Free BROKEN BLADE by J.C. Daniels Page A

stops me from doing anything is the day I take up knitting.”
    “Then I must assume it’s because of Damon.” He cocked his head. “Why is it a problem for you, though? If it’s over...and the woman you used to be is dead?”
    I glared at him for a long moment and then fantasized about drawing my gun and shooting nice, watermelon-sized holes in the walls of his oh-so-lovely office. Instead, I turned on my heel and left.
    Still, I carried that image with me all the way down to my car.
    I tried to hold on to it even as I drove to the Lair. Going there really shouldn’t be a problem. Not if the woman I’d been was dead. The problem was I that I knew I’d lied.
    It was just easier to think about things if the woman I had been was completely dead.
    Dead sounded so much better than broken.
     
    * * * *
     
    There had been a time when I couldn’t show up here without Damon being on the walk, coming toward me the minute I parked in the spot that he’d set aside for me, almost always with that faint smile on his face, the one that made my heart skip.
    Even now, I was having a hard time controlling my heart and damned if I could figure that out.
    I drove past the empty spot that had once been mine and turned down one of the side streets, parking nearly a half-mile away. Parking wasn’t exactly substantial around here, but that spot wasn’t mine anymore.
    A couple of the cats I saw glanced at me—weird little double-takes and then I got the same damn behavior from them that I’d gotten from Chang and it pissed me off, but what in the hell was I supposed to do about it?
    A year ago—hell, six months ago—the Lair had been a quiet place. Heavy with tension, pain and ugliness, the silence broken by the raised voices of those who’d been in good standing with the former Alpha. She’d been a crazy, evil bitch and those who were crazy, evil pieces of work had done well under her hand.
    Since her rather timely death, Damon had been doing his best to turn things around and after a few rough months, things had changed. Usually, it was noisier here. He was doing a lot of rebuilding, putting his stamp on the massive building that was known as the Lair. Sounds of construction filled the air, people laughing, shouting.
    Some of the cats lived there. I think he had about two hundred people total living at the Lair and a handful were kids. Sometimes, you could hear them laughing. When I’d driven past, I’d heard the faintest strains of voices drifting over the resounding whack of a hammer, somebody blasting music.
    But the closer I moved to the Lair, the quieter it became.
    Nausea churned in my gut as I popped my wrist, wishing like hell that faint tingling I sensed in my palm was something, anything that would bring my blade to me, but it wasn’t.
    Because I needed to touch something, I rested my hand on my belt and rubbed my thumb over the silver wire worked into the leather.
    I wasn’t even afraid of them really.
    I was just—
    A tiger’s roar ripped through the air and I tensed as I saw the flash of orange just before he came leaping over the fence—that damn thing was eight feet high. He took it like it was a bump on the road.
    I came to a halt as Doyle crouched on the ground in front of me, a long, sleek tiger that was nearly double the size of a natural one. He waited there, staring at me with intelligence in his eyes.
    Swallowing the knot in my throat, I forced myself to talk.
    “Hi, Doyle.”
    He stretched out on his belly and rested his head on his paws, eyes on my face, just watching me.
    “Ah...is this your way of telling me I can’t go in? Using that giant, tiger-skin rug to block me?”
    He sneezed and sat up, still watching me.
    I took a step forward and he didn’t do anything, so I moved a little more.
    By the time I was even with him, I was almost breathing normal. As he leaned in, he lifted his head to butt it against my chest. It was almost enough to knock me off my feet. Sighing a little, I wrapped my