Chapter 5

“You and your sister don’t look where you’re going very often, do you?”

Gunner’s fingers burned against my wrist as he restrained me from...what? Pulling a sword that didn’t currently exist? Punching him in the eye or kneeing his balls in an effort to relax his grip?

Unfortunately, the tremor racing down my spine couldn’t be entirely attributed to the grasp of a powerful opponent. And perhaps that’s why my rebuttal came out with so much bite. “Oh, yes. The expert on sibling relations. Did you show your big brother to his room, sedate him with sleeping pills, then sneak out for a beer? Is that why you dared to leave his presence when the poor little pack leader might very well be stubbing his toe at this very instant?”

Only the slight twitch of Gunner’s left eyebrow proved that my verbal attack had struck home. But he did release my wrists and take one small step backwards, the musk of predatory alpha thinning until I was finally able to think...

...and to remember that I had a friend here in the convenience store. Over the werewolf’s shoulder, I caught the eye of a clerk I’d gone to high school with and shook my head briefly in response to his raised eyebrows. No, I didn’t need help. Not against one annoying shifter whose worst fault was a tendency to show up in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

“A beer,” Gunner answered, picking the least incendiary part of my tirade to fixate upon. “Good idea. How about I buy you a bottle and we can talk about why you purposefully lost tonight’s match?”

His words followed me more closely than the whistled melody had as I slid away from his tantalizing body heat and stalked toward colder quarry. Bread—not the kind Kira liked the best but the cheaper sort she would still smile upon. Life was all about compromise and tonight’s Arena windfall wouldn’t last long if I fed her tween appetite with name-brand morsels.

“I didn’t lose on purpose,” I lied vaguely, trying to decide whether my kid sister was still on a 1% kick or whether we could return to the whole milk we’d both enjoyed until the previous autumn. Unfortunately, the girls in her grade were brutal on body fat, and Kira embraced their barbed comments even though our kind required far more calories than the average couch-potato twelve-year-old.

Better safe than sorry, I decided with a grimace. Plucking out a gallon of low-fat, I froze as Gunner’s warm breath counteracted the cold emanating from the refrigerated case.

“Or we could change the subject,” the werewolf murmured, voice so low the clerk had no chance of overhearing. “My brother and I are hunting something very specific. My gut says you’re the key to finding it. We’d pay very well if you helped us track it down.”

I was the key to finding whatever these brothers were looking for here in a city their pack had ignored for several decades? A shiver far less enticing than the ones that had been impacting me previously ran down my spine. Slowly, unwillingly, I turned to meet Gunner’s gaze. “What are you looking for?”

“Something,” the werewolf answered unhelpfully before allowing silence to descend between the two of us. His face was as expressionless as a still pool of water, but I could smell his amusement that I’d risen to the bait.

Gritting my teeth, I tried to focus on lunch meat. Perhaps if I splurged on a hunk of salami my kid sister’s eyes would light up at the treat like the noon-day sun....

But despite my best impulses to the contrary, Gunner’s hook lodged itself in my gills and pulled me relentlessly out of the safely deep waters. What were these werewolves looking for? Did it have anything to do with Kira and my kind?

My inherent curiosity sent me leaning forward as I pondered, heart rate elevated more than it had been by my recent near miss. Still, I opened my mouth to give the smart answer, the correct answer. Because I shouldn’t spend any more time than necessary around the new pack leader’s brother. Kira and I couldn’t afford to risk our skins just to enjoy salami on a weekly rather than a yearly basis...or to douse inquisitiveness that was so painfully inflamed.

But before I could come up with an appropriately scathing comment, a trickle of melody slid beneath the crack in the door. The same strangely familiar tune I’d heard while walking down the street....

And in response I paled, dropping Kira’s bread on top of a display of candy bars as my fingers abruptly lost their hold on the potential purchase. My instinct had been right and my pursuer hadn’t given up. Which presented an even worse situation than I’d previously been in. Because I was now standing beside an eagle-eyed werewolf, unable to use my inherent abilities to gnaw my way out of the trap before it could close around my leg.

I bit my lip as I began lowering the jug of milk to the floor in instinctive disburdenment. But the liquid would rot there if the clerk didn’t notice in time to slide the jug back into the case. And upcoming evasive maneuvers would be less obvious if I hung onto one potential purchase at least.

So I clutched the cold handle, fingers digging into plastic as I spoke to the werewolf who’d delayed me—purposefully? accidentally?—long enough for the whistler to catch up. “Hold that thought,” I told him, offering Kira’s full-blast-sunshine smile and hoping the expression was as heart-stopping on me as it was on her. After all, I needed every advantage I could muster if I intended to slide out the 7-Eleven’s window right under a werewolf’s nose.

Then, without further explanation, I padded into the filthy bathroom, twirled the lock to solidify the barrier...and hoisted myself plus my purloined jug of milk through the tiny opening set too high in the wall for an average human to clamber in or out.

“I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” I whispered into the night air, knowing the clerk would understand the delay in cash flow. Still, the debt squeezed at my star ball, dragging at my footsteps as I beat a hasty retreat.