Living Extinct (15 page)

Darrell stared at Moira, definitely enjoying the view. She wore a sleeveless shirt and no bra. Her narrow shoulders and long, slender neck showed off how petite she was.

She’d found her way downstairs after he did, joining them to eat. She’d twisted her long, thick black hair into a knot behind her head. Silky strands drifted around her face, highlighting her regal high cheekbones. She was the daughter of one of their kind’s greatest leaders, purebred royalty—and by right, completely his.

Moira raised the corner of her lip and growled at Darrell, giving the pack leader absolutely no respect in his own territory. Darrell took a step toward her and Dante moved forward. Darrell hesitated, finally looking away from the bitch and focusing his attention on Dante.

Although he’d made no formal announcement that Moira was his mate, he knew his scent was on her. Darrell would prove even more stupid than he’d originally thought if he made a move on Moira.

“Why are you here?” Darrell puffed out his chest and fisted his hands on his hips.

There was no fear on the young punk. The werewolf didn’t trust him though.

“We’re deciding what part of the country we’ll settle in. A few days here should be long enough for us to decide if this place suits us.”

Moira raised an eyebrow and her mouth parted before she closed it quickly. She stood and moved to the low brick wall bordering the terrace, brushing her hand over the smooth surface before plopping her cute ass down on it. Darrell didn’t turn to give her any attention so he didn’t notice Moira’s surprise. She looked down, wiggling her toes through her sandals and stared at them.

He won’t accept you in his pack.
Her words were like music in his mind, warm, wrapping around his own. And she’d kept her end of the deal so far not to close her mind to him. She was obviously enjoying her newfound talent of mixing with his thoughts.
And what do you mean by settle down?

“And what would you do in this pack? I won’t have any pack destroyer in my territory.”

“Your pack is safe from me as long as you don’t do me wrong.”

What a bully.
She chuckled, the sound dripping through him like a sweet, torturous drug. May she never learn what her thoughts in his head did to him.

Darrell glanced over at Moira then turned from both of them, pacing the length of the brick terrace and then back. He crossed his arms over his chest, a silent statement that he knew Dante wouldn’t attack him. His body language showed all signs of confidence but his mind was a whirlwind of doubt and animosity. The only problem was that he thought so quickly in Spanish that Dante could barely keep up. The predominant message was clear—he didn’t trust Dante.

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“You may stay in this house for two days,” he decided, staring Dante in the eye.

“I’ll have no trouble—none. Is that clear?”

“Offer none and you’ll get none,” Dante told him honestly.

Darrell moved quickly, jumping into Dante’s face. “Disrespect me and you won’t be here two hours,” he growled, his Spanish accent thickening as the putrid smell of anger laced the air.

Dante glared at him. “A title doesn’t gain a werewolf respect if he acts like a fool.”

The glass doors leading into the house flew open at that moment. Dante didn’t take his attention from Darrell when the werewolf spun around, startled and wired enough to leap at the disturbance. His two werewolves almost fell through the door, Juan with them. The three of them let out a spew of profanity, yelling and growling at each other until Darrell yelled at the three of them.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded.

Juan jumped away from the other two werewolves. Shrugging to straighten his shirt, he glanced toward Dante. His comical expression would fool many, and although he didn’t possess any of the gift, he was damned good at covering hostile emotions with amusement. Which more often than not in the past usually had the two of them in fights.

“He insisted on coming out here,” one of the werewolves told his pack leader. “We told him you were in a private meeting and if we couldn’t be out here, neither could he.”

Juan turned to Moira. “No one keeps me away from a beautiful bitch,” he said gallantly and moved to stand by her side.

Darrell pointed a thick finger at Dante. “Two days,” he told him and then moved faster than Dante would have guessed his thick, short legs could travel as he stalked into the house.

Hostility and outrage lingered in the air after the three werewolves left them on the terrace.

“I don’t think we should stay here for two days,” Juan said quietly the second the glass doors closed behind the werewolves.

Moira leaned on the four-foot brick wall that surrounded the terrace, her hands flat on the smooth surface on either side of her. She didn’t look up but stared at the concrete ground in front of her, long, silky strands escaping the twisted knot behind her head and drifting over her shoulders with the breeze. They blocked a clear view of her face.

Dante quickly searched his half-brother’s thoughts. Juan had learned something when he’d begged off after dinner to return to his room for a shower before a late-night run. The werewolf was damned good at snooping and enjoyed doing it. Most of the time he didn’t get caught.

His thoughts were muddled, overlapping each other, which was common for Juan.

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“Why is that?” Dante asked, tilting his head to try and get a better view of Moira’s face. She continued to focus on the ground.

“Someone has contacted WA asking about you. We’ve got trouble headed our way.

I can smell it.” Juan kept his voice low. “No matter your reputation, you can’t fight off all of WA.”

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Moira moved through strong emotions, which made the air feel tighter. She fought to concentrate. Leaving her body alone on the terrace with Juan and Dante out there wouldn’t be safe after a few minutes. She gave the werewolves credit for having enough sense to figure out something was wrong with her if she didn’t move or speak for long.

The moment the glass doors banged open, she’d picked up bad vibes. She smelled them, felt them, knew something wasn’t right. With all the commotion and testosterone hanging heavy in the air, she’d leapt out of her body and sped into the house, searching for information—anything. She’d left the shell of herself sitting out on the terrace, a very dangerous act with so many werewolves around, but something she had to do.

Staying out of her body for too long could prove deadly if Darrell or one of his mutts came back and tried talking to her. But she needed answers.

And it hadn’t taken long to find them.

The large mansion was either the pack leader’s den or a central location where he and his mutts hung out. Either way, there were a hell of a lot of werewolves on the premises. More than she’d realized at first. The walls were thick and large and potted plants had been chosen intentionally for their strong aromas, making it harder to smell out who might be in the next room. A clever ploy, and one she doubted that numbskull of a pack leader she’d met had anything to do with.

Moving through walls disoriented her. She preferred not messing with molecular structures and risking getting her own thoughts all screwed up. But once she was in the house, hurrying from one room to the other, it hadn’t taken long to find a small group of werewolves huddled in an office full of computers.

“Darrell needs to just kick them all out of here,” a short Mexican werewolf said. He leaned on a cluttered desk, looking down at the monitor while a younger werewolf typed with obvious expertise.

“You don’t just send Dante Aldo packing.” The younger werewolf sniffed the air, glanced around at the three other males lingering behind him and then looked back at the monitor. “He makes me nervous though. Everyone has a record of some sort and I can’t find shit on him.”

“Don’t waste your time. He’s like a ghost.”

“He destroys packs. And more than likely with WA’s approval,” the fat werewolf said.

“Watch how loud you say that,” an older werewolf, his silver hair falling in strings over his weathered face, scowled at the lot of them and glanced toward the door nervously.

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Moira hovered toward it just in case he decided to close it. As much as she ached to hear more about Dante, she didn’t want to end up trapped in here with her body out there with Dante. That would be bad.

“He destroys more than packs.” A fourth werewolf, who wasn’t half bad-looking in his muscle T-shirt with tattoos covering his thick arms, kept his voice at a whisper and glanced over his shoulder before going on. “He wiped out an entire race of werewolves over in Europe. Then he comes here and goes wherever he’s needed, destroying packs who get out of line.”

“That’s just not possible.” The younger werewolf at the computer tried another search engine, typing in something and waiting for the site to load. “No one werewolf can take out a pack. I need proof.”

“You can smell the power on him, Jorge. Not all proof is in your computer there.

They say he’s more than a werewolf.
El es magico
,” the older werewolf said.

“Well, I’ve got some proof on at least one of them. Check this out. That little bitch out there is with GWAR.”

The werewolves moved closer, hovering around the screen. She ignored the crude comments they made about her.

Moira backed out of the room slowly, then turned and flew through the house. She wouldn’t risk trying to go through the now-closed glass doors but found an open window in the kitchen. Hurrying around the house toward the brick terrace, she sank into her body, instantly feeling the hard pounding of her heart. She almost coughed on her first breath.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Juan laughed and nudged her arm.

Moira stared at him, not having a clue what the question was. He was quite amused by her, his grin adding to the thoughts of envy and curiosity as to how far Dante had made it with her and if she would be Dante’s mate or not. She sucked in a breath, unable to do anything more than stare into his handsome face. Holy shit! His thoughts had spilled out of him as clearly as if he’d just spoken to her. Before Dante, that had never happened to her before. She swallowed, and closed her mouth, realizing it had been gaping open.

“I’m not sure,” she mumbled, more than disoriented by Juan’s thoughts and the knowledge she’d just gained.

Apparently Juan had it in his head that she was supposed to be Dante’s mate. That backed what Dante had told her, although at the moment that was the least of her worries.

How the hell could she mate with someone who was known for destroying her pack?

For the life of her, even though she hadn’t known Dante that long, she had a hard time believing it was true. It wouldn’t be the first time a werewolf took a false rumor and built on it to make themselves seem more than what they were. But if Dante had 81

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done that, allowed packs to believe he’d destroyed the Malta werewolves, how could she lay her kill at his paws?

It wasn’t the first time she’d despised the fact that GWAR made it a point to keep its agents in the dark when it came to common pack knowledge. The only information she was supposed to have in her head was facts about the mission she was on. GWAR

believed its agents would work at their best if they had no outside knowledge that might sway their opinion on how they were supposed to do things. She’d been trained to act on orders and let WA worry about the rest of the world.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Dante said quietly, pulling her out of her panicked thoughts.

“What did she hear?” Juan looked around the terrace. He frowned at Dante and then looked at Moira. “Do you want to go on a run now or not?”

For the moment, the three of them were alone. Moira didn’t look at Dante but glanced at the windows, then up at the walls searching for any surveillance equipment that wouldn’t be easily sniffed out. A camera was fixed to the wall just above the windows at the edge of the terrace. More than likely it was equipped with a microphone too.

She wouldn’t insult Dante by implying he had no idea what she might have heard.

She stood, straightening her shirt and moved away from both of them.

“I’m going to my room.”

“It’s almost dark. You can join us on a run and then we’ll go to our rooms.” Dante didn’t make it sound like a question.

She finally met his gaze, reaching out to his thoughts. More than anything she wanted to find proof inside him that everything she’d just heard was wrong.

He locked on to her gaze, seeming to pull her into his head as if he greeted the opportunity for her to see what was in his mind. She remembered watching pack members turn to watch the RV when they’d drove into town. They all knew about Dante Aldo, knew who he was. Quite honestly, she’d never been matched up against such a powerful werewolf before. And it didn’t help that his scent did a number on her insides. Just staring at him increased the heavy thud of her heart, made her pulse pound between her legs.

God. If she weren’t careful, the smell of her lust would drown all three of them out.

“Let’s go,” Dante stressed, taking her arm and guiding her toward the edge of the terrace.

When they reached the edge of the yard, Dante wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her against his hard body while they slowed their pace.

He looked down at her. “Maybe you’d like to talk about what you just learned?”

“What did she find out?” Juan asked, surprised. “She was on the terrace or with you. When did Moira learn anything?”

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Dante held his hand up, silencing Juan. He continued to stare at her. She had half a mind to play stupid and second what Juan had just said. But she demanded trust from him. And she would give him what she expected in return.

His pale blue eyes turned fluorescent as he stared at her. Heat burned her insides.

He knew she’d moved through the house. Obviously, telling her how he knew didn’t seem important to him. If her body had given away the absence of her spirit, then Juan would be wise to it as well. Yet he wasn’t.