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Chapter Three
Johnny
“You’re much more beautiful in person than you are on canvas.” I slid up next to Charlotte Larsen, knowing full well that she’d clocked me ten minutes before as I was gathering my luggage before I exited the terminal.
The stories of her uncanny talents were legendary. Not only was she one of the few remaining ‘of age’ unmated female werewolves, but she also had a reputation for being a kickass ballbuster with reflexes that rivaled the most hardened warriors. The swirling rumors about her were mythic, and I was curious to find out what was true and what was fantasy. What I did know was that her father, the late, honorable alpha Dominic Larsen, had his youngest, most precious daughter trained by some of the greatest werewolf masters in the world while she was developing into the werewolf queen she was now.
Dom had been a progressive kind of alpha—not that I’d ever had the honor of meeting him—who believed that gender was not a prerequisite to worth and that any wolf could claim the role of alpha, no matter their sex—a sentiment that was not shared by the patriarchal and very antiquated werewolf old guard. It was probably, if I were being honest, what had gotten him killed. He never was one to accept the way things had always been, especially not after being blessed with a female werewolf child.
She tilted her head my way, her normally plump lips pulled tight, her stunning green eyes narrowed like knives. She didn’t respond beyond a slight eyebrow twitch.
And that made me grin. I liked tough nuts. It was always a pleasure to crack them wide open then dig out what was inside.
“Johnny Duke,” I said with my hand out. “We’re headed to the same place, so I figured I’d hitch a ride.”
The black sedan pulled up just at that moment, and Charlie, as I knew she preferred to be called, rolled her eyes, bypassed my hand, then got into the car. She didn’t have luggage, so she must have thought she wasn’t staying long.
Interesting.
She was going in blind then. All the more reason for my personal mission.
The driver came around quickly, looking mortified that he hadn’t been there to open the door for her. “Miss Larsen, so nice to have you home. Can I get your luggage?”
She mumbled something from the depths of the car that had the driver wringing his hands.
I tapped the frazzled man on his shoulder, so he spun abruptly. “She doesn’t have any, but I do. Just back from a trip abroad. Could you take these cases over to my place after you drop us off?”
He looked like he was about to argue but I cut him off. “My brother is expecting me to join him for this meeting, so I don’t have time to swing home.”
“Your brother?” The driver seemed to calculate everything very quickly for a human. His eyes widened and his mouth gapped for a nanosecond before he forced a smile. “Ah yes, you must be Mr. Duke’s brother, and yes, he was just arriving at the offices when I left to pick up Miss Larsen. I was unaware that you’d be joining him.”
That was because Kane didn’t know I was back in town. The sneaky devil thought he’d do the deal without me. Luckily, Levi had given me a heads-up. “Well, I’d suggest we get a move on then, shall we? The meeting is starting, and I’m already late.” There was no way I was letting Kane fuck this up with his usual hardcore ways.
Levi said we needed this woman with us. He said she was part of our destiny somehow, and when Levi, the youngest and wisest of the three of us Duke boys, said something like that, we did whatever was necessary to make him happy.
He told us other things about Charlie—things that I trusted must be true but that I couldn’t speak for personally. She was special, uniquely powerful and maybe even prophetically linked to our family. So, the stakes were high for all of us, even if I didn’t fully understand them.
“You know where the Duke compound is, correct?”
The driver nodded curtly—of course he knew where the Duke compound was—then waved me toward the car door. I had to bend awkwardly to get inside, because even the most modern conveyances didn’t account for werewolf height and breadth. Once I was settled, admittedly closer to Charlie than I needed to be, I let out a sigh as I slid the window down.
“I just love the smell of home, don’t you?” I had her in my peripheral sight, so I saw when she blew an exaggerated breath through her bangs, billowing them up and out dramatically.
“If you like the smell of garbage, sewer and filthy werewolves, then yeah, sure. Love it.” She leaned farther away from me, like she’d climb out of the window and onto the roof if she could.
I shifted back, wedging myself against her side. She wasn’t tiny but she was obviously smaller than me. Her body was lean, as I would expect it to be, solid in a way only an unmated female werewolf could achieve. While her arms weren’t bodybuilder cut, I could see the faint definition there and imagined she bulked up quite impressively when she partially shifted, a trait that only some females of our species could master. With the males, it was full shift or nothing, but the females had this uncanny ability to shift parts of themselves. My mother used to be able to shift only her hand, a monstrously large furry appendage, which she’d use to slap us silly in public. Smack! She’d have our ears ringing and our attitudes straightened out without a human blinking an eye in her direction. We’d deserved it nine times out of ten. Werewolf pups were a handful, so I couldn’t fault her for getting rough.
I’d heard that Charlie was quite proficient at the semi-shift, even using her abilities to fend off an attacker just the night before.
I’d been keeping tabs on her since Levi had told us she was important. Vested interest and all that.
“You might have a point there.” I chuckled. “So—”
“Listen.” She put her hand up and gave me a shove, so I wasn’t looming over her quite so eagerly. “I get that you’re curious. I know there aren’t many of us around, but could you please just shut up? I’ve got a headache.”
“Do you now?” I grinned. “It just so happens that I have a secret weapon for headaches.”
She rolled her face my way, a droll expression making me second guess my very existence. “Let me guess… You’d like to make me come, screaming your name.”
