Chapter 31 #2
Flashes of that night crossed her memory as they walked deeper into the warehouse. She remembered the waves of fire and fighting the wolves who had taken her friend like they had any right over her life. But that was months ago. Elise was safe now. Delainey had to push it out of her mind.
They found the spot where Nico and Elise had been tied up.
There was still a stain of blood on the floor that hadn’t been properly cleaned, but that was the only evidence.
The stain was dark and irregular, about the size of a dinner plate, seeped into the concrete in a way that no mop would ever fully lift.
Delainey knelt down and summoned her magic, trusting Reece to have her back as she sent a pulse of energy out and waited to see if she got anything back.
The blood was Austin LaSalle’s. It didn’t tell her anything she couldn’t have learned with her own eyes and a DNA testing kit.
It was his. He had bled here. That was all.
She didn’t have the gift of clairvoyance, where she could have read the incident in the ether.
But she reached down and scraped a bit of the blood off the ground and put it into the plastic bag she’d tucked in her pocket for this reason.
She could give it to Aya, and Aya could test the resonance against the manacles and see if he had any sort of relationship to them. It would be a long shot.
Most likely, if he had anything to do with the cuffs at all, he had hired someone to make them. But even if he had touched them, there was a possibility his resonance was still there.
“Hey, what are you doing?” a voice called from behind them.
Reece hadn’t warned her, but he would have had to run away to go fight, and she knew he wasn’t planning to leave her uncovered. Delainey stood and put the evidence in her pocket.
Two wolves were approaching them in human form, probably from the Iron Runner pack, seeing as they were deep in their territory and the pack owned this building.
A woman in black pants and a polo shirt, and a man in black pants and a t-shirt.
The woman was about Delainey’s height, broad through the shoulders and thick-armed in the way that meant muscle, not softness, her dark hair pulled into a tight bun at the base of her skull.
The man was taller, lean and long-limbed, with a shaved head and a neck like a tree trunk.
They looked like regular warehouse workers, but Delainey could sense the wolfish energy coming off of them.
Reece shifted his stance until he was ready to fight.
Delainey summoned her magic, but her mind flashed back to that moment in the woods where the wolf had come at her, the way it had taken barely a flick of her wrist to send him flying and break his neck.
Bile rose in her throat, and her magic skittered away.
Or maybe she rejected it; she couldn’t quite tell. Her fingers went cold, the glow of magic dying before it had even fully formed.
The hesitation cost her.
The wolves were on her in a second. The man went for Reece and the woman went for her. The man closed the distance in three long strides, faster than any person had a right to move, and threw a haymaker at Reece’s jaw that Reece caught on his forearm with a crack of bone on bone.
Delainey threw up a defensive shield that the woman bounced off of and glared at her. The impact rippled through the shield like a stone, and Delainey felt the jolt travel up her arms and into her shoulders. It took real force to hold the ward against a werewolf’s full-body charge.
“A witch,” she scowled. “Well, that’s interesting.”
Reece and the man were fighting, trading blows, and Delainey could smell blood in the air. She could hear the meaty thud of fists connecting, the scrape of boots on concrete as they grappled for position between the stacked boxes, and a grunt from Reece that told her he’d taken a hard hit.
Without offensive magic, Delainey was no match for the woman, but she could keep the shield up indefinitely. The woman seemed to realize it. She turned her gaze from Delainey to Reece and launched herself at him.
It was two against one.
Fuck.
Delainey watched the fight in horror, with no idea what she would do if she couldn’t use her magic.
Reece was fast, but two werewolves drove him backward step by step, the woman coming at his left flank while the man pressed him from the front, and a box behind him splintered when someone’s elbow went through it.
The second there was more than a six-inch gap between Reece and his attackers, Delainey extended her magic shield and threw it between them. Unfortunately, Reece didn’t realize that. He ran for the wolves and bounced back harmlessly.
He hit the invisible wall chest-first and stumbled back two steps, the same force that had stopped the female wolf sent him reeling, his nose was bleeding from an earlier hit, a thin red line running from his left nostril to his upper lip.
“Sorry,” she winced as he rubbed his nose. Hopefully, it wasn’t broken.
She and Reece shared a glance. With the defensive shield in front of them, the wolves couldn’t get to them, but they’d been backed up against a wall of boxes and the Iron Runners were between them and the exit.
They couldn’t get out without hurting those wolves, and if they hurt those wolves, it wasn’t going to look good for the Southern Basin pack. Delainey didn’t normally care about pack politics, but it seemed rude to start a pack war when she was a guest of the Southern Basin.
“What’s going on?” A man in a gray suit was stalking down the row of boxes between them.
The suit was well-cut, charcoal fabric that had no business being in a warehouse, and his shoes clicked sharply on the concrete with each step.
He looked more like he belonged in a boardroom than in a warehouse.
He glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist, then over at them. “I don’t have time for this.”
This was Dawson, the alpha of the Iron Runners, who Delainey had only met once. And that was more than enough. Frankly, she didn’t need to start collecting acquaintances with werewolf alphas, and she would be glad if she never met another one.
“A beta.” Dawson glared at Reece. “And one of the witches. This is interesting.” He straightened the cuff of his left sleeve with two fingers, the gesture precise and unhurried.
He looked to his wolves. “Back up. We need to talk, and these two are smart enough not to attack.” His brow quirked up as if daring them to contradict him.
Delainey wanted to attack him on principle.
Instead, she let the defensive shield drop and held up her hands. Reece didn’t do that, but he didn’t make any aggressive move either. Maybe that was a werewolf body language thing; she would need to learn.
Or not, because this bond would eventually break, and she and Reece would go their separate ways.
Every time she said it to herself, it sounded weaker.
“What are you doing here?” Dawson demanded. “Don’t tell me you’re playing nice with another witch. Your pack is going to get a reputation.”
Reece bristled, and Delainey heard him growl. She didn’t have to look at him to know his eyes had gone gold.
Okay, this was not good. Dawson didn’t need to know what was going on in their personal lives.
“He hired me,” she said. That was normal enough. Relations between witches and shifters were not traditionally great, but business was business, and this was America. “He wanted to track down Austin. I can’t say I disagreed. That bastard deserves to have his face caved in.”
Reece growled again, and Delainey shot him a look.
If this motherfucker ruined it and got them thrown in an Iron Runner cell, she was going to have words with him.
His shoulders were tense, and she could feel his disagreement pulse through the connection between them.
That was new. Even at the height of passion, she hadn’t felt his emotions through their bond.
“He hired you.” Dawson sounded doubtful. “Reece hired you.”
“I’m standing here, aren’t I? And why would he go to another coven when I have the background on this particular situation and want vengeance just as much as he does.”
“So you decided to come to my territory in the middle of the day. After five months, what brought this on?”
“None of your business,” Reece bit out, his voice dropping into that low register that meant his wolf was doing half the talking.
“Something that happens in my territory is my business, beta.” Dawson barely spared him a glance. This had to be more werewolf bullshit.
Dawson was the alpha; he was in charge. Reece was a beta; he obeyed his own alpha, and maybe Dawson thought that meant Reece was under his regard. But if it came down to a fight between the two of them, Delainey’s money was on Reece.
Reece had four inches and at least thirty pounds on Dawson, and the kind of scarred knuckles that said he’d been in more fights than a man in a gray suit could count. Not that she wanted that to happen.
Dawson had a very punchable face, but there was no need to upset the balance of power in Hobson just yet.
“Does Cole know you’re here?” Dawson asked.
“Cole doesn’t need to know everything,” Reece replied, and Delainey had to grit her teeth.
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to tell the enemy-ish werewolf that no one knew where they were or would come looking for them. She didn’t say a thing out loud.
“We want an update on Austin. We have no quarrel with the Iron Runners.” Behind Dawson, one of his wolves snorted, but she couldn’t see which. “We came here because this was the last place we saw him. That’s it. We wanted to do a resonance scan and see if that gave us a place to go.”
“Is that what Cole’s been trying to call me about for the last four days?” Dawson asked, sliding his hands into his pockets with the ease of a man who had never once been afraid of the answer to his own question.
“Have you been dodging his calls?”
“I have three hundred werewolves under my command. I’m a busy man.”
That was a yes, but she didn’t point it out.
Dawson sighed. “Austin LaSalle is in Arizona. He is working as a used car salesman, and no pack will allow him to join. He’s little more than a rogue. He isn’t in Hobson and hasn’t been for months. He is nowhere near the East Coast. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”
“Where in Arizona?” Delainey asked.
“Scottsdale. Now get out of here before I decide to teach you a lesson. I do this as a favor to Cole. Tell him to remember his debts.”
Reece growled, but Delainey reached out and put a hand on his arm.
The muscle under her fingers was rigid, his forearm corded tight, and she could feel the heat of him even through the sleeve of his shirt.
If Dawson wasn’t looking right at him, she might have grabbed his hand, but that felt like giving too much away.
They walked back to the car in silence. Reece’s strides were long and stiff, and Delainey had to take two steps for every one of his to keep up.
Delainey silently took the passenger seat, realizing Reece probably needed to feel in control right now.
The only way she could give him that was by letting him drive.
They were still deep in Iron Runner territory, even sitting in the car, and should have started it up immediately and driven away. But Reece sat in the driver’s seat with his hands on the steering wheel, shoulders heaving as he breathed deep.
He looked pissed.
His knuckles were white where they gripped the wheel, and a smear of drying blood still marked the skin below his nose; he hadn’t bothered to wipe it.
“I’m sorry I sort of took that over in there,” she said, hoping that would ease them through this. “No.” She corrected herself. “I’m not sorry, but if that caused problems, I regret that for you.” She didn’t know exactly what she was saying.
In a flash, Reece was on her.
His body pressed her back against the seat, and his face was buried in her neck. The seatbelt caught across her collarbone, and his weight pinned her against the leather, one of his large, square-knuckled hands braced on the headrest behind her.
His teeth nipped at her pulse point, and Delainey shivered. She held completely still, unsure if this was incredibly sexy or some sort of threat.
Why did werewolves need to make everything so complicated?
“You’re more than just someone I hired.” His voice was low and rough, and his lips brushed against her neck with every word.
Delainey shivered again. “I know that.” It came out high and a bit breathy.
Reece pulled back. Their gazes met. His eyes were solid gold, no brown left in them at all. Then his lips were on hers.
It was the kind of kiss that staked a claim, that bruised, and was so far beyond some casual thing that when he pulled back, Delainey felt like he had left a piece of himself inside her.
She tasted copper, his blood or hers, she couldn’t tell, and the pressure of his mouth had been hard enough that her lips felt swollen and hot when the air hit them.
The gear shift had to be digging into something uncomfortable. Reece pulled back as if he were being jerked by an outside force.
He didn’t say anything as he put the car into gear and they drove away.