He managed, with shaking hands, to spring the locking mechanism on the third try. He ran a caressing hand over his salvation, the destiny hung on a chain around his neck that whispered to him even now.

“Destroy him … clear the way … I shall reward your loyalty …”

“I will do as you ask, my Master. Only a little more time, I swear it.” Malachi picked up the cell phone, hurriedly punching in the numbers. The Andrakkar’s patience would not last forever … and even the hints Malachi had seen of his displeasure had been nothing short of terrifying.

Answer, he thought, his stomach roiling and burning with both temper and a terrible, sick fear. Answer, you incompetent bastard, or I swear on all that is sacred I will come to kill you myself.

On the third ring, he picked up.

“Tell me,” Malachi growled, willing himself not to grip the phone so tightly that he would crush it.

“You’re going to be pleased. They’re lovers, or near enough. And now he knows I’ve seen her, that I’ll take her. She’s his mate, though he fights it. And when he discovers he can’t stop me … it’s going to break him.”

Malachi braced himself against the desk, tears of relief filling his eyes. A gift. Salvation. If nothing else, didn’t this prove what his mother had always taught him? That St. Columcille, that God Himself was on their side, the side of the strongest, the fittest?

“There is suspicion,” he said, more evenly now, more steadily. “You know what needs to be done. This is the key to them all, but it must be finished by the full moon.”

“I’ll be in contact. Soon.”

Malachi broke the connection and sank into the plush leather of his chair, shaking with the release of all of the pent-up nervousness. The stress. He needed to focus, he told himself. To center. Tomorrow, the next day at the latest, this would all be over. And the luxury he was now surrounded with would be nothing, nothing compared with what was to come, what had been promised. He was smarter, stronger, quicker. He had been born to rule, and over more than just a ragtag pack of indifferent werewolves. He would create his empire. He would fulfill his destiny, and the destiny of that magic piece of rock so carefully hidden all these hundreds of years.

Even now, with the moon coming into her fullness in just days, he could feel his strength gathering, readying for the rush he would make on this last barrier. And at last, he would be what he was meant to be. He would be a king among Wolves, a god among men. Fit to be called Drakkyn once again. And finally, finally, he would make his mother proud.

“A king,” he whispered raggedly, serene even as he felt something within him begin to crack. “A god. I’m ready.”

And his smile, when it came, was madness.

Chapter Nine

HER CAR WAS SNOWED IN, STUCK IN HER DRIVEWAY, SO

she’d hiked down to work.

She’d been that desperate.

Carly perched atop her little stool behind the counter and stared out into the dimly lit street beyond her window, now plowed as well as it could be but, in general, a mess. And she was brooding. She knew she was brooding. But damn it, who did this stuff happen to, outside of those dumb, busty blonds in the horror movies her brothers always used to force her to watch? At least she’d avoided the part where said busty blond was impaled, decapitated, or generally killed in some disgusting way or other.

So far.

But Gideon had lied to her, and from the looks of those eyes outside her window last night, and his reaction to them, it had been a big one. She shouldn’t be hurt, Carly told herself firmly, even as something inside her ached persistently. She barely knew him. It wasn’t as though he was some kind of fixture in her life, someone she’d allowed into her heart as well as her life.

Except that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Carly toyed with a pen, doodled little circles and spirals on the corner of a Post-it. Something about Gideon pulled at her, had from the beginning. She ought to be a big enough girl to admit that to herself. It wasn’t just that he was amazing to look at, although no one could ever dispute that he most certainly was. No, she decided, it was the air of lonely nobility he seemed to carry with him, something that had called take care of me to her when she’d looked into his beautiful, golden eyes.

Not that he’d like it if she told him that, she supposed, now stabbing angrily at the paper. Small, indented dots of displeasure marked it as she imagined Gideon’s reaction to her perception of some vulnerability on his part. Because aside from that strange sense of need Carly felt from him, there was nothing but big, tough alpha male. And big, tough alpha males didn’t, as far as she knew, enjoy anything resembling emotion unless it was somehow anger or lust related. Hadn’t he even said that the position he was going to inherit was called “Alpha”?

Figured.

Well, they’d certainly covered the “lust” area of the program, Carly thought, even as she fought off images of what they’d been doing in her kitchen when everything had suddenly gone to hell in a handbasket. What she’d wanted him to do. What they hadn’t quite gotten to.

Stupid. It had been stupid of her to invent some weird connection between them, stupid to imagine Gideon MacInnes as some mystical hero who’d ridden in on a white charger to sweep her off her feet. Who would be some manifestation of her dreams of romance. Well, he was out of her life now, Carly thought, burying the pang that accompanied it. Gone, and his libidinous mind-fuzzing abilities along with it. She could breathe again, think straight again. Clearer heads could finally prevail.

Now, she just needed to work on being happy about that.

Carly frowned, rose, and moved to the door to flip the sign to OPEN, even though it was just eight-thirty. She was twenty-seven years old. Young yet, yeah, but too old for fairy tales. Carly looked around her as she reached for the sign, at the rich wood, the gleaming spines of the books, the glimmer of beautiful things peeking out from unexpected places. Her sanctuary. But it was time, she realized with an embarrassed flush, to remember that stories were only stories. If she was ever going to find a man she could be happy with, a healthy dose of realistic expectations was in order.

Not that anything about this entire situation was either realistic or expected. More like a sexual fantasy wrapped up in a nightmare. Gideon MacInnes was a lesson in “be careful what you wish for” if she’d ever seen one, and oh, she’d learned it. She was just lucky, she supposed, that nothing more had been hurt than her feelings.

Then the vision of those intense, somehow malevolent eyes resurfaced in her mind, and she wondered if she should be breathing a sigh of relief on that score just yet.

God, she thought with a shudder. She hoped so. But then, there was no real way to know, being that she’d stayed huddled in her bed, trying desperately to ignore Gideon’s pleas to be let in, to explain. Worried that if she let him in, he’d get to her, and she would crumble under the weight of her reaction to him … and she would let him keep taking. Wasn’t it pathetic, she chastised herself, that even now she had to slap away the worry for him that wanted to creep into her thoughts? The guilt? He’d used her, after all. Even if he had sounded so tired … and sad … and somehow sincere.

And she wasn’t going to get a damned thing done today if she spent the whole day feeling sorry for herself and analyzing her stupid mistake half to death. Even if the weather moved back in as predicted, she still had the morning to freshen up her displays, order more stock. She had a business to run, a real, concrete business.

It had been enough for her before. It was going to have to continue to be.

Carly moved back to the counter, slid back up onto the stool, and began working up a list of things she had to get done. There was a small stack of special orders that needed to be taken care of, a book signing with a local, popular author that needed to be organized, ordering decisions to be made, her mother’s fifty thousand phone messages to return …

After a half hour at it, she was so deeply absorbed that the silvery ring of the bell above her door sent her nearly jumping out of her skin. After she’d caught her breath and swallowed the scream that had nearly escaped her throat, it took her a good minute of squinting to even identify what, at first glance, appeared to be a sentient pile of winter clothing as female.

“Good morning. Can I help you?”

The blue wool coat raised its arm to the fat pink knit hat and scarf, which revealed only a few tufts of light-colored hair and the impression of bright, twinkling eyes, and pulled down the scarf. “You most certainly can. If I have to spend one more moment in that house with Reg, much as I adore him, I’m going to have to bludgeon him to death with the tea kettle.”

“Celestine!” Carly burst out laughing. Thank God, she thought. Celestine was just the thing to lighten her mood this morning. She’d thought Regan would be the one for that job, but she’d been a little odd on the phone when she’d spoken to her earlier. Granted, the roads weren’t really fit to drive on, and there was nowhere to park downtown that wasn’t covered in at least a couple of feet of snow, but Carly would have liked to delay herself for a while to help Regan move goodies from home to store just the same. They’d done it together before, after all. But though Regan had operated under the guise of friendly concern once Carly let it drop that she’d kicked her visitor out on his ass, still, Carly had gotten the distinct impression that she was being brushed off. Sweetly, and minus any malice, but definitely brushed off.

It was something she had every intention of poking into later. But for now, all she wanted to do was forget her pissy mood for a few minutes and enjoy the company of one of her favorite people.

“Honestly, Celestine, the way you talk about that cat, you’d think he was your husband. How bad can a fat old housecat be?”

“I hope you never have to find out,” she sighed as she unwound yards of scarf from around her neck, draped it on a branch of the coat tree, and then plucked off her mittens and hat. “That animal is a menace. Two of my favorite pairs of shoes, chewed to pieces, along with a cozy mystery I was reading. And I know you won’t believe me, but I am determined he’s been raiding my potato chips.” She smoothed down her hair with a few quick, graceful strokes of her hands and in moments was looking as crisp as she always did. It was a skill Carly had always envied, and watching it always left her tugging self-consciously at her simple tail of hair, just as it did now.