Once I was done, I headed out to my car and drove to the grocery store. The ten-minute walk was only a two-minute drive. A text came through from Felipe as I pulled in, letting me know he had eyes on me. Javi was nowhere in sight, so I got out, leaned against the SUV, and waited.
The waiting went on for longer than it should have. The time for the meet arrived, and Javi had yet to show up. I gritted my teeth. It was obvious what he was doing, and it pissed me off.There was no doubt he was coming. He wouldn’t have agreed on the phone and then not show up. Javi would have just told Felipe to go fuck himself. No, he was making me wait on purpose in a roundabout way to assert his dominance. A true alpha didn’t wait for anyone. That was the message he was sending. It was loud, clear, and irritating.
Ten minutes after the scheduled time, Javi’s muscle car came roaring into the parking lot. It took everything I had not to sneer in disgust as he parked and got out of his car. I needed this to be diplomatic. I had to push my anger below the surface.
Javi’s salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore his usual leather jacket. I never knew how he survived the Florida heat and humidity with that damned jacket on. It was almost fall and still over ninety degrees.
He nodded to me. “Nico.”
“Javi.”
“Well, I’m here. I don’t have a lot of time. What are we discussing?”
I sighed. “You know exactly what we’re talking about.”
Javi raised an eyebrow and ran a hand through his gray goatee. “Elaborate, please.”
“Stay away from Maddy,” I said, forgoing any more preamble. Javi’s eyes narrowed at the mention of her name, but he didn’t respond. “Maddy is mine. I’m going to claim her, and that makes her part of the Lorenzo pack. Now and forever, she’ll have our protection.”
“Claim her?!” Javi shouted. The change on his face was so pronounced that it startled me. “You’re going to try and claim thatthing? You goddamned fool. You have no clue what she’s capable of.”
“Watch your mouth when you talk about her,” I hissed, pointing a finger at him.
“You idiot!” Javi raged. “Do you have any idea what she is? Or are you just trying to get some hot little piece of ass?”
I didn’t justify that with an answer. Instead, I relaxed back against my car, crossing my arms. We glared at each other for several seconds, Javi’s anger growing hotter by the moment.
“Okay,” Javi said, raising his hands. “Let’s lay it all out. Maybe you really are that dense. She’s a monster, Nico. An abomination that can destroy us all. The blood that flows through her veins is tainted.” He pointed in the general direction of the Lorenzo compound. “Thatwomanyou and your family are harboring? She is a beast unlike anything you’ve ever seen. If you’re stupid enough to awaken the monster inside her, then you deserve the shitstorm that’ll follow.”
“All I hear is an old man who’s scared of a woman. Is that what this is, Javi? Is that what your clan is scared of?”
Javi clenched his hands into fist. “Goddammit! Listen to me. Her great-grandfather was a carrier of the blood of Edemas. You know what that means? I know your father told you the stories. Everyone does.”
This was information Luis hadn’t uncovered yet. I wanted to hear everything he knew, so I nodded for him to go on.
“The grandmother was a half-breed. The bloodline is there, but her father was born with human genes and her mother was fully human. That means the Edemas line is diluted.”
“I’m gonna stop you there,” I said. “If the bloodline is so diluted, why is Maddy such athreat to you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, goddammit. It’s the reason she can’t be allowed to survive. If she were to mate with a shifter, there is a chance the dormant beast inside her will react to her mate. It will awaken the latent genes. She could become a shifter.”
I’d assumed as much, but still didn’t think it was reason enough to kill an innocent person. The legends about the crueltyof Edemas probably had some truth to them, but that didn’t mean every single descendant was some psychotic monster that had to be wiped out.
Javi jabbed a finger toward me. “We can’t allow her to become a wolf. She needs to be destroyed. If there was even a one-percent chance she could go on to have a child that was an alpha, then the werewolves could return. You can’t let that happen…unless you want to risk the lives of your entire clan.”
Rage swept across my body. I took two heavy steps toward Javi. “Is that a threat?”
“No. You’re confused. That’s not what I mean. I’m not the threat, that woman is. If the Hollander bloodline was to be restrengthened and the werewolves come back, she’ll be the main reason we are destroyed and subjugated. It will be a bloodbath.”
My mind went to Maddy. Nothing about her seemed like the type of person who would go mad with power. She was kind and gentle. Everything Javi believed was urban legend, paranoia, and bullshit. “Listen, I know exactly what Maddy is capable of. She’s none of the things you’re talking about. The blood is so diluted, even you’re sitting here talking about ‘maybe’ and ‘possibly.’ You have no idea what you’re talking about. You even said her father was a half-breed and her mother was a human. What could you possibly fear from someone like that?”
Veins stood out on Javi’s neck and he slammed his palms into his thighs in frustration. “She’s not what you think she is. Blood doesn’t lie. You’re blind.”
“Blind or not, Maddy is mine. Tell your puppet masters they need to stop pulling your strings. If thisroyal familyor whatever keeps going after her, they’ll be in for a fight they’ll regret.”
Javi’s eyes widened in surprise and he took a step back. Apparently, he hadn’t thought we’d know about the peoplecommanding him. He’d thought it was a secret only he knew. He yanked his car door open. “Fine. Have it your way. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Nico.”
He sped away, not sparing me another look. I watched him go, my mind processing the information. I didn’t need any more proof for who and what Maddy was. But I couldn’t help but wonder if Javi’s story was true. Had it really been centuries since any of Edemas’s descendants could shift? It seemed crazy that none of them had mated with a full shifter. Shifters made up a full third of the earth’s population. The odds that it had never happened over the course of three centuries seemed outlandish.
