The Fate of Black Hearts (The Crown’s Wolves #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Present Day

Evie lowered her rifle to massage her shoulder. Her hand came away with blood.

“What?” Roman blurted through her ear communicator. “All good?”

Oops. She must’ve cursed out loud.

“All clear,” she replied without a hint of the bite doubling her over from where a bullet had pierced her upper arm. “Just…” She breathed through the pain. “Just tying up a loose end.”

“Sounds like I should send someone—”

“Six hostiles cleared.” She didn’t want her son realizing she’d been hurt.

“Are you sure? Operationally you’re—”

“If you suggest I’m old, I’ll put a bullet somewhere it’ll hurt to pee. You won’t be able to make your girl—”

“Got it. You’re good,” he snapped. Nothing made Roman lose his composure faster than bringing up his mate, Nova. “When have I ever suggested you’re—”

“Shut up before she makes you dig your own grave,” advised Flynn, a few years younger than Roman.

She imagined him rolling a lollypop from one side of his mouth to the other and rotating his signature baseball cap backward over his shaggy blond hair.

His talent for hacking into security systems had earned him a spot on several international most-wanted lists.

“I can be there in three,” Ky, her third son on this mission, offered.

Although Ky had found love and mated a beautiful lycan several years ago, it hadn’t erased the hyperalert paranoia that kept him alive.

Give him a gun or a knife and he could bull’s-eye any target. A talent he’d inherited from her.

“I repeat, all clear.” So, she had some mileage?

Birthdays had blurred together long ago, somewhere around two hundred-something.

Being a lycan, she had the potential to live for a lot longer.

Age wasn’t why she’d been hit by one of the fifty-something bullets the humans fired her way from the third floor of the government building across the street.

She would’ve dodged perfectly if someone hadn’t distracted her.

“Status,” she demanded.

“It forced spirit possession on the militia general to distract us. Target escaped,” Ky reported. “Working on exorcism but fifty-fifty at this point if it works or we eliminate. Meet at the rendezvous to resume pursuit of the target.”

Someone still watched her. He wasn’t someone she suspected to be involved with their target. Her watcher wasn’t a someone but a something. The identity of the type of nonhuman creature that stalked her remained unclear, but he’d been following her for several months.

She could identify most nonhuman types by smell, but this creature’s nature remained unclear.

She whipped off her coat, yanked down the sleeve of her black dress, and wrapped a temporary bandage around her arm. Packing bandage materials in her rifle bag was a new need. What should’ve healed within minutes now took hours to days. It was a decline in health she chose to ignore.

The dress had been her costume to infiltrate the general’s party across the street, but plans changed when armed mercenaries were detected instead of the posh soiree.

She’d gotten sniper duty instead of partygoer.

She stuck her finger through the hole in the sleeve and groaned. Damn it, she loved this dress.

Once done placing a bandage, she squinted around the bare, unfurnished apartment. The slithery sensation of being under an unknown’s perusal pissed her off.

This time, she’d get him. He endangered all of them by following her.

She locked onto his scent, which carried a hint of a unique soap. Something familiar, but the memory of it evaded her.

Her watcher had escaped her twice over the past few months. Today, she’d win this hunt.

She whipped on her black, knee-length leather coat, which conveniently hid the blood she wore.

After a rapid breakdown she shoved her rifle into its black travel bag, which she slung over her non-injured shoulder.

The pace at which she took the steps down several levels almost caused her to take a header on the concrete staircase.

Outside, in the dark night, humans buzzed around her on their treks to Friday night festivities in Ljubljana. Local Slovenians seemed oblivious to the gunfire less than ten minutes ago, which was weird. Maybe the warlock had placed a spell to obscure the government building from notice.

Hairs on the back of her neck rose. Something not human—something foul—lurked on the other side of the government building.

This wasn’t the warlock they sought, but it was something too dangerous to the humans nearby to let it remain alive.

For a second she considered turning back on the ear communicator she’d shoved in her pocket and tell one of her sons to deal with it.

She glanced heavenward to cast a “really” to the Christian god. Her boys needed to chase the warlock. She’d handle this. After a disappointed glance up the sidewalk where her watcher had disappeared, she marched across the six-lane street, dodging traffic.

Ducking behind a decorative hedge, she removed the shotgun and stowed the duffle in a bush. Roman might be capable of magical voodoo to execute or exorcise a demon, but not her. A couple of old-fashioned demon head explosions might improve her aggravation with this evening.

With a satisfying shick-shick, she chambered a round.

The chill settling into her skin indicated she’d confront something revolting around the back of the building. With little effort despite wearing a dress, she scaled the pointy metal fence. On the backside of the concrete monstrosity, an ornamental garden sprawled over several acres.

Around a row of manicured pine trees, a human scurried into the light. Black eyes, head cocked at an odd angle, and drool trickling down one side of its mouth… So undignified and cliché for a demon possessing a human. It made an odd choking noise before darting her way.

“Prihaja po vas,” it rasped out. Her mind was slow to translate the Slovene: He’s coming for you. Who was coming?

“Not tonight.” With a grin, she fired.

Boom.

She cradled the gun against her body. The shotgun’s kick had ricocheted down her injured arm.

Blowing off a demon’s head hadn’t felt as fantastic as it should’ve, not with pain vibrating her upper body.

She watched the being closely. It remained dead.

Its otherworldly ash vacated its now dead human host, which meant the new potion she’d infused into the bullet had worked to send the creature back to hell.

Regular bullets weren’t enough, or so she’d discovered long ago.

Boom.

With a jolt, she flattened to the ground and rolled to see who shot at her.

A second demon lay a few feet away. Where its head used to be was now a pulpy mess.

How careless of her not to scan for more demons.

She’d never hear the end of it from Roman about being old and reckless after this. Slowly, she rose, ready to face a lecture from one of her kids. But it wasn’t a lycan she faced. Above the stench of demon, she picked up the smell of her watcher.

A huge shadow slung a shotgun across his shoulder. This someone had remarkable arm muscles. She couldn’t make out his details beyond that but heard a soft laugh as he strolled away.

She shot the now incapacitated demon with one of her own bullets to make sure it departed this world. The inky smoke of the demon left the body.

Her watcher was nowhere in sight.

He wouldn’t escape her this time. She scaled the fence again, picked up her bag on the other side, and reacquired his scent.

She pulled off the dark cap covering her hair and put on a long-haired brunette wig.

Once more she stowed the rifle bag behind a hedge near the bar he’d entered.

Time to blend in. Her hunt took her inside a low-lit packed bar.

In this goth club, her natural blonde hair would’ve stood out like a pear on a walnut tree.

Her heart thrashed hard with the need to locate her prey, but she forced herself to relax.

She conjured an adequate glamour that would make her less interesting to humans.

Without it, they’d either stare or be terrified of her inner predator to the point of panic.

Against her breast, her phone buzzed its reminder she should be on her way to the rendezvous.

There, she’d regroup with the boys and locate the missing warlock.

Then she could board her plane to fly home to Spain.

In forty-eight hours, her daughter turned five.

A precocious kid, Lyra hadn’t wanted her to go on this trip, claiming she’d had some sort of vision.

With Lyra, she could never tell if it was something real or the product of an overreaching interpretation of one of her dreams.

Aha! The smell…

She ducked down a back hallway that led to a low-lit gaming room with a large bar.

There.

Even seated at the bar with his back to her he commanded all the space around him.

He, too, must have a glamour in place since no human gave him more than a cursory glance.

Women would normally flock to a being so well put together with his wide back and long legs encased in dark pants.

She couldn’t make out his arms in the leather jacket, which, like her coat, probably hid several weapons.

Dark hair interwoven with fine strands of gray curled against his collar.

Was he the person to whom the demon referred?

She slid onto the stool next to him and signaled the bartender. “Martini. Extra dry. Two olives.”

With the slightest head shift, he viewed her thoughtfully out of the corner of his eye. His stubbled chin suggested fierceness. And stubbornness.

How could she know that from a chin?

Her mind filled in that description as if he were…familiar.

I need to remember him. She ground her molars and pressed her brain hard. A dig of her finger into the temple opposite him didn’t alleviate the pulsing pain from the push to remember. Not a single memory emerged.

With deadly focus, she detailed everything about him.