Chapter Two
I watched from across the street as Brendan walked the final block to the shelter alone. I’d been right to be cautious. Before Brendan reached the front door, a black Mercedes sped down the street and screeched to a stop beside him.
“Remy!” I heard Brendan say before a tall figure leapt out. I caught a glimpse of black hair, broad shoulders, and a shadowed jaw before the man hustled Brendan into the back seat.
The car sped away at once.
Remy had gotten here fast. I doubted he lived nearby. He was obviously rich, and the rich didn’t live anywhere near the part of the city that had shelters for unhoused people.
I remained in the shadows for another few minutes, making sure Remy didn’t come back. Then I started walking, soaked but grateful for the rain. It kept the streets empty. The drunk guy wasn’t the first person to grab first and ask permission never, and the Beast had eaten more than enough tonight.
When I got to a more commercial intersection, I called an Uber.
Ten minutes later, I was dropped off in front of a tall, mud-colored building with several rickety fire escapes clinging to it.
The main entrance still had an old-fashioned keylock, and the elevator creaked its way up to the sixth floor.
Once inside my apartment, I shrugged out of my coat and grabbed hand towels from the kitchen countertop to mop up the water pooling at my feet. Everything was within easy reach; I’d give that to tiny studio apartment living.
I wanted to fall onto the bed that was the focal point of the main room, but first I had to shower and brush my teeth. When I came out of the bathroom, a fluffy calico cat now lounged in my bed, eyeing me with her usual mixture of affection and disdain.
“Hey, Belle.”
Most animals hated me because of the Beast. Not Belle.
She’d been a stray that snuck in one night after I left the window open.
I’d kept it open after that so Belle could escape if the Beast ever took me over, but she hadn’t.
Not even after an intruder had crawled up the fire escape and squeezed in through that open window.
I’d woken up with a hand over my mouth while a masked guy said, “Don’t scream, or you’ll be sorry. ”
He’d been the sorry one. Survival instinct always released the Beast. When I was myself again, the intruder was nothing more than cold ashes on my covers.
Belle was still there, yawning from her window perch as if to say, You go from sweet to murderous in an instant? Big deal, cats can do that, too.
That’s why I named her after the heroine from Beauty and the Beast, who was also able to love a fearsome monster.
Belle stretched, tilting her head so I could scratch under her chin. I did, and was rewarded with a rumbling purr.
I don’t remember falling asleep. The next thing I knew, my alarm was blaring, and sun streamed through the windows. It didn’t feel like I’d slept ten hours, but I had. Transforming into the Beast took a lot out of me. Now I had less than an hour before I had to clock in for my shift.
I quickly got ready. I didn’t have time to take the bus, and my car was still in the shop, so I called an Uber. Traffic was heavy for a Saturday, but I still managed to get there a few minutes early, earning me a grateful look from Sue, the charge nurse.
“I know you worked overtime yesterday, Raine. Thanks for not being late today.”
“No problem,” I said.
Sue smiled. “A few of us are going out for drinks after work. Why don’t you join us?”
“Sorry,” I said with a fake smile. “I’ll be too wiped out.”
She wagged her finger at me. “One day, you’ll say yes!”
“One day,” I agreed, but I wouldn’t. Friends were for normal people, not for someone who had to run around most nights finding violent auras to snack on so the thing inside me didn’t break out and kill more innocent people.
At 11 PM, my shift was finally over. I left through the staff exit at the back of the emergency room. Once outside, I scanned the pick-up/drop-off lane. My Uber should be here soon. If I hurried, I could make it to the convenience store to get more cat food before it closed.
I was so focused on that, I ignored the black Mercedes parked along the curb until it pulled toward me. That wasn’t my Uber. It wasn’t anyone’s Uber. It was an S-class Benz, and it looked like the car that had picked up Brendan last night.
The driver jumped out and opened the back door. I glimpsed a muscular man wearing a dark suit inside.
“Mr. Byrne would like a word with you,” the driver said.
This was bad. Remington “Remy” Byrne was the CEO of Frontview Republic, as I found out when I googled the company during my dinner break. Now he was here? Why?
“I don’t know a Mr. Byrne, so I’ll pass,” I said as I started backing up toward the employee entrance.
“We met over the phone last night,” that deep voice replied from inside the car. “And I’m low on patience, so get in.”
The command in his silky baritone actually had me taking a step toward the Benz before I came to my senses. Nothing good would come of me meeting the caretaker of an eyewitness to my inner monstrosity. How had he found me?
I backed up. The employee door was only a few feet away.
“I don’t think so.”
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
My whole body suddenly lost its strength. I would have fallen if that unknown person hadn’t picked me up.
“Here, let me help you,” I heard before my eyes fluttered closed, the lids too heavy for me to keep open.
The last thing I felt was the cool embrace of soft leather as I was dropped into the Mercedes’s back seat.
I didn’t open my eyes when I regained consciousness.
I tested my wrists and feet. No restraints.
No gag, either, and I was lying on something that felt bigger than the back seat.
I didn’t sense any motion, so we must be out of the car.
I also didn’t have any head pain, so I’d either been drugged or Tasered …
and that was twice that someone had snuck up on me.
Damn, I normally had better reflexes.
“I know you’re awake.”
I tensed. And I knew that smooth baritone voice.
I opened my eyes and sat up. I was on a couch in a large room with soft gold lighting, brown leather furniture, bronze drapes over windows twice my height, and strange boxed walls.
Not boxed, I corrected as my eyes adjusted to the low light. Bookshelves. I’d been kidnapped and brought to a library?
A man sat in the corner of the room, the sides of his chair rising around him like a throne.
He was in his early thirties, and his black suit was the same color as his raven hair.
His golden-bronze skin was a perfect backdrop for thick black brows, a straight nose, high cheekbones, and a hint of darkness that shadowed his clean-shaven jaw.
He didn’t make a threatening move, but suddenly, the Beast’s gaze overtook mine.
Light exploded around the man, haloing his vermilion aura.
The deep red shade should have devoured that light, but it continued to burst within his aura like a lightning storm against a setting sun.
I’d never seen such duality before. Usually the red overcame the light, or at least washed it out into ashy maroon, yet his aura was scarlet, fathomless … and impossibly bright and beautiful.
“Stunning,” I breathed out.
“Flattery is wasted on me, Miss Stone.”
“I didn’t mean your looks.” Sure, those were remarkable, too, but I could barely see his now with his aura still flashing like diamonds against a sea of crimson.
I caught a glimpse of white teeth amidst that brilliance. “Insults won’t help you, either.”
The Beast twisted inside me, hungry for the violence in the man. I forced it back. I didn’t need it to survive … yet. After several moments, Remy’s incredible aura faded. Instead, I just saw him, and I raked him with my most authoritative gaze.
“I want to leave now, Remy.”
“Remington,” he responded instantly. “‘Remy’ is for family or friends who are like family. You’re neither.”
And he was dead if I let the Beast out. “I’ll care about your name preference when I’m not being held against my will, Remy. I’d think the CEO of a Fortune 500 company would have better things to do than kidnap a nurse, but I suppose everyone gets bored sometimes.”
His head cocked. “You’ve been taken to an unfamiliar place by a stranger, but you’re not afraid. Why?”
“I’m only afraid of one thing, pal, and it isn’t you.”
“That’s a mistake.”
Something in his stare made gooseflesh race over me. The Beast wasn’t the only one reacting as though Remy was unusually dangerous. My human senses warned me of that, too.
Then again, the thing inside me was the most dangerous of us all. “So was kidnapping me. I’d rethink that if I were you.”
His brow arched. “My door’s not locked. You are free to go … right after you tell me what the hell you did to Brendan.”
I was off the couch before that part made me pause. “Do? I helped him get away from the guys who tried to kill him—”
“Not that.” His voice was so sharp my skin actually tingled. “He called you a beithíoch—”
A vicious inner slash almost made me scream. Oh God, the Beast was trying to get out.
“—and he shouldn’t know that word,” Remy continued. “Beithíoch isn’t in your everyday vocabulary—”
“Stop!” I clutched my torso, trying to force the Beast back. Somehow, Remy saying “beithíoch” activated the Beast like the threat of imminent death. My skin burned as if about to burst apart and my breath came in painful pants.
Remy’s gaze tracked every movement. “What’s wrong?”
Sweat trickled down my face while my heart hammered with fierce inner blows. “Don’t say the B-word again.”
It was taking everything I had to fight the Beast, though I didn’t understand why. Brendan had called me a beithíoch and I’d been fine. But if Remy said that word again, he was dead.
“Miss Stone.” Remy’s voice now washed over me like a refreshing stream. My scalding skin suddenly cooled. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t say that word again. Now, sit back down.”
I was back on the couch before I realized it. More startling, the Beast was now curling back into whatever corner it retreated to when it wasn’t trying to eat someone. Remy wasn’t talking anymore, but somehow, I could still feel the vibrations from his voice like hands massaging my tension away.
That wasn’t possible. Neither was the Beast suddenly chilling as if it had smoked a supernatural bong.
“What are you?” I whispered.
His smile made me sure I was right to say “what” and not “who.” No normal person could make a simple facial change look so threatening and yet so … sensual.
“You first.”
At the words, another wave of that strange languidness rolled over me, threatening to pull me under.
“Whatever you’re doing, stop it!” I managed to snap.
He did, so abruptly I shivered with a sort of instant withdrawal. Damn, that was good stuff, whatever it was.
Remy leaned forward, his aquamarine gaze now piercing. “Stop pretending you don’t know what I am. You’re on my lands, but you entered without my permission.”
He was speaking English, but I still had no idea what he was talking about. “Why would I need your permission?”
“You’re not human,” he replied in a silky tone.
“At least now I know who’s been trespassing on my territory.
I knew someone supernatural had to be. There was a sudden drop in violent crimes in a specific section of the city over the past year.
The criminals didn’t die, get arrested, or disappear, either.
They just had an inexplicable change of behavior. ”
My heart skipped a beat. You’re not human. After eleven years, someone had finally realized that. Furthermore, Remy didn’t look the slightest bit surprised by it. That made no sense, unless I wasn’t the only one with supernatural secrets.
“So?” I said, deciding to brazen it out.
His smile was exactly like his aura, dazzling and deadly all at once. “‘So’? That’s the entirety of your defense?”
Was I on trial? “I don’t know what rules you think I broke, but I’d let it go if I were you. Bad things happen to people who attack me, as Brendan’s dead kidnappers can prove.”
“Are you threatening me?” An amused sort of menace radiated from him.
“The opposite,” I said with all seriousness. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
His laughter soaked into me with subtle vibrations that felt like claws caressing my skin. Worse, I liked the sensation.
“Stop that,” I gritted out.
“My mistake,” he said with another chuckle that thankfully didn’t feel tangible this time. “You caught me off guard, which is rare for a Warden.”
“A Warden?” I said in a careful tone. “Is that what you think I am?”
The air filled with tension so palpable, it was like lightning were about to strike. “No, Miss Stone. I am a Warden, but as I said, call me Remington.”