Chapter 16
Sins of the Brother
Dodger
The elevator doors slide open with a cheerful ding that matches my unusually good mood. We shuffle inside, and Harper stands close enough that his arm brushes mine, standing a lot closer than he would have yesterday.
But so much has changed since then.
“Should we have breakfast before we go?” Harper asks.
“No. The sooner we leave, the better.” Rowan knows that I’m alive and staying at this hotel. Which means I need to get the hell out of here. The only reason I was able to stay put and not totally panic last night was because… I had company.
Yep. Yesterday was just full of surprises. Rowan was the worst of it while Melody and Harper were, well, they weren’t the worst. Not even close.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Yeah. The coffee here sucks anyway.”
“Right.” He shifts his weight, adjusting his grip on his suitcase. “Maybe we could find someplace else to eat then.”
I tilt my head to look at him. “Oh god, are you one of those breakfast is the most important meal of the day people?”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
My hands raise, fending off a lecture. “No, don’t start. You’re going to find that my diet consists mostly of coffee and junk food and that’s the way I like it.”
“That’s not remotely healthy.”
“That’s the way I like it,” I insist, adjusting my bag as the strap slides down my shoulder.
Quietly, he says, “I just thought it might be nice to get some breakfast.”
“Oh.” As in breakfast with me. A breakfast where I don’t ignore him, treat him like an inconvenient stick in the mud, and wish I were anywhere else. Because things have changed between us, even if we aren’t exactly sure what that means. Besides great sex.
Great sex and breakfast. Yeah. I could handle that.
“We don’t have to,” he says when the silence stretches.
“No, we should,” I jump in too quickly. He can’t take it back now. “Breakfast is nice. It’s the most important meal of the day after all.”
“Okay.” Harper leans into me, and I can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips when Harper’s knuckles graze mine.
He looks particularly attractive with stubble dotting his handsome face and his shirt slightly rumpled, disheveled because of me.
Last night still lingers between us—the tangle of sheets, the way Harper’s wolf-gold eyes flashed in the darkness, how his hands felt rough and gentle all at once.
The elevator pings and the doors slide open to reveal the hotel lobby with its beige walls and forgettable landscape paintings. Morning light streams through the front windows, catching dust motes that dance in the air.
Harper heads toward the waiting area with the case for my enchanted guitar, but I catch his sleeve.
“I can take those,” I say, nodding at the guitars. “You go check us out.”
“You sure? It’s not a problem.”
“Hey, I’ve always wanted two guitars. Living the dream here. I think I can handle hauling them a few feet.”
Our fingers brush during the hand-off and I feel a spark. God, it’s so ridiculous. Sleep with a guy who’s supposedly my mate one time and suddenly everything about him makes me all gooey.
I adjust my duffel on my shoulder, then grip both guitar cases by their handles, one in each hand.
The enchanted guitar is bigger than my regular one and it’s a little awkward trying to maneuver with both.
But I’m a grown-ass man who just spent the night with an Alpha werewolf; I can handle two guitar cases and a duffel bag.
Or not.
One guitar swings like a pendulum and smacks me in the knee, nearly buckling my leg. I stagger, catching myself just before I go down completely, narrowly avoiding a collision with a potted plant that looks plastic but might be real, hard to tell in hotel lobbies.
After sending away the werewolf who was perfectly happy to be my gopher, I can’t admit defeat, so I keep going and end up doing a strange, stumbling dance in the middle of the lobby. Not my finest moment.
The whole thing leaves me out of breath and totally mortified when I drop down into the nearest chair in the seating area. How am I supposed to handle hell beasts if two guitar cases nearly bested me? I make the executive decision to forget any of this ever happened.
A soft chuckle reaches my ears. “Nice show.”
Oh god, there was a witness.
A man in his early thirties with meticulously styled honey-blond hair sits across from me, a magazine open on his lap that he’s clearly not reading.
He’s handsome in that catalog-model way, everything about him deliberate from the precisely rolled sleeves of his crisp white shirt to the polished tan loafers and gaudy ring with a blue stone that probably cost more than everything I own combined.
“Do you play professionally?” he asks, nodding down to the cases before I can put my headphones in.
“Just a hobby,” I mumble. “Ignore me, that wasn’t my finest moment.”
“Nothing to be ashamed of,” he says. “You’re very spirited.”
“Is that a euphemism for clumsy?”
“Not at all. I’ve always appreciated your spirit, Dodger.”
The embarrassment fades as my heart clenches in my chest and suspicion sets in. I didn’t give him my name. “How do you—”
The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out something that catches the light, an antique pocket watch on a chain, ornate and familiar. My mouth goes dry. I know that watch. I’ve seen it before. It belongs to Asher Rowan.
“How?” The word escapes me as a whisper.
The man—Rowan?—leans closer, his voice barely audible over the bland lobby music. Speaking too low for my bodyguard to overhear. “This is my specialty.” He motions to himself and mouths the word ‘glamor’ with a self-satisfied smirk.
It’s Asher Rowan, no doubt about it. This version of him is blond and a few decades younger, but the pristine appearance and smug superiority are the same.
I open my mouth, ready to call out to Harper, who has his back to us as he finishes the checkout process. Rowan’s finger shoots up to his lips in a shushing gesture.
“This is a friendly visit. I even brought you a gift.” Rowan places a manila folder on the glass-topped table between us. “Information I think you’ll find... enlightening.”
I glare at him, about to tell him exactly where he can shove this gift of his. Harper’s gotta be almost done… then again, we did change rooms multiple times and he broke down one door. Guess I shouldn’t expect him anytime soon.
But then something strange happens. The blue stone on Rowan’s ring dims, its vibrant color fading to a dull gray before my eyes.
Rowan notices it too. His smile falters as he glances down at the ring. “Ah,” he murmurs. “How inconvenient.”
His handsome facade begins to crumble. A softening around the jawline, a slight dulling of the too-bright blue eyes. The honey-blond hair darkens in patches and his frame expands, like he’s going from thirty-something to sixty in seconds.
“Looks like your little trick is running out of power,” I say.
“Good help is so hard to find these days,” he remarks, voice strained.
“Help? You bought a glamour? I thought this was your craft.”
Rowan brings a hand up to his temple, concentrating hard. Color appears in his hair again, but it’s gone a second later. He’s trying to maintain the illusion, but it’s slipping away.
The Rowan who appears before me now isn’t quite the one I’m familiar with. There are strands of silver eclipsing the black color in his hair. His face looks heavier, etched with wrinkles and lines that weren’t there before.
“This, this is what you really look like?” I whisper.
This is his craft, but he isn’t very good at it.
Not enough to change his whole appearance.
He had to buy the power to look like a completely different person, but the glamor he purchased in the ring just ran out of juice.
No, his meager skills are only capable of hiding his blemishes and signs of old age.
With the stronger magic gone, Rowan activates his own skills and hides all his superficial flaws.
The grey in his hair changes to black. The lines around his eyes disappear.
He doesn’t seem as powerful as he usually does.
Only an aging man who erases his imperfections and can’t handle his true self being revealed.
“This, this isn’t…” Rowan seems genuinely flustered, his composure cracking along with his appearance. He stands abruptly, the magazine in his lap slides to the floor, but he doesn’t stoop to retrieve it. “Some truths are better left hidden, but I believe you deserve to know this one.”
Then he’s gone, striding away. I sit frozen for a moment, processing what just happened. The folder still sits on the table.
Against my better judgment, I reach for it.
Inside are newspaper clippings, police reports, and photographs. The first article headline jumps out at me: “Werewolf Couple Killed in Necromancer Attack.”
The photograph below shows a crime scene cordoned off with police tape. Police reports detail how a necromancer summoned a beast in an attack that resulted in three casualties: two werewolves and the necromancer himself.
And then I see the names. The accused perpetrator isn’t a surprise, the unknown necromancer that the city wasn’t able to identify but I still recognize him.
My brother, Jonathan Williamson. He was blamed for the lethal necromancer attack five years ago that changed the city, but Rowan found me before I could dig further into the incident, so the other names are new.
James Harper and Elaine Harper, werewolves killed while defending their territory from a supernatural threat.
The papers slip from my suddenly numb fingers, scattering across the table.
Harper. Oh my god. The victim’s last name can’t be a coincidence. Rowan was even ‘kind’ enough to include one article that lists surviving relatives like a brother, Ethan Harper.
My brother is accused of killing Harper’s brother and sister-in-law.
Harper, the man I’d spent last night with, whose rare laugh makes something warm unfurl in my chest, that same Harper lost his family to my brother.
I glance toward the front desk. Harper is turning away, receipt in hand, heading back toward me with a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t know. He has no idea who I really am or whose blood runs in my veins.
I gather the papers with shaking hands, stuffing them back into the folder and hiding the evidence in my bag.
What the hell am I going to do now? How do you look into the eyes of someone you’re falling for and tell them your brother killed their family?