Pine looked up from his conversation when the hall fell silent in an uncharacteristic hush, and then he almost swallowed his tongue. April wasn't just beautiful and brave and funny and fearless.

She was magnificent.

She stood framed in the doorway for a moment, but Pine knew instinctively that it had nothing to do with any desire to display herself to the best advantage, although she was certainly doing that just by existing in this space and time, in his house, in his territory, in his mind and skin and blood and …

He shook his head to clear it and stood to greet her, and thirty wolves followed his lead. April's eyes narrowed as she scanned the room, and he grinned as he realized he'd been right. She hadn't been showing off her stunning beauty. She'd been identifying and cataloging exits and possible threats.

He crossed the room to her and held out his arm. She looked at it, and then at his face, and her fingers twitched in a motion he already knew meant she wanted to reach for her bow. Or one of the knives she almost certainly wore in places too delicious for him to think about right now without embarrassing himself in front of his entire hall.

"Let's try this again," he said quietly. And then, louder: "Welcome to Scotland, Ambassador."

His people, now all standing, applauded politely, but he saw puzzlement and suspicion on many of their faces. After all, Nyn wasn't the only one he hadn't told about April. He hadn't told anyone.

First, he wasn't sure she'd even come, and he didn't want to look like a fool.

Second, he had no idea what he would have said. "I think I fell in love at first sight with the deadliest, fiercest, most beautiful woman I've ever seen? I blackmailed a warrior into becoming an ambassador by direct appeal to the king of Atlantis? I'm a complete and utter gobshite who deserves to be kicked in the bollocks for thinking with them instead of with my head?"

Yeah. No. Any would have been true. None would have been appreciated.

"Shall we dine?"

She rolled her eyes. "Shall we dine? Really? You really picked the wrong ambassador if this is what you expect."

But she nodded, ignoring the arm he held out but walking next to him to the head table.

"You look very beautiful," he murmured, unable to take his eyes off her. She smelled like flowers and the sea and, very faintly, of the leathers she'd worn when she arrived. He found the combination of scents incredibly erotic, and caught himself leaning over to sniff the wild red cloud of her hair.

When she gave him an incredulous look, it occurred to him that this might be what it felt like to go completely mad. He was sniffing her hair.

He was sniffing her hair in the middle of his damn hall, with his people watching their every move.

Sniffing the ambassador's hair. Yep. It was official. He was insane.

April was glad she'd foregone Nyn's strappy little shoes for her own sturdy boots, because the last thing she needed was to stumble beneath the scrutiny of what must be more than a hundred shifters. Or at least thirty. Well, she assumed everyone in the enormous hall was a shifter and one of Pine's people, but that might be wrong. For now, she was estimating the threat as Shifters: 100, to April: 1, and not liking her odds.

And Pine … was he sniffing her hair?

He tried to take her hand, but she yanked it away and kept walking, avoiding his hot gaze. She'd seen lust often enough to recognize it in him, but it didn't flatter her or incline her to the same. Lust was impersonal and objectifying; she wasn't interested and she definitely wasn't amused.

On the other hand, he was possibly the most striking man she'd ever met, especially in the black suit and white dress shirt he'd changed into, and she'd met a lot of striking men, considering she lived and worked with the cream of Atlantis manhood. Pine, though—something about him reached inside her and tugged at her nerve endings, sensitizing them in a way that raced along the edge of pleasure almost to pain. She was hyperaware of him at all times and afraid he knew it, but everything about the man's looks pushed all her buttons. He was a few inches taller than her and built like the warrior he must be to hold alpha position of the European wolves. His different colored eyes contained a mystery, and both the blue and the green had gold flecks in the pure color, and the way his golden-brown hair framed his face made her want to plunge her hands into it and pull his head down to hers and …

Enough, April.

Pine helped distract her from her internal catalog of his hotness when he practically ran over a man standing in their path because he was too busy staring at her. She blew out an exasperated breath, grabbed his arm, and yanked him to a stop.

"It's just a dress, you idiot, get over it," she hissed at him, and his eyes widened in what looked to be sincere confusion.

"What?"

"Oh, gods. Not this again." She smiled, or at least bared her teeth, at the man they'd nearly run into, and stuck out her hand, not seeing any way to avoid it. "April Athereon from Atlantis. Poseidon's newest Warrior and, as of today, a temporary ambassador to your people. It's a pleasure to meet you."

It wasn't; nothing about this evening was a pleasure so far, although the food smelled good, but she figured she'd try to be diplomatic or ambassadorial or at least not outright rude.

Pine unexpectedly put his hand on her lower back, and she acted solely on instinct. She dropped into a fighting crouch and knocked him off his feet with a leg sweep. When he landed on his ass, the collective gasp by everybody else in the room and the utter shock on his face struck her as ridiculously funny, for some reason, and she started to laugh—the first real laugh she'd gotten out of this ludicrous situation. She stood and held out her hand to him to help him up and, to his credit, he grinned and took her hand, but when he leapt to his feet and stepped in close, far too close, he murmured in her ear: "Well played, lass. Well played."

She put one hand to his chest and gently pushed until he moved away, and then she looked around at the rapt audience surrounding them and held her hands out in a shrug.

"Ambassador training. It kicks in at the darnedest time."

The man they'd stopped in front of laughed and then started clapping, and the rest of the room followed suit. April could feel a lessening of the tension in the room, so she played along and swept a dramatic palace-etiquette-inspired curtsy.

"I'm Sean, this one's second when I'm at home," the man before them introduced himself. He had dark brown hair to Pine's golden brown, two blue eyes, which April suddenly found to be indescribably boring, and wore a dark suit and white shirt. He had Pine's lovely Scottish accent, though, and she liked the humor she saw in his eyes and smile.

She grinned at him. "And when you're not at home?"

Next to her, Pine made a soft growling noise that startled April but had a stunning result on Sean. The smile dropped off his face, and he instantly stepped back two paces away from April and tilted his head slightly to the side.

She knew enough of shifters to recognize a show of submission when she saw one, and a slow burn started in her gut and burned its way up to her throat. She clenched her teeth around maybe the most fake smile in the history of the world and leaned in to Pine. "Did you just growl at that man because he talked to me?"

In spite of her outrage, she found herself fascinated by the sight of Pine's throat as he swallowed, hard. "Er, more because you talked to him, I think," he muttered. "I might be going mad, lass, er, April."

She stared him down. "That will be Ambassador Athereon to you, Pine. And anyway, which is Pine? Your first or second name? What should I call you?"

He sighed. "Dumbass. You should call me dumbass, and I'd deserve it. I'm sorry, Ambassador. Sean, I'll be begging your pardon, too, man. The day has knocked me sideways, and that's the truth."

April's innate sense of fairness wouldn't let an apology go unanswered, and she allowed her tense shoulders to relax and grinned at him. "I could go with dumbass, but I bet it's not in the ambassador handbook. Here's the deal: you call me April, and I'll call you?"

"Pine."

"Pine what? Or what, Pine?"

His eyes narrowed. "Never you mind. Just Pine, if you please."

"Ah. A mystery. I'm good at mysteries. So, Sean. About Pine's name?"

But the other man just laughed and shook his head. "I'm out of this conversation, Ambassador."

"April, please," she told him. "Is that roast beef I smell? I think my stomach started growling an hour ago."

"It's roast everything," Pine said. "I think the cooks are showing off for you."

"The cooks? Fancy." April knew the palace had cooks, but she'd spent her life fending for herself. Maybe she could get used to this luxury thing. She definitely liked to eat.

Pine held out his hand, apparently to help her up the single step to the head table. "Shall we?"

She lifted the hem of Nyn's dress and showed him her boots. "I'm good. Let's eat."

Before she could take the step, the smallest of noises alerted her to the presence of somebody hiding behind the tablecloth that draped down to the floor, and she quickly sidestepped and pushed Pine out of the way.

"What's happening--"

"Quiet," she told him. "I'm about to get murdered."