1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The body had its throat ripped out. I'd done my fair share of throat-ripping during the last few days, so I recognised a wolf's handiwork when I saw it. I exchanged a meaningful glance with Greg. This was not good. The last thing I needed with the Werewolf Council on my land was a dead body.

‘You can go,' I said to Thea and Archie. Greg and I couldn't talk freely with witnesses present.

Thea was trembling in Archie's arms. Finding a corpse hadn't exactly been in their plans for a romantic stroll. The poor girl was wearing a pretty dress; even though she was white-faced and shaking, she still looked beautiful. She'd clearly made an effort for her rendezvous with Archie. Evidently things were heating up between them – though perhaps not so much right at this moment.

Archie was looking a little resigned. I guessed finding a cadaver was a whole new level of cock-blocking. ‘ Come on,' he murmured softly to Thea. ‘Let's get you a nice cup of chamomile tea.'

Ares snuffled at Thea, blowing warm air into her face. A tremulous smile appeared and she stroked the deadly unicorn's soft nose. ‘I'm okay, Ares,' she reassured him. He gave her another nuzzle then a distinct push towards the mansion before fixing Archie with a red-eyed glare.

Archie glared back. ‘Of course I'm going to look after her, you overgrown donkey.'

Ares snorted.

Thea and Archie walked away, his arm still around her shivering shoulders. She was in shock; she'd already been through so much with her brother Ace's death and her other brother Beckett's manipulation, and I hated that she was being exposed to more violence here where she should feel safe. I waited until they were out of earshot before I spoke again. ‘This is less than ideal.' I sighed.

‘Not the best,' Greg agreed.

I looked down at the body and recognised the paling skin. ‘It's Scott Larsden.'

‘Someone's cleaning house.' His tone was grim.

Scott Larsden was the Council member who had video-called us after Ace Frost's death. He'd questioned us intensively, but in the end he'd grudgingly cleared us of any wrongdoing – incorrectly, of course, since I had indeed killed the bastard. Fortunately, my deadly unicorn Ares had eaten the corpse and there'd been no evidence to suggest we were responsible. Later, we'd found a USB-drive full of blackmail material and the contents had told us that Scott had been a very naughty boy. One of the first acts I'd planned as Queen had been to make an example of him, but some rude prick had beaten me to it.

Ares was snuffling at the corpse optimistically. ‘No,' I said firmly. ‘You can't eat him – we don't know where he's been. Plus, there are too many strangers here. We can't have Larsden disappear, too.' People would start thinking there were dark goings-on in the Home Counties pack, and we couldn't have that. Even if it was true.

We only kill our enemies Esme huffed in my mind. If they'd respect us properly, we wouldn't need to show them our trousers and smiles.

I laughed despite myself. Show them that we're not all mouth and no trousers , I corrected, snickering aloud.

Greg shot me a knowing look, ‘Esme?'

‘She's hilarious. Not on purpose, but even so.'

I am often intentionally entertaining, she argued.

Sure she was. In my head, I gave her a pat.

I stared at the body; this was going to be a nightmare. Larsden had been killed before I'd had the chance to lay any crimes at his door and, even more importantly, before I could find out whom his buddies were.

Larsden had been a part of a black tourney, an illegal underground fight club. The participants hadn't always been willing and they'd often had to battle to their deaths. There had been evidence that details of lone wolves had been passed on to Ghost, the griffin who'd organised and directed the tourneys, and the USB-drive confirmed that it was Scott Larsden who'd passed on those details. A number of deaths could be laid at his door, including that of Elena's brother, Jackson.

I'd asked Elena to use her journalistic skills to investigate Larsden and now Larsden was dead. It felt too much like a coincidence. I murmured my suspicions aloud. ‘Elena?'

‘It's possible,' Greg agreed. ‘She knows there are no cameras out here.'

After the murder of Mark Oates and a subsequent attack on Archie, we'd installed a tonne of cameras inside and around the mansion but there was nothing this far out in the grounds. Someone had known that when they'd killed Larsden here amongst the roses.

I knelt down and lifted up Larsden's hands to examine them. ‘No defensive wounds,' I noted.

‘He trusted his killer and they sucker-punched him?'

I considered that. If he was right… ‘That makes it more likely it was a fellow black-tourney organiser who killed him, rather than Elena.' I stood up. ‘Lord Samuel's note to me said he suspected council members Aitkin and Ramsay, so I suppose that gives us a starting point.' I bit my thumb. ‘I could call Voltaire and ask him to share information about what he found on the other USB drives.'

Greg snorted. ‘Peaches, you used your piping skills to control him.'

‘To save him from a black witch!' I protested.

‘Do you think he cares about that?'

‘Well, he should!'

‘You controlled him. His whole purpose as a Red Guard is to bring down necromantic witches because they can control vampyrs – then you swanned in and took away his free will just like that!' He clicked his fingers. ‘No, Luce, he's not going to share anything with you. Besides, I think you give Voltaire too much credit. The USB drives were encrypted to the nth degree and even Fritz had a hard job getting into the one I took.'

I grimaced. ‘Okay, so Voltaire's probably not going to be best buds with me. Do you think he's going to be an issue?'

‘I don't know,' Greg admitted slowly. ‘He vowed that no vampyr would harm you or your pack, and that includes him. But if he could get a third party to harm you without him being directly involved…' He trailed off. ‘We'll heighten security.'

It was my turn to snort. ‘Greg, we haven't come down from DEFCON1 since meeting Beckett Frost in the forest.'

‘It's been an intense few days,' Greg agreed. ‘But we can do more.' He frowned. ‘I'm still not happy about our skies. We have cameras on the roof now, but I'm used to a dragon guarding us from above as well.'

‘I doubt Emory has a spare dragon right now.' A chirping noise caught my attention and sparked a thought. Krieg, the High King of the Ogres, had his murder of crows around him, so why couldn't I have the same?

I reached out with my piping senses to find some of the larger birds but, to my chagrin, I only encountered one corvid. When my mind touched his, I felt his surprise but no alarm. Second-hand curiosity filled me. I pictured the mansion, its roof then a bird's nest on top of it. Home, I sent.

I felt humour from the bird then it disconnected from me. Dammit. ‘Well, that was an abject failure,' I grumbled. Greg raised an eyebrow in question. ‘I tried to pipe a bird – it was a crow or maybe a raven. They're smart. I thought I'd do Krieg's trick and get some of them on our side.'

He looked thoughtful. ‘That's actually not a bad idea, but it might take a little more work since I'm guessing you're unwilling to subsume the bird's rights?'

‘You assume correctly,' I said primly. ‘Enough of that for now. What are we going to do with him?' I toed the corpse.

‘Let Ares eat him?' Greg suggested, only half-joking. Ares whickered loudly, fully on board with that plan.

I sighed. ‘No, we're going to have to get to the bottom of this. Even if Larsden was a Grade-A asshole, we can't just let people kill our werewolves willy-nilly.'

‘I'm not suggesting that we do, but if Larsden's body goes missing his murderer won't know that we've found it and might not realise we're on the case.'

Ares' red eyes lit up hopefully as I considered Greg's point. ‘No,' I repeated finally. ‘Let's take him in for the Council to deal with. Nothing says welcome to the Home Counties pack like having to deal with a human carcass.'

I took out my phone and snapped a few photographs of the scene for posterity, then peeled off my clothes and shifted onto four. Pleasure rippled over Esme and me as we donned fur.

The world drained of colour but our sense of smell strengthened. The scents on the ground were many and varied: that of Ares was strong, and the defecation from the body overwhelmed us for a second .

Esme started filing the various smells away, examining them and ignoring them. She snuffled at the ground and the perfume of the pack filled her nose. Because of all the disruption the battle had caused and the uncertainty about some of the Devon pack joining us, Liam had recently led a small hunt on our grounds so the fresh odour of our wolves was everywhere .

We persevered, trotting this way and that as we tried to ferret out a scent that didn't belong, but we couldn't find a thing. I noted, though, that Elena's scent was nearby – then again, so was everybody else's.

Defeated, we shifted back onto two. Greg passed me my clothes and I dressed quickly. ‘Anything?' he asked, but he already knew the answer from my face.

‘Nothing but the scent of our pack.'

‘The murderer could have used a scent-masking potion,' he suggested.

‘Maybe. Or our initial thoughts about Elena might actually have some legs,' I said grimly.

How do thoughts have legs? Esme huffed.

It means that the idea has merit.

Then why don't you just say that? You humans must complicate everything. What have you got against simple and straightforward?

I grinned at her. Simple and straightforward are boring.

Her tone brightened. Well, lucky for you, we have a body and those rarely lead to boring things.

My gut knotted. She was right; there were turbulent times ahead, and they couldn't have come at a worse time.