“I’m on a diet.”
“Gwyllgi don’t diet.” He thrust the cone into my hand as we rode into the exhibit. “Try again.”
Shifter metabolism burned calories off as they touched our lips. That, and a genuine love of good food, meant he was right. Gwyllgi were eating machines. More so than the sharks swimming above us.
“I’ll take your ice cream,” I said haughtily, “but only because my parents taught me not to waste food.”
A chilly rivulet tracked over my fingers, and I chased the drop with my tongue before stealing a few of his napkins to protect me from more spillage. “There. I’m eating it. Happy?”
The way he watched me lick my lips caused a lump to form in my throat.
“Not even close,” he rumbled, invading my personal space, “but it’s a start.”
As I faced forward, determined not to embarrass myself again, a warning prickle stung my nape.
A low growl poured into the tunnel, and patrons scattered like leaves on the winds of a hurricane.
Puffing out my cheeks, I kissed my peaceful evening goodbye and turned to identify the problem.
Bastian Crowley.
I should have known.
And he’d brought his brothers, Mathieu and Ormand, with him.
“Eva Kinase,” he roared. “I challenge you for your rank as gamma.”
“You want to do this here?” I ate my treat with forced nonchalance. “Now?”
“You used your witchy magic on my brother,” he accused. “Otherwise, he would have beaten you.”
Thaddeus Crowley had challenged me yesterday, right after I ate enough tacos to send myself into a food coma. I had to wonder if he had done it intentionally. Jerk. The joke was on him. I never lost a challenge, or my dinner. Or my lunch. Or my breakfast, now that I thought about it.
What can I say? Momma didn’t raise no quitter.
Before we were done, I had broken his right leg, his left arm, and probably his tailbone.
But I won. I always won. I was a Kinase.
Daughter of an alpha. Granddaughter of an alpha. Great-granddaughter of an alpha.
I might be a dynastic aberration, but I refused to be a failure.
“I’m a gwyllgi, the same as you.” I hated airing our pack’s dirty laundry in public. “I have no magic.”
Plenty of folks wondered, and I couldn’t blame their curiosity, given my peculiar life up to this point.
Mom almost miscarried me after a challenge gone wrong. Aunt Grier, her best friend, used necromancy to save me. That would have been fine, if her magic hadn’t also tweaked my biological clock, setting my development on fast forward.
I was born early, right after Mom’s first trimester, but at the length and weight of a full-term baby. They might have explained that away too, with a joke about how much Mom ate during her pregnancy, if the trend hadn’t continued.
I grew weeks within days, months within weeks, years within months.
I was the flower girl at Aunt Grier and Uncle Linus’s wedding, but at two and a half, I passed for twelve.
At the age of five, I was done growing, leaving me in a body frozen between twenty and thirty.
Mentally and emotionally, I developed a step or two behind my apparent physical age, earning me freak status and making me a one-of-a-kind oddity. I was twenty-five next week, and my outside matched my inside. For now. No one knew why I’d stopped growing or if I would start again.
As much as my family hated to admit it, I’d accepted I was living on borrowed time years ago.
Maybe that was why I got hung up on Corbin in the first place. He was a Deathless vampire, the only one of his kind in existence, as far as anyone knew. A true immortal, unlike the other vampire types. It was less lonely knowing another weirdo was out there.
“Witch,” Bast snarled. “I bet if I set you on fire, you’d burn.”
“Um.” I crunched through the cone. “I hate to break it to you, but literally anyone would burn if you set them on fire.”
A huff of laughter reminded me Corbin was getting a firsthand look at the ugly side of my life.
“Who’re you?” Bast turned on Corbin. “Are you with the witch?”
After polishing off his cone, Corbin took his time wiping his fingers and then his mouth clean.
“I’m the guy,” he said, “who just scored a front-row seat to watch you get your ass kicked.”
“Big talk from a bloodsucker,” Mathieu sneered. “Want a turn with me when he’s done with her?”
“Nah.” Corbin bared his fangs, sharp and deadly, in a smile. “I’m here as a spectator.”
As much as it galled me to ask Corbin, I did it. “Will you agree to act as an impartial witness?”
“I would, but I can’t.” He rolled a shoulder. “I’ve never been that where you’re concerned.”
Unsure what to make of that, I decided I didn’t want to ask and be told the reason he couldn’t be impartial was he viewed me as a little sister to protect.
“Canvass the crowd and pick a lucky soul for us?” I wanted this done by the books. “Bast, we need to pick a spot that’s not the conveyer in the shark exhibit.”
I cut him off when he attempted to talk over me. “There are children present. I won’t risk harming innocents.”
Most paranormal species were indoctrinated to violence and bloodshed from an early age, but I didn’t want to scar those with more delicate sensibilities.
“Okay.” He tilted his head back, watching the giant ray swim overhead. “I’ve got just the place.”
Forethought on his end did not bode well for me, but I sucked it up and let him have his way. “Lead on.”
I fell in behind the Crowley brothers, not trusting them at my back, and shot my folks a text.
Bastian Crowley challenged me at the aquarium. Mathieu and Ormand are with him.
Kick ass, baby girl. Mommy loves you.
A flush prickled up to my hairline, but I couldn’t stop my smile.
Love you too.
Within minutes, Corbin returned with a young woman who gazed up at him with wide blue eyes.
Ugh.
The idea of him with other women always put me in a violent temper, so maybe this was a positive.
“This is Paula,” he rushed out her credentials. “She’s a warg, and from out of state, so there should be no conflicts of interest.”
Our pack had interbred heavily with wargs, diluting our blood enough to escape Faerie rule, but that was centuries past. As long as she wasn’t from a Georgia pack, I had no problem using her.
Paula took one good look at me and cringed back a step. “Hi.”
Damn my Southern manners.
I wanted to rip out her curly blonde hair and strangle her with it, but I shook her soft hand, and mine came back smelling of magnolias and a foreign pack that would suit my purpose just fine.
“Thanks for doing this.” I forced a smile. “With any luck, I won’t hold you up long.”
“I totally understand.” She ditched Corbin and fell in step with me. “I’m from Florida, the Iglesias pack.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m five rungs down the ladder, and the boys can’t stand it. They pick fights with me less now that I’ve whooped all their asses at least once, but cornering you in public, on a date night?”
Her upper lip curled. “That’s as low class as it gets.”
Cue feeling bad for all the nasty things I had been thinking about her.
He was doing it again. Burrowing under my skin. Warping my common sense. Making me territorial.
I had to yank him off my heart like a juicy tick on an itchy dog.
“I agree.” Genuine warmth seeped into my grin. “I’m gamma, under my parents. You can imagine how that goes.”
“Oh.” A grimace twisted her adorable features. “That’s got to suck.”
“Yeah.”
We passed through a door labeled Employees Only, and the fishy scent of the aquarium grew sharper. Metal stairs painted glaring white led us up two stories, by my estimate. “No matter how many times I prove my worth, there’s always someone who doesn’t believe I’ve earned my spot.”