Page 58 of Junk Magic

I winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Those bastards should have called me as soon as you were brought in. I’m supposed to be on the contact list for emergencies—”

“You are on the list. In fact, you are the list.”

“Then why the hell—”

“Sedgewick. Maybe Hargroves, too. They didn’t know what they were dealing with, and didn’t want anybody causing trouble until they figured it out.”

I stopped there, because I’m not a fool.

But Cyrus’s jaw clenched anyway. I felt it against my head. “And what, exactly, would I be causing trouble about, if they were just trying to help you?”

Damn. Sometimes I really wished I had a dumber boyfriend. “Cyrus—”

He pulled away so that he could see my eyes. “What was the plan, Lia, if you’d turned into something like Colin? What were they prepared to do?”

“I liked it better when you were tiptoeing around my feelings back at the apartment,” I told him honestly.

“Answer the question.”

Yeah, only I didn’t want to do that, because the atmosphere in here was already getting hard to breathe. Cyrus was shedding power, trying to avoid a Change, but he was losing because he’d already figured out the answer and his beast didn’t like it. No, scratch that, his beast was furious, I thought, as the broken light bulb came back on and then abruptly shattered, raining down shards of glass everywhere.

And shit.

Chapter Sixteen

“They don’t get to decide that,” Cyrus growled, his voice so full of wolf speak that I could barely understand him. “They don’t get to decide anything to do with you!”

I put a hand on his arm, a light touch because his beast would not appreciate restraint right now. He accepted it, although the muscles under my palm were bunched and tense. But not Changing.

Not yet.

“You saw what Colin could do, and that was without magic,” I said softly, trying to diffuse things. “They couldn’t risk the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off downtown—”

“And did they think about what they risked from Arnou if something happened to you? What they risked from me?”

I gazed up at him. The hall was dark, but his face was fierce. He hadn’t Changed, yet I could see the wolf, and I didn’t need extra senses to do it.

But right then, I had them, and my beast liked what she saw. Liked the lean lines of his face, both that of the human and of the hulking predator who hovered just out of reach. Liked the bared teeth, the very non-human expression that called to her, that showed his ferocity. Liked his anger.

Liked it so much that she slid against him, not the man but the wolf, twining her body around his and calling him out, drawing him forth. For a moment, I could almost see the two of them, the dark, red eyed female, sleek and savage, and the massive, black and tan Alpha male. They were circling each other, taking the other’s scent, curious but cautious.

Because they’d never met, had they?

The idea floored me for a moment. Cyrus and I had been lovers, off and on, for years now, starting out in Jersey shortly after he broke with Arnou, and continuing on for most of my time in Vegas. Our wolves should have met long ago, only they couldn’t have, could they?

Not until now, when whatever I'd taken had brought mine closer to the surface.

And they were taking full advantage.

He was larger than her, by a good deal. Cyrus’s family were big men and they made big wolves, dwarfing the punier clans. Such things shouldn’t matter when choosing a leader, but Weres were no less superficial than humans, and Sebastian’s stature had definitely helped his chances.

As Cyrus’s was doing now.

But my wolf was holding her own, undisturbed by his size. Maybe because whatever she lacked in bulk she made up for in speed, easily evading his attempts to get closer. But then circling around and coming back, almost as if she was teasing him.

She was dark lightning, and he was quickly confused. And then intrigued, unsure why he couldn’t catch her. I had the impression that she was laughing at him, or maybe with him, because his befuddlement quickly changed into something else.

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