The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) (9 page)

Humans were so goddamned tribal. If you weren’t Us, you were Other, and Other was to be feared. And where Fear walked, its big brother Hate followed in the shadows, growing stronger and more powerful.

I blew out a heavy sigh. Not that people would always be wrong to fear. God knows there were plenty of shifters only too ready to do them harm. I just felt sorry for the innocent ones caught up in the mess, and the humans who’d never heard of shifters who would now be victimised just because.

A tweet caught my eye and I frowned.
Dead woman a dragon?
I clicked the link and arrived at a feature article in the
Sydney Morning Herald
.

“Damn. Look at this.”

Ben read aloud, his breath stirring my hair. “
Sources close to the coroner have suggested there could be a link between the mystery woman pulled from the harbour in the early hours of New Year’s Day and the dragon battle that took place on and around the Harbour Bridge that morning.
Sources close to the coroner? What does that mean?”

“Don’t know.” My thoughts flashed to Detective Hartley. The death of the “mystery woman” would be treated as a murder investigation. Would that one cross her desk too? But nothing tied Valeria’s naked body to me. I was jumping at shadows. “I guess cause of death is pretty obvious. She’d have a giant hole through her chest. But I don’t see how the coroner can link that to the dragons, even if he can prove that she died at roughly the same time as the dragon hit the water.”

“He’d have to officially recognise the supernatural first,” Ben said. “And that’s not going to happen, especially with Elizabeth doing her damnedest to convince people it’s all a giant con trick.”

If only everyone
would
be convinced. The spectre of the Middle Ages loomed over me. If people died, it would be my fault, but what choice had I had? Once Valeria had turned dragon there’d been no other way out.

In other news, the Prime Minister announces the formation of a special taskforce to investigate allegations of supernatural activities in Australia. Taskforce Jaeger will begin its investigations with a review of evidence and eyewitness accounts of the alleged dragon sightings over Sydney Harbour in the early hours of January 1st.

I sighed and rubbed at my face. Alleged dragon sightings. Right. Not even one o’clock in the afternoon, and I was already exhausted.

Ben dropped a kiss on my hair. “Don’t sweat it. They’ve got nothing. Let’s focus on more important things.”

There sure were a lot of those. We had to find more men, and I desperately needed allies in the shifter community. I had to keep Detective Hartley at bay, keep my nose clean and keep Ben alive. I had to find out who’d tried to kill him and where Jason had got to.

“Which ones?” I asked, feeling the weight of all those enormous and often-incompatible responsibilities.

He turned the chair around and drew me gently to my feet. For once we were alone, which was pretty unusual these days, though my enhanced hearing picked up other voices elsewhere in the house. A bright square of sunlight lay on the carpet, and dust motes danced through it, swirling with the movement of our bodies. He stood a head taller than me, though I wasn’t a short woman, and I lifted my face to his.

“Lachie will be busy for hours with his Lego. I thought we might have a little nap. Afterwards, of course.”

“Afterwards?” He stood very close. I gulped in a deep breath, full of his fresh woodsy aftershave and a warm Ben-smell. My pulse sped up. “But your arm …”

“I have an injured arm. I’m not
dead
.”

“True.” I pressed against him and felt his body respond. “In fact, you seem … rather lively.”

Amusement glittered in his eyes. His good hand slid down my back, producing little shivers of delight, and cupped one cheek firmly. “Come upstairs and I’ll show you just how lively.”

I wound my arms round his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. The world would just have to burn without me for a while. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Sex is a wonderful stress release. Dr Ben was prepared to prescribe a great deal of it, but even his enthusiastic assistance couldn’t produce more than a temporary relief. I had an appointment with Trevor, the leader of the Sydney werewolf pack, the next morning, and my nerves grew as the time ticked away till the meeting.

Garth and I waited in the study. Leandra had preferred to call it her office, but come on—who was she kidding? Sure, she had the big antique desk, the plush carpet and visitors’ chairs so padded you could lose yourself in them. She had state-of-the-art computer equipment and a bank of filing cabinets that looked the part, but she barely worked. Those cabinets were so empty you could have hidden a body in them. She lived off the interest from a bucket load of investments, but the most she ever did in this room was sign a few papers. She had an accountant and a financial planner who handled everything for her.

She hadn’t even earned the money in the first place—it was the “seed capital” a dragon queen provided to each of her queen daughters when they left her protection to face the rigours of the proving. It wasn’t much of a risk for the queen—only the winner got to keep it. The losers’ assets came back to their mother, and if they’d managed the money well, often with a substantial profit. Leandra—or her financial advisors, at least—had turned a small fortune into a significantly larger one.

I was now the beneficiary, and determined Elizabeth wouldn’t see a penny of her money back.

Garth sighed and checked his watch for at least the third time since sitting down across the desk from me. The chair next to him awaited his brother, the pack leader. It amused me to receive Trevor from the position of power behind a desk, as he’d done to me only last week. I wanted him in no doubt as to who was in charge.

“Do you want me to call you when he gets here?” I asked, as Garth shifted restlessly. Not for the first time that morning, I rearranged the pens on the red leather that was set into the desk top. His nerves were catching. “You could go make Steve’s happy life miserable instead of waiting around.”

I’d considered not having him present at all. Though they were brothers, Garth was an exile. Some pack leaders might take offence at his inclusion in the interview. But I had Trevor pegged as a fairly level-headed guy, and last week he’d seemed to reject Garth more because of pressure from the rest of the pack than from any personal inclination.

Besides, Garth might be able to push his brother to join us in ways I couldn’t. I had to take every advantage I could find.

“I’ll wait,” Garth growled.

Yesterday’s playfulness had disappeared. Grumpy Garth was back.

“When’s full moon?” I asked.

The scowl deepened. Asking a werewolf when full moon was due was like accusing a woman of having PMS. But it was a valid question. The proximity of full moon did affect werewolves’ moods, no two ways about it. And if Trevor was feeling its pull he’d be more prickly and unreasonable than normal.

“Not for eight nights.”

That was common too. Ask a schoolteacher how long it is till the holidays, and they’ll answer you to the hour. Werewolves were the same. They knew exactly when to expect the moon. It was never “about a week” or “in a fortnight”. Eight nights. Eight nights exactly until they were forced to change, whether they wanted to or not, and either run wild or lock themselves safely away. Any other night they could take wolf form or not as they wished. But on full moon they couldn’t resist the pull of their darker nature.

Full moon night was a bad night to meet a werewolf.

Not that there was ever a great night to meet a werewolf. I’d had personal experience in how terrifying such an encounter could be.

“How long have you been a werewolf?” I asked on impulse.

Also not a polite question in shifter society, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t reply. Leandra had taken him on as a favour to Trevor after the pack leader had been forced to exile him from the pack. She’d found him a useful addition to her team, but she hadn’t been interested in his personal history. Whereas I felt very close to him, despite only meeting him a week ago, in less-than-ideal circumstances. Funny how bonding it can be to dig up a grave together. They should include it in team-building management courses. But I still knew very little about him. He’d mentioned last week that he’d been turned, but hadn’t gone into detail.

“Sixteen years,” he said eventually. “Coming up seventeen in June.”

Leandra had assumed he’d been born shifter, as most wolves were. Turned werewolves were rare, which was just as well, or the secret existence of werewolves wouldn’t have stayed secret very long. Only a person who was bitten on the night of full moon would become a werewolf—and didn’t I wish I’d known
that
the night Garth attacked me and I was panicking about transforming. Unfortunately for the victim, wolves were so crazed by the influence of the moon that night that the attacks were usually too frenzied to leave survivors.

“And Trevor? Was he turned at the same time?”

“No. He’s a born.”

I blinked. “But you’re brothers. How does that work?”

“He’s younger than me. Mum was turned after she had me.”

“What about your father? Was he turned too?”

“He died.” He crossed his arms and stared down at the carpet, as if he’d found something fascinating in its design. “She met Trevor’s dad after she joined the pack.”

I stared at the top of his bowed head. His defensive posture made it clear he didn’t like discussing this. I supposed I could drag it out of him if I had the patience for playing twenty questions, but really, it wasn’t any of my business. I was only trying to distract myself from my own nerves. I shifted the pens again instead.

It made sense, though. Ever since I’d discovered Garth wasn’t born a werewolf I’d been wondering how on earth his brother had managed to work his way up to pack leader starting as a rank outsider. Though packs weren’t strictly dynastic, it was more common than not for the offspring of a pack leader to become leader in turn, and absolutely unheard of for a newcomer to the shifter world to make it that far. Trevor was an unlikely enough candidate as it was, given his relatively small physical size and his rather bookish air.

Not that I had any illusions about his mild-mannered exterior. I knew he could be a ruthless bastard when the situation called for it.

Before I could change my mind and subject Garth to a thorough grilling on his personal history, Steve knocked on the door. The ruthless bastard himself followed Steve into the room, looking surprisingly small next to the big half-Maori. Garth and I both stood.

I offered my hand, and Trevor shook it. His grip was firm but not crushing. He was shorter than his brother, only a little taller than me, and looked to be in his early thirties, though his hair had already started to recede.

“Please, have a seat. Can I offer you something to drink?”

Trevor sat—though not till after Garth did. Wolf dominance games were as natural as breathing to them. He declined a drink, so Steve left, closing the door with a definite click, cutting off the noises of the house.

In the silence Trevor cocked his head to one side, an expression of polite puzzlement on his face.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you survived the … drama … since we met, but I understood this meeting was to be with Leandra.”

“It is.” I leaned back in my chair, projecting a relaxed assurance I didn’t feel. “You’re speaking to her.”

He frowned and looked around as if expecting Leandra to jump from behind the filing cabinet. “I don’t understand.”

“At our last meeting you said you couldn’t take sides with me against Valeria. You said if only Leandra herself were standing in front of you asking, your answer might have been different.”

“I remember what I said. And my answer hasn’t changed. If Leandra wants something from me she can ask me herself.”

I put my hands flat on the desk, the leather inset giving slightly beneath my fingers, and leaned toward him. “She is. I am. I
am
Leandra.”

He rose from the chair, his expression chilly. “Don’t waste my time. I know what Leandra looks like. And I’ve seen her on the news, like every other man and his dog, killing Valeria, so I know she’s still alive. Is she injured? Is that why she’s hiding?”

I didn’t move. Inside I reached for the rest of my essence. Only a little. It got easier every time. Claws as long as sword blades sprang from my fingertips with a tiny snick, and Trevor flinched.

“Let me put it another way. Leandra and I have merged into one personality.” I lifted one hand from the desk, not in a menacing way, but so he could clearly see the curve of dragon claws, harder than steel. “You won’t be seeing her old body again, but rest assured, she’s here. Please sit down.”

He subsided into the chair, eyes fixed on the wicked length of my claws. I willed them away and folded my hands on the desk top.

He glanced at his brother. “Is this true?”

Garth nodded. “Every word.”

“Bloody hell.” He looked back at me. “You’ll have to tell me the story.”

“Some other time, perhaps. Today I’d like to discuss a mutually beneficial arrangement such as we used to have.”

Good Lord, I even sounded like Leandra. Well, at least that might convince him I was telling the truth.

“Ah.” He drummed the fingers of his right hand lightly on the arm of his chair. His fingernails were short and very clean. Anyone further from the popular image of a werewolf would be hard to find. There was nothing wild or unkempt about him. Even the faint shadow of stubble on his cheeks looked more city chic than weekend hangover. Werewolves always had a problem with fast hair regrowth. He wore a tie and a long-sleeved blue business shirt, as if he’d just stepped out of the office.

Quite possibly he had. He had a thriving accountancy practice. I could see that logical mind stepping through the options as he sat there, fingers moving in a quiet rhythm.

“I assume you’ve heard about the bounty?”

“What bounty?” Garth growled, instantly alert.

I tensed too, though I tried to hide the fact. “Bounty” was not a good word.