“I’m amazed anyone would want to do this for a living, let alone a beautiful woman. And that brownie you just put in your mouth was probably laced with narcotics to sedate his next victim. He’s selling Shifters into slavery; do you think they go willingly?”
He wiped at her mouth, and a tiny bit of terror raced through her as she spat on the floor. Kat should have known better, but her appetite had gotten the best of her, along with having Prince as a distraction.
“If you start to feel dizzy, I’m taking you back to Nadia’s,” he stated.
She knocked his hand away and stormed off. “I’m fine. I barely licked off enough of that sugar to have done any serious damage. Now let’s eat some tacos and get this day over with.” Kat pushed the main door open, her faced heated with embarrassment and anger all at once. “By the way, you’re a terrible partner!”
* * *
“These are sooo yummy,”Kat sang, rocking back and forth in her metal chair, biting into her taco. “Spicy,spiiicy.”
Prince eyed her impatiently while finishing the last of his beef burrito. By the time they’d stopped off at the taco stand, the effects of whatever drug Kat had consumed from the brownie topping were beginning to show. She wasn’t sleepy or knocked out, but her altered behavior was similar to someone who was inebriated or stoned.
He decided that when she finished her sixth taco they were leaving. She had already been eyeing the beef nachos, and this buffet had to end or they’d never make it to the second location.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked, wiggling her fingers in front of her face.
“I had a brother once, but he perished long ago in a great battle.”
“Sorry. That must have been hard for you.”
Prince appreciated Kat’s sincerity, and her honesty was refreshing.
“It must be lonely not to have any family left.” Kat sucked on her straw, and it made a terrible slurping sound when the soda reached the bottom. She gave it a shake and the ice rattled. “I don’t know what I’d do without my sister.”
“What about your mother?”
“She left us for good.” Kat set down the yellow cup and a gust of wind blew some of her dark hair forward, but she didn’t make any attempt to fix it. “I checked up on her a few years ago, but she’s hard to track since she’s still with that rogue and they move around a lot. I think her pregnancy was an accident, and maybe two babies at once was too much for her to handle. I guess I’m used to her being gone since I’d only lived with her a few years of my life. But my papa is my heart, and so is Nadia. Maybe she’s Tweedledee and I’m Tweedledum, but we’re two tweedles, you know?”
The effects of the drug were beginning to wear off, although not entirely. He much preferred when she was talkative and happy to this altered version of herself that was sullen and introspective.
“My pack is my family.” Prince wadded up the empty burrito wrapper.
“Are they? Do you hang out with them and watch TV?”
“You have a fixation on television.”
She shrugged and sat back. “Everyone has their thing. Nadia loves nice clothes and those breakable figurines, my papa loves fishing, and I love reruns ofSeinfeld.”
“As I recall, your father was a skilled hunter.”
She flashed a dazzling smile and looked up at the sky. “He is. More with a crossbow than a gun, but he really loves fishing. Sometimes we’d take a camping trip and spend all day on the lake in a small boat. He’s like a fish whisperer or something—you should haveseenthe ones he caught. Afterward, we’d cook them up and then he’d tell stories over a campfire. He tells great stories.”
Prince couldn’t help but notice how she spoke of her father in the present tense. Kat truly believed with her whole heart that Alex was still alive. “Yes, he did. Your father weaved some tall tales.”
She laughed and wadded up her wrapper, setting it next to the other five. “That’s the truth. Half the time I wasn’t sure if he was making it up.”
Prince drew a deep breath, taking in the smells and sounds of the street corner around them. Taco meat, hot concrete, summer wind, honeysuckle growing over the concrete wall behind them. “Every story your father told had some truth to it; he just happened to be a master at embellishing the boring parts.”
Kat leaned back in her chair. “How did you meet?”
“I’d wandered into his territory and fell on a steel trap. My injuries were severe, and I could have lost my leg. When he discovered me, I thought he was going to take my head for trespassing. I was an alpha, and we both knew I had intentionally ignored the territorial markings. In those days, that blatant disregard was an act of war. A Packmaster had the right to slay any alpha who crossed into his domain.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Because Alex liked to see the good in men. He had foresight most men didn’t and chose to release me from the trap and take me in. I was looking for a fresh start, and he gave me men from his own pack. He wanted us to be allies, but we became brothers by circumstance.”
Prince could see a glimmer of Alex in Kat’s eyes, and he felt a pang of remorse for the absence of his friend.
