Page 47 of Obsidian Prince

"I'm glad I could impress you."

"You always do."

Liliana grinned, warm down to her toes.

"I'd like to take you out, then." He looked at the calendar on his computer. "A week from this Friday night. I'll pick you up at seven."

"Take me out? Like a date? Dinner at a fancy restaurant and all that?"

"That is the general idea, yes."

The request seemed odd to Liliana, based on her previous experiences with men who desired her. "Why do you want to take me out on a date? I already want to have sex with you."

He barked a surprised laugh, then leaned forward in his chair, looking into his office communication center. It made his head fill all the space inside the tiny window of the phone screen. "Maybe I want more from you than sex."

Liliana's heart fluttered with nerves. The prince had been impressed by her fighting skill, her dancing, and her honesty, three things she excelled at. "Alexander, I am not so good with crowds and strangers." She didn’t want to disappoint him.

He nodded. "I noticed at the hanger. You'll be fine. I'll take care of you." His deep voice filled with a softness that she’d only heard from him a few other times. She didn't want to question that voice. She certainly didn't want to say no to something Alexander seemed to really want.

"Okay. I will expect you at 7:00 next Friday night." Liliana hung up. She fiddled with the scarves that made up her skirt. A date. The spider seer had never been on a single date in her life that didn't end in disaster. She knew where she excelled and where her skills were lacking. Her dating skills were truly abysmal.

She was not alone now, though. She had friends. She would enlist their aid to make sure this date succeeded.

If I can defeat a powerful lion-kin alone, I can manage a simple date with my friends' help. Right?

The spider seer told herself that repeatedly as the week wore on and her injuries faded.

The only distraction she had from worrying about the date was watching the investigation into the brutal killings happening in the forest just outside the boundary of Fort Liberty.

She saw inhumanly long shaggy arms rip people apart, but didn’t see anything she thought would really help Pete, Sgt. Giovanni, Lt. Runningwolf, and Alexander. A few of the victims she saw had axes or saws in their hands when they died. They must have been cutting wood for a campfire.

Not all of them, though. Some of the soldiers hadn’t been doing anything but drinking too much in a place where intoxication should have been acceptable, the deep woods. But again, she saw great arms rip a beast-kin man’s leg clean out of the socket. Something was different this time, though. The big arms she saw doing the killing were stockier. They seemed more … furry.

Then she saw something else and sighed.

I’m not even healed from the last fight, dammit.

Chapter13

Badger Versus Bear

On Thursday,when her wounds were at least mostly healed, Liliana went to the woods to find Lieutenant Runningwolf. It seemed like this was how her life was going to go from now on. Fighting monsters to protect her friends, healing, then going to fight more monsters.

It was still better than her old life of boring loneliness.

Lieutenant John Runningwolf was not entirely in a category she would call “friend.” They barely knew each other. She felt protective of the badger-kin, since unwittingly, he had given Doctor Nudd a few crucial seconds of survival. That had been all it took for help to arrive, so unintentionally, he’d saved the goblin healer’s life. Also, John Runningwolf had agreed to keep Liliana out of official reports when she asked. She felt personally indebted to him for that. It was like a Fae favor.

She’d foreseen that she should not fight this enemy at the soldier’s side, or the bear-kin would escape.

Liliana chose the appropriate tree in the forest on the edge of Fort Liberty so she could wait for the young Lieutenant to arrive.

An hour or so later, the stocky man crouched under the tree, hiding from a very big bear that obviously was not a normal part of this forest. Small black bears were the only kind native to North Carolina. This bear was huge. Liliana had never seen such a big shaggy brown bear, not even the Russian bear-kin who danced in the circus when she was little.

A mere badger would be no match for such a powerful beast, and this was not a natural bear. It had human intelligence driving those muscles. On top of that, the bear-kin was a killer who tore his victims limb from limb. His big, furry man-bear arms were what Liliana had seen in her most recent vision tearing someone’s leg off.

No wonder John Runningwolf trembled, his aura sickly green with terror where he crouched behind the trunk of the tree she sat in.

Liliana dangled a bit of her silk down until it tickled his ear.

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