Chapter One
May 1
Location: The business district of Encantado, Nevada, a city known for its gambling and entertainment industry, and for being located alarmingly near a magic portal.
Zoey limped in to the office of Kalinda’s Katering at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, wondering if she’d be picking up her paycheck or facing a firing squad.
After the week she’d had, the firing squad would be just about par for the course.
First her favorite cafe had closed up shop and vanished last Monday – the latest in a string of local businesses that had shut down.
Then she’d had the blind date from hell four nights ago. An acquaintance set it up, describing the guy as “perfect for you.” She must not have liked Zoey very much. “Perfect for you” was a drunken accountant who, five minutes after meeting her slurred that he “liked dating fat chicks because they weren’t so demanding.” Well, that was just a guaranteed panty-dropper…not.
And then when Zoey made it clear that she was going home right after dinner, alone -he stiffed her with the check. So she’d headed to the bar, and as far as she could recall, tried to drink her weight in tequila. Which was why she woke up with the phrase “love bites” tattooed on her right butt cheek the next morning. The fact that the calligraphy was really pretty didn’t help anything.
And after last night – well, it turned out, those sucktastic events? They’d been the high points of her week.
Kalinda stood up when Zoey entered her office, clad in her usual uniform of tuxedo jacket and skirt, her dark shiny hair yanked back in a severe braid, her brows drawn together. She was tall, mocha-skinned, regal and very annoyed. Zoey, by contrast, was short, plump, and had unruly brown waves, and had been told that she was annoyingly cheerful.
The look on Kalinda’s face told Zoey that her boss had already heard what had happened at the Blood Oath Pack’s party. Of course. Word got around fast in Encantado.
“Hello, Kalinda. Beautiful morning, isn’t it? The sun is shining, the phoenixes are flocking…” She gestured out the window at a half dozen phoenixes which were gliding overhead, trailing cold blue flames.
“There are three simple rules to catering a mafia pack event,” Kalinda said, her voice sharp enough to slice through bone.
Like Zoey hadn’t heard this lecture before. After all, Zoey worked those events all the time. She was one of the few girls willing to work the Blood Oath Pack shindigs, because everyone else was terrified of them.
Zoey was too, of course. Shifters were scary enough, but the Blood Oath pack? Effing petrifying. They’ve been known to literally eat their enemies. The pay was too good to resist, though. It paid triple what she earned at other catering gigs. And why would they eat the catering staff when they served up such delicious food? Then nobody would be willing to work the Blood Oath pack parties, and they’d have to go get their own food, which would cut into the time they spent fooling around with mob groupies and smoking stinky cigars.
That’s what Zoey told herself every time she went to cater their events.
And she got the same lecture from Kalinda before she went in, every time. Three simple rules.
“You don’t say. Why don’t you tell them to me?” she said. She might have been a little salty, but she felt like she had the right. Her right butt cheek had an enormous set of fang marks in it, right below the tattoo, and it was probably going to scar.
“Get in. Don’t get bitten. Get out. Is that so hard to remember?” her boss demanded.
Zoey shrugged. “Apparently.”
Kalinda gave her a dirty look. “Now is not the time for your sass.”
“When, exactly would the time for my sass be?” she grumbled. Could she schedule a time? Like five seconds from then? But she didn’t say it out loud, because Kalinda looked like she was about to blow a gasket.
“When you didn’t do something to provoke aCapoof the Blood Oath pack to bite you in the ass.”
Zoey looked at Kalinda with alarm. “How do you know he’s aCapo?I didn’t know he was aCapo.”
“Word gets around fast. What did you do to him, exactly? Step on his paw? Pull his tail?”
“Do you think I’m crazy?” she spluttered. “Seriously? You think I’d pull the tail of any wolf shifter, much less a Made Wolf?”
There were made wolves, and there were Made Wolves. Dominic Lombardi was both. First, he’d survived being bitten by a Born Wolf from the Warrior Class. Not the med-mages, not the empaths, not the Common Class wolves who could turn people safely – no, he had to go and get fanged by a Warrior. He went into it knowing there was a significant chance he wouldn’t make it – around 25 percent of the people who are bitten die within 24 hours, and then of the survivors, many die on the next full moon, when they go through their first turn.
After he survived his First Moon, he would have worked as a foot soldier the Blood Oath pack. He’d have been sent on assignments that could be anything from collecting money to revenge raids on their enemies, the Bianchi Pack. And then, when he’d impressed theCapo Di Tutti Capos- boss of all bosses - enough by being a vicious psycho killer, he was “allowed” to go through some sort of gruesome secret ritual, and after he survived that, he was a Made Wolf. A member of the Blood Oath Pack, the corrupt and violent mafia shifters who unofficially ran the north side of Encantado.
She knew all that from the wolf tat on his bulging right bicep. The howling wolf was nestled into a crescent moon, which meant that he was a Made Wolf. And the star above it meant that he hadn’t been born a wolf, he’d been made into a wolf.
Zoey also knew that Dominic Lombardi’s eyes were a blue-green that would make the ocean jealous, his slacks molded to his perfect butt in a highly distracting fashion, and his mighty thighs looked as if they could crush a woman to death - but most would have been willing to take the risk and die smiling.
