Page 43

“We’re going to have to establish an HR department.” Kin sighed.

“Is that why you couldn’t fight at one hundred yesterday?! How rough was he?”

Rowan frowned at Louisa’s question, remembering that some of her injuries had indeed been a consequence of the coupling.

“Come on, let’s concentrate. I need to get home before the sun sets or my dear husband will have my head on a platter. He was already upset that I spent the night at the Brood compound yesterday.”

Rowan sobered up and nodded, “I see you’ve brought your own materials to class Kin, however, Henrietta Young also pitched in and sent us this.” Rowan tapped the leather-bound book neither of her partners had taken notice of.

It took a second even after she directed their attention to the relic for them to comprehend what they were looking at.

Louisa let out a gasp.

Kin looked as if his eyes had landed on the most precious thing the world had ever beheld.

“Dead Henrietta Young?” Louisa asked.

Rowan nodded.

Louisa’s eyes grew wide with shock, and she covered her mouth. “Rowan, did you kill Henrietta Young so you could get the Elder’s Grimoire?”

Kin saved Rowan the energy from hitting her best friend by giving her a soft smack with one of his journals. “Why are you such an idiot?”

Louisa waved them both off and leaned over the book. “I never thought I would get to see it, let alone touch it.”

“Do it.” Rowan whispered conspiratorially as Louisa paused, her hand inches from touching the cover. As soon as her fingersstroked it, Rowan gave a shout and burst into laughter at the vampiress’ terrified features.

Kin delivered her strike while picking up the grimoire.

Rowan rubbed the back of her head, sure that he had hit her harder.

“Well, I think it’ll be more helpful to your role than ours. Perk up Louisa, time to get into the gossip reels.”

Louisa pouted, “Fine.”

XOXOXOXO

By the time Rowan hung up the phone for her last call, the sun was close to being where Kin would have to leave.

She wasn’t surprised that as he’d researched, Kin had also created a slideshow. As he set up, Rowan and Louisa took turns looking through the Elder’s Grimoire, trying to find a rhyme or reason for its random entries. Kin had apparently got it down pat and was ‘testing’ their intellect to see if they could also figure it out.

“It’s impossible.” Louisa groaned, slumped over one of the five bean bag chairs Rowan had littered throughout her office.

Rowan turned to Dew perched on her shoulder, who had made her way in for moral support once she’d closed up the front office for the day. “Do you have any idea?”

“Well.” Dew got shy when asked for input on things she considered way over her head. “It’s not in any order that would make sense to us, because the Coven keeps their history pretty close to the chest. I think to decode it you would have to know which Elder had it and what events they went through and when they went through it.”

“Yes, Dew. That’s exactly what it is.” Kin flung a chocolate in her direction and Dew caught it with a giggle.

“Lucky guess.” Louisa grumbled.

“You really need to work on being such a sore loser, Louisa.” Kin motioned to his prepared presentation. “So, according not only to the grimoire, but also a couple universities that have studied the relationships between shifters, hierarchies are the strongest determining factor in how we act. Hierarchies themselves range in structures between familial, to friendly, to romantic. Over this past year, a new study posed the question of how these hierarchies formed and what the most important factors were. They returned with an answer that the beast hierarchies aren’t determined by race at all, but things such as age, physical prowess and—perhaps most important—magic capabilities while in beast form. The wolves shouldn’t have affected me because I’m older and my magic capabilities as a kitsune overpower the typical wolf by tenfold, but because they were in a hive mindset, they counted as one giant threat to my beast.”

Rowan didn’t miss the annoyed tone Kin took on as he relayed this last part. “Still, they couldn’t dominate me. I still maintained a relative humanoid form rather than going full fox, which was probably a mistake. If I would’ve let the beast take over completely instead of trying to hold on to my human reasoning, I could’ve made my own decisions and not hurt either of you.”

“Is this hypothetical, or fact?” Louisa asked.

Kin scowled at the vampiress.