Blood Heir (Aurelia Ryder, #1)(42)

After the separation from the Pack, Derek fully embraced his Lone Wolf of Atlanta status. He worked for Cutting Edge, but he seemed most content when he was working on his own.

Old Derek was a loner. The new Derek had a pack. He had landed with his back to them, and they had positioned themselves to protect him. I had no doubt that if he growled a command, they would have tried to tear me apart. That was his pack. Not Desandra’s, not a Pack crew. His.

Old Derek was grey. Large, by shapeshifter standards, but still within normal range for a lupine shapeshifter. The new Derek was silver, bright uniform silver, without any black or brown, and he was huge. I’d never seen a werewolf that large before.

Old Derek emanated strong hunter green, right in line with the rest of the Pack. The new Derek left a trail of mint-green magic.

Old Derek’s eyes glowed amber. The man I saw tonight had eyes that shone with gold. And it wasn’t just the shine. It was the way he looked at me. He’d stared at me as if I had intruded into his territory and he had the right to punish me. He’d given me the alpha stare. You couldn’t buy one of those. You couldn’t steal or borrow it. You could learn to imitate it, but most natural leaders were born with it. It was one of the most effective means of control for a pack leader. Curran had raised it to the level of art, and Conlan was doing his best to catch up.

In all of our years together, I had never seen Derek give someone the alpha stare. He focused on them and he had what I used to call his “death glare,” but it wasn’t an alpha stare.

What the hell had happened?

It was Derek. The scars were unmistakable.

Perhaps that was all that was left of the Derek I used to know.

Ascanio must’ve realized Derek was back in the city. That time when he had tried to take the cookie from me, a shapeshifter, one of his people, had run up and reported that she saw “him” and then she waved her hand in front of her face. She must have been indicating the scars. Besides our family and the Medranos, Derek would be just about the only person for whom Ascanio would drop everything and go chasing into the night. The rivalry between them started the day Ascanio tried to put his hands on me, and Derek had shown him the error of his ways. It never got better, only worse.

Derek had returned to Atlanta, and now he and Ascanio both were somehow tangled up in Pastor Haywood’s murder. Why had he left in the first place? Something had occurred, some seismic shift must have taken place for him to abandon Kate and Curran and disappear.

Maybe it wasn’t Derek at all. Maybe something was just wearing his body. The thought brought me up short.

If something dared to take his body, I would kill it.

Magic flashed in my mind. Someone had just crossed my outer ward. I jumped off the divan, picked up my spear, and marched to the front door.

It couldn’t be him. I had used wolfsbane, and then Tulip and I swam through Lake Adair for half a mile, dodging water snakes and snapping turtles living on the drowned trees left over from when the lake had been Adair Park. It would take him and his people ages to find my scent, if they ever did.

Someone knocked on my door. I flung it open.

Knight Stella Davis took a step back. “Easy now. I just came to borrow a cup of sugar.”

The tension went out of me. “White or brown?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really bake.” Stella looked over my shoulder. “That’s a textbook shithole you’re living in. I admire your commitment, but just so you know, we don’t take a vow of poverty in the Order. You can live somewhere nice. With furniture that hasn’t been gnawed on.”

Ha. Ha. “It’s after midnight. Did you need something, or did you just come over to insult my house?”

Stella narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you curious how I found you?”

“Let me guess, someone from the city called you about the phone service?”

A little of the excitement went out of her. “Yep. Funny thing, when you wave around an Order badge and a wad of cash, people still want to check you out and see if you’re legit. Great job staying off the grid. You should teach covert work at the academy.”

“Would that be before or after your class on surveillance, with an emphasis on how to lose a suspect on your home turf? That really pissed you off, didn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it did. But now I found you.”

“Congratulations. You’re the best that’s ever been.”

Stella grinned. “Thank you.” She raised a piece of paper and waved it at me.

Fine. I made my tone flat and disinterested. “What’s that?”

“This is a murder. I think it’s connected to yours.”

I opened the ward. “Come in.”

“Is it safe? Will the germs get me?”

“Poverty isn’t contagious. You’ll be fine.”

Stella entered and followed me to the kitchen.

“Beer, coffee, tea?”

“From this kitchen? No thanks.” She passed me the paper.

I read it. A name and an address. “Alycia Walton. Why do you think she’s connected?”

“She is, well, she was, a historian specializing in early Christianity.”

If you had some Christian relics and they had real power, the next step to selling would be to establish their history and provenance. Stella knew about the relics.