Jabir is more urgent this time. “Well, did you?”
I exhale a hefty puff of smoke. “I don’t know.”
Passing the dance floor, the sensual vision of Vessa’s voluptuous body grinding up on the stranger sizzles in the spotlight of my mind. If only I’d paid more attention to what the asshole looked like instead of sulking there in all my envy . . .
Swallowing tightly, I elaborate for them. “Like I said, it was hard to tell if he was a lycan or just some lanky stoner. If you ask me, he kind of looked like Kiersten. If she was a dude.”
Kiersten, my sister’s ultra-nerdy overprotective ex-girlfriend.Deadex-girlfriend, I should add.
Cringing at the name, Axe grunts. “Don’t fuck with me.”
I crack my neck on each side and flag down our middle-aged head of surveillance, who’s having himself a smoke break. He nods to me and walks over to the office, punches the four-digit code in, and invites the two Bleeding Sun officials inside. Axe dips his head, curtly thanking him.
He hands over a sheet hot off the press. “Here is the document you requested, Alpha. Photos should be coming through to your email any minute.”
“Excellent,” he grumbles, just in time to hear the notification ping.
While Axe plops down in the nearest seat to start browsing through pack files and cross-referencing the names, the security manager signs into the computer bank, allowing Jabir to access last night’s footage on seven different monitors.
“You take left three, I’ll take right four,” Jabir orders. “Starting from 9:00.”
“Zoom in on anyone with tattoos. Specifically on the neck. We’re looking for a scorpion.”
Knowing what transpired here has my brother so on edge that his palms are clammy. On a good day, Axe is insufferably broody. But today, his eyes alone could incinerate this entire room. He’s ready to hunt down and carve up any male that so much as blinks at Vessa the wrong way on camera.
Hopefully I don’t make any surprise appearances.
I follow along with the footage of clubgoers silently until Axe barks an order. “I want names, shift schedules, and background check files of all the bouncers who worked last night. Then I’ll decide who can come to work tonight and who we’re terminating.”
My temper soars. This is my club. Not his pack. “These aremyemployees. I will evaluate them as I see fit.”
If anyone on my payroll has something shady to hide, I would be the first to know. Snuffing out secrets is my specialty. I was born a divulger, one of the most highly sought augments that allows lycans to perceive whether someone is harboring false intentions. I wouldn’t call it a gift. Once you learn that in truth, everyone lies, it becomes pretty difficult to trust or form attachments with anyone. Nevertheless, Axe is determined to keep me on Bleeding Sun’s roster.
He grits his teeth, turning to face me. “It wouldn’t be necessary for us to step in if they were properly evaluated the first time, now, would it?”
I slam my cigarette down on the metal desk, extinguishing the flame an inch from his left hand. He doesn’t flinch.
Just when things can’t get any worse, four more of the Alpha’s dogs show up at the doorstep. Axe stands to address them, showing his back to me. “Alright, boys. Two levels, two pairs. I want this building searched top to bottom.”
“This is bullshit,” I snarl.
His focus returns to the documents that lay in front of him. “Don’t take it personally, Dom. For once in your life, just try to cooperate.”
Fuck this. I need another cigarette.
Without another word, I stuff my hands in my pockets and make to exit, nearly colliding with someone in the doorway. Kimberly, my newest bartender. Her cheeks flare pink, as they always do any time Axe pays a visit. “I—uh—sorry, sir. A package came for you. I set it outside your office.”
Hastily, I sidestep her and launch up the staircase.
The cardboard box is much smaller than I’d anticipated. It sure took long enough to get here from the Volkenese anthropologist I bought it off. After five weeks of waiting, I shred through the packaging and carefully set the snakeskin-bound book on my desk. My index finger smears a shadow of dust away from the gold-foiled lettering, which reads,Drovniye Sredstva yt Likantropy.Ancient Remedies for Lycanthropy.
If there’s one thing I am grateful for, having grown up in Lupine Manor, it’s my rigorous schooling in Volkenese. Had I not been tutored by my older siblings, I likely never would have stumbled across this text on the black market of supernatural oddities. One that, curiously enough, was banned by the Yinsew capital archives eight decades ago.
Over the years, I’ve acquired nearly every prohibited book on the list, searching for what the Council has gone great lengths to disavow. What Axe and the rest of Bleeding Sun are certain is impossible.
A cure.
Chapter 18
