His grin did strange things to David’s insides. Twisted them. Made him want to run away from the potent energy coming off him.
“Um…hello,” the stranger said. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were in.”
“What do you want?” David wasn’t up to playing host—not yet, not while everything was still so raw.
“I heard you were looking for news. About your parents. Name’s Warwick Smart, by the way.” He shoved out one hand—somewhat ragged nails, rough skin, a callous or two on the palm.
David shook it and, man, those callouses fair had his dick swelling. “You probably already know from the loose lips in the town that I’m David Jolie.” Stupid of him to say that, really, but it was done now.
“Yeah.” Warwick released his hand. “Someone in town said you were here. Back from…Branchley, isn’t it?”
“Hmm. Lived there for years now. You said you had news? Or implied it.” David looked away from Warwick’s brown eyes. A bit too all-knowing for his liking.
“I do.” Warwick nodded. “Any tea on offer?” He glanced around, attention seemingly snagged by the old white kettle that had seen much better days. “Does that thing still work?”
“It did this morning. They made things to last in those days.” David gave a tight smile and, although he wasn’t up for chit-chat, he’d entertain the bloke if it meant getting information. After all, that’s what David had come back for. Flicking the kettle on, he welcomed yet dreaded whatever Warwick could tell him.
“Ever heard of the Angels of Wereling?” Warwick went to sit at the pine scar-topped table as if he’d done it a million times. He took off his blue, lightweight sports jacket and draped it over the chair beside him. It hung there like a third person.
Still accustomed to city life, David held on to the admonishment he’d been about to say. Make yourself at home why don’t you… “Why would you ask me that?”
“So you have. Just by saying that, you have.” Warwick propped his elbow on the table and cupped his cheek. A very nice stubbled cheek by all accounts. “Word has it your sister was a Superior, but she wasn’t, you know.”
Was this fella a reporter? Sent here to garner information for some seedy rag that would tell the world shifters definitely existed and put David’s parents’ deaths in a bad light—and dredge up Rachel’s again, opening old wounds that were better left with the scars almost healed?
Almost healed, my arse.
“Um, how do you know about the Angels?” David wasn’t going to give anything away if he could help it—not until Warwick proved he had the right to have knowledge of the Werelings.
Warwick’s eyes appeared to glitter. “Because I’m wolf, same as you.”
Christ, not a reporter who would write about shifters, then. Unless he’s pretending to be wolf, luring me in with that line of bullshit so I trust him and spill any beans he might want to cook up into some nasty-tasting stew the public would lap up.
And what answer should David give? Casually admit that yeah, he was a wolf, shall we go for a run in the woods, become were buddies?
“Hmm.” David turned his back on his guest and started making tea.
Why hadn’t David sensed Warwick was wolf? Where the hell was his seventh sense when he needed it? Was the bloke not a reporter but sent from wherever to capture David? That sort of shit went on, people believing shifters existed, intent on killing them—full humans who thought shifters were weird and a species to be eradicated. He shouldn’t have his back to Warwick really…
Tea made, and acting like he wasn’t bothered by the silence that had lingered since they’d last spoken, David took a cup to Warwick and placed it in front of him. “I put two sugars in.”
“That’s fine, thanks. You might want to sit down and join me.”
“I might, but I’ll stand if it’s all the same to you.”
I’m ready to run if I have to.
“The news?” David prompted.
“Idaline took your parents,” Warwick said.
Hearing that name outside of his head shook David up. He swallowed, tucked his hands behind his back to hide the fact that they trembled, and leaned against the counter. The edge dug into the soft underside of his wrists. It gave him something else to focus on other than the fear pervading his body.
“Right,” he managed. “And she would be?”
“A pain in the arse, that’s what she would be.” Warwick sipped some tea. It appeared he didn’t have any urgency about him, no sense that he wanted to unburden himself quickly then get the hell out.
It frustrated and unnerved David. “Could you just get on with it? You know, say what you have to say so I can continue grieving in peace?”
“You won’t have time to grieve. Yet.” Warwick shrugged. “She’s coming after you next.”
Dread oozed into David’s bones. He’d said the same thing to himself in the past, hadn’t he, that he’d end up in the depths of the lake, but had he really believed it? No, he hadn’t. But now…?
“And you know this because?” David took his hands out from behind him to fold them across his middle. And wasn’t that a stupid move, showing insecurity. He picked up his tea and drank instead.
“Because she’s pissed me off most nights in my sleep since I was a kid,” Warwick said.
Oh, fuck. Not another person like Rachel. Warwick was here to finish whatever Rachel had started, was he?
“You’d best leave.” David had a feeling the man wouldn’t, though.
“Not a chance.” Warwick swallowed more tea. “Not while she’s still alive, anyway. Idaline, that is.”
“So I’m to believe you’re not under her influence?” David asked. He wanted to laugh. Hard.
“Ah, so you do know who she is.” Warwick seemed sensitive enough not to smirk.
“No, I don’t.”
Sod it. Just come clean, tell him what you know.
And why would I do that?
Because there’s something about him that’s telling you he’s on the level.
David went on. “Look, all I know is she visited my sister while she slept. Directed her to hurt me, gouge my eyes out, stop me from seeing someone I was meant to be with, apparently. Who she actually is—Idaline—no, I don’t know that. Not sure I want to, either.” And he didn’t. It creeped him out knowing someone could influence another while they slept. Could make hair and eyes glow. What sort of person could do that? What sort of being?
“You know more than I thought but not enough,” Warwick said. “She visited your sister, you say? Makes sense.”
“How?” David tensed with anger, some of his tea sloshing over the side of his cup and dripping over the back of his hand. The bloody stuff burned, and he shook the excess liquid off, cursing a blue streak in his head. “How the hell can any of this make sense?”
Warwick shrugged. “Idaline’s reasons for doing it don’t make sense but… Listen, if your sister—Rachel, wasn’t it?—was meant to stop you seeing the one you’re meant to be with… Have you ever wondered who that is and why you’re not meant to meet them?”
“Sort of. Well, yeah, of course I have. It’s all tied in with Rachel’s death, for God’s sake, so I’m bound to have thought about it all. Too much, if I’m honest.” David was annoyed with himself for revealing so much.
“Haven’t you ever wondered whether you’re a Superior?”
David laughed. A full-out belly gripper. “What?”
“I’m one.”
Warwick said it so calmly that David wondered whether the bloke ever got riled—and what he’d be like if he did.
“You’re a Superior?” David asked.
Warwick nodded. Finished off his tea. Stretched his legs out beneath the table and lazed back. Hands over his stomach, fingers laced, he gazed at the ceiling.
Oh, to be so mellow…
“See,” Warwick said, “Superiors have a job to do when they become an adult. They’re selected by the Angels to do certain things. When that is, we don’t know
until we get the Hail.”
“Hail?”
“You know, the calling or whatever. How come you don’t know all this? You’re a damn wolf.”
David frowned. Yeah, he was a wolf all right, but it didn’t mean he knew everything about them. Shit, he didn’t even know what the Angels truly were—a band of higher species? Governors? Who the hell knew?
Warwick clearly does.
“My parents preferred to live outside of were society,” David said. “Hence the remote cabin. They mentioned Rachel being special, reckoned the Angels had said so in one of my dad’s dreams, but I was a kid and I didn’t think anything much about it. We were home-schooled. I didn’t interact with many people until I moved to Branchley. I know jack shit about shifters except that Angels exist, I can change at will, go running when I get the urge, and I have to keep under the radar. That’s about it.”
He was irritated at his parents for not informing him of the basic things he ought to know. It was all very well them wanting a quiet life, but what about him? Unarmed without certain information, he was a damn sitting duck.
Warwick lowered his head. Looked across at David. “Well, I got my Hail, and it’s tied in with yours. I was told to come to you. You’ll get your own Hail at some point in time. And it seems like I need to give you a lesson in shifter business, doesn’t it?”
Chapter Two
Warwick was straining to keep his damn wolf at bay, under wraps. The bloody thing kept repeating in his head that David was his mate. Nice to know he had one after all these years of thinking the chance of a bond had walked on by and had forgotten to turn back and let Warwick know who he should be with but…
Now wasn’t the time to test the mate theory—and besides, David hadn’t batted an eyelid at him in that way. Then again, Warwick had hardly shown his cards, either. He’d decided as soon as he’d sensed his mate, when David had first come into the kitchen, that he’d act nonchalant, unbothered by David’s presence. Beneath the calm façade, though, Warwick was struggling not to kiss the life out of the bloke then fuck him to Heaven and back.
“The Angels of Wereling are like our gods,” Warwick said. “Got some more tea there by any chance?”
David sighed, pushed off the counter then strode across the room to collect Warwick’s cup. It was worth annoying the man just to see his hips sway—and watch his arse on the return journey to the ancient-as-fuck kettle.
While David made more tea, Warwick continued.
“They have our destinies in their hands—or, closer to the truth, they have it in their big old book. Some tome or other called The Objective. Now, these gods—I think there’s about five main ones who look after things—have lower-ranking Angels to do their bidding, like informing us in dreams of what we need to know. So, for instance, if your sister was a Superior, one of your parents would have been shown that while they slept. You’ve already said your father had a dream—but I think he interpreted it wrong and that Rachel was never a Superior, but that’s by the by. Get it so far?”
“Yeah.” David grunted as if to say, “I’m not dense.”
David carried the fresh tea to the table and all but dumped it down—definitely not happy about making more, then—and stood there staring, hands on hips.
“Anyway, our gods live in the shifter form of Heaven, which is like a town beside human heaven. Then there’s a shifter underworld, a Hell, and this is where Idaline comes in.” Warwick hoped David would believe him, because what he had to tell him soon needed faith and acceptance. “So, Idaline is one of the devil’s—for want of a better word—underlings. She, as well as fuck knows how many others, has to interfere in shifter destinies and basically bugger things up. Still with me?”
David took a seat opposite. Progress. Less distance between them. David nodded.
Warwick cleared his throat. “Thanks for the fresh tea, by the way. As I was saying, Idaline comes to people in their dreams and makes them do things. Sounding familiar?”
David chewed on his inner cheek. “Go on.”
“So, for instance, you said Rachel hurt you and her job was to take your eyesight, yes?” Warwick didn’t wait for David to confirm that. “Therefore, she was being used to stop what shifter destiny has decreed. Now, as well as Idaline trying to make me come here to hurt you, too, I’m also directed in dreams by an Angel, who is stronger than her.” He shrugged and laughed. “Bit of a pisser, that, if they both visit me in the same night. Gets tiring when they wake me up too often. And it’s tiring resisting Idaline’s power.”
“You could only be telling me this so I do whatever it is you might want me to do. You could be making me think you’re not working for Idaline, when in reality you’re setting me up for her to come waltzing along and do me in.” David narrowed his eyes.
“Suspicious bugger, aren’t you? Don’t blame you, though.” Warwick had to play this carefully. One wrong word and David might turf him out. “I can’t give you solid proof that I’m not here to hurt you, just words to convince you, but I can give you some kind of proof that I’m one of the good guys.”
“How’s that then?” David frowned.
“I can tell you Rachel has visited me.” Warwick waited for a noise that indicated derision from David, but there was nothing except for a widening of the man’s eyes. “She told me to tell you that if you hadn’t set the boat in motion, she’d have killed you. Idaline had progressed from mere eye gouging in her request on that boat to outright murder. And let me tell you, Idaline would have continued to use Rachel in that way her whole life had Rachel lived. Unless, of course, Rachel could kill Idaline. Not sure how—still trying to work that one out myself.”
David shook his head. “Rachel’s death was well reported around here at the time. You could have read it in any of the news archives.”
“I could have but I didn’t.” Warwick pulled out some of his memories, undecided which ones would sway David better. “All right, Rachel loved mint ice cream and she had a habit of crumbling shortbread on the top, mixing it all around until the ice cream had melted, then eating it.”
David hid his gasp pretty well—but not well enough.
“She hated going trout fishing, and hated your father even more because of something he had you two doing when you were five and her nine. The pair of you detested him for it, so she said. Something about him making you both gut a pig and carry the innards to your mother so she could make pâté? Hardly something to hate your father for considering what else he could have done to you, but she’s still ten when she visits me, so there you go. A kid’s sulky mind and whatnot.”
David rose, his movements abrupt, and stalked to the kettle. He turned his back and started making a refill for himself. Warwick sipped from his cup. He’d wait. He had the time—for now. And no choice in the matter. He couldn’t leave here without David onside.
“So,” David said, voice sounding a tad hoarse compared to before, “what else did my sister tell you?”
“That I had to come here to meet you.” Warwick paused. “Make you see me.”
David didn’t whip around to face him as Warwick expected. Instead, he continued with what he was doing—poking at the teabag in his cup. Hadn’t he ‘got’ what Warwick had implied?
Maybe I ought to spell it out.
Fuck it.
“And by seeing me, I mean we’re mates,” Warwick said. “Just in case you didn’t know. And together, as Superiors, we’re meant to defeat Idaline.”
David did turn around then. He stared as though Warwick was shit on his shoe. “What, we’re mates and I’m a Superior? Whatever, man.”
“Do you believe Rachel has spoken to me?” Warwick could understand him not believing the mates or Superior bit, but not the information from Rachel. How else could Warwick have known specific stuff like that if he hadn’t been told by the girl herself?
“No.” David paused. Sploshed milk into his cup. “Sort of.” Stirred in sugar. “I don’t know. It’s all so…fucking weird.”
“I suppose it would be to a shifter who knows nothing much about his kind. If you don’t mind me saying so, your parents were remiss in not even telling you the basics.” Warwick waited to get his head bitten off, what with their deaths being so recent, the grief so new.
David swiveled and leaned against the counter again, teacup held high, a shield perhaps, level with his chest. “I’ll agree with that. It was inevitable that one day they wouldn’t be here to protect me, and I’d be left not knowing things. They should have told me before I left for Branchley.” He sighed. Sipped. Swallowed. “Hindsight and all that.”
“Hmm. Maybe. But I’m here now, and I’ll protect you.” Warwick wasn’t sure how he’d take the last half of that sentence if their roles were reversed. He’d probably splutter and say he could look after himself, thank you very much.
“Will you, though?” David asked. “How, when Idaline is in your head?”
“Because, like I said, the Angel who also visits me is stronger than her and it gives me the strength to hold Idaline back. Plus, we’ll have mated, and once that happens…” Warwick swerved his mind off the road that would take him to thoughts of their actual mating. A hard-on while sitting at this table wasn’t the best of situations at the minute.
David snorted. “I’m no use to you there. In the bedroom—unless it’s just an ordinary shag. I don’t even know what happens when mating.”
Warwick would be blunt—he’d found that had always served him best in the past. Less chance of crossed wires. “We’d fuck. We’d bite each other. We’d be mated. For life.” Adding that last bit gave Warwick a thrill. Spending his life with David would suit him just fine. “Not much to it, really. Same as any other fuck apart from the biting—unless it’s your kink?”
“Bite each other?” David widened his eyes and reared his head back to look at the ceiling. “Jesus Christ. That sounds painful—and no, it isn’t a kink as you put it.”
“Maybe it will hurt, but I heard it’s a good kind of hurt.” Warwick wanted to make David see that it would be okay, the fucking, but if it wasn’t okay…?
There wasn’t much they could do about it. They were mates and that was all there was to it. Whatever they had to go through to bond, they would—whether David resisted or not. If he did, it would be pointless. They would end up mated one way or another.
The Crumpled Sword Page 2
