“Are you two comin’?” Eggie barked from the next room. “Or are me and my Sugar Bug going to just starve out here waitin’ on y’all?”
Ulrich tucked Darla’s arm around his own and together they headed toward the front door.
“Sugar bug?” Ulrich softly asked.
“There are some things you don’t question, Ulrich. But instead, you simply accept it. Sugar Bug is one of those things.”
“I will keep that in mind, Miss Darla.”
She patted his shoulder. “Good man.”
Alder Van Holtz was having trouble sleeping. He was so angry, he could barely see straight and he had been this angry since he’d gotten word from his cousin Niles that he was to be packed and out of Manhattan in the next two days. He and his eldest son. Apparently, they were being dumped on his wife’s relatives in the middle of nowhere Colorado.
As if Alder would ever let that happen. As if he’d allow his cousin to steam roll over him. His wife, who’d stopped speaking to him after she’d gotten a call from his cousin’s bitch wife, had already started packing up the apartment. His son had already made arrangements to move his own wife and pups out in the next week. They were just accepting all this. Alder would never accept it. Not ever.
Raging now, Alder went to toss and turn—hoping to annoy and wake up his wife and force her to talk to him—but something, he abruptly realized, was resting on his chest. He opened his eyes and saw shiny, bright yellow eyes staring down at him.
He opened his mouth to yell, but something sharp and pointy pressed against his jugular.
“Uh-uh, hoss,” a gravelly voice told him. “One warning: You’re out and on your way to your new home day after tomorrow or the last thing you’ll see”—he leaned in close and now Alder could see the wolf’s face clearly in the dark—“will be me.”
A Smith. It was bad enough his idiot son had mated with one, but now he had her white trash relatives making appearances in his bedroom in the middle of the night.
“Understand me, boy?”
Alder wanted to argue, but the blade pressed in deeper and he felt blood trickling down the side of his throat. It was something he could tolerate, something he would normally not care about. But what scared him, what had him wanting to reach for his wife to shake her awake so that she’d call the police or one of their Pack for help, was the way the wolf watched what he was doing. It was like Alder was something to play with. A bug to be tortured under a magnifying glass on a sunny day. Killing him would mean nothing to this wolf. Honestly, Alder got the feeling all the bastard wanted to do was kill him. To cut his throat and let him bleed out while Jennifer continued to sleep beside him. Or maybe the wolf would drag Alder out and kill him somewhere else and get rid of the body so he was never found.
Unwilling to risk either of those scenarios, Alder nodded. “Understood.”
“Thank you kindly,” the wolf told him before the weight on Alder’s chest vanished, those freakish yellow eyes with it. And although Alder heard no footsteps, no doors or windows opening or closing, he knew the wolf was gone. Disappearing into the shadows that he’d eased from.
Suddenly Alder didn’t think he could get out of Manhattan fast enough.
Van parked his rental car in front of his Fifth Avenue restaurant, closed down for the night due to a big dinner party that involved all those who’d worked on shutting down this particular case, including KZS and NYPD. There would be others who would try to use hybrids, thinking they were dispensable, but this was a good start. A very good one.
He glanced over at the wolf sitting beside him. They hadn’t spoken since the wolf slipped into his car and Van had headed here. They were already an hour late.
“So everything is settled with my cousin?”
“Yep.”
Eggie Smith—chatty as always.
“Good. And I guess you’re aware of what’s happened between Ric and your daughter.”
“You didn’t see that coming twenty-five years ago?”
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
“You always were kind of stupid.”
Van glared at him. “Get out of my car.”
“As ya like.”
Van knew he’d really have to watch his kids from now on, especially his sons, to make sure they didn’t fall into the same Smith seduction trap that his poor, defenseless, clueless cousin had.
“Poor, poor Ric,” Van sighed, before he headed inside the restaurant to find his family.
Dee-Ann put her arm around Ric’s waist and laid her head on his shoulder. She’d left a very tolerable get-together to track down her mate, locating him at the mouth of the alley, leaning against the side of the building.
Blayne, fully recovered from her wounds and subsequent slap-fight with Gwen, was working the room in her skates, showing off her faint knife scar. Desiree, Mace, and Marcus were sitting at the table with Bobby Ray and the wild dogs, having the best time, considering all that they’d been through. Although when Desiree thought no one was looking, she’d hug her son tight. Novikov had managed to only insult two or three people so far. Abby had lasted in human form for a good hour before she couldn’t stand it anymore and shifted back to her animal form and had begun to go from table to table, begging for scraps. Hannah sat in a corner, quietly glowering at everyone in the room. Stein continued to complain loudly from the kitchen that he was not slave labor. Malone had shown up with her entire family including a grown daughter Dee had known nothing about, three brothers, her superstar father, and her mother. Their table was right next to Sissy’s table because it’s always a good idea to seat wolves and the lions they love next to tigers who loath both breeds equally.
Yep, just another day in New York City.
“Everything all right, darlin’?” she asked.
Ric’s eyes narrowed a bit, his gaze on the valet in front of his restaurant. “Can you explain to me what possible reason my Uncle Van and your father would have getting out of the same car together?”
“I could—but you sure you want to hear that response?”
Putting his arm around Dee’s shoulders, Ric admitted, “As always you have made an excellent point.”
“I try.”
“I’d better get back inside,” he said, turning around and putting both his arms around her. “Make sure that food is getting out to the ravening, blood-thirsty hordes.”
“Or,” Dee said, hugging the man she loved, “you can just call ’em family.”
“Makes sense. We’re stuck with them anyway. Just like blood relations.”
“Such a positive viewpoint.”
“I do my best.”
Arms around each other’s waists, they headed back to the side door of the restaurant.
“I never got to say,” Ric told her, “how amazing you looked yesterday in that dress.”
She smiled, feeling intense pleasure at his praise. “Thank you.”
Ric held the door open for her. “Although I have to admit, Dee, that in the end, I still prefer you naked.”
Laughing, Dee walked into the restaurant. “And I still say—like a wolf with a bone, Van Holtz.”