Cinder's Wolf: A Shifter Retelling of Cinderella (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 2) (12 page)

T
he great thing
about being a wolf was that you didn’t have choices. Not really.

Hungry? Eat.

Lustful? Fuck.

Angry…

Well, if you were angry.

You killed.

Rex lowered his body to the ground, snarling at Bane, who was still twirling the shoe around his pinky with the dexterity of a drummer playing with his sticks.

“Growl away, little wolf. That won’t help you find your mate,” Bane said, holding out the shoe in front of him, gazing out at it in mock fascination, like it was a skull and he was Hamlet. “If you were to say, transfer a couple of hundred million dollars my way…” The shoe swung a full revolution. “That might help.”

That was all the opening Rex needed.

He sprung upward, leaping not only over the stream, but also over the waterfall itself, to land directly onto Bane’s chest, pushing the panther back against the bench until he grunted. Rex smiled inside as his claws tore through the silk of Bane’s suit. Only a little more pressure and he’d hit skin. Bane’s dark brown eyes were wide, but Rex couldn’t smell any fear on him. Although it was hard to smell anything through the rancid odor his cat-ness.

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Bane spluttered.

Rex snapped at his nose. He wanted to bite it off, just as he had destroyed the phone in his apartment, but he managed to restrain himself. Better give Bane a chance to tell him where his mate was first.

“You idiot; you can’t do this here,” Bane hissed through a gritted jaw.

Rex knew what Bane really meant was that Bane couldn’t shift here. Rex was large for a wolf, but still at a distance could be mistaken for a dog. There would be no mistaking a giant black panther.

Rex dug his claws further into Bane’s chest, scraping through skin until he felt the wet warmth of blood.

To his credit, Bane didn’t scream; he barely even winced, before trying to pry Rex off with his bare hands, as if he were a naughty puppy.

Bane’s attempt didn’t last long because Rex’s teeth lunged for his fingers. He almost caught the fool’s pinky, glinting with a golden ring inscribed with the same signet as his cufflinks. A spinning wheel. The logo wasn’t just for Bane’s ride-sharing app but for his whole conglomerate, one spoke per subsidiary of his company. Rex’s wolf’s mind struggled with the complexity of the design, and Bane used Rex’s distraction to scramble sideways off the side of the bench. But he wasn’t able to dislodge Rex completely. As a result, they both tumbled to the ground.

Bane managed to squirm out from underneath Rex, before rolling upright in a motion so sudden a human eye would’ve missed it. Rex whirled to face the cat, ears twitching. Mud and loose dirt speckled his fur, but Rex didn’t risk Bane trying something by taking the time to shake his pelt clean.

Bane’s panther instincts on the other hand apparently demanded immediate grooming. He frowned down at the puncture wounds leaking red down his torn white button-down, as if it more offended by his ruined shirt than the attack itself. “Wolves…” He shook out his wrist, as if they’d just had a fistfight. “So quick to violence and so slow to get a joke. Or maybe that’s just Americans. Either way.”

Rex growled, his wide tongue darting out to catch a bit of foam dripping from the corner of his dark mouth, but he didn’t attack Bane again. He didn’t have to. Rex had the upper hand. Bane had no weapon and he couldn’t risk shifting without being seen. He would tell Rex what he needed to know. Or Rex would kill him.

“Stop yipping at me like I’m a Bond villain, Rex.” Bane tried to shoot Rex one of his impish grins, but it came out more of a grimace. “I haven’t kidnapped your mate, and I’m certainly not ransoming her. Not really.”

Rex lowered down to his haunches and imperiously nodded once, as if to say ‘Explain.’

Flicking off a splotch of blood from his hand into the river, Bane began, “I met her stepsister last night. Reagan.”

The stepsister. So that had been the girl in the golden gown. Interesting.

“Reagan mentioned her stepsister was dancing with you, and even human eyes could see the sparks flying between you two. So when your mate’s name came up as a request for a ride share on Spinning Wheels, I thought I’d do her the favor of giving her a ride home from the CEO himself.”

Rex’s lips pulled away to reveal his fangs as his growl tapered into a snarl. The points of his claws, still wet with Bane’s blood, pierced through stiff spring earth.

“Oh, calm down.” Bane waved away Rex’s concerns. “I didn’t kidnap her. Just offered our little Cynthia Cinders some friendly advice.”

Cynthia Cinders.

Her full name shot a straight path through the tangled synapses of his wolf’s brain, and his clumsy lips tried to stretch to form the syllables. It came out as a dull whine. Bane’s winged eyebrows swept downward, as if he could smell Rex’s weakness. But it was a trick. Cats had inferior noses.

Rex narrowed his own eyes in turn. As a human, he had more than enough practice hiding his emotions, but in his wolf form he was raw.
“From what she communicated to me, I gathered there’d been some sort of—” Bane gestured vaguely “—misunderstanding. So when she exited my cab and threw her shoe, I thought I’d do you the kind favor of retrieving it.”

Maybe it was the sun, slipping behind the trees only half-clothed in young leaves, that shadowed his profile, sharpening his cheekbones into razors and making his dark brown eyes glint a warning gold. Or maybe it was something within Bane, a weary coldness that had seen demons in the eyes of men and monsters alike, but instead of fighting them, had stolen all of their best tricks, leaving the heroism to the more foolhardy.

Rex had spent so long pretending to be a human, that he sometimes not only forgot he wasn’t one, but also that many of the shifters he associated with weren’t either.

“Seeing,” Bane continued, his voice quiet enough that even with his enhanced hearing Rex had to swivel his ears to catch his words, “as you’re a wolf. I’d assumed that if I gave you the shoe, you’d be able to track her with it.” He sneered. “I’d also assumed you’d be grateful. Not attack me”

Rex barked once in an equally low reply, careful enough of the human hearing that even the pigeons perched in the nearby tree didn’t fly away.

“I wouldn’t have taken the money even if you’d offered it to me, wolf.” Bane smiled thinly before flicking another line of blood away. This one to the ground.

It was disconcerting how little Bane seemed to care about the fact that Rex had just attacked him.

As a human, Rex found Bane difficult to read, but as a wolf, understanding Bane was impossible. What Rex did know was that Bane wasn’t lying when he said he wouldn’t have taken the money. Now that his panic over his mate had faded somewhat, Rex couldn’t believe he had fallen for Bane’s joke.

Everyone knew Bane didn’t deal in cash. He dealt in favors. In fact, Bane Stilskin had told him on more than one occasion that he considered money to be a more diluted form of the currency of power. Why would he ask for a hundred million dollars when he had a billion of his own? No, much better to ask for nothing, and then call in the favor later. Better a blank check.

Rex cursed at himself for being such a fool and giving into Bane’s bait. It was his damn wolf’s fault. He couldn’t think.

He felt Bane’s eyes on him like a teacher analyzing a pupil to make sure the lesson had sank in. Bane had given Rex Cynthia’s last name, which doubled as a way to find her, and now he owed him. Quite possibly his life.

More at himself than at Bane, Rex snarled.

Satisfied, Bane smirked and buttoned up his shirt, smoothing out the tears over his now completely healed, if blood-crusted chest, as if they were nothing more than wrinkles. “I suppose you’ll want this?”

Casually, he tossed Rex the shoe.

It flew upward, spinning end over end.

Spinning.

Spinning.

As it glided through the air, Rex was taken back to the first moment he had met Cynthia, in a forest denser and truer than Central Park’s. Even then, he’d known what a disaster letting his wolf out would be, but the impact of seeing her, with those tight jean shorts and the “kiss-me-I-dare-you” purse of her lips, had ripped the animal out from between his legs. He’d lost control and growled at her. Then she ran.

Just a second of that noise had earned him ten years of anger at himself. His wolf had driven her away. He had been so sure of it.

But what if he was wrong? Last night it wasn’t him nipping her on the neck that made her run—it was after they had consummated the bond. After he had complete control.

Gods! There was something holding her back. Something keeping her suspended in the air, just a hair’s breadth out of reach. Twirling and twirling, like at the ball during their dance. Something kept her running away.

But in this body, he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was. All he could do was stare up at that damn shoe. If he wanted his mate, to know her, to love her as he craved, he had to change back.

Rex knew what he had to do. He reached for a knotting worry in his muscles that his wolf’s form couldn’t comprehend. Pain grew, first in his muzzle and then his bones as they pulled and broke. This change wasn’t the quick reshaping of flesh to fur in a flight from fear and panic. No, if anything, to keep his bones growing and fur shrinking, Rex had to embrace the agony and uncertainty. It felt like it took years. But by the time it was done Rex’s mind was clear enough to realize it had only been minutes.

When he was fully a man, he was naked and on his knees in front of Bane, his hair draping over his face, limp. In front of his much shorter human nose was the shoe. It had landed just on the edge of the book, its toe dipping with the current. Rex snatched it, and clutched it against his bare chest already tingling with gooseflesh from the nippy, spring morning air.

“I’m going to find her,” was all Rex could manage. “Now.”

Bane looked at him curiously. “You might need to borrow a suit.”

T
he atmosphere
in the conference room was tense, and Cynthia hadn’t even said a word yet. While the space was expertly decorated with a refurbished table she had found at an antique store, painted white just like the rest of her office, the chairs were standard issue. Natural light poured in through the windowed walls, but even that couldn’t ease the mood.

Hikari, the CFO, and Emma, the designer, assembled around the table slowly, as if they wouldn’t have to hear the bad news until their butts were in their chairs. Marian, in contrast, plopped down unceremoniously before unfolding her laptop and beginning to type percussively away at some code or another. She either didn’t know how bad things were or didn’t care. As the tech side of their operation, Marian was the one who’d have the least trouble finding a job if it all went south.

But we’re not quite there yet. I won’t give up. I can’t
, Cynthia thought, remembering Eliza’s gentle face.

Cynthia crossed her legs, tapping the button on the side of the plastic table that sent a screen lowering down behind her. “Alright, let’s get started. Hikari, did you send me the latest numbers?”

Hikari tucked a strand of her long, dyed red hair behind her ear and nodded.

“Good. Okay.” Cynthia refreshed her email client still open on her decade-old laptop. The email popped up. She opened the spreadsheet attached and with another click, flung it to the screen behind her. The numbers looked so innocent in their boxes. So simple. But the reality they represented was anything but.

“So I called you in today because we need to have a serious discussion about the direction of this company.” Cynthia took in a deep breath, trying to ignore the pulsing of the mark on her ankle. “Because we’re in trouble. We need…”

The mark throbbed in time with her headache. She pushed her palm back down on the table, trying to grab her train of thought back from the fog of an impending migraine. “We need…”

The phone rang from the center of the table. Everyone looked at it at once.

“Ignore it,” Cynthia said.

But Marian, rising from her chair, leaned over and yanked it off the receiver. “Boxes & Broom, this is Marian, tech wizard, how may I help you?”

Cynthia narrowed her eyes. She needed to have a talk with Marian about the chain of command. Or maybe she should just secretly set her up with Loxely. The two deserved each other.

“Yes, that’s right. She’s here.” Marian shot a sly glance over to Cynthia.

Cynthia froze. It couldn’t be.

Marian nodded one final time before she hung up the phone. “Well, I just may have the answer to our prayers. Or rather Cynthia does. What did you do at that party last night?”

No. No. No.
“Nothing. Let’s focus back on the meeting. I’ll tell the receptionist to call him back later.”

“Don’t you even want to know what’s she’s talking about?” Emma asked.

“I want to solve our problem,” Cynthia said.

“One of the investors you met last night would solve our problems, I think,” Marian said.

“An investor… did he say who?” Cynthia asked.

“Sorry, he just said the name of his company. Something investing. But aren’t they all that? See, this is why I’m not a secretary. But he said he was interested in talking to you.” Marian shrugged.

“Whoever it is, I’ll meet with them tomorrow,” Cynthia said, waving Marian away before standing up from the chair and ducking under the table. “Before we can ask for anyone else’s money, we have to start properly managing our own.”

“Cynthia.” Hikari gasped and covered her mouth. “What are you doing?”

“We’re not leaving here until we fix this company, and I don’t want any more distractions.” With a yank, she unplugged the phone from the socket.

“I don’t think you can ignore this one,” Marian said, something like fear filtering through her monotone sarcasm.

“Watch me,” Cynthia hissed. She didn’t care if Marian thought she was crazy. She didn’t care if she actually was at this point.

“Uh, Cynthia?” Emma asked

“What?” Cynthia started upward and hit her head on the underside of the table. She winced with pain. But bumping her head was nothing compared to the agony that had taken residence in her leg lately. Although for the moment, it had quieted at least.

“I think you might want to see this,” Emma said.

Grumbling, Cynthia crawled out on her hands and knees from under the desk and stood up.

Oh, damn it all to hell.

Standing on the other side of the glass was Rex West.

His brown hair had gone from barely contained to completely wild, and the rest of him had followed. Where he normally wore clearly custom-made clothing, now he donned a suit jacket more than a couple sizes too small. His muscles bulged threateningly underneath the fabric. The chaos should’ve made him less attractive, but instead, it sent a warm wave washing over her chest.

He had had a rough night too.

But while Rex may have had the aesthetic of a suddenly homeless stockbroker, the way he was looking at her was anything but disheveled. Not angry. Not horny. Just intent. As if he finally understood the rules of the game.

He held her gaze calmly for another beat before stepping back from the window and opening the door to the conference room with such force Cynthia revised her earlier statement.

No, he didn’t just understand the rules of the game.

He was convinced he knew how to win.