To the Edge and Back [The Royal Wolves] (Siren Publishing Allure) (2 page)

“We have a distant cousin in England who will let us stay there for a time,” he said quietly, his mind already planning on how to get them there.

Pulling the bag she’d taken from the Palace into her lap, she opened it to show him the contents. “I managed to gather a lot of what your parents had in their personal vault. It should see you to England and help you for many years to come if you’re careful.”

“I will invest it as Father taught me and make sure that my brothers never want,” Laszlo reassured her in his odd way, sounding too much like his father already.

Blinking back tears, Maria nodded. “I have a friend who will get you across the border tomorrow night if you wish. After that you will be on your own. You will need to be on guard at all times, Laszlo. Otherwise someone might take advantage because of your age.”

Reaching out, Laszlo laid his hand on her arm. “Don’t worry, Maria, we will be just fine. Father taught us to survive no matter what, and we will. I am worried about you though. If they discover that you assisted in our escape they will hurt you.”

Shaking her head, she smiled, putting her other hand over his. “I will be fine. No one knows I helped you and no one ever will. Once you are safely away I will leave as well. My friend will get me out of the country and I will go to an old friend to the south. She is married and will gladly take me in.”

“Good, you shouldn’t be punished for doing the right thing,” he told her with a nod. “Go and sleep, Maria. You’ve had a rough day and look tired.”

Smiling, Maria set the bag on the table and headed to her pallet near the fire, pausing to look at the four other boys all sleeping peacefully before the warmth. Crouching, she adjusted a couple of their blankets and then went to lie down.

Laszlo waited until she was asleep before waking his brothers and getting them dressed. Taking the bag, he pulled out a clutch of coins and, counting them, left them for Maria at the side of her pallet. Quickly he and his brothers left her home and headed into the night for the border. He knew that dawn would be too late for them to start moving. They needed to go now. Without another look back they walked into the moonless night and vanished…

* * * *

Four weeks after the Royal family’s death

He knew that his parents were dead, just as his other brothers did. They all felt the loss of that connection they’d always had with them. He was saddened of course. He loved his mother and father, but he knew that they wouldn’t want him and his brothers to mourn them for too long.

Luckily or not, depending on one’s view, they had escaped the slaughter that had come knocking at their door. Death had swept through the Royal Palace that had been their home,
his
home for four short years, and now would forever tarnish many of the memories he’d had of the place. But while it could never mar the love and warmth that had always permeated the building making it a home of the heart, it would never be quite the same in his mind again.

But it wasn’t the time to remember. For the moment they all had to run, run from those wanting them dead and from others that wanted to use them as leverage. Luckily for them Maria, the young maid who’d helped them escape, had been able to clean out one of the safes that his parents had kept money in. She had been very brave and resolute in her assistance, never once worrying about her own health and safety, only concerned for him and his brothers. He would always remember her and knew that if any of them truly had a chance at survival it was all thanks to her.

“Janos.” He looked around as Laszlo, his oldest brother, called to him. “Come away from the railing,” he was told softly. Casting one last look at the shoreline getting ever fainter in the distance, he went to join his brothers.

Sitting at Laszlo’s side, Janos leaned into his brother’s larger bulk and soaked up the warmth into his tiny frame. One day he promised himself he’d do something for Maria even if it was only in her memory.

The here and now…Janos

Hanging up the phone, Janos let out a low growl of displeasure before shoving a hand through his long black hair. Sometimes he really questioned his decision to open as many bars and clubs as he had. Today was definitely one of those days.

“What’s up, boss?” Max, his manager for all three of the clubs, asked from the other end of the bar where he was tallying up the liquor order before he called it in for that day’s delivery.

“Miklos just called.” He named his older brother and middle of the pack. “The cameras he put in at Edge panned out apparently. He has solid proof that Dahlia and Ernie were robbing me blind,” he said, mentioning the head bartender and her boyfriend who was also a bouncer at Edge.

“Shit.” Frowning, Max looked around suddenly, his eyes skating over the entirety of the bar. “Uh, boss…” He let the question trail off for Janos to figure it out.

“No,” Janos bit out. “I only did it at Edge because the books were being screwed with enough that even I, a nonaccountant, could figure it out. I did more checking and found that this had been going on even longer than I had first realized,” he said as he moved down the bar to press his hands to the surface near where Max sat. “They’ve managed to take somewhere in the range of a thousand to fifteen hundred over the last year.”

Stunned, Max stared at him. “Holy shit.” That was a good chunk of money and rather ballsy, too. When you took on a Wolf you’d better make sure your life insurance was up to date and to the extreme. “What are you going to do?” he asked the Wolf in question, whose dark blue eyes were taking on a distinctly feral look.

“I don’t get to do what I want to do. Miklos is going to arrest them and charge them according to human laws,” Janos said with a low animalistic growl and pointed at nothing in particular.

“Damned pesky human laws,” Max said, the look on his face almost comical, just managing to keep his face straight when those hunter eyes turned toward him. The growl from deep in Janos’s chest had him chuckling though. “Down, boy,” he teased, laughing even harder when the growl turned feral.

“Sometimes I really wish that you humans were under Wolf law,” Janos said. At the questioning look he shrugged. “I’d be able to call them out and turn them into mincemeat like I want to do.”

“Damn,” Max breathed out. “Harsh.”

“We’re not like you, Max. We have to have laws applicable to our lives,” he pointed out with a sigh. “I need you to go over to Edge tonight and run the show, let everyone there know about Ernie and Dahlia. I’ll handle things here tonight,” he added so that Max wouldn’t worry about the Full Moon. “Place the liquor order before you head over, while I go through and make sure I remember what I’m doing,” he ordered, pushing off the bar top and moving away. “And no flirting with the chick that takes the order. It’s bad enough you make eyes at her while she’s here, none of that over the phone.”

Shaking his head, Max rolled his eyes and internally muttered nasty names at his boss’s back, knowing better than to speak them even under his breath. One thing he’d learned early on was that the Wolf had incredibly sharp ears and could hear just about anything, including a pin dropping in a chaotic machine shop. Picking up the phone, he made the call.

Two hours later, an hour before the liquor truck would arrive with the night’s requirements, Janos lay down on his sofa. He was exhausted and knew it wasn’t just physical exhaustion. He’d been feeling old of late even though he was only six years short of celebrating his second century without his parents, after the escape.

Resting an arm over his eyes, his mind turned to the woman who was their liquor distributor representative. She was a cute little thing, for a human, a tempting little bit that would serve as a delightful appetizer for a Wolf’s hunger. And he’d always had a bit of an interest in her, but knew better than to actually approach her. Humans were not on his particular menu.

Slipping into sleep, he wasn’t surprised when she came to be the main attraction of his dream, her delightfully naked body spread under his. Licking and nibbling at her smooth flesh, Janos growled softly as he shifted on the sofa. Smoothing his hands over her soft curves, he inhaled the heady scent of her flesh, moving ever lower on her body. He had a goal, to taste her, as he truly couldn’t wait to lap at her warm juices. He was almost there, her body quivering in need for his touch when a buzzer sounded, snapping him awake.

Sitting up sharply as the buzzer sounded again, he snarled as he stood, his body having reacted to his dream more than any other. “Damn fine time for a hard-on,” he grumbled as he headed for the stairs and the back loading dock. Shifting his erection slightly in the suddenly too-tight jeans, he let out a breath. “Better not be dreaming about humans, too fragile and they just scare too easily,” he muttered, pushing open the door.

The here and now…Mina

The name plaque on the desk read “Mina Tremayne,” and behind it was the woman herself. With a phone to her shoulder, a quick click-clack-click of a keyboard, sultry laughter, and then the click and sigh as the phone was once more placed on the cradle, she went about her day.

Leaning back with a grin, she twirled her pen in her hand as she watched the order being processed. She loved her job. She didn’t have to think too hard. There were no corporate ladders to climb. For now she was perfectly content to simply be a “Cube Farm Worker” as she termed her position.

In truth Mina was a customer service representative for the largest beer and liquor firm on the East Coast. She was a specialized account manager who dealt only with those businesses that ordered in massive quantities. With each customer she built up a strong rapport. They were her family to her. However, she would never tell them that.

Mina was alone in the world, having been orphaned when she was first born, and had grown up in a state system that was more than a little flawed. Emancipated at the age of fifteen, she got a job sweeping floors at the company she was with now and, once she graduated high school, she was offered an office job.

Her cubicle was the first real “home” she had, and it showed in all of the bobbleheads she had lining the metal shelves surrounding the fabric walls, right down to the file in her desk with birthday and Christmas cards from her clients and boxes of blank ones she could send to them.

Clicking her pen a couple more times, she stood from her chair and stretched, looking over the wall to the other cubicles and, seeing only the tops of heads, gave a shake of her own. She worked in an office with five other people. However, they seldom even spoke.

She had been with the company for seven years. However, she didn’t know where one of her coworkers lived. The strange part, however, was she knew where every single one of her clients lived, their birthdays, their religions and political views, everything. That was what made them her family and not her coworkers. Her clients were really her world.

Sitting back down as the phone rang once more, she answered with a smile on her face. “Mina Tremayne, how can I make your day a glorious one?”

Yeah, she knew she was supposed to answer with the company’s name and a very cold and impersonal greeting, but she never had been able to do it. It was because of her personal touch that she was the most sought-after CSR in the office. Clients were lining up to have her personally take their orders. Not only because she was chipper and friendly, but because she had a one-hundred-percent accuracy in orders. She had never once gotten one wrong, and one had never been shipped wrong.

Taking the order for the club that she actually visited, she teased with the bar manager a moment before laughing with a shake of her head. “Max, I swear, you are the bright highlight of my life.” She heard him laughing and then heard another masculine voice say something to Max, and that voice, never in her life had one affected her the way that that male voice had.

Her whole body went tight, moisture gathered between her legs, her nipples puckered, and she had to bite her lip to stop a moan, and all from the deep husky timbre of the voice yelling at Max.

Swallowing hard, she said, “Hey, Maxi, I will let you get back to it. The booze will be there by five tonight. I will be here till six, so if it doesn’t make it or anything is wrong, give me a yell.”

She heard him mutter agreement and then something about a “rabid dog” and then said, “The boss will call you if something is wrong, sweet cheeks. He is checking in tonight’s order here. As for me, seems I am being sent over to the Edge, so wish me luck.”

Mina just shivered. The Edge was a hot spot and mecca for all of the creatures of the night and for those humans who didn’t give a fig who they were around at any given time. She wasn’t against the Wolves. Hell, she was alive because of their lifesaving blood. Thanks to medical science and the way that the blood of the Wolves seemed to heal, she had been saved when she was five years old. Just thinking of that time had her shivering and rubbing her hands over her arms for that brief thought. She had been taken into the hospital by her foster family when she was five; a simple test, however, had revealed that Mina was far sicker than they would have even believed she was. However, after a blood transfusion from a Wolf, Mina had recovered from the disease that would have killed her within a few simple months. However, they still terrified her, no matter that their blood had saved her life.

Wolves were, by nature, extremely tall, normally all well over six feet in height, and all built like brick houses and looked like they could bench-press a Mack truck in their human form, and she shuddered to think of how they looked in their animal forms. She had never seen one and likely would faint if she did.

Mina was petite by any standards and very thin, mostly because she didn’t eat as much as she should. But when one only made a certain amount of money and had to pay for an apartment, utilities, and transportation all on their own, there never was much left over for a frivolity like food.