After he was done, he was off to Window A, where they snapped his picture and created his Paranormal ID. The Maddox glaring back from the stupid piece of plastic looked pissed off. Pretty spot on. His mood only worsened from there on out.
Window H was next. The woman perched at that counter gobbled him up like he was a piece of candy. There was a come hither look in her big blue eyes that made Maddox’s wolf sit up and snarl because they weren’t Evangeline’s forest green shade. This woman wasn’t his, and his wolf took the arousal it scented through the thick glass shield separating him and the D.P.R. worker as an insult.
Once he wrangled his beast back, he managed to explain his situation through clenched teeth while she listened too attentively to his request. The blonde leaned forward, pushing her breasts up high as she crossed her arms right beneath them. Maddox could feel her lust like an oil slick coating his fur. He shook it off, reminding himself that this woman might be able to help him find Evangeline.
She was interested in what he had to say for the first few minutes, only to cut him off when he mentioned that he was a shifter looking for information on his missing mate. Which she would have known if she asked to see his P.I.D but, after the time he spent getting that squared away, not one damn person asked to see it. Almost ruefully, she sent him off to Window F. He loped away from her window, his wolf yipping at him to put some distance between the pheromones coming off of the woman.
After waiting over an hour for the pointy-faced man at Window F, Maddox walked up and opened his mouth—then never even got the chance to say a single word. The little man looked him over, swallowed loudly, and shook his head. His beady eyes were locked on Maddox’s bared teeth.
Maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to show this clerk his sharp fangs. He’d admit that. But he couldn’t help it. The weaselly man’s whole countenance shouted ‘prey’ and the predator in Maddox responded.
“Window B,” the man squeaked out, pointing at a window across the crowded room. “Next!”
Maddox knew a dismissal when he saw one. Plus, the reek of the man’s fear was even worse than the blatant way the human female at the other window had openly lusted after him. With a dirty look that caused the clerk to tremble noticeably, Maddox stormed his way back over to the first bank of windows.
At least fifteen others were leading up to Window B, a motley mix of shifters and vampires waiting anxiously. One sniff told him that his wolf was the most dominant animal in line. Too bad pack didn’t mean nothing when it came to bureaucracy; no matter how badly he wanted to bully his way to the front of the line, he couldn’t.
Even worse, with so many vampires nearby, the tangy rust of blood and dead meat assaulted his senses—a bloodsucker’s scent both tantalizing and repulsive to a shifter—and he was forced to breathe shallowly through his mouth before he gave in to his instincts at last, wolfed out, and attacked.
There was at least another hour’s wait ahead of him. His wolf let out a long, mournful howl and, honestly, Maddox didn’t blame the beast one bit.
* * *
“Next.”
Maddox realized with a start that it was finally—finally—his turn. He took a step forward, then watched as some smarmy vampire tried to cut in front of him. Oh, hell no. It didn’t matter that he was dealing with a more docile Dayborn instead of a ferocious Nightwalker, he reacted the same: with a deafening snarl that left spit on the vampire’s smooth alabaster cheek. The vampire hissed, wiped the spit away with the back of his hand, and bared his fangs in warning at Maddox.
But when Maddox lunged forward, the bloodsucker took a hurried step back. Maddox didn’t even blink. The vampire's fangs were only half an inch long. A mere fledgling. He wasn't even worth a second look as Maddox stalked over to the open station and the bored human standing behind the glass partition.
At least, the human male had looked bored before the shifter appeared before him. The second he got an eyeful of Maddox, his eyes widened and he gulped. Now he just looked alarmed.
Maddox resisted the urge to snarl at the clerk, too. Not another one. This was the fourth line they had sent him to and each of the D.P.R. workers acted as if they’d never served a Para before. This clerk alone, in the last hour, had helped six vampires and nine shifters—one of which was a fucking bear. Was his wolf that scary? Shit.
He huffed and waited for the human to regain his composure. As long as the Ant didn’t ship him off to another line like the last one, Maddox could spare a few more seconds before he said fuck it and let his wolf take over, screw the consequences.
Would it have killed them to have a worker who didn’t flinch every time a dominant Para approached a window?
The D.P.R. tended to hire Ants because, as they discovered shortly after its inception, there was something about the menial tasks, the paperwork, and the tedium that just called to human workers. Sometimes the agency would make a mistake and hire a Para, but after the last time a witch got frustrated and blasted a Para civilian who complained about their P.I.D., they secretly adopted a very pro-human hiring policy. Normally that wouldn’t bother him. But his patience had worn thin the instant he walked into the D.P.R. and now he was seconds away from losing it.
A month back, Colton’s news had caused a drastic change in Maddox. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t sense Evangeline yet, just knowing she was out there was enough for the moment. His appetite came back triple-fold—and, for a shifter, that was saying something—and his boundless energy made him manic, considering he couldn’t give his beast free rein. While he was still in the Cage, the warden gave orders that he had to wear the silver collar, but the urge to bust out into fur and claws and break free simply manifested itself in another way. He exercised. He ran laps and lifted weights. He did sit-ups until he fell asleep and woke up in a push-up stance. In the cozy darkness of their bedroom, Evangeline always loved to run her hands along his defined muscles as she murmured how hard he felt. She already owned him, heart and soul. He wanted to give his body back to her, too.
Maddox had to admit that he probably looked better now than he had at any point in the last three years. Taller, stronger, and deadlier. There was no denying he was a powerful alpha shifter who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
No wonder the Ant on the other side of the counter was staring at him in ill-disguised terror. That’s how humans always seemed to react whenever they had seen him with Evangeline. Looked like he was going to have to get used to that all over again. Fine. It was a miniscule price to pay to have his mate back—even if he was finding it kind of hard not to spring at the glass and watch this Ant piss his pants.
Maddox had to give this clerk credit since he did recover much faster than the others. He didn’t quite resume his bored expression—Maddox could feel the tension that surrounded him even through the enchanted glass—but he sounded like a true professional as he actually attempted to help Maddox.
Hallelujah, he had found the right window at last.
6
“Name? Last name first, please.”
“Wolfe, Maddox. Two ‘d’s, one ‘x’. There's an ‘e’ at the end of Wolfe.”
The clerk turned to look at the screen in front of him. It was positioned so that, even with Maddox’s shifter eyesight, he couldn't see a damn thing. There was the fierce tapping of keys and then a brisk nod.
“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. Now what can I do for you?”
“They told me that this was the window to ask about mates. Is that right? Because I’m beginning to think someone’s giving me the runaround here.”
“Hmm… okay.” The clerk tapped his computer screen, his lips moving as he read something to himself, then pressed a couple of more keys. An instant later, he frowned. “That's interesting. I think I see what’s going on here.”
“What's interesting?” The air suddenly shifted and Maddox tensed. The human wasn’t so much afraid as he was suddenly very, very anxious. “What’s going on?”
The clerk pretended not to hear
Maddox’s demand. “What was the name of your mate?”
Was. Maddox didn't like the sound of that. There must have been something about his three-year incarceration or the Claws Clause on that screen.
“Her name’s Evangeline Lewis.”
The clerk looked up from his computer. “Her first name is Lewis?”
“No— oh, that’s right. Last name first. Sorry. It's Evangeline. Lewis, Evangeline. And Lewis is spelled L-E-W-I-S.”
Maddox’s wolf bristled as he spelled her name. He knew his other half was desperate to assert its claim on his mate and, before he thought better of it, he found himself adding, “It should be Wolfe, but she didn't get the chance to change it legally after we got hitched before...”
He let his gruff voice trail to a close as he thought back to that night three years ago. Of course she didn't. The car crashed the night they got married. One bad turn in a freak storm on their way to their honeymoon cabin. They never even got the chance to consummate their union, his wolf edgily reminded him, or finish the claiming.
That was something that would change as soon as he got his claws back into Evangeline.
He couldn’t wait.
“Hmm...” More clacking. “Oh, I see. Let me just…” A tiny twitch above the clerk’s right eye. More clacking. The stink of fear started to seep back into his scent. He kept glancing back over at Maddox, his eyes locked on Maddox’s throat. “Okay. Hmm.”
Maddox wasn't a patient shifter at the best of times. While he had more control over his wolf than most—including Colton and his notorious hair-trigger temper—there was no denying the fact that this Ant was, in his wolf’s eyes, the only obstacle between him and his mate.
“Stop it with the damn ‘hmm’s, alright? Is she in there or not?”
“Can you verify her date of birth for me?”
If answering stupid questions got him to Evangeline quicker… “March 22nd. She just turned 27.”
“Thank you, sir. If you’ll just excuse me one moment.”
The clerk abandoned his computer. Maddox braced his hands on the granite countertop, scowling as he was forced to wait. The enchanted glass that separated him from the D.P.R. workers was the same shit they used in the Cage which made the whole thing worse. It didn’t matter that he was finally free again; he was free in name only. The trapped feeling still followed him, and his wolf whined. It wanted out almost as bad as it wanted Evangeline.
The clerk wasn’t gone long and, when he returned, he wasn’t alone. He brought back with him a tall, stern woman with slicked iron-grey hair and eyes so dark they were nearly black. She could’ve been anywhere from forty to sixty and, from the look of disgust on her thin face, she hated everyone and everything for every single one of those years. She had the word ‘supervisor’ written all over her.
She spared Maddox a quick, dirty look, sniffed audibly, then followed her employee’s point to something written on the computer screen. Turning sharply, she looked back at Maddox and, as the clerk had before, she narrowed her focus on Maddox’s throat.
That’s when he realized what all of the humans were staring at. He had worn a silver collar around his throat the entire three years he was in the Cage. When they finally removed it, he found out that they were full of it when they said that the treated side of the collar kept the silver from harming him—he just hadn’t felt it as it ate into the skin around his neck. Reaching up, Maddox anxiously rubbed the raw patch of ruined skin where the collar had left its mark. Thanks to the silver, that was one injury that would never heal. Anyone who saw the scars knew exactly why he had them.
The Ants didn’t need a computer to tell them that he’d been in the Cage. Maddox was all the proof they needed. No wonder he alarmed them all. They probably expected him to go rabid at any moment.
And, he admitted to himself, they weren’t wrong.
The supervisor turned back to the computer screen. She hit a couple of keys, peered closely at the screen, then pressed the enter button. Maddox’s hackles rose as a tiny glint of satisfaction lightened her expression. Something told him that meant bad news for him.
“What’s going on?” His stomach tightened as the old familiar weight of despair settled back into place. Maybe Colt was wrong. Maybe the warden made a mistake and Evangeline was…
He shook his head and gripped the countertop in front of him again. “Is it Evangeline? Is something wrong?”
“That, sir, is none of your business.”
Could she have sounded any snider if she tried? He doubted it. “She’s my mate. Everything about her is my business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. According to our database, Ms. Lewis is listed as one hundred percent human. She's never bonded with any paranormal. At least,” the supervisor added, and there was the smallest of smiles as she did, “not officially.”
Screw despair. This was absolute panic. Maddox caught his outraged howl just in time, though his fingers flexed and he gripped the edge of the countertop with all of his strength. The granite was no match for a furious shifter. With a loud crack, the edge shattered as if it was made of clay, rubble and sand and broken bits of counter falling at his feet.
Was she fucking serious?
Three years ago not one damned soul gave a shit that they had never visited the local Bumptown to get a stupid piece of paper signed. After the accident, it was clear to everyone that he was both a bonded male and highly unstable without Evangeline so they immediately invoked the Claws Clause. As soon as the human cops got word that she was DOA at the hospital, Maddox was given his three choices: life in a voluntary incarceration facility; he could undergo a mystical lobotomy that would rip Evangeline from his soul; or be put down like the animal they clearly thought he was.
No one ever asked him to see their bonding license when they were cuffing him in silver and transporting him to the Cage.
Now though, now that he had discovered the truth—the impossible, glorious truth—that damn piece of paper was everything. No bond, no rights. That’s what this Ant was telling him. All because of the ridiculous Claws Clause.
No fucking way.
“She’s my mate,” Maddox said, pushing away from the damaged counter before he broke off the rest of it. “You have to tell me where to find her.”
“Actually,” the supervisor shot back, “we don’t.” There was a finality to her tone that told him he could argue until the moon turned blue and she still wasn’t budging. “Franklin, please explain to this… gentleman how the bonding laws work. Quickly now, we have a line to get through before we break for lunch.” She turned her nose up at Maddox and waved her hand at the mess. “And make sure to take his information. We will be sending him a bill for repairs to the counter.”
The clerk, Franklin, waited for the woman to walk away before he leaned in. Though he lowered his voice, Maddox picked up every word through the haze of his denial. “Sorry about that. Unfortunately, she’s right. Agency’s a real stickler when it comes to the Bond Laws.”
The Claws Clause. If he ever came face to face with the lawmakers who made up those ridiculous laws, he’d love to show them how much damage a real pair of claws could do. Because that damn ordinance had done a number on him. He figured he could return the favor.
Maddox kicked roughly at the mess at his feet. He had to make him understand. “I don’t care if she’s right. I just want to know where my mate is and get her back.”
“I wish I could tell you, but... look, between you and me, I get it. I really do. I’ve had girls run out on me before, too. It sucks. But if this ex of yours found a way to get out before the two of you actually bonded, there had to be a reason.”
No, Maddox thought as he shook his head. Not his Evangeline. She loved him. She married him. Before the accident ripped her away from him, they couldn’t have been more bonded—
“She didn’t want to go anywhere before the crash. We were already bonded,” he snapped through gritted teeth. His gums began to burn, his fangs begging to leng
then again, before he forced his change back. He had to. More ridiculous laws for Paras to follow. Just like vampires weren’t allowed to bite in public and witches couldn’t cast spells within twenty-five feet of public buildings, there wasn’t any unauthorized shifting allowed within a federal facility. “She’s mine.”
The clerk flinched—based on the way his vocal cords stretched and his voice sounded like gravel, Maddox could only imagine the distortion of his features locked in the beginning stages of a shift—but refused to back down. If Maddox wasn’t so frustrated, he might have been impressed.
“Not according to the government, she isn’t. Our records are foolproof and you know the law, Mr. Wolfe. Without the bonding license, you can’t invoke any of the clauses in Ordinance 7304. I can’t give you any further information on Ms. Lewis. There’s simply nothing else I can do for you in that regard. Please don’t make me get my boss again.”
“Mrs. Wolfe,” he growled out. The words were almost unintelligible, slurred out behind an overlarge tongue and a set of canine fangs. He’d lost the battle with his teeth the instant the clerk used Evangeline’s maiden name. Let them fine him for losing control. He didn’t care. “The second I get the bonding license signed, she’s changing her fucking name. I promise you that.”
“So you say, sir. Just remember that you can’t actually force anyone to be bonded to you.”
Maddox didn’t even dignify that with a response. He let the flash of his wolf’s glare and a hint of fang let the clerk know that he’d gone too far with that last comment. He wouldn’t have to force his mate to do anything as soon as the bond snapped back into place and anyone who knew anything about the mating instinct knew that.
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