The teenager’s palm tasted like grease and salt, and I was 99% certain my opponent hadn’t washed after using the restroom. Gross. Still, the eyes that advanced toward me were entirely human. And the male’s scent was more fast-food pickles than incipient fur.

  So I didn’t bother dulling my reflexes. Just hooked my knees around Pickle Breath’s ankles and pulled so hard he hit the ground with an audible thud even as I struggled to regain my own footing.

  Which didn’t leave me in the clear, of course. Not with four other gang members still reaching toward me, their hands making up in number what they lacked in supernatural speed.

  Despite the advancing front of heady testosterone, I stole a moment to peer at my sister as she perched atop the wall just where I’d left her. Predictably, Kira had completely ignored my previous commandment. If I didn’t miss my guess, she was currently trying to decide which gang member to leap upon first.

  “Go home,” I mouthed again, hoping our opponents had forgotten about the girl’s presence. Just imagining what would happen if they grabbed my innocent sister sent my chest shrinking in on itself, forcing life-giving air out of my lungs....

  So I let the barest hint of fox fill my features as I glared directly at her. Let Kira know from my sharpening teeth and darkening eyes that I was serious about being obeyed this time around.

  And, to my relief, Kira hesitated only one more second before nodding. Then she spun on her heel and sprinted away so quickly none of the gang members would have been able to catch her even if they’d tried.

  The distant shriek of a city bus’s air brakes promised Kira would be safe within seconds if she played her cards right. Which left me with no one to worry about except my lonesome.

  Good thing I had aggressions to work out of my own system since the field was currently rather overbalanced on my opponents’ behalf.

  Chapter 8

  Five against one was a bit much even for me, but I didn’t bother turning my star ball into a sword this time around. Not when goons like the ones before me measured the world in terms of greater and lesser forces. If I whipped a blade out of nowhere and vanquished them today, they’d just try again with weapons of their own tomorrow. On the other hand, if I beat up five bozos using nothing except my own body...well, maybe they’d leave my kid sister alone should she ever sneak out and walk down this street by herself in the future.

  So I dipped beneath the closest male’s grasping arms and used his own momentum to push him toward the pavement. Thug two received a kick to the chest and three didn’t see the arm-twist coming. Which left only the tallest gang member standing...plus Pickle Breath, who was clambering back to his feet on my right-hand side.

  The recent show of strength really should have been enough to dull their aggressions. After all, these teenagers were just kids barely older than my sister. So I gave them an opportunity to cut their losses without further bruising doled out by me.

  “I recommend you walk away while you still can,” I told the tall guy who apparently believed in leading from the rear. Then, glancing at the three teens still catching their breath atop the pavement, I added, “Or crawl. Whichever works best for you.”

  “You need to pay up if you want protection in our neighborhood,” Tall Guy countered, acting as if he had a full posse behind him rather than being the only member of his gang with all body parts still intact. “We’ve carried your ass long enough. Stay and pay, or go and...”

  I couldn’t decide whether or not to roll my eyes as Tall Guy struggled to come up with a word that rhymed with “go.” Because I’d felt bad about beating up gang members who were really just confused teenagers. But if their leader was going to force the issue...well, I hadn’t enjoyed a good fight in over a week due to Ma Scrubbs’ requirement that I lose my most recent Arena match.

  “Go and owe?” I suggested, taking a single step forward. Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t really blame Kira for beating up those girls earlier in the day. Not when my own feet were itching with the urge to leap and kick, not when my fingers tingled with the knowledge that battle was imminent....

  “Let the water flow,” my dead mother’s voice warned me. And her words materializing in my brain shocked me just as much the second time around as they had the first.

  Perhaps that’s why I merely stood there as a faint scent of musky fur washed over me. Since when did werewolves follow me around day after day? And did my maternal ghost’s sudden chattiness have anything to do with the presence of a shifter where one didn’t belong?

  Unfortunately, Tall Guy took advantage of my surprise to get the jump on me. The teenager wasn’t willing to be laughed at in front of his comrades, and he was apparently willing to do something about that affront. I barely caught a flicker of movement before he was reaching into the back of his baggy trousers and pulling out a revolver that changed the odds in an instant.

  The weapon reflected a beam of pure sunlight into my retinas before tilting so I stared down the dark barrel instead. “Die, ho,” the gang leader said grimly.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  WITH A WEREWOLF NEARBY, I couldn’t dodge out of the way of the oncoming bullet. But I could use my star ball to protect myself.

  Apparently it was too much to ask to manipulate magic into a solid barrier while also bracing myself against the impact though. Because the cartridge hit dead center in my chest so hard it sent me sprawling, the scab on my hand scraping loose against the pavement as I attempted to catch myself before my skull hit the ground.

  And even though I didn’t crack my head open, I did land with enough force that I ended up unable to do more than watch as the newcomer launched himself onto those poor thugs with the full force of a pissed-off werewolf. My protector was outwardly human but inwardly bestial. And once I finally blinked tears out of my eyes sufficiently to make out my ally’s identity, I found myself unsurprised by the realization that I was far too familiar with this ravening beast.

  A swordsman’s grace in an athlete’s body. Gunner. Of course. Who else would be tailing me so slyly that he could come to my supposed rescue at just the wrong moment...yet again?

  The werewolf-in-human-clothing wasn’t even breathing heavily when he paused thirty seconds later to assess the damage. His opponents, on the other hand, were another matter entirely. Tall Guy whined like a nap-deprived toddler, his arm broken and his pistol kicked twenty yards away. Pickle Breath swore steadily, but even he kept his eyes down and his head bowed in instinctive submission to the beast within their midst.

  And the other three kids? They’d run off the moment Gunner turned his attention elsewhere, proving they were smarter than their so-called boss.

  “Mai is under my protection,” Gunner growled then, words barely human as he knelt atop Tall Guy’s prone figure with the teen’s unbroken arm twisted up behind his back. The werewolf’s muscles rippled with his attempt to maintain humanity, and his dark eyebrows lowered into a glowering frown. “You so much as look at her funny, and your future ends precipitously. Do you understand what I’m saying here?”

  I wasn’t so sure Tall Guy knew the meaning of the word “precipitously,” but he certainly got the gist of the werewolf’s threat anyway. Because the boy cringed in on himself so severely he appeared shorter than I was. And his breathing became so sporadic he managed no more than a frantic nod as I took advantage of the lull to pry myself off the pavement and pad over to their side.

  Not that I wanted to put myself between an angry alpha and his quarry. But while Gunner might have seemed like a nice-enough guy in the Arena, I didn’t trust any werewolf to protect the innocent. And Tall Guy—despite his chosen profession—was innocent enough.

  So I twisted half of my star ball into the shape of a dagger, secreting the weapon beneath my sleeve where it would be accessible if Gunner turned overly aggressive once I moved to interrupt. Then I opened my mouth and accepted the werewolf’s annoying yet helpful support. “And my sister as well,” I murmured just loudly enough for the shifter to hear me without impinging upon Tall Guy’s attempts to smooth his gasps into words.

  “And Mai’s sister,” Gunner added, driving his knee deeper into Tall Guy’s kidneys while twisting the poor kid’s arm up higher into the air. “The sister is mine also. Swear it.”

  The scent of fur grew stronger as Gunner’s humanity continued slipping. And I’d already opened my mouth to let the kid off the hook when Tall Guy finally forced out a babbling plea for mercy. “Yes, yes, yes, yes!” the teenager shrieked, writhing within the larger male’s grip.

  At which point I placed one hand on Gunner’s shoulder to remind him that my former opponents were only human. If he broke them, they’d remain broke.

  Alpha werewolves hate being contradicted, but Gunner’s response was more extreme than I’d anticipated. Because before I could so much as skitter sideways, his hand reached out to grab my wrist with the speed of a striking cobra. Then his nostrils flared as he took in the liquid pooling across my palm.

  “Blood,” he noted. At which point his gaze landed on the hole in my sweatshirt and his eyes widened. “You’ve been shot.”

  Chapter 9

  Gunner rose to his feet so abruptly I would have lost my balance if his hands hadn’t been tearing at the neckline of my sweatshirt, attempting to rip fabric away from my skin. Out of the corner of one eye, I caught sight of the remaining gang members fleeing the scene of their defeat. But I wasn’t concerned about teenage hoodlums any longer. Instead, I was fighting off a male who outweighed me by approximately a ton of muscle and who possessed supernatural speed and agility to boot.

  “Stop!” I demanded, bringing one knee up to hit the male equivalent of an eject button. Because, yes, I’ll admit it—I had previously found the alpha werewolf as enticing and dangerous as a shiny new rapier. But I didn’t intend to assuage my curiosity on an open city street.

  Unfortunately, Gunner’s instincts proved far too well-honed to fall prey to the typical female self-defense moves. Instead, the alpha’s easy twist out of my reach suggested that he was as adept at street fighting as he was at protecting his brother. And this time around, my throat tightened as I realized I was trapped within the vise-grip of werewolf arms.

  Well, not quite trapped. The icy dagger slid down into my left fingers with facility despite the mandates of gravity begging it to move in the opposite direction. And my lips twitched into a smirk as I recalled how easily a lefty strike typically worked its way through an opponents’ unwitting guard.

  But before I could decide between the long-lasting damage of a stab and the shock value of a swipe, the fabric of my shirt tore at last with a resounding riiiiiip. Then cold air rushed across my chest at the same moment Gunner flipped the dagger out of my hand with an almost-gentle bend of his wrist.

  I was both disarmed and in dishabille. And while either state might have been enough to leave me shaken, it was the separation from my star ball that struck like a punch to my gut. The fragment of my soul soared away before I could beg it to change trajectory, and I bent inward as my strength fled right along with my blade.

  “I need to see where you’re wounded,” Gunner growled, his words laden with more emotion than seemed justified by the ugly gray of my sports bra. Oh, right, the bullet hole. I shook my head woozily, trying to recall why showing the handsy alpha my holeless skin wasn’t the obvious route out of this untenable situation.

  And as I pondered, Gunner took matters into his own hands. “Easy does it,” he murmured, voice hoarse with emotion. One huge hand slid down to press almost gently against my lower back while the other leveraged my shoulders up. Then chilly air gaped down the dramatically enlarged neckline of my sweatshirt, bringing my barely covered chest closer to the werewolf’s searching eyes.

  IT WAS HARD TO THINK with a third of my soul glinting against the pavement two body lengths away. So despite the sure knowledge that retrieving the star ball via magic was a bad idea, I nudged at the pseudo-metal with my mind’s eye, dragging it inch by inch across the road as stealthily as an alley cat stalked a mouse.

  And the mere change in direction of my soul fragment snapped the rest of my brain back into focus. He can’t know what I am, I realized, hoping it wasn’t already too late.

  Luckily, I could work quickly when haste was necessary. Calling upon the rest of my magic with far less ceremony than usual, I molded the icy star-ball fragment into a medallion. Sent out a tendril of magic to solidify into a gold chain looped around my neck. Then mental fingers slipped the bulky disc into my left bra cup a split second before Gunner’s hand-on-shoulders momentum bared my unclothed chest to view.

  It turned out I needn’t have hurried though. Because the werewolf who had been so aggressive one moment earlier paused before digging into my underwear. His fingers hovered atop the second layer of fabric while his scent grew subtly more human as he overcame the instincts of his beast.

  “I need to look at....” He paused, averted his eyes, and didn’t quite manage to complete the thought as the faintest tinge of red infused his cheeks.

  The abrupt shyness from a formerly brash alpha was endearing. So rather than snapping back in retaliation for earlier abuses, I merely pulled the medallion out of its hiding place with a jerk to the chain that hadn’t existed seconds before. “The bullet never hit me,” I informed him, speaking as slowly as I did with the most annoying of my sixth graders. “It’s the old Bible-in-the-breast-pocket routine. No wound. No blood. No reason for you to be pawing at my breasts.”

  Seconds after I spoke, though, I realized the error in my logic. Kira would have rolled her eyes at such an obvious continuity flaw in someone else’s magic trick. Because if the medallion had been inside my bra cup from the get-go...why was there no hole in that second layer of fabric? Why wasn’t there the bulge of a bullet breaking up the gentle curve of my breast?

  Moving as swiftly as I could, I pulled a safety pin out of nowhere...or, rather, out of the back of the medallion, which shrank by half a centimeter as it lost a twentieth of its mass. Then I covered up the evidence quite literally, pinning my sweatshirt back together with hands that trembled only slightly.

  Meanwhile, the boomeranged dagger nudged at my boot, its peregrinations complete. Just what I needed—to draw further attention to inconsistencies in my spur-of-the-moment solution. Still, I couldn’t just leave it there.

  So, neck prickling with danger, I bent down to collect the errant weapon, feeling absurd as I went through the motions of stashing a trickle of magic away in an imaginary sheath up one sleeve.

  Up my right sleeve. Shit. Could I be more disingenuous?

  Before me, the werewolf’s brows furrowed in consideration. He knew something was cockeyed...which meant it was past time to make my escape.

  “Thanks for nothing,” I said grimly, turning away from a predator who possessed the means, motive, and opportunity to snap my neck between his long fingers. Then, forcing my feet not to break into a run, I headed blindly toward the far end of the block.

  Chapter 10

  Unfortunately, I’d only taken a single step when Gunner’s hand came down upon my shoulder. And I hated myself for the tingle of awareness that had nothing to do with the werewolf tendency to hunt fox shifters as one of his fingers slid sideways to brush up against my bare skin.

  “Wait,” Gunner ordered. Or rather...requested? Because there was no electric tingle of alpha compulsion seasoning the single syllable this time. He wasn’t telling. He was asking...well, as much as an alpha could bring himself to ask.

  I was too much of a teacher not to reward good behavior. So I swiveled back to face him, arching an eyebrow even as I cocked my head. “What?”

  “I wanted you to know the offer’s still open.” Confusion must have painted itself across my face because Gunner elaborated. “The job. My brother headed back to headquarters this morning, but I’m here for the duration. Well, not literally here. In town.” He stopped himself before explanation turned into babble, held out what appeared to be a newly printed business card.

  Curiosity forced me to accept the small rectangle of card stock. The werewolf had rented an office in the city while searching for a single Something? From the address, the space couldn’t have come cheap.

  “I’m not going to take a job I know nothing about,” I countered, even as dollar signs danced through my head like moonbeams. How much, I wondered, might the werewolf in front of me spend hiring a local guide and investigative assistant? Enough to pay Kira’s tuition? Enough to buy my voracious sibling salami every day of the week?

  “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything nefarious,” the werewolf in front of me promised. His eyes were hooded, his voice sweet as honey. “There’s something dangerous walking these streets and I intend to find it. To keep people like your sister safe. There are elements involved I think you might be familiar with....”

  Only when his words trailed off did I realize that I’d been inching closer with each of his syllables, my chin tilting upward as if Gunner was a magnet and I was iron filings drawn toward him through no action of my own. Bad idea, Mai, I berated myself. Forcing myself to take one long step backward, I decided then and there that Kira and I would be better off living on ramen noodles rather than placing ourselves in the sight line of a seductively smooth alpha like this one.

  Unfortunately, the star chain around my neck was unimpressed by my decision to be my own master. Instead, the mere thought of food was enough to remind it of last night’s unpaid milk money, and now the magic sent cold trickles shivering over my shoulders and turning icier by the second. I needed to get to that 7-Eleven sooner rather than later. I needed to pay off my debt....

 

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