Wolf Rock Shifters Books 1-5: Five BBW Paranormal Romance Standalone Novels (55 page)

D
ascha woke a little before dawn
, his head still on Estée’s lap. She’d watched him sleep a little, his large arms crossed over one another as he made noises far too adorable to emerge from such a large man. Seeing him calm and sound asleep was reassuring, and she’d told herself that as long as this man remained undisturbed nothing could go wrong.

But as he began to stir she averted her gaze, looking across the river towards the cars that had slowly increased in numbers, making their way along whatever street lay above the Seine, to important jobs or away from lovers.

Dascha sat up slowly, stretching his arms overhead as his shirt seemed to tighten over his chest, which drew Estée’s eyes for a moment before she looked away again.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Not sure. I turned my phone off eons ago,” she said.

“Shit, you have a cell phone,” said Dascha. “I’m an idiot. They’ll be tracing that.”

“Don’t worry. It’s one I bought in a convenience store for ten bucks. No affiliations with me whatsoever.”

“Clever girl.”

“Yes, clever. And by the way, you should be pleased to know that I have a Canadian passport with someone else’s name on it for when we cross the border.”

Dascha grinned. “Right,” he said. I didn’t think about that either. You are quite the deceitful criminal mastermind, aren’t you?”

“I do my best.”

“Well, let’s get up the stairs. Our chauffeur will be looking for us.”

Estée handed him the jacket which had kept her warm all night and Dascha pulled it on as he watched her reach for her satchel, her hand rummaging inside.

“Looking for something?” he asked.

She pulled out a tube of lip balm and showed it to him before stroking it along her lips. “Chapped,” she said casually.

“Ah.”

He led her towards the staircase. It seemed likely that their driver had already arrived, as they saw a dark sedan parked above, a man standing at the top of the stairs.

“The driver is a wolf, you said?” asked Estée.

“Yeah, a pack member.”

The man was watching them advance towards him. He wore dark clothing, his eye color indiscernible in the dim light and from the distance below. He waved and smiled, clearly having discerned that they were his passengers.

But as Dascha began to ascend the staircase, a second man approached the first, looking as though he might be requesting a cigarette. The driver shrugged, appearing to apologize before beginning the walk down the stairs, turning his back to the stranger.

Doing so turned out to be a huge mistake.

As the shifter descended towards Dascha and Estée, the man behind him altered, his clothes tearing away. He was a large, quick hyena now, leaping at the presumed driver, who responded too late by turning and thrusting his arms over his face.

“Oh, God,” said Estée as she watched in helpless horror, the men too far off to reach.

Dascha was quick, shifting as the two men, both altered now into their animal forms, fought on the stairs. His clothing dropped to the ground around him as it was meant to do and his dark wolf went bounding towards the fray.

The hyena had managed to sink his teeth in before the other man had shifted, and Dascha could see a gash at the base of the wolf’s neck, already bleeding profusely, the creature’s energy waning.

Dascha thrust himself at the attacker, his huge jaws snapping at any part of the hyena that he could reach, trying to pull him away from his victim as all three tumbled down the staircase.

To the side of the stairs closest to the water was nothing but empty space, falling precipitously thirty or so feet to a concrete walkway below. And the sparring shifters were coming perilously close to tumbling off its edge.

The hyena remained clamped on the driver, as though he had a personal vendetta against the man. As Dascha lunged at him once again, both assailant and victim fell sideways, slamming hard onto the solid surface below.

Dascha went barreling down the stairs towards them, even as Estée debated whether or not to shift. Her hand was planted firmly in her bag, fingers twisted around the package. If she put it down and transformed, she could lose it. Anyone could take this bag. But if she didn’t shift…

The wolf driver lay on the ground, his breath shallow, blood coming now both from his wound and from the back of his head.

“You…Dascha,” he mustered, his breath coming in a raspy whisper.

Dascha shifted, rushing over to the man’s side.

“Yes, I’m Dascha. We’ll get you help, buddy. Just lie still.”

The driver looked into his eyes. “Find…Colin. Not Alpha…” he said.

“Colin?”

The driver’s eyes were still open but now they seemed clouded, the life gone out of them in an instant.

The hyena, stunned, lay next to him.

Dascha took the creature by the neck, holding him down.

“Now,” he said. “You’re going to tell me who you are, what the hell you’re doing here and why you’ve just killed my driver.”

T
he hyena gasped for breath
, his neck caught between two very strong hands, their grip tightening by the second.

He shifted, either in order to speak or to relieve some of the pressure building up from the wolf shifter’s grip.

“Well?” said Dascha, feeling human skin between his fingers.

“Fuck you,” hissed the man.

“Right.” Dascha renewed his squeeze, the man’s face going bright red, his neck matching. His hands grabbed at the wolf shifter’s arms as he tried to pry them away.

He made an unintelligible sound; a few syllables coming out in coarse breaths.

“I’m sorry,” said Dascha. “I didn’t entirely understand that.” Finally he let up a little; enough for the man to speak.

“I said all right,” the man rasped, his voice sounding as though his vocal cords had been sent through a wood chipper. “I’ll talk. Just stop with the choking.”

“Deal,” said Dascha, standing up. He reached for his clothes and pulled them on as Estée watched, still frozen.

“You know who my boss is,” said the man. “At least
she
does.” He nodded to Estée.

“Okay, you work for the pompous jackass we saw on TV,” said Dascha. “Why’s he doing this to her?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” The man laughed, realizing that his opponent didn’t even know what he was defending.

Dascha leaned down and punched him in the jaw. The hyena shifter was still sprawled on the ground and the blow landed like a sharp thud against skin and bone as he cried out in pain.

“Look, I don’t know. I get hired to track people down. I was told that you were meeting here this morning, that I should stop you leaving Paris at all costs.”

“Well, killing the guy who drives the car is a good start,” admitted Dascha. “You’ll get brownie points for that, I’m sure.”

The man rubbed his jaw.

“I can’t tell you anything more than what I know. Except…”

“Except?” Dascha leaned forward once again, clenching his hand into another determined fist.

“Except that everyone thinks she killed a guy. An employee of the Boss.”

“Well, she didn’t,” said Dascha. “So if you ever see him again, you can tell him that. He’s got the wrong woman.”

“Wrong
tiger,
you mean,” said the man, still cowering.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Look, like I said, I don’t know anything. I just know what I hear and I do what I’m told.”

Dascha turned to Estée. “Watch him,” he said. “If he moves, tear his balls off.”

He made his way up the stairs to the place where the driver’s clothes still lay in tatters on the ground and picked up the shredded pants, feeling in the pockets.

“Got them,” he said, extracting a set of keys. “Estée, come on. We’re leaving.”

“But,” she began, gesturing to the hyena shifter. “What about him?”

“If you want to kill him and throw him in the river, go for it. Me, I’m into the idea of leaving him naked on the ground, lying next to the body of the shifter that he killed. He can explain that to whoever finds him.”

Estée wordlessly followed him up the stairs, making her way to the illegally-parked car.

“Get in,” growled Dascha as he assembled the Hyena’s clothing, tossing it into the back seat. “This day’s started out badly. Let’s try not to make it any worse.”

E
stée climbed
in on the left side. This car, it seemed, was outfitted for driving in England, its steering wheel on the right.

“Do you even know how to drive this thing?” she asked.

“I suspect it’s like driving my car, only I’ll have to pretend to be shit-faced drunk,” said Dascha. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Look, Dascha—about back there, what you did…”

“I did what I’m supposed to do,” he said, his tone hostile. “But I failed. That wolf shifter didn’t need to die. I was too slow.”

“It wasn’t your fault. If you hadn’t been there we both know he would’ve died anyhow. You gave him a fighting chance at survival.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Dascha’s voice had gone cold, as though he were pushing the feeling from it. “He’s dead. And now I need to go tell his pack that he died on my watch.”

“On mine too,” said Estée. “It’s all because of me.” Once again, her hand was in her bag, feeling for the small package as though it was the only object on earth that could help her to maintain her sanity. All of this madness for such a small item.

“You screwed up. I don’t know what you did to this Grendel guy, but you screwed up,” said Dascha, his eyes locked on the road ahead. “And guess what, Estée? We all do. It’s called life. Every single one of us fucks up from time to time, and if we’re really, really lucky, no one dies in the meantime. But for shifters it’s different. Don’t forget that there’s a tiger inside you. A tiger that thirsts for blood, for fights. It’s aggressive, whether you pretend to ignore it or not.”

“I don’t ignore it,” she said, her voice antagonistic. “I fight it from inside. I tell it to stay put, I hold it in place. Otherwise, it would…”

“It would what? Kill people?” He turned briefly to her. “So you see, what’s inside us, that spirit of the animal, is not what the human side is. We can’t always control it.”

“I know.”

“So whatever you did, you should tell me, so I can help. If you did kill a guy…”

“Oh, so we’re back to this now? We’re back to you doubting me?”

“I don’t doubt you. I know you did something wrong. I don’t know what it is. But maybe it was your tiger that did it, and not the woman sitting next to me.”

Estée didn’t reply. She put her forehead against the window and looked out as Dascha took the hint and went silent himself.

At a red light he poked around at the car’s GPS, inserting an address.

“Where are we going?” Estée asked at last.

“To the pack headquarters. They’re outside of London. They call themselves the Fraternity of the Claw. Apparently they’ve been around for centuries, these wolves. So I guess the only thing to do is throw myself on the sword for them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I need to tell them that one of their members is lying by the Seine, in a pool of his own blood.”

“You can’t do that,” said Estée. “Let me tell them. I’m a woman. Maybe they’ll be merciful…”

“My entire purpose for being on this continent is to prove that I’m trustworthy, that I’m strong and that I can do my fucking duty. That I’m a good guy. You think I’d ever throw you under the bus like that?” said Dascha. “We’re born soldiers, we wolves. We fight for a common cause. I’ve known since the day that I first felt my bloodlust kick in what I was. I’ve known all along what I need to do. I would sooner have you put a gun to my head and blow my brains out than allow you to take responsibility for my slow reflexes.”

“Well, at least let me explain to them…”

“If you’re going to explain,” said Dascha, over the sound of a synthetic English-accented voice barking at him to turn right, “Maybe you should start by telling me what’s in that fucking bag of yours.”

E
stée clammed up once again
, realizing that her fingers had remained clutched around their precious payload since she’d gotten into the car. Slowly, she extracted her empty hand from the bag and showed him her palm.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

Dascha hit the brakes and pulled the car over to the right side, stopping abruptly as they both shot forward.

“I can tolerate a lot,” he said. “I can put up with a lot of things. But I hate liars.”

“I’m not—”

“Save it, tigress. You are. You’ve been lying to me all along. Maybe you killed someone; maybe you didn’t. But I know perfectly well that there’s something in there that’s making a pile of shifting killers hunt you down.”

Estée slipped her hand back into the satchel and pulled out the wrapped object. She unpeeled the cloth until it draped over her hand, revealing a small jade cat, no larger than a carved chess piece.

“What the hell is that?” asked Dascha. When Estée failed to answer he looked at her face.

Her voice was cold as she spoke, almost without feeling, as though allowing emotion in would prevent her from speaking.

“When my parents met in happier times, my father gave my mother a gift: a jade tiger. It was, I suppose, a symbol of his devotion to her. Worth a fortune, apparently. She showed it to me when I was a little girl; she even let me play with it sometimes. It meant the world to her. She loved him, you see. More than anything. And she always hoped that Cecile and I would find love like that in our lives.

“But when she died, my father sold some of her things. I suppose in retrospect that it hurt him to keep them around. I’ve always wondered if he regretted the decision. And so the tiger disappeared, sold to a collector somewhere on the other side of the ocean, never to be seen again. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw it in Grendel’s house.

“I didn’t really know who he was—that he was the man who’d bought it from my father, or the auction, or wherever it was—you have to believe me. But I knew that he was a collector, and that he was very wealthy. I have my mother’s love of beautiful things, I suppose: art galleries, museums. I jumped at the chance to go to the party, to see what made him tick. I never thought in a million years that I’d see this cat. But as soon as I did, I knew exactly what it was: my mother’s jade tiger. It has the same little chip in its left ear, even. I would have known it anywhere.”

Dascha examined the piece closely and saw that she was right.

Estée continued, “It’s all that I have of her. All that anyone has of her, in a way. And I loved my mother more than anything. I wanted her back. And so, when I saw it, I stole it from him, not knowing what the consequences would be. But had I known, I probably would have taken it anyhow.”

“You stole this from one of the most powerful men in Britain?”

“Yes.” Estée spoke the word almost with pride. “I suppose I should admit that it had partly to do with him, how much I disliked him. He was sleazy, that one. I felt that he didn’t deserve this tiger. He showed me around his house on a private tour, so proud of all his precious things. Brought me to each room in turn. I honestly thought he’d try to chain me up in the basement to keep me forever.”

“I can imagine doing that,” said Dascha, a faint smile on his face. “So what happened?”

“One of his men came to get him during the evening—something had happened that he needed to look after. And so he left me in his study. I suppose he’d forgotten that this was in there; I don’t know. It was sitting on his desk, right next to his computer, like he kept it with him while he worked.”

Dascha picked the tiger up and examined it, turning it around in his hand. On the underside was a rectangle of paper-thin lines; possible cracks, he supposed. But otherwise it was an impeccable work of art, sleek and beautiful.

“And now he wants it back, it seems,” said Estée.

“It must be worth millions if he’s going to all this trouble,” said Dascha. “But why would a guy leave something like this lying around?”

Estée shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he wasn’t thinking. I don’t suppose billionaires really worry too much about money, except when they lose it.”

“You’re probably right. And it’s most likely his hurt pride that makes him want it, like you said.”

“I suppose.”

Estée’s hand was still out, and Dascha placed the tiger back at its center gently, pulling the car out from the side of the road and continuing the journey north. “There’s more to this than we know,” he said. “But you know what you need to do. You need to give it back.”

“I know,” muttered Estée, her emotions exhausted. He was right, of course. There was no need to hold onto this token, except that it represented a happier time; a time when her mother was alive, when her father was a loving man. But it wouldn’t bring her mother back. And as for her father, it sounded as though he’d undergone some change in attitude. Perhaps all that happened with Cecile had woken him up, and he’d realized that he still had two women in his life who were important.

It was, Estée supposed, time to grow up and to confront her own issues.

“We’ll go meet with the Fraternity,” said Dascha. “And see what they say. Maybe they’ll help us, maybe they won’t. But we have to let them know what’s happened to their man. And I need to figure out what that guy was talking about when he said to find Colin. I mean, who the hell is Colin?”

“I don’t know,” said Estée. “All I know is that I don’t want anyone else to get hurt for me. And that includes you.”

“I’ll be all right,” said Dascha. “The last thing you need is something else to worry about. Are
you
going to be okay?”

Estée’s face turned once again to look out the window at the passing Paris streetscape as her fingers tightened around the small tiger.

“I’m always okay,” she said. “Great? Not so much.”