*
Paul spent the whole next day in a daze. He couldn’t think, couldn’t eat, kept making stupid mistakes at the shop until his dad told him to “Get the fuck outta here until you get your mind right.”
He was still in a fog when he rode his bike over to the pack’s usual hangout, a beat-up old bungalow in Liberty City that had seen better days. Much better days.
Paul parked his bike in front of the house with no worries. The neighborhood was full of drug dealers, whores and thieves but not a single one of them was stupid enough to mess with a pack of werewolves. Technically the human world was ignorant of their true nature but the Lunas Locas had made their presence felt on more than one occasion with deadly consequences. The result was the other inhabitants of the neighborhood knew something supernatural was going on, even if they didn’t know exactly what. At this point Paul could have left a gold Rolex lying in the road in front of the pack’s house and no one would have touched it.
He stuffed the cycle’s keys in his pocket and strode up the front steps, his mind still a million miles away. His smell, his taste…the way he felt against me—so fucking hard. As hard as I was. No, have to stop thinking about it. Have to stop— “Well hello, Skulls.” It was Mercedes and she was blocking the doorway. Paul tried to side-step her but she was suddenly all over him like a cat in heat.
“Damn it, not again, Mercedes,” he growled. “When are you gonna get it through your head that I don’t want to fuck you?” “You don’t, huh?” She still hung on him, one hand at the back of his neck, her eyes shining a poisonous green. “Well that’s okay, Skulls. ’Cause I don’t have to fuck you in order to fuck you up.” Without warning she hooked her nails into the side of his throat and clawed him hard enough to draw blood.
“Ow! Mierda, Mercedes. What the fuck?” Paul had had enough of her shit. Female or not, he wasn’t going to let her use him for a scratching post. Pulling her arms from around his neck, he pushed her roughly away. Mercedes landed flat on her ass on the sagging wooden porch but when she looked up at him she was laughing.
“Just giving you something to remember me by. Enjoy the rest of your night, you fucking cabron. ”
“Crazy-ass pinche puta.” Shaking his head, Paul walked into the house. The scratches on the side of his neck stung and throbbed. What the hell was wrong with that bitch? If she hadn’t already been sexed-in he would have asked Angel to blackball her permanently. He might do it anyway—there was more than one reason to get kicked out of the pack and disrespecting the second wolf was a serious offense.
“So here he is, our fearless leader who abandoned the pack in the middle of the hunt last night.”
The words snapped Paul out of his irritation and he looked up to see Chulo glaring at him. Worse, most of the pack was standing behind him—like they’d been fucking waiting for Paul to get there.
“I didn’t abandon the pack, I went to check out a lead on that coven. Which turned out to be nothing, by the way,” he added quickly. There was no way he was giving Chulo or anyone else—even Angel—the Coconut Grove address Laurent had given him. In the past he would have given a vampire up in a heartbeat, hell, he would have been the first in line to kill the dead son of a bitch. But Laurent was different. And just because Paul was determined never to see him again didn’t mean he wanted him staked or reduced to a pile of ash by the sun.
“So you’re saying you didn’t give me point and send me off on a fucking wild goose chase on purpose.” Chulo was still obviously pissed.
Paul shrugged casually. “I gave you point. What you did with it is up to you. So what did you do, Chulo? I killed my vamp—did you wipe out the rest of the coven?”
“No we fucking didn’t because there was no coven and you know it. We scented everywhere and never caught another whiff.”
Paul frowned because it was true—he’d been scouting for the coven of vamps before he’d stopped Chulo from killing Lauren and had never seen or smelled them either. But he couldn’t admit that now. “Look, I can’t be the only one who saw them.
Where’s Gordo? He raised the alarm in the first place.” He found the skinny wolf standing almost right behind Chulo, looking like he wished he could be invisible.
“Well, Gordo?” “I, uh…” Gordo shifted uneasily. “Could be I made a mistake. I never actually saw more than just the one vamp. But you know, since they always travel in groups I thought—”