpose. It’s the perfect place to hide out from the law since bounty hunters won’t be able to do anything here.
But Alice is good at finding loopholes. Olympus is on the top floor of the building and Henderson plans to expand the space to the roof in a few months. The bar may buzz with wards, but the roof does not.
“Is this seat taken?”
Right on time. I turn and coolly lift a brow at the man, taking his measure. Alice had shown me a photo of him, but he appears bigger in real life than
on Alice’s cell phone screen. Henderson is handsome in a slick way that stinks of greasy money and shiny things. His size gives me pause but he has nothing on my shifter. I silently correct myself; Greg isn’t my anything. But I won’t lie to myself, having Greg watching gives me some comfort.
I focus on my role in the plan. I am here to lure this bottom feeder from the safety of his domain, so lure I will. I look him dead in the eyes and try to broadcast the traits that give my kind their reputation. Power, confidence, and violence.
“Is it?”
Wyatt Henderson grins at my sharp question as he slides onto the stool beside mine. The fish is hooked.
Gregory
I watch Zeph at the bar touch Henderson’s hand in an unenthusiastic shake and my wolf paces. My chest is tight; Alice kicks me from under the table.
“Cool it with the growling, Kujo. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
My face heats when I realize Alice is right, my chest rumbles with a growl. “Nothing.”
“First, you’re insulting Zeph’s capabilities, then you can’t keep your eyes off her, and now you’re blushing. Want to clue me in on why you’ve suddenly become someone I can’t take to nice places?”
“I just want to keep her safe.” I pay close attention to the conversation between Zeph and the target.
Every bored look Zeph shoots at Henderson increases his interest. It’s not the regular kind of interest that you see between flirting couples. It makes my skin crawl.
“What did Henderson do to have a bounty placed on him by the Council?” I ask.
Alice doesn’t answer right away, I take a moment away from my surveillance. Alice bites her lip as she squints at me. I glare back in the imposing way hired muscle should, but the squinting continues.
“He has some contact, if not direct involvement in a trafficking ring,” she says reluctantly.
The blood leaves my face and my ears start ringing. Sharp pain brings me back in control before I do anything stupid to blow our covers like flip a table. Alice stops the vicious pinch to the tender spot on my inner wrist, the action hidden by our held hands on the table.
