by Nalini Singh
“It’s about power,” he told her. “A predatory changeling pack can only legitimately claim territory it can hold—and that means clearing it of all other predators. The Crew calls our authority into question. Another changeling group could decide that means we have no right to this area.”
“And then blood would spill,” she said, voice solemn. “The SnowDancer wolves?”
“Dangerous,” he told her. “But they’re holding a massive amount of territory already. Our intel says they haven’t got the manpower to push us out.”
“But they’re not the only ones are they?” Sliding her hands into the pockets of her vivid red coat, Ria nodded left. “That’s the alley where he grabbed me. I was walking home after a night class. My last class actually.”
“Why were you alone?” he asked, a slight growl in his voice. “It was after dark.”
“It was barely eight.” Irritation sparked again—Emmett was starting to show the same overprotective tendencies as her parents. “And I’m an adult in case you haven’t noticed.”
A slow blink. “Oh, I noticed.”
THREE
Heat curled up from her stomach, spread through her limbs, threatened to color her face. “Then don’t patronize me.” Steeling her spine against the impact, she met those gorgeous eyes of his. “My decision was a solid one. There were a lot of people around, heading out to restaurants or coming home from work. That excuse for a human being took me during a split-second respite in the foot traffic.”
“Means he had to have been following you, just waiting for an opportunity.” Emmett stared into the dark maw of the alley, his eyes narrowed.
She wondered if he’d even heard her first two sentences. “That’s what I thought. I’m always careful when I get off the skytrain, but it’s hard to pick up that sort of thing when so many people disembark at the stations.” Last night, the mass of humanity had spread out as soon as they hit the ground, but there’d been enough of a crowd going her way that she hadn’t really paid attention to anyone in particular.
“Until we neutralize the Crew,” Emmett murmured, still staring into the alley, “you don’t go anywhere alone.”
Her mouth fell open. “What?”
“To Death,” he said, turning to face her, “that’s their motto. They follow their quarry to death. They’ll come after you again and again. It’s a matter of ‘honor.’ ” He all but spat on the street. “What the fuck kind of honor is it to hurt a woman?”
The unflinching conviction of his words reached straight through to the warm feminine core of her. But—“I can’t sit at home. I have to start interviewing for jobs for one.” Work was her ticket to freedom, a freedom she’d worked hard to gain. “And I take my grandmother to her appointments—”
“Who said you have to sit at home?” An intent stare.
Ria didn’t react well to any kind of intimidation. “Well, if I can’t go anywhere alone—and I’m not going to put my grandmother in danger—then what else am I supposed to do, hire a bodyguard?” The minute, the second, her father found out about this, he’d use it as an excuse to stop her from finding a job.
Simon and Alex Wembley loved their only daughter. They loved her so much, they couldn’t bear to have the world put a single bruise on her soul. As a result, Ria had grown up being protected and cosseted. If it hadn’t been for her grandmother, she might have turned into a spoiled brat. Instead, she’d grown up cherishing her parents’ love . . . while understanding the sadness that lay behind its protective fervor. That’s why she hadn’t gone away to college like Ken—she hadn’t been able to put that much worry in their hearts. But she couldn’t live in a cocoon forever, not even for her mom and dad. It would never suit her—it would, in fact, destroy her.
However, her parents hadn’t yet figured that out. In Simon’s and Alex’s minds, marriage to Tom would provide the ultimate protection—as a Clark wife, she’d be expected to do nothing more strenuous than look pretty and maybe arrange a few flowers. “Emmett?” she prompted when he remained silent.
“I’ll protect you.”
Her heart thudded. “How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
She almost took a step back at the sheer untamed power of him. “You can’t be with me twenty-four/seven. I won’t say no to an escort from the skytrain at night, though.” She was independent, not stupid.
“The Crew’s been known to kidnap people off the street in broad daylight.” His skin pulled taut over his cheekbones. “They intimidate any witnesses into silence, so their victims seem to disappear into thin air.”
The need for freedom came up against the logic of what he was saying. “What about my family?”
“We’ve already posted pack soldiers at your mother’s store and around your home. The Crew’s M.O. is to hit the women in the family, so your mother, sister-in-law, and grandmother are most at risk.”
“Amber’s over eight months pregnant,” Ria began.
“Really?” A teasing smile. “I thought she looked a bit different.”
She felt a flush stain her cheekbones. “She hasn’t been going out much anyway—if we tell her about the Crew’s tactics, she’ll probably be okay with staying inside for a bit.”
“It would definitely make our job easier. Your mother?”
“No way. She’ll go to work—she refuses to surrender to intimidation.”
“I can’t say that’s exactly a surprise.” He shook his head. “I’m not even going to ask about your grandmother. Just make sure she knows someone will be shadowing her every time she goes out alone.”
“Knowing her, she’ll get them to carry her shopping.”
Emmett’s eyes gleamed. “And you?”
“I’ll be ignoring you,” she said, feeling an odd sense of excitement in her gut.
No smile, no hint of softening in his face. “You’re welcome to try.”
* * *
Emmett finished fixing the computronics inside his mother’s car and picked up his cell phone to call her. “I’ll drop it off tomorrow morning. It was a short circuit, nothing big.”
“Thanks, baby.” His mom was the only one Emmett let get away with calling him “baby.” The one time he’d tried to question her about it, she’d simply stared at him until he’d sighed and given in.
“Has Dad gotten in yet?”
“No,” she told him, her voice holding a rare kind of clarity. “He’s running an extra training session for some of the new soldiers. If things keep going the way they have been, I think there’ll come a time when we’ll have to take a stand against the Psy—we need to be prepared.”
Since his mother was the pack historian, her words carried real weight. “What do you see?”
“I’ve been tracking the Psy Council’s actions since I was a teenager,” she told him, “and year by year, I see more and more darkness creep into their world. They’re slowly going beyond cold, to a place that makes me scared for the Psy race as a whole.”
Emmett felt no pity for the Psy—not given what he’d seen of their tactics, but his mother had always had a soft heart. “Lucas is obviously listening to you—I’m scheduled to teach more sessions as well.” Somewhat to his surprise, he’d inherited his father’s way with the younger members of the pack.
His mother chuckled. “I hear he gave you the ten- to fourteen-year-old crowd.”
“They teach me patience.” It was a deadpan comment.
“Oh, Emmett.” Another laugh. “Why are you single? You’re gorgeous, good with children, and you adore your mother.”
Grinning, he fixed the timecode on the dashboard computer. “Not that you’re biased.”
“I get to be biased about my baby.”
“There is someone,” he found himself saying, “but she’s being stubborn.”
“I like her already.”
* * *
Ria did try to ignore Emmett as she’d vowed. But ignoring six feet and a few spare inches of predatory changeling, especially one as quietl
y dangerous as Emmett, was not an easy task. She could feel his eyes on her even while he stood easy task. She could feel his eyes on her even while he stood outside as she walked into a shop with her grandmother.
“Tea will take some time.” Miaoling patted her arm. “Go and talk to that leopard who looks at you like you’re food.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks. “He does not.” Though she’d found herself fighting the insane urge to stroke him . . . just to see what he’d do. Would he let her? The thought caused her stomach muscles to clench.
Miaoling made a face at Ria’s response.
Ria kept talking, knowing she was protesting too much. “He’s only protecting us because the Crew poses a threat to DarkRiver’s control of the city.”
“Pah!” Miaoling waved a hand. “I know when a man’s hungry. And if you’d use your woman parts more often, you’d know, too!”
Thankfully, Mr. Wong appeared at that instant, eager to lead Miaoling upstairs to his apartment for their weekly tea-conference, as they called it. The two were as thick as thieves. Ria had no idea what they discussed at these conferences, but her grandmother always had a Cheshire cat smile on her face when she left Mr. Wong’s.
At first, Ria had thought the two were . . . well . . . but her grandmother had put her straight with an unexpectedly solemn response.
“No, Ri-ri. I’ve loved only one man my whole life. I love the same man still.”
The depth of devotion in that single sentence had brought tears to Ria’s eyes. Her grandfather had been twenty years her grandmother’s senior, and had taken his last breath when Ria was fifteen. His death had devastated Miaoling, but she hadn’t ever broken down where Ria could see her. Instead, she’d used the memory of her love as a shield.
Miaoling still spoke to her husband as if he could hear her. Though she never did it when pragmatic Alex was nearby, she was open with it in front of Ria. Because Ria understood. Truly, when she was with her grandmother, she sometimes thought her grandfather was in the room with them, watching over the wife who, he’d often complained, had always made him wait.
Going to be slow coming up to heaven, too, aren’t you, my darling?
Words her grandfather had said on his deathbed, his hand wrapped around his wife’s. Miaoling had smiled and kissed him, teasing him to the last. Now, as Ria watched Miaoling ascend to the second floor of the shop, she felt her heart contract. “Grandmother?”
“Yes?” Miaoling looked over her shoulder, her eyes warm, full of silent encouragement.
“How long will you be?”
“Perhaps three hours. We’re having lunch today as well.”
“Then maybe I will go for a stroll.”
Her grandmother smiled and continued on her way.
Heading out of Mr. Wong’s, Ria found Emmett standing to her left, scanning the street. “Have you got someone who can stay here with my grandmother?” she asked.
“She’s already inside,” Emmett said. “Mr. Wong’s planning to tell your grandmother she’s his new assistant.”
“The beautiful brunette minding the shop?” Her eyes widened. “She doesn’t look dangerous enough to swat a fly.”
“Not only can she swat flies, she can kill most men with a single blow.”
Ria felt a sudden sense of inadequacy. “I wish I could do that.”
“If you’re serious,” he said, looking her up and down in a way that was distinctly professional, “I can teach you enough self-defense that you won’t ever feel helpless again. You’re fit and you move well. You should pick it up quick.”
Startled, she stared. “You’d do that?” A few tentative tendrils of hope wrapped around her heart—she’d begun to believe that Emmett was as suffocatingly protective as her father, but this argued differently.
“How much time do we have now?”
“Three hours.”
He straightened away from the wall. “We can practice in a small basement gym members of the pack use when they can’t get out of the city for a good hard run. You’ll need workout gear.”
Ria thought about it. “I’ll buy some. There’s a shop two blocks over.” That way, none of her family would even know about the training. Not that their objections would’ve stopped her—but she didn’t have time to have the argument.
* * *
Emmett slid his hand along Ria’s arm, positioning her as she needed to be, and asked himself—for the hundredth time—why he was torturing himself like this. Even in the loose sweats and T-shirt she’d changed into, the woman who currently stood with her back to his chest set his body on fire. But the little mink didn’t seem inclined to play—she’d been all business since the moment they got to the gym. The leopard wasn’t pleased. Neither was the man. But no way was he going to push himself on Ria and make her uncomfortable. Not after what that bloody waste of space from the Crew had done to her.
“There.” He released her. “Perfect. Now kick.”
Ria brought up her leg in a forceful, fast kick. It wasn’t graceful or poetic. It was hard, rough, dirty. Emmett didn’t care about pretty. He cared about making sure she could protect herself. “I want you to practice for ten minutes while I go make a few calls.”
Giving him a nod, Ria began to go through the beginner routine he’d devised. She was a fast learner, but as a human, her strength was much less than a changeling’s. Added to that, she was small and female—so the next time they worked out, he planned to teach her to fight using anything at her disposal, as she’d used her handbag two nights ago. That is, unless she had the option to turn and run. A physical fight would never be the smart first choice for her.
Walking a short distance from where she moved that sweet little body with such focused determination, he brought out his phone and coded in a call to his alpha, Lucas. “Were you able to track the source of the hang-ups to Amber’s cell phone?” Ria had told him about the calls this morning.
“Disposable.” Lucas’s anger was clear. “But we got another one of the bastards. He made the bad decision to try to shake down a couple while Clay was running patrol.”
Emmett’s leopard smiled, its teeth razor sharp. “Is he dead?” Clay didn’t see the point in keeping vermin alive.
“Clay thought we might want to question him, so he only broke a few ribs. Man’s refusing to talk, but I’ve had Clay prowling around him in leopard form—he’ll break when those teeth get too close.”
“What’s your gut say—small fry or big gun?”
“Very small fry. He’s not likely to know anything important.” A sigh of frustration. “Keep on the girl. They’ll do anything to get to her, because the longer she remains alive, the more traction Vincent loses.”
Emmett traced Ria’s form with his gaze as she went through her routine. The curve of her butt was the perfect shape to fit into his hands. “I’m not letting her out of my sight.”
FOUR
Having done two reps of the routine Emmett had shown her, Ria turned to see him walking back to her.
The savage edge in his eyes raised every hair on her body.
The man looked hungry. No one had ever looked at Ria like that. It was almost terrifying. But she stood in place, waiting, wondering.
“Ready for the next step?” His voice was deep, holding the beginnings of what sounded like a growl . . . a leopard barely contained.
She swallowed. “Sure.”
He padded to a spot opposite her, still dressed in the jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing earlier. It was obvious why he hadn’t bothered to change—he hadn’t so much as broken a sweat with what they’d done so far, while her muscles were starting to protest. Now, he crooked a finger. “Come on, mink, use what I just taught you.”
She was so startled by what he’d called her that she completely lost her focus. He was in her face an instant later. “What the hell was that?” he growled. “If you blank out in a fight, you’re dead.”
“You called me a mink!” She refused to back off.
“Did I?” M
oving at inhuman speed, he closed a hand around her throat before she knew what was happening. “Let’s make sure you’re not a dead mink.”
Eyes narrowed, she reached up and tried to break his nose using the flat of her hand. He caught it using his free hand. Her knee was already aiming for his crotch, and when he blocked that, she leaned forward and sunk her teeth hard into his forearm.
“Fuck!” The hand around her neck remained in place, but he released her other hand. She immediately went for his eyes and his crotch again. Her knee brushed against something very hard, before he twisted away and swore. She kept going, kicking, trying to scratch, even attempting to break the pinkie of the hand he had around her throat.
He finally let go. “Truce.”
Her heart was in her throat, exhilaration in her bloodstream. She knew he’d been playing with her—with his strength and training, he could’ve had her on the ground in one second flat. “How did I do?”
He glanced at his forearm. “I didn’t teach you the biting.” It was a snarl.
Or maybe he hadn’t been playing the whole time. “I decided to add it on my own,” she said, though in truth, it had been an instinctive response to his arrogant provocation. Her eyes went to the marks she’d made. Deep and red and perfectly formed. Guilt invaded. “I didn’t mean to bite you that hard. But . . . I’m not sorry.”
“Oh?” He walked over, slow, so slow. This time, she backed up. It was one thing to play with a predator who was keeping his claws sheathed, quite another to know you were prey. He kept coming. She knew the door out of the basement was only about a foot away. Making a quick move, she went to dart left.
Too late.
He was there before her and somehow, she found herself pasted up against the closed door, very aware she was all alone with a big, dangerous leopard in human skin. Except instead of fear, it was a vivid excitement that beat in her blood as he placed his hands palms-down on either side of her head and bent until their breaths mingled. “Boo.”
She jumped, then wanted to slap herself for it. “Stop acting like the big bad cat.”
