phone to call her. “I’ll drop it off tomorrow morning. It was a short circuit, nothing big.”
“Thanks, baby.” His mom was the only one Emmett let get away with calling him “baby.” The one time he’d tried to question her about it, she’d simply stared at him until he’d sighed and given in.
“Has Dad gotten in yet?”
“No,” she told him, her voice holding a rare kind of clarity. “He’s running an extra training session for some of the new soldiers. If things keep going the way they have been, I think there’ll come a time when we’ll have to take a stand against the Psy—we need to be prepared.”
Since his mother was the pack historian, her words carried real weight. “What do you see?”
“I’ve been tracking the Psy Council’s actions since I was a teenager,” she told him, “and year by year, I see more and more darkness creep into their world. They’re slowly going beyond cold, to a place that makes me scared for the Psy race as a whole.”
Emmett felt no pity for the Psy—not given what he’d seen of their tactics, but his mother had always had a soft heart. “Lucas is obviously listening to you—I’m scheduled to teach more sessions as well.” Somewhat to his surprise, he’d inherited his father’s way with the younger members of the pack.
His mother chuckled. “I hear he gave you the ten- to fourteen-year-old crowd.”
“They teach me patience.” It was a deadpan comment.
“Oh, Emmett.” Another laugh. “Why are you single? You’re gorgeous, good with children, and you adore your mother.”
Grinning, he fixed the timecode on the dashboard computer. “Not that you’re biased.”
“I get to be biased about my baby.”
“There is someone,” he found himself saying, “but she’s being stubborn.”
“I like her already.”
Ria did try to ignore Emmett as she’d vowed. But ignoring six feet and a few spare inches of predatory changeling, especially one as quietly dangerous as Emmett, was not an easy task. She could feel his eyes on her even while he stood easy task. She could feel his eyes on her even while he stood outside as she walked into a shop with her grandmother.
“Tea will take some time.” Miaoling patted her arm. “Go and talk to that leopard who looks at you like you’re food.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks. “He does not.” Though
Miaoling made a face at Ria’s response.
Ria kept talking, knowing she was protesting too much. “He’s only protecting us because the Crew poses a threat to DarkRiver’s control of the city.”
“Pah!” Miaoling waved a hand. “I know when a man’s hungry. And if you’d use your woman parts more often, you’d know, too!”
Thankfully, Mr. Wong appeared at that instant, eager to lead Miaoling upstairs to his apartment for their weekly tea-conference, as they called it. The two were as thick as thieves. Ria had no idea what they discussed at these conferences, but her grandmother always had a Cheshire cat smile on her face when she left Mr. Wong’s.
At first, Ria had thought the two were . . . well . . . but her grandmother had put her straight with an unexpectedly solemn response.
“No, Ri-ri. I’ve loved only one man my whole life. I love the same man still.”
The depth of devotion in that single sentence had brought tears to Ria’s eyes. Her grandfather had been twenty years her grandmother’s senior, and had taken his last breath when Ria was fifteen. His death had devastated Miaoling, but she hadn’t ever broken down where Ria could see her. Instead, she’d used the memory of her love as a shield.
Miaoling still spoke to her husband as if he could hear her. Though she never did it when pragmatic Alex was nearby, she was open with it in front of Ria. Because Ria understood. Truly, when she was with her grandmother, she sometimes thought her grandfather was in the room with them, watching over the wife who, he’d often complained, had always made him wait.
Words her grandfather had said on his deathbed, his hand wrapped around his wife’s. Miaoling had smiled and kissed him, teasing him to the last. Now, as Ria watched Miaoling ascend to the second floor of the shop, she felt her heart contract. “Grandmother?”
“Yes?” Miaoling looked over her shoulder, her eyes warm, full of silent encouragement.
“How long will you be?”
“Perhaps three hours. We’re having lunch today as well.”
“Then maybe I will go for a stroll.”
Her grandmother smiled and continued on her way.
Heading out of Mr. Wong’s, Ria found Emmett standing to her left, scanning the street. “Have you got someone who can stay here with my grandmother?” she asked.
“She’s already inside,” Emmett said. “Mr. Wong’s planning to tell your grandmother she’s his new assistant.”
“The beautiful brunette minding the shop?” Her eyes widened. “She doesn’t look dangerous enough to swat a fly.”
“Not only can she swat flies, she can kill most men with a single blow.”
Ria felt a sudden sense of inadequacy. “I wish I could do that.”
“If you’re serious,” he said, looking her up and down in a way that was distinctly professional, “I can teach you enough self-defense that you won’t ever feel helpless again. You’re fit and you move well. You should pick it up quick.”
Startled, she stared. “You’d do that?” A few tentative tendrils of hope wrapped around her heart—she’d begun to believe that Emmett was as suffocatingly protective as her father, but this argued differently.
“How much time do we have now?”
“Three hours.”
He straightened away from the wall. “We can practice in a small basement gym members of the pack use when they can’t get out of the city for a good hard run. You’ll need workout gear.”
Ria thought about it. “I’ll buy some. There’s a shop two blocks over.” That way, none of her family would even know about the training. Not that their objections would’ve stopped her—but she didn’t have time to have the argument.
Emmett slid his hand along Ria’s arm, positioning her as she needed to be, and asked himself—for the hundredth time—why he was torturing himself like this. Even in the loose sweats and T-shirt she’d changed into, the woman who currently stood with her back to his chest set his body on fire. But the little mink didn’t seem inclined to play—she’d been all business since the moment they got to the gym. The leopard wasn’t pleased. Neither was the man. But no way was he going to push himself on Ria and make her uncomfortable. Not after what that bloody waste of space from the Crew had done to her.
“There.” He released her. “Perfect. Now kick.”
Ria brought up her leg in a forceful, fast kick. It wasn’t graceful or poetic. It was hard, rough, dirty. Emmett didn’t care about pretty. He cared about making sure she could protect herself. “I want you to practice for ten minutes while I go make a few calls.”
Giving him a nod, Ria began to go through the beginner routine he’d devised. She was a fast learner, but as a human, her strength was much less than a changeling’s. Added to that, she was small and female—so the next time they worked out, he planned to teach her to fight using anything at her disposal, as she’d used her handbag two nights ago. That is, unless she had the option to turn and run. A physical fight would never be the smart first choice for her.
Walking a short distance from where she moved that sweet little body with such focused determination, he brought out his phone and coded in a call to his alpha, Lucas. “Were you able to track the source of the hang-ups to
