Enigma (32 page)

But he had blue eyes. Like Ben. Like him.

Patrick opened his mouth and closed it again, uncertain what he should say to the brother he’d barely known, the brother who’d still been a child when Patrick’s father had thrown him into the streets. Maybe this had been a mistake after all, a selfish attempt to fix himself without caring whether he shattered another man’s peaceful life in the process. “Should I go?”

“
No
, I just…” Arthur trailed off. “It’s ridiculous, but I think I half expected you to be a little boy.”

“Not in a long time.” Patrick’s hands fisted, and he forced out the hardest words. “I hated that he drove you away. I hate that she let him. She shouldn’t have.”

Arthur blanched even more. Liz reached for him, but he shook his head.

Before he could speak, squeals and screams erupted as footsteps thundered down the stairs. A tiny brunette wearing an eye-straining combination of neon launched herself at Patrick’s legs, throwing her arms around his waist with a triumphant shout. “I get to hug him first!”

The other one froze in the middle of the living room, her lower lip already wobbling, then flung herself at Liz with a wail. “You said we could do it together, you promised!”

“Shh, Emma.” Liz stroked her daughter’s hair with a long-suffering sigh. “You and Elyssa can both hug Uncle Patrick—”

“It’s
Conan
, Mom,” the tiny girl clinging to him corrected before tilting her head back. She had big blue eyes too, and a lump formed in his throat as she beamed at up him. “Daddy named Conan Harris after you. That’s how we knew your name.”

Patrick blinked. “Who’s Conan Harris?”

The girl—Elyssa—jabbed a finger toward the wall. A dozen framed pictures lined the hallway, though a closer look revealed that they were book covers with Arthur’s name plastered across the bottom. Mysteries, they looked like, each with the same trenchcoat-clad hero in a different dark alley.

The lump grew into a damn boulder.

He barely felt it when Emma crashed into his opposite side, just lowered his hand by instinct, patting her back while his gaze skipped down the line of covers and back. Above each title were four words in white, four words that made his chest hurt.
A Conan Harris Mystery
.

“All right, girls,” Liz’s voice came from somewhere far off. “Give your uncle a few minutes to breathe. His friend Anna’s a real live shapeshifter, you know. Why don’t we show her the back porch, and you can ask her what it’s like.”

Uncles must have been boring compared to werewolves, because Anna had only a moment to brace herself before the waist-high tsunami broke over her.

She held her ground admirably, with only her raised eyebrows to betray her apprehension. “I’ve got this,” she murmured as she herded the kids past him and Arthur, through the door, toward Liz’s voice.

Silence reigned, and Arthur filled it by clearing his throat. “Scotch?”

“Yeah. Please.” Patrick had to swallow—hard. “They’re cute. Energetic.”

“They’re a handful.” But his brother beamed with pride as he beckoned Patrick to follow him back through the archway, which led into an office. “Will your friend be all right in the midst of the madness?”

There was an undertone there, a question that went deeper than Anna’s nervousness. She was a shapeshifter surrounded by pint-sized spell casters, and most wolves wouldn’t have been happy about the situation. “Anna’s spent a lot of time in New Orleans,” he said, answering without answering. “One of her best friends is a coyote, and she runs with a lot of casters. She’ll be fine.”

Arthur hummed as he set up two glasses and began to pour the liquor. “I’ll admit to a bit of anxiety. She’s rather infamous in supernatural circles. Then again, so are you.”

“Yeah.” Patrick rubbed at his arm, trying not to look at his tattoos. “I know we’re not the sort of people you probably want in the life you have here…”

“I’m taken aback, not horrified,” Arthur said firmly, handing over one of the drinks. “I owe it to my wife and children to be a little cautious.”

Patrick stared into the liquor. “You
could
be horrified. Maybe even should be. You got out before—” He paused to regroup. “We had another brother.”

Arthur sat down, his face solemn. “Tell me?”

“Ben. When we changed our names, that’s what he named himself. She named him…”

“Doyle,” he supplied with a pained smile. “A matched set.”

Patrick gulped down the Scotch and fought for composure by nodding to the shelf full of books. “And now you’re writing mysteries. She
was
psychic. Maybe she knew one of us would live up to the name.”

Arthur’s smile faded. “Perhaps I inherited a little of her ability, after all. You’re more like the character in my books than I could have imagined.”

Patrick held out his glass for a refill. “I hope you haven’t put him through half the shit I’ve been dumb enough to get tangled up in.”

“You’ll have to read the books and let me know.” He topped off both glasses. “Your father didn’t run me off.”

The world shifted ninety degrees, and Patrick gripped the arm of his chair to brace himself. “He didn’t?”

“Not at first.” Arthur swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “I had decided to leave. But then I made the mistake of telling them I was taking you with me.”

Free fall.

“He wouldn’t have liked that,” Patrick whispered. It was the only thing he could think of to say, the only thing he knew for sure. The man who’d sired him hadn’t cared much for his son or the woman who’d given birth to him, but they had still belonged to him.

“No, he didn’t.” His brother looked up, and their eyes locked. “I tried to come back for you, but they’d skipped town. Maybe Mother had even left him by then. I don’t know.”

Patrick took a deep breath, let it out…and let the past go with it. “Maybe it happened the way it needed to happen. If you had taken me, there wouldn’t have been anyone to take care of Ben. And he—” The lump was back, and he couldn’t swallow it down this time. It kept battling its way up, too many months of repressed grief fighting to claw free of him. “He died in January. No, not just died. He was murdered, and his girlfriend with him, and I wasn’t there to stop it. If I’d been smarter, or faster, or
something
, you’d be meeting him too.”

“I’m sure you did what you could.” Arthur shifted from the chair to the couch and slowly wrapped his arm around Patrick’s shoulders. “It took a lot of years for me to be able to say that, you know—that I did what I could. But, in the end, it’s all there is. We do what we can.”

Tears stung Patrick’s eyes, and he covered it by sipping his Scotch until he could blink them away. “You’re smart. I forgot how smart you were.”

“It’s been a while.” Arthur squeezed him in a half-hug, his own eyes bright. “It’ll all come back to you, Con—
Patrick
.” He sighed. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

A lot of things would. If this was what it had felt like for Anna, Patrick couldn’t believe she’d made it to the warehouse, much less up the steps and back into his life with those rings clutched in her hand. The pain was still sharp, a thousand
might have beens
and
should have dones
climbing over one another, scrambling for attention.

But he’d done what he could. Every day since his father’s death, every day since Ben’s. He’d done what he could. The best he could manage. It wasn’t until Anna had slammed into his life and shown him the weak spots in his armor that he’d realized his best wasn’t enough anymore.

He wanted to do more. He needed to, even when it hurt, when it meant tearing open old wounds so they’d heal right. For once, he could afford to be vulnerable, because she had his back.

She had his back. And right now, he had to have hers, before she ran screaming from the avalanche of children he’d just unleashed on her. “Can you get used to me enough to introduce me to your kids properly? I’ve always kind of wanted nieces and nephews.”

“Come on.” Arthur led the way through the house, past the kitchen and onto the back porch.

The yard was chaos. Anna was running in circles, chasing a young boy almost as tall as she was. Quite a feat, especially since she had one of the twins—the shy one—attached to her back. Liz watched it all with an adorable toddler balanced on one hip and a fond smile on her face.

It was domestic in all the ways Patrick had never wanted—all the ways he
still
didn’t want—but there was a certain seductive lure to the idea of having a place like this in his life. A quiet place in between the fights, a place to rest and recharge, with cute kids he could spoil and an older brother to give him advice over good Scotch.

A family—not to replace Ben, but to grieve for him too. People who would listen to stories about him and remember him, love him and miss him.

Anna caught his gaze, and her grin softened to a questioning smile.

A few of the broken pieces inside him settled into place, a thousand times stronger than before, and he returned her smile before crouching to wink at the other twin. “Think we can run faster than them?”

Her face scrunched up in a doubtful grimace. “I don’t know. Anna says wolves are fast.”

“Yeah, but I’m a spell caster, like your mom. Like you.” He leaned closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. “And I know a really cool trick.”

Anna stopped in her tracks. “No cheating, Uncle Conan,” she called. “We’ll know if you try.”

“All’s fair in love and shapeshifter footraces,” he called back as Elyssa scrambled up onto his back. He’d left the sword in the car, but he didn’t need it in his hand anymore. The thought was enough to summon a trickle of power. Not the swift river he’d had before and would have again, but that was better for this. Just a touch, and the world brightened around him.

Or maybe that was
Anna
, setting his heart to racing even when she was mock-glaring at him.

“Hold on tight,” he murmured, and everything slowed to a crawl as he shot forward, his niece’s gleeful squeals filling his ears, and Anna’s love filling all the empty places in his heart.

Winning would be fun. She’d kick his ass later for cheating, but that would be fun too.

About the Author

How do you make a Moira Rogers? Take a former forensic science and nursing student obsessed with paranormal romance and add a computer programmer with a passion for gritty urban fantasy. To learn more about this romance-writing, crime-fighting duo, visit their webpage at
www.moirarogers.com
, or drop them an email at
[email protected]
. They also write dystopian erotic romance as Kit Rocha. (Disclaimer: crime-fighting abilities may appear only in their fevered imaginations.)

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Sanctuary’s Price

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Deadlock

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Impulse

Building Sanctuary

A Safe Harbor

Undertow

…and the Beast

Sabine

Kisri

Children of the Undying

Demon Bait

Hammer Down

Bloodhounds

Wilder’s Mate

Hunter’s Prey

Archer’s Lady

Diana’s Hound

Green Pines

Haunted Sanctuary

Haunted Wolves

Her submission can heal him. His dominance can free her.

Impulse

© 2012 Moira Rogers

Southern Arcana, Book 5

Sera Sinclaire is a New Orleans rarity: a submissive coyote trapped in a town overrun by dominant shapeshifters. Worse, she lacks the willpower to deny the alphas-in-shining-armor who need her soothing presence, even when their protectiveness threatens to crush her hard-won self-reliance.

The only shifter she doesn’t want to push away is Julio Mendoza, a wolf so dominant he’s earned a place on the Southeast council.

Julio doesn’t have the luxury of indulging in the vacation his psychic shrink insists he needs. He can’t turn his back on responsibilities he’s beginning to wish he’d never shouldered. When an obsessive ex endangers Sera, though, instinct drives him to get her out of town. Watching her come to life outside the city makes him feel like he’s finally done something right, and her touch ignites desire he doesn’t want to ignore.

But soon, lighthearted flirting becomes a dangerous game of seduction, where every day spent falling into each other is another day avoiding the truth. Sera’s ex isn’t the only one who’d disapprove of their relationship. There are wolves who would kill to get Sera out of Julio’s life—starting with his own blood kin.