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I crouched on the iron railing, bare feet curled around peeling paint. It was four days later, the majority of the intervening period having been spent in lupine form evading human eyes as I loped toward my goal. Two hundred and fifty miles might not feel terribly far as the car drives, but my pads were royally sore and my stomach was growling by the time I reached the Gray clan home.
I’d arrived the previous afternoon, actually, but I knew I couldn’t dive straight into my intended meeting buck naked. Instead, I’d broken into a thrift store to cover my bare ass, wishing I had something to leave behind by way of payment and apology.
Yet another point in favor of remaining an enforcer, I thought, my mouth twisting sardonically to one side. I was burning bridges like crazy, eschewing an easy job and a lavish lifestyle in order to go rogue. But I couldn’t spend the rest of my days shoring up the shifter status quo. No, when I saw an injustice, I had no choice but to right the wrong.
Speaking of injustices, my prey appeared at last, thrusting open the glass doors separating bedroom and balcony then stepping out into the cool night air. She was right on schedule and I hoped the rest of the Gray clan would be similarly predictable tonight.
Because breaking into a powerful alpha’s home might not be such a bad idea. Breaking into a powerful alpha’s home and getting caught? Game over.
In an effort to keep my neck aligned with my torso, in fact, I’d spent the entire previous evening nosing around the pack boundaries and noting down everyone’s movements. Now I was banking on the patrolling guards sticking to a path that matched the schedule of the night before. If all went as planned, they’d currently be checking out the far side of the property rather than listening beneath our feet.
Of course, that’s assuming my luck holds....
Ignoring the potential danger, I opened my mouth and spoke. “Don’t scream,” I said softly, the scent of rose petals and honeysuckle immediately lining the inside of my mouth.
The girl in front of me was enticing...but not so enticing that she took the edge off my tension. So I held stone still, hoping against hope that Ophelia’s curiosity and my own feigned innocuousness would be sufficient to prevent her from sounding the alarm.
“It sure took you long enough,” she answered. “I’m ready to go.”
The young woman held up a small suitcase that she apparently expected me to hoist over the railing before scooping her into my arms and descending like a courting prince out of a fairy tale. In response, I couldn’t quite prevent myself from sliding down to the floor and taking two steps toward the woman who I’d previously assumed was my unsuspecting prey. This wasn’t at all the reception I’d been planning around.
“You’re ready to go?” I parroted, peering into her moonlit face.
“Yes,” Ophelia answered curtly. “I’m ready for you to take me back to Colin. Angelica said you were coming, although I really expected you a couple of days ago. You’re late. I’m impatient. So, let’s get going.”
“I’m not taking you anywhere,” I said slowly by way of reply. Was that really what Blue-eyes had expected me to do with the challenge she’d tossed into my face? Track down hapless females one at a time and deliver them into the loving arms of their paramours?
Not only did the task seem like a royal drag, it wasn’t going to solve the larger problem. And I’d soon be unable to show my face in polite shifter society due to a horde of angry papas on my tail.
“What do you mean, you’re not taking me anywhere?” Ophelia’s voice rose enough to still the crickets chirping in the nearby bushes. Startled, I took two quick strides forward and slapped a large palm across her open mouth.
“Shh,” I admonished, then felt my unintended compulsion take effect. “Shit. I don’t mean you can’t talk. But could you keep it down? I’d really rather not be drawn and quartered when your relatives find out I’m present.”
In response, Ophelia reached up to remove my hand from her face. “Okay,” she hissed. “I’ll be more careful. But I can’t believe you’re not going to help me. After all, this whole thing is your own fault!”
I could have argued that point, but instead I drew the young woman over to a wicker sofa that had been placed beneath the roof overhang so its cushions would stay dry during summer storms. Figuring my companion would be less volatile if she was sitting down, I pressed lightly on her left shoulder until she collapsed onto the closest pillow.
Kneeling in front of her, I kept my voice low enough so a passing patrol wouldn’t be able to hear. “I am going to help you, but I’m not planning to do anything tonight. First, I need to understand what you really want.”
“I want to mate with Colin,” the girl replied, voice heated but tone quiet. “Although right now he won’t even speak to me, thanks to you.”
Ophelia’s words were steady, but I caught the faintest hint of bitterness entering her scent. The question became—was the girl pissed because I’d given her intended partner a temporary case of erectile dysfunction by likening her to his mother? Or was she pissed because she saw mating as the only way out of a bad situation?
“If he won’t speak to you just because you can’t have sex at the moment, then maybe he’s not the mate you really need.”
Blue-eyes would have punched me had I dared speak so plainly, but Ophelia instead gasped and drew away in horror. Honestly, the girl needed to get out and see the world a little more if she thought my recent language was earthy. “Sex” wasn’t an expletive.
Still, Angelica cared enough about the young woman in front of me to be angry at my part in her unfortunate fate. So I waited for the pack princess to regather her composure and thoughts rather than voicing my own.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to be a clan leader’s daughter,” Ophelia told me at last. “My options are limited and Colin is the best solution I’ve been able to come up with for getting out from under my father’s thumb. It’s not that Dad’s a monster, but I’ll suffocate if I stay here much longer.”
I hummed my assent. She was probably right. And Colin had seemed like a passable mate. Still, who wanted to shackle themselves for life to passable?
“If you could do anything at all, what would it be?” I prodded after a moment of silence. The crickets had launched back into their evening serenade and an owl in the distance screeched its presence into the night. I knew I only had a few minutes left before the net I’d picked my way through earlier in the evening closed back up around me, but I didn’t want to rush this conversation. Not if the revelations to come were going to decide the entire course of Ophelia’s life.
“I want to be a normal human girl,” she said after a long moment. “Go to college. Date some guys. Get a job. Marry someone I love rather than the first white knight willing to rescue me from my father’s tower.”
She paused and I took her hand. Poor kid. In some ways, her dilemma was worse than my own. I wished my inner wolf wasn’t so powerful that it acted like a bug zapper, luring every alpha-leaning werewolf in the vicinity into battering himself against my uber-alpha abilities.
Ophelia, on the other hand, wished she wasn’t the pot of honey that bees relentlessly circled. She wished that the males around her weren’t a never-ending danger, that she didn’t smell so sweet that she was forced to choose a protector—father or lover—to keep the ravenous hordes at bay.
Unfortunately, neither one of us was human and we each had to play the cards we’d been born with. But maybe, just maybe, I could stack the deck a little bit more in Ophelia’s favor.
“I can’t give you all of that,” I said, towering above her head as I got back to my feet. To my surprise, the girl didn’t cringe away from my bulk and I realized that Ophelia’s backbone was stiffer than I’d given her credit for. After all, she’d risked meeting me here, alone on her balcony, when I might just as easily have stolen her away for something more akin to rape than it was to Colin’s semi-forced mating.
Maybe she’ll be strong enough to accept the challenge I plan to thrust into her lap after all.
“I understand,” the girl answered, face turned away in disappointment. Ophelia thought I was going to leave her there, I realized, and never come back.
Well, technically, I was going to leave her there and never come back. But I wasn’t going to abandon her cause.
“If all goes as planned, an opportunity will come your way soon,” I told her. “If you want it, grab it.”
Then, as her sweet aroma expanded out to cloying proportions, I scanned the nearby lawn and swung one leg over the railing. It was past time for me to put my stratagem into action.
