Free Kiss of Darkness by Loribelle Hunt Page B

She narrowed her eyes as they approached; the nightwalkers were searching people at the door. She’d heard enough about these meetings to know that was an unprecedented step.
    She recognized Baron, Mitchell’s beta, and smelled his outrage. Once cleared he stepped back to greet her while Dupree spread his arms and grinned at the nightwalkers doing the search. Whatever he felt about the intrusion was carefully concealed. She exchanged a few words with Baron before he nodded and went into the house with Dupree. She and Gia went through the same routine and followed the voices down a long center hall.
    It was as elegant on the inside as out, like the understated class of an English manor home. She tried not to gawk, tried to conceal her discomfiture. Thick red-and-gold carpets covered the floor, Persian she’d bet, old and expensive-looking. There was a wide staircase on one side, winding up to the second floor landing, and she caught a glimpse of more stairs rising from there. Two chandeliers lit the huge area. She shook her head. If this was Marcus’s house, he was way out of her league.
    The meeting was being held in a dining room and they turned left into the doorway. She restrained the impulse to roll her eyes when she entered, and this time it wasn’t the décor, just as formal, just as expensive, that elicited a response.
    At one end of a long table, sat two nightwalkers. The lupines sat at the opposite end. She walked around the wolf side and sat in the chair in the center, back to the wall facing the door and equal distance from both camps. God forbid she give the appearance of being more closely allied to one group or the other. She was already becoming the politician a regional commander needed to be. What a depressing thought.
    Gia sat to her left between Winter and the walkers. Dupree closed the door and sat opposite her. As soon as the door shut, Mitchell leaned forward and caught her eye.
    “You doing okay?” he asked.
    She nodded. “Just peachy.”

    Not that she’d tell him if she wasn’t. Not here. Trust wasn’t a high priority in this crowd. She’d met him again yesterday and worked out a lot of her anger the old-fashioned way. It was their fiercest fight yet, neither of them holding anything back and she had the scratches to prove it. It wasn’t what she’d really wanted, needed—screaming sweaty sex—but it was a close second. Leaning with his back against a wall behind his alpha, she noticed Baron watching them closely. To anyone else his pose would have looked casual, bored even, but she caught his concern. He’d been afraid one of them would kill the other and it was a toss-up who the winner would be.
    “Where is Benjamin?” a smooth cultured voice interrupted from the other end of the table. So they didn’t know. She’d thought Marcus hadn’t picked the information out of her head, but was still a little surprised. She wasn’t that good at blocking him. Maybe he’d suddenly started respecting her privacy. No, she wasn’t buying that. But the only other viable option was he’d kept the information to himself. Why?
    She looked up and somehow kept herself from starting. The speaker at the head of the table looked exactly like Marcus, a mirror image, but he wasn’t Marcus. Her senses were extended to feel him, to warn her if he drew close. She hadn’t paid much attention to the two nightwalkers when she’d come in, hadn’t sensed him among them. Frowning, she replayed the last few minutes in her mind. It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed this guy. He’d been turned away from her, intentionally hiding his face. Now he looked at her, as if daring her to misstep. She followed the mental path to her tormentor.
    What kind of game are we playing now?
    He didn’t answer but she felt him drawing near. In a shimmer of air he materialized and took a seat. Turbulent blue eyes clashed with hers, and his displeasure rolled over her. She ignored it and drank him in. This was the first time