Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 50

I shed my clothes and stand before Thom, goosebumps prickling my skin in the cool night air as his gaze slides over me like a violation.

There's a strange, almost hungry look in his eyes—one I'd never seen when I would have offered myself willingly, had he asked—and I wonder if Thom is only attracted to what he knows he can't have.

The envelope of photos rests on my pile of clothes, and he keeps the gun casually trained on me. He holds it with a self-assurance that speaks of long acquaintance with such weapons, though in the time I'd known him he'd never even spoken of firearms except to express his opinion that they ought to be more strictly controlled.

I suppose that this, along with everything else I'd thought I'd known about him, was also a lie.

"Come now," Thom says, motioning at me with the pistol's short barrel. "It doesn't take all night, does it?"

I glare at him, although it's hard to feel very fierce with no clothes on at the wrong end of a gun.

"Why couldn't you just leave me alone, Thom?" I ask, shivering. "You'd won. I'd given up. What more do you want?"

He nods. "You'd given up, yes, but not completely—not the way you were supposed to, and I couldn't risk it. You're too brilliant. Eventually, you'd get over what happened, and start telling people about it, and some of them would believe you. I've been careful, but I know if someone like your brother knew where to look, they'd find enough proof to at least raise some very inconvenient questions. I decided it was safer to take matters into my own hands."

"You tried to kill me that day. With your car," I state, crossing my arms over my chest.

"I saw an opportunity and took it," he confirms. "Fortunately, I failed."

"Fortunately?"

"The book's expected to do quite well, you know," he says, seemingly at random.

"What?"

"The publisher has asked me to submit a proposal for another. That's a problem because, while the words are mine, all the ideas—as you well know—are yours. So, I need you, Noah. I need you to help me, and cooperate, or I need you dead. The choice is yours."

I shake my head. "You've seen my brother and sister. You know what we are. If anything happens to me—"

"That's why we're here," he interrupts, nodding again. "Finding that little 'field guide' was a godsend—exactly what I needed. Something to hold over you: an unshakeable advantage. Now, you either do as I say, or I spill your little family secret."

I laugh, taking myself by surprise. "Tell whoever you like. Everyone will think you're insane, and your precious reputation will be ruined."

He smiles. "I don't need to tell everyone. Just the right person. Someone like the author of that superbly useful little book, for example. Apparently, he was something called a 'Huntsman.' I suppose you've heard of them?"

He nods at it where the book lies near my piled clothes, and I go still.

"Werewolf hunters, sure," I shrug. "They don't exist anymore."

"I thought so too, at first," Thom smiles, "but it turns out you just have to know where to look."

I frown at him as an uncomfortable certainty comes to settle in my chest.

Thom may have only recently learned that things like werewolves are real, but he's a quick study, and he's right: there are still Huntsmen, though very few.

Once they were considered virtuous crusaders, protecting the innocent against the 'ravaging Wolf,' but these days they're not welcome in polite society. They're zealots and fanatics, convinced that things like werewolves and other Shifters are against the 'divine order,' or something, and therefore need to be eliminated.