by S. M. Reine
The bedroom was so fancy that it seemed to belong in a museum, although the rumpled bed had obviously been used.
A woman stood by a full-length mirror, suitcase open at her feet, and beamed at Deirdre.
“What’s going on?” Deirdre asked, edging over to sit directly in the sunbeam. Her whole body was trembling with cold.
“Sorry to have you brought all the way here,” the woman said. “I really wanted a chance to speak with you, but my schedule was too tight to fly to Quebec.”
Deirdre wetted her lips with her tongue. “Where am I?”
“This is the White House.” She turned back to the mirror, smoothing her hands over her suit jacket. She didn’t seem to like what she saw. She fluffed up her hair and picked at her eye makeup with a fingernail. “What do you think? How do I look?” The woman faced Deirdre, arms spread wide.
She looked fine. The cream skirt suit did favors for the peach undertones in her skin. She looked professional, mature, almost matronly. In fact, there was something very motherly about the woman. Like she could have been swapped out with any of the foster parents Deirdre had lived with through the years.
“I thought the White House was destroyed,” Deirdre said.
“Parts didn’t come back after Genesis, but some areas are fine. They’ll have the West Wing restored next autumn.” The woman dropped her arms. “I’m sorry, I should probably introduce myself. I’m—”
“Rylie Gresham,” Deirdre interrupted.
Now that she’d had a moment to clear her head, she recognized the werewolf Alpha. Rylie Gresham was known for avoiding public appearances, but she’d held a few press conferences over the years, and every shifter watched them.
If the gaean species—like shapeshifters and the sidhe—had a president, it would have been Rylie Gresham.
She was responsible for the social programs benefiting victims of Genesis. Everyone who had lost something when the world ended a decade earlier had been given jobs, homes, and healthcare because of Rylie Gresham. The dozens of group homes Deirdre had suffered in as a child had also been established by this woman.
Deirdre wasn’t sure if she was supposed to bow, kiss her ring, or punch her in the face.
Her ankles felt better, so Deirdre settled for standing up. “It’s an honor to meet you, Ms. Gresham.” The words felt awkward coming but of her mouth, but it seemed like the right thing to say. Unless the title was wrong? “Um, Alpha Gresham?”
“Rylie. Just Rylie. Thanks.” Her smile was tolerant, as though she dealt with people fumbling over formalities every day. “And you’re Deirdre Tombs. How do you feel? Did you finish healing?”
“I think so.” Deirdre fingered the back of her head. She remembered Burgh smashing her into the roof hard enough that something had cracked, but there was no injury now.
“You had my guy worried. He thought you weren’t going to make it. I’m glad to see that wasn’t the case.”
Mention of her “guy” made Deirdre take a second look around the bedroom. It seemed wrong that someone like Rylie Gresham would meet a stranger without guards.
Of course, Rylie was capable of transforming into a massive, beastly wolf within heartbeats, so she was probably her own best protection.
“So…what can I do for you?” Deirdre asked.
Rylie slapped her forehead. “Right. Okay. Where did I put that?” She dug through her suitcase and came up with a laptop. She set it on the desk underneath a portrait of President Carter. “I’m going to show you a recording of what you experienced in Montreal. Do you mind?”
Deirdre blinked. “Uh…I guess not.”
“Great.” Rylie opened a video file on her laptop and clicked “play.”
The video had been taken from a security camera. Deirdre watched herself enter from the right side of the frame—a girl wearing a peacoat, jeans, and combat boots, with all of her straightened black hair hidden by the hood. Her posture made it obvious that she hated the rain. Deirdre hadn’t realized she projected her misery so obviously.
As she watched, the broad-shouldered man stopped her in the middle of the sidewalk and grabbed her arms. The camera didn’t show his face. But there were a lot of little details that Deirdre hadn’t noticed on the street that she now saw in the video. The backs of his hands were hairy. There was a tattoo on the side of his neck, something inky-dark and complex, but the camera’s resolution was too low to show it. He also had the telltale bulge of a firearm at the small of his back, barely concealed by a jacket.
In the video, the man spoke to Deirdre, then moved on.
Rylie stopped the playback.
“Is that all you wanted me to watch?” Deirdre asked.
“We don’t need to review the fight,” Rylie said. “I just want to know what Everton Stark said to you.”
“Who’s Everton Stark?”
Rylie plucked at the hem of her skirt, then smoothed it over her thighs again. The leader of the preternatural world was awfully fidgety. “He’s a threat. A significant threat. It’s important that you tell me what he said, Deirdre.”
“He told me to kill them,” Deirdre said. “He wanted me to kill ‘all of them.’ I don’t know who he was talking about.”
“Did you do it?” Rylie asked. “Did you kill anyone?”
Deirdre folded her arms tightly over her chest. “No.”
“I understand that you work for someone named…” The Alpha grabbed a report printed on White House stationary. “Gutterman? Is that right?”
“Yeah, Gutterman.”
“He’s a nightmare demon. Did you know that?”
As if Deirdre could have missed the way that her skin crawled every time he entered the room. It wasn’t just because he was a disgusting person. That was his power. An aura of terror followed Gutterman everywhere he went. “I know,” she said.
“He has a lengthy record with the Office of Preternatural Affairs. He’s flaunted the law since well before Genesis.” Rylie’s eyebrows knitted with concern. “Gutterman is a murderer.”
It was probably best if Deirdre didn’t admit that she knew that. “I’m not a killer. I repossess things when Gutterman’s debtors don’t pay their dues. That’s all. I’m good at sneaking around.”
“I saw your attempt at escaping the werewolf,” Rylie said. “You’re really good.”
“Thank you?”
The Alpha clasped her hands together. Her eyes were bright and the corners of her mouth were lifted in a smile. “I believe that you didn’t kill anyone. In fact, you drew Colin Burgh’s attention away from the people he was hurting, led him somewhere isolated, and put your life on the line trying to stop him.”
“Yeah, well, he would have killed me if I hadn’t,” Deirdre said.
“You didn’t have to fight him. He was distracted.”
Annoyance crept through Deirdre. “He was killing people. What’s the problem?”
“You’re not a problem at all,” Rylie said. “In fact, you might be the solution to my problems. I’d like to offer you a new job. It will require you to break your ties with Gutterman, leave your home, and join me at the shifter sanctuary. Are you interested?”
Leave Gutterman, who had probably tried to kill her? Get a job that didn’t involve repossessing cars from lowlifes? Live somewhere that it didn’t rain three hundred days out of the year?
Was she interested?
But Deirdre’s moment of excitement shriveled. She clenched her fists. “I’m not eligible for sanctuary residency.”
Ten years earlier, Genesis had destroyed the world. Most people had come back to life afterward—but many of the survivors came back different.
People who had once been human had woken up as sidhe, shapeshifters, and a hundred other strange creatures. Deirdre was one of those who had been turned into a shifter. She passed all the tests that qualified her as a shapeshifter, anyway—the rapid healing, improved reflexes, and aversion to silver.
But she couldn’t shift shapes. Where most people turned furry
every full and new moon, Deirdre stayed human. And she didn’t have animal instincts, either.
Nobody knew what Deirdre was supposed to be.
Because her breed was a giant question mark, she hadn’t been allowed to live with the orphaned shifter children at the sanctuary. She was considered too dangerous.
“I know that you don’t shift,” Rylie said gently. “But that’s okay. I’ll name you my Omega. You’ll be in my inner circle—practically a member of my family.” She took Deirdre’s hands. Rylie’s blood was heated by the power of her inner wolf, making her skin warmer than sunshine.
It wouldn’t be the first time that Deirdre had been called Omega. Various foster siblings had gifted it to her as nickname, taunting her for the weakness.
An Omega was the lowest of the low, no better than the dirt underneath a werewolf’s paws.
Those momentary fantasies of being liberated from her life in Quebec vanished all too quickly, leaving a hollow, bitter core within Deirdre’s heart. It was a familiar sensation. It was the way she had felt every time she needed to be moved to a new family, a new boarding school, a new orphanage.
It was the sensation of painful inevitability.
“No,” Deirdre said. “I’m not interested.”
She would never allow herself to be some pack’s Omega.
Rylie dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, scraping lines into the lipstick. “Will you think about it? Please? I could really use someone like you.”
“I’d like to go home,” Deirdre said.
Rylie sighed. She plucked a tube of lipstick off the desk and reapplied it. “I’ll have my guy take you back as soon as the press conference is over. Ten minutes. Okay?”
Deirdre nodded mutely. Her stomach knotted in on itself, twisting with immediate regret. She ignored the sick burn of shame.
Better an outcast than Omega.
When Deirdre opened the bedroom door to leave, she was greeted by hands shoving her aside, a clamor of unfamiliar voices, and so much motion that she didn’t know where to focus.
Everyone outside Rylie’s room wore business suits, so Deirdre felt trashy in her t-shirt and jeans. If she’d known that she was going to be knocked out, dragged across the border to the White House, and seen alongside an important politician, she would have dressed better.
People closed in to speak to Rylie. There were a few people with huge cameras, armed guards, a woman with a tablet rattling off a list—“express your sympathies, reassure people that moon sickness isn’t contagious or permanent, then move on to what we plan to do”—and some interns in pack-branded t-shirts that said “Our Sanctuary, Your Safety.”
The crowd was overwhelming, too much for Deirdre’s senses. She tried to retreat into the bedroom.
“Move it,” someone said, barring her entry. He was short for a man, about on eye level with Deirdre, and built stocky. His white skin had olive undertones and his head was shaved. His rain slicker didn’t match the sunny weather in Washington, DC.
Deirdre knew a shifter when she saw one. She squared her shoulders and stood tall, refusing to show submission. “Let me past.”
He didn’t look intimidated. He spoke to Rylie over Deirdre’s shoulder. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
Rylie looked like she’d forgotten about Deirdre during all the commotion. “Oh, sorry. Deirdre Tombs, this is Gage Cicerone. He’ll take you home after the press conference.” She slapped Gage lightly on the shoulder. “Be nice to Deirdre, okay?”
“Who, me? I’m always nice,” Gage said.
Rylie rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Don’t let him give you trouble, Deirdre. He’s wonderful once you get to know him.”
“Alpha! Over here!” shouted a White House staffer, flapping a folder above his head so that he could be seen over the crowd.
“Sorry, have to run.” Rylie pecked Gage’s cheek and then disappeared into the throng, tailed by interns trying to brief her on the upcoming speech.
Where the Alpha went, the crowd followed. It only took five seconds for the hall to empty.
Deirdre was alone with Gage Cicerone—as alone as they could be at the White House. There were still people clustered around the door through which Rylie had disappeared.
Her gaze skimmed from his beat-up shoes to his scruffy jaw. “Who are you, exactly?” Deirdre asked. “My handler?”
“I’m the guy who saved your life,” Gage said.
She gave him a second look. He looked like any shifter she might have known in the group homes: tough with way too much attitude. And an apparent inability to shave his face properly. She never would have guessed that he could have taken down the raging beast that had almost killed Deirdre.
“What happened to Colin Burgh?” she asked.
“He’s dead.”
“Good,” Deirdre said. “I’ve never seen a guy moon-sick to that degree.”
“And you never will. Come on, this way. We can watch Rylie’s press conference.”
He dragged Deirdre around a side hallway where fewer staffers were gathered. A guard wearing a black suit and an earpiece stood beside a door that had been propped open.
Through the door, Deirdre could see the immense crowd waiting to hear Rylie speak. The walls were draped with banners in the colors of the werewolf faction: gold and blue. An enlarged portrait of Rylie, looking regal and serene, hung on either side of the stage. Her appearances were so rare that it was more than a simple press conference. It was an event.
The sheer size of the auditorium awed Deirdre. It must have been able to fit thousands, and every seat was packed.
When Rylie stepped onto the stage, she wasn’t the fidgety, unassuming woman that Deirdre had met in that bedroom. She was straight-backed, confident, and proud. A leader of wolves, just like on the banners bordering the stage.
A familiar sense of grief rolled through Deirdre at the sight of Rylie.
The last time Deirdre had watched one of the Alpha’s public speeches, it had been two years after Genesis. She had been living in a group home and there hadn’t been anything else to do. The pain of everything Deirdre lost had still been so fresh. Now it was a wound that had scabbed, but not healed, aching just under the surface.
She turned from the door. Gage’s eyes weren’t on Rylie. He was watching Deirdre with a curious expression.
“What’s your problem?” she asked.
“You look better now that you’re awake,” he said. “What are you?”
Deirdre’s spine stiffened. “I’m an Omega. Haven’t you heard?”
“Funny. But really, what are you?”
“What are you? I assume you must be a wolf if you’re in Rylie’s inner circle.” Wolves were the most common breed of shifter. Before Genesis, they had been the only breed of shifter.
“Assume away,” Gage said. “I’m just wondering how you resisted Stark.”
That was the name that Rylie had used to identify the creepy guy Deirdre met on the street. “Guess I just wasn’t in a ‘kill them all’ type mood.”
He leaned in too close to stare at Deirdre. She stared back without yielding an inch.
“Weird,” he muttered.
He’d be the one calling her Omega next.
She didn’t like this line of conversation. Or any line of conversation focused on her, for that matter. “So are you, like, Rylie’s boyfriend or something?” Deirdre asked. “Beta consort? Mate?”
Gage barked a laugh. “She’s practically my mom. I’ve lived with her since Genesis, along with all the other kids.” That meant that he had gotten to spend his youth at the sanctuary. Not sent to boarding schools for wayward gaean children.
Deirdre hated him immediately. She hated his smile, the way that Rylie had kissed him, and how he said the word “mom” without any hint of pain in his voice.
Rylie’s voice echoed throughout the auditorium now.
Deirdre didn’t stick around to watch the press conference.
—III—
By the time Deirdre got home, they were still airing the press conference on every channel. It had been on the radio in Rylie’s private jet. It played in the cab on Deirdre’s drive back from the airport. And her roommate had it on TV when she walked through the front door.
“Where have you been?” Jolene asked. She lounged on the couch upside down, feet propped up on the back, russet braids draped across the floor. She tossed another piece of popcorn into her mouth and crunched it loudly.
Deirdre dropped the shredded remnants of her peacoat on the side table. “I was at Rylie Gresham’s press conference in Washington.”
“Crazy, huh? A cure for moon sickness. That’d be something.” Jolene fumbled blindly for the remote on the couch. It was out of her reach. “So you were working late, huh? What’d Gutterman have you repo this time?”
“My sanity,” Deirdre muttered.
She took the Ruger out of her pocket and checked the magazine. Only the three iron bullets remained. She was surprised that Gage, who had returned both the jacket and the gun, had let her keep the illegal ammunition. Iron was the only surefire way to kill the sidhe, after all.
Stuffing the gun into the belt at the small of her back, Deirdre snagged the remote and flipped the channel.
“Hey, bitch!” Jolene protested. “They were about to show the press conference again!”
“I know.” Deirdre wasn’t sure which channel she had switched to, but it was showing commercials, which was an inoffensive alternative to the news.
She took the remote into the kitchen, which was really just the half of the living room with linoleum. All the appliances were pre-Genesis by at least a decade or two. The refrigerator was a sickly shade of pink and the microwave had a dent in the door, probably from getting dinged by debris during the end of the world. Deirdre and Jolene were lucky to have it. Some public housing didn’t have a microwave at all.
“Rylie Gresham announced that she’s going to open the sanctuary for a town hall meeting,” Jolene said. “Try to get feedback from the community. About time! You know it’s been four years since the Alpha made a public appearance?” She drummed her heels on the back of the couch. “I was still at St. Joseph’s last time she came on. We did a whole unit on her biography in history class because of it. Where were you?”
