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Danika waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. My first and last mistake: setting you two up.”
Danika knew Reid casually through the part-time security work she did for his father’s business—a massive human-owned magi-tech company in the Central Business District. Danika claimed that the work was too boring to bother explaining, but paid well enough that she couldn’t say no. And more than that—it was a job she chose. Not the life she’d been shoved into. So between her patrols and obligations with the Aux, Danika was often at the towering skyscraper in the CBD—pretending she had a shot at a normal life. It was unheard of for any Aux member to have a secondary job—for an Alpha, especially—but Danika made it work.
It didn’t hurt that everyone wanted a piece of Redner Industries these days. Even Micah Domitus was a major investor in its cutting-edge experiments. It was nothing out of the ordinary, when the Governor invested in everything from tech to vineyards to schools, but since Micah was on Sabine’s eternal shit list, pissing off her mother by working for a human company he supported was likely even better for Danika than the sense of free will and generous pay.
Danika and Reid had been in the same presentation one afternoon months ago—exactly when Bryce had been single and complaining constantly about it. Danika had given Bryce’s number to Reid in a last-ditch effort to preserve her sanity.
Bryce smoothed a hand over her dress. “I need to change. Save me a slice.”
“Aren’t you going out for dinner?”
Bryce cringed. “Yeah. To one of those frilly spots—where they give you salmon mousse on a cracker and call it a meal.”
Danika shuddered. “Definitely fill up before, then.”
“A slice,” Bryce said, pointing at Danika. “Remember my slice.” She eyed the one remaining box and padded out of the kitchen.
The Pack of Devils were now all in human form—save for Zelda—pizza boxes balanced on knees or spread on the worn blue rug. Bronson was indeed swigging from the ceramic jug of mead, his brown eyes fixed on the nightly news broadcast. The news about Briggs’s release—along with grainy footage of the human male being escorted out of the jail complex in a white jumpsuit—began blasting. Whoever held the remote quickly changed the channel to a documentary on the Black River delta.
Nathalie gave Bryce a shit-eating grin as she strode for her bedroom door at the opposite end of the living room. Oh, Bryce wouldn’t live down that little tidbit about Reid’s performance in the bedroom anytime soon. Especially when Nathalie was sure to make it a reflection on Bryce’s skills.
“Don’t even start,” Bryce warned her. Nathalie clamped her lips together, like she could hardly keep the howl of wicked amusement contained. Her sleek black hair seemed to quiver with the effort of holding in her laughter, her onyx eyes near-glowing.
Bryce pointedly ignored Connor’s heavy golden stare as he tracked her across the space.
Wolves. Gods-damned wolves shoving their noses into her business.
There would never be any mistaking them for humans, though their forms were nearly identical. Too tall, too muscled, too still. Even the way they tore into their pizzas, each movement deliberate and graceful, was a silent reminder of what they could do to anyone who crossed them.
Bryce walked over Zach’s sprawled, long legs, and carefully avoided stepping on Zelda’s snow-white tail, where she lay on the floor beside her brother. The twin white wolves, both slender and dark-haired in human form, were utterly terrifying when they shifted. The Ghosts—the whispered nickname followed them everywhere.
So, yeah. Bryce tried really hard not to step on Zelda’s fluffy tail.
Thorne, at least, threw Bryce a sympathetic smile from where he sat in the half-rotted leather armchair near the television, his CCU sunball hat turned backward. He was the only other person in the apartment who understood how meddlesome the pack could be. And who cared as much about Danika’s moods. About Sabine’s ruthlessness.
It was a long shot for an Omega like Thorne to ever be noticed by an Alpha like Danika. Not that Thorne had ever so much as hinted at it to any of them. But Bryce saw it—the gravitational pull that seemed to happen whenever Danika and Thorne were in a room together, like they were two stars orbiting each other.
Mercifully, Bryce reached her bedroom without any comments regarding her sort-of boyfriend’s prowess, and shut the door behind her firmly enough to tell them all to fuck off.
She made it three steps toward her sagging green dresser before laughter barked through the apartment. It was silenced a moment later by a vicious, not-quite-human snarl. Deep and rumbling and utterly lethal.
Not Danika’s snarl, which was like death incarnate, soft and husky and cold. This was Connor’s. Full of heat and temper and feeling.
Bryce showered off the dust and grime that seemed to coat her whenever she made the fifteen-block walk between the apartment and the slim sandstone building that Griffin Antiquities occupied.
A few carefully placed pins erased the end-of-day limpness that usually plagued her heavy sheet of wine-red hair, and she hastily applied a fresh coat of mascara to bring some life back into her amber eyes. From shower to sliding on her black stiletto heels, it was a grand total of twenty minutes.
Proof, she realized, of how little she really cared about this date. She spent a gods-damned hour on her hair and makeup every morning. Not counting the thirty-minute shower to get herself gleaming, shaved, and moisturized. But twenty minutes? For dinner at the Pearl and Rose?
Yeah, Danika had a point. And Bryce knew the bitch was watching the clock, and would probably ask if the short prep time was reflective of how long, exactly, Reid could keep it going.
Bryce glared in the direction of the wolves beyond the door of her cozy bedroom before surveying the quiet haven around her. Every wall was bedecked in posters of legendary performances at the Crescent City Ballet. Once, she’d imagined herself up there among the lithe Vanir, exploding across the stage in turn after turn, or making audiences weep with an agonizing death scene. Once, she’d imagined there might be a spot for a half-human female on that stage.
Even being told, over and over, that she had the wrong body type hadn’t stopped her from loving to dance. Hadn’t stopped that heady rush seeing a dance performed live, or her taking amateur classes after work, or her following CCB’s dancers the way Connor, Ithan, and Thorne followed sports teams. Nothing could ever stop her from craving that soaring sensation she found when she was dancing, whether in class or at a club or even on the gods-damned street.
Juniper, at least, hadn’t been deterred. Had decided that she was in it for the long haul, that a faun would defy the odds and grace a stage built for Fae and nymphs and sylphs—and leave them all in her dust. She’d done it, too.
Bryce loosed a long sigh. Time to go. It was a twenty-minute walk to the Pearl and Rose, and in these heels, it’d take her twenty-five. No point in getting a taxi during the chaos and congestion of Thursday night in the Old Square when the car would just sit there.
