Wolves of Paris

by Tori Knightwood

  Ryenne, Gavin, and Dany took up defensive stances, but there were too many Fangs. Ryenne had counted twenty, which meant she had to take out at least six of them. Ryenne knew they’d need a miracle to all get out of this alive and unharmed.

  She pulled her dagger from her back sheath and swung it in a wide arc to keep the attackers away. The Fangs had quickly moved into positions between Ryenne’s friends and the gate.

  Dany’s claws were out as she swiped at three rogues who were closing in on her.

  Ryenne couldn’t help Dany because a tall, thin man with white-blond hair came toward her.

  “You,” Ryenne breathed, recognizing him from the café.

  The snake shifter sneered and his fangs elongated from his mouth, dripping liquid, possibly venom.

  Ryenne shuddered. “Gav,” she yelled and tossed him a closed switchblade from her pocket. Out of the corner of her eye, as she swung her dagger again, she saw Gavin catch the knife and pull one of her mom’s small stun guns from his pocket. She should have known he’d come prepared, but she’d been blinded by fear for him.

  Ryenne and Dany stood back to back so they could cover all sides. They tried to keep Gavin on the far side of them as they moved toward the gate through the crowd. Movement from an upper story of the building caught her eye and she glanced up to see Chantal’s secretive date, also in a black business suit, arms crossed in front of his chest.

  Who was he?

  The snake shifter lunged for Ryenne and she brought her attention back to him in time to slice him with the dagger. He hissed and fell back. He was replaced by the weaselly man from the café last week and a ruddy, pinch-faced woman she’d never seen before.

  Ryenne didn’t wait to see what they’d do. She kicked the weasel shifter in the face and slashed at the woman with her dagger. The man fell to the ground, a hand covering his nose. He shouted in French.

  The woman jumped back but soon recovered and flew at Ryenne with outstretched hands tipped by sharp claws. Ryenne ducked, stabbed the woman in the thigh, and brought her fist up into the woman’s jaw. The Fang doubled over with an oof of expelled air. Ryenne finished her off with a front snap kick into the woman’s face.

  The snake shifter returned for round two. Ryenne executed a back spin kick into his chest. As he fell sideways, she pushed forward and zapped him with the stun gun she’d had hidden up her sleeve.

  She’d lost track of her friends but found herself at the gate. Dashing through, she glanced around, dagger and stun gun ready. Dany staggered through the gate, bleeding from a gash on the side of her head, and holding her left arm tight against her body. Three Fangs spilled out behind her.

  “Gavin!” Ryenne whirled around, frantically searching for her best friend.

  Two shifters came at her, baring claws and fangs, and she had to focus on not getting killed or bitten. She jabbed one Fang in the leg with the dagger and kicked the other in the face. Then, she followed up with zaps of the stun gun to each and watched them crumple to the ground.

  Dany punched another shifter in the nose with her good arm and Ryenne dashed to her side to help. She elbowed him in the gut, back-handed him in the mouth, jabbed his side with the stun gun, and whirled around to face the next opponent, but no one else came through the gate. In fact, the door was now closed.

  Ryenne pulled at it but it wouldn’t open, somehow jammed from the other side. She pounded on it and yelled for Gavin, her voice breaking on his name.

  “Ryenne,” Dany called, pain evident in her tone. “We’ll have to come back for him.”

  A couple of shifters on the ground began to stir. Ryenne saw the wisdom in Dany’s words, but her stomach twisted at the idea of leaving Gavin behind.

  “I can’t,” she said. “He’s not like us. He can’t fight them off by himself.”

  Dany staggered toward her and took her arm. “He did great from what I saw, but there were too many of them. They were waiting for us. We have to get the rest of the family.”

  Yes, the rest of the family. Lucien and Guy, Françoise, Mathieu, and Emma. Together, they’d be seven against the Fangs. Much better odds.

  The injured Fangs stood and wobbled toward them. Before they could fully recover their wits, Ryenne gave one another jolt with the stun gun and Dany punched the other on the side of the head. As they fell once again to the ground, Ryenne and Dany ran for the car. Worried more Fangs might come out of the front door of Lord Enterprises, they again took the street behind the Lord building.

  At the car, Ryenne took stock of their injuries. She had some scratches and sore spots that would probably bruise, but Dany’s head was still bleeding and she continued to grip her left arm against her body.

  “Shit, Dany.”

  “I’m fine.” But her normally sunny and bright countenance was now dark and pained.

  “You’re not fine. Here.” She ripped off the bottom of her shirt and tried to stanch Dany’s bleeding.

  “It’s not as serious as it looks. A knife grazed me. Pascal will fix me up just fine and I’ll probably be healed by the time we get home anyway.”

  “What about your arm?”

  “Hmm, it might be broken, but it’ll be fine by tonight. I can’t move it, though. Can you drive stick shift?”

  “Sure, but I’m a little rusty. I don’t drive much in New York.” Not like they had a choice.

  Spurred by the pain on Dany’s face, Ryenne drove them through rush-hour traffic according to Dany’s directions. Every few minutes, Ryenne glanced at Dany and caught a wince or tightening of her jaw.

  “I’m fine,” Dany kept insisting, but Ryenne saw otherwise. Dread filled the pit of her stomach.

  FIFTEEN

  Lucien went downstairs looking for Ryenne but she wasn’t in the house. In fact, she, Gavin, and Dany were gone.

  “What do you mean, gone?” he asked his mother.

  “I came out of the office as the three of them pulled away in the car,” his mother said.

  “Where are they going?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  Lucien went into the salon where Emma and Pascal were playing a board game with their daughters. “Do you know where Ryenne went?”

  Emma looked up from the game. “No, but at least she isn’t alone.”

  Lucien had to admit it was a positive in this situation. The only positive. Why had she left without telling him? She must have known he’d be annoyed. Which meant she probably went after the Fangs. “Putain.”

  “Lucien!” Emma gestured toward the girls with her head.

  He raised his hands in apology and backed out of the room. Pulling his phone from his back pocket, he called her. It rang. And rang. And went to voice mail. “Ryenne, what are you doing?”

  Anger rose inside him. He wanted to toss the phone across the kitchen but knew it would only get him another scolding from Emma or his mother. And maybe a cracked screen. With their bank accounts frozen, he couldn’t afford a new phone.

  Instead, he paced through the house in long strides. Past the office, up the stairs, on the back patio. If it were dark, he’d go out for a run in the Bois de Boulogne, but he wanted to be here when Ryenne returned or called in. Anyway, he couldn’t take the chance in broad daylight when they didn’t know how or when the Fangs would next strike.

  About an hour later, Guy arrived and found Lucien outside in the backyard. “Are they back yet?”

  Lucien shook his head. “Back from where?”

  “Dany texted me that they were going to confront Grieux, but I was in a meeting. I tried calling but it went straight to voice mail so I came back here.”

  “Grieux? Shit, what were they thinking?” Lucien growled.

  “I don’t think they were thinking,” Guy said.

  Lucien tried calling Ryenne again. Still nothing.

  “This doesn’t feel right.” He pushed a hand through his hair before striding inside. “Should we go after them?”

  “They can take care of themselves,” Guy said. “They’d bo
th be pissed that we tried to come to their rescue if they don’t need it.”

  Lucien nodded. Ryenne would be furious at the assumption she needed help. But this was the Fangs. Renardin was dead and the Malraux business was being destroyed. These rogues weren’t playing games. If Ryenne needed him and he didn’t help her, he’d never forgive himself, no matter how annoyed he was that she’d left without telling him and talked his sister into it, too.

  “You’re right,” he said to Guy. “But I can’t stay here a moment longer doing nothing. Are you with me?” He loped to the door and pulled it open.

  But before Guy could answer, the family car screeched to a stop in front of the house and Dany spilled out the passenger door.

  He ran down the stairs to the car. “Putain,” he muttered, lifting Dany, cradling his younger sister to his body as he carried her into the house. Beyond noticing she wasn’t seriously injured, he couldn’t look at Ryenne. He strode into the dark interior, not waiting for her or anyone else.

  “Pascal,” he yelled as he ran toward the salon at the back of the house. He deposited Dany on the couch and stepped back as both Pascal and Guy pressed forward.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Dany insisted.

  Guy leaned into her arm and she whimpered.

  Yeah, fine, Lucien thought. “What were you thinking?” he asked in a voice close to a roar, pacing by the end of the couch near her feet.

  Emma had ushered her daughters out to the patio and stood in the doorway, anger and concern etched into her face. Their mother joined her in the doorway.

  “We had to do something,” Dany said between gritted teeth.

  Pascal examined her. “This cut on your head just needs to be cleaned. Luckily, it was superficial. Head wounds tend to bleed a lot, but it’s nothing. Your arm, however, is broken. I’ll need to get some things from the pharmacy to set and immobilize it.”

  Maman stepped into the room. “I’ll clean her head wound while you’re gone.”

  At her words, Lucien glanced toward her and saw Ryenne hovering behind his mother and older sister. He turned on her with a venom he didn’t realize he’d been hiding. “What the hell were you doing, going after those people on your own?”

  Everyone scattered at his tone of voice. Maman to the kitchen, presumably to get towels to clean Dany; Pascal out the front door; and Emma out the back to be with the little girls. Only Guy stayed, dropping down to sit on the couch with Dany, putting her head on his lap.

  And Ryenne, who stared back at him with a quivering lip. He was too angry to consider what the quivering lip meant, only to realize he’d never seen any part of her quiver before except with excitement and pleasure.

  “You’re so stubborn and selfish, only doing what you want!” He tore at his hair. “Do you ever think of anyone else, Ryenne? Shit, you could have gotten yourself killed. Or turned. Did you think of that? And Dany now has a broken arm because of you.”

  “Lucien,” Dany said from the couch, raising her good arm toward him. “It’s not her fault. I wanted to go. We couldn’t stand just waiting here for them to strike next. But it was like the Fangs were waiting for us. There were so many of them.”

  Maman came in then with a bowl of water and some towels. “Shh. I’ll take care of the small cuts and the blood. You stay calm and let your body heal.”

  “So instead of waiting around for them to strike next or for us to come up with a plan together, you two went off half-cocked. What did you expect? You went straight into Fang territory with no backup, nothing.”

  “There were three of us,” Dany said in a small voice.

  Lucien stared at her.

  Ryenne made a whimpering noise he’d never heard from her before. He glanced up and looked all around the room. The anger slid off his face. “Where’s Gavin?”

  Ryenne sucked in a breath and ran from the room. Lucien heard her feet pounding on the stairs.

  He dropped down onto the floor next to the couch. “What happened to Gavin?”

  Dany closed her eyes and a tear leaked out. “We don’t know. He didn’t make it out. Ryenne only left because I was hurt.” She took a few deep breaths. “Don’t be too harsh with her. She thought she was helping you.”

  Lucien dropped his head into his hands. How was risking her life, along with Dany’s and Gavin’s, helping him? He lifted his head and watched his mother soothe away Dany’s pain with the damp towel and a few whispered words.

  “We have to get him back,” he said.

  Guy nodded. So did Dany.

  “But not right now,” his mother said. “Call your uncle and tell him to come. Enough is enough. We need a plan that will end this.”

  SIXTEEN

  Ryenne rushed up the stairs, relieved not to meet any other Malraux on the way. Françoise and Emma wouldn’t even meet her eyes when she stood near them in the doorway between the kitchen and the salon. At least Pascal had given her a small smile of reassurance on his way out of the house. And Guy didn’t seem to hold anything against her, despite his girlfriend’s wounds. He was always so even keeled and jovial.

  But Lucien...

  She’d never seen him so angry.

  And he was right to be angry with her. Ryenne had been a fool. A stupid, impatient, careless fool. Dany was lucky to have made it out of there with only a broken arm and some cuts and scrapes.

  Because Gavin...

  A strangled cry escaped her throat. Poor Gavin. Her best friend wasn’t a fighter. Was he even still alive?

  Upstairs, she locked herself in the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  This was all her fault. She had asked Dany to come and had failed to keep Gavin out of it. She had failed to keep him safe.

  Undressing, she remembered what she had suffered at the hands of the Fangs a few months ago. But she was trained to fight and had been mentally prepared to die if she had to. And she’d had her mother’s shifter vaccine to prevent her from being turned.

  Unfortunately, she had none left after today’s dose. She had only planned on visiting Lucien for a week and hadn’t expected to get into another war with rogues.

  She stepped into the shower and turned the heat on higher, needing the pain, the punishment. She deserved every word Lucien had stabbed into her heart.

  Now the Fangs had her best friend and she didn’t know if he could survive. What if they turned him? She shuddered. It didn’t matter. He’d still be Gavin, he wouldn’t become a rogue. The Malraux would help train him as a shifter and she would stand by his side.

  At least he’d be alive.

  She pounded her hands on the cool tiles. How could she have let them take Gavin?

  There had been so many of them. Pouring out of the abandoned building as soon as she, Gavin, and Dany had crossed the yard. Almost as if the Fangs had been expecting them.

  Could there be a mole among the Malraux?

  She scoffed. They were family. None of them would work for rogues, none would hurt the others.

  Guy wasn’t family. He was just Dany’s boyfriend. And he’d been out this afternoon when Dany and Ryenne had left the house. Dany had texted him their destination. He could have warned the Fangs.

  No, she shook her head, water droplets flying from her hair. He loved Dany. Ryenne had no doubt.

  Chantal wasn’t family either, and she knew Ryenne suspected the Fangs in recent events. Ryenne had seen Chantal’s boyfriend or whoever at Lord Enterprises today. He was a rogue and he could have stabbed Lucien last week. But Chantal didn’t know Ryenne would visit Lord today.

  They must have had better security than Ryenne realized.

  Shit, she’d been so stupid. If she’d been on a job, she would have checked for cameras, and Gavin would have hacked their system. They didn’t do anything today, they’d just shown up as if they thought the Fangs would roll over and let Ryenne rub their tummies.

  Now, who knew what they would do to Gavin? Kill him. Turn him. Use him as bait to get to her or the Malraux.

  Tears of anger
and loss burned behind her eyes but she wouldn’t let them fall. She didn’t cry. Not since her brother had died.

  Ryenne couldn’t believe she was going through this again. She’d almost lost Gavin to rogues at a shifter hunter convention in Las Vegas years ago when he’d been taken hostage. He’d come through it fine. He’d used his wits and managed to stay alive until Ryenne could get to him.

  This time was different. In Vegas, there had been a handful of rogues and Gavin had been able to elude them for hours. This time, they were up against an entire corporation full of rogues who already had their hands on Gavin, who was in a foreign country, unable to understand the language, and unfamiliar with the players.

  In Vegas, she’d been able to communicate with him. Now, she hadn’t heard from him since she’d left the Lord compound. Back then, she’d been working in her own country, in her own language. That wasn’t the case here in France.

  If they killed him, she’d hunt down each and every one of them and make them pay.

  Turning off the water, she got out of the shower and reached for a towel. She dried off then wadded up the towel, stuffed it against her mouth, and screamed.

  She couldn’t lose Gavin. Not Gavin, too.

  Alone in the bedroom, she noticed Lucien hadn’t come up to talk to her, to let her apologize. What if she’d lost him, too? The thought tore at her insides and made her want to scream again. She really cared about Lucien, and his entire family.

  The realization hit her like being stunned by her telescoping cattle prod: she was falling in love with Lucien. Now that she might have lost him—lost his love, respect, friendship—she finally realized her true feelings. She was falling so hard for him and she might never get the chance to tell him.

  On her way to the closet for fresh clothes, her eyes fell on the packet of letters Gavin had brought from her mom. The letters from the mysterious T.O. who wanted to share secrets about her family.

  If she were home, she could have helped her mother through this situation, and Gavin would be safe. But she had thought the Malraux needed her help. They might not be safe now, but they wouldn’t have been any safer if she’d left on Friday when she was supposed to. The Fangs had targeted the Malraux long before Ryenne had come along.