by Amy Cissell
Five enormous men entered the gym. At a glance, we were very much playing out of our weight class. The women on my side ranged in height from 5’2” to 5’8” and were all variations of weights. Emma was naturally willowy and years with the Fae had made her almost gaunt. Florence was more solid and matronly, but when you looked close enough, you saw that she was all hard muscle and sinew. My dragon metabolism had eaten away at most of my extra weight, but even so, I was the only one that came anywhere near not thin.
The men approaching us were big. Large. Huge, even. The shortest among them was still over six feet tall, and he looked almost petite compared to his companions. They looked like they’d just come from competing in the world’s burliest lumberjack contest. Pitted out flannel shirts, dirty, ragged pants, and some of the bushiest beards I’d seen in a good long while, and I’d lived in Portland for more than a decade.
I took a few steps forward to make it clear that I was the one in charge. Lead lumberjack didn’t even look at me. Instead, he made eye contact with Florence and said, “When?”
“As a conversation opener, that wasn’t very impressive,” I said. I stuck my hand out. “Hi! I’m Eleanor Morgan. Thank you so much for allowing us to stay in your town and supplying us with meals.” I smiled up at him and determinedly kept my hand out while making very aggressive eye contact. He finally reached out and shook my hand and I squelched my smug triumph—my last lesson was still fresh. I had just out-alphaed this guy. I didn’t think he was the alpha in Alpha, but I was willing to bet he was pretty far up the hierarchy.
He dropped my hand like it was a hot coal as soon as he realized what he’d done. It was harder to bite back a smug grin this time, but I bit my tongue and succeeded. “And you are?” I asked.
“Jason Whittiker.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Jason. These are my friends, Emma,” I gestured towards the wolf behind me and hoped she was standing tall and not giving in to her instinct to cower, “and Florence.”
“I was instructed to talk to the mage,” Jason said, sounding decidedly uncertain. The men behind him shuffled their feet, and I knew they were picking up on his unease as well as the fact that he’d just been dominated by what they probably regarded as a mere scrap of a woman since most shifters didn’t know I was Fae on sight. If he didn’t pull himself together, he was going to have a fight on his hands later. I didn’t like Jason, but I didn’t want him to lose his position because I’d taken him down a few notches.
I met Jason’s eyes and saw that he was aware of what was going on behind him. I winked at him, hoping the other shifters wouldn’t notice, and then asked, “Would you introduce me to your friends?”
He straightened up and a small grin played around his lips. He might not know what I was, but he’d felt my power and was perfectly willing to let me use it on everyone else, so they were all back on the same playing field again.
“Of course. My apologies for the oversight.” He executed a small, half-bow and smiled up at me, his eyes peeking through long, dark lashes. Every shifter I’d ever met knew how to pour on the charm.
He turned and led me to the line of men behind him.
“Andrew Miller.” I held out my hand and met his eyes until he reached out and shook it. It took him a lot less time than it’d taken Jason.
“Charmed,” I said. He dropped his gaze and looked at his feet. Jason repeated the process with the three remaining men, and each time, it played out the same. None of them could hold out against me for more than a couple seconds. By the time I’d shaken hands with each of them, any hint of fomenting rebellion had disappeared.
“I appreciate you taking the time to introduce me to your companions,” I said to Jason.
“I’m happy you pointed out the breach in my manners,” he replied. “Thank you,” he mouthed at me, and I winced as he opened the gulf of debt between us. Either he hadn’t figured out I was Fae, or he didn’t know the rules.
“And now, why don’t you fulfill your purpose for finding us here.”
Florence stepped forward and Emma trailed in her footsteps. “What can I do for you, shifter?” she asked.
“The Alpha wants to know when you’re going to hold up your part of the bargain.”
“Soon,” Florence replied. The chill in her voice was enough to make me shiver.
“When?” Jason asked again.
“When we’ve had time to assess the situation and make a plan utilizing our resources in the best way we know how.”
“What resources?” sneered one of the men standing behind Jason. “All you have is a couple of girls.”
I sighed. He hadn’t learned his lesson when I’d out-dominated him and all his buddies. I didn’t want to fight with him. Hand-to-hand, I’d probably lose, even with magic, and I didn’t want him to know I was a dragon. The fewer people who got a hold of that sweet little tidbit, the better. But, I also didn’t want to waste time giving a play-by-play of each of our skills. I also didn’t need Emma thinking that this was an okay way to be treated. This was a more enlightened time. More or less.
I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind, but before I could say anything, Emma strode forward and shoved her finger into mouthy lumberjack’s chest. “Are you always in charge of the negotiations your alpha makes?”
He took a half-step back and then caught himself. “I know what’s going on.”
Emma raked his body with a scathing look. “Somehow I doubt that’s even marginally true.” He took another half-step back. “Were you present for the negotiations between your Alpha and our mage?”
“No,” he said, almost biting his tongue as he spat the word out.
“Then you weren’t there to hear what we brought to the table?”
“No.”
“Does your Alpha often make deals with helpless women? Deals that involve said helpless women providing any service?”
One of the other men snorted in laughter and Emma turned her attention to him. “You think that’s funny? Your mind immediately went to a filthy sexual place and that’s all you can think of? I promise you, I am not helpless, I will never provide the kind of service your juvenile brain finds amusing, and none of you will ever be the kind of wolves in the confidence of an Alpha.” She glared them all into submission, and the guy who’d laughed was shaking so much he was about three seconds away from pissing himself in fear.
Emma strode towards Jason and looked him in the eye. He didn’t back down, but neither did she. Interesting.
“As for you, tell your Alpha that we’ll make our move when we’re good and ready. We aren’t idiots or amateurs who will rush in without a plan, without having checked out the situation for ourselves, and without backup. We have an agreed upon window of time, and every time you harass us, we’ll tack another day on before we get to sweeping up your problem.”
She stepped back to join Florence and me, and I remembered to close my mouth which had dropped open in astonishment.
“I don’t want to hear another insult from any of you, or I’ll tell you exactly how I feel about an Alpha and a pack that have to hire ‘mere girls’ to clean up their problems.”
Jason smiled at her, clearly impressed with her fire and her figure then turned. “You heard the lady. Let’s report back.”
As soon as they disappeared, I spun towards Emma. “That. Was. Amazing! You are a badass. Welcome to the gang.”
Chapter Six
THE NEXT TWO days were a haze of delicious food and hand-to-hand sparring with Emma. Our mutual triumph aside, her attitude towards me hadn’t improved markedly, which was helping me stay warm. I had a brief moment where I suspected they were drugging us all into compliance, but Florence assured me that the food was really that good. At dusk on the third day, there was a knock on the door. It was too early for our dinner, but Raj didn’t usually knock. I grabbed some weapons and asked Florence and Emma to be on alert.
“There’s no need, it’s Raj,” Florence said, refusing to get up from the comfy
chair.
I opened the door. Raj stood there, looking as gaunt and pale as I’d seen him since we began our association.
“Have you eaten?” I asked.
“Not since you,” he replied.
“Do you need to?”
“Not yet. I can go quite a long time without feeding under normal circumstances. I usually do small meals every day or two, but if I have a larger meal, I can go weeks.”
“What was I?”
His lips twitched, which relieved me. He’d seemed so grim when I’d opened the door. I was glad the dirty mind was working as well as ever. “You were more than an appetizer, but not a turkey dinner. Maybe a light supper to hold one over before going to the main event.”
I thought it would unnerve me to be referred to as food, but I liked it. And that’s what unnerved me the most. I smiled at him anyway. “Do come in.”
“I cannot.”
“Why not? This is a public room, and the threshold thing doesn’t apply to you anymore anyway, does it?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Great, just what I needed. More complicated men in my life.” I sighed loudly and dramatically. His lips twitched again. “Raj, is your inability to come into our motel room physiological? Are you unable to take the steps into the room? Or is it political? Or psychological? Or some other ‘P’ word I haven’t thought of yet?”
“It’s political, mostly. And practical.” Now he was just smiling, and I kinda wanted to smack him.
“You have to come in. You have to tell me things, and we have to tell you things. It’ll be so awkward to do it through the open doorway. Plus, our dinner will be here soon, and maybe if you’re nice, he’ll be your dinner, too.”
“Eleanor, I would request that you come with me to a private place where I will tell you what needs telling. At that point, you can decide if it’s still politically prudent to associate with me—either publicly or privately,” he was emphasizing the ‘P’s’ overmuch, and it was making me giggle.
“I don’t think you should leave with the vampire,” Emma whispered when I turned to grab the sheath for my sword and my several layers of outdoor accessories.
“He can hear you,” I whispered back. I put on insulated snow pants and an over-sized parka and then awkwardly attempted to slip my back sheath on. “I need to switch to a waist sheath. This is hard.”
“I can help,” Florence said.
“If I can’t get my weapon on and off, there’s no point.” I gave up and decided to just carry the sword in its scabbard. Then I put on another couple layers of socks and my giant fur lined hiking boots. Next up was the balaclava. Then I stashed several throwing knives about my overstuffed person before finally donning large, warm gloves that had little mitten hats that came off, exposing my fingers to the cold air but that also allowed me to grab whatever weapon I needed with only a little awkward fumbling. I grabbed my sword. “Ready.”
I looked around the room. Florence was not laughing, and I appreciated that. Raj was not really looking at me, and I assumed that it was so he wouldn’t laugh in my face. Emma wasn’t laughing at me either, but not out of politeness. “You look ridiculous. Why bother going armed? It’s not like you’ll be able to do anything dressed like that.”
I dropped my sword, looked at her, and gave the universal ‘bring it’ gesture, which didn’t translate well through my bulky gloves. “Bring it, wolf,” I said. She rushed towards me, hoping to take me off guard and off balance. I sidestepped her, stuck out a foot to trip her, and then fell on her with all my extra bulk. She rolled underneath me, ready to heave me off her. She would’ve succeeded—she was quite a bit stronger than me in our human forms—but I’d retrieved a silver knife from one of my pockets and had it at her throat once she faced me.
“You’re dead,” I pronounced.
She scowled up at me, and I fumbled with my pockets until I got the knife back in. Then I rolled off Emma and suddenly realized what a turtle on its back must feel like. I couldn’t get up. I struggled for a minute, while everyone openly laughed at me, and then managed to get to a chair that I used to haul myself up. Between the brief fight and the fire in the room, I was sweating now, and I hoped that I didn’t freeze too quickly when I went outside.
I looked at Emma. “Now do you feel a wee bit more confident in my ability to defend myself?”
She nodded grudgingly.
“Thank you,” I said. She looked surprised. “It was a good test.”
I walked out of the room and closed the door behind me. “So, where to, Raj?”
He wrapped his arms around my now considerable bulk, kissed my general nose region through the balaclava, and said, “You’ll see.”
We flew through the air for way too long, and I was shivering by the time he set me down. I looked around, trying to clear the nearly frozen tears from my eyes. We were standing atop the concrete tower of an enormous bridge. “Raj, are we in New York?”
He smiled at me. “Yes.”
“We’re standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, aren’t we?”
“We are.”
“You just flew me to New York City?”
“I did.”
“That didn’t take as long as I’d expected.”
“Ah, yes. We flew here in about a half hour.”
“You’re like jumbo jet fast, huh?”
“It’s not so much speed as I’ve seemed to develop the ability to fold space.”
“You’re tessering?”
“Not really. I’m not doing anything with time, I don’t think. It’s only over short distances. I think the tesseract, if I remember my L’Engle correctly, involved the fourth dimension, so folding space and time.”
“Well, if you’re moving through space in too short a time, wouldn’t both have to be involved?”
He tilted his head to one side. “It might be time to go back to university again. My knowledge of physics is greatly lacking.”
I waved my hand before the idea of a shiny new degree distracted him. “Is this something new?”
“It’s shown up over the last couple of days,” he confirmed.
“Huh. Interesting. And handy.”
“I didn’t know if it would work with another person.”
“I’m your guinea pig?”
“You are. I got IRB approval.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I’m going to call bullshit anyway.”
He laughed.
“Why are we in New York? Not that I’m objecting, although it’s a little weird to see it like this.” I indicated the dark buildings towering over us like greedily hungry skeletons.
“Two reasons. The first is that you’ve never been, and I know you’ve always wanted to see it. It’s not ideal, but we can spend the night, and you can see it in daylight tomorrow which will be slightly better. The second is I own a flat here that is quite comfortable, and it is there that I would like to talk.”
“Does it have a fireplace? And food?”
“It has both of those things.”
“What kind of food?”
“Food for us both.”
He wrapped his arms around me again and flew back towards Brooklyn. I was surprised we weren’t headed towards Manhattan. “Please. Manhattan is so cliché.”
He landed on the roof of a large building, pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the access door, and then led me into a hallway lit only by flickering candles in irregularly spaced wall sconces. The shadows danced erratically in the featureless passage, creating pockets of darkness so deep that my imagination was convinced there were creatures lurking within. A sound behind me caused me to jump, and I hit the wall next to me. I turned around, ready to do battle. Raj stared at me, not quite successfully hiding his amusement, and gestured towards the door he’d just opened. “After you, my sweet.”
We went down one flight of stairs and then used the key to access a much less creepy and much better lit hallway. Raj unlocked the only door. “Please, come in.”
“You have a penthouse? In New York? That must cost a fortune!”
“I’ve owned it for a while, so it’s no big deal.”
“How long?”
“About seventy years.”
I sighed. “I do have a thing for older men, don’t I?”
Raj led me through the expansive foyer to a sitting room where a fire already burned in the fireplace. I began to systematically remove my layers of clothing and divest myself—at least temporarily—of weapons.
“There are a couple of humans here,” Raj said. “So please don’t throw knives at them, even if they startle you.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Raj picked up a small silver bell and rang it. I stared at him, jaw hanging open. He reached forward and gently pushed my mouth closed.
“Did you just ring a bell? And are you expecting someone to answer?”
A door opened on the other side of the room, and Salem walked in. “Hey bitch,” she said.
“Hooray! It’s my favorite hostage! It’s been a long time since I kidnapped you. How’ve you been?”
“I was doing alright until I had to see your face again.”
I reminded myself I wasn’t supposed to throw knives at Raj’s people. I turned my back on her and finished removing all my extra layers. When I turned back around, Raj was having a drink. From Salem. From her wrist to be precise. I stared, unable to help myself. She didn’t look lost in the throes of ecstasy like I’d been, but it didn’t look unpleasant, either.
Raj finished, closed her wounds, and said, “Can you send someone around with food for Ms. Morgan and that bottle of 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild.”
“Sir, you were saving that for a special occasion,” Salem said.
“I did,” he replied.
Salem rolled her eyes but left the room. Moments later, a slight, dark man appeared wheeling a cart carrying several large sandwiches, a tray of brownies, and two wine glasses. He opened the bottle of wine very, very slowly and when he pulled out the cork, I noticed it was crumbling a bit at the bottom. He poured a tiny bit into a glass, handed it to Raj who swirled it, smelled it, and then tasted it. “This will do nicely, Jeffries,” he said.
