Authors: Christine Warren
Because he had to face it: Love beat like a heart at the center of everything. Love had created the curse after it had been betrayed and cast aside; love was the reason shifters took mates, the reason why Dmitri had turned Regina and Graham had marked Missy. Love was even what Graham alluded to when he talked about the way Rafe seemed unable to keep his mind off Tess—but could love really be what he felt for his maddening little witch?
He liked her with no question. He liked her spunky attitude and her sharp tongue, her tendency toward grumpiness and her oddball sense of humor. He especially liked the way she felt against him, and over him and beneath him, but what did that really mean? That he should take her to mate? What would be the point? He was a Feline; eventually, he would grow restless and drift away, the way his kind always did, and Tess would be left behind with a bunch of broken promises just as the witch in the legend had been. If he never made promises, wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t she rather not have that betrayal on top of all the rest when she was free to move on to other relationships? To men who would be able to stay beyond that first flush of passion.
Men who wouldn’t be Rafe.
“Hey, you all right?”
Rafe jerked his attention back to the present and caught Graham’s frown of concern. He must have snarled out loud.
The thought of another man putting his hands on Tess dropped a red curtain of rage across Rafe’s field of vision. Every cell in his body roared in outrage at the idea of any man but him seeing her creamy curves, touching her soft skin, tasting her rich, intoxicating flavors. His heartbeat thudded fast and loud in his ears and his breathing grew sharp and shallow. He felt his skin tingle and crawl the way it did before a shift, and his animal fought with claw and fang for the freedom to hunt and kill the rival threat.
Christ. He had to get ahold of himself.
“Rafe.”
Graham halted in the middle of the sidewalk and reached out a hand. Rafe batted it away with a rumble of warning.
“Do not touch me,” he gritted out, stepping to the side to lean against the wall of the adjacent building. He closed his eyes and fought hard against the beast within him. “Just give me a moment. I will be fine. A moment.”
He felt the wolf’s shadow pass over him as Graham positioned himself at his side. Even that seemed like a challenge to his furious inner jaguar. Graham might be one of Rafe’s closest friends, but all his beast knew was that the wolf was a mature, Alpha male, and it wanted to kill the potential rival for his witchy mate.
What the hell was happening to him?
Rafe concentrated on the feel of the concrete at his back, the warmth of the sun on his face, and the monotonous drone of pedestrians and car traffic that filled the air around him.
Deep breaths. Out and in. Out with tension. In with relaxation.
In.
And out.
“Uh, don’t take this the wrong way, buddy,” Graham hissed, his voice dully penetrating Rafe’s intense concentration, “but get a fucking hold of yourself. It’s two in the afternoon and you’re standing on the corner of Lex and Eighty-Seventh
growing fur
. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Rafe’s eyes flew open, and he followed Graham’s glare down to his own hands. Hand that currently sported long, black claws and a light, dense coating of golden fur punctuated with irregular black spots.
Fuck.
Hastily, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and ducked his head into his chest.
“What else?” he growled, wincing when he heard his own voice. It had gone low and gravelly, sounding more animal than human, and feral at that.
“Your eyes have changed completely,” Graham murmured, turning him toward the less crowded cross-street and urging him forward. The Lupine set a brisk pace back toward Vircolac. “A cabbie would have a heart attack the minute he caught sight of you. Your nose is also flattened, and I can see your facial markings bleeding into your skin. You’re goddamned out of control.”
Graham was right, and Rafe knew it. Damn it, this was what that witch did to him. She stripped away his control and turned him into an animal for the whole world to see.
And if any of the world noticed, Rafe would find himself in a steel cage being dissected while the rest of the Other world tried to deal with the collateral damage of a very unexpected and abrupt Unveiling.
“Keep your head down, and for God’s sake get a grip, furrball.” Graham snagged a fedora from the sidewalk display of a tiny shop with one hand and tossed cash at the protesting vendor with the other. Hurriedly, he crammed it on his friend’s head and lengthened their strides even further.
Rafe obeyed the first command and struggled with the second. At least the fear of imminent discovery was serving to distract him somewhat from thoughts of Tess. Or more specifically from thoughts of Tess with another man.
A roar of challenge caught in his throat, and Rafe cursed silently. He hadn’t had this much trouble controlling his beast since puberty, damn it. He should be able to do this.
Risking a quick tilt of his head, Rafe turned his gaze toward the sign on the corner and realized they had reached the street that housed the club. Thank God. Just a few more yards, and they could get inside where it would be safe. Then Rafe could beat himself into unconsciousness if that was what it took to put his jaguar back to sleep.
At this point, he feared that might be necessary.
The only bright spot at the moment was that at least Tess wasn’t around to see this. First, he couldn’t guarantee his jaguar wouldn’t leap right on top of her, take her neck in its jaws, and carry her away to its lair for a rough and thorough claiming. But even more than that, he didn’t quite feel comfortable with the idea of her seeing him like this, so out of control.
Even if it was all her fault.
Fifteen
Graham hustled Rafe up the steps and into the club as if the sidewalk were on fire. Not that Rafe felt inclined to protest. Out of sight would hopefully be out of mind for any human passersby who might have gotten a glimpse of his partially shifted features. If they were very lucky, the traditional human coping mechanism would come into play and any observers would find themselves remembering not a half-human half-jaguar man practically jogging through the streets of the city, but a man in strange pre-Halloween makeup, or someone with an unsightly skin disease at whom it would be impolite to stare. Usually, humans came up with some sort of explanation for any Others they sighted that involved nothing remotely supernatural, and that was exactly the way the Council of Others hoped to keep it. At least for the moment.
As soon as they stepped into the club’s entry hall, Graham turned them away from the areas frequented by the members and straight into his private offices. Rafe felt grateful for that. Having a human see him in his current condition would prove disastrous for the secrecy of the Others; having an Other see him this way would prove disastrous for his reputation and for his authority as head of the Council. The inability of a shifter to control his change counted as a sign of weakness, and Rafe couldn’t afford to appear weak, especially not in the current uneasy climate. Everyone knew the Unveiling was coming, but it would take a strong leader to take the community smoothly through the transition. A leader perceived as weak could never hold them together.
Graham shut the office door behind them and leaned against it for a moment, looking exhausted. Rafe couldn’t blame him. He felt pretty tired himself, mostly from struggling against his shift. Now, though, in the calm of the quietly furnished room, he could feel some of the tension beginning to drain from him. Reaching up, he removed the hat Graham had pressed on him and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Any better?”
“Better than what?”
The female voice made both him and Graham turn toward the large desk that blocked the door to Graham’s inner sanctum from the outer office. Rafe hadn’t even thought about Samantha, Graham’s assistant, who occupied her usual spot in front of her computer.
“Long story,” Graham muttered, raking his gaze over his friend’s face. “Some, but not completely normal. And I have to say, you’re freaking me out with this. Frankly, I think I need a damned drink.”
Pushing away from the door, Graham stalked toward his inner sanctuary, jerking his head for Rafe to follow.
“Hey, wait,” Sam called, jumping from her seat and moving to block the entry. “You can’t go in there.”
The brunette Lupine might be strong and toned, but she presented no sort of threat to her pack Alpha and very little to Rafe, whose jaguar form outweighed even her wolf by at least a hundred pounds. She didn’t appear to consider that, though, as she tried to prevent the men from moving into the inner office. She at least had the good sense to do it while keeping her eyes cast toward the floor, thereby making it clear she had no intention of actually challenging her Alpha.
Nevertheless, Graham didn’t appear to be in the mood to wait out here by Sam’s desk. He growled and reached out, grasping the woman by the shoulders and physically moving her out of his way.
“Not now, Sam. It’s already been a long day, and it isn’t even three o’clock. Tell anyone who stops by that I’m not in, and hold all my calls. I’ll return messages later.”
He spoke over his shoulder, so he was turned away from his office door even as he swung the panel open and stepped forward. It was Rafe’s muttered curse that made his attention snap back to the inner office and the visitor who waited inside.
A visitor named Lionel Menzies.
* * *
Rafe might have asked Graham to dig into Menzies’s background, but he’d also taken a few minutes of his own time to do a quick Internet search on Tess’s grandfather. Apparently, the banker played a prominent enough part in Manhattan society that his photo appeared regularly in the papers and on the websites of various industry and charitable organizations. Rafe recognized him immediately.
Tall and thin, with pale, wrinkled skin and sharp blue eyes, Lionel Menzies possessed a military bearing and a sour expression. He stood with his back toward Graham’s desk, facing the door, with his hands clasped behind his back and his feet spread at shoulder width. His shoulders had begun to curl with age, but he still managed to stand so that he appeared firmly upright and confident. Rafe thought the illusion might be strengthened by the height he achieved with his nose held so high in the air.
His blue eyes appeared a bare shade lighter than his granddaughter’s, but they lacked even a fraction of her warmth. They passed over Graham and locked on Rafe, narrowing with icy indignation.
“So
this
is the man the Council of Others has chosen to lead them? A shifter so weak he can’t even contain his own beast? Is this some sort of joke?”
Samantha cleared her throat behind them, and Graham and Rafe turned their heads to see her shrug apologetically. “I tried to warn you. He didn’t have an appointment, but he wouldn’t let me brush him off. He insisted on waiting for you. He’s been here for nearly an hour.”
Having witnessed Samantha at work before and having seen her deal with drunken vampires, lust-crazed weres, and terrified swanmay, Rafe knew Lionel Menzies had to be one stubborn son of a bitch to have withstood the Lupine’s efforts to be rid of him. Of course, knowing Tess, that didn’t come as a huge shock. She had to have inherited her determination from someone.
The unexpected confrontation with his lover’s grandfather and a powerful force behind the desire of the Witches’ Council to meet with him accomplished what Rafe had been struggling with for the past twenty minutes. He felt his beast settle back in its lair with a disgruntled rumble and felt his features settle back in their normal—human—lines. Drawing his hands from his pockets, he stepped forward and offered one to the scowling witch.
“Mr. Menzies,” he said in his smoothest, most professional head-of-the-Council voice, “I am Rafael De Santos. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I apologize that neither Graham nor I was here to greet you. Would you care to sit down before we talk?”
The witch ignored his outstretched hand—or to be honest, he spared it a disgusted glance before tugging at the cuff of his expensively cut suit coat and stepping around the Others toward the exit.
“I would
not
care to sit,” Lionel bit out, “and as far as I am concerned, we have nothing to talk about. Now please step aside.”
“Wait a minute,” Graham growled, glaring at his unexpected guest. “I’m not sure how things operate among you magic users, but around here you don’t force your way into a man’s office and then refuse to shake the hand of his friend. And you especially don’t storm out without so much as an explanation of what you wanted in the first place. So why don’t you tell us what you came here for, old man, before I decide not to bother with my own good manners.”
Rafe winced. This was why Graham was never meant to head the Council of Others. The Lupine wouldn’t recognize diplomacy if it sat beside him and howled at the moon. Before Rafe could open his mouth, though, Lionel had already fired back.
“Where I come from,
boy,
” the elderly man sneered, “a man is not expected to shake hands with an animal. And whatever I came here for became irrelevant the moment I realized that the individual my colleagues intended to rely on as a rational voice for the Other community is little better than a rabid beast. I had hoped to have an intelligent, preliminary discussion of the ways in which our communities could cooperate to ensure the continuation and even strengthening of our vital Accord, but I can see now that such an endeavor would be not only fruitless, but ridiculous. Clearly if your kind is willing to walk the streets in daylight where any human can see you looking like animal freaks, the only choice my brethren and I have is to decide when we can expect a return to the hostilities the Accord was drafted to stop. From what I’ve seen here, it’s clear to me that the answer will be almost immediately.”