by H. D. Gordon
The ride home seemed to take longer than usual, but when I finally set foot back on our land, I breathed a sigh of relief. Dawn would be breaking shortly, and if I knew my brother, he would be waking soon, getting ready for a new day.
I saw no need to delay the conversation we needed to have. I found him in the office, fixing his tie and shrugging on his jacket.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked.
Devon looked up and saw me. “In a minute,” he said, and then took in my condition. I bit down on a wave of anger as exasperation flitted across his face before worry took its place. “What the hell happened?”
I told him about the Vampires and the attack. Pulled out the white card the group had dropped along with the identical one Cartier had given me that first time I’d met him.
Devon listened in silence, his face unreadable as I relayed my tale.
When I was finished, he was silent for a few heartbeats.
My eyes narrowed. “You blame me,” I said. It was not a question. I could see it in my brother’s eyes.
He held up a letter I hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “This is from Cartier. He’s doubling the original amount of the agreement.”
I scoffed. “Of course he is. I told you he would.”
My brother gave me a deadpan look.
“If you have something to say,” I said. “Then, say it.”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t broken the wrist and dislocated the shoulder of his number two.”
My hands were in fists tight enough for my nails to draw blood on my palms. I opened my mouth, but every thought that came to me was cross, and so I shut it again.
Devon shook his head and buttoned his jacket, heading toward the door of the office.
“Where are you going?”
“Where do you think? To meet Cartier and see if we can come to some kind of alternate agreement.”
My jaw unhinged. “Did you hear anything I just told you? He’s been playing us the whole time.”
Devon tossed up his hands. “And what would you have me do, Dita? Go to war with the most prominent Wolf Pack on the eastern seaboard?”
I blinked. That was exactly what I expected.
“You can’t go alone,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”
“No,” Devon said firmly, blocking the doorway. “You stay.”
I shook my head, hardly able to believe the firmness in his tone, the accusation.
Devon left without another glance back.
“What happened to your face, D?” Demarco asked, joining me on the back porch later that morning.
“I slipped and fell,” I mumbled, sipping from a glass of tea. The rose gardens were in full bloom now, and their fragrance floated on the slight breeze, rustling my hair around my face.
Demarco smirked and took a seat beside me. “I’d hate to be the floor that did that,” he joked.
But I wasn’t in the mood. Devon hadn’t returned home yet, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be with him, protecting him when things with Cartier inevitably went south.
I sighed and pushed away the thoughts, looking over at my little brother for the first time. He’d fully healed since the incident with the Vampires, and as far as I knew, he’d been staying out of trouble as well. In fact, it had been nearly a moon cycle since I’d worried about him, which had to be some kind of record.
“What have you been up to?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you around a lot lately.”
Demarco picked up the tea glass I’d just set down and drained the remainder of the contents, offering me a lopsided grin when I raised a brow at him.
“Actually,” he said, “I’ve been hanging out with Miss Charlene at the art school in Faerport quite a bit. She’s been showing me how to paint. She seems to think I have a knack for it.”
I leaned back in my chair, surprised. “That’s good,” I said. “You need something to keep you out of trouble.”
Demarco gave me another crooked grin. “Perhaps you should take your own advice.”
I gave him a look that made him hold his hands up. “Just kidding, D.”
I sighed, shaking my head.
“Anyway,” Demarco continued, “you’re right. It has been keeping me out of trouble, and I like doing it. I like working with my hands and the process of creating. I think I’ve finally found something I’m good at, and I’m happy about it.”
I placed a kiss on my brother’s forehead, wrapping my arm around his broad shoulders and leaning into him a little. “Then, I’m happy for you. I hope this means you’re turning over a new leaf.”
Demarco nodded. “I think so.” He gazed out at the gardens, his usually jovial face going serious. “It’s like getting the shit kicked out of me woke me up. It was touch and go there for a while, and it really made me think.”
“Well, that’s a first.”
Demarco smirked, but his expression was still serious, his eyes far away. “I was thinking, I don’t want to spend my whole life making trouble, getting into fights and such. I want to make something of myself, do something I can be proud of before my time is up.”
My arm tightened around him a little bit as I came to the realization that at some point when I hadn’t been looking, my little brother had grown up.
“You probably think it sounds stupid,” he said, glancing at me.
I shook my head. “Not at all. Not one bit. In fact, it’s the best news I’ve gotten for a while.”
Chapter 22
Devon did not return home until much later in the evening.
I was on the roof again, mostly asleep and in my Wolf form, and his arrival pulled me away from the edge of sleep.
Speaking into his mind from my position overhead, I said, “How did it go?”
Devon glanced around until he spotted me, the moonlight catching in his dark hair. “Not well,” he replied, his voice exasperated even in my head. Without further comment, he let himself into the house.
After a moment, I rested my head down between my paws again, but I didn’t sleep a wink.
When the sun rose over the land at dawn, I pushed to my paws and went for an early hunt, needing to do something to release some of the nervous energy that kept building up in me. As much as I wanted to stick by my promise to let Devon take full control of things, sometimes that was a hard promise to keep.
My gut told me that Cartier would strike again, and that we needed to hit him before he hit us. We’d already set a dangerous precedent, already made ourselves appear weak.
I actually cringed to think of what diplomatic bullshit Devon must have tried to push, how ridiculous he must have looked, like a boy among men.
My mind kept circulating these thoughts as I caught the trail of a hare and followed it until I spotted the creature nibbling on some vegetation in a clearing between the trees. In the following moments, I had it in my jaws, the taste of its fresh blood setting some ancient instinct in me humming.
After breakfast, I went to a stream nearby and lapped at the water before shifting back into my mortal form. Once I stood on two feet again, I stripped down and waded into a little pool near an outcropping of rock.
The water stung the various injuries covering me, and as I scrubbed at my skin, it turned scarlet as it cleansed away blood that was both mine and not.
My rib was the worst. One of them had been broken in the brawl, and since I’d sustained the injury a time or two before, I didn’t need a healer to tell me this. With my Wolf blood, it would be fully healed within a week, but it would hurt plenty before then.
So hopefully Cartier would wait until then to make his next move, since it was clear that my brother had no intention of doing so first.
When I returned to the house later that morning, he confirmed this.
“You did what?” I asked. Kyra, Devon, and I were standing in the office.
Devon sighed. “I agreed to buy two thirds of our stock from him for his going price,” he repeated.
In my head, I did
the math. “We’ll run through our principle in under a year at that rate,” I said.
Kyra sat silently over by the window, having not said a word, only looking forlorn, as she seemed to be making a habit of lately.
“I thought you said you were going to negotiate,” I said, “not blindly agree to whatever the son of a bitch demanded.”
Devon pinched the bridge of his nose after taking a long swig of the shine in his hand. “I tried,” he said.
I scoffed. “I should have come with you. If you hadn’t been so stubborn—”
“Then you would have what, beat them into submission?”
“Yes!” I nearly shouted. “That’s how this works. It’s what I keep trying to tell you. You either do the beating, or you take it. Why is that so damn hard for you to grasp?”
“I’m not going over this again,” Devon said, slamming his glass down on the desk and heading for the door. Kyra sat up as if to stop him, but thought better of it and remained where she was by the window.
I pulled my eyes away from her, not wanting to read her expression. Kyra opened her mouth to say something, but there was a knock on the office door, and Nyla entered.
I raised my brows at her.
“There’s a male here to see you, D,” Nyla said.
“A male?”
“A Demon, if my guess is right. Says his name is Elian, and that you know him.”
I snatched Devon’s abandoned glass up from the desk and drained the contents, noting that I’d been turning to the shine to calm my nerves too often as of late.
Kyra was looking at me curiously, but I shook my head. “He’s just a friend,” I said, and left her to her thoughts.
Nyla walked alongside me as we went down the hall toward the foyer.
“A very handsome friend,” she mumbled, and gave me a small smile before branching off toward the kitchen.
I found Elian waiting in the foyer, his head tilted back as he looked up at the old chandelier, his hands resting easily in his pockets.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
The Demon placed a hand over his heart. “I missed you, too, my darling.”
Normally, his cuteness and accent would have made me smile, but I was too wound up for his jest. “I’m really busy,” I said.
A dimple appeared on his right cheek. “Should I go?”
“Why have you come?”
Eli glanced around. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Something in his expression gave me pause, so I led him outside to the rose gardens, making sure no one was out there before turning to him with raised brows.
“I had some business at the Cartier estate last night,” he began, “and I… overheard something I thought might interest you.”
I held still while I waited for him to continue, positive that I would not like whatever he was about to say.
“Spit it out, then.”
“I heard him mention the name Silvers, and how you may be becoming more of a problem than at first anticipated. That perhaps something should be done about you.”
I was silent while I absorbed this. “Is that all?” I asked.
Eli blinked at me. “I should think that’s more than enough.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and released a slow breath, cursing the fates for it all.
“Thank you for letting me know,” I said. “I’m sure it’s not something Cartier would want you doing.”
“You’re right about that.”
Around us, the air smelled of roses, the breeze just enough to cool my overheated skin. It felt as though things just kept piling up, and I wondered how long my legs would hold beneath the weight.
Eli moved a bit closer, and I stole a moment to admire him. As much as it pained me to admit, I’d begun thinking about the male when he was not around, wondering what he was doing and where he was in between trying to navigate the shit with Cartier, and the other shit with my siblings. That was not usual of me. I liked males, for sure, but beyond the obvious, I’d found little use of any who were outside my family.
Seemed to me, most of the time, they were more trouble than they were worth. One only had to look at Delia’s current predicament to see this illustrated.
“What will you do?” Eli asked gently, his handsome face serious, big hazel eyes fixed on me.
I bit my lip, more self-conscious under his careful study than I should be. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “There are disagreements about what should be done. If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m willing to hear them.”
“Cartier does not make idle threats,” Eli said.
My rib pinged at this, a small slice of pain that occurred anytime I moved my midsection. “Yes,” I said. “I know that.”
“But he must be intimidated by your brother and family, otherwise, what would be the point in all this?”
I snorted softly. “What’s the point of any extortion? Money and power.” My next words kind of just fell out of my mouth, more revealing than I would normally be with an acquaintance. “And it’s not my brother he’s intimidated by.”
I could feel his gaze on me, could hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat in his chest. The urge to step closer to him came over me, sudden and unexpected, and I ignored it, mostly because I was afraid that if I buckled even in the slightest, my whole structure would collapse.
As if Elian could feel it, too, he raised a hand out toward me, but before it reached me, he thought better of it and slipped the hand back into his pocket with the other. I almost sighed at the close call.
“I insulted him,” I admitted, glancing back at the house to make sure that none of my nosy kin was eavesdropping. “When Cartier first demanded we purchase shine from him, I made my brother outright refuse.”
Eli’s accented tone was gentle but firm. “And you’re wondering if this was a mistake?”
I wasn’t sure why I was telling the Demon all of this, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I started walking further away from the house, and Elian kept pace beside me.
“I’m pretty sure he was behind an attack on my younger brother, too, but I can’t prove it. And then there was the thing with his lap dog, that ugly bastard Arsen Bain.”
A single dimple appeared on Eli’s cheek. “Yes, I heard about that.”
“You did?”
“You broke his arm at the Spring Ball in front of a few of the chattiest socialites Cerys has to offer. Yes, I heard about it.”
“He promised to do terrible things to me,” I said through gritted teeth. “He had it coming.”
A rare dark expression came over Eli’s face, and he nodded once. “I’m the last person you need to convince of the foulness that is Arsen Bain.”
I wondered what the story behind that was, but didn’t ask. A rogue pain shot through my midsection again as my still-healing rib barked out at me. I sucked in air through my teeth and cupped the spot where it hurt, straightening up again quickly. It was a Wolf’s instinct to hide pain, to never appear weak.
Or at least it was mine.
Eli stopped and placed a hand on my elbow. “Are you okay?” he asked.
I smoothed my expression and drew a deep breath, fighting against the pain. “Fine. This is simply another result of Cartier’s display of power.”
“He did this to you?”
Something in the tone of the Demon’s voice had me turning to look at him, and also made warmth spread through me, igniting an urge I wasn’t sure I should act on.
“He didn’t do it himself, of course,” I replied. “But I know it was him.”
“Because of what you did to Bain? I knew when I heard about it that he’d retaliate. If he didn’t, it would have made him look weak.”
“So you agree that my actions are the cause of where we are?” I asked, not sure why I should care about his opinion on the matter at all. “That we should have just paid his extortion money from the beginning?”
We were walking again, the expans
e of green land spread out before us and the thick trees of the forest across the distance. I didn’t fail to notice when Eli moved a little closer, walking shoulder to shoulder with me, close enough that I could pick up the scent of his expensive aftershave.
“Cartier has made a fortune doing what he’s trying to do to you. New people move into town and open some kind of business. Once they start doing well, Cartier sends in Bain to make the demands clear, and most people just pay him.” He looked over at me, and my breath caught as the sun glinted in the hazel of his eyes.
“The trouble is,” Eli continued on, apparently unaware of the effect he had on me, “which I’m sure you already know, his fees are too high for any business to remain profitable, and the people end up going out of business. They sell and move on, heartbroken but glad to be finished dealing with Cartier and Bain. Some time later, someone else comes along, and the process begins anew.”
I nodded. “You said most people. What about the others? The ones who fight back?”
Eli released a heavy breath and stopped walking, turning so that he could face me. I did the same, and swallowed hard as I struggled to maintain the space between us.
“Do I really need to tell you?” he countered.
No, I supposed he didn’t.
“And the Guard? I take it a good portion of them are on his payroll.”
Eli smirked, revealing a dimple. “Would any of it work if they weren’t?”
I nodded once, pulling my eyes away from his lips to look out over the Warner Plantation, this piece of land I’d been trying so very hard to make my home.
“Why tell me all of this?” I asked. “Why come here now?”
Eli was quiet for long enough that I wasn’t sure he’d answer. Then, in a voice just above a whisper, he repeated, “Do I really need to tell you?”
No, I supposed not.
And I was too much of a coward to say that I wished he would.
Chapter 23
As I watched Eli climb into his carriage and disappear down the road, I told myself as sternly as I could manage that now was not the time to go catching feelings for a handsome Demon with a devilish smile.
