Page 19 of Wretched Thorns

He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, looking up at her with eyes that were more gold than brown. Assessing. Dismissive. It made her blood boil.

“I am looking for Celie Toussaint.” His voice was a low rumble. Not friendly.

“And you are?”

“Someone who doesn’t have time for games.”

He took another step forward, and her hackles rose.

“I said that’s far enough.” The anger in her own voice surprised her. The reasonable part of her brain knew she needed to make an ally of this wolf, but everything about him was freaking her out. She couldn’t let him pick up on that.

His jaw tightened. “Listen, chère, I don’t know who you are, but—”

“I know who you are.” Tara came down one step, then another, until she was close enough to see the gold flecks in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders. “Dex Fontaine. Packless wolf who attached himself to the Voss brothers. Does their dirty work. Runs their errands.” She let her smile sharpen. “You’re the attack dog. And right now, you look like you’ve lost something important.”

Her hands tightened on the porch railing.

For a long moment, he just stared at her. The anger radiating off him was a tangible thing, the barely contained violence. As she had marched down the step his eyes had gone pure gold. Wolves didn’t like being challenged, especially not by humans. But Tara had her own ways. And she wasn’t about to let some growling alpha-wannabe intimidate her on her grandmother’s porch.

“Rowena sent me,” he said finally, biting off each word.

That Rowena had not come herself told her things were worse than she had let herself imagine.

“We believe the mystic arts are at play here, blocking our natural senses.” The words came out rough. Frustrated.

He went still. His eyes moved past Tara to the doorway, where her grandmother had appeared, the jar of dark liquid clutched in her hand.

“Something is interfering with our bonds.”

“You’ve lost more than one, no?” Grandmère tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.

Dex’s brow furrowed and his voice lowered to a growl. “How do you know that? What do you know?”

“I am Celie Toussaint.” Celie turned back toward the house. “Come inside. Both of you. If we’re going to find her, we need to work together.”

He pushed past her up the stairs, close enough that she caught his scent. Wild and woodsy, but not at all the canine undertones she was expecting. Something that made her pulse jump in ways she absolutely refused to examine.

Stamina. The word banged around in her head like a game of ping pong. Tara sucked in a breath, but it came out as a growl.

He stopped on the top step.

He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t not smiling either.

For one reckless second, Tara considered punching the smug look right off his face.

No. Absolutely not. She was not going to give him the pleasure. Nor was she going to be attracted to this arrogant, dismissive, insufferable—

He continued across the porch. His head turned, not all the way. Just enough that he was looking at her over his shoulder, his eyes on her face for the length of one slow breath. Whatever wolves heard with their noses, he had heard it. He was not pretending he hadn’t.

“You coming, chère?” he said over his shoulder. “Or you just gonna stand there looking at me like that all day?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Call you what?”

“Chère. I’m not your anything.”

He grinned, slowly. Like a man who’d decided something he wasn’t going to say out loud.