Bullet ARC Giveaway

Tonight isn’t for olive branches. It’s more like a storm long coming.

“Watch the news lately?” Jackson Harper asks, as four of his wolves stiff-arm their way into the living room. They’re a small, but mean, group of gentlemen, equipped with the furrowed brows and cauliflower ears to prove it.

The Old Wolf’s squat frame remains on the threshold. Slicked-back white hair runs to the nape of his neck, ending at the collar of a red flannel shirt. He could be an out-of-work lumberjack, or a paper towel spokesmodel past his expiration date. Really, he’s the Alpha in Demos City, but no one calls him that, or haven’t in the last ten years, anyway.

“Not in front of a TV much,” I say. “Anything good on that I missed?”

Harper takes a deliberate, almost sluggish step into my apartment. Behind me, his pack members fan out, one moving into the hallway that leads to the bedrooms, another heading to the kitchen, and the remaining two planting themselves square to my six o’clock.

“I saw the damnedest thing on the news not too long ago,” the Alpha—oh, why not?—says. “Someone blew up half of Front Street downtown. Cops said there were at least forty-three confirmed dead. Can you believe that?”

“Crazy.”

“Know anything about it?” Harper closes the front door behind him. “Heard your name mentioned.”

“That depends,” I say, hemmed in by wolves. “Do you want to hear the lie I planned, or the one I just made up?”

Harper lets out a wheeze of a laugh, but it doesn’t change the circumstances. An Alpha doesn’t pay a social call in the middle of the night unless there’s an eviction about to come down, or a verdict from a more lethal category.

There are no means left for me to make a clean exit either. I can smell the wolves who are just outside, which means all routes are blocked.

“You know why I let you stay in my city?” Jack asks. “Your little girl,” he says, not waiting for my answer. “She was the prettiest baby, I think, I’ve ever seen.
Couldn’t just leave her out in the cold. Only a heartless prick could look a toddler in the face and turn her away.”

“And we’re both grateful.” Luckily, Shauna’s not here, and I’m not sure she’d think the same right now anyway.

“Is that so?” Harper moves a pace closer to me. He takes a breath that seems like it should make his ribs creak from the expansion. Nostrils flare as he lets it out in a single, audible blast. “You want to tell me why a man who swore he was going to keep a low profile in this city would even think about getting involved in a pissing contest with the Widow’s Hand?”

Rook’s blood in my mouth, the butter soft separation of skin beneath fangs, is an easy memory to find. The beast tends to those moments, pruning them in its macabre psyche to keep them crisp and vivid in their recollection. A shame I didn’t get to see him expire, to watch the murderous candle go out for good. “I took a job,” I finally say. “I was on the clock when the Widow’s Hand got in the way. Couldn’t let them just kill my boss. A guy could get a reputation if he starts letting racist prison gangs walk all over him.”

“We had a deal, Leon.”