Free Hear No Evil (Alpha Guardians Book 2) by Vivian Wood

He should feel like the luckiest man in the world, especially considering his humble beginnings.
    So why did he feel so lacking, so unfinished? And why, oh why, did the very thought of being incomplete draw his gaze straight to Cassie?
    Sipping his wine, Gabriel forced himself back to the conversation, unwilling to consider the topic for even a moment more. Cassie was beautiful and entertaining and kind, but she was nothing more. Not for him.
    Gabriel would never take a mate, for her sake as much as his own.

Chapter Seven
    “ I f I can just … find…” Cassie mumbled to herself, gently spreading a crumbling map out across the massive library table in Gabriel’s study.
    Over the last week, she’d started to make herself at home in Gabriel’s guest bedroom and his sprawling living area. It consisted of a couple of desks crammed up against the window, a pair of dusty armchairs, and a labyrinthine collection of research materials. Gabriel had filled almost every usable inch of the room with wall-to-ceiling bookshelves, racks of maps and scrolls, and tables cluttered with every type of magical instrument known to man and Kith alike. The massive window was covered with blackout curtains, making it nearly impossible to find anything; it took Cassie over an hour to find the document she was currently examining, and that was after days of learning Gabriel’s “system” of organization.
    “Aha!” Cassie said, picking out a tiny point on the map and tapping it with a fingertip.
    “What’ve you found?”
    Cassie whirled around at the sound of Gabriel’s deep, warm voice. He was leaning up against a bookshelf as he watched her, wearing a tight white t-shirt and a pair of low-slung gray sweatpants. His shirt was damp in places from perspiration, clinging to every defined inch of Gabriel’s arms, shoulders, and torso. The barest bit of skin was exposed between the hem of his shirt and his sweats, and Cassie had to fight to keep from staring at it.
    No man should ever look so good or smell so good fresh from a workout, but Gabriel did. Damn him.
    “Ohhh…” she said, giving herself time to recover and not drool like an idiot. “I was researching the Gates of Guinee, the supposed portal into the spirit realm. Pere Mal is obsessed with the Gates, and I started to think… If they were real, maybe they correspond with some other places of power.”
    “Like where?” Gabriel asked, crossing his arms. The hem of his shirt hitched up another fraction of an inch. A very noticeable fraction.
    Cassie took a moment to smooth down her brightly-patterned Alice + Olivia sundress and tug at her arm-length white lace gloves, wondering if she’d ever be able to dress casually again. Gabriel was just too hot in any kind of clothing, and Cassie couldn’t stand the thought of being less put-together than him. Of course, that meant that she spent a lot of time primping… but then again, she also liked primping and feeling girly.
    “Cass?” Gabriel prompted.
    “Hm? Oh, uh… I pulled up a bunch of different maps of New Orleans online. Crime maps, cemetery maps, old riverboat maps that show how the city used to be set up. Here, look,” she said, reaching for a sheaf of papers she’d printed from the internet. She spread them out for Gabriel to see. “I’ve made marks here on the crime map where paranormal crimes are the most frequent. On this map, I marked where the Kith first settled, around the French Quarter and along the river. And here, on the cemetery map, you see where some of the most prominent Barons and priests and priestesses were supposedly buried.”
    “These points are the same on every map,” Gabriel said, his brow hunching as he absorbed her findings.
    “Yeah. So look at this one,” she said, moving to the big map she’d examined earlier. “This one shows where the old money families settled here, when New Orleans was still surrounded by plantations.”
    “How do these fit together?” Gabriel asked.
    “Well,