Page 9 of Romeo

He snapped to his senses a moment later, duty to his king overriding whatever the hell he was dealing with. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he demanded harshly.

The petite female stared up at him in shock, her lush lips parted as she panted, her eyes wide with a mixture of curiosity and fright.

She wore all black and carried a bag strapped across her chest. He inhaled but couldn’t pick her scent up, which sent an alarm ringing through his mind. No one with good intentions ever came into shifter territory cloaking their natural scent.

He growled softly. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

She blinked a few times and then relaxed slightly, her shoulders drooping under his hands. “I’m a journalist.”

Frowning, he eased back a little but didn’t let go of her shoulders. She looked like she was two seconds from running away, and while he liked a good chase, he didn’t want to deal with that right now.

“This is the territory of the Whisper Creek Ambush. You can’t be here without the king’s permission, and I know very well that you don’t have it.”

“How do you know?” she asked, defiance creeping into her voice.

Okay, he liked that her fear was easing, and she was getting sassy.

His tiger chuffed and a thought crossed his mind.

Truemate.

Pushing the tantalizing thought away—for now—he gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Because I’m the head of security, and I didn’t authorize anyone to watch anything, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have had the person hiding out in the trees like a criminal. So why don’t you explain why you’rereallyhere?”

She wiggled her shoulders, but he didn’t let go, which made her grunt in annoyance. “I’m doing an article for a website about shifters. I didn’t know you were having a ceremony tonight…I was just checking things out and decided to watch. I wasn’t going to take pictures of anything private, I was just going to write an article about your people.”

Confusion filled him. He let go of her shoulders and she sniffed and straightened so she wasn’t leaning against the tree. To her credit, she didn’t try to run since he would absolutely have stopped that.

“Why did you mask your scent?” he asked.

Surprise lit across her features for a moment. “Because I didn’t want to alarm anyone.”

He snorted. “Good job.”

She smiled and he was momentarily dumbstruck. “Thanks.” She exhaled and tilted her head, and a stream of moonlight lit up her hair. And it was chestnut.

Holy hells bells, she’s the female from his dreams!

He’d honestly been dreaming about his truemate, and here she was.

Spying on them in the woods with a story about being a journalist.

He couldn’t put his finger on it, but while she sounded like she was telling the truth, there was an air of dishonesty about her words.

“I’m not interested in disturbing my king while he’s in the middle of important ambush work, but you need to come with me while I sort things out.”

“I’ll leave,” she protested.

“Not happening,” he said.

He put his hand around her upper arm and she tried to push it off.

“Hey, you can’t just keep me here.”

“I can and I will,” he said. He tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her along with him as he made his way to the front of Midas’s home so he didn’t disturb the ceremony at the back. He wasn’t sure what to do with her when he got there because his tiger wanted to take her tohishome and see if he could get her to smile so sweetly again, but the part of him that was a protector knew he needed to get to the bottom of who she was and what she was doing.

* * *

Shit.

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