by Laina Kenney
After a few hours in the company of the drug dealers who had targeted her, Emma had been in bad shape. The thought of the fading marks on her slender arms and torso made his fangs drop again. He knew his eyes were glowing with anger, but it couldn’t be helped.
Even after two full months had passed, his wolf was still enraged, and the man wasn’t much better off.
As a warrior, he had seen many heinous things, had hunted both vulfen rogues and human hunters, but the knowledge that criminals had put their filthy hands on his mate, touched something dark and lethal in his nature, and the beast roared within the chains of his control.
He had known instantly that she was his.
Who but a mate could arouse such a feral response in a man who prided himself on his iron control?
He ran a claw-tipped hand through his unruly black hair. He had just found his calm, damn it, and between moments of slashing rage and an instant hard-on every time his mate smiled, calm had been in short supply for weeks.
She was so small, so fragile. Human. But she was his mate. And still she had no idea.
Muscles hard as iron, still he had somehow found the gentleness to cradle her against his pounding heart, and even now her scent seemed to linger in his mind like a siren’s call. She had marked him on the inside, deeper than any brand, though she knew it not. He would follow her scent anywhere, could find her anywhere she chose to go.
He could feel her faint energy signature within him even now, and he held to that fragile connection. He cherished the delicate thread that linked the female to him with a tenderness that was as foreign as it was powerful.
Since the death of his mother when he was a teen, he had lived the strict life of a warrior with his father, uncles, and brothers. He had thought the gentle part of him long dead if he had thought of it at all, but his mate awakened things in him better left alone.
Emma.
Even her name was soft, beautifully female.
“I’ve got it bad,” he muttered, and stepped out of the shadows as his younger brother approached.
“Kuhr.” Tiber nodded in greeting.
“Tiber.”
Kuhr knew his brother, knew what was coming.
“Kuhr, I saw your face,” Tiber said, “and your fangs. Your wolf has been so strong in the past weeks.” A thread of some indefinable emotion colored his voice. “Is she?”
What was she to him? She was everything to him. Kuhr felt the truth of it wash through him, bringing a momentary sense of effervescent lightness he had never expected. He almost didn’t recognize the emotion as joy.
She was strength and beauty and courage, everything a warrior silently dreamed of in the darkness before the light of dawn. And her kindness to her neighbors, the old woman and the children who lived nearby, showed him day after day that she was a caring part of her little community. No wonder neighbors had gathered her mail and tended her little garden when she was in the hospital. No wonder the two little boys next door had colored posters for her return home. She was worthy of love, and she was loved.
“She is my mate.”
Tiber’s quick grin flashed in the darkness.
“I knew it. I knew from your face, your eyes as you marked the face of each man that night that you would bathe in the blood of her tormentors.”
Kuhr just looked at his younger brother. Tiber would understand, any vulfen male would, if he chose just such a course. If he bayed at the moon and pursued blood vengeance, no vulfen male would gainsay him. Indeed, many would hunt by his side. But his mate needed him close, and pursuit was not the best course in any case.
He searched for the words, but he could not explain the thread of knowledge inside him that insisted the men who had attacked his vulnerable mate would come after her again. It was a knowing beyond any evidence.
“A patient hunter lets his prey choose the path,” was all Kuhr said. It was a basic lesson passed down from one generation of vulfen warriors to the next.
After a moment, Tiber nodded, and Kuhr could see the knowledge in his brother’s eyes. For all his relative youth, Tiber was a fine warrior in his own right.
“You believe they will come back here to try to take your mate again,” Tiber said, “and so you wait.”
“Exactly.”
“After the trap is sprung, are you bringing her home?”
Kuhr thought of his family home, the large estate outside of Boston near the Sidarov enclave. His family had always been loyal to the Sidarov family, always served the Alpha of their people, but the Valcovs had money and power of their own. He would like to see his little mate safe in his family home, surrounded by the men of his family, strong warriors who would always see to her protection above all else.
On second thought, perhaps not.
“She is unclaimed,” Kuhr said.
Tiber nodded. “But when she is?”
Kuhr thought of all the things that could go wrong and felt his muscles tense as his wolf ascended to surge against his control.
He had no knowledge of what her life had been like prior, but she had been attacked, and he was ten times stronger, more frightening to any sensible person, than any of the thin, drugged-out men who had tormented his fragile mate.
But he had seen her bravery, her defiance in the face of torture, and it gave him hope. If the sight of his strong features and tough rangy body didn’t scare her away, they might have a chance together.
Kuhr knew he was a fighter through and through, not any woman’s idea of the perfect lover, but for her he would be happy to learn. His blood heated in his veins, pumping down to stiffen his unruly cock. He was more than ready to learn every little thing that would please his pretty mate, but it could be a long campaign to let her heal and win her gentle heart.
“We’ll see,” was all he said.
Chapter 8
“I’ve been worried. I wanted to talk to you about Emma,” John said in a low tone.
His partner Harden hovered near the doorway of the busy cafeteria down at cop central, just out of earshot of a normal human. Kuhr would have known where he was by scent alone, burnt coffee, egg salad sandwiches, and sweat. The chipped paint on the door frame, and the uniforms crowded on bench seats to eat lukewarm soup and drink scalding coffee only added to the picture of a hard-working cop shop.
Kuhr looked into John’s eyes and felt his hackles rise. He had known when John called him to meet for a bite that it wasn’t going to be a social call. John had seen much of evil as a Fox shifter and as a Boston cop. He was not a man who worried for nothing.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the men who attacked Emma before chose to come back and wipe out her testimony by engineering a fatal overdose. She’s the only one who saw all of them together, and drugs are their stock in trade,” John said.
Unspoken was the thought that since they had allowed her to see them all together, they must have intended to kill her all along.
Kuhr’s claws pricked him as the tips emerged, and he tried to keep his temper in check. The thought of her death was unacceptable to him in every way. Though he desperately wanted to draw blood, it would do no good to attack the messenger.
“I hear you,” was all he could manage to say through the wave of rage choking him.
John glanced pointedly at Kuhr’s claws and cleared his throat.
“This is normally the point where I’d say to one of you vulfen bastards “don’t kill them”…but I know she’s your mate.”
“She is my mate, yes.”
“And I can’t pull any more patrols off other duties to watch her round the clock. We’re stretched thin already.”
“I understand.”
John grimaced and plowed ahead. “I want to help you, but I just don’t have the manpower. Or the budget. Fuck, it always comes down to the shitty budget.”
“I understand,” Kuhr said again. “I have the Cadre.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was hoping. Getting pretty bad on the streets when a cop has to rely on a bunch of wolfie assassins t
o clean up the fucking town. Letting you elitist bastards loose on Boston is my personal nightmare,” John groused, but Kuhr could hear the relief in his tone.
Kuhr did understand it all. John was a fox, but he was alpha, a protector as much as any vulfen warrior, and his instincts would demand that he stand up to protect Emma, even if he did it on his own time. But there was no need.
Kuhr’s Cadre brothers would step up to help him, as he had helped them in the past and would in the future.
John still looked so uncomfortable that Kuhr roused himself to clap his friend on the shoulder.
“Do not worry, my friend,” Kuhr said. “We are the elite, and we get the job done whatever the cost. If Emma is threatened again, the Cadre will take care of this problem once and for all.”
John snorted.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m worried about. I’d like to shine the spotlight on the mayor’s office, and Emma has implicated his right-hand man in this whole fiasco. But if he just up and disappears, how will I drag him into interview and squeeze information out of him?”
Harden walked over to them, confirming Kuhr’s suspicion that the other cop could hear everything that they had said. No human could have ears that good. What species was Harden, anyway?
“John—” Harden began.
“And a few others around here. I’m not the only one—” John broke in, indicating the busy Boston Police cafeteria.
“Would like to get the mayor into a holding room and grill him about one or two little items of interest, like how he affords all those classic cars on the income he reports—”
“And why the biggest fucking drug dealers in the city are working out of his office like they own it. Just a few minor things,” John added.
Two other cops at a nearby table seemed to be going about their own business, but Kuhr noticed that their conversation stopped as soon as Harden mentioned the mayor.
It was suddenly very quiet for such a busy place.
Kuhr shrugged. Ultimately, he didn’t care about whether or not John got his fondest wish of having the mayor and half the city council sweating in a dingy interrogation room. But if it helped to keep Emma safe in the city where they made their home, he would pledge himself to help clean up the city. And he knew with a gut-deep certainty that where he led, his Cadre brothers would follow. He would ask out of courtesy, but he knew that he didn’t have to.
“Thank you, John. I know it isn’t easy for you to ask, but as you have been there for us, we will stand for you.”
Kuhr reached out, and John clasped his forearm in the way of warriors. It was a pledge, and the fox knew it.
If Kuhr expressed a need, the Cadre would be there, and they would stand together. There was no doubt at all.
The only problem he would have then would be to keep the body count down.
Chapter 9
Kuhr halted under the big maple and waited until his brother, Tiber emerged from the deeper shadows.
“Someone is with you tonight,” Kuhr said.
Tiber waved a hand behind him.
“Dakon is patrolling with Ives. They are close.”
Kuhr nodded. “I knew it would not be Brax.”
Tiber gave a mock shudder.
“Thank the goddess, no. Brax has been pulled off active status and is back in intensive training, this time with the Cadre Seconds. He started two days ago, and the little Queen tells me he was complaining within the hour. I have never seen Ives so relieved as when he saw Dakon’s name beside his as a trainee. The man was pathetically grateful.”
Kuhr felt a smile pulling at his mouth. He could sympathize with Ives. For a warrior whose strength and control was becoming legendary in his own time, as Ives was, to be stuck training a spoiled boy like Brax would be beyond frustrating.
And training with the Cadre Seconds, two of the most powerful and experienced vulfen warriors in the Russian Clans, was a fitting punishment for the arrogant young Brax.
“Good. He might learn something from Valeri and Miros.”
Tiber pursed his lips.
“Yes, if he lives.”
Kuhr studied his brother’s expression and remembered his own training days with the Alpha and the rest of the Sidarov warriors.
“They will not harm him.”
“Not if he stops with the whining and saves his breath for the training course. Otherwise, the little Queen will harm him herself. She does not trust him, and who could blame her. Her life and that of her young son are at risk if he screws up again, and she is fierce in defense of her young. As she should be. If Brax doesn’t shape up, he will be out of the running, and the young Sidarov and Valcov cousins will take the place he covets.”
Kuhr leaned his back against the rough bark of the old pine and crossed his arms over his chest.
“It might be for the best,” he mused. “The boy is strong, and fast, but he is not a warrior born. He does not possess the instinct.”
“I know.” Tiber took up a relaxed stance. “Do you ever think that perhaps we are too hard on Brax, and on all the young ones?”
“No,” Kuhr said instantly. “If he faced what we had faced at his age, he would already be in the ground.”
Tiber swore and looked away, but he did not argue the point. There was no argument to be made.
Kuhr reached out and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “In our teen years, we stood as warriors and battled for the lives of our people. You were younger than Brax is now when you were forced to make your first kill to save a child of our people, and no one accused you of whining about your duty.”
“No,” Tiber said quietly. “But it took something from me.”
Kuhr squeezed his brother’s shoulder and let go. “We give much to our people, sacrificing even our souls. But I have found my soul again, and her name is Emma. She shows me the light, the beauty that I had almost forgotten could exist in the world.”
Tiber looked over to the house where the porch light was softly glowing.
“She is a beauty,” he said, and the reverence in his voice touched Kuhr deeply.
“Yes. And a target.”
Tiber stilled. “You believe they will come back here to try to take her again. Your every action shouts that certainty.”
Kuhr looked toward the house where a single light was burning.
“They were interrupted. And the man who was laughing praised her ‘freshness’ and called her his artwork.” His voice came out between clenched teeth.
“I see the direction of your thoughts.”
“That man is the biggest danger to my Emma. His focus is fixed on her, and he will want to finish his work.”
The wind rustled through the leaves of the maple tree. Tiber moved closer and spoke in a low tone.
“I know that one of the four men who were here that night is already dead. The police are still searching for him. They do not know, but I saw some tracks and followed a scent I recognized.” He paused, but Kuhr did not confirm or deny. “I stand beside you, brother. If you have a need, do not be too proud to call on me.”
Gratitude flooded him and Kuhr reached out and clasped his brother’s arm in the warrior’s hold.
“I thank you.”
Tiber’s grin flashed.
“I know you would do the same.”
There was no need to say more. He and his brother were on the same page, as usual.
“I almost forgot,” Kuhr said, and pulled out a paper bag with several freshly baked cookies. “Emma sent these for my partner. She knows you are out here guarding her, and she thought you might be hungry.”
Tiber opened the bag and inhaled. A slow smile crossed his face.
“She is an angel, your mate.”
Chapter 10
“I’m sorry, Iselle. I know it means a lot to you, but I just can’t.”
Emma listened to her friend on the phone for another minute, then interrupted.
“Iselle—Iselle, I can’t do it. I’m exhausted and grumpy and the burn marks
are still bright pink all over my arm. I look like hell, and I don’t want to go to a party.”
Emma sighed when the only response from her friend was silence. She softened her tone and tried again.
“I’m sorry, Iselle. Yes, I love parties, and I appreciate the invitation, but I just don’t feel like it. A month from now, maybe I’ll have a different answer for you. Just not tonight.”
Emma smiled when Iselle turned away from the phone to relay her answer to Balke.
“You know I can hear you,” Emma teased and laughed a little when Iselle’s response began with a loud raspberry.
“Yes, if you invite me out again I have to go…Yes, promise… Okay, love you, too. Bye.”
She hung up the phone, paradoxically feeling better than she had, even though she wasn’t going to the party. That was the best thing about Iselle, she was a true friend and never held a grudge about the small stuff.
Emma looked down at her arms and touched a cautious finger to one of the small round pink marks. It wasn’t painful any longer, not physically. The little marks were fading but still unsightly, and she didn’t want to answer the inevitable questions all night.
Emma dropped into the big blue plush chair and listened. She waited until she heard Iselle and Balke leaving and then peeked out between the curtains to watch them.
Iselle’s dress was gorgeous, a shimmering navy blue that made her skin glow in the soft light of dusk. Emma felt a pang of envy that she tried to squash. She loved parties of all kinds, but she just wasn’t up for it tonight.
And she didn’t want to go without the silent man who she just knew was outside in the growing darkness alone. She couldn’t explain the wordless connection between them, and even though it was so strong, she felt a little crazy believing in it. But it was real.
And when he knocked and walked in the door a moment later, she didn’t even flinch. She knew who it was without having to see him.
“I opened the door,” she said, almost choking on the admission. “That night, I opened the door to them.”
“You opened the door to your attacker because he was known to you. It is a common story.” Kuhr’s tone made it seem reasonable. He sat down on the sofa beside her, not touching any part of her, but she had the strangest feeling that her pain and unease had pulled him indoors.
