Two hours later, in the wolves' ancestral hall

April looked at herself in the full-length mirror and wanted to throw up. Pine had relieved her of the surprisingly heavy weight of what turned out to be his recently Transitioned and apparently benignly murderous thirteen-year-old niece, Annie, and then he'd mentioned the formal welcome dinner for the Atlantean ambassador that he'd be hosting that evening.

April had almost shrugged until she'd remembered that the Atlantean ambassador was her.

Nyneve, Pine's sister—and why had she felt such relief at hearing that Nyn was his sister and not his mate?—had apologized several times with a highly confusing explanation of Annie's 'games.' Evidently the woman had been terrified that April would demand the child's head in some arbitrary ambassadorial hissy fit. None of it had made any sense at all, and all of it had made April's head throb, so she'd just nodded and tried to look like she understood everything. Ambassadors probably did that, too, she imagined, but how in the nine hells would she know?

She was a warrior, damn it, not a politician.

She sighed and looked at herself again, taking inventory.

Hair? A tangled mess from the bout with King Conlan that afternoon. (He'd kicked her ass, but she'd learned a few new tricks from him and was still glowing from the king's praise for her skill.)

Clothes? Her leathers were perfectly good for almost all occasions. This, however, wasn't one of them, she suspected. The duffel bag only contained underwear and extra weapons, because she'd planned to portal home to the tiny cottage which was all hers and get fresh clothes when she needed them.

Face? Her face was just…her face. Bones too sharp, eyes too large, chin too bold, or so she'd been told by more than one man, usually just after she turned down their clumsy advances. She'd only had a few sexual encounters, because most of them were so terribly disappointing that, why bother? Her one real relationship had been with a pirate who was now happily married to a human artist, of all things. And—worse—April had rather liked Lyric the one time she'd met her and warned her not to hurt Dare.

She was doing a lot of that lately. Warning women not to hurt her friends. Most recently, it had been on the west coast of the United States, when her team had gone to help her childhood friend and now fellow warrior Lucas and his new woman rescue the woman's child. April had liked Rhiannon, too, and the kid—Stevie—was a cute kid with tons of energy. None of that had stopped April from warning Rhiannon that if she hurt Lucas, April would kill her. The human had agreed and then told April to get the hell out of her way.

She grinned at the memory. Rhi was her kind of woman.

The grin faded, though, when the warrior in the mirror stared back at April and reminded her silently that she had nothing to wear to a formal dinner. What would an ambassador wear? She had some vague memory of things Queen Riley wore to formal events, but they were all girly dresses and jewels and other things April would never in a million years consider wearing.

Leathers it was, then.

A knock sounded on the door of the spacious room they'd given her in the enormous stone manor house that many of the wolves seemed to call home. It wasn't far from the remains of the ancient stone fort, so April had walked with the others instead of transporting via mist as she had when she'd first arrived. She knew that must have freaked out her hosts, since they wouldn't have been able to use their famously sharp wolf senses of smell to know that she was entering their territory.

She was still smiling about that when she crossed to the door and yanked it open. "What?"

Nyneve stood in front of the door, hand raised to knock again, with a harassed expression on her face. In her other hand she held a long plastic bag. Pine's sister aimed her piercing green gaze at April and shook her head. "'What'? Really? That's how you answer the door? Been an ambassador long, have you?"

She pushed her way into the room and dumped the bag on the enormous, fluffy-looking bed that had been tempting April to take a nap ever since she'd first seen it.

"Try three hours," April said dryly.

Nyn's eyes widened. "What?"

"Now you're doing it."

"What?"

"Yes. That."

Nyn's puzzled expression faded, and she laughed. "Oh. Doing the 'what?' thing. I get it. Well, you have to know that this whole ambassador thing is somewhat surprising, since I just heard about it for the first time."

"Join the club," April muttered. "I'm a warrior, not an…oh, forget it. What do you want, what's in the bag, and where is the killer wolf cub?"

Nyn blew out a breath, clearly exasperated, but April could also see the love the woman held for her daughter, and she felt a sudden pain in her chest at the sight. Tried not to wonder what it must feel like to know you had a mother's unconditional love.

Tapped her foot in impatience, with herself, with Nyneve, and with the entire situation. But mostly, definitely, with Pine.

"Why does he have one green eye and one blue?" She'd blurted out the question without thinking, as she so often did, and she fought against the hot flush of color trying to rise up into her cheeks. She didn't need to know personal things about Pine, for Poseidon's sake, and she certainly didn’t need to be giving the man's sister any reason to suspect she was interested in the man.

Wolf.

Whatever.

Distracted by something she was doing with the bag, Nyneve shook her head. "What?"

"You're doing it again," April pointed out.

"Oh!" The shifter laughed. "Sorry. It's rare but not unknown in wolf shifters, and more common still in pure wolves."

"Pure?"

"Actual wolves who have never been human and never will be. All shifters contain a part of their animal form, but not all animals contain any human, of course."

"Of course," April repeated, rolling her eyes. "I don't need a basic lesson on shifter biology. We've been dealing with your kind for thousands of years."

Nyneve sighed. "Right. You know, for an ambassador, you're fairly prickly. Here, try this on."

Before April could ask the obvious question, Nyn held out an armful of shimmering fabric.

April stepped away and put her hands behind her back. "What, exactly, is … that?"

That turned out to be a dress. No, more like a gown. Whatever you called it, it was the girliest, most unexpectedly beautiful item of clothing April had ever seen.

And there was no way on earth she was wearing it.

"Consider it an apology dress," Nyneve told her, eyeing April up and down. "You're about my height and basic shape, although my chest is a little bigger--"

"Boobs get in the way of archery," April informed her haughtily.

Nyn laughed. "It wasn't a judgment, just my way of saying that the dress should probably fit you well enough. I figured you hadn't brought anything formal in that small bag of yours, and this dinner is going to be a big damn deal, because my boneheaded brother is pulling out all the stops, and I wanted to apologize for my equally boneheaded daughter, and so, well, just wear the damn dress already."

April blinked. Evidently everyone in Pine's family shared his insanity.

"I could just shoot you and be done with it," she finally pointed out, tapping the bow that now hung from the bedpost, always in easy reach of her hand.

"You could try." Nyn bared what seemed to be a surprising amount of very sharp teeth. "Wolf, remember?"

"Fine. I'll wear the dress. Consider it my first official ambassadorial duty," April said, well aware that she was sulking but feeling distinctly put upon by the events of the day. "This dinner better not last long."

"Surely not longer than three or four hours," Nyn said breezily as she let herself out of the room. "There are a few other things you might need in the bag, too. Like a hair brush."

The door closed behind her before April was quite finished with the blue streak of ancient Atlantean curse words she was muttering. Somewhere after "dung of sea urchin scum" but before "rodent grandfather of a motherless barnacle."

Oldies but goodies.

The door opened again. "Dinner's at eight. Meet us down in the hall."

This time, April threw one of her knives. It slammed into the door just after Nyn closed it.

April left it there and started taking off her leathers so she could put on the stupid dress.