She figured he didn’t want to expose her to the other reds either. “Devlyn, none of them is coming home with me tonight... only you.”
She applied green shadow to her eyelids and blush to her cheeks and then grabbed fistfuls of red curls and held them against her head. “Up or down?”
He groaned. “Wear a black wig. Or a big floppy hat.”
She released her hair. “Okay, down... less work.”
“I really don’t know how you talked me into this.”
“You love me.”
“If I had any sense, I wouldn’t allow this,” he grumbled, his brows knit in a hard frown.
She crossed the floor and grazed his mouth with hers. “You’re an angel. My guardian angel. And you’ll watch out for me. But, about my question, should we arrive early?”
For an instant, his smoldering gaze held her hostage; then glancing outside, he shook his head. “We’re already too late for that. Ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, under the circumstances.” She squelched the urge to shudder and pulled a shawl over her shoulders.
When they arrived in the vicinity of the club, they parked a quarter of a mile away from the red brick building in an attempt to avoid others seeing their vehicle or that they were together. She walked to the club ahead of him, the music already beating a gypsy rhythm to stir the dead. Cars filled the parking lot to capacity; others spilled into the road, silent against the curb.
She entered the club first, while Devlyn lagged a short distance behind.
A kaleidoscope of colored lights flashed overhead as the music pounded in her ears. She imagined she wouldn’t be able to hear anything for hours afterward. The scent of perfume, cologne, and sweaty bodies wafted in the air, but it was a minute before she picked up the smell of a lupus garou nearby. Too nearby.
“Rosa,” a deep voice said.
A chill prickled the nape of her neck and she turned.
“Alfred.”
“You’re fashionably late.” His chestnut eyes studied her too intensely, looking from her hair all the way to her strappy heels. He’d added some kind of greasy stuff to his hair, making it appear darker, less red. He seemed taller than he had at the zoo. She glanced down at his shoes. Elevated.
Alfred offered to take her shawl.
Once she removed it, his face brightened. “Certainly worth waiting for.” Then a dark shadow crossed his face. “I saw Nicol here, though. He said he was meeting you also. I told him to try back some other time.”
He seated her at a small round table for two near the highly polished dance floor.
“A gray lupus garou pack raised me, Alfred. I haven’t been with my own kind since I was small. I don’t want to select a mate from the first red wolf I meet.”
He waved for a bartender and then turned back to her. “I see. The red alpha pack leader isn’t good enough for you?”
So Alfred was the pack leader of the local red lupus garou. But she noticed at once that his smell wasn’t the same as the smell of the one who’d been in the apartment where she and Devlyn had discovered the murdered girl. That was good. He’d want to find the rogue as much as they did, then.
“Actually,” she said, “that’s some of the problem. A pack leader is already after me — of the grays.”
Alfred’s eyes widened. “He’s not from around here. Can’t be. We have no grays in the area.”
“No, from Colorado, where I lived originally.”
He relaxed. “It’s not his territory. Not to worry. A gray from another area won’t have any success here with our females.”
She wished his reds could do away with Volan. Then she’d offer herself to Devlyn as his mate. Although she assumed he wouldn’t like it if the only way he could have her was if reds from another pack killed Volan. Of course, if Alfred and his pack eliminated Volan, Alfred would be sure to think that he could claim her.
Wishing life were less complicated, she took a slow breath. “As pack leader, why haven’t you already found a mate?”
“They’re either much too young or much too old. You can’t imagine what a stir you’ve created with your sudden appearance. We had no idea that a lone female was in the area. You must keep an awfully low profile. And we never fathomed you’d escape from the zoo. We had planned to storm the place to rescue you later that night.” He turned to a bartender. “A beer and... “
“A Bloody Mary,” Bella said.
He smiled and then grew serious. “So, who stole you away from the hospital? A gray?”
“Yes. He had orders to return me to the pack leader in Colorado. But something else came up.”
Alfred fisted his hands on the table and snarled, “No pack leader from another territory has any say here.”
Despite his outburst, Bella kept her words cool. “He’s a gray. So far, Volan’s been unbeatable.”
The bartender returned with their drinks and Alfred paid for them. Bella sipped hers while Alfred raked his eyes over her in too leering a manner. “He won’t be welcome. If he arrives here, I’ll have a committee give him a grand send off.”
Pack leaders — well-thought-of pack leaders — took the lead. He should be the one making plans to take Volan down. Already her estimation of him had sunk to the depths of the Marianna Trench.
She made no comment concerning his threats about Volan, which seemed to make him uneasy. Did he assume he’d not said the right thing to win the red’s heart? He had that right. He’d have to look, act, and feel like Devlyn to get close to her.
Alfred cleared his throat. “I thought maybe tomorrow night we could — “
“I have other plans.”
He tapped his fingers on the table, his eyes narrowed, and his lips formed a thin line. “I don’t want a long courtship. I need a mate.” He spoke abruptly, like a pack leader used to getting his way.
But with her, he had to tread lightly. She wasn’t one of his pack, and she had no intention of ever being one. “And I told you I’m not going to choose a mate when I haven’t seen some more eligible bachelors. Mating for life means something to me.”
His eyes darkened and he frowned.
Despite his look of aggression, she wouldn’t back down. She glanced around the club, hoping to catch sight of Devlyn. Leaning against a pillar near a set of tables, he observed her from the east side of the building. Her whole body thrilled to know he served as her protector, but it was the way his gaze locked with hers, mesmerizing her, claiming her, that stirred her to the core.
She gave him a knowing smile and then turned to Alfred. “So, where’s Nicol?”
He pointed in Devlyn’s direction. “The curly redhead who’s nursing a drink at the table over there, fuming and watching every move we make.”
“Ah.” She caught Devlyn’s eye and then motioned to the red-haired man with her head.
Devlyn nodded and moved in to sit beside Nicol at the table.
She searched for Argos but, regretfully, saw no sign of him.
“Looking for someone?” Alfred asked, touching her hand as she held onto her glass.
She pulled away from his icy touch, concerned Devlyn might overreact to Alfred’s attentions toward her. “An old friend. He wished to speak to me about some problem, but I don’t see him.”
“How old a friend?”
“Ancient. He’s about seventy and retired as our pack leader before I became a teen.”
“If you’re referring to this gray wolf pack from Colorado, he’s not one of your kind. We are.”
She leaned back in her chair, not liking the comments he made about her pack. It didn’t matter how different they were. They took her in and cared for her when she would have died without their help. Alfred hadn’t even asked how her family perished and she ended up with a gray pack. He seemed more interested in getting her to agree to be his mate than anything else, but didn’t he know that meant trying to convince her she was someone special?
He reached his hand out to her. “Let’s dance.”
Her heartbeat quickened. She’d have to dance to keep up the charade, but she didn’t want to, not with him. She glanced back at Devlyn.
“Nicol won’t ask you. I am.” Alfred still held his hand out to her, and she took a deep breath, weighing her options.
Devlyn watched every move the slick red lupus garou made toward Bella. Twice, he’d had the urge to break up the party, claim her for his own, and take her away from the club — damn the reason they were here in the first place.
When Alfred reached his hand out to Bella, Devlyn knew he was asking her to dance. The thought sent a shard of ice straight into his heart. He wanted no one else near her feeling the heat of her curvy body and smelling her sweet scent.
Nicol spoke, distracting him. “She sure is hot.” He looked over at Devlyn. “Got yourself a mate?”
“Yeah,” Devlyn said, and it was no lie. Bella was his mate, if he could only convince her she didn’t want a human. But dealing with Volan was another matter.
“You didn’t bring her?”
“She’s preoccupied with work right now.”
“Ah. So what do you do?”
Devlyn considered the man’s calculating brown eyes and his unruly mop of red hair. “Leather goods. You?”
“Professional hunter. Take folks into the wilds — the rougher the terrain, the meaner the prey, the more they love it.” Nicol’s eyes darkened with a hint of malice.
Devlyn returned his attention to Bella. “You’re not here much of the time, I take it.”
“I’m here and then I’m gone. I still need a mate, if that’s what you’re getting at.” He pointed his beer at Bella and Alfred. “Now that’s what Iwas supposed to be doing.”
“He’s your pack leader?”
“Yeah. But from the looks of it, she’s taking it really slow.”
“What’s your leader like around women? Is he aggressive?”