2. Chapter 2
Isla had chosen a quiet table in the corner, near the fireplace, and I joined her.
I was starving, but looked around at the other patrons; it was an old habit.
I studied the few small groups scattered around the lobby restaurant and I wondered if this was the only place to eat in town.
It wasn’t like Talinsk had a large enough population to support multiple restaurants and most of the locals probably ate at home.
“Hi, I’m Suzie, I’ll be your waitress…”
A faint scent drifted across the space — distractingly fragrant — musk mixed with cinnamon and herbs.
It was almost overwhelming, but I forced myself to ignore it as Suzie rattled off the specials.
“We’ve got fresh halibut and muskox as well as a few different types of pasta, but those aren’t made in house. ” I ordered the muskox, Isla the fish.
“Make it rare, bloody,” I said and Isla snorted.
“What?” I asked and Isla closed her menu and handed it back to the waitress, thanking her. “Guys love rare steak.” Suzie walked off and Isla changed the subject.
“How’s your room?” Her tone clued me in that she wasn’t thrilled with hers. Isla preferred five star accommodation, six if it was available. This was most definitely not that.
“Mine’s fine, tight and warm, just the way I like it.
” I winked and she laughed at the dumb innuendo and I was happy that we’d been assigned to work together, even if it was only for a few days.
I genuinely liked being with her and it wasn’t just because of who we were.
She was basically an orphan, too, understood what it was like and could relate to me on a level that none of the other women who drifted in and out of my life could.
“Did you imagine when I came to recruit you that we’d end up together in a place like this?” The waitress brought our drinks.
“Hey, you’re the one who told me that…”
“All of the most interesting shit happens in the worst places,” she finished my sentence and motioned around her. “Well, I delivered.”
“If this is the worst of it, then I’m not complaining,” I leaned closer, grabbing her glass and taking a sip of wine. It was surprisingly good. “But I know it takes a lot to meet your exacting standards.” She smiled, then leaned back in her chair.
“Maybe that’s why it never worked out between us.”
Ouch.
That one hurt. Isla was the first peer I’d fucked and it was honestly the most mind blowing experience I ever had.
With human women, I had to be gentle, constantly check in, but Isla liked it rough and I liked giving it to her that way.
The thought made me hard and I hoped she’d be interested in getting reacquainted after dinner.
My meandering thoughts were interrupted by the scent again and I looked around, trying to stay inconspicuous, but Isla knew something was wrong. Her abilities were finely tuned, if somewhat limited, and it was impossible to hide anything from her.
“What is it?” Isla asked, her voice low, and she kept her gaze locked on me.
She had learned to trust my instincts and I knew that there was at least one other Peer somewhere in the vicinity.
The scent coiled around me, weaving through my consciousness like a familiar song.
It wasn’t the scent itself that interested me, it was the carrier.
Pheremones.
Musk and cinnamon, and underneath, something green and bruised, like herbs crushed between fingers.
I'd catalogued thousands of scents in my life.
Scent was how I read the world, the same way everyone else could read faces, and I had never once smelled anything that captivated me that way.
It was all I could think about and everything else around me froze.
It wasn't perfume. It was a signature, older than any language, and the primal beast inside of me was desperate to know the source.
"Max." Isla's voice came from somewhere far away. "What is it?"
"I…I'm not sure." I kept my eyes on my plate; my hands were still, my heart pounding.
I held out my hand, motioning for her to stay put and placed my napkin on the table next to the uneaten slab of meat, then stood, the scent a delicate thread that pulled me closer.
"Be right back."
"Max…" She looked concerned. I didn’t blame her, but she had to trust me.
"I’ll be right back." She listened.
I crossed the restaurant at a frustratingly steady pace.
The scent thickened with every foot towards the kitchen, and by the time I reached the swinging doors it wasn't a thread anymore, it was a rope, pulling me closer.
I pushed through into steam and grease and searing halibut, and under all of it, the scent lingered, intriguingly persistent.
There she was…
She was at the back counter, beside the door, with a knife in her hand, dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She turned at the sound of the door swinging open and froze, eyes locked onto me.
Her face was the only thing that was real, everything else, an illusion.
For fifteen years, every face I'd looked at had come apart somewhere between my eyes and my brain — eyes here, mouth there, a nose filed separately, an inventory of features that refused to assemble into a person. I'd learned to stop looking. It was easier than watching people dissolve.
She didn't dissolve — dark eyes set a little wide, a thin scar cutting through the smooth skin on her left cheek, a slight bump on the bridge of her nose. She was beautiful, but it didn’t matter, I could describe her.
I could pick her out of a crowd of ten thousand with my eyes alone, like most people did, like I hadn't done since I was a kid.
"Who are you?" It wasn’t what I wanted to say, but it was the thing that came out as she stared at me. Her heartbeat was audible and her nostrils flared slightly as time stood still. As her gaze fixed on me, her eyes went from surprise to something resembling recognition.
She knew what I was.
"Wait!"
She dropped the knife in the sink and slipped through the door without looking back.
"Sir!" Suzie shouted, but I wasn’t listening, I didn’t care. "Sir, you can't be back here…"
I was already moving. The back door spat me into the parking lot and the cold hit like a slap, ten below and wind, and the wind was the problem — it took her scent and shredded it across the lot faster than I could gather it.
I stood in the empty darkness with my breath smoking, turning slowly, pulling in air until my throat ached.
A ribbon of her to the left, gone. Another near the dumpster, fraying. In two minutes there'd be nothing.
The wolf wanted out. He wanted to shift, to track his mate through the darkness and snow and make her his, and for a moment I actually weighed it — in the middle of town, on night one, with Isla forty feet away and a cover to protect.
Later, I told him. He didn't like it. Neither did I.
Inside, the waitress was standing, staring, with her arms crossed, annoyed about her territory being breached. "The woman in your kitchen," I said. "Dark hair, dark eyes. Scar on her left cheek. Who is she?"
"The only one back there is our cook, Denny, and I don’t think anyone has ever called him beautiful." She turned to deal with some guys at the bar and I was left with nothing but her scent, the memory of it rewiring my brain chemistry and putting thoughts into my mind that I didn't need right now.
Isla watched me sit down. She didn't touch me — she didn't need to peek into my mind to know that I was rattled, my face told her everything. "Well?"
"I thought I saw something." I couldn’t begin to explain. There was too much. It would take time to process. "Maybe I didn't."
"Max."
"Tomorrow," I said. "We’ll get everything out into the open."
She didn't like that answer, but she let it go, and I tried to regain my composure, tried to push away the memory of her face, but it was a part of me, one that I was hesitant to share.