Ruby didn’t know why she stopped in her tracks. It wasn’t because he said her name correctly despite his faint Spanish accent. Spanish was about as far from Polish as it was possible to get.
No. There had been something about the way his voice hit her nervous system that caused her to do what he said without thinking about it. Power with a capitalP. Fear had her spinning around to face him, unable to let him stand at her back even with Alan there.
He watched her face, the beautiful dark man, frowning a little. For all of Alan’s reaction and Moreno’s obvious ability to command her movement, she couldn’t feel anything odd about him. She could tell when someone had supernatural abilities: witch, werewolf, or fae. She couldn’t always tell what someone was, but she could tell they were something. In this moment, he seemed no more than human.
She tried to remember if she’d felt his wolf when she’d first seen him—the way she’d understood Alan was a werewolf before he told her. Because she couldn’t feel any of the wildness that usually surrounded werewolves, and that was one of her few talents, even if it worked best on dead people.
She waited for him to do something else to her, but he just watched her with liquid dark eyes. She met his eyes, knowing it was a foolish challenge to a dominant werewolf. For a moment nothing happened—and then she felt as if a veil he held around himself opened to her in a way she wasn’t used to with living beings.
Instead of the usual jumble of emotions and thoughts, she received only one overwhelming impression: age. Years and time sodeep it caused a resonance in her bones and sent her magic humming—and her wrist burned as if the tattoo caught fire.
She froze, suddenly not at all concerned with the danger in front of her, or the reaction that her instant obedience to his voice had caused in her belly. Because her magic had moved, flexing against the binding, and she felthim. Not Moreno, but her monster.
This was not the faint touch of the beginning of a hunt—as she’d felt two weeks ago. He was somewhere near—and he was so hungry. The tattoo on her wrist flared with brutal intensity and she broke into a light sweat as her stomach roiled in terror.
“Ruby?” asked Alan, reading her reaction.
But Moreno just waited. Asil Moreno, who was now her only option for freedom because she’d left running until too late. She looked at the beautiful intruder she’d invited into the one positive thing she managed to do in the world and wondered if she should drag him into her own personal hell.
His lip, she noticed absently as she examined him, was starting to tighten along the edge, hiding a smile—or anger. It was hard to say. But she thought his eyes warmed a bit—though not, she thought, deeply. He held out his hands and, moving his feet minimally like a model, he spun in place until he was facing her again.
Apparently, her examination had been too obvious.
“Ruby,” said Alan again—and she heard the alarm in his voice.
“My apologies,” she told Moreno. “I—”
He shook his head and raised a hand. “Obviously there is more going on here than a blind date, Miss Kowalczyk. You know who and what I am—” He waved at Alan, indicating without words that she wouldn’t have had Alan, the werewolf, with her if she hadn’t been expecting a werewolf. “And I know you are of faelineage.” He tapped his nose with one elegant finger as a wash of gold spiderwebbed across his eyes and faded, leaving the original inky brown behind.
She’d never seen anyone’s eyes do that; that was not how werewolf eyes turned to wolf. She became aware that Moreno was patiently waiting for her response—so she nodded slowly.
“Really,” he said, his voice resigned, “I no longer expect these things to even feel like dates.” He considered her, glanced at Alan, and said, “I presume you need my help.”
Alan nodded.
“No,” she said—responding to his taking her choice away from her. It was irrational to be angry with him for that—he had driven all the way here from somewhere inMontanathinking he was going to go ghost hunting and have a nice dinner. And when he figured out they’d had different plans—he’d jumped right in with graciousness she should be grateful for.
She was aware of Alan’s mute dismay as she continued, “I don’t think my problem has a solution, Mr. Moreno. It is unfair to bring you, a stranger, into my private battle. How about I show you something of what my team can accomplish—let you finish this date without incident as I’m informed there is a betting pool of some sort? Then you can return home in time for your next dating adventure.”
She smiled at him, inviting him to accept her word on the matter. “I’ve had this—” Her tongue stumbled as she tried to find a way to word it so it would not feel like a challenge to him. And it had to be the truth because werewolves could smell a lie. “—problemfor a long time, and it is unlikely to kill me.” No matter how much death would be preferable to the endless cat-and-mouse game.
“Youdo not know who I am,” he said slowly.
“The Moor, right?” Ruby said, hoping—after she said it—that it wasn’t really an epithet.
But he didn’t appear offended. He looked at Alan and, evidently seeing something she didn’t in her friend’s face, Moreno shook his head and changed whatever he’d been going to say.
He gave her a charming smile, which made him even more beautiful—and she was sure he was secretly laughing at her.
“By all means,” he said. “Let’s go hunt ghosts.”
Behind him, Alan’s eyes widened in surprise at Moreno’s response. She wondered what Alan had expected the other werewolf to do.
Asil decided not to argue with her determination to push him away from whatever she’d originally wanted from him. His experience in the past three dates indicated he did not need to force matters—disaster would come in its own time. He braced himself for the rebellion of his wolf at his decision to be patient—and it did not come.
The wolf agreed with his assessment. And he’d scared her once already when she’d instinctively obeyed his command. His wolf was unhappy about that. Asil was intrigued by the strangeness of sharing his skin with a reasonable being.
Today’s date was only minutes long, and already it was shaping into something at least as interesting as his last three dates had been.
