Page 58 of Under a Wicked Moon
As he stood next to Vivi and Roman on the fourth floor of the empty office building, Ky’s heart slogged through each beat. He worked through worst-case scenarios while studying all angles of the open space. He’d never been here before. It wasn’t their underground headquarters but some neutral ground, likely to keep Vivi out of their secret space.
The bogus construction signs at the building’s entrance deterred visitors, but the inside was finished, yet unfurnished aside from the solitary desk at the corner of this floor. A black phone sat on the desk along with one yellow sticky pad. No pen. That would’ve made a decent weapon in a pinch.
Of course, they’d been “ordered” to come unarmed. As if they hadn’t seen that red flag to indicate this was a death-trap ambush. Even with Flynn outside to monitor what he could of cameras inside and outside the building, this felt wrong.
He didn’t like the open windows. Made them an easy target. A scan for sharpshooters detected one potential in the building directly across from them. If it was someone with a rifle, the person was cool and silent. His steady pulse indicated he or she had the focus of a hunter. Intuition told him they were being watched through a scope.
Ky caught Roman’s gaze and said in Gaelic, “Aon.” One.
He moved subtly to block both Roman and Vivi from the potential shooter.
“Where’s the third one of you boys?” Ben Slater, Chief of theSecret Intelligence Service or MI6, who went by Slate, flashed a smile about as warm as dry ice. He stepped off the elevator and stalked to the opposite side of the desk. Gerard skulked behind him. They’d met Slate in person once in all the decades of following the king’s orders. He wasn’t someone they answered to, nor were they obliged to follow his orders. Only the recently crowned king got that distinction, and their handler, Gerard, who served as a representative of the king. However, if the king made Slate someone inside his protected inner circle, then Ky and his brothers couldn’t touch him.
“He’s on a recon assignment,” Roman said. “Gerard specified that Ky and the lycan we found incarcerated needed to be at this meeting. I figured I’d tag along for kicks and giggles.”
“All of you were to be here,” Slate said.
“This is who you get. You don’t command us.” Roman didn’t flinch, but his jaw clenched so tight Ky was surprised he didn’t break his teeth.
In his ear, Flynn said, “There’s no feed of the inside of the building. There are a few external cameras but nothing internal. The building is owned by a bogus company that’s a shell for MI6. No other hostiles entering.”
“Was I not clear, Gerard?” Slate asked of their handler, who leaned against the wall to Slate’s left.
The normally poker-faced agent who managed the Crown’s Wolves seemed pale and more unkempt than normal. Gerard seemed twitchy and off-kilter. His usual button-down shirt was rolled up at the sleeves and wrinkled. Gerard didn’t know Slate’s plan, which made Ky more nervous. None could be sure how far the human who’d worked with them for over thirty-five years might go to betray them if Gerard had been offered a promotion within MI6 or some other form of power, which they’d long ago learned was his weakness. Maybe Gerard’s nerves stemmed from the fact that he, too, distrusted Slate.
“Is he your new boss?” Roman asked Gerard.
“I’ve always been his boss. He works for my section, which means me.” Slate’s confidence bordered on cockiness. “That means, technically, you work for me, too.”
Gerard cleared his throat and swallowed. “I was instructed to bring in the lycans who were incarcerated, which are Ky and the one he rescued. Beyond that, there was no instruction.”
“Did you tell Gerard to order I give myself up so I’d end up in that prison, Slate?” Ky asked and dropped all glamour to present his unfiltered self, even if he hadn’t shifted to his feral, more powerful form. Without his glamour—the magic that kept him more human-looking—his innate predator scared humans. They recognized him as something they couldn’t fight in any situation.
Slate rocked his head to the side but didn’t answer. He didn’t smell of the sweaty fear most humans developed around them when the brothers made their true natures visible, as if he were acclimated, a stark contrast to the last time they met when he’d almost peed himself out of fear. It raised suspicions he’d spent time with other lycans since then—or he felt he knew enough about them now to be safe. Bottom line, he had to be neck-deep in the incarceration facility business. Now to find out for certain.
Slate rounded the desk, leaned his butt against it, and crossed his legs. He stared in silence at Vivi. “What are we supposed to do with you? You’re a threat who knows too much. A problem.”
“Who are you?” she asked without a hint of fear, eyes narrowed and chin elevated. Spectacular.
“Ben Slater, MI6 chief.”
“What does MI6 have to do with any of this?” she asked.
Slate didn’t answer. A wolfish smile ghosted across his mouth.
He planned to kill her. Or more likely force them to do it.
They predicted this. He just hadn’t accepted it. Now in it…
Ky’s chest squeezed tight until his breaths came in short gasps as if something smothered him. Spots appeared in hisperipheral vision. His hands shook. He should grab her and run. Before they proved they could control her. But what if the elevator wouldn’t work? No other obvious escape from this room presented itself. Too many stories up to jump. They couldn’t fly. Even magic had limits.
He whispered to Roman in Gaelic, “We should leave.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t like Slate. Didn’t trust him. It radiated from her in waves. “About what specifically do I know too much?”
“No one’s supposed to know about our wolves who serve the king. I read somewhere in a report that even to their own kind, they’re ghosts.”
