by Holley Trent
How long has he been staring at me?
“I’m actually not doing much work right now,” Blue said. “Been rejecting most meeting requests. I can afford to say no at least for a while.”
“You own the company, then?” Along with the private plane he kept parked and fueled up at the county airport.
“Company is a generous way of putting it. Am I incorporated? Yeah, kinda have to be once you clear a certain tax threshold. But do I have staff?”
When he didn’t immediately continue, she looked up in time to see him shrug.
“Technically,” Blue said, “Kenny’s my staff.”
“And what does he do for you?”
“Without getting too complicated, when people need money for business start-ups or to invest in the next big thing, they go through Kenny to get to me.”
“Ah!” She gave her hands a revelatory clap. “You’re a venture capitalist.”
“Yep.” He grinned.
She couldn’t help but to smile at that. That career wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d imagined for him. She’d assumed something much more illegal. Racketeering had come to mind. The last Coyote alpha had earned most of his income from blackmailing schemes, and all Willa could do was try to sabotage them whenever she learned of them. His lieutenants had gotten good at subverting her toward the end of his reign.
“I’m happy that Kenny has stuck with me this long,” Blue said. “Lance, too. I know I don’t make shit easy for them.”
“What do you mean?” Willa asked.
“Once a boy hits a certain age, it’s rarely good politics to align yourself with a pack alpha’s son,” Diana piped up. “Unless they’re from a family that’s historically been politically aligned with the alpha lineage.”
“Ugh. Sounds like an aristocratic mess. I’ve witnessed enough of that chaos to know how cutthroat it can be.”
“Oh yeah?” Blue asked, smirk deepening. “Who’d you witness it in first?”
“You think you’re slick. You’re trying to pinpoint my age.”
“Answer me anyway and surprise a guy for a change.”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. Then she set her sandwich down on the wrapper and, furrowing her brow, concentrated on the half-moon shapes of her bites. “The thing is, I can’t give a simple answer to that.”
“I knew there had to be a catch.”
She laughed. He was quick, and sometimes it was nice to talk to people who knew enough, and cared enough, to guess where a conversation was going. Most people got bored. Most were too stuck in their own heads to care.
Briefly, she glanced up at him.
He made a “Well?” gesture.
Okay. Just one clue for you, Alpha.
“When I was born, Spain had only been a unified state for a few decades. It had been a collection of small, competing kingdoms.” She paused, contemplating context and depth. Wondering how much to say. There was so much she could say about that period of her history, but she didn’t want the conversation to get too personal. If it got too personal, she’d spiral into anxiety again and wouldn’t stop fretting about everything and nothing for days. She knew herself too well. She knew to stay away from familiar triggers.
“They didn’t all come together until Isabella married her cousin Ferdinand,” she informed them after a minute. They were waiting so quietly and patiently.
Blue made a hmm sound. “Strategic marriage for political gains.”
“Kind of like OG arranged for you,” Diana said brightly.
“You’re going to marry your cousin?” Willa asked warily. She wasn’t going to pretend that didn’t happen anymore. She knew better.
He guffawed. “Nah. Not a cousin. Just the daughter of an alpha from the next closest pack.”
“What’s so wrong with her that you’re avoiding her?”
“Oh, Blue’s gonna chew her up and spit her out,” Diana said. A bit of her sandwich meat slid out of the bun and hit the floor. King was on it in half a second flat, licking the tile clean.
Willa grimaced.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Blue muttered.
“You know she’s right,” Lance said. He shoved a fistful of potato wedges into his mouth and waggled his eyebrows at his alpha. “I know exactly what the old man was thinking, but shit, she’s young.”
“How young?” Willa asked. “Age is a vague concept for me.”
She certainly didn’t feel her age, nor did any of the ladies she knew who were in the same range of semi-immortality. Noelle had her by several hundred years, but Noelle seemed like the typical—though far more jaded—thirtysomething. Her friend Jenny was the same, minus the cynicism. Willa knew how kids were supposed to behave because she worked with them almost every day, but adult ages were trickier.
“Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Somewhere in there,” Blue said in an undertone.
“I guess youth doesn’t appeal to you?”
“I am literally old enough to be her father, so no.”
“I see,” she murmured, giving King’s head a scratch as he paced nearby.
Conservatively, that put Blue in the realm of forty. She’d never been hung up on exact numbers, but now she was curious. He’d probably tell her if she pointedly asked him, but then they’d end up in another of those “tell me because I told you” scenarios she wanted to avoid. There was too much about herself she wouldn’t, couldn’t share. Too much baggage, and she wanted to be able to sleep after the Coyotes left.
“What if you were to pick your own mate?” Willa asked instead.
“Assuming he could find anyone who’d voluntarily put up with him for longer than a night,” Diana said to a background “Screw you,” from Blue, “I suspect OG would make her life a living hell.”
“Why?” Willa asked.
“Because that’s what he does. If he can’t control something, he tries to ruin it. That’s why I’m here, right?” The woman was a master of the sardonic smile. She did it better than certain Greek goddesses Willa knew, and they were the best at irony.
“Why do I get the feeling that Blue’s not the only person who stands to be ruined?” Willa asked.
Diana gave her soda a long slurp and stared eloquently at Willa over the top of the cup.
“Oh. I see.” Willa nudged a couple of potato wedges across her plate. “How’d you get on his bad side?”
“Don’t ask her for the truth if you don’t really want to know it,” Blue said. “Because she’ll tell you.”
“Sometimes the truth isn’t pretty, but . . . it’s also the best disinfectant there is.”
If you can stand it.
Diana seemed to be considering that. She rolled her bright gaze to the ceiling and had parted her lips to say something when King bolted toward the front door.
The doorbell came two seconds later.
“Who could that be?” Willa pushed back from the table and gave her hands a frantic wipe on a wad of napkins.
“Not expecting anyone?” Blue asked, standing.
“No. No one visits me at home.” Glancing at the congregation in her kitchen, she added in a mumble, “No one invited, anyway.”
She made her way to the door slowly, peeking around the hallway corner as she approached to screen whomever it was, but Blue walked at the door full bore.
There’d be no pretending she wasn’t home, obviously.
Sighing, she followed him.
“It’s Noelle.”
“Huh.” Willa nudged him aside. Sure enough, the black-haired elf was standing on her stoop with her arms folded over her chest looking as suspicious of her circumstances as ever. Tamatsu was crouched beside Willa’s Jeep, peering under it.
Willa remembered why when she saw a small paw swipe at the angel.
“Um.” She cringed. “They’re . . . harmless, I guess.” She unlocked the screen door. “I mean, they probably aren’t rabid. Just hungry.”
Tamatsu shook his head and strode to the door w
ith his usual long-limbed ease. He was graceful for a seven-foot-something giant, but of course his angel DNA probably had a little something to do with that.
“Grapevine’s buzzing,” Tamatsu said. “Noelle wanted to see if you were okay.”
Noelle nodded.
Having heard her speak in the past, Willa could imagine exactly what the woman would have said if she’d still had a voice: “Let me know if I should give him a swift kick in the nuts for you.”
“I’m fine,” Willa said with a laugh. “Who’s been talking?”
“Tiny from the Cougar glaring,” Tamatsu said. “He drove past your house in his taco truck about half an hour ago.”
“He lives in the neighborhood,” Willa said for Blue’s benefit.
Blue growled softly in response.
“He called Tito,” Tamatsu said, “who called me.”
“Is a pack alpha really not allowed to confer with the pack patron?” Blue asked dourly.
Noelle looped her fingers around one of Tamatsu’s. His forehead creased and head tilted slightly toward Noelle. Willa had come to recognize that as evidence Noelle was communicating telepathically with him. They needed to touch to talk.
A few seconds later, he said, “Noelle says that given your contentious start, we have to assume there’s a problem. Is there one?”
“Not at the moment,” Willa said. “I’m fine. I promise.”
Noelle didn’t look like she believed her, but she took a breath, nodded, and backed away from the stoop, anyway.
“She said she’ll text you before school tomorrow,” Tamatsu said, following her. Then he stopped, turned back, and looked pointedly to Blue. “She also said to let her know if you want to sell your condo in Vegas. The market is about to surge.”
Blue sighed. “Sure thing.”
Tamatsu saluted, looked all around, caught up to Noelle on the path, looped his arm around her waist, and teleported both of them away.
Blue strode down the walkway and did a three-sixty turn, eyeing all directions.
“What are you doing?” Willa asked.
“Checking to see if anyone else in Maria Heights is ‘just looking out’ for you, because if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you have them on some sort of schedule.”
She laughed and pulled opened the screen door. “Nothing more than coincidence.”
If not for coincidence, she wouldn’t have any luck at all.
Chapter Eleven
After Willa kicked Blue, Diana, and Lance out of her house at ten thirty, Blue went straight home and opened his laptop.
He ignored the slew of unread e-mail messages from his father, bulk deleted the ones from his stepmother that had chatty subject lines but edicts from his father inside, and opened his note-taking app.
Mostly, he used the software to sync information with Kenny about potential business opportunities, but he also had a few folders in the cloud that were dedicated exclusively to research about the arcane. Blue had spent a lot of years of his life sifting through that information and working out what events were real versus what were bogus. He wasn’t going to let the data go to waste. Contrary to what his father thought, it was important to know how the outside world discussed people like them in historical texts.
He’d just opened his bibliography on the ancient Greeks when a text message flashed on his phone screen:
SIXTH AND IGLESIA.
“Shit, what now?”
It wasn’t a group text like he usually got from Coyotes—they always CC’d Willa on any messages they sent him, probably expecting she’d show up to be the good cop to his bad cop.
That message was sent especially to him and from a number he’d memorized as belonging to a certain sheriff’s deputy.
“Damn,” he spat, pushing back from the table.
Fortunately, he hadn’t wasted time undressing. He had his shoes back on and car keys in hand in no time flat. Then he tossed the keys back onto the counter, kicked off the shoes, and shucked his clothes.
He could run to Sixth. If Tito was giving him a hasty heads-up about Coyote issues, Blue handling the mess in his animal form made sense.
He stalked quietly to the dark side of his rental house, laid his head to one side and then the other, and rolled his spine. As much as he hated wasting energy to force himself into his animal shape, it was the fastest way to impose order. Alpha magic was stronger when he was in his wild form.
Shapeshifting, to him, had always felt like having live wires in place of his bones, and when the magic started rippling through him, scalding hot electricity poured into them and stole his breath. His body both shrank and stretched, skin rippling over reshaped bones, and balance falling forward onto four feet.
He gave his fur a hasty shake and took off at a sprint, keeping to the shadows of his neighbors’ yards and then taking alleyways rather than streets.
Which troublemaker is it this time?
He didn’t know why he bothered wondering. Guessing was pointless. The whole pack was unpredictable. He couldn’t pick just one pain in the ass.
He crossed over to Iglesia, saw the flashing of police cruiser lights, and sped up upon identifying one of his charges pressed against the hood. Allen Banks was attempting to shapeshift under Tito’s grip.
Don’t you dare, dipshit.
Blue let out a quiet bark upon approach and ignored the two Cougars chomping at the bit to take a piece out of Blue’s pack member.
Foye and . . .
Of course.
Blue rolled his eyes.
The second Cougar also had red hair, so he had to guess that was another Foye. There were three brothers, supposedly.
Tito got out of the way right as Blue launched himself at the car hood.
Allen had barely started to stand when Blue set his teeth into the younger man’s shoulder.
Get down.
Allen couldn’t fight him. He didn’t even have time to scream out in pain or complain. Blue’s will was greater than his, his energy too dominant.
Allen hit the ground writhing and convulsing.
Blue pulled his fangs out of his back and sat close while the Coyote shifted in front of him.
Blue wouldn’t have bothered—he would have let Allen have the shame of getting tangled up in his clothes—but Tito pulled a knife from somewhere and cut Allen’s jeans and shirt off of him as his body morphed.
Allen laid on his side, panting heavily, canine eyes rolling meekly toward Blue.
It’d probably be a good five or ten minutes before Allen could muster up enough energy to stand up. Being forced into animal form by an alpha was a bit like being yanked through the birth canal and having the misfortune of being fully aware it was happening. OG had done it to Blue enough times that he knew precisely how badly the compression hurt. It was the worst kind of squeezing—like being suffocated and crushed at the same time. There was nothing kind about a forced shift, but sometimes they were necessary.
Momentarily ignoring the Foyes, Blue canted his head toward Tito.
Well?
Tito shifted his weight and, sighing, massaged the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to arrest him on mere suspicion that he was about to commit a felony, but you and I both know he probably was.”
Blue thumped his tail against the ground impatiently.
“I don’t know if he was in his right head or not. I’ll let you make that determination.”
And what’d he do, Deputy?
“Found him in the cab of Hank’s truck rooting through the glove compartment.”
“Miles found him first,” the not–Mason Foye brother said. “You’d better be happy my wife has a soft spot for kids too stupid to know better.”
He—Hank, apparently—had longer, brighter hair than his brother’s.
Same asshole countenance, though.
Hank crouched and met Blue at eye level. He had the same asshole energy as his brother, too.
How nice that their daddy got a spare heir.
“If it were up to me,” Hank said dourly, “I’d evoke a deadline for you to get your pack out of town.”
Whatever, man.
There was a chance that whatever it was, Blue wouldn’t be there, anyway. He hoped that wasn’t the case. He still had a lot of work to do in Maria.
Tito let out a ragged exhalation and tossed a blanket he’d gotten from the trunk of his car on top of the shivering Coyote. “Mason could, Blue. Old treaty provision made four or five generations ago. Shifters were tearing up the damn town—if you could even call it a town at that point. It’d barely gotten started. The Coyotes, Wolves, and Cougars made an agreement that they’d put an end to the turf battling for the time being, but all bets would be off if any group made a personal attack on someone in another group.”
“As you may have learned,” Mason said, “there’s only one full-time Wolf in Maria.”
Tito grunted. “And he’s not even from here. Moved for his mate. The pack that used to be here got chased out about a hundred years ago. The fact that the Coyotes are still here, in spite of the hassle they’ve given the Foyes, is due only to the fact that little towns like this tend to do better overall if there’s diversity of supernatural groups. Better for the magical ecosystem.”
Blue waited for the “but.”
“But I’m running out of patience,” Mason said.
Here we go.
Blue would have rolled his eyes again if he’d truly thought doing so wouldn’t be the opening salvo to a public alpha tussle. The town probably didn’t need that. Both shifter groups were still paying off property damage from various conflicts.
“So consider this a warning,” Mason continued, and then shrugged. “Or maybe a suggestion, if you like that word better. My wife says I should practice being more diplomatic, so now I can tell her that I am without lying.” He smiled.
Blue didn’t like the way that man looked when he smiled. His wife probably liked the guy’s mug well enough, sure, but the expression made Blue want to ball up a fist and swing it, and he didn’t have fingers at the moment.
“What month is this, May?” Mason asked his brother.
“Yep.”
“Cool. Pack chaos usually starts to surge as spring fever kicks in, so we’ll see how well controlled the Coyotes are by . . . hmm.” Mason narrowed his eyes and tapped his unshaven jaw. “June first. That’s a Friday, I think. If I’m not seeing significant progress by then, I’ll demand that the pack leave and I won’t shed any tears about having to forcibly remove anyone who lingers. I don’t give a damn how long they’ve been here.”
