I pushed through the door and waved the manager out. There sat the obstinate LaSalle woman, bent over a sheet of paper on a table, sketching furiously with a stubby pencil. I could almost feel her anger with each stroke. Her energy was vibrant and alive. Something about her called to me—her fierce focus, or maybe her reckless resistance. I couldn’t stand her stubbornness, couldn’t stand the reminder of what had happened to my sister, but being around her was like a drug.
Then she broke the spell by speaking.
“You have some explaining to do, Laurent.” She didn’t even look up. “I was attacked by werewolves, and the very first thing you did when you brought me into the city was take me to the damn werewolf den.”
I growled. “Because it was safe. You were safe with us. Yet the first thing you did this morning was prance over to the LaSalles. I made it clear that they’re extremely dangerous, and I warned you to stay away.”
“Yeah, so did others. The thing is, the LaSalles didn’t spend all evening playing mind games and lying to me.”
So she had gone to them.
I put my hands on the table. “If the LaSalles are talking, they’re lying. You don’t know them or this city. Like sugar, they’ll rot you from the inside out.”
“Funny. They said similar things about you. So who am I to believe? My own family, or one of these?”
She flipped the paper around and shoved it across the small table so I could see.
I sucked in a sharp breath. Fates, could she draw.
Savannah’s illustration depicted a rough, tattooed woman, partially shifted. Her muscles were tensed, and her arm had retracted as if she was going to rip free of the page with her long, savage claws. Her lips were pulled back in a contemptuous snarl, revealing her erupting canines.
I let out an imperceptible sigh of relief. I didn’t recognize the she-wolf, so she wasn’t from our pack.
Picking up the paper, I studied the details. Somehow, working with just pencil, Savannah had even captured the glow of the she-wolf’s eyes and the rage in the contours of her face. It was so lifelike—and filled with hate.
“It’s extraordinary.” I met Savannah’s eyes. “This is far better than the sketch artist could have done.”
“It’s what I saw.” She scowled, but I could smell her pride simmering beneath the surface.
My wolf shoved against my chest, excited by the scent. I glared at the drawing. Was this how Savannah saw us? Saw me? Neither human nor monster, but a savage half-beast, forged from violence and hatred?
I laid the extraordinary illustration back down. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. This is not what or how we are.”
“I figured that much, or I would’ve been dead already. You didn’t need to lure me to a bar. If you wanted to take me, you could have done it anytime.”
Heat shot through me, and my wolf shifted. “Is that so?”
The words left my mouth without thinking and carried a tone that I hadn’t intended. I could sense her surprise, and beneath that, the sweet scent of her arousal. It began to do inappropriate things to me.
Her cheeks flushed, and she put her hand on her mouth. “That came out wrong, I mean that if—"
“You never mentioned this tattoo,” I said, and pointed to the woman’s neck, trying to cover for the both of us. I shouldn’t have said that sort of thing to a LaSalle, nor felt this way. It was wrong and dangerous.
The tattoo was a two-headed wolf, small, and just above the collar bone.
Savannah grabbed the page and inspected it. “I didn’t really notice it much while they were trying to murder me. But I saw her in the bar earlier. The tat kind of came back to me. Does it mean something?”
“I’m not sure. Did the other man have one, too?”
Dane hadn’t had a tattoo like that when I’d kicked him out of the pack, so maybe it was a sign he’d joined a gang or something. The problem was that Dane was wolfborn and turned into a wolf at death. There was no way to inspect his human form for tattoos. They didn’t transfer.
Savannah bit her lip. “I can’t remember if he had one. Let me draw.”
The flowing lines of her sketch pulled me in: quick bursts of pencil, jagged marks, the scratch of shading. Soon, I found myself standing next to her, breathing in the heady aroma of her tangerine signature. It was like standing in warm sunlight.
There was something about this woman beneath the fire and anger and stubbornness.
She leaned slightly against my side, and then froze. Her cheeks reddened, and her pencil quivered. “You’re breathing on me, wolf man.”