The Problem with Promises (39 page)

But no sooner had I finished cheering my self-fortitude than the next wave hit. The bag holding the tablet slid from my fingers. How can such a weightless thing—a flare is light after all—feel so tangible? So heavy?

“Bend!” it demanded.

Shit!
I was melting faster than the Wicked Witch. I put a lock on both knees.
Balls, Hedi. Grow some balls.
I had royal Fae blood in me, didn’t I? I had a wolf who’d caught the wink of an Alpha’s eye, hadn’t it?

“Vraiment, vous me défiez?”
asked my sparring partner before adding a little more oomph to the throw down.

Geeze. What was he? Obi-wan Kenobi?

A bead of sweat rolled down my back, then sluiced between my ass cheeks. “Don’t give in,” I told myself, wanting to do precisely that. “You are stronger than you think you are. Last night you stood toe-to-toe with evil. You killed two men. You yanked a bolt out of your own shoulder blade. You traveled to another realm. You outlived a car accident. You outthought a shapeshifter. You are strong.”

I want to fold, I want to fold.

You see? It’s too easy to listen to the voice that tells you that you’re too weak, or too small, or that your resistance amounts to nothing in the larger scheme of things.

Hold on.
My knees started shaking. Literally knocking together.

Oh Goddess, for how long?

That’s when my Fae, who’d sat and listened to my good-byes, and who’d watched death and destruction, and observed humility and loss, and all things humanizing, stepped up. “Do not bow to him,” she said. And without further ado, she merged her presence with ours, and so, together, the three of us—she, me, and my inner-bitch—held.

As Strongholds do.

“You are a very stubborn woman.” I heard the French guy sigh from the other side of the wall of delft blue. “It is not my desire to hurt you.”

People have been saying that for days.
I lifted my hand, finger poised, because frankly, using my magic was starting to become second nature. I’d been tripping, choking, smacking, cracking, and killing with my Fae talent for over seven hours.

“To him,” I whispered.

There was a delay. A very
important
delay in response time because my Fae was busy shoring up my dissipating flare.

The Alpha sprang. Or flew (after Liam, nothing was too improbable or impossible). Whatever. A split second after my command, he and I were up close and uncomfortable. His legs bracketing mine while his large hands circled my throat. Curled over me he was, like a dog hunched over a meaty bone. Wolf breath on my forehead. Hot. Flavored with brandy.

Why do Weres always go for the neck and humans always go for the head?

He squeezed. I squeaked.

Merry leaped.

She went, as per her custom, for his cheek. A flash of whipping vines, then pincers pinched his flesh.
“Merde!”
His sharp hiss feathered my hair. I had a brief moment of hope, but his rear of surprise didn’t greatly interfere with his desire to choke the ever-living life out of me. He could rear and throttle simultaneously—the man had very long arms.

Oh crap.
Spots were forming.
I’m fading.

“What’s going on?” I dimly heard someone say.

“Nothing,” lied the Frenchman. Through his near-blinding flare, I got a hazy impression of high cheekbones. The scent of blood—
not
mine—bloomed between us.

“Who’s there?” A Spaniard.

“I believe it is Hedi Peacock,” answered the guy squeezing my neck. He leaned so close that Merry’s looped chain tickled my chin. “I suggest a temporary truce, mademoiselle,” he whispered. “Perhaps you’ll ask your amulet—it is sensible to words, yes?”

I grunted, my vocal cords too abused to squeeze out words.

“Then I would be gratified if you would ask it to release me?” he inquired softly. The squeezing-python sensation eased a tempting fraction—the implication clear. Air was on the other side of compliance.

Someone spoke up in the background. “Shall we call for reinforcements, St. Silas?” A Russian, sounding amused.

“I have everything in hand,” he replied.

“Let him go, Merry,” I whispered.

My amulet reluctantly released her pinch-hold, then wetly dropped from his cheek, still pulsing a purple-red light of her own. Immediately, the choking pressure around my throat was removed.

Air. Sweet Goddess, air.

“Now, as to your flare,” St. Silas continued in his silky whisper.

I’m still flaring?

“I am an Alpha and I cannot allow you to defy me much longer. It is not done, you understand? And so, your defiance will end here, and that which you seek—for I am sure you have come here for a good reason—will never be discovered by those on the Great Council.”

“I have things to show you,” I rasped. “Things you need to hear.”

“Then put out your flare,” he said in a hard voice.

It seemed like a loss to comply, and I needed a win, or at least a draw. There was only one option left: I stiffly turned my head and directed my flickering flare to the wall. From my perspective, it wasn’t a surrender, it was a cessation of direct fire.

The wall colored green while my tear ducts streamed.

He laughed softly under his breath. “You are a very rude woman. We will both extinguish flares at the same time, agreed?”

Speech was beyond me. With a curt nod, I closed my eyes.

Goddess.
I slumped against the wall. Could eyes smoke? Blindly, I knelt to pat the ground, searching for the iPad. I heard the crack of knees—so, the French Were had some cartilage issues—and a cloud of Alpha stink surrounded me. “Is this what you want?” he asked. The weight of Knox’s tablet settled on my thigh.

I don’t like smelling other Alphas. I don’t like having their essence coat my skin. That intimacy belongs to Trowbridge, and no other wolf.

I rested my head against the wall and breathed through my nose. My head ached, my sinuses throbbed. I pressed my fingers over my eyelids.

I had a roomful of Alphas to face.

“Allow me to help you to stand, Mademoiselle Peacock,” he offered.

Like hell.

Walls are multipurpose things. They hold up structures, they’re useful to have sex against, and dammit, this one would do to help me spider-walk myself to a standing position. When I was more or less upright, I counted four Mississippis, then turned to face St. Silas.

*   *   *

The Frenchman was a surprise. Like most mated Weres, he didn’t show his age. Plus, he was francophone cool—the type of French Canadian male who can wear a battered leather jacket at any age, and look supremely urbane and elegant. Blue eyes, some facial hair—but a nice scruff, mostly dark though patched with sections of white. About a week past due his layered haircut, but he evidently had a very good barber.

Astute, though. With eyes that revealed no inner thoughts.

His
weren’t streaming tears.

“After you, Ms. Peacock,” he said, with a courtly wave.

I blotted my face with my sleeve as I passed him. When I walked into the suite proper, I was assailed by quick impressions, coming at me fast as a handful of confetti thrown in my face. This was no committee meeting. The opulent room was too empty. The scent signatures too distinct for a mass of wolves. And there was a curious flatness of smell.

Trowbridge listed in a silk-covered chair, set in the middle of the room.

“Hey,” he slurred. The flare he’d attempted to summon at the sight of me was brief and short-lived—the tiny flicker of a lightning bug against the backdrop of very dark night.

“Hey,” I replied.

Somewhere between here and the Peach Pit, he’d been given a change of clothing: a gray hoodie and a pair of jeans that would fit a man far heavier. He wore no T-shirt under that sweatshirt, and there was a rust-colored stain smeared across his chest. More blood bloomed on his knuckles. Another caked and broken line of it ran from the corner of his full lip to the edge of his chin.

Mine.

Déjà vu. I’d been here before. Threat circling my battered Trowbridge. But this time,
I
wasn’t duct-taped to a kitchen chair.

And I was not helpless.

“She shouldn’t be here,” said Reeve Whitlock.

My gaze jerked to the wolf, who stood to the right of my man, gripping the blade he’d brandished at the Peach Pit. And all the other bits and pieces of information? The perplexing absence of witnesses and jury. The guard with his gun. The French Alpha. All those other threats blew away. Specks of gray confetti gusting in the wind.

Hurt him.

My magic sprang from me. It hurtled across the room, aimed for the center of his chest.

Take his black heart. Squeeze it in your grip until it beats no more.

Intuiting that something wicked came his way, Whitlock sucked in his gut and did a half spin, effectively reducing the strike zone to a much narrower profile. Instead of skewering him, my magic grazed his ribs.

Hit him again.

Before I could snap my wrist, he slashed at us with his blade—the wide sweeping arc of a blind man. A lucky swipe. It severed the long thin coil of glittering green light neatly in two. And with that, my green serpent, so abused, so overused, broke apart into a cloud of shimmering green iridescence.

I inhaled sharply in shock. My own heart—so cold, so focused—slamming inside me. My magic was too tired to re-form, too spent to reshape, but my nostrils had picked up a saliva-inducing layer of copper over woods, wolf, and enemy.

My inner-bitch—she of the tucked tail—now knew the possessive satisfaction of resting teeth on the nape of her meal.

She slipped her leash. “I am hungry for a hunt.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I’d scented blood so many times. Oozing from skinned knees, hidden under cloth bandages, leaking from plastic-covered meat trays. I’d understood it not by the quiver of my nose hair but by my reaction to it. Howling horror—
Daddy’s stomach is torn open!
Blunt pain—
Mummy is gone.
Weeping despair—
don’t cut my Trowbridge again!

But now … oh Goddess, now.

It was a multilayered missive to the animal within me. We could smell what Whitlock had eaten, we could sense the faint metal tone of his hidden fear, we could taste the brine of his loathing. We knew him on the most basic level.

I sank into a feral crouch. I could feel the stretch of my lips, the air on our exposed front teeth.

The hunt.
We leaped.

Whitlock turned to face our attack, his face split with a lupine leer.

I’d forgotten about the knife.

My mate hadn’t. Trowbridge lurched upward—the guy with eight beers and a couple of hot dogs tucked under his belt who dimly perceives the arch of a home run overhead. With more luck than skill, he managed to snare my waist as I soared past him.

Momentum carried us. We hurtled over his chair, and I hit the floor with a bloodcurdling howl. Trowbridge toppled heavily on me, his body covering mine.

Trapping us. Holding us back. My inner-bitch’s frustration exploded. Growling and moaning, we arched under our mate. Teeth snapping, claws raking at his broad shoulders.

“Eaasssy.”

I think that’s what he muttered. Hard to make it out. I was überbitch and his face was buried in our hair …
Our
hair? I froze under him, registering the fact that I was hovering on the brink of a change. A real change. My spine—it was suddenly too short. While my rib cage—oh heavens—it was getting tighter.

My skin. It’s crawling. Goddess, is it moving? Will I become my wolf here? Now? In front of them?

Our enemies were threatening shadows in the periphery of my vision. No. I couldn’t be vulnerable in front of them—naked as a newly birthed pup.

I whimpered.
Help me, Trowbridge. Help me push her back.

His scent wove around me, reeking of sun potion, and of dried blood, and of dull, unfocused anger. But there—love and anguish too. And now, fear. Not for him, but the same sort of nagging worry for me that I’d sensed on his skin before we’d made love.

“Eaassssy,” he breathed again.

Trowbridge.
The start of all my “mines.”

The heavy pounding inside my chest eased, searched for unity with the rhythm of his. Pulses melded and settled.

Till two hearts beat as one.

A tear snaked down my temple. With a dark wordless mutter, he pressed a kiss to the tiny hollow between ear and jaw. He turned his head so his cheek rested on mine. His breath warmed the sensitive whorls of my inner ear.

“What took you so long?” he mumbled.

I lifted my lids. Stared into glazed blue eyes. His pupils were too dark, too wide.

My magic curled over his unprotected head. Curious and covetous, it licked at the sweat coating his forehead. Tiny sips. Testing and tasting.

“Whazzat?” he asked, his brows pulling together.

I stroked his jaw. “Just me.”

“Don’t want you here.”

Sharp hurt. I stiffened under him again.

“Can’t watch them hurt you,” he said thickly.

“Hush.” I pressed my fingers to his mouth, sealing it. “Can’t you see I’ve come to rescue you?”

He shook his head, widening his eyes with obvious effort. A strained and shaky grin. “Coming for you. Trying to come for you. But I’m so—”

“Hammered,” I filled in. My gaze hungrily roamed over him.
The most handsome man in this realm.
“You okay?”

“Been better,” he muttered. “They’ve got plastic.”

“What?”

He nodded to the floor. My gaze followed his, and my gut suddenly clenched. Indeed, the Great Council had plastic. A large sheet of it, heavy gauge, about the size of a large area rug, spread over the hotel’s wall-to-wall.

Some trial. Some open court of inquiry.

“Separate them, Mathieu,” I heard St. Silas say. Then some dumbass—male, wearing a nice watch—tried to do just that. He leaned into our space and tried to pry my mate off me. Freakin’ idiot. Talk about pulling a hungry dog off his favorite bone. Trowbridge, though hovering on edge of the twilight zone, was
still
an Alpha.