by Kimber White
He was still shirtless. I put a flat hand over his heart. Something came over me and I moved forward, pressing my ear to him. His heartbeat strong and steady along with my own.
The Dragonsteel dagger was still in his back pocket. I reached for it, letting the light catch the blade. I’d felt the thing go in him. The sound of it might haunt me forever.
Leo had the red diamond in his hand. I tossed the dagger on the coffee table.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, taking the stone from him.
My head swam. Information and emotional overload. The Kingsblood Diamond. It was real. My grandfather was right. A wave of grief rose and slammed into my chest. Leo felt it along with me. He caught me by the elbow.
I sank into the nearest chair. “He was right,” I whispered. “All this time. He was right. He knew what Mrs. Davies had. I told myself I believed him. I mean...even if this was just a red diamond, it’s one of the rarest in the world. But now…”
“Now,” Leo said. “Everything’s changed.”
I looked up at him. His expression turned serious, almost grave.
“If you’re holding this,” I said. “If you’re wearing it, you can’t be killed. Not even with Dragonsteel,” I said. “Nothing? Not fire. Not by drowning...nothing?”
Leo raised a brow. “Well, I’m not sure I’m willing to be the guinea pig for the rest of that, but I think so. I felt its magic when you stabbed me.”
I winced. The thought of ever doing anything that would hurt this man turned me inside out.
“Don’t ever ask me to do that again,” I said. It was my turn to be grave and serious. “I mean it, Leo. Never again.”
“No,” he smiled. “I think we know enough.”
“He knew,” I said. “Alonzo. I think he knew exactly what this stone could do.”
Leo shook his head. “I’m not so sure. Your grandfather was probably the closest thing to an expert on it. He’s the one who figured out what it was when he saw it.”
“So there’s maybe a chance whoever sent him doesn’t yet know it’s really the Kingsblood,” I said.
He rubbed a thumb across his palm. I had the sense he was keeping something from me.
Fated mates.
Leo’s words echoed through me. If I chose to let him mark me, our bond would grow stronger. I’d be able to read his mind. At that moment, I wished for it.
“Leo, what aren’t you telling me?”
As soon as I said it, I felt sure I already knew.
“Wolfguard,” I said. “They want the stone.”
His eyes went instantly wide. He recovered just as quickly. “Meg, you can’t sell it now. You know that.”
I did know it. But, even as I admitted it to myself, I felt the walls closing in. My former life was over. My grandfather was gone. The shop was gone. And now, without my commission from this sale, I had literally nothing to my name.
Then there was my father. Whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into this time, I had no means to bail him out even if I wanted to.
“Leo, there has to be some way…”
“No,” he said. “There’s no way. If that thing got into the wrong hands… Meg, what do you know about my boss, Payne Fallon?”
“What? Um...nothing, really.”
“For a generation, an evil man, a wolf shifter, controlled all the other wolf shifters in Kentucky. Payne was forced to work for him. That type of shifter is called a Tyrannous Alpha. It’s the darkest of magic. Mind control. Totalitarianism. The man basically forced every Kentucky wolf shifter into slavery for him. They couldn’t mate without his say so. They couldn’t even shift without his say-so. Some of them were forced to kill for him.”
“My God,” I said. “I had no idea. And this went on right under everyone’s...I mean...uh...human noses?”
“Yes,” he said. “Not all. Some worked with the resistance to overthrow him. And back in Moscow, the shifter who took over the Russian packs from my family, he was headed down that same path.”
“But your father won. He took back his power.”
“He did,” Leo said. “Not without a price. My point is, if the Kentucky Alpha or my father’s enemy had gotten ahold of this thing, they would have been unstoppable.” He held the diamond up, his face filled with disdain.
I reached for him. Calm settled over him and he carefully laid the stone on the table beside him.
“It’s incredible, the power I felt,” he said. “I could have easily been intoxicated by it.”
“You’re a good man,” I said. “You’re not like the man your father overthrew or this Kentucky Alpha.”
“There are plenty of others out there that have the potential to be like them, though,” he said. “We can’t let that happen. I can’t let you sell that thing. We have to hide it. Guard it. We have to do something. And I know what that means for you.”
I leaned back in my chair. Gone. All gone. Like the green vapor that permeated my shop, my old life had just vanished in a puff of smoke.
“Meg...I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish there was something I could do. I know how hard this is for you. Everything you’ve been through.”
The thing was, he did. I knew he was starting to feel my pain as much as I did his. It was intense. Even now, I felt something akin to an embrace from him even though he wasn’t touching me.
“Are you sure I can’t get you something to eat? Or a glass of wine?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to try to get some sleep. I’ll have a fresher brain in the morning.”
I rose. Leo’s gaze followed me up. He stayed seated at the coffee table, the red diamond sparkling beside him.
“You’ll take care of that?” I asked.
Leo looked down. “I’ll get it back in the safe.”
I paused at the bottom of the stairs. Before I did anything else, I wanted to take a shower. Since we came to the safehouse, we’d taken separate bedrooms. Now, that seemed pointless. The thought of having Leo’s protective arms wrapped around me all night appealed to me on a cellular level.
“Will you come to bed?” I asked.
His eyes glinted in the darkness. “Later,” he said. “I still have to check in with Milo, my cousin. We’ll have some decisions to make come morning.”
Again, I had that sensation that he was holding something back. It was probably nothing. The weight of the truth about the Kingsblood Diamond was heavy enough.
An invincible shifter. It was like a weapon of mass destruction if it ever fell into the wrong hands.
Who had created such a thing? I knew that was part of the questioning he had left for his associates at Wolfguard.
“I’ll check in on you,” he said.
“Aren’t you exhausted yourself?”
A slow smile spread across his face. Those brilliant eyes of his flashed with mischief and it sent heat rocketing through me.
I wanted him again. The force of it nearly took my breath away. But, I wanted the quiet as well. I had a lot to process.
My choice. Leo would never mark me unless it was what I wanted. It was forever.
I kissed his cheek and went up to the bathroom. I heard him moving around downstairs. I realized he was waiting for me. Whatever he had to say to Milo, he didn’t want me to hear.
I closed the bathroom door and turned on the shower. I slipped out of my clothes and into the warm water. It felt like heaven.
I could still feel Leo’s hands on my body, his kisses on my lips. Then, further down, there was a constant pulse of desire between my legs.
The Rise.
I was a shifter’s mate. I’d only met one woman who was. Her name was Lenore and she’d come into the shop looking for Dragonsteel years ago. At the time, we had none.
Lenore was mated to a bear shifter named Donal. They had a son together. Donal accompanied her and he’d been this huge, looming presence, watching her every move. I remember wondering what it would be like to love someone like that. My mother had been in t
he wind since I was little. She wanted nothing to do with my dad. And I’d never known my grandmother as she died before I was born.
Love.
Did I love Leo?
I ran my hand over my breasts, letting the water sluice away the soap.
Leo’s hands were big and strong like every other part of him. My body belonged to his. I knew it in my bone marrow. We fit. Every part of the sex we’d just had felt instinctual. I’d never trusted a man enough to submit completely like I had with Leo in the woods tonight.
And I knew I would do so much more for him. I could sense his desire flooding through me. I knew what he wanted.
I imagined what it would feel like to let him tie me up. A shudder of pleasure went through me at the thought of it.
I trusted him. That was the thing. I knew in my heart he wanted to protect me. It felt so real. Could I let myself give in to it even though we’d only just met?
I wondered what my grandfather would say. He would have liked Leo. I knew that. He was fascinated by shifters and most of what I knew about them before Leo came into my life Grandpa taught me.
Fiercely loyal. Superhuman strength and speed. Driven by the need to mate.
I put my hand over the base of my neck. I craved his bite with such intensity I could barely think straight. And that was the thing. I needed to think straight. My world turned upside down and every decision I made going forward mattered so much.
Leo was loyal to Wolfguard. But would they have my interests in mind as well? I doubted it.
I turned the knob and cut off the water flow. I toweled off and slipped on the robe Leo brought for me.
He wasn’t downstairs anymore. I looked out my bedroom window and saw his shadow moving in the corner of the yard. He was still on the phone.
I climbed into bed, intending to wait for him. Sleep came quickly. I was exhausted. Spent. Sated.
Leo never came. Instead, a light breeze kissed my cheek and sunlight stabbed through the window.
I sat bolt upright. Disoriented, I reached for my phone. It was past nine in the morning. I never slept that late.
“Leo?” I called out. I felt his steady presence through the beat of my own heart.
He appeared in the doorway, freshly showered and shaved. He was wearing what I called his Wolfguard uniform. All business with a black suit and tie over a crisp white shirt.
I pulled up the sheet, feeling suddenly modest. Leo raked his eyes over me and my body responded. I was already wet for him. I squeezed my legs together. There was something else on Leo’s mind as well. I read it in his intense gaze.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He came to me. He sat on the edge of the bed. With just the thin sheet separating us, it was hard to concentrate.
“There’s something I have to tell you and it might be hard to hear. I’ve been in communication with Milo and Payne. We’re trying to contain the situation and I wanted to have better, more concrete news to share before I told you.”
“What?” My heart raced. The room started to spin.
Leo put a calming hand on my knee. “Meg, it’s your father. We’ve had contact with him.”
“What? My dad?”
Leo pulled out his phone. He swiped open to his photo album.
“You were right about his interview with the reporter the other day. We think he was trying to send you a message.”
“No,” I said. “He’s in trouble, I know it.”
“Yes,” Leo said. “They’ve left you a ransom note. It was left in the shop sometime late yesterday. I’ve got people on it trying to trace where it came from.”
“Let me guess, they want the stone in exchange for my dad,” I said.
Leo nodded. Then, he turned the phone so I could see what picture he pulled up.
When I did, my heart dropped straight through the floor. It was my father. Blood ran down the side of his face. His left eye was nearly swollen shut. I couldn’t see who else was in the frame, but they were holding a knife to his throat.
Chapter Eighteen
Leo
Meg was strangely calm. She pressed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose.
“What are they asking for this time?” she said. “How much?”
“This time?”
Her eyes had gone instantly bloodshot. Underneath her calm facade, I could feel her pulse quicken.
“How much does he owe?” she asked.
“Meg,” I started. I’d spent the better part of the night on the phone with Payne and then Milo. “This isn’t loan sharks or whoever else he usually gets tangled up with.”
“Of course it is,” she said, rising from the bed. She wore only a t-shirt and panties. The sight of her stirred my wolf. I cleared my throat and tried to focus on the crisis at hand.
“No, baby, it’s not. Not this time. I’m not saying he’s not in his usual trouble at the same time, but the people who took him know about the Kingsblood Diamond.”
She buried her face in her hands. “He told them,” she said. “He wasn’t even supposed to know about it. My grandfather swore to me he was keeping it under wraps.”
“But we already knew your dad was in on it. That story that ran in the news. You know it had to be your dad who gave them that picture of the diamond.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “I just...I can’t believe he’d do this.”
She said the words, but I knew they weren’t true for her. She knew exactly what her father was capable of. I hated that she’d only just now come into my life. I wished I could reach back in time and stand beside her as she fought some of her toughest battles.
I would never let anyone take advantage of her again. I would never let anyone hurt her. I would have her back for as long as we both lived.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said.
There were tears in her eyes now and it tore my guts apart.
“It’s not though,” she said. “No matter what...even if I figure out a way to get him out of this mess, there will be another. And without the proceeds from the sale of that cursed diamond, I don’t have two pennies to rub together.”
“Meg,” I said. “You aren’t going to face this one alone. You will never face anything like this alone again. I swear to you. No matter what you decide or how our future unfolds, I’ll protect you.”
She came to me. She slid her hands up my chest. A shiver of pleasure went through me. It was ludicrous. I’d just told her her father’s life was in danger. I had yet to tell her what Wolfguard planned to do about it. The timing couldn’t be worse, but I wanted her so badly.
“I know,” she said, smiling. Of course she knew.
I kissed her.
“Meg,” I said. “I meant what I said. You don’t have to face this alone. I’ve been in communication with my firm most of the night. We think we know where they’re holding your father. We’re developing an extraction plan.”
She took a step back. “Extraction plan?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
This was the part I hated. My need to protect her also included wanting to keep her from the hard parts of this.
No sooner had I said it before my phone rang on the dresser. I shot her a look and went to pick it up. She saw the caller ID before I could get to it. It was Milo.
“Leo, if that’s about my dad and this plan, I want to hear it.”
“Meg…”
“No, I need to know. I love that you want to protect me, but I’ve been taking care of myself for twenty-four years before you walked into my life. This is my family we’re talking about. What’s left of it anyway.”
I wanted to tell her I was her family. As my fated mate...regardless of if I ever marked her, the Kalenkovs would honor the oaths I’d made her.
She was right though. Meg was no damsel in distress and it was one of the things I loved most about her. Though it went against my better judgment, I clicked the speaker button and answered the call.
“You’re
on speaker,” I told Milo. “Meg’s here.”
“Good,” he said. “I was going to suggest it. I’ve just spoken with Payne. There’s a house just outside of Ann Arbor. We tracked Emerson Junior there. He was nabbed in a bar yesterday afternoon on State Street. One of the patrons there saw the whole thing happen. A jag shifter from Arizona. Anyway, he got word to us through the grapevine. We’ve checked and confirmed everything. We got eyes on Junior about an hour ago as they were moving him.”
Meg narrowed her eyes. She shrugged her shoulders and mouthed the words, “How in the hell?”
“Drone,” I said.
“Yes,” Milo answered.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “Simple door kicker?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “We’re still doing some recon, but we’re not getting the sense of any high-level magic users on the premises.”
“Got it,” I said. “Where do you want me?”
Milo paused. Just that one beat and I knew I was going to hate the rest of what he said.
“They’ve asked for Meg to make the drop.”
“The drop?” she said.
“It’s a decoy,” Milo said. “Payne had one of the specialists working all night. I’ll send you a pic after we get off. Meg brings the fake diamond to the drop. We have eyes on her the whole time. Then, we follow and swoop in and get her dad out of this. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”
“No!” I boomed. “No way. Meg doesn’t go anywhere near this.”
“Leo.” Meg and Milo spoke in unison.
“Leo,” Milo started again. “We need to flush at least one of these dipshits out in the open. She’ll never be in any danger. We just need to tag the guy who shows up. Then we follow him back and get Emerson. This is easy, Leo. We’ve done it dozens of times.”
It wasn’t the same. It was so damn easy for Milo to say. I didn’t want to throw it in his face, but Meg was mine! She wasn’t some operative.
“Look,” Milo said. “I knew you’d want in on this. I told Payne you’d never abide sitting on the sidelines, even though that’s what he wants.”
