Red

by Bianca D'Arc

  “So the pups moved in on the girls independently?” Pete wanted to know. “They had no idea you were watching that group, right?”

  “That’s the way it looked to me. They seemed surprised to see me when I left Jorge and moved toward them. About that time, a fight broke out, delaying me. When I finally got to the girls, I realized something was seriously wrong with those shots. The chemical scent was overpowering and their reactions were way over the top. I signaled one of yours…” Steve nodded toward the werewolf Alphas, “… and they called in the cavalry. They met us outside, where they’d foiled an ambush that was waiting by the door. My guess is that the fight was started to delay me and force the women out of the bar, where the trap would have been sprung.”

  “Somebody was targeting them,” Bebe surmised with a frown. “Maybe the fey was attracting the wrong sort of attention? Or maybe your mate’s magic attracted it, Stevie. I hate to say it, but we all know firsthand that there are evil folk out there who would easily prey upon such easy targets.”

  “Because there were so many wolves involved, it seemed right to bring the ladies here when you suggested it, Pete,” Steve addressed the wolf Alpha with respect. “I’m sorry I’ve brought trouble to your door. I just didn’t see any alternative. Yours is one of the few places equipped to take in so many strays. I’ll reimburse you for whatever costs they incur and I’ll reinforce your security with the Clan’s, if you’ll allow it.”

  “Done and done,” Pete agreed with a serious nod. “And I understand why you brought them. I don’t really blame you for it. Sometimes things just work out the way they work out.” The older man shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was supposed to work out this way,” his wife agreed. “We’ll help however we can, Steve. The security of your mate is important to all of us. We want to see you both happy and safe.”

  A little pang went through Steve’s heart at the love Bebe displayed so casually in her words and her attitude. He missed his mother. She’d been ripped from his life by violence only a short while ago. He hadn’t really healed from the loss yet. He’d moved on with his life, but there was a gaping hole where his mother used to be in his heart.

  Bebe reminded him of that endless, boundless, unconditional, maternal love. She reminded him of his mother. His greatest champion no matter how old he got. His mother had understood him and counseled him and filled the role of wise elder for not only him, but the entire Clan. She was sorely missed.

  “If she really is his mate,” Grif reminded them.

  In his heart, Steve had no doubts. His inner cat knew its mate. It wouldn’t be fooled by nymph magic. It knew its heart’s desire. And so did Steve. Even though it was going to cause problems for him with one of his best friends, Steve knew Trisha was meant to be his.

  The question was, did she realize it? And if she didn’t now, would she ever? She wasn’t a shifter. She didn’t have the same mating imperative wired into her DNA. Would she leave him and sentence him to a miserable life alone?

  The sad truth was, he thought just maybe, she would.

  She wouldn’t mean to hurt him, but she didn’t understand what mating among weres was all about. Hell, at this point, she didn’t even know he was a shifter.

  And to top it all off, she was probably still in danger from whatever or whomever had targeted her little group of friends. Once something evil got the scent of unprotected, naïve magic, it didn’t easily let it go.

  Whether it was the fey or Trisha herself that had attracted the evil, he didn’t know. He didn’t think it really mattered at this point, because all seven women—the humans too—were clearly in the crosshairs.

  “Regardless, we must protect them all,” Slade put in. “Kate’s still upstairs with them, but I had a chance to talk over a few things with her. All of them will require a few days recuperation. They’re not going to come out of the stupor any time soon. It’s a magical as well as a mundane drug they’ve been given. The two who got sick—your woman, Steve, and the half-fey girl—reacted to some ingredient in the potion. Kate thinks it might’ve been silver, but she hasn’t told Trisha that. Better to let her go to the lab and find out for herself. She’s very intent on analyzing the substance they’ve been drugged with, so I suggest you take her to the lab at your earliest opportunity. She’ll find out what happened on the physiological level while Kate and I will try to figure out what’s going on magically. The half-fey woman agreed to help us there. Better to get Trisha out of the way for now. Let her do her doctor thing. Then figure out what we need to tell her as it comes.” Slade sighed and ran one hand through his shoulder-length black hair. “If she really is your mate, Steve, we’ll have to let her in on our secrets. If it’s the drug—or her magic—then maybe we can skate.”

  Steve saw red but reined in his temper. “While I understand your caution, she is my mate, no matter what you think. I’ll deal with her and I’ll thank you all—” he paused to look around the room and eyeball each person in it, “—to leave her to me. She is my business. Not yours.”

  Everybody looked at Grif, wondering how the Clan leader would handle Steve’s ultimatum. Slade bristled, as did Pete, but they both deferred to Grif, as it should be. Grif’s jaw clenched visibly a few times before he spoke, a sign Steve recognized as his older brother’s attempt to manage his own anger. Too bad. Steve wasn’t backing down. Not about Trisha.

  “If she poses a threat to the Clan, the wolf Pack or any of our people, she becomes our business, Steve. For now, I’ll leave her to you. For now,” Grif repeated, emphasizing his words and his forbearance.

  Fine. Steve would take that and run with it. He nodded toward his brother and headed for the door. He wanted to be with his mate. The cat wouldn’t put off seeing her, basking in her scent, for another minute.

  Chapter Four

  The lab Steve took her to wasn’t far. It was housed in the corporate offices of Redstone Construction, which contrary to popular belief was housed in a two-story structure—nothing higher than a shifter could safely jump from—that resembled a house more than an office building. It was on the outskirts of the city on a wide parcel of land owned outright by the Redstone family.

  “You said this was your mother’s hobby?” Trisha ran her hand along the gleaming bench top as she walked farther into the big room. Everything was crisp and clean, the way Steve’s mother had left it. “She must have been some hobbyist. I couldn’t have asked for better in a laboratory that wasn’t built expressly for medical purposes.”

  “Mom was a researcher, like you, only in chemistry, not medicine,” he admitted, missing seeing his mother tooling around in here. “Although, she did like to tinker with plant genetics on occasion. Some of her work with drought-resistant plants was patented. It became an interest of hers when we moved to the desert.”

  “She sounds like a remarkable woman.” Trisha turned to him, halting in front of the centrifuge.

  “She was,” he agreed in a quiet voice. Sometimes it was hard to hide the pain he still felt at her loss.

  Trisha reached out to him and placed one soft hand on his arm. Tingles ran from where she touched him, all through his nervous system. His body definitely recognized the touch of its mate.

  “Her death was recent, right? Deke told me he hadn’t been able to make the funeral. He felt really bad about that. He wanted to be here for you.”

  “It’s okay. The arrangements happened very quickly. She passed a couple of months ago. It was sudden. And violent. She was murdered.”

  “I’m so sorry. I hope they caught whoever was responsible.”

  “Yeah, we got them. In fact, Slade and Kate were instrumental in the hunt.” Better to get her used to the idea that the Clan handled things on its own, rather than involve human authorities, a little at a time.

  “Really?” She seemed both surprised and intrigued. “I thought they both worked for your construction firm.”

  “No, not at all, in fact. Slade only moved here recently whe
n he married Kate. They met when he came to help track my mother’s killer. He’s got special skills in that area, and once he met Kate, well, it was clear they were meant to be together. He moved here to be with her since she’s an integral part of our community.”

  As they talked, he helped her unpack the small cooler full of samples they’d brought with them from the Pack house. Trisha started to look through the drawers for the supplies she’d need and she smiled when she found the centrifuge tubes and pipettes. The smile of discovery was familiar to Steve. He’d pottered around in the lab with his mom often enough that he remembered the way she had smiled when she discovered something that helped her research.

  That wasn’t to say that Trisha reminded him of his mother. Not in the least. Well…a little. Maybe. In her quest for knowledge and her caring heart. In all other ways, she was unique. And uniquely fitted to him.

  He started to think about a future spent by her side and he liked the idea very much. It fit well with what he hoped for his future. A smart, caring mate. A happy life. All those things everyone sought in this world and seldom found.

  Steve hadn’t been sure he ever would find the woman meant for him. Having seen what he’d seen of the world and done all the things he’d done, he wasn’t sure he really believed in happy ever after anymore. Until now. Until Trisha and her wonderful, alluring, amazing scent.

  Maybe, just maybe, there would be a happy ending for him. If he could get her to agree to be his.

  Not being a shifter, he didn’t know how she would handle everything. It bothered him that she probably wouldn’t feel the mating imperative the way he did. The fact that she didn’t know about his people or his ability to become the cat that lived inside his soul was yet another thing to worry about. How could he tell her, only to have her reject him?

  Right now, that was his biggest fear. He didn’t think he could live through her rejection. For one of the very rare times in his life, Steve was truly afraid.

  “What does Kate do? I thought she was the company nurse or something,” Trisha observed as she laid out her supplies on the bench top.

  “She’s a…counselor of sorts. But she’s completely independent of the company. She works for herself.”

  “She was very helpful with my friends. She must’ve had some kind of medical training.” Trisha seemed thoughtful as she took the samples from him and began to work.

  “I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask her,” he answered vaguely. And good luck to Kate in trying to explain that she was the priestess who served the local shifter community. “Is there anything I can do to help?” Steve changed the subject. “I’m pretty handy in the lab. I used to help my mom a bit.”

  “Really?” She looked at him over her shoulder, a playful expression of disbelief on her pretty face. “Do you know sterile technique?” Her tone made the question a mischievous dare.

  “Does a cat scratch?” he answered in the same tone.

  She laughed and handed him some of the samples she’d been transferring into centrifuge tubes.

  “You know how to load that thing?” She nodded toward the nearby machine that would spin and separate the blood into its components.

  Without commenting further, he expertly balanced the tubes—one on one side, then one opposite until he had the machine properly balanced. They worked together in silence for the short time it took to get all the samples prepared for separation. Trisha was using only about half of each sample, resealing the rest and packing it back in the ice they’d used to transport it. He wasn’t sure what she had in mind, but it was probably better to keep some of each of the samples from the seven women in reserve so they could do more tests later, if it became necessary.

  What followed was several hours spent preparing samples and analyzing data. The results were disturbing.

  “Well, this is new,” Trisha reported as she examined the various results she’d managed to isolate. “It’s got organic and inorganic components. And a trace of silver that was probably meant to act as a catalyst. It’s going to take a while to figure this out—if I can figure it out.” She sighed heavily and leaned back against the lab bench. “But now I know why I got sick when the other girls didn’t. I’m allergic to silver. Lynda is too. The rest of the gals make fun of us because they can’t buy us silver jewelry for gifts. They claim we’re just holding out for gold.” She laughed weakly.

  “Silver, huh?” Steve observed, thinking deep thoughts.

  Silver was poisonous to many magical people—shifters, in particular. Apparently, fey and whatever Trisha had in her lineage was also affected by the deadly metal. Whoever had targeted the group of women—if it had been a trap designed for magic—had to have known that anything with silver in it wouldn’t work as expected on magical folk. So what was the point?

  Perhaps dosing them all with silver and waiting for the magic ones to self-identify? But why knock out the non-magic ones and leave the potentially more dangerous ones conscious? That seemed counterintuitive. Steve rubbed a hand over his forehead and decided to leave it for now. He’d bring the findings to Grif, Slade and the rest, and see what they thought.

  In the meantime, he had a mate to protect.

  She looked so defeated, her head hanging down as she leaned against the countertop. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her and tell her everything would be all right. He wanted to take her to his home, lock them both in his bedroom and make love to her until that worried exhaustion left her body completely.

  But he couldn’t do any of those things. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He had to approach her cautiously. Woo her.

  Unfortunately, Steve had never been big on wooing. His looks and position in the Clan meant women were usually wooing him. There were a lot of females out there who wanted either the thrill of bedding an Alpha cat or the perceived power having him as their bed partner would create. He was second-in-command to one of the most powerful Alphas in the country. Possibly the world. Currying favor with Steve was something a lot of shifters tried to do, but he had a nose for those overtures of friendship that were genuine and those who were only seeking him out for their own benefit.

  Steve moved closer to Trisha and put one hand on her shoulder, offering comfort. Not as much as he wanted to offer, but it was a start. “It’ll be okay.”

  “No, it won’t. At least not for a few days.” She turned to him and suddenly they were standing very close. He could see tears in her eyes, though she seemed loathe to actually let them fall. “This compound…” she began in a soft, defeated kind of tone. “It could potentially keep them unconscious for days. This is a lot more serious than I expected. I figured—at worst—it would turn out to be some kind of date-rape drug, but this is serious anesthesia. Only it’s been modified into something new and strange to me.”

  A tear did fall then, but she quickly wiped it away. Steve couldn’t take it. He reached for her and gently pulled her into his arms. Somewhat to his surprise, she didn’t resist. If anything, she clung to him for support as her lithe body trembled ever so slightly. Her head fit neatly under his chin and he felt the pressure of her cheek resting just above his heart. He’d never felt anything more perfect in his life.

  She was a strong woman, but her friends had been hurt and it clearly bothered her even more than she let show. Steve understood. He’d been in her shoes, only worse. His lost friends wouldn’t wake up. Ever. At least not in this realm. They’d passed beyond this mortal coil. On to bigger and better things, he hoped.

  “It’ll be okay. We can watch over them. We’ll make them as comfortable as possible until they wake up.”

  “They should be in a hospital.” She hiccupped and he pretended not to notice. He sensed she wouldn’t want him to make a big deal out of her tears. He pulled her a little tighter and ran one hand up and down her back in a comforting gesture.

  “We take care of our own around here,” he said softly. If she really wanted her friends to be admitted to a human hospital, he’d ha
ve to agree, but things would be a lot less complicated if they could handle all this themselves. As the Clan usually did. “They’re just sedated, right? There’s no chance they could die, is there?”

  If a bunch of humans died in their care, there would be hell to pay, but just nursing a few doped-up women should be all right. He’d have to rely on Clan folk to help, and it would also mean inconveniencing the wolf Pack for a bit longer than he’d hoped, but it could be done.

  “No, they won’t die. They’re probably just going to be unconscious for a couple of days, followed by one hell of a hangover.” She pulled slightly away from him to look up into his eyes. “Taking them to a hospital is going to open up a huge can of worms with their families, my family and a whole host of people you don’t even want to know about.” She chewed on her lower lip, worrying, and he was sorely tempted to give her lips something else to do—with his.

  “They can stay where they are and we can all keep an eye on them. They’re safe, which is something I can’t guarantee in a hospital. Whoever tried to abduct you all might try again.”

  “It really was an abduction attempt?” Her gaze held even more worry and he was sorry to have put it there, but she needed to know the truth.

  “There was an ambush waiting outside. I think the bar fight was started to force you all out into the street where a group of men was waiting to shove you into vans. My guys disabled the vans—and the people driving them. Without their help, I’m not sure I could’ve gotten all of you out safely. That kind of setup reeks of advance planning. Somebody wants one or all of you for some reason, and I aim to find out why.”