Wolf's Secret (District Shifters Book 3) Page 6

  “You know what? It doesn’t matter what empty threat you’re going to pull out. Because you’re in luck. I did have a good reason, so you can go back to your life and just forget all about this.” He didn’t think it would be so easy for him to forget her.

  She shook her head. “Are you kidding me? That’s it? You expect me to just take your word for it?”

  “I don’t see that you have much choice,” Archer snapped.

  “Stop playing games, Archer.” He felt a shiver run through his body as she said his name. He never should have revealed it to her; he saw that now. But hearing her say it in that breathy voice, seeing the way her lips moved as she spoke it made the risk worth it. “Just tell me what your reason was,” she added.

  Archer knew he should just tell her what Caroline was. If she knew as much about immortals as he suspected she did, she would get it. Seeing Brianna again would be playing with fire. She was trouble. He could see it in her eyes. But he had never been afraid of trouble before, and he wasn’t about to start now. There was something about Brianna that made him want to take risks. Something that made him want to see her again.

  “You want my reason? Fine. I’ll tell you. Over drinks. Tonight,” he said.

  “I… Are you seriously asking me out on a date right now?” Brianna demanded. She tried to look angry, but Archer could see something flickering beneath her feigned anger that looked awfully like desire. He had to put a stop to this before it could go any further.

  “Not a date. Just a chance for us to talk like civilized beings,” he insisted. He saw the flicker of disappointment cross Brianna’s face, and he resisted the urge to smile. He might be in trouble here, but so was she. He was having an effect on her, just like she was on him.

  “Fine. The student bar down the block. Eight o’clock,” Brianna said.

  Archer wasn’t used to following orders. He was used to giving them. He was a little disconcerted to know that Brianna had made the arrangements for tonight. For their “not a date” meeting. What if she was planning some sort of stakeout?

  Then he would go in prepared. Regardless of what he might be walking into, there was no way in hell he was standing Brianna up tonight.

  “See you then,” he said. He turned and walked briskly away before she could change her mind. He resisted the urge to get one more look at Brianna. He might have been caught out momentarily, but now he was firmly back in control, and he could feel Brianna’s eyes on him all the way to the corner where he turned and was no longer in her sight line.

  7

  Brianna looked down at herself, wondering, not for the first time, if she was dressed appropriately. She had no idea what to wear to confront a killer. It wasn’t really something that popped up in conversation. She had settled on a knee-length black dress with flat slip-on shoes. She didn’t want to look too overdressed. Archer had made it quite clear he didn’t think this was a date, but she didn’t want to look a mess, either. Date or not, she realized with dismay that she wanted him to think she looked attractive.

  She shook her head at herself and picked her handbag up. She grabbed her keys off the side, walked out of her apartment, and locked her door. As if she was worrying about her outfit and whether or not this was a date. The fact was that Archer had killed Caroline, and that meant he was dangerous.

  She shouldn’t be going to meet him, yet she felt a swirling of excitement in her stomach as she stepped into the street and headed towards the bar. The sensible thing to do would have been to say no, but it was already too late for that. She’d agreed to this. From the moment she had outright asked Archer why he had killed Caroline, it had been too late to go back. She should have just gone along with his grief-stricken friend story and told him she hadn’t noticed anything odd about Caroline’s death. That would have been the sensible thing to do. He would have left her alone, and she could have somehow moved on without answers.

  Brianna had come here to get away from the supernatural world, and now she had somehow managed to fall right smack bang into the middle of it again, and rather than playing dumb, she had decided to play detective. She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but she wasn’t just going to meet Archer because she wanted answers. She was going to meet him because she found him attractive.

  By the time she reached the bar, she had successfully convinced herself this had been a wasted journey. Archer had obviously agreed to it just to get away from her and her probing questions. He wasn’t going to show up tonight. She wished she’d realized that before she had gotten to the bar, because now that she had, it seemed so obvious and she felt stupid.

  It’s not like anyone will know, she told herself, turning away from the door and heading back the way she had come.

  “Changed your mind?” Archer’s voice asked from behind her.

  She turned around slowly, steeling herself for the moment she saw him again. As much as she had tried to prepare herself, he still took her breath away, standing before her in black jeans and a short-sleeved, casual blue shirt.

  “No,” she said, walking towards him. If she had thought he was going to let her get away with being caught fleeing, she was wrong.

  “You didn’t think I’d show, did you? You were going back home rather than risk being stood up,” he said.

  She felt brave, suddenly. His tone was teasing, not angry.

  “Why did you show up?” she asked.

  “I promised you answers, and I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep. Shall we?” Archer gestured towards the bar. He held the door open for her, purposely standing close enough to it that she had to brush up against him slightly to enter.

  Brianna felt electricity flood her body, her bare arm rubbing against his. She pulled her arm back quickly with a gasp, hoping Archer hadn’t noticed. His smile told her he had. She moved towards the bar, trying her best to ignore how close to her Archer was.

  “What are you drinking?” Archer asked her.

  “I thought you said this wasn’t a date. Why would you buy me a drink?” Brianna challenged him.

  “It’s not a date, Brianna. I just thought some drinks would make this a little more enjoyable.”

  “Oh,” she said, disappointed when she should have been relieved. “I’ll have a red wine, please.”

  “Why don’t you go grab us a table?” Archer said. “Somewhere quiet. We don’t really want ears on our conversation.”

  She felt herself blushing as she turned away from him. She rolled her eyes, telling herself to stop acting like a lovesick teenager. She scanned the room. It was fairly busy, but the majority of the patrons were crowded around the pool table and dartboard. She headed towards the back of the room, where it was almost deserted, choosing the table furthest away from everyone else.

  Archer approached with their drinks. He handed her a glass of red wine and sat down opposite her, taking a sip of his own drink; a bottle of Budweiser.

  “Good choice,” Archer said. nodding approvingly as he looked around at the quiet area they were sitting in. “So. Tell me, Brianna. What do you know of the immortal world?”

  She took a large gulp of her wine, trying to put out the fire that burned inside her as he looked at her, an amused smile playing across his lips. The wine did nothing to put out the flames, but it was good, and she took another sip.

  “Let’s just say I know enough,” she said. “And I’ll be the one asking the questions.”

  The amused smile stayed on Archer’s face, and he laughed softly. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you? Okay, ask away.”

  “I know enough to know that not all immortals are immoral and nasty. So I’ll ask you again. Why did you kill Caroline? Did she do something to you, or did you just want another trophy kill under your belt?”

  “A trophy kill?” Archer replied, laughing. Brianna narrowed her eyes, shocked that he seemed to find this funny. Her shock must have shown on her face, because he stopped laughing, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry. But you have this all wrong, Brianna. Do you
seriously think I’m a hunter?”

  Brianna thought of the paw prints beside her building. She didn’t think Archer was a hunter; not really. But accusing him of being one seemed much safer than accusing him of being a wolf.

  “You tell me,” she said.

  “I’m pretty sure I just did. I am not a hunter. I’d be happy to tell you everything, but I must warn you; knowing about this stuff is dangerous for a mortal.”

  “You don’t say. But it’s a risk I’m willing to take. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Do you know what a Matchmaker is?” Archer asked.

  Brianna nodded, suddenly afraid. What if she had this back to front? What if Archer was a Matchmaker, and he had taken Caroline out because she was getting in his way?

  “That’s what Caroline was,” he said. “She approached me the morning I killed her and offered me a professor from her college as a mate.”

  Brianna took a moment to digest the two simple sentences that gave her a ton of answers. Archer wasn’t a Matchmaker; Caroline was, but she hadn’t been interested in Brianna. It really was a coincidence that they had ended up meeting. It was Helen. It had to be. That was why Caroline had shown so much interest in her. And when she had sneaked out of the dorm room early and left Brianna in bed there, she had gone out to see Archer.

  It was a relief for her that Caroline hadn’t known about her. It was likely that her secret was still a secret here. And she was glad to hear that Archer was no Matchmaker. Not just for her own safety, but because, as much as she tried to deny it to herself, she liked him. She liked his honesty and the way he teased her and kept her on her toes. She still felt a little sad for Caroline. She had seemed nice enough, but knowing what she knew about Matchmakers, Brianna thought that Archer had probably done the world a favor by getting rid of her.

  “Brianna? Are you all right?” Archer asked, peering at her with such genuine concern that she felt her heart skip a beat. She nodded.

  “Yes, sorry. Just processing. So you hunt Matchmakers?”

  “No,” he replied. “I can’t stand them, but I don’t go out of my way to hunt them. If they cross my path, I will end them, though.”

  Brianna finished her drink in one big gulp.

  “Another?” she said, gesturing at Archer’s drink. He nodded, and she went to the bar. She came back to the table with the drinks. “How did you come across Caroline? You said she approached you and offered you a mate, but surely, she didn’t just walk the streets offering her services to random people. How did you get on her radar?”

  She watched Archer’s face crinkle slightly as he debated how to answer the question. He sighed, and Brianna thought he had resigned himself to telling her the truth, no matter what his plan had been before he’d gotten here.

  “From your assumption that I was a hunter, you obviously know that certain mortals hunt immortals. One such bastard has traced my pack, and a good friend of mine was killed recently.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brianna interrupted, meaning it.

  Archer flashed her a grateful smile and went on. “Caroline had information about the hunter’s location. She wanted to make a deal. She would tell me who he was, and in exchange, I would let her have free rein of the district. The teacher was just a sweetener in her mind. I couldn’t bring myself to work with a Matchmaker, and, well, here we are.”

  “So you know who the hunter is now?”

  “No. I told you. I would never work with a Matchmaker,” he said.

  “But presumably, you didn’t tell her that.”

  “I did.”

  “Wait. You didn’t pretend to make a deal with her to get the information before you ended her?”

  “No,” Archer answered. “It probably sounds stupid to you, but my word means something, Brianna. If not to anyone else, at least to me. If I had agreed to the deal with Caroline, I couldn’t have killed her, whether she deserved it or not.”

  “I don’t think that’s stupid,” Brianna said. “I think it’s pretty noble of you.”

  “It didn’t help my pack, though. The hunter is still on the loose. And being with me here tonight is dangerous, Brianna.”

  “Not as dangerous as making friends at college, apparently.” She smiled. Archer returned the gesture, and she found herself studying him again. She pulled her gaze away, picking up her glass for something to do with her hands. “So you’re a wolf, right?” she asked.

  He nodded. “How did you know?”

  “You left paw prints around the side of my building,” she chuckled.

  “Careless of me.” Archer shook his head. “But in my defense, no one would see paw prints and jump to the conclusion a wolf shifter had been by. You had to know about this world before that.” Brianna nodded, confirming that she did. “Let me guess. Your older sister ran off with a vampire.”

  It would be easy to say yes, but Archer had been straight with her, and she felt like she owed him the truth. At least most of it. She wasn’t ready to tell him she carried the Sanmere protein. Not because she thought he would harm her, and certainly not because she thought he would pass the information on to a Matchmaker, but because she never wanted anyone to know that about her. The supernatural world wasn’t her world, and the harder it would seem for her to fit into it, the better in her eyes.

  “Not exactly,” she said.

  “Don’t be shy, Brianna. I’ve just literally confessed to murder. You can tell me how you know about shifters, surely.”

  “I moved here a couple of weeks ago from New York. My roommate there was abducted by a Matchmaker. She went for a blood test, and the doctor was in league with a local Matchmaker. He told him she had the Sanmere protein in her blood. When my roommate told me about it, I wasn’t sure I believed her at first. No, scratch that, I thought she was nuts. But she proved it to me.”

  “You saw her shift?”

  Brianna shook her head. “No. But she took me somewhere where bear shifters went to ‘let their hair down,’ as she put it. Imagine my surprise when she takes me out to the middle of nowhere. We were hiding, and a group of men ran past, and before my eyes, they were gone, and a group of bears had taken their places.”

  “I can see how that made a believer of you.” Archer smiled. “But why didn’t she just shift and show you? Actually, hold that thought. We need more drinks.”

  He got up and went to the bar. Brianna watched him as he walked away. He had the effortless grace of an animal, that much was true, and she figured the sense of danger she felt around him came from his animal side, too. But he definitely had empathy, a human quality. Why did he have to be a wolf? Why couldn’t he just be a student?

  He came back and sat back down with their drinks.

  “Did you hold it?” he asked.

  “Hold what?” Brianna asked, confused.

  “Your thought about why your friend didn’t just shift herself.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “She wasn’t a shifter.”

  “You said a Matchmaker took her.”

  “He did. A couple of bear shifters saved her. That’s how I knew not all immortals are bad. Some of them are actually about helping humans.”

  “I’d like to think I’m one of them.”

  “And yet you hunted me down to kill me if I knew too much. Right?”

  “Wrong,” Archer said quickly. “Do you really think so little of me, Brianna?”

  Brianna blushed. “No. But why did you search for me if you weren’t going to kill me?”

  “I didn’t know you already knew of the existence of immortals. I wanted to know exactly what you saw when Caroline died. If you had seen too much, I would have called a vampire friend and had him erase your memory of it. I know it’s not exactly ethical, but like I said, it’s dangerous knowing about this stuff, and I didn’t want you poking around in this world and getting bitten.”

  Brianna considered his words and nodded. Hadn’t Raina offered to do pretty much the same thing for her once she had saved her life? “It makes sense.”
/>
  “So what did you really see? What convinced you Caroline’s death was supernatural?”

  “Other than the fact that there was no way she’d bled out? The silver poisoning was a big clue,” Brianna answer with a small laugh.

  Archer laughed with her. “Yes, I imagine it was.”

  “Did you get to the sheriff and erase his memory?” Brianna asked. She shook her head, answering her own question. “No. You couldn’t have. He told me Caroline died from blood loss right at the scene. There’s no way you got to him before that.”

  “The sheriff knows about us. He works hand in hand with us. He keeps out of our business as long as we’re not harming mortals. In fairness, I think he would have complaints if we were just killing each other all the time. He would never be able to pull off a cover-up of that scale. But he knew what Caroline was and what she did to mortals. I called him and told him what I was planning, so he was waiting for the call.”

  “And the paramedics, too?” Brianna asked.

  Archer nodded. “Yes. The system wouldn’t work everywhere, but this is a small town, and ultimately, we all need to get along to some extent.”

  “Yeah, I get that, but I must admit I’m surprised the sheriff goes along with it.”

  “You haven’t heard the stories about some of the crooked cops in this country?” Archer snorted. “Covering up murders, drug busts, the works? At least the sheriff here is protecting his people in his own way. We scratch his back when he needs it, too, you know. Sometimes he has crimes to solve and no leads, and he’ll come to me, and one of the pack’s best trackers will sniff out his criminal.”

  Brianna considered this.

  “Yeah. That makes sense,” she said. She reached out to pick her glass up and realized it was empty. She nodded towards Archer’s drink. “Another?” she asked.