‘Good.’ The silver in his gaze diminished and a guarded smile returned to his mouth. He lifted her right arm and squinted at the metal prosthesis. ‘Otherwise, I might find it necessary to remove the gift I procured for you.’ He dropped her arm. ‘I assured you I would find someone to fix what had been done to you without anyone else knowing. There was no need to kill Zafir.’
‘I didn’t kill him, my lord,’ she lied, knowing he meant to catch her. ‘As I told you, he made unwelcome advances. I pushed him away and a lamp broke. I was lucky to escape that fire myself.’
He eyed her suspiciously. ‘And what of your missing hand? Any luck finding that yet?’
‘No.’ She and Octavian had searched every centimeter of the room where the comarré whore had cut off her hand and every possible escape route but had found nothing. She could only assume the girl had taken it. Or perhaps Malkolm had – but she’d never imagined her former husband the sentimental type. ‘Do you think she’ll use it against me?’
‘It’s not her I worry about but her friends. They are an unsavory lot.’ His smile came fully alive and he lifted her chin with his fingers, kissed her firmly, then shook his head. ‘The path ahead will not be an easy one.’
Was anything she’d done for him? Or anything in her life for that matter? She caressed the Tepes star that dangled from a thick gold chain around his neck. She could see herself in the bold ruby square at its center, a beast of a gem compared to the chip that decorated her locket. ‘Nothing worth having ever is.’
He laughed. ‘That’s my Tatiana. Not afraid of anything, are you, love?’
‘No. Nothing.’ Nothing he’d ever find out about. Nothing that would ever happen again. She forced a smile as the dulcet tones of Sofia’s little-girl laugh echoed in her memory. ‘Shall we discuss your plan of action?’
He slipped his arm around her waist and led her toward the door. She knew instantly what he wanted. Since Mikkel’s death, Ivan had become exceedingly amorous. If he hoped to woo her as a means to keep her loyal, he was dead wrong. ‘Yes, but not just now.’ His fangs extended, his face shedding its humanity to reveal his true visage. ‘It will make for wonderful pillow talk afterward, I assure you.’
‘I look forward to it, my lord.’ She laughed, fluttering her lashes, leaning into him and savoring the moment she’d be able to walk over his ashes on the way toward leading the vampire nation into a new age of domination.
Sweaty and miserable, Doc stumbled into the hold that had been modified into a gym and collapsed to his hands and knees on the mats. He gave in and quit fighting the inevitable. By now, the need to mentally command his body to change was gone. Instinct took over and a moment later he found release in his animal form. If you could call the pitiful house cat that was his only option a true form. It wasn’t. Not to him. Or any other straight-up shifter.
Never would be either. Even if he had to live with this hellacious curse for the rest of his unnatural life.
He sprawled on his side, panting with the effort of holding off the shift for so long. He lifted a paw. The claws were tiny pinpoints. He hated this form. Just like he hated that for at least one night a month, he had to assume the shape of a creature so small and lame compared to his true self.
Varcolai were not humans born with the ability to shift into animal forms; they were animals born with the ability to take on human shape. Being Doc the human wasn’t any more difficult than breathing, and it was a damn sight less humiliating than walking around looking like a house pet. Except when nature sank her full-moon teeth deep and reminded him what he really was under that smooth, vulnerable skin.
Then being human became virtually impossible. So he gave in, shifted to his lesser form and hid from the world.
His pride leader, Sinjin, had cast him out as soon as Doc had told him about the curse. What good was a house cat to a pride of big cats? His cursed form wasn’t the only reason Sinjin had ordered the pride to shun him. He closed his eyes against the truth, but that didn’t stop it from staring back at him.
There was the little matter of what he’d done to get cursed. He’d dealt in certain pharmaceuticals. Not street drugs, but the kind of amped-up concoctions that othernaturals paid big for. Really big. Hell, that kind of scratch let a player make the rules of the game. But with big rewards came big risk. He’d known that.
Just like he’d known the risk in working for Sinjin’s enemy.
With good reason, Sinjin had a major beef with Dominic – owner of the nightclub Seven, powerful alchemist, and New Florida’s leading drug lord. Sinjin had owned Seven long before Dominic had come to town, back when the club had been a broken-down scum hole of a joint, but then Sinjin lost the building and the business to Dominic in a poker game. To this day, Sinjin swore Dominic had used his alchemy to win. Dominic denied it, of course, but that hadn’t stopped Sinjin from declaring Seven off-limits to the pride. Anyone who went there was subject to pride law.
The other major varcolai clan in Paradise City, the wolf pack, were under no such orders. Their
