by Alyssa Day
He found himself smiling at the thought. "Or maybe I'll find someone to rescue me," he told her. "I'll see you soon, in Scotland, April. Maybe you can teach me that nifty Atlantean trick with the ice daggers."
He only enjoyed her widening eyes for a second before he turned to go. The temptation to kiss her was too strong, and he'd probably lose his bollocks if he took that liberty.
He'd only gone a few paces when she called his name.
"Hey, Pine, why don't I teach you a nifty human trick, instead?"
He knew better--he knew better, but he turned around anyway, compelled by an internal demand to look at her face just once more.
She stood next to the shimmering oval of the Atlantean magic doorway, smiling at him while her companions walked through it.
Then she gave him a two-handed salute, only using one finger on each hand.
She was still smiling when she vanished through the portal.
Pine threw back his head and laughed. Damn, but she was magnificent.
"Oh, April," he murmured. "I have many more human tricks to teach you, and I can't wait, lass."
In an hour, he was on his private jet and heading out over the Atlantic, and he made himself a vow: If you don't show up in Scotland by the end of the week, I'll be going to Atlantis after you.
2
Atlantis, the war room adjacent to the throne room, April 1st…
April stalked back and forth past the scarred wooden table that dominated the room, fists clenched at her sides, muttering creative suggestions under her breath in ancient Atlantean as to what the king and Denal could do with their idea. She'd expected to be kicked off the team after she'd been so rude to the man she'd only later found out had been an actual freaking prince. Instead, they'd hit her with this.
King Conlan, tall, dark, and gorgeous in that uniquely Atlantean royalty lineage way, leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure the throne would fit up my ass, and if Cerberus ripped my arms and legs off, my wife and son might be rather annoyed with you."
She froze. "You heard that?"
Denal, one of the king's elite fighters and now the leader of her team of Poseidon's Warriors—or Denal's Desperate Dozen, if you hung out in taverns for any time at all—blew out a sigh and shoved his hands into the pocket of his faded jeans. "You see, Conlan? Hopeless. This is a terrible idea. Also, April, I know you haven't spent much time around royalty--"
"Try none."
He continued as if she hadn't spoken. "But a little respect might be nice. Or I'll take you to the training grounds and kick your ass."
She scowled. Unfortunately, this was a threat that carried some weight. Denal had been a warrior for longer than she'd been alive, because Atlanteans lived very long lifespans. He was unbelievably hot, in that "look at me and I'll kill you" feral kind of hot way, but she hadn't the slightest interest in bedding him. She just wanted to impress him.
To impress the king.
Great start, fool.
She abruptly knelt and inclined her head. "My apologies, your highness, if I have offended you. Well, of course I offended you. Gah. I mean, the throne up your ass thing might have come across worse in translation…"
She smacked her forehead. After muttering dire insults to the king, she was now questioning whether he could understand ancient Atlantean, the language of his royal ancestors.
Maybe she could stab herself in the kidney next and get the pain over with faster.
Conlan laughed.
He laughed?
"April. For Poseidon's sake, get up. And if you call me 'your highness' again, I'll be the one kicking your ass on the training grounds. My sword play is a little rusty these days, but I can take on a youngling like you."
She leapt to her feet, a hot rush of denial searing up her throat, ready to boil forth in a mass of words, when her brain kicked in: He'd said a youngling.
Not a female.
She was a youngling, compared to his five hundred or so years, so it would be ridiculous to be offended, and she was getting tired of looking for offense from every corner. She'd made it—she'd been accepted into Poseidon's Warriors, even if on a misfit kind of team.
"Look." Denal strode over to her and poked her in the shoulder. Hard. "Try not to be a jerk. I'm telling you, as the head of this insane team of misfits, that you're going to be an ambassador to the wolves."
She refrained from poking him back and gave herself a hundred points for her massive amount of restraint. "For how long?"
"A year." Denal studied her face and then glanced at the king, whose face was impassive. This was Denal's decision, then.
"Six weeks," she countered, without much hope, but it was fun to watch that nerve in Denal's jaw jump.
"Six months, and if you argue with me again, it's going to go back to a year," he said, his eyes narrowing.
"I'll take it."
"Good call."
The king stood up and stretched. "I have politics to play, crushing boredom to endure. Or maybe I'll go chase my son around the garden for a while. April, do a good job. If you put me in the middle of the wolves' civil war, we're going to have a problem."
His eyes darkened, and the genial king façade disappeared, so that April saw the dangerous predator lurking beneath. Conlan had been a fierce warrior for hundreds of years before he took the throne, and she could tell that nothing had changed.
"Yes, your highness," she stammered, taking a step back.
Conlan's face lit up with a huge grin. "You did it! I warned you. Now you can meet me on the training grounds in an hour for a bout. You'd better warm up your sword arm, warrior, because I'm not holding back."
Denal groaned. "Don't hurt my newest team member, Conlan. Do you know how hard it is to find good fighters?"
April blinked. He thought she was a good fighter?
"It's not hard at all," the king said, his calm voice completely at odds with his narrowed eyes. "Or else somebody at the younglings' training academy needs to lose his or her job."
Denal raised his hands. "Fine. It's not hard to find good fighters, but it's hard to find people with the skills and temperament to be one of Poseidon's finest, as you well know."
He thought she had the skills and temperament to be one of Poseidon's finest?
April swallowed. This meeting hadn't gone at all like she'd imagined. She'd thought she was going to be booted off the team. Instead, she found out she was one of Poseidon's finest, who was going to be an ambassador to the European wolves, after she sparred with the king.
She needed a drink.
Conlan pointed at her. "One hour. Be there or I'll track you down."
She nodded to them both and then walked out of the room. Maybe she'd have that drink after her sword fight…
With the king.
Of Atlantis.
In one hour.
She started running.
3
Creag Phadràig, Scotland
Pine's niece was trying to kill him.
Again.
He sat on the edge of the ruined stone wall that stonemasons—possibly even wolf shifters—had built more than 2,000 years before, breathing in the cool, Scots pine-scented air. The Iron Age fort had housed so many for so long, until Pine's grandfather had claimed it for his own through a series of shady land deals, political bribes, and blackmail. It had been only a little more than a decade ago that Scotland had officially deeded it to Pine's pack as a Royally Deeded Land Preserve signed by the British queen, herself.
The quiet scuffling noise sounded again, and he held in a sigh and wondered whether Bridei, one of the Pict kings back in the 580s, had been tortured by his family when he'd ruled from this fort.
"Grrrrrrowr!" The screechy growl sounded right behind him, where Annie had been "sneaking up" on him for the past five minutes. He supposed if he'd been unconscious from some mortal injury, or perhaps dead drunk from a whiskey bender, he wouldn’t have heard her.
Maybe.
Stealth was definitely not yet one of
her skills.
She leapt, scattering pebbles, scratching the stone with her tiny claws, and making various other loud noises, but since this wasn't Pine's first time being her victim, he knew his part and held still.
He braced himself just before eighty pounds of muscle smashed into him and then tried not to wince when sixteen needle-sharp claws dug into his neck and shoulders. Dire wolf cubs were many things, but little wasn't one of them.
Annie yipped with excitement and then put her teeth on his neck, demanding surrender in the traditional manner of wolves. He reached back over his head, laughing, and gently disengaged the golden-furred cub from his skin. Then he pulled her into his lap and scratched behind her ears until she relaxed and laughed up at him, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth.
"Annie!" Pine's sister Nyneve's clear voice rang out from the path leading up to the fort, and Pine shared a guilty look with his niece. Nyneve was definitely not a fan of her daughter's murderous tendencies.
The wolf cub scrambled out of his lap and raced around the side of the wall to where, he presumed, she'd hidden her clothes when she started the shift. She was pretty quick for a recently Transitioned wolf, but odds were still on her mom showing up before Annie had the chance to get dressed and put on her patented "I'm so innocent" face.
Pine's thoughts strayed to April, as they'd done approximately a thousand times in the five days since he'd seen her walk through that portal in Florida, laughing and shooting him the bird. He had the feeling that April had been a lot like Annie as a girl—feisty and full of herself. But had April had any of Annie's adolescent insecurity? Her sweetness?
And why the hell was he wondering about April's childhood? He stood and tried to shake all thoughts of the fiery Atlantean warrior out of his mind, at least for the next couple of days. He'd promised himself to give her a week.
Forty-eight more hours, and he'd be on his jet again, this time pointed to Atlantis. If she didn't want to be his ambassador, she could damn well tell him to his face.
"Pine!" Nyneve rounded the corner and glared at him. "Where is my daughter?"
He tried his best to put on an innocent face like Annie's but from the look on Nyneve's face, he was failing miserably.
"Is she trying to kill you again?"
Pine grinned at his sister. She was tall and lean and gorgeous; she had golden hair in her human shape and golden fur like her daughter as a wolf, with two green eyes instead of his one, and a tart tongue that could flay the skin off men who tried to court her. She'd said many times that Annie's father had been her one great love, and she had no desire to play at the thing with anyone less.
Pine, who'd never yet met anyone who'd inspired such devotion in himself, had tried once to encourage her to take a chance on someone—anyone--so she wouldn’t be alone for the rest of her life, but she'd cuffed him so hard that she'd knocked him out of his chair at the dinner table.
He'd quite carefully stayed away from the subject of Nyneve's love life after that.
She marched up to him and poked him in the chest. "Why do you encourage her?"
"I—"
"What kind of lunatic girl am I raising that she's always trying to murder people?"
"She—"
Nyneve stamped her foot. "And even her alpha? She's trying to kill her alpha? What's going to happen when she plays this game with a wolf who doesn't get the joke and tries to hurt her? To put her in her place?"
Pine sighed and stared silently up at the sky.
"Well? Are you going to answer me or not?"
He tilted his head. "Oh, am I allowed to talk now?"
A grin tugged at the corner of her lips, and he caught the sparkle in her eyes before she forced her expression to become serious.
"It's not a joke, you wee idiot," she said, ignoring the part where he was older by two years, taller by four or five inches, and outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds in human form and maybe three hundred pounds in wolf form.
"I know, Nyn, I know." He put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a brief hug. "But she's my niece, and the only one I'm likely to have. I'm just so damn happy that she survived the Transition. Just … just let me enjoy this for a while before I have to be the stern alpha with her. Please?"
His sister's eyes darkened, and he knew she was remembering the terror they'd both felt when the Transition had struck Annie. So many of them didn't survive the first shift; and the odds were even worse for female shifters. They were so very lucky that Annie had been one of the fortunate.
Even though she'd been trying to kill him ever since.
Nyn finally gave in and hugged him back. "Fine. But when she really hurts you, don't come crying to me."
A new voice rang through the air from behind him. "Does he do that a lot? Cry? Because I probably would have pegged him for it. Nobody that pretty can be all that tough."
Every nerve in Pine's voice sizzled into overdrive.
His first thought was almost pure gratitude: April's here.
His second: How did she get past his sentries and evade his own senses, not to mention Nyn's?
His third: "You think I'm pretty?"
As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he wanted to stuff them back down his throat. Damn. He sounded like he was fishing for praise. April would think he was an idiot.
He was an idiot.
Nyn had whirled around when April spoke, and now Pine turned to join her. April sauntered into the open space in the center of the ruined fort, dressed again in leathers and wearing her bow and quiver, but this time carrying a duffel bag.
"So, I heard you needed an ambassador," she said, her lip curling. "Sounds fairly pathetic to me. Can't handle your job, Pine? Need a babysitter?"
He could actually feel his sister's rage building at what she'd see as the intruder's rudeness, but Nyn had no idea that he'd all but forced the Atlantean king to assign April to him. She'd probably call him out for being underhanded—or high handed—if she knew, but when needs must, as their mother used to say.
Looking at April's glorious red hair blazing in the late afternoon sunlight, Pine was absolutely sure that needs damn well must.
"Welcome to Scotland, Ambassador," he said, fighting against the smile trying to spread across his face. "Welcome to my highlands and to Creag Phadràig."
April sent him a flat stare. "Yeah, you won. You demanded my presence, so here I am, for at least six months. But know this, werewolf: you cost me a great deal. Florida was my very first mission, and now I'm stuck here on this diplomatic cluster-fark of an assignment. It will be a cold day in the ninth level of hell before I forgive you for that. So you can take your welcome and stick it up your—"
"Grrrrrrowr!"
Oh, no.
A blur of golden fur shot across the grass toward April before either Pine or Nyn could do a thing to stop it. He launched himself through the space toward Annie, but only managed to touch the tip of her tail before his determined niece slipped through his grasp and leapt five feet through the air, claws out, aimed straight for April's head.
Nyn screamed, Pine froze, and April merely raised a single eyebrow and then darted one hand out almost faster than he could see to snatch Annie out of the air by the scruff of the neck. Now the angry cub hung from April's grasp, hissing and twisting wildly in an attempt to get away, and the warrior gave Annie a little shake.
"Pipe down, pipsqueak." April's voice held the unmistakable whiplash of command, and the cub immediately settled down, responding to the tone in spite of herself.
April turned her lovely whiskey-dark eyes to Pine. "This belongs to you, I presume?"
Nyn put her hands on her hips and glared at her brother. "Ambassador?"
Pine offered up a weak grin. "Surprise?"
4
Two hours later, in the wolves' ancestral hall
April looked at herself in the full-length mirror and wanted to throw up. Pine had relieved her of the surprisingly heavy weight of what turned out to be his recently
Transitioned and apparently benignly murderous thirteen-year-old niece, Annie, and then he'd mentioned the formal welcome dinner for the Atlantean ambassador that he'd be hosting that evening.
April had almost shrugged until she'd remembered that the Atlantean ambassador was her.
Nyneve, Pine's sister—and why had she felt such relief at hearing that Nyn was his sister and not his mate?—had apologized several times with a highly confusing explanation of Annie's 'games.' Evidently the woman had been terrified that April would demand the child's head in some arbitrary ambassadorial hissy fit. None of it had made any sense at all, and all of it had made April's head throb, so she'd just nodded and tried to look like she understood everything. Ambassadors probably did that, too, she imagined, but how in the nine hells would she know?
She was a warrior, damn it, not a politician.
She sighed and looked at herself again, taking inventory.
Hair? A tangled mess from the bout with King Conlan that afternoon. (He'd kicked her ass, but she'd learned a few new tricks from him and was still glowing from the king's praise for her skill.)
Clothes? Her leathers were perfectly good for almost all occasions. This, however, wasn't one of them, she suspected. The duffel bag only contained underwear and extra weapons, because she'd planned to portal home to the tiny cottage which was all hers and get fresh clothes when she needed them.
Face? Her face was just…her face. Bones too sharp, eyes too large, chin too bold, or so she'd been told by more than one man, usually just after she turned down their clumsy advances. She'd only had a few sexual encounters, because most of them were so terribly disappointing that, why bother? Her one real relationship had been with a pirate who was now happily married to a human artist, of all things. And—worse—April had rather liked Lyric the one time she'd met her and warned her not to hurt Dare.
She was doing a lot of that lately. Warning women not to hurt her friends. Most recently, it had been on the west coast of the United States, when her team had gone to help her childhood friend and now fellow warrior Lucas and his new woman rescue the woman's child. April had liked Rhiannon, too, and the kid—Stevie—was a cute kid with tons of energy. None of that had stopped April from warning Rhiannon that if she hurt Lucas, April would kill her. The human had agreed and then told April to get the hell out of her way.
