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Chapter 2

Jackboot

LENNOX

C harlie Lopez smells like smoke. And other things. I give the air a sniff. Hair spray. Tea… English Breakfast. Strawberry jam. Toast. Daisies.

I glance at her from the corner of my eye. Her delicate fingers are curved confidently around the steering wheel as she navigates New York traffic. I’d taken a cab to the crime scene. She offered me a ride when she found out.

My mate.

She’s so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her.

Her hair is black except for the fringe of her bangs, which is dyed blue. She’s short but has more than enough curves to fill my hands… if I wanted my hands filled. Which I do not.

Or that’s what I have to tell myself because my palms itch to fill themselves, my mouth waters at the mere thought of a taste.

It’s the mating call.

But I’m old enough, smart enough, seasoned enough, not to give into instinct. Or at least, it’s what I used to believe. That if I ever found my mate, I would be able to resist her charms. I don’t have a choice. If I don’t, she'll die.

We make our way to Charlie’s office, a windowless room tucked into a small corner of the West Brooklyn Fire Hall.

“Sorry about the mess,” she says as she puts her shoulder into the door, shoving it past some boxes blocking the way.

“You just move in?” I ask, stepping over several files spilling from the top of a box.

“No,” she replies, clutching a metal cup with a sticker of a fire engine on the side. “Just bad at filing.”

I pick out her desk in the mess, a picture of a dark-haired boy catching my attention. “Yours?” I nod at the picture.

Her face softens and a dimple teases her cheek as she flashes a quick smile. “Yup, that’s Luke.”

I try not to sound like my entire existence depends on her next answer as I ask, “And his father?”

She gives me a look that tells me we don’t know each other well enough for these kinds of questions, but answers anyway. “Died in a fire three years ago.”

That explains why my mate puts herself in harm’s way to investigate fires. I’ll have to find a way to remove her from her dangerous job while keeping my distance from her.

As if reading my mind, she says, “Before you decide the tragedy of my dead husband is the reason I became a fire investigator, it’s not. I started down this career path before Ramón was killed.”

I nod, trying to ignore the steady beat of her heart, the flutter of her pulse, the whooshing of her breath, but instinct tells me to monitor her life signs the same as I do my own. I shake my head and try to refocus on the conversation.

Leaning against her desk, I cross my arms over my chest. “What made you decide to become an investigator?”

A mischievous glint enters her eyes. “I’m a fire bug.”

I frown. Fire bugs are arsonists. “You’re a firefighter who sets fires?”

“I used to.” The grin teasing her lips has me gripping her desk hard enough to snap it if it were made of weaker material. “I’ve been obsessed by fire since I was a child. Got in trouble a few times setting fires in the neighbourhood. One of them got out of hand and burnt down a shed and half a fence. I had to work two jobs the summer I turned 14 to pay it all back.”

I shake my head, but smile, her amusement at her own story warming me. “A well-meaning fire investigator took you in hand?” I guess. “Taught you to stop the fires rather than start them?”

“Nope again.” She laughs then shrugs. “There was no praise Jesus moment leading me down this path. I’ve always loved fires and figured fighting them put me in close proximity to them. After a few years of fighting them, I wanted more of a challenge. I wanted to understand fire, so I learned about accelerants and explosives and landed a job as an investigator.”

“I’m impressed,” I tell her truthfully. “You’re young for that kind of a career trajectory.”

She shrugs and moves a box from a wooden chair to the floor, waving me to sit before maneuvering around the piles and sliding into the chair behind her desk. “I knew what I wanted to do after high school, and I went for it. I became a firefighter when I was eighteen and an investigator four years ago when I was 29.”

I sink into the chair she cleared for me. “As I said, young.”

She frowns at me, her eyes drifting over my face. “How old were you when you became a cop?”

I try not to snort at the question. “I’ve been with the NYPD for fifty-eight years.” Her eyes widen at my admission and her head tilts as she continues to peruse me.

While humans are aware of shifter immortality, I find the ones who live in large human-dominated cities like New York often forget how long-lived we can be. Shifters my age are somewhat rare. Immortality doesn’t mean we can’t die. We do, as evidenced by the dead shifter at our crime scene.

Charlie’s thoughts seem to drift in the same direction. “Our victim was a shifter.”

I nod. “A shifter pathologist will perform the autopsy.”

“We know the cause of death isn’t natural,” she says, her voice becoming matter of fact as she fires up the laptop on her desk. She looks at me pointedly. “Tell me what you saw at the scene.”

I take myself back to the warehouse, the scent of smoke heavy in the air, the body sprawled out on a metal bedframe, jaws stretched wide as if to rail against his fate. “The deceased is a male wolf shifter in his prime. I’ll get you his birth date when I’ve had a chance to check the Wolf-Haven records.”

Her tone is sharp as she asks, “You knew him?”

“Not well,” I admit. “His name was Greystone Boulder-Wolf.”

“You’ll have to take yourself off the case,” she snaps, her brows lowering in annoyance. “You can’t investigate the death of someone you knew.”

I rub the bridge of my nose, pulling from the deep well of patience towards humans I’ve had to cultivate over my years of working with them. “I’m over 700 years old, there aren’t many wolf shifters in existence I haven’t at least heard of. I didn’t know the deceased; I knew of him and could name him on sight. I have no biases toward him.” Not entirely true. He was once a lesser advisor to my brother Fallon when he was king of Wolf-Haven. I don’t harbour warm feelings toward the shifters who helped my brother commit atrocities against our brethren. But I will investigate Greystone’s death the same as I would for any other shifter.

She continues to eye me, eventually saying, “I don’t suppose there are many shifters in your division?”

“A handful and I’m the only detective.”

She sighs, but nods firmly. “Then you stay on the case.”

It’s cute that she thinks this is her decision to make, but I allow her to take the dominant position in our case.

Our case.

I haven’t had to work with a partner since Edith Thornton, the Pinkertons and the Rangers.

“I haven’t had a partner in years,” she murmurs.

I wonder if she’s subconsciously reading my mind.

She’s my mate, and despite my resistance to the idea, I can feel the draw for her growing. She feels the same attraction to me that I have for her, but she won’t know what’s happening, why or what to do about it. At some point, if we continue our proximity to each other, we’ll be able to hear each other’s thoughts.

Which would be a disaster.

If I really want to keep her safe from the curse that haunts my family, I should leave now. Stop talking to her, stop learning about her, stop breathing her in with each inhale.

“What were the slogans painted everywhere?” she asks, drawing my attention back to the conversation.

“They were ASHRA slogans.”

She taps her keyboard, then reads from the screen, “ASHRA. The anti-shifter human rights association. Their mission is to disrupt any and all relations between humans and shifters in order to protect humanity from extinction.” She wrinkles her nose. “Ew. Gotta love the way they position themselves as the champions of all humans at the expense of all shifters. I mean, they don’t even define which shifters they’re against. Who could possibly hate the cute little bunny shifters? No thanks, you don’t speak for me, you speciesist assholes.”

I burst out laughing, surprising myself. I smile so rarely it feels strange to have this woman pulling one out of me.

“Good to know my new partner doesn’t hate my kind.”

“Of course not!” she says, offended, but then her dimple flashes. “Only you.”

“Hey!” I defend. “You don’t even know me.”

She grins. “You set me up, I’ll knock you down.”

“Noted.”

A moment passes before we both realize we’re grinning at each other like teenagers. She glances down at her screen and I clear my throat, saying, “ASHRA has been a thorn in the side of the wolf shifters for a few years now. They had a run-in with my brother’s wife.”

She taps the keyboard a few more times, then her eyes widen as she quickly reads. “Magdalene Rage-Witch-Wolven-North, formerly known as Magdalene Good Witch. Mated and married to Rush Wolven-North. She was arrested in the town of Pendle for using witchcraft against humans. In a fit of rage, she broke out of the prison where she was placed, killed several guards and set explosives off in the town of Pendle, injuring several humans.”

“A human wrote that,” I growl, not liking the description of what happened to Magdalene in that town.

“Obviously,” she says without looking up. “Doesn’t mean I won’t find valuable information. I’m capable of looking past the agenda when I read. I’m smarter than I look.”

“You look plenty smart to me,” I tell her.

“Exactly.” She frowns at me. “These assholes hate all non-human creatures, don’t they? From their website, they don’t seem to differentiate much between witches and wolves.”

I’m impressed with her quick and accurate assessment. “They don’t and they are extremely dangerous to all magical creatures, which is why my brothers and I are trying to stop them. We haven’t made much more progress than Pendle though, where we dismantled the part of their organization experimenting on us.”

She nods as she listens. “The so-called prison your sister-in-law was sent to?” At my affirmative nod, she says, “So I guess the big question is what does my fire have to do with your dead shifter?”

We stare at each other for a moment, both of us thinking over her question.

I state the obvious. “They used the fire to get rid of evidence.”

She shakes her head. “There was no accelerant on the floor where the body was placed. He was barely singed. They wanted the paint and some of the leaflets to survive too.” She squints at me and when she speaks, her voice is low as if she’s talking to herself. “That building was empty. There was a real estate sign on the front, which means it’s either up for sale or has recently sold.” She scrawls a note to herself to find out who owns the building. “I think the fire was set for attention. To draw us to the crime scene. There wasn’t much for furniture. The building was empty, and they didn’t want their message to go undiscovered.”

Her eyes flash to mine and for a moment the melted chocolate orbs capture me, holding me breathlessly still. It takes precious seconds before I can fill my lungs with enough air to speak. “I think you’re right.”

The distraction she’s causing me is starting to annoy. I’m off to a terrible start. I haven’t contributed anything meaningful to the investigation except for the name of the deceased. I need to up my game if I don’t want my new partner to do laps around me while I gape at her like a lovesick puppy.

“Here.” Charlie tears the paper from her notebook and hands it to me. It takes me a second to decipher her scrawls, but I realize she’s given me a to-do list.

It reads:

Detective Wolven-North:

1. Call Wolf-Haven - get info on deceased shifter

2. Collect CCTV footage from the area of the fire

3. Check police database for info on the deceased

Investigator Lopez:

1. Find out who owns the building

2. Determine accelerant used

3. Determine spread of fire

“You have quicker access to the police and shifter stuff,” she explains, “and I’ll have access to anything related to the building.” She stares at me for a few seconds and I stare back, my mind blank of everything except how pretty the blue in her hair is. “You can leave now.”

“Huh?” I snap to attention. Is she dismissing me?

“I assume there’s not much you can do from my office, right?” She nods toward the door. “Go back to your precinct, work on your part of the list and let me know when you come up with something.”

I push myself out of the chair and step awkwardly around the piles until I reach the door. I glance back at her hopefully but she only waves.

Before I can close the door, she calls out to me.

I eagerly stick my head back in, hoping she asks me to stay. It’s not what I should want, but my pathetic wolf won’t stop leaping around in joy, begging me to lick her.

“Yes?”

The dimple deepens as she replies, “Do you prefer Detective Prince Wolven-North, or should I call you Prince Detective?” She frowns and looks thoughtful. “Being American, I’m never really sure if the royal title comes before the job title or vice versa.”

She’s mocking me and my damn wolf his lapping it up.

“Call me Lennox,” I tell her, closing the door and leaving.