Page 8 of Warwick

“Not sure. He warned me away from his coven the first thing. When I first popped onto that sidewalk, he stopped, backtracked a step, and then looked right at me. He knew I was there. He went over to lean against a wall to talk to me. He warned me about his coven master not liking outsiders.”

Atticus snorted. “Venice is a very popular tourist destination. How is it the coven master here would think he can control who comes to the city?”

I shook my head because I hadn’t a clue. “Don’t know. Today, he freaked out when I showed up at his office building. It’s a coven building, and I was warned that they would be doing facial recognition against me the moment I stepped into the building.”

It was Atticus who snorted that time. “Did you tell him there would be no matches for you?”

I chuckled. “No. But I had also disabled the cameras as I entered the place as well. But one has to wonder just what a certain coven master is up to if he is running background checks on everyone that enters a business building.”

“Indeed,” Atticus said. We were quiet for a moment, watching the others question Dominic, before he hit my bicep with the back of his hand. Atticus nudged his head toward the door. I nodded, and out we went. “Where’s the building? Do they have more?”

“I’m sure they do. Dominic said they were also in real estate. One has to have several buildings if they’re in shipping and storage, no?”

Atticus looked thoughtful for a moment before he nodded. “Show me the office building. I need to get Salvatore and his team on it as quick as I can. This is probably right up Ledger’s area of expertise.”

I couldn’t say if it was or wasn’t. “The name on the building is RC Transport. I’m pretty sure the letters are for his name, but don’t quote me on that.”

Atticus pulled out his phone and started typing. “It’s a start. Have an address?”

I gave Atticus the address, and then we walked down the hallway and over to the elevator. It was time to do a little bit of recon, apparently. That was all right with me though. My beast and I were more than ready to get back to work.

Chapter 4

Cecil

Iabsolutely loved to bake. I didn’t do it often because then I would eat all of the baked goods. Not that I couldn’t simply burn them off with my higher metabolism. But I always felt bad about eating an entire batch of cookies in one night because I was still working on decades of guilt ingrained into me from my parents. I knew a lot of my self-confidence issues came from my mother. She was human, and although she was mated to my father, she still had to watch what she ate if she wished to remain slender. How she had ended up the mate to my father, I’d never know, but there you had it.

They’d met when he was on vacation with one of my uncles, and that was the end of my father’s party-boy days. They proceeded to have four sons within eight years and then me a little over three decades later. I was the only omega, and it was no secret that I’d been a disappointment since I was born with an omega line.

Then puberty hit, and although I could shift, I looked like a juvenile polar bear when shifted. Another strike against me. But then my first heat never came. And the next year, still nothing. By the time I was eighteen and still no heat, my parents couldn’t even look at me. Their only omega child, and I was “defective,” according to them.

I stayed only long enough to secure somewhere else to live and pack my things. I took the coward’s way out and left in the middle of the night. It took my parents almost two weeks to realize I and my things were gone from my room. By that time, I was already settled into my own place while waiting to go to college in the fall. I worked three jobs to be able to afford my rent until I could go off to university.

Done with my parents, I’d muted their numbers, but when Grandpa Lev had called, worried, I simply told him I was all right, I just wanted to do something for myself. Hindsight being what it was, I should have said something to my grandparents then. Actually, I probably should have long before then, but I didn’t wish to cause any issues with them and my father. They were his grandparents, after all, and they of all people should know what type of asshat he was.

A loud buzzing sound brought me from my thoughts, and I realized it was the buzzer on my oven. I rushed to it, wondering how long I’d been reminiscing about my life growing up. The cookies looked perfectly fine, and I placed the baking sheet on top of the stove and slid the last one in before resetting the timer. Those would need to sit on the sheet for a few more minutes before they could be moved to the cooling rack. They smelled divine, and I couldn’t wait to have a few in a bit. Yes, I was going to thumb my nose at my mother and eat cookies not only now but later on this evening at the family dinner.

I was a shifter. I actually didn’t have to watch what I ate. I burned everything off faster than my body could store it. There had even been a time when others around me had questioned if I was eating enough because I had become dangerously thin. It was that concern from those I considered friends that I took a step back and realized that my mother’s obsession with food and watching every bite she put in her mouth had been unhealthy not only for herself but for me as well. I needed more calories. I needed meat. She could choose to count every calorie she put in her mouth if she chose, but I wasn’t going to any longer.

One of the reasons I came here was to get away from my family. They were unhealthy for me. Not only that, but they really didn’t care much for me. I was fairly certain I was an oops baby. I was born thirty-two years after my next older brother. Just me. No more since, and I was pushing a hundred now.

I shook my head and took several deep breaths. I was dwelling on my shitty upbringing again, and I had promised myself that I wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to give my parents the satisfaction of having that control over me any longer. I glanced around my tiny kitchen, and when my gaze landed on the cookies, I snatched one up from the cooling rack. I shoved it in my mouth, and two bites later, it was gone. I was still chewing when I moved the cookies from the baking sheet over to the first batch I’d made. They would finish cooling on the rack before I put them in a container to take up to Treasure Ridge.

The buzzer sounded again, and I pulled out the last of the cookies and placed them on the oven to sit for a few minutes. With the baking completed, I went to the bathroom and stripped out of my sweats and T-shirt I was wearing. I turned on the water in the shower, and as it was heating up, I turned to look at myself in the mirror. I was a polar bear omega, and as such, I was able to grow facial hair. Sort of. It was still splotchy, and because of my dirty-blond hair coloring, it wasn’t exactly dark. I didn’t need to shave just yet, so I turned and stepped into the shower.

After that was complete, I dressed and then went to the kitchen to pack up the cookies. A glance at the clock told me I wouldn’t be too terribly early if I left now, and with nothing else to do, I gathered everything and left my tiny cabin.

I grinned as I closed and locked the door. It wasn’t that I had anything too valuable inside and felt I needed to keep others out. I lived in a cabin on den lands, but the area was full of tourists, and they didn’t always like to obey the private property signs. It really made for some interesting times when you were walking through the forest and suddenly came across a group of tourists who were “just out hiking.”

I placed the cookies in the back of my little car and then slid behind the wheel. It was one of the first things I’d purchased when I arrived here in Montana. Hindsight being what it was, it probably would have been better to pick something else because my little vehicle wasn’t exactly the greatest when it came to driving on the snow. There were several times last winter when I needed someone to come take me to the dragon’s cabin so I could get to work. True, the roads were plowed, but the snowplows couldn’t always keep up when the snow started to come down.

I really should look into getting something with a bit higher ground clearance. And maybe bigger tires. But I really loved my little car. I wasn’t exactly large. I was only five eight and felt my car was perfect for me. Except when it came to winters in Montana, I discovered.

I sighed as I thought about what I was going to have to do. I knew I needed to get something more equipped for the upcoming winter; I just wasn’t quite ready. It wasn’t that funds were an issue. They weren’t. I might not be nearly as old as others around here, but I had funds. My portfolio wasn’t nearly as vast as some, but when you were part of the created polar bear’s family, you didn’t want for much. Except maybe fewer scowls. It seemed as if the males in Vitomir’s family had the scowl gene down. Well, at least the alphas.

It didn’t take long to make it to the dragon’s cabin. I was walking into the garage door when my phone chimed in my pocket. I wasn’t sure who it was because I’d not assigned anyone a special sound, but I figured they could wait a few more minutes until I was on top of the mountain before I replied.

“Family dinner time?” Timothy asked.

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