But only for a minute. Because those guys hadn’t been Clan, they’d been vargulf. It was obvious by how they looked, by the untrained way they fought and by the lack of any and all Clan insignia. And I didn’t think a bunch of outcasts had shown up to avenge the murder of a High Clan wolf—especially not after attacking a member of the group that had found the body.
So they’d been looking for something.
Something I’d missed.
Chapter 6
I shoved off the wall, tripped on a spent shell casing and went down hard on one knee. I staggered up, wishing I had the breath to curse, and retraced my steps. My knee ached and almost gave out on me twice, and my left arm throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I checked myself out in the dim light of the cave.
Gore matted my hair, slicked my coat, and stuck my shirt to my skin. My bum knee felt weak and rubbery, but probably more from the adrenaline afterburn than any real damage. But the arm was another matter. My shields had slowed the attack down, and my coat had provided an extra layer of protection. Yet it was still lacerated badly enough to need stitches.
Great.
I wrapped a handkerchief around the wound and tugged my sleeve back down. The coat had already started to heal the tears in the leather, with short brown filaments stretching across the gaps like threads in well-worn denim. Too bad flesh doesn’t heal as fast.
I really hoped I didn’t have to beat up anyone else.
The cave was still silent, smelly and frustratingly empty when I returned. Had those guys really been headed here? Or was there some other hidden space along the miles of drain ahead? I decided to do a check of the immediate area before sifting through the ashes again, and started for the door.
And looked up to see myself lounging at a bar.
Cyrus wasn’t looking, but she was hard to miss: with long, messy dark hair, clan-gray eyes and a red-stained mouth that stood out starkly from her pale skin. She was leaning back against the bar on her elbows, her mile-long, leather-clad legs in front of her, crossed at the ankles. Watching him.
It seemed to Cyrus as if the volume of the room suddenly turned down, as if the colors dulled to shadows, except around her. Because even better than those stunning looks was the faint but unmistakable scent of Clan. It wreathed his head like the finest of drugs, cutting easily through the smoke and alcohol and cheap cologne of the bar. It caught him off guard, with no defenses up, and landed like a sledgehammer.
It was hard to believe that it had only been two months since he found himself out on the street: a pack animal with no pack. He’d told Sebastian he could handle it—hell, this whole thing had been his idea. It would be hard, he’d assured his brother, he wasn’t kidding himself about that, but the goal was worth it. He’d been so certain he was right, so sure of himself, so cocky.
He almost pitied that man now.
Of course, that man had never had people he’d once called friends turn away in disgust at the sight of him. He’d never had his own family refuse to look him in the eye, their glances jumping over him as if he was an interruption, a glitch in their visual field. An error. He’d never lain awake at night with the gnawing, ever-present, sickening absence of something as vital to him as the air he breathed. That man had been Cyrus of Arnou, High Clan and wolf born, with the whole weight of a prestigious house behind his every word and action.
This man was just Cyrus. And he’d been appalled at what he’d discovered about him.
Just Cyrus avoided places where he was likely to meet Clan, dodging confrontations he knew he couldn’t win. Because he fought alone now, while even the feeblest member of the weakest clan had dozens of brothers behind him. Just Cyrus ducked his head and turned away when he saw family coming, before they could do it to him. Just Cyrus desperately wanted to slink back, tail between his legs, begging to be taken in, even knowing what it would cost his brother.
Because Just Cyrus was weak.
The only thing that still allowed him to look at himself in the mirror everyday was the knowledge that wanting and doing were two different things. He might not be the man he’d thought he was, but he wasn’t quite that sniveling creature that haunted his nightmares, either. Because he hadn’t done it. Not yet.
And now he found himself by the bar, with no memory of how he got there, staring at an obviously High Clan woman like she was the last oasis in the desert. He expected to be ignored, rebuffed, cursed, although there was no way she could immediately know what he was. Lately, it had started to feel like he had his shame permanently tattooed across his forehead.
She swung her legs around and tipped her head sideways to look at him. “Buy you a drink?”
“I thought that was my line,” he said, not trying, because this wasn’t going anywhere.
“Yeah, but I’m the pushy type. I like to get it out there early.”
“You’re Clan. It goes with the territory.”
“I’m not, actually.”
He leaned in despite himself, the heady scent of a fertile female of his people flooding his senses. “Oh, you are,” he said, already half drunk with it. “You very definitely are. To whom do you belong?” The usual Clan courtesy slipped out before he could stop it.
“Myself. How about you?”
Her answer didn’t make sense, but the question did. It was almost the first thing two strange Weres asked each other, because the answer would influence everything that followed: who are you, where do you rank, who are your people?
Where do you belong?
“I’m vargulf,” he said shortly. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
It came out sounding harsh, even to him. He waited for it, the look of disgust, the hastily mumbled excuse, the rapid retreat. And didn’t get it. “Good,” she said, leaned over, cupped the back of his head, and kissed him.
And she was right, he thought vaguely, his hands on her waist, sliding over silk and skin-tight leather. She was the pushy type, at least until he got on board. Then the practiced tricks gave way to something soft and startled. It went through him in a rush, a tidal wave of emotions carrying him along with it, even as part of him wondered what the hell he thought he was doing.
“Got someplace to be?” she asked as she broke it off.
“I’m all yours,” he told her hoarsely, already sliding off the seat.
The bar dissolved into a dank, smoke-blackened room. I fell back against the wall, eyes stinging hot and watering. I remembered that night, but it was a little different seen through Cyrus’s eyes.
I’d kept getting saddled by the Corps with any and all cases involving Weres, supposedly because of my “special insight.” But the fact was that Mom rarely spoke about her other life, and she’d been so ill those last years that I’d hated to constantly bother her with my problems. I’d decided I needed an outside source, someone I could pay for insights into the Were world. And as luck would have it, a few days later a patrol logged a report about a brutal beating behind a bar involving an “unaffiliated Were” and members of a local clan. I’d gone to check it out.
It had been a night of surprises, starting with how I’d reacted. Cyrus was handsome enough to turn heads, but I’d met plenty of attractive men before. And none of them had made my stomach tighten at one glimpse, had need crawling over my skin, had my fingers itching with the urge to stroke. And when we kissed, heat and power, hunger and desire thrust into me in a wave of sensation that had left me reeling. I’d spent the entire evening—at a restaurant, because I didn’t dare take him home—quietly freaking out about my sudden lack of self-control.