Page 4

Chapter Four

T he kitchen in the main house was both a thing of beauty and of function. It was also large enough for half a dozen people to work in comfortably, but still managed to have everything necessary to bake my ritualistic morning cookies in my short-arm’s reach of the stove. I stood there, mixing dough, and looking out the bay windows of the breakfast nook into the garden. Redbuds were budding with that almost neon purple hue, while daffodils skirted the slender trees, all of it backed by shrubbery that was pruned the right balance between too wild and too tame.

He had a very good gardener. My father would be impressed. I was impressed. I’d woken up happier than I had been in a long time. I wasn’t alone with my heavy secrets anymore. It wouldn’t last forever, of course, but I’d enjoy my vacation from reality as long as it lasted.

“Miss Era, what are you doing?” Senator Silverton said, coming into his kitchen hesitantly, like he might be infringing on my space.

I smiled shyly. “Good morning, Senator. I’m making mint fudge and double chocolate pumpkin cookies. I hope you don’t mind. I have to make cookies every day, so I smell less like a werewolf. Is it too much bother? If I am, let me know and I’ll be gone faster than you can blink. I can be very fast. It’s the gnome in me.” My words came out in a rush and I stood there, shifting uncomfortably while I stared at the elf, who looked even more stunning this morning in his business suit and purple tie.

He smiled slightly. “It’s no bother, Miss Era, and neither are you.” His words were soft, gentle, the kind of tone I usually got from people who pitied the helpless little reporter, not someone who knew I was a werewolf.

I stared at him for another long moment before I cut the last line of brownies. “Your kitchen is incredibly well-stocked. Do you have a housekeeper other than Manny the Ogre?”

“Mm. Did you eat? You shouldn’t start the day with brownies. You missed dinner last night. When I came to inform you it was ready, you were sleeping on the couch. Did you stay there all night? It’s not good for your neck to sleep without proper…”

I laughed, but it came out as an awkward snort, which was way too embarrassing. I was half elf. I could be elegant for five minutes. Couldn’t I? Apparently not.

“Right. You remember me complaining about my neck health? Proper alignment is so important in life. I’m so glad you agree. Don’t worry, I won’t make a habit of falling asleep on the couch. Except that maybe I will. It’s such a delightfully cozy thing. My neck feels perfect. Also, I usually have cookies for breakfast. It’s part of my brand. Good thing I have all these Elven genetics to mitigate my bad life choices.” Actually, as a werewolf, I could recover from anything, including a bad diet. I stared at him. I could actually tell him that because he knew that I was a werewolf. How in the world had that happened? I shouldn’t have let down my guard to two practical strangers, particularly when one of them was so handsome. No, his handsomeness wasn’t a reason for something. It was his intellect and ability to manipulate politics that should have me worried. And yet, I wasn’t worried. That was worrisome. I needed to get out of here before I lost my mind completely.

“Any luck finding a loophole in the werewolf law?”

He frowned, shaking his head. “Not yet. The entire structure is antiquated and should be rewritten. Anyone civilized would ignore half of the mandates.”

“Max is a jewel. He wouldn’t be making a thing out of this if Ridley didn’t notify the Alta Manada about my shocking independence.”

“Max the Alpha of Singsong? Do you like him?”

“Of course I like him. I asked him to be my mate, but sadly, he refused.”

He blinked twice. “If you want him, then we will convince him to have you. Why would he say no? You’re everything a wolf wants.”

I raised a brow. “Everything a wolf wants? Do you mean my shortness or my excellent cookie-making skills?”

He picked up a mint brownie and bit into it, in spite of it not being proper breakfast food. “Your cookies are delicious,” he said once he’d swallowed that bite. He held the brownie like he wasn’t sure what to do with it, eat the rest so as to not offend me, or to throw it away so as to not offend his personal health codes.

I took it out of his hand and nibbled on the corner. Mm. I’d made it particularly minty. Was anything better than chocolate mint? “Thanks, but most wolves aren’t that particular whether food has been cooked or is still in its original raw state. Also, I only asked Max because I knew he’d say no. He values his independence as much as I do. That’s the only reason he’s the alpha, so no one can boss him around, even an adorable, gnomish elf wolf who cooks. So, you didn’t find anything at all that you think you can use? Maybe it would help if you asked me some questions about being a wolf.” I chewed on my bottom lip. I was still incredibly uncomfortable about admitting that out loud, but the wolf was officially out of the bag.

He frowned and then stole the half-eaten brownie out of my hand and took another bite out of it.

I gasped. “What are you doing? You can’t eat something I’ve had my mouth on! Do you want to become a furry, vicious monster?” I lunged for the brownie, but he side-stepped, blocking me with one forearm. His forearm was very well-muscled.

“Do you consider yourself a member of the pack?” he asked, ignoring my outrage.

“I consider you a lunatic. Give that back! I’ll give you a nice new one, okay?”

He glanced down at the brownie as I lunged for it. He blocked me almost negligently, putting his hand on my face like that was civilized. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes,” I snarled, pulling back and scowling at him, at the brownie, at his mouth, all of those things pinging against my werewolf nerves like a rubber band. “I’m part of the Singsong pack. I go to some of the potlucks. Max insisted that I have good relations with the wolves.”

“Not the runs?” he asked, holding the dangerous brownie negligently in two graceful fingers.

“No. I’ve never shifted in front of them.” I moved as fast as I could, channeling the werewolf in order to snatch it, but instead of a brownie, I caught his fingers. He’d stuck the whole thing in his mouth like a completely careless imbecile.

I sputtered as I stared at him, watching him chew for an eternity, while my heart raced from horror and excitement. It would be nice to have a werewolf elf in Singsong. I’d never met one before. But what if elves were almost as difficult to turn as Gnomes? Also, it would ruin his life, his ambitious goals, his destiny.

He smiled without a trace of chocolate in his teeth. “Interesting. Why don’t you want anyone to see your wolf?”

I wrung my hands and stared at him, half-expecting him to sprout furry ears. “You shouldn’t be so careless with your happiness and well-being.” I wanted to howl. I was so upset about the idea of him losing his whole world like I had done. Why didn’t he care?

“That was an evasion.”

I said, “No, it’s called having the proper perspective. Asking about silly things instead of being careful with your health is absolutely horrifying. You need to be properly horrified at the thought of turning. It’s like you’ve read a romance novel about shifters and now have no sense of the very real danger it poses to your life. As a werewolf, you’d lose everything you have and become something completely different. All of your friends, family, you’d lose them all. Elves don’t exactly favor werewolves.”

“No? I believe you are under seriously strange misapprehension. You clearly don’t mingle with your kind at all,” he said, giving me a look that was more than slightly disapproving.

“Elves aren’t my kind,” I said, crossing my arms and feeling like a teenager. But he was so frustrating! “Aren’t you worried about being turned?”

He shook his head. “No. I’d be very difficult to turn. Also, people don’t get turned from eating brownies, or even kissing a werewolf. It has to be a bite, usually more than a few. Are you close to biting me?”

“As a matter-of-fact, yes. I’d like to bite you for being so stupid. I wasn’t ever bitten, but I still got infected. You think you know so much about werewolves when you have no idea.”

He studied me. “I’ve worked with a few. Were you infected from eating something a werewolf had bitten?”

“I don’t know. Probably not, but that doesn’t mean…”

He put a brownie in my mouth and then turned towards the fridge to get out a lumpy disgusting shake the color of rotting produce and pour it into his glass while I chewed. Mm. Minty. “Libby wouldn’t have brought you here if she didn’t think I could handle it.”

“But Libby didn’t know I was a werewolf,” I mumbled.

“No? Are you sure? Why else would you want to know about werewolf law?”

He was probably right. How many other people knew what I was but were too polite to mention anything? Well, that was actually really encouraging. If people were kind and polite, what did I have to be worried about? Other than my parents? And Max. And now the Alta. Sigh.

“Are you sure you weren’t bitten? Do you remember what happened before you turned?” he asked before taking a long swallow of his disgusting lumpy shake.

I frowned, recalling the night before everything had gone to pieces. It had been a college party where all my friends were decompressing from the last week of finals. At the Songbird Academy for Fine Arts and Sciences, they had the most beautiful parties, filled with elves and fairies, with humans in the mix. It took place in the green, surrounded by flowers and lit with sparkling magic, while they crafted the food to make all of your worries disappear. My mother wouldn’t ever have allowed me to go to a college with werewolves. Not that they were forbidden, but the application process weeded out anyone who wouldn’t flourish, which included everyone on the dark side of the spectrum. Like me now.

I shook my head. “There weren’t any werewolves at the school. The only people at the party were elves and fairies. I must have gotten infected during the previous week, but I was busy taking tests. I did fall asleep in the woods one afternoon. That must have been when I got infected by a random, passing feral werewolf.” I frowned, because to sleep through being bitten by a werewolf sounded impossible.

“It sounds like a great mystery. Tell me about the party.”

I eyed him. He looked like a sculpture, studying me with those soulful eyes, cupping his glass of noxious health while he waited for me to explain. “The party was beautiful.” Like him. “Elves were there from all around the country. My friends Forsythia and Nala left me at the desserts table. I was trying to find them when my stomach started cramping, the music became impossibly loud, and the people incredibly irritating.”

“You don’t remember any specifics between your friends abandoning you and your illness?”

I shrugged. “I asked some people if they’d seen my friends. Mr. Clay was there, and he said that he’d seen them at the light drinks bar flirting with a very handsome elf, but when I asked that elf, he hadn’t seen them. After that is when I got sick. Right. Because the pretty elf grabbed my arm and asked if I was all right.” He’d been very pretty, and I’d been so embarrassed at the thought of throwing up on him in the middle of all that perfect beauty.

“The pretty elf? How can you tell which are pretty when we all look the same? You think that he infected you somehow? Perhaps he injected you with werewolf saliva. That would do it.” He nodded solemnly.

“Elves don’t all look the same. Why would an elf infect some random girl? I’m not powerful enough to be a threat, and most people actually like me. I’m very likable.”

“That must be coming from the gnome. An elf would never be proud of such a thing.”

I poked his muscular arm. “You’re likable when you want to be, just not around me. Why is that? I’m naturally what you pretend to be around other people.”

“You’re too agreeable. If I were as likable as you, then the combination would be intolerably sweet. Can you describe this pretty elf a bit more specifically?”

“He had very short hair, buzzed so you could see the perfect sculptural qualities of his skull. He looked like you, only thinner, smaller, less powerful.” I eyed his shoulders. “You’re quite large for an elf.”

“And you are quite large for a gnome. Perhaps we’re both werewolves.” He frowned at me. “Mr. Clay was there? Why was a media mogul at a college party?”

“He’s a huge benefactor of the school. My parents know him, so it was an easier sell to get my parents to let me go off into the big bad world if it was at a safe school like Songbird.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “It should have been safe, but it wasn’t. There is no safety in the world, which is why we must always…”

“Look for the good in everything. You can always find the evil if that’s what you’re focusing on, but you can also see the good. And life is much better with the one rather than the other.” I beamed at him and handed him a brownie. “So, thanks for letting me stay in your lovely pool house. I’m going to go and enjoy it right this second. You don’t mind if I use the pool, do you?”

“You may use anything you like,” he said with the warm enthusiasm you’d expect from an elf, as in none at all.

“Perfect. I don’t have a swimming suit, but I do have some extra yarn in my knitting bag that would probably be just enough for a bikini.”

He stared at me, shock rolling over his lovely features. “You’re going to knit a bikini?”

“Is that strange? It’s the gnome in me. You’ll have to get used to it. Of course, you could always evict me, but I’m far too adorable to throw to the wolves.”

“Mm. Don’t get sunburned,” he said, leaving me in the kitchen by myself, carrying his noxious drink away with him.

“Gnomes don’t burn,” I called after him.

“Elves do,” he said over his shoulder, gave me a small shake of his head and then continued out of sight.

The bikini was a bit shocking, but not because it was knitted. I wasn’t accustomed to following that particular pattern and found that I needed to unravel the top pieces a few times while I adapted a stitch that I wove with magic that would hold me up as well as a serious underwire bra. Gnomes tended to curves, and elves to planes, which made me somewhere in the middle. Planes were so much easier to fit, but when I finally tried it on, I was pleased with the suit even if I wasn’t so sure about myself. I knew what beautiful gnomes looked like, and elves were always beautiful, but I was both and neither. Not round and sensual, not tall and elegant. I didn’t even have the lean, athletic musculature of a werewolf. Oh well. Senator Silverton wouldn’t be in the pool.

He wasn’t, which was a good thing, because the knitted fabric immediately stretched out, so I had to use quite a few spells before it remained in its proper shape. My decency was not assured during that time of adjustment, but eventually, I could focus on floating and swimming around, enjoying the natural pool, lined with rocks and plants that fell into the water, making it feel more like a lake than anything manmade.

“You’re burning,” Senator Silverton said from the side.

I was floating on my back when he said that, lazily keeping my body up while I soaked in the sunshine. His pool was so wonderful. It didn’t stink of chlorine, just life and sunshine. I needed to pay him back somehow for all of this.

“I feel fine.” So fine. So wonderfully perfect.

“Mm. Are you going to the fund raiser this evening?”

I finally let my legs float down so I could look at him standing on the edge in his elegant tuxedo. He was stunning, naturally. The fund-raiser for the charity hospital was something I’d been looking forward to covering, but it was hard to want to leave the pool and face the rest of the world. Max was going to be so furious when he caught up to me. I’d disobeyed a direct order, and he couldn’t let that kind of thing go, however little he personally cared about what others thought about him. It would make problems for him and his pack if he didn’t maintain order and enforce those orders. I sighed heavily, stirring the heavy water with my hands. “I don’t have anything to wear. It would take me too much time to knit a dress for the occasion.” Did he think my knitted bikini was weird? Of course it was weird, but this whole situation was not normal. I mean, I was living in the Senator’s pool house, for crying out loud!

“I ordered some things in for you.”

I stared at him in shock while horror and embarrassment washed through me. “What do you mean, you ordered things for me? Like clothing? You, Senator Silverton, ordered clothing for the poor unfortunate you couldn’t help take in? Tell me you’re joking.”

He blushed slightly. Had I ever seen an elf blush before? I felt suddenly vulnerable being below him and dressed in so little. I swam to the side and pulled myself out, then grabbed the fluffy enormous pool towel and wrapped it around myself before I turned to face him. He’d walked up to me and was examining my cheeks and shoulders.

“You’re definitely burned. I suppose you’ll stay in then with some aloe on those.”

I pointed at his still-pink cheeks. “Maybe I’m just embarrassed that my unwilling landlord, who isn’t getting any monetary compensation out of this arrangement, felt like he needed to clothe me. I have clothes in my apartment. I’m not entirely penniless. Maybe you’re just worried about being seen with someone who isn’t wearing haute couture. Don’t worry, I have no intention of being with you at events. You can call up Forsythia and ask her if she’s available. I’m sure for you, she’ll be very available.”

He raised a brow. “I’m a public servant whose life is to serve the poor unfortunates. As for the clothing, it was Libby’s idea, not mine, once she heard about your apartment.”

I gripped my towel more tightly while my stomach churned. “My apartment?”

His eyes tightened with concern or anger. Maybe both. “I should have seen to your things last night, before he…” He cleared his throat and took a step back. “I have some paperwork to do until you’re changed. I’ll be waiting in the library.” He gave me a slight bow and left me standing there in a towel.

Panic was threatening to swallow me, the voice in the back of my head whining that I needed to run, to attack whoever had attacked me. Senator Silverton’s back was towards me, so I dropped the towel and shifted into the cutest little wolf you’ve never seen. I darted through the underbrush, stalking the elf as he made his way back to the house.

I’d brought danger to his peaceful world. What if Ridley decided that he needed to hurt the Senator for taking me in?

I sniffed the air, scenting the elf, admiring his smooth, even gait. He was graceful and powerful, a lethally attractive combination to me and my wolf. And he knew that I was a wolf, so I could shift whenever I liked, the better to keep an eye on his fortress.