Page 71 of Furever Loyal
You just spent an hour on the phone with Dani.
Haley needed more than that, though. She needed—
Kincaid. You need Kincaid. You want him back, you want to be near him.
“Stop it, or I’m bringing back the aliens,” she warned her mind. “We’re not doing this now.”
Sighing, she went back to the couch. There wasn’t even a radio. Just the ancient landline, the receiver barely a generation past the rotary dialer. She contemplated dialing out, seeing if she could somehow get herself connected to Ursidae Manor. Maybe she could reach the Queen and—oh, who was she kidding? As soon as anyone there realized who it was, they would either disconnect her or start doing that fancy tracking thing where they located her number.
Maybe she could take a nap. That would be the perfect way to leapfrog forward in time to where something actuallyhappened.
Getting up off the couch, she went to the bedroom and flung herself down. At least he’d had the decency to make it a king-sized bed. Haley sprawled out luxuriously, worming her way down into the covers as the foam-topped mattress sank her into its depths, almost like a cocoon of warmth.
She was dozing off, happy thoughts of Kincaid, whipped cream and something else tickling her brain when the house creaked. Angrily, she lifted one eyelid.
“What the hell took you so long?” she called lazily, just glad that Kincaid was back.
When there was no reply, she brought herself back to wakefulness and slipped out of bed. The steel panel was still in place, and nobody else was down there.Must be the steel shifting as the temperature drops at night.
No further sound came, so she shrugged it off and hopped back into bed.
A moment later, she heard a loudthumpand the steel panel flew inward as explosives blasted it open.
“Excellent work, thank you,” she heard someone speak from the stairs, obscured by the smoke from the charges.
Haley slipped off the bed to the floor and then under it. There was nowhere else to hide, she was trapped in the bedroom as footsteps came down the stairs. Only one pair, she judged, but still, the only people who might be coming in here after her would be shifters. She had no hope in hell of overpowering them.
The only thing she could hope was that they were from Ursa, not Canis. At least that way, she would—probably—be treated decently.
“I know you’re in here,” the same voice called.
Haley felt a chill run down her spine. She knew that voice. It didn’t belong to anyone from Ursa. She was screwed. Royally screwed.
“Come out from under the bed, will you? You can’t be anywhere else.”
Haley stayed frozen. The person was guessing, they had to be. They couldn’t know for sure. Could they?
Someone walked over to the bed, casually lifting it and flipping it against the far wall.
“I told you dear, I know you’re in here. Now stop making this difficult.”
Haley stood up, staring her kidnapper in the eye, a hulking Canis shifter standing behind her, proof that she hadn’t heard everyone come downstairs. “You,” she said with as much vehemence as possible.
“Yes, me. Get over it.”
Then they snatched her by the hand and dragged her out of the safehouse.
34
It took all he had to stay still. To not charge across the floor of the building and attack Laurent Canis.
Kincaid stood before the Court, the ruling body of all shifters. Twelve stone chairs stood in front of him, nine of them occupied. The center three were empty. They belonged to High House Drakos, and despite the power struggles that had emerged since the great House had disappeared from the world, none of them was arrogant enough to repurpose the chairs for their own use.
To the right was the trio from High House Canis. To the left, his own Ursidae. They were the only voting members of the board. House Panthera’s representative sat to the very right, mirrored on the far side by that from House Raptere.
The twelfth chair was on Kincaid’s right, sitting apart from the other eleven. In fact, it faced the rest of the Court. That was where the Viceroy sat. Currently, it was occupied by the King of High House Canis, though Kincaid knew it should be Kaelyn, his Queen, who occupied it. She was fit for the position, unlike the old Canim King.
“Why is he here?” the Canim King—Laurien—asked with tired irritation, pointing at Kincaid.
