Ford Bentley, who had cracked a joke about his name the first time we met, wasn’t laughing now. As the pack liaison with our office, he and I were on friendly enough terms that I recognized the endearment wasn’t a come-on or condescension but simply habit.
Sorrow had turned his lively blue eyes dull, and his wild black hair showed tracks from where his fingers kept tunneling through its jagged length.
“Yeah.” I locked my gaze on him to keep it from sliding to his left. “The POA is in Savannah.”
That meant this was my case to solve, the first one I would tackle as lead.
Just my luck, Midas was here to bear witness. A ghost from my past, come to haunt me.
Perfect.
“Have you met Midas?” Ford twitched his head toward the slightly taller man. “He’s our beta.”
“We haven’t been introduced.” I dropped my gaze to the victim, using the gruesome tableau to help regulate my pulse. “I’m Hadley Whitaker.”
“Midas Kinase,” he said, his voice sandpaper rough, not with emotion, though I heard that too, but from an old injury no one so much as whispered about behind his muscular back. “Are you sure we haven’t met?”
Predator that he was, he scented my nerves and eased in front of me for a better look.
In response, the predator in me unfurled, creeping across the asphalt, stretching shadowy fingers under his boots, tapping on individual treads, as if counting all the ways it could kill him.
“We both live in the city.” I kept my voice bland, eyes focused on the stag logo branding his tee. Fine. I was ogling the way his pecs stretched the thin fabric to its limits. He had packed on serious muscle since the last time I saw him, but he hadn’t been the heir then. His sister, Lethe, had held that title until deciding to break ties with Atlanta and start her own pack in Savannah. Guess her defection had landed him a promotion. “You must have seen me around.”
The new cut and style reinvigorated my blonde hair with short layers and plenty of curls, and the hazel contacts, heavy on the green, plus a few magical augmentations, meant Midas would see only Hadley. Just the law-abiding citizen and enforcer of justice. Not the homicidal maniac our mutual friends would have warned him about.
“Your scent…” Flaring his nostrils, he parted his lips. “It’s familiar.”
“I work a kiosk in the mall, and I run the Active Oval in Piedmont Park five days a week.” I held my ground. “You could have picked up my scent anywhere.”
Crowding me, he ducked his head, attempting to force eye contact, a dominance tactic that didn’t work half as well on necromancers as it did on gwyllgi and did nothing for me. “What was your name again?”
“Hadley.” I caved to the challenge and my annoyance, which never failed to land me in hot water, and met his gaze. “Hadley Whitaker.”
The full force of his shifter magic pooled in his eyes, turning the tranquil aquamarine to vibrant crimson. I should have been terrified. I was terrified. Goddess, I couldn’t glance away after verifying he was every bit as gorgeous up close as I remembered from all the glimpses I had stolen of him through a curtained window in that other life.
Sun-streaked blond hair fell in waves to his broad shoulders and framed a face so beautiful in its austerity that I wanted to reach out and touch it, see if he was real. His jaw was hard, and muscle twitched in his cheek. His mouth was full, perfect. Soft, I bet. But his eyes. That’s what captured and held my attention. The sorrow in them tugged on my heartstrings, and I understood in that soul-bearing moment when our gazes clashed that he was dangerous to me on levels I hadn’t conceived of before meeting him in the flesh.
The one thing I had been warned against doing—instigating a staring match—was exactly what I did while Bishop and Ford looked on in horror.
Clearly, they expected Midas to strike me down for the offense. I did too. And yet, I kept breathing.
“I have exceptional control,” he rumbled, “but you’re testing it.”
Bishop stomped on my instep, and the jolt of pain yanked my attention to him and away from Midas.
“Fire ant.” Bishop made a production of searching for more on the sidewalk. “Little bastards.”
“Bastard is right,” I groused at him before redirecting my focus to Midas’s chest to avoid another standoff. “Mr. Kinase, I’m sorry for your loss. I respect your right to be present, but I have a job to do. I would appreciate it if you stepped aside and let me do it.”
Midas yielded no ground but let me ease around him. If he figured my willingness to do so proved his dominance, well, bless his heart.
Ditching him and Ford at the barricade, I continued on with Bishop. “That went well.”
“Yeah,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “It did.” He crouched over the body, what remained of it. “The pack isn’t required to cooperate with us. Not when the victim is one of theirs. They could throw their weight around and block us from investigating. Their alpha prefers to handle these matters internally.”
“There’s no guarantee the person who did this is gwyllgi. That puts the ball back in our court.”
Though I couldn’t afford to let assumptions cloud my judgment this early in the investigation. I had to get this right, or I lost points with the POA, who would not want to cut his trip short to play pack politics.
“That’s why I like you.” Bishop chuckled under his breath. “You’re so gosh darn optimistic.”
“Har har.” I flicked my fingers at the shadow nosing the corpse. “Make yourself useful.”
The vague outline of me snapped out a salute then made a production of diving in headfirst.
“Showoff,” I grumbled then caught Bishop staring. “What?”
“I’m never going to get used to that.”
“All potentates have wraiths.”
“That is not a wraith.” His gimlet eyes dared me to lie to him. “It’s so…Peter Pan. Do you
