Page 41 of The Wild Moon
What are you doing?
The instant I suppressed my Soulbond, Mr. Sexbot was working his mumbo jumbo on me again.
“That would be nice,” he said, flashing two rows of perfectly white teeth at me. “I think I might take you up on that.” He reached into his suit pocket and handed me something.
After a moment, I reached up to take it. Several moments later, I registered it in my hand and looked down. It was a white business card with gold lettering embossed on it.
Aaron Greiss.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You,” I said, shocked back into my chair.
“Me,” he agreed.
To stall for time, I turned and picked up the water that had been sitting patiently on the counter, waiting to be drained. I made up for lost time by putting half of it back in one go. I then promptly coughed as some of it made it into my lungs.
Off to a really good start. Really badass of you. Coughing on water. Some tough shifter chick you are.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked as he sat down anyway, correctly deciding I wasn’t going to invite him. Not anytime soon, at least.
“Aaron Greiss,” he said as if that answered everything, instead of leaving me with more questions.
“How did you know Thomas?” I asked, switching gears.
Aaron smiled, giving me another full glimpse of those teeth that I’d swear were implants if everything else about him wasn’t also stupidly perfect. He was just a genetically gifted individual.
“You mean your father?” he said.
I stared, too astonished to realize I might be in a world of danger in addition to being hopelessly outclassed in the knowledge department. Not that it made Greiss a supergenius or anything. I was just that bad at the moment.
“How did you know that?” I asked, then clamped my mouth shut. “It’s probably too late to deny that we’re related, isn’t it?”
Aaron nodded. “A little. But it wouldn’t have done you any good anyway.”
“Why?” I was getting tired of asking all the questions, but I was so hilariously unprepared right now it didn’t matter. I was still getting answers. Maybe some of them would actually be helpful.
“Your father talked about you all the time,” Aaron said. “I think he liked to brag.”
“Oh,” I said, stomach twisting itself into uncomfortable knots.
This was the same Dad who I’d run away from without giving him the chance to explain the truth after twenty-one years of raising me and doing things like this.
“You knew him well, then?” I asked, struggling to compose myself.
“He was an explorer,” Aaron said. “Like myself. We have worked together in the past on different projects. Most recently, we were looking for something together.”
I nodded. This much I knew. My father hadn’t been shy about telling me what he was after.
“Shuldar,” I said quietly. The ancient, lost shifter city. From a time when we had been a species united in one pack. Ruling the PNW from our homeland. A time of godly worship and obedience.
Supposedly.
“Yes, Shuldar,” Aaron said. “Your father was insistent that an ancient civilization had formed a true city out here.”
I bit my lip, trying to keep my face neutral. That effectively confirmed my father hadn’t told Aaron about shifters. Not that I’d expected him to, but there were humans who were invited into our world every so often. It was rare but not unheard of.
What would you have told him if you found the city, I wonder?
