Asil’s Fourth Date Dating Terrors #3
Alan nodded. “Yes. But maybe not this scary. I’m going to call my pack mate, the one who let me know about the way Asil Moreno was set up with these dates.
He’s the one who told me Moreno could run off anything bad we were likely to run into.
Let me grill him a bit. If I don’t like his answers, we’ll call the whole thing off. ”
“Can we?” she asked. Alan was a submissive wolf—low in the pack power structure. She was pretty sure that her blind date wasn’t a submissive wolf.
Alan dropped his chin and looked away. “Maybe. Probably. Go back and listen to some ancient pop music and I’ll figure something out.”
She’d met Alan and Miranda a half dozen years ago.
He shouldn’t have belonged to the small group of lesser magically enhanced people, including Miranda and Ruby, who had clustered together for mutual protection.
As a werewolf, Alan was much more capable of defending himself than any of them were, and he also had a pack of stronger wolves to back him up.
But a couple of the witches in Ruby’s group of friends bought herbs from his shop and brought him with them to one of their meetings.
His soft, unthreatening manner had quickly led them all—even Ruby, who was as wary as a beetle in a henhouse—to consider him one of theirs.
He’d married Miranda, the only one of their group with enough magic to mix anything stronger than sleeping draughts, a couple of years ago.
There was no question that Alan made their little group of mostly powerless misfits safer than they’d ever been.
Alan never complained about playing guardian, but he’d also never claimed to be a Power in his own right.
The werewolf part was enough to keep most of the other predators at bay, though.
Larger predators walked warily in Seattle because his pack was diligent about removing anyone who made trouble on that scale.
She worried that someday they’d ask Alan to help them, and he’d get hurt or die trying to keep one of them safe. She hoped it wasn’t today.
She should have left Seattle already. She was going to get someone killed. Again.
Ruby hadn’t stayed alive and free as long as she had by playing long shots.
She’d agreed to this ridiculous scheme because Miranda had been frighteningly adamant—and there wasn’t much Ruby wouldn’t do for her.
And because Ruby had been dreaming for the past couple of months about the dark fur and golden eyes of a werewolf—and that werewolf had not been Alan Choo.
She rubbed her wrist, feeling guilty and scared and unhappy. Well, the guilty she might be able to do something about. Alan seemed pretty sure Moreno would help if asked—it was his reputation. She could just ask him.
She didn’t know if she would. A lot would depend upon what she thought about him when she met him.
This wasn’t the first time she’d escaped her captor—though this was the longest any of her bits of freedom had lasted.
She wondered, bleakly, if she shouldn’t stop trying to get away.
He would, eventually, kill her. The first time he’d caught her, she’d had people who tried to help her.
They had all died. She hadn’t tried to find help again. Until now.
She rubbed her wrist where the tattoo burned.
“This is wrong,” she told Alan. “I can’t bring someone else into my trouble. And this poor man doesn’t even know what he’s getting into. He thinks we’re going to explore a haunted house and eat dinner.”
“Ruby,” said Alan in the tone of a man called upon to use more patience than he had.
“He’s a werewolf. Not someone who uses magic as a weapon,” she said, as she had when this had first been proposed. She hoped Alan would be more reasonable than his wife had been. “That’s like wielding a club against a submachine gun.”
“Hold up,” Alan said. “I understand you are having second thoughts—I might be, too, if for a different reason. But we don’t have time to panic right now. I need to make a call before we have the wolf himself at our door.”
Moreno was supposed to be here in a half hour.
“Alan—”
Alan met her eyes. “Ruby, I have been assured this wolf can help. He is supposed to be a most efficacious club, even against a magic-wielding fae. But I need to make sure you will be safe with him.” His eyes narrowed and he brought out the big guns.
“Afterward, feel free to explain to me why you aren’t going to try everything we can come up with in order to be here for Miranda when the baby’s born. ”
She gave a huff of frustration. “All right,” she said, because her common sense was no match for Alan’s ploy. They both loved Miranda.
He nodded. “Okay. I can’t have you overhearing our secrets, Ruby. Not even you. Put your headphones on, listen to some Air Supply, and let me make a call.”
She did as he asked—though not Air Supply. Twisted Sister seemed more appropriate somehow. She closed her eyes because she didn’t want to betray Alan by reading his lips—because he was right, she could do that.
But not even “Hot Love” could keep her from hearing Alan say, “What do you mean Asil Moreno is the Moor? You had me arrange a date for Ruby with the Moor?”
Ruby pulled off her headphones and met Alan’s horrified gaze.
Problem? she mouthed.
He nodded, looking wild-eyed. He concluded his call but kept his phone in hand. “I’m canceling this,” he said. “Dangerous is one thing. Messing around with the Moor is out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire level of stupid.”
Unfortunately, before he could make a call—or explain to Ruby who the Moor was and why that had changed Alan’s mind—the Subaru with Montana plates they’d been told to look for splashed through the temporary stream where pavement met sidewalk and stopped. Her date was here. Twenty minutes early.
Alan gave a frustrated growl and spoke hurriedly, just before the engine stopped. “Treat him like you would Angus, if Angus were both crazy and ten times as dangerous as he is. Maybe a hundred times as dangerous.”
She didn’t think it was the time to point out that she’d never met Alan’s Alpha.
The Subaru’s door opened. Alan shut his mouth and visibly tried to get control of himself.
Out of the mud-spattered car, the most beautiful man Ruby had ever seen emerged.
He glanced at them, then walked around the front of his car.
He strode through the downpour with no more notice than if he’d been walking through dry sunshine as his shirt darkened and clung to every cut inch of him.
It was an effect she’d have expected in a men’s cologne commercial or one of those racy Calvin Klein ads.
She’d never seen anything like it in real life.
He stepped across the widening torrent of water between road and sidewalk without visible effort or a break in stride. The grace of his movement made her mouth dry and her pulse speed up—not a reaction she welcomed just now.
His skin was a rich brown and his features were Arabic—“the Moor” might be as much a description as an epithet, she thought.
As he got closer, she could see his eyes; the color reminded her of liquid bitter chocolate.
It made her nervous that her mind was giving her edible similes to describe him. This wasn’t really a date.
The photo on his profile had been a rose. She’d thought, casually, that it might be to conceal a blemish. She hadn’t considered it might be to keep him from getting millions of queries and unsolicited offers of modeling contracts.
He was no more than average height, maybe less. His hair was short, as dark as his eyes, and it curled just slightly in the rain. There were no age lines on his face, but she knew better than to expect a werewolf to look old.
He didn’t look crazy, either. Or even particularly dangerous—or at least not dangerous in any way that didn’t have to do with sex.
The address Asil had been given belonged to a grand old Victorian that reigned supreme on a quiet street of lesser houses. The falling snow in the mountains had given way to a heavy, cold rain, and he was soaked to the skin before he had even shut the car door.
His date sat on the wall of the porch, safe and dry beneath the overhanging roof. A compact man with Chinese features stood near her. The man was a werewolf. Even the rain could not hide his scent from Asil.
He considered how that changed the game he was playing as he made the wet journey onto the porch.
The werewolf kept his eyes on Asil’s shoes—but the woman had no trouble meeting his gaze.
Her own carried a challenge and, he thought, a reluctant interest. The werewolf, on the other hand, smelled terrified—but Asil was used to dealing with such a reaction.
Ruby Kowalczyk looked a lot like her photograph—which people didn’t always.
She wore tight pants that followed the muscled curves of her body until they—the pants and the curves both—disappeared into the loose flowing shirt that ended halfway down her leg.
The feminine blouse was balanced by well-aged black combat boots.
Her red-brown hair was collected in a tidy braid, revealing her strong jaw and straight nose without precisely flattering her. She watched him with ice-blue eyes framed in dark lashes sparkling with glittery mascara. She looked maybe nineteen.
But Asil’s wolf knew better. The air carried her scent to him through the winter rain—something magical and older than a few decades, though not anywhere near as old as he was.
Fae, he thought, then considered as he got nearer and revised it to half fae.
Enough blood to give her long life and the power that roiled and coiled about her but was oddly contained.
Trapped. He didn’t know how his wolf knew all of that, but he’d long since ceased doubting anything the old beast told him with such surety.