“I’m not my brother.” I lowered my voice although I didn’t care if Maddy heard me. “Stick to the job you’re being paid for, bloodsucker.”
Small crinkles at the corners of his eyes appeared—the equivalent of vamp amusement. He smiled, giving me some fang. “Or what? Everyone knows your wolf spirit slumbers inside you. Maybe you don’t even have a wolf spirit at all. Maybe you are just a human.” He spat the last part.
Max viewed humans the way I viewed office temps. The comparison wasn’t flattering to either of us.
“I don’t care what you and that freaky ghoul get up to in your free time, but stay away from Maddy.”
“Or what?” He handed me his clipboard and pen. It was a requisition for more wiring.
Vamps are excellent at subtext. They’ll calmly discuss the most mundane things while plotting your doom.
“Do not threaten a vamp,” he said. “Sunlight is the only threat we know. Shifters come and go. She’s not your mate. She’s better off without you sniffing around her ass.”
I wanted to separate his head from his body. Instead, my growl surprised us both. “Stick to the job you were hired to do.”
With one more look at Maddy’s shapely backside, I headed to my office.
“We were doing just fine before you Havocs showed up.” Gabe hurried to catch up with me. He stunk like rotten fish.
“What’s the matter with you?” I flicked the light on in the office without asking him in. He followed me anyway. Ghouls are such drama nerds.
“Do you know how long Maddy pined for you after you left the last time? Keep in mind that’s coming from a ghoul. She built a life here. Now you show back up and expect everything to be like before. What’s going to happen when you leave again? How can you just keep hurting her?” I look up to find disgust slapped across his face.
On a good day I didn’t like my faults pointed out. On a day when I’d seen a vamp eyeing my lover and now was being lectured by a ghoul, I was not in the mood.
“Maddy said the bloodsucker is your friend. Make sure he stays away from her.”
Gabe wiped his nose on his sleeve. His chronic sinusitis wasn’t endearing either. His watery eyes didn’t meet mine.
I rummaged around in my desk drawer. “Why is he sizing her up?”
“Maximus doesn’t... He wouldn’t.”
“Do you really want to try and say he’s a saint? Come on, Gabe. He’s a fucking vamp. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Gabe shuffled out and I let him go without another word.
I’m sure that in the ghoul’s mind, his hanging around Sleepy Briar meant that Maddy would eventually fall in love with him. Who knows? It could happen. But not while I could do anything about it. That little foxy shifter was a hard habit to break.
With Gabe gone, I paced the floor before dropping into my office chair. This project was a mess financially. Jax was skilled in carpentry, not the handling of the project as a whole. And now the vamp was making me edgy. I hated his predatory stares at Maddy. It could be him setting these wolf traps.
But I knew it wasn’t.
I tugged on my hair in frustration. How to keep Maddy safe?
She was never far from my thoughts when I was in Sleepy Briar. In California, I’d blocked her out with a steady diet of work and buxom models. Even then her sweet face had haunted my dreams more than I wanted to admit.
Before he left, Jax told me of the dark magic traps. Maddy was still recovering from the wolf trap injury. Every time she winced from standing up too quickly, I wanted to kill the source of her pain.
I didn’t need my wolf to protect her. I’d take care of this my own way. Luckily, she’d welcomed me back to Sleepy Briar—and her bed. Now keeping an eye on her was easy. I’d be lying if I said she didn’t thrill and excite me like no other woman.
Was she better than Sleepy Briar? Absolutely. But she was happy here. Happier than I’d ever been, certainly. Back in high school, she’d begun shifting without warning. Unlike most other shifters, she’d never completely gained control of her form.
Once Maddy understood that her pre-shifting life was gone, she accepted her fox spirit. She’d be out on the snowy tundra in her fox form for days. When I left for college in California, Maddy stayed in Sleepy Briar to study online. Her argument to my failed attempts at persuasion: “No matter how cool college is, no one is going to allow a fox in their classes.”
Maddy was wasted in Sleepy Briar. She would’ve made an excellent lawyer.
Chapter2