My pulse misfires, and fear skitters across my chest like a huge spider.
This is it.
There’s no going back.
“Sir?” The man pops open the door and peeks his head inside. “Someone from New York is here to see you.”
“New York?” a male voice exclaims, and is that suspicion in his tone?
The fear I feel is accompanied by adrenaline that pumps through my veins.
I can do this.
I can do this.
Ihaveto do this.
The two men talk for a few minutes before the first steps back outside.
“Go ahead,” he tells me, and I nod stiffly before entering the sparsely furnished office.
The man sitting behind the desk glances up when I enter, and shock evaporates all coherent thoughts. I can’t do anything but stand there, gaping at him.
“Yes?” Irritation curls his lips down.
Every plan I’ve made deteriorates. I can’t even remember why I came here in the first place.
The man tilts his head to the side, his eyes narrowing. “Can I help you?”
I feel as if he’s studying me. I’m nothing but a moth under a magnifying glass tilted just so to singe my wings and set me aflame.
Trying to ignore the sharp crack snaking through my chest, I clear my throat. “You’re Logan, correct?”
At least, that’s the name I discovered that belongs to the leader of this particular Hunter sect.
The suspicion in his eyes turns into a blazing inferno of wrath and darkness.
“Who the fuck are you? Garret may be an idiot, but I’m not. What is a goddamn shifter doing here?”
“My name is Desiree.” I hold my hands in the air to show him I’m not armed, though I’m not sure the gesture makes a lick of difference. Most Hunters know that shifters don’t need weapons to kill. “I just want to talk.”
Logan’s face doesn’t change—not even a minuscule twitch—when he reaches beneath his desk and grabs a gun, aiming it at my chest. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”
“Because I know your sister!” I blurt, staring at a face so eerily familiar to me yet entirely different. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why you stopped hunting shifters indiscriminately?”
I’m totally guessing, but when his eyes sharpen, I know I’m on the right path.
Holy fuck.
Ho-ly fuck.
“You have to know that something weird is going on. Shifters have been murdered, and they had the Hunter symbol carved on their skin. Then vampires attacked the shifter compound pretending to be human. Then the witches attacked the shifters, and the shifters attacked the witches. Somebody is trying to start a war, and they’re pitting you against us.” I take another step closer, my hands still raised, my heart racing overtime in my chest. “But if the Hunters and shifters work together?—”
“Why the fuck would we do that?” His golden hair glimmers in the bright artificial lights bearing down.
“Because…” I bite my lip, debating. What I say next is either going to get me killed…or gain us a crucial ally. “Because you’re not truly human, are you?”
His finger tightens on the trigger.
