Page 28 of Primal Mirror

—Thread on Psycho & Metrics: A Forum for Ps-Psy

REMI SPENT THE next nine excruciating days pressing the flesh and schmoozing with potential business partners, Theo at his side. They had to fly for some of it and damn it to hell he hated planes, but at least he was back at their Sunset Falls HQ for the last hellish day of face-to-face business meetings.

“I hate this,” he growled as he pulled at the pale gray of his tie after another mind-numbing negotiation.

At least he’d had the satisfaction of booting the previous party onto the street while their eyes bugged out. Those particular asses had thought they could take advantage of RainFire because they were just “dumb animals”—he’d literally heard one of them say that while leaning down to whisper to his associate.

Who the fuck went into a meeting without looking up the abilities of the other side?

He’d have expected such behavior from a certain caliber of Psy, but turned out there were pockets of humans who thought the same superior way. It had given him great pleasure to purr, “This dumb animal isn’t interested in your offer” as he allowed his eyes to shift.

He’d then risen to his feet with a smile that held pure death. “Let me show you to the door.”

He hadn’t made a single violent move, had kept up his smile the entire time—and they’d almost shit their pants as they scrambled to get the fuck away. Theo had cracked up afterward. “That’s one hell of a smile, Remi. You ever look at me like that, I’m running away and never coming back.”

Mliss Phan, the head of their public HQ, meanwhile, had just said, “I’m going to find their most dangerous competitor and offer them the deal of their lives, just to screw with these bastards.”

Remi liked the way his chief operating officer thought.

Now, having already hung the dark gray of his suit jacket on the back of the chair, he rolled up the sleeves of his lighter gray shirt as he took a seat at the break room table. “No one warned me about CEO bullshit when I said I wanted to be an alpha.”

Mliss raised a perfectly arched eyebrow underneath asymmetrical razor-cut black bangs that framed an elegant face with wide cheekbones and full lips against tanned olive skin. “What? You thought it’d be all dominance fights and chest-beating?”

The tall COO puffed out her cheeks and squared her slim shoulders before beating her fists against the white silk of her shirt. “Me alpha man, hear me roar.”

“Why the fuck am I surrounded by assholes?”

“This asshole made you coffee to take the edge off and is plotting vengeance against that one group, so stop with the snarling.” She placed the mug on the table, her scent a comforting mix of pack and the threads that were just her, including a faint undertone of roses that came from her favorite soap.

Intelligent, a tough negotiator, and much better at public relations than Remi, Mliss’s “grade” in the pack, if he was to use Auden’s terminology, was senior maternal. As such, she had significant dominance. Maternals ran the gamut from deeply submissive to dominant enough to face off against a soldier, and, despite the name, weren’t only women. It just happened to be the one term that had stuck in the changeling world.

In a pack, maternals generally took charge of everything from organizing the education of the cubs, to disciplining their young, and ensuring a pack felt like a home. Maternals were why their older kids had just aced a set of countrywide exams, why the dining aerie was set up like a cozy room in someone’s private aerie, and why Remi’s aerie had curtains that suited his personality.

Maternals were also some of, if not the most ruthlessly organized people in a pack. Add that to Mliss’s MBA and other qualifications, and she’d been a slam dunk to be the head of operations of their public HQ.

He’d borrowed the idea of a public HQ from DarkRiver. It not only permitted RainFire to keep their territorial lands private, a bland public office also removed the intimidation factor when it came to humans and Psy who’d never before interacted with changelings.

While some idiots thought them dumb, others expected Remi’s kind to go around clawing off people’s faces, rending them limb from limb, then dragging their bodies off into the forest to feast on. It didn’t help that certain juveniles found it the height of hilarity to spread exactly those rumors online. The last one Remi had seen was a solemn account of how a SnowDancer wolf had made a cape out of an intruder’s skin.

Juveniles were punks, but at least they’d picked the right pack for that little fantasy. SnowDancers didn’t play if you encroached on their territory. Neither did Remi, his leopard vicious in defense of his own.

But today, he wasn’t dealing with a threat to the pack. He was with his own, people who trusted his far more dominant and deadly leopard to keep them safe. Mliss wouldn’t stand a chance against Remi in a rage. Neither would built-like-a-linebacker Theo. Their bond was a thing of trust and loyalty.

“Me alpha,” he snarled. “Me drink coffee.”

Mliss, standing with her back against the counter, snorted coffee out of her nose and down her shirt. Even as she cursed him, she was laughing until tears rolled down her face.

Theo, who’d been an invaluable help over the entire interminable nine-day odyssey, all of it designed to build RainFire’s business network, poked his head inside to see what was going on. He still wore his chocolate brown suit, complete with an unmolested silk tie and a pristine white shirt. “Oh, Liiiiissy,” he said in a singsong way, “how are you going to explain that stain to your big sister, hmm? Didn’t she buy that for you in some fancy schmancy boutique in Paris?”

Mliss stopped laughing long enough to glare daggers at him. “You snitch to her and I’ll bite off your face, Theo ‘I can’t mind my own business’ Ortiz.”

The big sentinel held up his hands, palms out. “Hey, I was just making a comment.” He glanced at his wrist. “Forty minutes till our next meeting, Remi. You want a briefing or you up to speed?”

“I read the notes,” Remi grumbled before giving the sentinel a narrow-eyed look. “Why do all these meetings not drive you nuts?” Man’s eyes were still shining and even the loose curls of his hair looked bouncy.

Theo shrugged. “I dunno. I like chess. Business is like chess.”

Mliss, who’d given up on dabbing away the coffee from her top, came over to sit in the seat opposite Remi. She brought a tin of cookies with her—because she was a maternal, even if of the hard-ass variety. “Eat and stop being a sourpuss.”

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