by Thorne, Elle
Circe frowned. Marie had never, ever commented on the attractiveness of either an applicant or an applicant’s parent before.
She gave Marco a glance.
He shrugged.
Okay, then.
Circe shoved the papers back into the file. Time to find out what sort of havoc the tigress and the fire elemental were wreaking on the little one.
Chapter Four
Linc studied the mansion before him. Yup, this was the right address. A gated driveway with a punch code that had been provided to him had granted him entrance. He’d pulled the rented Continental through the manicured garden, resplendent with trees, bushes, an assortment of flowers, and a large pond with a fountain. The place had an ancient air, and yet, it had an air of hope.
Burgundy bricks, intermittently spaced with brown ones lent an ambiance of careless architecture that was too symmetrical to be truly careless. Two large chimneys poked out from each end of the building. An even larger one from the center. Rows and rows of oversized windows would allow sunlight to fill the rooms.
The second floor was smaller than the first, permitting several balconies to jut from the majestic structure.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
He pushed that thought away and glanced at his silent niece next to him. She was taking everything in, wide-eyed and close-mouthed.
“This is it,” he said with a smile, hoping to coax her from her seriousness.
She nodded.
He wondered if that was Dina nodding or her tigress, or her elemental. He’d heard you could talk to the elemental within someone, but he’d never seen that. He’d heard they were a different entity. That he also couldn’t testify to.
And the person he’d heard that from? Yeah, that would be his dead brother. And he couldn’t exactly go to his brother for confirmation on this.
“Are you ready?”
Another solemn nod.
He held back the sigh that fought to come out in a large exhaled whoosh.
I sure hope this works.
It better. It was his very last option, of that he was sure.
He let himself out then opened the door for Dina and held out his hand for her to take it.
She shook her head and reached out with both her arms.
Linc picked her up and she buried her face in his neck.
“I’m sorry to worry you, Uncle Linc.” She was trying to put forth her best attempt to fully pronounce the word uncle.
“You don’t need to be sorry about anything, Dinaria Avila. Not a single thing.” In his mind, he cursed the fates that put this little girl in the conundrum she was in. The same conundrum her dead mother faced. The same one that got his brother killed.
Tapping on the remote, he locked the vehicle and strode for the polished wood double doors in the center of the immaculate pebbled driveway. Whatever this operation was, it was well funded.
He’d barely knocked on the door when it opened and for the first time in his life, Lincoln Avila was speechless.
More than just speechless, his jaw had probably dropped to the floor.
Before him, the most stunning brunette with dark eyes and a figure that wouldn’t quit appraised him coolly. Her eyes flashed with golden highlights, and he’d have sworn it looked like electric sparks in their depths.
Full lips curved into a polite smile. “Mr. Avila?”
He nodded while he fought to get control of his tongue and his lion.
Indeed, he fought to control the lion within his mind that had begun to roar the moment she’d opened the door, rendering Linc almost incapable of hearing. He struggled for power over his shifter animal, which was at the moment making it quite clear that the woman before them was unlike any woman he’d ever met.
To say this was unusual was an understatement. Linc’s lion was impervious to females, allowing Linc to flirt and cavort, enjoying his fair share of the opposite sex while maintaining a distance.
Hell yeah, this was more than extremely rare for his lion. It was damned unheard of, and it was damned unnerving. It didn’t help that the attraction Linc felt for this woman was overwhelming.
Finally, seconds later, though it felt more like an eternity, he had it under control.
“I’m Lincoln Avila. This is Dina.” A finger under Dina’s chin, he tipped her face toward the woman. “And you are?”
“I’m Circe.”
And wouldn’t you know it, she had the name of a minor Greek goddess. Though this woman was anything than minor. He’d never presume to understate her. She was a full-blown, in the flesh, goddess.
Damn.
Then he remembered the mythology from ages ago. Circe. The one who’d turned Ulysses’ companions into pigs.
Damn, was right.
“Hi, Dina.” Circe patted Dina’s back.
A heat flowed between Linc and Dina. A film of perspiration made its way to his temple.
Not good. Not good at all. She was doing her fire thing.
He gave Circe a look of consternation.
Circe must have known or sensed. She backed up slowly and nodding, opened the door wider. “Why don’t we go into a special room to visit. We have a great playroom,” she told Dina. Then she looked at Linc, and added, “And it’s fireproof, as well as any other kind of proof we could manage. It’s been set up to neutralize…” She paused, then added, “to neutralize effects.”
Got it.
He followed her, reminding himself he was there on business and kept his eyes on the back of her head, not the long dark hair that swayed with each swish of delectable hips.
And what the hell is up with me? Since when do I do this?
His lion roared in response.
Pipe down.
Circe led them down an opulent hallway past several doors until she came to the last one on the right. "In here."
She reached for Dina. Linc frowned.
"I need to talk to her privately," Circe said.
Dina looked between Linc and Circe, then went to Circe's arms.
"Why," Linc asked.
"Dina, why don't you play with some of these toys?" Circe knelt and put Dina down in front of a large pink toy chest. She opened the lid. The box was full of stuffed animals.
Circe rose to her feet, and approached Linc. "Follow me, the room next door has a two-way mirror. You can watch our conversation. It even has a speaker. You can listen in."
Linc glanced at Dina, playing with a pair of stuffed alligators, one pink and one blue. He was reluctant to leave her.
I’ve got to. It's for her own good.
He followed Circe out of the room, to the next door, taking a seat in an oversized plush chair, and waited.
In the room, he’d just left, Circe knelt next to Dina and began to play with her. He studied Circe while she visited with his niece. His mind began to wander while the two of them played, not really talking about anything that drew his attention.
Linc wondered if Circe was a shifter. He felt confident she was, but she wasn't letting off the vibes that he usually got when he was around another shifter.
Maybe my shifter radar is off.
Linc couldn't have said later what it was that caught his attention, but something did, because suddenly he began to tune them in.
What did she just say?
He listened more closely.
Circe was talking. "When my elemental…"
Linc didn't need to hear anything else. Why the hell was Dina alone with an elemental?
What the hell is wrong with me?
He couldn’t trust elementals. At all.
He flew out of the chair, out of the room, and yanked open the door to the room Circe and Dina were in.
"You didn't say you're an elemental." He noticed his lion's presence in the gravelly, growling tone of his voice, but it wasn't like it was something he could control.
Elementals were too dangerous. Dina wasn’t safe with one.
Circe sprang to her feet, a confused look on her
face. Her eyes flashed, tiny bolts of gold sparkled in the depths of her dark irises.
Circe stared at him as if he’d lost it. “What?”
The air between them sizzled.
Linc fought to control his lion, struggled to keep the shift from happening. Behind them, Dina crab-crawled toward the box, stopping when her back was against the wooden side.
A pair of hands grabbed Linc from behind, turning him around.
Linc found himself faced with an equally large sized man whose dark features were drawn into a scowl. “Are you threatening my sister?”
“Marco! No,” Circe exclaimed.
It was a bit too late.
Reflexively and instinctively, Linc’s lion began to emerge, the bones in his body signaling the approach of the shift with their signature creaking sounds.
A ring of flames appeared suddenly, engulfing the man that Circe had called Marco, singeing Linc at the same time.
“Jesus.” Linc jumped forward, pushing his lion back, he grabbed a sobbing Dina and wrapped her in an embrace, turning her face away from the flames she’d created, and the man who’d leapt out of the middle of the ring of fire the little girl had surrounded him with.
“It’s okay, DiDi,” he soothed his little niece with the nickname her father used to call her.
It was not okay, and now, more than ever, he could see it.
Chapter Five
Marco held Circe’s arms. “Calm down.”
“I will not calm down,” Circe ground the words out.
Marco and Circe were in the private room two doors down the hallway from the room where Dina had started the fire. They’d left Lincoln Avila and little Dinaria in another room, a bit farther away.
Marie was busy directing a cleaning crew in the smoke-filled room.
“Have one of the twins handle this case,” Circe said. “Eden. Let’s have Eden do this one. I’ll take her place and work with Camden.”
Marco shook his head. “Circe. No. They’re heading out. The operation they’re on is their specialty. They’re the only ones who can handle it. You know this. You said it yourself when we got the file a couple weeks ago.”
Circe’s body was trembling. Electricity coursed throughout her system. Marco jerked backward and released her immediately as the surge traveled to his hands.
She scowled. “You take it then.”
“Me? No. I’ll have to leave for the airport shortly. I won’t be back for a couple days.”
Circe couldn’t take her mind off the man who’d barreled into the room, interrupting her and Dina.
Lincoln Avila.
There was something haunting about him. She’d seen it when she’d first opened the door, but she’d shoved her reaction to him away. She had Dinaria Avila to worry about, not some hot—incredibly hot—man who looked like he lived with ghosts and was a lion shifter. A lion shifter who almost attacked her.
And what was that about?
Another thing—Dinaria, who was only four had actually started a fire around Marco. She was exceptionally powerful. The last time Circe had encountered an elemental as powerful at such a young age—
She pushed that thought aside. She would not think of Mae. She would not think of that time when both she and Mae had been four, young cousins, playing together in the backyard at… Circe couldn’t even remember where they’d been playing when she and Mae had gotten into a scuffle over a doll.
Except that when two little girls who housed powerful elementals in their bodies got into a scuffle, electrical sparks flew and hail rained down with a fury from the cloudless sky above.
And that was exactly what had happened.
Mae’s and Circe’s parents had come running out and snatched the girls. Mae’s elemental had been creating spikes of ice and piercing the earth about them while Circe’s electric bolts had pummeled the same ground.
That had been the beginning. Tumultuous.
The ending had been equally tumultuous.
Circe hurling accusations and lightning while Mae countered with ice spears and blame.
Both had shed tears, grown women, long past that childhood, best friends for years…
Circe pushed the memories to the recesses of her mind, shut the pain out of her heart.
She thought of Dina. That child needed someone who could help her, and in her heart, deep down, though she was unwilling to admit it, Circe knew she was the one to help.
But she’d have to stay away from Dina’s father, Lincoln Avila.
“Cee?” Marco was using his pet name for her.
Damn him.
Her brother knew how to pull her heartstrings. She let out a small sigh. “I’ll do it.”
And she would. She had to. This was her calling.
* * *
Circe knocked on the door to the room where Lincoln and Dina Avila waited, then turned the knob and walked in.
Lincoln looked up from the chair he was in. A sleeping Dina rested in his arms, her face a bit paler than it had been when they’d first arrived.
“How is she?” Circe asked.
“Wiped out.” He glanced down at the little girl.
Circe took that moment while he wasn’t watching her, to study the man’s face.
There was something broken there.
Mind your own business, she cautioned herself. As if I don’t have enough issues of my own to deal with. I can’t be fixing a man.
He raised his eyes to hers, and her breath hitched.
There was a predatory gleam in the depth of his gaze.
She was wrong. This was not a man who needed fixing. This was a dangerous, wounded lion.
And you know what dangerous, wounded lions do to the ones who get in their path, she issued herself a warning.
Her panther snarled a response.
They both knew that a wounded shifter was a dangerous shifter, and though she couldn’t see Lincoln Avila’s wounds, she knew they cut deeply.
“So—” he said, cutting himself off abruptly.
She waited. Was that the start of a sentence?
He raised a brow.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t.
“Well?” his tone was a bit more insistent.
“We’ll—I’ll help your daughter.”
“Dina’s not my daughter,” he said softly. “She’s my brother’s daughter.”
“Where’s your brother?” A natural question to ask, Circe figured.
His jaw muscles worked.
Jeez, every part of this man was hard muscle. She waited patiently, watching a flurry of emotions pass over his face as he pondered whatever it was he had to say.
“My brother’s dead. So is Dina’s mother.” He let out a labored exhale, then continued. “She killed my brother then herself. She was an elemental.”
“My God.” Circe leaned against the doorjamb as the horror of what Lincoln Avila had just told her sunk in.
Now there was no way she could walk away from this little girl.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing the words were so inadequate at conveying the emotions she felt, but there was nothing else she could say.
He nodded. “Thank you for helping Dina. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost her.”
And Circe knew the danger was very real. The wrong elemental, in the wrong shifter’s body, that could lead to—that could lead to exactly what happened to Dina’s parents.
And some hybrids—too many, it seemed—didn’t make it past childhood.
Circe wished she could hug the little girl, and take her troubles away, take them deep into herself where she and Albani could deal with them. She couldn’t.
But there were some things she could do. And she would.
“There’s a room, a suite, prepared for you and Dina.”
“I have some questions. I don’t really understand the whole elemental thing. Could you—someone—explain it to me? Sometime?”
“Sometime.”
He was silent. Watching
He rose from the
chair slowly, holding Dina against his body while she slept. “Lead the way.”
* * *
After settling Lincoln Avila and his niece—she was still trying to wrap her mind around that, and her panther’s reaction to this new development—Circe was ready for some “me time.” For her the best kind was retail therapy.
She knew exactly where to get that.
The mall.
Ain’t no men at the mall, her inner voice reminded her.
With my history, men are the last thing I need.
Grabbing her wallet and cell phone, she opened the door and found herself face to face with a person she didn’t expect to see again, ever.
Or even want to.
Chapter Six
“Circe.”
That one word slipped out of Mae’s mouth just before a thread of electric current slithered from Circe’s fingertips and encircled Mae’s wrists, binding her hands together, searing flesh where the electricity touched Mae’s skin.
The rope of current grew, then jerked Mae backward.
Had it not been for the muscle-bound man standing just behind and to the left of Mae, she’d have fallen to the ground.
As it was, he caught Mae’s backward catapult and turned a hard gaze toward Circe.
Circe’s elemental retracted the electric tentacles, leaving Circe breathless and spent of energy. Her panther snarled in Circe’s mind.
“Why are you here.” It wasn’t a question. No, it was an attack. Circe didn’t care why Mae was here. She didn’t belong here. “You have forsaken the Order, and now you—”
“Wait,” the man behind Mae said.
Circe stared at him. “You’re not—” She struggled to remember the name of the shifter Mae had left the Order for. Ah, yes, then it came to her. “You’re not Brad.” She gave him a hard look, and at the same time, restrained Albani who was raring to inflict more damage on anyone, everyone.
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not.”
Circe cocked her head. “Shifters mate for life.”
