: Chapter 27

Savannah

My life had become a living nightmare.

Being hunted by werewolves seemed like a much smaller problem now that I knew demons were coming for me. Demons summoned by sorcerers.

Could Casey and Aunt Laurel summon creatures like these?

Jaxson had warned me the LaSalles practiced the dark arts. Was this what he’d meant?

I leaned against a tree and took stock of my situation. In addition to being hunted by a variety of supernatural beings, I was pretty sure that I’d just alienated and pissed off everyone in the local werewolf pack, and now the cops wanted to throw me in jail for using wolfsbane. At least Jaxson was able to persuade the cops to let me go—though I could tell that had infuriated his pack. Sam wouldn’t even meet my eyes anymore.

The cab ride home was a dismal affair, and a black SUV full of werewolves followed me all the way back to the Indies.

Casey, as always, greeted me at the door. It was late. Had he been waiting?

He ran his fingers through his hair. “Jeez, Savannah, every time you show up, you look worse off than you did the time before. What happened now?’

I didn’t want Aunt Laurel to hear, so we headed upstairs. I explained everything while I sat at the tiny desk in my room and sketched the demon from the park to calm my nerves.

Casey rubbed his face with his palms. “That is fucking madness. You need to stay away from Laurent and his pack. He’s going to get you killed.”

I shook my head. “No. I have to put a stop to this. I can help.”

My cousin frowned. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Jaxson may hate you, but I know he’ll protect me—even after what I did to him tonight.”

Jaxson had killed a man in front of me. Just to protect me.

Casey gave a half laugh. “Yeah, well, you’re going to be working that one off for a while. Wolfsbaning the alpha. You’re lucky he didn’t kill you himself.”

I set my jaw. “You gave me the wolfsbane! I nearly got thrown in jail just for having it on me!”

“Yeah, sorry about that. But I gave you it to use on assailants. Not the Dockside alpha,” Casey said, chuckling. Clearly, the thought delighted him, but Casey hadn’t seen Jaxson in his wolf form, glaring back with blood dripping from his mouth.

I flipped my sketch of the demon around and shoved it toward my cousin. “Can you tell me what this is?” While the demon’s body had disappeared, its sinewy limbs and savage claws were going to be etched in my mind forever.

His eyes widened. “Holy shit, you’re good at drawing. This picture actually scares the bejeebers out of me. Unfortunately, I have no idea what this is.”

“Can you find out? You owe me.”

“Yeah, we’ve got a few manuals of demonology stashed around here somewhere. And I know people I could ask.”

“Discreetly.”

For whatever reason, I didn’t fully trust my aunt. Through the mild application of physical threats, I made Casey promise not to tell Aunt Laurel or Uncle Pete what had happened. While I trusted my cousin implicitly, I couldn’t shake the feeling that his parents would try to stop me from working with Jaxson or that they’d keep me on lockdown until the threat had passed.

But I needed to figure out what was going on, and Jaxson Laurent seemed hell-bent on doing the same.

That night, I barely slept, and when I did, my dreams were filled with nightmares.

I woke exhausted, with a dark cloud hanging over my heart. Demons and werewolves were hunting me, and I’d just maced the one person who seemed the most invested in keeping me safe.

Not mace. Wolfsbane. I had no idea what exactly that was, but while it had burned my skin and eyes, it had practically incapacitated the other wolves. When I closed my eyes, I could see Sam staring back at me, filled with hate.

I put my hands over my face as I flopped back in bed. I had to make amends. The problem was, I’d never been particularly good at apologies or acting contrite. It was practically a foreign language.

At breakfast, I asked Casey how best to apologize to a werewolf, and he grinned. “Bring it a dead rabbit. Nice and rotten.”

Thanks, Captain Helpful.

With little to be gained from my cousin, I kept to myself for the rest of the morning and had a cab drop me off at Eclipse at ten a.m.

A muscle-bound bouncer leaned against the wall of the restaurant, scrolling on his smartphone. He had a wolfy look about him, hot and menacing. Most of the werewolves I’d met in Magic Side were unbelievably good looking. There must have been some kind of sexy wolf gene in this pack.

The man slipped his phone into his pocket and stopped me with a meaty hand. “Hold up. Are you carrying?”

“Carrying what?”

He loomed over me. “Wolfsbane. I heard what you did at the Full Moon Fair. I can’t have you bringing that in here.”

“Nope, fresh out.”

He growled and sniffed. Could he have smelled it if I’d had some on me?

“I was attacked by a demon and a bunch of werewolves,” I snapped as I stepped back.

“Don’t pull that excuse. You sprayed the alpha and the people trying to protect you. Don’t ever try that shit when I’m around, or you’ll regret it.”

I pushed past him. “Well, everybody had fangs and claws out and was growling. How was I supposed to tell the difference?”

I stepped into the bar and immediately regretted my words. Four shifters sent me death glares, stopping me right in my tracks. I’d hoped the place would be empty that morning.

So much for putting off apologies.

The look of betrayal in Sam’s eyes cut particularly deep. Three days ago, she’d taken care of me when I was drunk and adrift in a world I didn’t understand. In return, I’d wolfsbaned her while she was trying to save my ass.

I straightened my spine and walked over to the bar. She turned her back to me and began stocking the liquor shelf.

I deserved that. And more.

I couldn’t believe that this was the same place I’d gone out for dinner with Jaxson. That night, it had been rich, lively, and teeming with excitement and music and magic. Now, in the light of day, I could see the cracks and taste the bitterness in the air.

Placing a hand on the bar top, I murmured, “Look, I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire yesterday, Sam. I didn’t know what was in the canister, and I was really scared and fairly certain I was about to die.”

She slowly turned with a deadpan look, then braced her arms against the bar. “Do you have any idea how badly that shit hurts? You should have listened to me. I told you to submit. Why don’t you listen to anything anyone says?”

Her tone was cold and dismissive, and my temper flared. I lowered my voice so it was a knife-edge whisper. “When you first met me three days ago, I didn’t know any of this existed. Since then, I’ve been attacked by more werewolves than I can count and nearly choked to death by a demon that looked like it walked straight out of a Tim Burton film. Excuse me if I wasn’t ready to listen at that moment when Jaxson was about to rip my throat out. I’d just watched him snap another man’s spine in front of me.”

“He wasn’t going to rip your throat out.”

“Yeah, well, after being nearly shredded to pieces, I wasn’t about to take any chances. Do you get my drift?” I emphasized those last words and glared at the other shifters around the room.

I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so they’d better cut me some slack.

A man seated at the bar slowly spun on his stool until he was facing me. Had I seen him last night? Several deep furrows cut his forehead, and his eyes sparked with pure hatred. “You need to keep in mind that LaSalles aren’t welcome here before you go shooting your mouth off,” he said, his voice almost a growl. “You’re lucky the alpha needs you now, but as soon as that’s through, don’t you ever set your dirty feet in pack territory again, or I’ll drag you out by your filthy red hair. Do you get my drift?”

My throat tightened.

Every look around the room was the same. They hated me here, and it wasn’t just the wolfsbane. They despised my family. This was a blood feud, and I was in the wrong part of town.

“I’m not a LaSalle,” I said. “I’m a Caine. And I don’t want anything to do with whatever feud you’ve got going. I assure you, I want nothing more than to get the hell out of here.”

The sooner we tracked down whoever was hunting me, the sooner I could put these werewolves and their bullshit behind me.

The man slid off his seat and stepped up to me, towering over my head. His signature stormed around me. He was extremely powerful, reeked of vodka, and spoke with unstrained venom. “Blood is blood. You’re a LaSalle, whether you like it or not. Consider this your warning, little witch. Next time, there won’t be one.” With that, he marched to the door and left.

I bared my teeth as he walked away—which was ridiculous, because I didn’t have fangs—but it felt right. Tears of frustration threatened to creep out, so I clenched my fists.

What, exactly, had I done to be treated like this? To have drunks getting in my face and threatening me? I wasn’t part of whatever shitty history they were caught up in, just collateral damage.

A glass of ice water slid across the granite bar top toward me, and I turned back. Sam had a sad expression on her face, but her voice had warmed a little. “Not many people stand up to Billy.”

“He seems like a real jerk.”

“He has good reasons for hating your family, but he won’t cause you any trouble. Not with Jaxson as the alpha. He won’t let any harm come to you.”

The other werewolves in the bar turned away, as if even the sound of Jaxson’s name could make them submit. There was so much I didn’t understand about him or his position as the alpha. He held sway over his pack even when he wasn’t around.

I considered the power he seemed to hold over me and shivered.

Every time I was around him, my mind fogged. He frustrated me to no end, and a part of me yearned to rage against him. But there was always a subversive undercurrent flowing through my thoughts, the desire to submit, to please, to obey. And when he was close, it was like I wanted to submit with my whole body. Judging from the heat between us, I was fairly certain he’d be amazing in the bedroom. God, why was I thinking about that?

Sam grinned widely and stacked several glasses that were still damp from the dishwasher.

“Is something funny?” I took a sip of the drink she’d given me.

“Oh, nothing. Just wondering how your thoughts went from Billy—the scariest wolf in our pack—to sex with Jaxson.”