“Well, this is lucky,” Cillian muttered under his breath. “At least I think it is.” Though there was a very good chance that he’d be fighting a bear in a few seconds, and he knew it.
Apparently not yet, however. Silently, the other man grabbed a chair and straddled it, staring at the shifter.
“You’re looking for me, I’m sure,” he said. “Though I’m sure you’re aware that this is a foolish place to do it. There are a lot of Grizzlies who come to this joint who are none too fond of your kind.”
Cillian looked around, noting the number of angry yellow eyes that were staring in his direction. The Underground Club had begun to fill up in the last few minutes, and not with his allies.
“Yeah, I’m aware, thanks,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t afford to care too much, though. They’re not my concern at the moment.”
“No, I suppose they’re not.”
A man at a nearby table rose to his feet and walked over, his eyes narrowed angrily at the Dire Wolf shifter. “What the fuck is ‘e doing ‘ere?” he asked. “We don’t welcome your kind in this place, mate.”
“I’m not your fucking mate,” Cillian replied, “and I’ll remind you that this place is owned by a Wolf shifter, not a fucking Grizzly. So get the fuck out of my face while you still have yours.”
The man lurched forward as if threatening to land a punch. Bertie giggled with glee at the idea of a fight. Cillian, meanwhile, prepared his Wolf for a shift. He wasn’t afraid; taking on a Grizzly was about the equivalent of fighting a poodle. They lacked the power and strength of a Dire Wolf, not to mention the speed.
But the other man—the Grizzly shifter who’d helped him and Sinead—rose to his feet and pressed his hand into the other bear shifter’s chest.
“Not right now,” he growled. “We’re talking.”
Almost immediately, the other man backed down, his eyes losing their animalistic glow. He shot Cillian a final glare and spun around to walk back to his table.
“You seem to have a way with people,” the Dire Wolf shifter said, extending his hand. “Cillian.”
“Phairfax Hardy,” said the man. “They call me Phair. You’re probably wondering why I helped you.”
“Yes, I am. But first I want to know how the hell you got out of Trafalgar Square.”
Phair let out a laugh. He was a good-looking man, particularly when he lost the angry look. “People tend to run when they see a bear. They may yell a lot and throw their weight around, but when you confront them with a big set of fangs, they’re amazingly quick to flee. So eventually they ran. I shifted and slipped into the crowd before the cops showed up.”
“Right then. Well, I’m glad you got away. As for why you helped us…”
Phair leaned in close, speaking quietly to ensure that his words stayed between them. “Because I don’t like what’s happening in this place. I don’t like that the bears came to London waging war, or that it’s led to something far worse. I came to this city looking for a better life than the one I had, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to see it ruined by my own kind.”
“Then we’re on the same page,” Cillian replied.
Phair shook his head. “Yes. It’s a fucking disaster, this. Listen, I don’t care who you are or what your déor is. My loyalty is to shifters, not to humans. I will not let them destroy what we’ve built. The truth is, I wish I could help. I want to do more. But before I can do that, I need to find my strength.”
“What do you mean, find your strength? What more could you do than what you did for us already? Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but the best thing you could do would be to talk to your mates, to help us come to some sort of understanding. If we could find our way to a truce, we’d be much stronger.”
“I’d like to do all of that,” Phair replied. “But trust me—it would be easier if I were more powerful. I could lead them, if they saw something in me that exuded strength.”
Cillian stared at him, the realization of what he was saying unfurling like a sail in his mind.
“I think I understand,” he replied. “I know what it is that you want. Listen—let me buy you a drink and we’ll talk more about this.” He turned to Bertie. “I want you to stay too, Bert. Your input is valuable.”
“Good,” said Bertie, who rose to her feet, picked up her chair and slammed it down between the two men. She sat down, turned to look at one and then the other, and said, “So, who’s buying me a drink?”
18
By the time Brigg and Sinead arrived at home it was five p.m.
Getting out of London had taken ages. The entire city had become a sea of emergency vehicles trying to make their way from A to B, of pedestrians hurrying about, frantically trying to figure out if their city was an official war zone yet.
Sinead had watched the scene with a sort of fascinated nausea. It was her home that was tearing itself in half. The righteous and the enraged, going at one another’s throats for no other reason than because they loved a conflict. In all likelihood, neither of them really cared much about the shifters’ plight; they just wanted to fight. To get angry, to lash out.
And they called shifters animals.
She was relieved when they pulled into the long driveway of Brigg’s peaceful home, and even more relieved to step over the threshold into the safe haven, away from the madness.
“Listen,” Brigg said as he led the way into the kitchen, “I know you’re tired. I’ll fix us some dinner, then we can go our separate ways. I need to draft up a bogus report to send to Collins. He needs to think everything is going well here, and I don’t want him getting wind of the fact that we were downtown. If he hears about the incident with the Grizzly, he’ll wonder why I didn’t bring him in.”
“Right,” said Sinead as she watched him open the fridge and rifle around for food. “Of course.” That ugly feeling of empty disappointment was hitting her again, the same one that had assaulted her insides when Cillian had taken his leave. Some part of her had hoped that she could spend the evening with Brigg. Talk. Perhaps they could even sit close together on the couch. She needed his warmth right now.
The problem was that she didn’t know how to ask for it.
Irony of ironies, she thought, to want so badly to be with him after I pushed Cillian away like that. After swearing up and down to myself that I don’t want to be tied down, I’m upset because Brigg doesn’t want me by his side.
Oh, God. I’m a psycho.
After a lifetime spent wanting to be on her own, it did seem fairly bonkers to suddenly want anyone around her twenty-four hours a day; particularly two men whom she’d just met. But she hadn’t just met them. Not really. She knew as well as anyone that the concept of time was all but irrelevant to shifters. A second spent staring into one another’s eyes, reading one another’s inner animals, was sometimes enough for a bond to form. Ten seconds spent inhaling a scent, an hour of conversation.
Shifters were not human. They didn’t need months of archaic courting practices to know what was supposed to happen. Theirs was a silent mating dance, initiated with a glance, with the slightest touch of a fingertip. It was their inner animals taking control.
Her mother had once told her about meeting her father, about how she’d fallen in love with him immediately. “Shifters,” she’d said, “are different. Our animals know. When we meet our mate, we can feel it in the depths of our souls. It’s up to our human sides to learn to trust our déors, because our déors never lie.”
Sinead had always laughed cynically at the concept of love at first sight, but now she’d begun to believe in the possibility. It wasn’t that she necessarily loved Brigg or Cillian, but she’d definitely been cursed with a serious case of lust.
Brigg prepared a quick stir fry, which he brought her in the living room. Sinead realized as she registered his presence that she’d been staring into space, trying and failing to analyze her feelings for the two men. Her feelings about being in this house, about being so close to Brigg, yet so far f
rom him.
Maybe what she needed was to spend some time with her Lioness.
But maybe it was someone else she should be with.
“For you, Lioness,” he said softly.
She looked up at him, her heart leaping when their eyes made contact. He was so delicious, so fucking edible. It was no wonder she craved him as much as she craved Cillian.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the plate from his hand. Not entirely by accident, her fingers grazed his own, and for a second she picked up the scent of his arousal in the air. She’d tested him and he’d passed—or had he failed?—with flying colours.
But he didn’t give in to temptation. Didn’t grab her, didn’t throw her onto the floor, tear away her clothes as she wanted him to do.
Instead, he nodded and headed back towards the door.
“I’ll be in my office,” he told her, his voice tight with restraint. Disciplined, sexy, crazy-making man. “Help yourself to anything. Wine, television, whatever you’d like.”
“Okay, thanks,” she called after him even as he disappeared.
She swallowed a lump in her throat as she stared down at her dinner. This was going to be a long, lonely night.
Unless she did something to change that.
19
At eight p.m., Brigg found himself sitting on his bed, staring blankly at a flashing cursor on his laptop’s screen. Tonight had been as inefficient a work session as he’d ever had. His mind had returned time and time again to the sight of Sinead standing in the kitchen, her thin t-shirt hugging the curves of her breasts, her dark eyes staring into his, asking for something that he wasn’t sure she really wanted.
When he’d given her the dinner he’d prepared, she’d teased him with her touch, tested him. Her Lioness wanted his Wolf; of that he was sure. Just as she wanted Cillian’s. But he’d seen her mind when her fingers had grazed him. He knew that her human side was still confused, still not certain that she could or should surrender her heart or her body. She still hadn’t convinced herself that she could trust either man enough to let him in.
He knew where her fear came from. Her life hadn’t been so different from his own, after all. It had been a life of isolation, of pain. When one grew accustomed to the agony of loneliness, somehow staying alone became more appealing than love. Because love could lead to heartbreak, which was an acute, real sort of agony. At least loneliness was just a void, a vast emptiness, waiting to be filled.
Love, if handled poorly, could turn itself into to a cruel, stinging wound, and that was so much worse than nothingness.
For his Wolf, none of it mattered. Emotion wasn’t even a blip on his radar. He’d picked his mate out of pure instinct.
There could be a thousand beautiful women lying in wait for him, but his loyalty existed in a narrow tunnel with only one spot of light at its end. It was his Wolf’s eyes that had explored the lines of Sinead’s lips, her eyes, her shoulders, a thousand times over. His Wolf who had learned the subtleties of her scent. It was his Wolf that craved the bond that they’d begun to establish, who wanted his human half to see it through to its completion.
Sinead was the mate that he wanted. It was a simple mathematical equation, and he’d done the calculus the first moment he’d set eyes on her.
Oh, if she walked out of his life now, his déor would survive. Of course he would. But he would be miserable for a very long time, as though a leg had been amputated and he’d had to learn to walk again. He’d feel the loss acutely, though he wouldn’t entirely understand it.
But it was his human heart that would ache every hour, every minute, for her. It was his human heart that felt as though it could break if he lost her now. Of course, loss was always a risk when one gave away one’s soul.
He was mulling over his predicament when a soft knock sounded at his door.
“Come in,” he said absentmindedly, setting his laptop aside. He hadn’t focused on the screen in what felt like hours, anyhow. It was a relief to have an excuse to stop pretending to work.
The door creaked open slowly and Sinead stepped in, dressed in nothing but a white silk bathrobe. Its slick material showed everything, the curve of her breasts, the peaks of her hard nipples, the roundness of her hips. Brigg swallowed hard when he saw her. He knew her well enough to understand that she wouldn’t wander into his bedroom dressed this way, unless she wanted something.
She slipped over to the bed and sat down on its edge, her eyes focused on her fingers, which were intertwining nervously.
“What’s going on?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from betraying his arousal. “Is everything all right?”
She shook her head. No, of course everything was not all right. He knew it as well as she did.
“Sinead,” he began. “Listen…”
“Brigg,” she interrupted, turning to face him. He knew that if he put a hand on her, he would feel her sadness. He could even feel it in the air around him, see it deep in her eyes. Something was troubling her. Perhaps, like him, she was reluctant to be on her own tonight.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m feeling fine,” she said, but her eyes told him another story.
“You’re not. Tell me. What can I do for you? How can I help?” A normal man would have reached for her, taken her hand, tried to comfort her. But he didn’t. As always, he was cold, distant. He could only hope that she understood why.
After a moment she reached for him but he recoiled, pulling away as though from the sting of a snake’s bite. Perhaps she could sense his reluctance.
“Brigg,” she said softly. “Won’t you tell me what made you like this?”
“Made me like what?” he asked. Stupid question. He knew perfectly well what she meant.
“Come, you know about me now. I told you and Cillian about my past, but you’ve told me nothing about yours. I just want to understand you. I…want to be closer to you.”
Surrendering, he reached a hand for her. As soon as she took it, he felt the jolt of darkness that he’d known was residing inside her. Pain, loneliness. Isolation.
He could make it better. He could help, if he told her the truth.
“What hurt me,” he began, “is a very long story.”
“We have all the time in the world,” said Sinead. “It would seem, in fact, that we’re sort of stuck here together. I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.”
Brigg grimaced. “I don’t feel stuck,” he said. “I feel fortunate to be here with you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she replied.
“I know.” Brigg pulled his eyes towards the mirror on the opposite side of the room, staring at the reflection of the window. The night had grown dark and windy, and it seemed to suit his mood perfectly. He braced himself. “My parents were killed when I was very young,” he said. “An automobile accident, as I understand it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Sinead breathed. She sounded surprised, but of course she was. This was the first time she’d learned a single thing about him.
“Thank you. I never knew them,” Brigg replied. “So I suppose in a way I didn’t miss them. I did, however, miss out on having shifters for parents. I had no one to teach me what I was. In that regard, I suppose my childhood wasn’t too different from your own.”
Sinead nodded. “I knew what I was, at least,” she said.
“Yes, of course.” Brigg looked around at the room surrounding them. “You may wonder about this house. How I acquired it, that sort of thing. Given my lack of family, it probably seems surprising that I would have come into such wealth.”
“I just assumed that you’d inherited it.”
He shook his head. “Not from my parents. This house belonged to a very kind human couple. I inherited it from them.”
“What? I mean, how did you end up living here?”
“When I was a child, I found myself on my own,” Brigg began. “I was alone when I discovered the death of my parents. I suppose that if anyone had known
about me, they would have put me into an orphanage straight away. But I was wily and evasive, and I ended up living on the streets for some time. I learned to panhandle, to read people’s faces. I knew how to manipulate, how to charm. It was some time before I realized that it was the creature inside me that made me so adept at reading others’ minds and emotions. My Dire Wolf has made me too good at it, in fact.”
“What do you mean? I thought…” asked Sinead. Almost immediately, her expression shifted, telling Brigg that she’d figured something out. “So, that’s why you don’t touch people,” she said. “It’s why you avoid touching me. You’re afraid of intruding.”
He nodded and continued his story. “I was taken by some humans when I was still quite young, and put in a home—an orphanage of sorts, though it was run horribly, by cruel people. They beat the children, starved us. I realize that it sounds like something out of a Dickens novel, and I suppose it was—minus the small fact that I’m a shifter. I was in the home from the age of seven until my first shift occurred, when I was ten.”
Sinead squeezed his hand. He could feel her fear inside his mind, her hesitation to let him continue. Some part of her wanted answers, but another part didn’t want to know what he’d been through. Oh, yes, she could imagine where this was going, but the thought of it horrified her. A child alone, learning for the first time about his déor, was an all too familiar memory. A trauma.
“Yes,” he said, reading her as though the words were written on her face, “it was as bad as you think. Needless to say, without my parents to guide me, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know that shifters existed, that it was possible for an animal to tear his way out of my body. It was as terrifying as you could imagine.” He stared into her eyes, more concerned for her welfare than for his own. “You all right?” he asked.
She nodded. Her hand was holding his so hard that she would likely have broken a few fingers if he hadn’t had the strong skeleton of a shifter.
Dire Wolves of London Page 11
