by Sierra Dean
“If you think that’ll help.” I knew from the chuckle in his voice he’d been thinking the exact same thing.
Chapter Sixteen
The elevator ride down was silent and tense. I was wedged between Lucas and Desmond, and it created a bizarre flavor combination in my mouth. On Desmond’s right was the blond werewolf who, at only an inch or so taller than me, looked short compared to the other two who were each over six feet. With all the oddness of meeting with Lucas, I’d forgotten his name, but he reintroduced himself as Dominick. He had the carefree smile and glinting eyes of a troublemaker. I liked him instantly.
Desmond had returned to being surly and stared at the elevator doors with a steadfast scowl. From this angle I could see his hair was longer in the front than in the back, and he constantly pushed it out of his eyes. Against my better judgment, I decided the way his eyes squinted in frustration was actually rather attractive. What the hell was wrong with me?
As I contemplated Desmond’s profile, Lucas took my hand in his. I didn’t shake free in spite of the fact that I normally loathed any kind of public display of affection.
It felt odd for me to allow it since we weren’t really a couple. But I couldn’t deny I liked the way my hand felt when it was wrapped inside his large, warm palm.
We exited, not in the lobby but one of the basement levels. The parking garage was lit by scattered fluorescent bulbs, giving it a cold, blue hue in sharp contrast to the warm light of the hotel. The shadows were abundant, providing plenty of ideal locations for people and things to hide themselves. I found myself wishing I’d gone home to get my gun after meeting the Tribunal. Weapons of any kind were forbidden inside the council headquarters. I thought it was unnecessary to ban them considering the vampires themselves basically were weapons.
A familiar black town car was waiting for us. This time Dominick held a door open for me to enter on my own, rather than me being forced into the back. I sat far enough from Lucas for another person to fit between us, looking out the tinted window as we drove into the light-dappled night.
There was a feeling of unease in my gut that had nothing to do with my wolf or what had happened between Lucas and me upstairs. I kept seeing Sig’s face and hearing him say, we would very much like him alive.
I’d like to go on a Dominican cruise and get a tan. I’d like to not wrestle with a monster who threatened to burst out of my skin every full moon. Both of those things seemed about as likely to happen as my capturing Alexandre Peyton alive.
It also brought back the nagging question, what was Peyton doing here in the first place? His vendetta against me was secondary to whatever brought him to New York. Keaty and I had established that last night during our post mortem.
Peyton wouldn’t have crawled out from whatever rock he’d been hiding under unless he had a damn good reason. He was old and smart, and you don’t get to that age without a strong survival instinct. For him to emerge as a known rogue in the city where three of the most powerful vampires in the Eastern U.S. ruled, though? It was more than just bold, it was a declaration of war.
But I still didn’t know why that war was starting. I also wanted to know how high Kill Secret McQueen was on his to-do list.
Lucas, ever the gentleman, allowed me to stew on this as we drove, until he placed his hand on my thigh. “Secret?”
I turned my unfocused gaze from the window to look at him.
“We’re here.”
Here had brought us to the front of a club known as the Chameleon Lounge. Depending on what circles you ran with, it was either the most famous nightspot in New York or you had never heard of it.
The Chameleon Lounge was run by weres for weres, and like the council headquarters, humans did not see the club in its true form. To human eyes the building had become so run down even bums refused to sleep there. To a were, it was a posh and lavish place to see and be seen.
If Lucas was bringing me here on our first date, he must not be too ashamed to be spotted in public with me, because by tomorrow morning every wolf in Manhattan would know we’d been here together.
I got nervous. I’d honestly been expecting us to dine at a nice human restaurant. One of the places he wined and dined models and movie stars to the delight of local gossip seekers. Part of me had hoped to be called a mysterious blonde in the weekend edition of Page Six.
This was serious. Not just to our relationship, either. This meant I was about to flaunt my newly discovered royal status to a room of full-blooded weres. Inside the club the name Secret probably didn’t hold water, but the name McQueen did. And Lucas Rain walking in with a McQueen implied something huge.
Everyone in the club knew more about soul-bonding than I did, so while I might not understand it, the deeper meaning would be evident to them.
I avoided spending time with werewolves because, just as Lucas had the night before, they could smell death on me. He had accepted it as a side effect of my chosen career, but what conclusion would a room of strangers draw? And how long would it be before someone pieced together my association with the vampires and the scent lingering on me?
I gave this courtship until my first full moon with him. When I didn’t change into a wolf, I had no doubt Lucas would be done with me.
There was no way this could work.
I grabbed his arm as he began to exit the car, and he gave me a quizzical look. His blue eyes gleamed in the interior car lights.
“Didn’t you want to go somewhere else? Like Nobu or something like that?”
I knew sushi didn’t appeal to either of us as wolves tended to crave more substantial meals, but I ate out so rarely—blood-bag takeout from Calliope’s alternative-reality Starbucks didn’t count—I said the first restaurant I could think of.
He smiled and patted my hand like I was a nervous child. The gesture was mildly condescending, but I doubted it was intended in that way.
“I know this must feel like I’m throwing you into the deep end right after your first lesson, but trust me”—he emphasized the last words by squeezing my hand—“this is the best way.”
With my stomach planted in my shoes, I let him draw me out of the car. Dominick held the door open and gave me a conspiratorial smile. Though he was a wolf, and just as near in proximity to me as Lucas or Desmond had been, he left no taste in my mouth. It confirmed what I’d thought at the hotel. I didn’t react to other werewolves the way I reacted to those two.
Desmond was waiting by the entrance doors, and when he opened them a wave of warmth and noise swept out into the cool spring evening. Holding my hand, Lucas passed through the opened doors and into the club.
For a few moments my dread kept me from breathing. My lung capacity was substantially greater than that of most girls my size and was the only thing that kept me from turning blue and passing out. One of the many benefits of not being human. I had to admit, in spite of my reservations and complaints about what I was, there were definite perks.
Sadly neither of those perks, vampire nor werewolf, could get me out of this situation.
The unique feeling of being near a fellow werewolf was amplified by the presence of so many being together in one room. The warm, comforting feel that made the beast inside me respond like she was home washed over me, and all the hairs on my body rose with a shudder. It was the most overwhelming and electric sensation I’d ever experienced—standing this close to so many who shared one half of my curious heritage. When I was with vampires there was a cool silence. Being among the wolves was like getting dropped into a nest of fur and live wires.
I wanted to rub my face against the tangible energy in the room.
I also really wanted to be wrapped around Lucas again. Hoo-boy he hadn’t been kidding when he used that deep-end metaphor. I had begun running my hand up and down his arm and had to force myself to stop. I put my free hand in my pocket to keep it from shaking. What was happening to me? One day with the wolves and already my control was slipping. It scared me.
The din in th
e room quieted to dead silence and all eyes were on us.
A beautiful woman with dynamic, curly red hair strode up to us, wearing a skin-tight violet bandage dress that hugged her ample curves more dangerously than a mountain road. Her heels were six inches high, which made her calves look like they were sculpted by razors. In a dress that tight with heels that high, any other woman would be relegated to standing still and looking pretty.
This woman, with her audacious body, approached us in a manner that brought the word slink to mind. She moved with a grace that would make supermodels insane with jealousy.
“Lucas.” Her soft, husky voice turned his name into a delicate purr.
Even I wanted to sleep with her. How could I hope to compare or compete with someone who looked like sex squeezed into human form? Lucas nodded to her and placed his arm possessively around my waist, pulling me in closer. The redhead had cunning green eyes with smoky purple makeup that made them smolder, and now they were focused on me.
“Genevieve,” Lucas said, “this is Secret McQueen.”
I wish I had a photo of the way her perfectly groomed brows shot up. I’d been right in expecting my name would carry weight. It was nice that it had a different meaning here than it did in a vampire bar.
Genevieve eyed me incredulously, then a smile twitched across her red lips.
“Has the wolf king found himself a queen?” The casual, almost teasing manner in which she addressed Lucas was a definite sign she was not a wolf, and therefore not under the thumb of his leadership.
I did not smile back. She made me uneasy in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on, especially when she was looking me up and down like a new menu item. Maybe I didn’t need to worry about her taking Lucas after all. I didn’t like how she said queen either. There was nothing special about her tone, but the word alone gave me a chill. The only queenly title I ever wanted was the one already attached to my last name.
The attention of every wolf in the room was glued on us, awaiting Lucas’s answer to her question.
“Secret and I are soul-bonded,” he announced. The official way in which he said it made it seem like it should be followed by you may now kiss the bride. A murmur spread through the room. “She is a McQueen and has a rightful place as a pack leader. However, as we have only just begun to date, calling her the new queen is a little premature.” He chuckled, and the wolves politely laughed with him.
This was bizarre to say the least.
“I do expect all of you under my rule to treat her with the respect of a princess being courted by your king.” There was no laughter in his tone, though being called a princess out loud certainly made me want to laugh. He was dead serious, and I knew every wolf in the room would respect his wishes.
He looked back to an expectant Genevieve. “The private room, please.”
“Of course.” She led us through the crowded room with such ease she did not so much as brush against anyone else.
I was willing to bet Genevieve always landed on her feet too.
Chapter Seventeen
For dinner we were served plate-sized, blue-rare Kobe beef steaks. They must have each cost more than what a family of five would spend on an average dinner, and they were bloody delicious. Literally. I sat with my eyes closed and sucked the juice from each thick bite of meat. It might not have been as satisfying as fresh, warm blood but my werewolf half was pleased with the offering.
I lingered in the soft red haze that followed a delicious meal, but deep in the pit of my gut my stomach growled for something more. For the time being I would have to ignore that urge and settle for an AB positive nightcap when I got home.
“That was the best steak I have ever eaten.” I paused between each word for emphasis.
Lucas put down his napkin and chuckled. “That barely qualified as a steak. That was still a cow.”
“Then it was the best cow I ever had.”
Desmond, who sat at a table near the door with Dominick, smiled with none of his usual stiffness. The smile was so honest it surprised me, but it dimmed the moment he saw I was looking at him.
I couldn’t understand why he hated me so much. Was my simplicity beneath what he expected from a princess or a queen? I didn’t think the same constraints of propriety applied to werewolf royalty as they did to human royalty. Especially if one considered that the Queen Mum was unlikely to strip off all her clothing on a full moon and run wild with her grandsons. I’d known I was a princess less than twenty-four hours, and no one had really explained to me what the expectations were.
Growing up, the only thing my grandmere had demanded of me was survival. I’d been born in Southern Louisiana, which is about as south as you can get in the States without a peninsula. She had told Elmore only what she’d needed to about me in order to secure my protection from the pack. I don’t know how much he knew, but it was enough that he respected our privacy and made others do the same. When he died, Grandmere knew she could no longer trust our safety so close to the pack. She left her three children, including her teenage son, and we fled the state. In later years, when she explained to me why we had been forced to move, she’d never told me anything about the finer points of how packs were run.
Knowing now that Elmore had been a king and had passed his crown to his barely legal son rather than his eldest daughter—Mercy, my mother—or his middle child, my aunt Savannah, I could see where the unrest would begin.
Grandmere had taken me first to South Carolina, where we remained until I was four, before deciding this was still too close for comfort. Then we left the United States altogether, to a place she felt would be outside pack law. I spent twelve years of my life in the southern part of the Canadian prairies, living on a fifteen-acre parcel in a large, old farmhouse.
One benefit of this upbringing was that unlike the boggy American South, the soil of the Canadian prairie allowed for houses to have real basements. It meant I had a room in which I could escape from the blistering sunlight every day. The land we owned provided me a place to run freely at night, burning off the pent-up energy someone of my unique genetic mix built up.
Raising me had been difficult for my grandmere. She was, however, uniquely capable of doing it. Being the mother of three children who had become wolves, and a powerful witch of some renown, she had knowledge others lacked. A human grandmother, feeding me formula or putting my crib in a light, airy room, would have made mistakes severe enough to kill just by doing what one was supposed to do with a baby.
Because my mother, upon abandoning me, had the foresight to leave a note explaining what had happened to me, Grandmere was able to brace herself for certain things. She’d already been aware that having any sort of silver near me would be disastrous, but that wasn’t an unusual problem for her since she’d had three werewolves come of age in her home.
It was the vampire blood that made things tricky. It meant I could not be exposed to sunlight and also that I lapsed into daytime sleeps that resembled death, complete with lack of breathing or pulse. Then there was the added difficulty of my lycanthropy being activated in infancy. In my youth and adulthood I had intuitively learned how to suppress the need to change forms. I buried the ability so deep within myself I didn’t know if it was possible anymore for me to shift. It was thanks to the calming effects of my vampire blood this suppression was feasible. As long as I was well fed I never felt the need to go furry.
As a baby that sort of control had been impossible.
My grandmere had a very memorable baby photo of me on the mantle of her fireplace. In a crib amid the shredded remains of a sun-yellow jumper and cloth diaper sits a puckish-looking wolf pup, tongue lolling happily, feet much too large for the body. It was only because of this photo I knew I had the ability to change at all. I did not remember the event happening and had no memory of how agonizing the pain must have been for me as a baby.
My grandmere said it only happened monthly from my first birthday up until my second. Before I turned one, the wolf inside wa
s too small to force itself out. After that year the vampire in me learned how to put the wolf on a leash.
She knew, too, I needed blood to survive. Not many babies are given pig or goat’s blood in a bottle. Needless to say my upbringing had been unique. None of it, though, had trained me on how to be a princess.
I had, until now, existed on the razor-thin edge of two worlds, part of both and accepted by neither. I didn’t know how to switch from feeling unwanted to being considered among the ruling class.
“I’d say penny for your thoughts, but I think I’d have to offer you more than a million to get everything that just went through your head.” Lucas was leaning across the table with a tentative smile on his lips, waiting for me to come back down to earth.
“Sorry.” I was embarrassed to have been caught so lost in thought.
“Where’d you just go?”
“I was thinking about my grandmere.” I waited for the confusion that accompanied my French nickname for her, which was something she had insisted upon from her Louisiana upbringing and also something to set her apart from my grandfather’s Irish heritage.
“Is she…?” he hesitated.
“Oh! No. She’s alive and well in Southern Manitoba, probably bitching to herself about the late melt and what it will mean for her peas.” I grinned to myself, picturing her in rubber boots and rolled-up overalls, stomping around in the knee-deep snow and thinking of what type of spell she could use to speed up the melt.
Manitoban winters dragged on for longer than six months at a time, but once they were gone spring was a barely noticeable blip before summer swept in hot and humid. I missed it sometimes.
“She isn’t like us, though?”
No one is like me, I couldn’t help but think. “No, she’s not a werewolf. She’s a pretty tough witch, though.” I didn’t want to make it seem like she was a helpless old lady. Far from it. Now in her early sixties, she was more active than ever and showed no signs of slowing down.
