Turn to Darkness (Offspring 5.6) (13 page)

“A treat,” he explained. “You and I can share a bottle before the others get here.”

“I don’t think—”

“Say, that’s a fine genealogy you’ve done.” He walked to the wall where she’d unrolled butcher paper so that she could create a visual display of the relationships among the animals they’d be observing.

He lifted a hand to trace one particular family’s line. “You have three generations here.”

“I’ve been studying these guys for years.”

“So why did you invite me?” he asked.

An innocent question. A logical one. She could lie and tell him that she’d come around to his way of understanding animal sexual behavior. Or she could give him the truth . . . that he was top in the field and papers they did together had an easy shot of getting into the best and most-read journals. She wouldn’t add that spending time with him in the forest was supposed to be chaperoned by the others.

“I thought it was time we collaborated,” she said.

“Instead of yelling at each other at conferences?” His eyes took on the gleam of challenge she’d seen in them so many times. The blue of his irises always seemed to darken, as they did now.

“I don’t yell.”

He made a noise that was half humph and half snort. Maybe more than half snort.

“All right, I raise my voice,” she said. “But your theory ignores the female in the mating equation.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I promise you, I’ve never ignored the female.”

Cute. Double entendre. His typical ploy to make his presentations “sexy.” “But you do. You make it sound as if the cows stand around, grazing, while the bulls do all the work. Fighting with each other. Then she has no choice and the winner climbs on and slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am.”

He laughed. “I don’t think I ever put it quite like that.”

“That’s what you mean.”

“You think I believe that?” he said. “That females have no sex drive at all?”

She glared at him, using every bit of willpower not to grind her teeth. “We’re talking about animals here.”

“I am. What are you talking about?”

“The way you look at things,” she said. “You’re completely androcentric.”

One of his sandy brows quirked upward. “You think I’m fixated on the male point of view and incapable of understanding the female?”

“Something like that.” Damn it all, it hadn’t even taken an hour for him to get under her skin. Not even half an hour.

“And I imagine you’re going to show me how females look at things,” he said.

“Animals.”

“Animals,” he said. “Should be interesting.”

An Excerpt from

by Amanda Arista

Violet Jordan, B movie writer-turned-shapeshifter (and a few other things), is back! She and Chaz are engaged, her pack is finally coming together, and her latest script is a hit. Sounds like the perfect time for the fur to start flying!

Dear Diary,

Eight months ago, I was attacked in the back alley of my townhouse and rescued by an über-hot guy named Chaz. He told me that there was a prophesy about me and that I might turn into a werepanther. He was right on both counts. Then Spencer, the guy who bit me, tried to convince me to join the dark side. It didn’t work. So he poisoned me and left me for dead. My best friend, Jessa, an undercover fairy princess, saved the day but bonded us together as the dynamic duo for opening and closing the Veil.

Six months ago, in an epic battle for the world, Spencer jumped through the Veil into the Neveranth, and I ended up killing his father. As he lay dying, he gave me the Haverty Legacy and the hellfire that comes with it.

I thought life was going to get better. After four assassination attempts, I finally changed my mind. When the Haverty pack needed a new leader and I was the one holding the Legacy, I quickly found that having loyal followers really helped when the elemental Carlisle started killing his way through all competition for leader of the Dallas Pride. When push came to claw, Carlisle got thrown into mirror jail, and I got crowned as the Prima.

Yep, I think that’s about it. All I have to do is keep sane, even with the prophetic dreams I keep having, run a pack, keep my “real” job, and have some sort of personal life with my shiny fiancé.

B
eing a queen was exhausting. This was the first of four meetings for the day, the first of three appointments with new pack members, and my second latté with an extra espresso shot.

As I waited at my favorite coffee shop for my caffeine and my ten o’clock appointment, I stretched my neck and slipped off my pointed heels. Cute but deadly. Now that I was a Prima, looking like a leader was starting to get tiring as well. The life of jeans and tee shirts was behind me. I had to look more responsible now, and my feet were paying the price.

The cool wooden floor soothed the pain burning up my legs and let me relax for just one moment. This place was my second home, and I’d single-handedly brought it back from extinction with a string of new customers by making it the unofficial hotspot for the new Dallas Pride.

Secret club’s got to have a clubhouse, right?

I looked down at my watch, my dreaded new accessory, and played with the charm at my neck. My ten o’clock was late. It had been hell to pin him down for a meeting. He was the last of the new members of my little family that I had to meet with before our first full moon together. I actually had to call his office to get an appointment. Neither of us was very happy about that.

My frustrated thoughts were quickly redirected by the feel of coarse fur brushing up my spine. I turned around to see a tall man enter the coffee shop and pause. His dark suit and briefcase were a stark contrast to the bohemian feel of the café.

He looked around the shabby chic décor, and when his cool blue eyes landed on me, I knew him, even though I’d never seen his human form before. This was my ten o’clock: Peter Delmont, lawyer/wolf.

He wore his power like he wore his sharply tailored suit and slick blonde hair: on the outside, letting everyone know he didn’t mess around. As he crossed the small space in long, purposeful strides, I was frozen in his gaze. The look. The suit. It was damn effective, and for a split second, I almost thought I didn’t have the claws for this one.

He stopped just short of stepping on me, and I had to look up at him. Something that, with my 5’11” frame, I rarely needed to do. He didn’t bother with putting up borders to contain his power, and his scent overwhelmed me. Under the cologne I was sure he wore because it made the women in his office swoon, his power, his wolf, smelled distinctively of leather and sandalwood.

“Miss Jordan?” His voice was low and deep as his eyebrow rose with his question.

My spine reacted to his power, going stiff and straight. “Mister Delmont.”

“May we sit?” His eyes flicked to the open table in the back.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

He strode over to the table, and I looked back to the counter for my drink.

The young girl behind the counter had my coffee in her hands, her mouth wide as she stared over at Delmont. Good. So it wasn’t just me.

I waved my hand in front of her face so she would relinquish my coffee. The girl jumped and spilt a bit of the coffee, sloshing the white porcelain counter.

With a sigh, I took the mug and headed back to the table. Usually, I would have said something about the waste of good caffeine, but I was going to need my strength for the conversation ahead. I had a feeling my usual new member spiel about safety in numbers and checking-in and full moon responsibilities wasn’t going to work with this one. I sealed my borders, keeping my power close to my vest, and knew the macchiato would get me through this.

This man had his suit, and I had my twelve ounces of hot coffee.

Delmont had turned my usual table into his personal office, his briefcase already popped open. “I’m sorry this meeting is so delayed.”

An apology? Now that was unexpected. I sat slowly on the chair across from him and waited for him to stop shuffling papers. “No problem. I’ve had a few things to organize.”

He closed the briefcase, opening up the space between us. In the right light, he was handsome—slender and broad shouldered. But I knew underneath this forced perfection was an animal, a silver-mantled wolf, easily the size of my panther. His energy had been primal when we’d bonded six weeks before, when he had pledged his power to me and that pledge connected our magical souls. Even now, as we sat civilly across the table from one another, Peter Delmont was different. Where the others’ connections were silvery threads that I gently nudged this way and that, his was a rough-hewn twine that bound him to me as his Prima.

Now, more than with any of the other fourteen, I was wondering why me. He was powerful, in this incarnation and in his animal form. He had been a high-ranking member of the Haverty Pride before I’d come in and destroyed it all. Yet when push came to claw in the battle between my few and the darker Wanderers, he had chosen me as his master.

That was the story I wanted to hear. The story I was slowly coaxing out of all the Wanderers who had given me a piece of themselves, chosen me as their leader.

Delmont looked down at the papers in his hand. “I was Haverty’s lawyer and the executor of his will.” His voice was quick and succinct, with so very little affect that I would have believed his act, if it hadn’t been for the twisting of the twine between us, something undulating under the coifed façade that pulled at me.

“Must have been an honor, with you being so young.”

All he gave me was a curt nod as he slid the stack of papers across the table toward me. “Reade Haverty directed that the next leader of the pack should get all of his properties and assets.”

A sudden void of white formed in the space between my ears, and the words bounced around in there as if it were a wind tunnel. “What?”

Delmont licked his lips. “Of course, he meant it to be his son, Spencer, but, well, we know that didn’t quite work out, what with you throwing him into the Neveranth and all. So, it seems, as the new leader of a majority—by one—of the pack, you are now the beneficiary.”

“I didn’t throw Spencer into the Neveranth. He jumped,” I corrected. I looked down at the stack of papers. “I always got the impression Haverty was loaded.”

“A full list of assets is included.” He folded his long fingers in his lap. “Including houses, foreign accounts, and domestic holdings, it would come out to around 1.3 billion if you were to sell everything. Which I don’t recommend in this market.”

I gulped and set my coffee down on the table. No need to waste the coffee by spilling it all over my new dress, though I thought this meant that I could buy a million more cups of coffee if I needed, and a million new dresses for that matter.

“Why?”

His steely blue eyes finally rose to meet mine. “With the crown comes the kingdom.”

His words settled around me like an ice-cold blanket, and my skin prickled. It had taken me over three months to assume the title of Prima. I wasn’t ready for a kingdom.

“I never asked for this.”

The smooth monotone of his voice didn’t help. “No, you didn’t.”

I licked my lips and cursed Haverty. Yet another burden he’d left me with. Like the Legacy, the collected family power he’d forced upon me as he lay dying, this fortune was just another trap to tempt me in the direction everyone else in my line had gone, straight into the darkness.

“I know this is a lot to take in, Miss Jordan, but I will need a decision on the next step fairly soon. The property has been in limbo far too long.”

“Of course.” It had been in limbo for five months, since last December, when I’d killed Reade Haverty and his cowardly son had jumped into a parallel dimension. Don’t imagine they have paperwork for that sort of thing.

A million storylines ran through my head about wealth, including a few scenes of Scrooge McDuck swimming through his money piles and all the horror movies I’d written with insane benefactors and large mansions and late-night feasts. But wasn’t that one of the special little bonuses of being Violet Jordan, knowing the darkness so I could avoid it?

I wrapped my hands back around the hot coffee. “I’ll need a little more time to think about it, Mister Delmont.”

“Very well. Call my office for an appointment.”

He moved to leave the table, as if this meeting was over.

I chuckled and wrapped my fist around the charm on my necklace. It usually kept me hidden from other Wanderers, specifically the baddies out for blood. But covered like this, it let me push my power out and flow over Delmont.

He froze six inches from the seat as if I’d pushed the pause button on his movements. His eyes darted to me as he felt the power again and smelled the burned magnolia fragrance of his Prima.

“Not so fast, Stretch. I booked you for an hour.”

He gulped, and his tanned face went pale. It was the first crack I’d seen in his façade since he’d come in. He returned to his seat and smoothed out his jacket.

I released the pendant and leaned back in my chair. Like this, the world was a little duller, but I’d gotten used to it. It was better than jumping at every shadow in the window, convinced the undefined
they
had found me again.

“I do appreciate the business portion of our meeting.” I tried to ignore the packet of potential just sitting between us and get down to the real meat and bones of this confrontation. “But I coordinated this to learn about you.”

Delmont licked his lips and was seemingly speechless. He finally mustered, “What do you want to know?”

I figured we’d start simple. “Did Haverty place you in your law firm, or did he get to you afterward?”

He adjusted in his seat again. “You really don’t play around, do you?”

“No,” I answered quickly. “But I’m also not testing your alliance. We both know what you did. I just want a little more as to why.”

Delmont’s eyes dropped to the stack of papers. “Haverty treated me very well. And yes, he did help me get a place at the firm. In return, he asked only that I waive my retainer fees.”