Avery
I felt a ring materialize on the finger of my left hand beneath the table, right before Raul took that same hand in his and raised it up in the air. A feminine gasp and mini squeal of delight followed.
Raul pressed a kiss to my ear and whispered in a sweet voice for me to pull my shit together and get my eyes under control. I realized when he said it that he’d been dabbing a cloth over my eyes not because I’d been crying, but because my eyes had shifted to that of my wolf. I got it under control then.
Pasting a mask of joyous exuberance on my face, I yanked Raul’s hand with the cloth from my eyes to find not only one but two excited female servers standing at our table making “aw” eyes at me and my idiot “fiancé.”
I endured their congratulatory platitudes with a patience I didn’t possess as one of them called two more servers over to see my ring.
All I wanted was to get home to my daughter. And I was drunk in San Francisco with a bulletproof werelock who’d just “poofed” a six-carat diamond engagement ring onto my finger. A teleporting werelock who’d claimed that my daughter’s spirit knew him from a prior life when she was someone else—and that she was pulling him into her nightmares now whenever she was scared and needed help.
I desperately needed to find a way to kill this guy.
Fellow diners were now flocking over to our table. Jesus, did he have to pick such a huge-ass diamond to go with his white lie and drag this out unnecessarily? I hoped the rock was real. Because I was keeping that shit. And hocking it at the first opportunity.
Raul had relinquished my hand to the fifth gawking restaurant patron to come by—a sweet little old lady with lipstick on her teeth—and he had been busy rapidly texting something on his phone ever since. But once he’d finished and had put his phone away, he interrupted the old lady’s chatter by looking her directly in the eyes and telling her, “You’re done here, sweetheart. Go back to your seat now.”
I was about to apologize to her and flay him for being rude, but the little old lady didn’t seem insulted in the least. In fact, she smiled brightly, said, “Okay,” and promptly went back to her table where her husband was still hunched over his plate, eating at a snail’s pace.
“What the hell was—”
“Not now,” he cut me off, his expression stone-cold serious. “We’ve got company coming. Bad company.” His eyes cut to the front of the restaurant.
I followed his line of sight and saw a tall, sophisticated-looking man with dark hair approaching the hostess stand.
“Who is that guy? Why are his eyes that weird shade of blue?”
“He’s someone who’d kill his own mother to get his hands on the Rogue,” Raul said with a smile plastered on his face.
He lifted his chin and nodded in greeting to the handsome man who was now chatting up the young hostess. Then he turned his smile back to me and whispered through tight lips, “Change of plans. You’re gonna have to trust me and play along. Your life and Sloane’s life depend on it.”
“Why? What’s his superpower? Are those colored contacts he’s wearing?”
“He’s your average petty, sadistic, emotionally rapey, empathic werelock. And he happens to be my boss.” He said all of this with the same strained smile on his face, leaning close and talking to me as if we were flirting.
“He’ll assume you’re human unless he’s near you long enough to pick up on your absence of scent. Try and keep your emotions simple if you can,” he advised quickly. “Be as uninteresting and even flat-out stupid if you can manage it so that he won’t try to read your mind and discover that he can’t. I got a bad feeling we’re screwed either way, but we gotta give it a shot,” he muttered. “Your boy Chaos will have to get you out of here if I can’t easily dismiss you without arousing Gabe’s suspicion. I just texted Alcaeus our location. Let’s hope you’re more than a notch to him.” He planted a palm on either side of my face.
“Wh—”
Raul’s lips crashed into mine before I could protest. Instinctively, I struggled at first. My struggling only caused him to pull me in closer, until I was mashed so tightly up against his hard chest I didn’t think I’d be able to squeeze a breath into my lungs—assuming I could even disengage from the unforgiving lock his mouth had on mine in order to take one.
When I didn’t immediately open my mouth for him, he bit down on my lip, drawing blood and growling, “Play along,” as he fisted the back of my hair in a punishing grip.
I did play along then, forcing my body to go limp against his and allowing my mouth to mechanically kiss him back. There was something in the weight of Raul’s command that alarmed me—that and the recognition that the desperate urgency with which his tongue invaded my mouth had nothing to do with sexual attraction and everything to do with fear. Fear of his werelock boss.
A fear so great that he’d called upon his enemy, Alcaeus, to get me safely away from Gabriel. Not a great indication of what a sweetheart this guy Gabe was likely to be.
When Raul’s hand fell to my knee, then moved higher to squeeze my thigh, I figured his boss was probably almost to our table, so I made a fake moaning noise in response—giving it my best ridic porn-star all.
We were all in or nothing at this point, right?
I knew it the moment Raul’s Alpha was at our table. Beyond his canine scent, he smelled of old money—that complicated yet classic old-fashioned cologne scent mixed with a hint of antique furniture polish, fresh linen, gold bullion, and stinky cheese that all filthy rich people somehow managed to reek of.
When he cleared his throat to announce himself, I could tell straightaway he was a dick. The guy managed to project how much better than everyone else in the room he thought he was with one simple throat clearing.
Raul tore his mouth from mine and turned his head to greet him. “Gabe! So good of you to join us. Allow me to introduce you to Cynthia, my date. Cynthia, this is Gabriel, a dear friend and coworker of mine.”
“Congratulations!” Another woman who’d been seated at a nearby table chose that moment to rush over to ours and wish me well. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said with a glance at Gabriel, before turning to address my fake fiancé. “I saw that beautiful ring and heard you tell the waitress that you’d just popped the question.” She gave Raul a motherly pat on his shoulder. “Well done, young man. You two make a lovely couple. And the ring is stunning,” she said to me.
As the woman flitted back over to her own table, the priceless look on Alpha Gabriel’s face threatened to undo whatever thinly held grasp I still had on my unraveling composure—and sanity—tonight. I had to casually cover my mouth with my fingers to hide my twitching lips while pretending that I was wiping a nonexistent lipstick smudge from Raul’s kiss.
Alpha “Gabe” Salvatella’s appearance reminded me of that of an obnoxious trust fund kid I’d gone to college with who’d had such delicate, perfectly symmetrical bone structure that I’d felt compelled to do him the favor of breaking his nose. Like my former classmate, Gabe’s features were the sort that crossed the line of pretty boy into straight-up effeminate. And those eyes of his—yikes! His eyes were a phony-looking shade of blue that was way creepy. Like alienesque creepy. I wasn’t sure if Crayola even made a crayon that shade of blue. The color was reminiscent of a swimming pool that’d been shocked one too many times with chlorine and wasn’t safe to swim in.
But beyond the spookiness of his eyes and the unwelcoming, pompous manner that he projected to the world, I couldn’t readily gauge what might be so frightening or dangerous about him.
Raul’s fingers latched onto my bicep, and he drew me up to an awkward standing position at his side—sandwiched as we both were between the bench seat and the table.
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” I said, automatically extending my hand to him in greeting.
Gabe didn’t take it. In fact, he pinned me with a contemptuous look that said he thought I was trash before pulling a chair out for himself and sitting down across from Raul.
Oh, boy. I was well used to rich, snobby people shunning me. I’d experienced it often enough throughout my life. And although I knew it was a good thing to be ignored by this doucher, attempting to snub or insult me was like waving a red flag in front of a bull—just asking for trouble.
“Oh, thank God. You’re a germaphobe, too? Whew,” I said, promptly withdrawing my hand as Raul and I reclaimed our seats. “Hey, are those colored contacts? You have to tell me where you got those so I can get some for Halloween.”
In my head, I rationalized that my ditzy behavior was in keeping with Raul’s advice and therefore acceptable.
Gabe frowned from me to Raul just as Raul rushed to shut me up.
“Gabe, hey, I’m real sorry I didn’t check in with you sooner,” Raul apologized in his carefree surfer way. “Lost track of time. Cynthia and I hit it off, and things just kinda went … well, you know. So, what’s up? You need me for something?” Before Gabe could answer, Raul turned to me and said, “Hey, babe, remember when I said I might have to hit the office tonight because of that big account I’ve got closing this week? I think Gabe needs my help. You understand, right?”
“Oh, sure, sure. Anything for you, pumpkin.” I gave his nose a playful tweak.
“Thanks,” Raul said, leaning in to give me a peck on the lips as his eyes told me to knock it off and tone it down.
Well, what did he expect when he called me babe?
“I’ll just be going so you boys can do your work thing,” I announced like the airhead that I was pretending to be as I stood from the table.
“Not so fast.”
The first spoken words out of Gabe’s mouth were accompanied by a force of gravity that sent my ass sinking back to the bench seat in a manner similar to how Raul had knocked me to the concrete in the parking garage. The difference was my lungs didn’t feel compressed this time—my emotions did. That was the only way I could describe the dizzying, confusing sensations I felt. It was like I didn’t know what to feel—what I was supposed to feel, rather.
Suddenly, I felt such an uncomfortable sense of self-doubt that I wanted to cry—similar to how I’d felt earlier when Raul had told me that Sloane was reaching out to him for help during her nightmares instead of me. Intuitively, I sensed that Gabe was somehow reading my strongest, most recent emotions. Perhaps pulling them from me somehow?
Either way, as I stared into Gabe’s cruelly mesmerizing blue eyes now as if unable to look away, I struggled to recollect what had seemed so funny about them before.
“What. The fuck. Is this?” Gabe’s cool gaze shifted to Raul, and I felt a measure of relief from the weird emotional pressure he’d wielded over me. “Who is she, Raul?”
“Gabe, look, we just—”
“I grow weary of you underestimating my intelligence as well as my patience. Who is she?”
“We only met a few days ago, but she’s already very special to me.”
It occurred to me Raul was trying to stick with mostly true statements as much as possible, so that Gabe wouldn’t scent a lie from him. Most of the fibbing he’d done thus far to Gabe had been combined with lies that Gabriel would believe Raul had stated in order to fool me—such as the big account closing and the two of them needing to hit the office tonight.
“Did you create that shield? How did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything, I swear. I’ve never touched her mind.”
“Well, some powerful werelock clearly has.” There was a pregnant pause before Gabe deduced, “And you know who it was … don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know.”
Gabe chuckled. “Right. You don’t know. But you suspect. Don’t you?” His lip curled into a sneer. “Really? Do we have to play these childish games every single time? You leave me no choice when you block me from your mind and play word games to avoid telling me what I want to know.”
“Come on, man, don’t do this. I’m telling the truth. We just met a few—”
“Help! My husband’s choking!” the old lady with lipstick on her teeth suddenly shrieked. “Somebody help him. He’s choking!”
There was a stir of commotion as waitstaff and patrons rushed to administer the Heimlich on the old man who was soundlessly choking, his eyes wide and frozen with a look of shock and fear.
“Aw, fuck, Gabe, don’t do this.” Raul dropped his head in his hands. “Why do you have to do this shit?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Gabe said with a serene smile. “People choke to death in restaurants all the time. Especially the elderly.”
“It’s fucking senseless, and you know it,” Raul hissed.
“Is it? I’m not sure I agree. You know I only do it because you care.”
Oh, my God. My stomach dropped as I realized Gabe had caused the old man to choke. And from the way Raul was reacting, it seemed as if this was normal behavior for his Alpha. Petty and sadistic, indeed.
“Stop it,” I heard myself demand before I could think it through.
Raul kicked me under the table as Gabe’s unsettling blue gaze slid back to me.
I heard another woman scream and turned to see a waitress slip on the hardwood floor as she raced to the choking man’s aid, her legs flying out from underneath her with such unnatural force that she flipped hard and fast onto her back, her head smacking against the hard floor with a sickeningly loud thwack that instantly rendered her unconscious.
Pandemonium broke out as people rushed to the unconscious waitress on the floor and shouted for someone to call an ambulance. Meanwhile, the old lady began wailing as her husband went limp and lost consciousness despite efforts to dislodge whatever was stuck in his windpipe.
“Humans die from accidental falls all the time, too.” Gabe shrugged, looking from me to Raul. “Such fragile creatures. Aren’t they, Raul? Speaking of … how is that med student friend of yours? I believe she lives here in San Francisco, doesn’t she?”
Raul huffed and shook his head, his Adam’s apple bobbing restlessly in this throat. “She’s Milena’s friend. Not mine.”
It didn’t smell like a lie, but Gabe chuckled at Raul’s obvious distress at the mention of this woman who was Milena’s friend and not Raul’s. Why would Raul care about a friend of Alpha Milena’s who wasn’t his friend?
“Of course, of course. You know, I read some interesting things from Mike’s mind the other day about your habit of covertly keeping tabs on Milena’s friend.” Gabe tilted his head, his creepy eyes absorbing Raul’s mounting distress with great delight as I heard Raul’s heart rate spike.
“Is anyone here a doctor?” a male waiter frantically shouted, raising his head from where he was bent over the waitress on the floor. “We need a doctor! She’s not breathing, and I can’t feel a pulse.”
“Shall we go for three tonight? I feel like an aneurism should be next. Or are you ready to tell me who she is and who you suspect put that mind shield on her?”
“I’m a doctor,” Kai’s voice echoed through the restaurant.
I’d never been so happy to see someone I hated before as Kai cut a path straight to the unconscious waitress. But before I could exhale my relief, my airway was blocked off as Gabe materialized on the opposite side of me on the bench seat and wrapped his hand around my throat.