Chapter Twenty-Two
Say that again.” The deliberately controlled anger in the familiar voice roused me, and I blinked my way back to the light.
It wasn’t the searing, eyeball-imploding brightness of Vegas at midday, but rather the dim electric light of my bedroom, with the curtains drawn and the blinds down over the windows.
Not my borrowed bedroom at Dante’s, with its gilt everything and foreign smells only faintly overridden by pack, but my room at home.
And I was so grateful for that that I could have hugged the pillow and cried, but that wouldn’t be appropriate for a war mage.
Which was relevant because there was another one in the room, and he wasn’t Caleb.
Well, damn.
I checked to make sure I had clothes on, and thankfully, someone had put me in a cute pink-and-white plisse nightie with a little bow at the bottom of the scooped neck.
It wasn’t mine; I didn’t know whose it was.
But I was grateful for it, because a moment later, hard little pebble eyes were staring into my soul.
They belonged to Richard Hargroves, the spit-and-polished old school bastard the Corps had brought out of retirement when the war started to lead the Corps in this region.
His rank was Lord General, which in the Corps was roughly equivalent to a bird colonel in the U.S.
Army, although the bird in question would have to be hungry because he was looking at me like I was meat. Fresh meat.
Hargroves didn’t like me. Hargroves thought a Were in service was bad enough, but a female Were? It put his back up as soon as I walked into a room.
Of course, his presence had the same effect on me, and that was when I was properly attired and not passed out in bed.
It didn’t help that he was dressed as formally as always, while I probably looked like hell.
I was starting to think he slept in three-piece suits as I’d never seen him without one.
This particular version was dark blue with tiny gray pinstripes that matched his cold, blue-gray eyes, thin form, and waves of silver hair and appeared to have been both tailored and ironed to within an inch of its life.
Even the pocket hanky was standing at attention.
I sighed.
Hargroves managed to make me feel inferior and slipshod even when I wasn’t sleep-rumpled, with tousled hair and a line of crusted drool at the edge of my mouth. I quickly wiped the latter away and tried to concentrate on whatever was being said. It was hard.
Like, really hard. I was fully human again, yet my wolf brain kept intruding. Now that I was awake, it was sending me all kinds of information I didn’t want or need, in what almost felt like a panicked flood.
Hargroves had had pastrami on rye for lunch, from the Corps’ canteen by the smell of it, which stunk up the whole place on days when they were serving it, as it came with a generous dollop of sauerkraut on top.
He’d dropped a spot of mustard on his impeccable tie and magicked it off; I could still smell the tiny residue the spell had left behind, and almost see it as well, like a sparkly tie-tack.
I knew what aftershave he wore, what soap he used, and the scent, if not the brand, of his hair gel.
I suddenly knew something else, too, and leaped for him.
“What the—” somebody said, but it wasn’t Hargroves.
Because he might have an elevated rank now, but it wasn’t because he’d come from one of the legacy families that almost guaranteed a top job for their sons shortly after joining up.
No, Hargroves had come up through the ranks, and despite the aristocratic looks, had been known as a badass street fighter in his youth. Or so the rumors said.
And they were spot freaking on, I thought, when his magic grabbed me halfway through the motion despite Were speed and—
Damn, I thought, as I was slammed against the wall, harder than my abused back could really take.
Just damn.
“Let her go!” Half a dozen young men were suddenly in the room, and they were pissed. The musky scent of pack flooded the small space so completely that even Hargroves’ nose twitched. And only Cyrus, placing himself between them, kept the group from rushing my boss.
Although, to be fair, Hargroves wasn’t helping things by ignoring the command. Or by approaching me with a scowl on his thin face and narrowed eyes. “What is the issue now, mage?”
His voice cracked like a whip, letting me know that this latest stunt didn’t amuse him—at all.
And that I’d better come up with a good explanation right quick, or he wouldn’t be my boss anymore.
Despite the de Croissets’ name, there were plenty of the Corps who would love to see me tossed out on my furry behind, so I decided to be as blunt as I was always accused of being.
“You have a curse on you.”
“What?” The high forehead wrinkled. I suppose he hadn’t expected that.
“Curse. On you. I can smell it but not identify it—”
“Smell it?” That was Hargroves and Cyrus together.
“I don’t smell anything,” Cyrus said, frowning. Because his nose was supposed to be better than mine.
“I do,” that was Sophie, pushing her way through the pack. “Get out of my way!” she told them.
“Take your turn,” Lee, with his voice halfway to wolf-speak, told her.
“Yeah, you can have what’s left,” Noah growled.
“Out,” Cyrus said. “All of you.”
He didn’t raise his voice or even turn to look at them, because he didn’t have to. As pack leader, his word was law. And they obeyed immediately—well, most of them.
“But I can smell it, too,” Sophie said, struggling as the boys bore her away. “And I have to talk to Lia!”
The boys ignored her and dragged her into the hall.
I half expected her alter-ego to come bounding back in as Sophie wasn’t any better at following orders than a common housecat, but it didn’t.
Maybe it was off somewhere, licking its wounds.
I would have liked to do the same, but I was still splayed out against the wall.
“Explain,” Hargroves said, his voice clipped.
“I can’t,” I said impatiently. “I already told you what I know—”
“Your nose isn’t that sharp,” Cyrus said, because normally, it wasn’t. But nothing had been normal lately, and right now, I could smell everything.
“Didn’t use to be,” I corrected him, and he frowned some more.
Hargroves hadn’t let me go, but he paused to run an expiscor spell over himself, which came back green. He ran it again, just to be sure, before skewering me with that gaze again. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.
Expiscors didn’t fail unless there was nothing to find.
“Let me down,” I said, and somehow it came out sounding like an order. Damn it, I told my wolf. Stop helping me!
A gray eyebrow raised, and I went nowhere.
“Let her go,” Cyrus said, and again, there was no change in inflection. But there didn’t need to be. Hargroves knew exactly who Cyrus was, and being sandwiched between two wolves, one of whom had transformed into a monster just that day, and the other who was protecting his mate...
He let me down. But he also did something else, because a moment later, howls went up from outside and the sounds of a scuffle tore through my house—literally.
I thought I heard one of my newly painted walls give way, but hoped I was hallucinating it.
And then two huge war mages rushed into my small bedroom and—shit!
The boys were right on their tails, and the next second, they Changed. And six wolves, three war mages, and a pissed-off pack leader were not fitting in my small bedroom. Not without ripping it to shreds, and I’d just gotten this place fixed up, damn it!
“Get out!” I yelled, the wolf-speak harshing my voice. “All of you!”
“I beg your pardon?” Hargroves said, oddly politely.
“Not you!” I pointed at the boys and Sophie, who had taken the opportunity to come back in. “Out!”
“I need to talk to you!” she said, while the war mages took up positions on either side of Hargroves. Like the bastard didn’t have glass shields when he wanted. If he’d been there earlier today, I wouldn’t have needed to scream myself hoarse just to keep from ripping Caleb’s throat out!
And now I was furious all over again.
I warded my hand, grabbed the curse on Hargroves, and jerked. And there it came, the bastard, and it was a bastard. It was a very big bastard, I thought, as it started trying to eat its way up my arm.
And suddenly the war mages were grabbing the boss and trying to fall back, only there was nowhere to go, and Hargroves was swearing at them, and the pack was howling and held back only by Cyrus from eating my boss, because they thought he’d cursed me, and—
“Die!” I screamed, so angry I couldn’t see straight for reasons I didn’t totally understand, except that I’d had a day, and my wolf was agitated as all hell and the damned spell was still trying to eat me and—
“Die! Die! Die!”
I threw the thing onto the floor and stomped on it, warding my foot to the point that it might as well have been encased in solid steel.
Only no, steel wouldn’t have held up under the assault that bastard of a thing gave me, which was a vicious fight that I shouldn’t have won, at least not so quickly.
But my other half was furious, too, and lent me strength, and after a stunned second, so did my boss. And where he led, the others followed.
And not much holds up to a combined assault from four angry war mages.
But damn if it didn’t try.
“What the hell is that thing?” One of the mages yelled, forgetting Corps’ stoicism when the black smoking nightmare punched out a tentacle-like strand and tried to wrap around his throat.
He cursed it to oblivion, and that piece disappeared, but the rest was fast, vicious, and determined.
And then it jumped for the boss again, and it took all three of us to haul it away from his face.