Fang scoffed while Remi started for the door.
“Hey, hey!” Dev caught his arm. “What’cha thinking, punkin?”
“That Maman should have eaten you when you were whelped. Or at least before you were weaned.”
Dev snorted. “You can’t go in there and start a fight with her. Need I remind you there’s a shit-ton of human tourists in that bar and Max is a bit preoccupied tonight with his dragonswan. That boy ain’t been up for air in days, so we can’t count on him to help us out with mind-wiping the humans in the event they see something they shouldn’t.”
Remi’s nose twitched in that way that said he was hell-bent for blood. “Can’t his brother mind-wipe them, then?”
Good question. Falcyn might have the same powers as Max. Then again, he might not. Even if he did, there was no guarantee he’d use them, as helping others wasn’t exactly the surly dragon’s priority. “No idea. You want to ask Falcyn?” That shapeshifting bastard was the only creature alive with a worse attitude than Remi.
Unless you counted the former Dark-Hunter Zarek. Though to be honest, Dev would run Falcyn up against Z any day. Thrice on Sundays.
Proof to the point? Remi backed down immediately at the thought of speaking to Falcyn, and that was something his brother never did.
“I’m going to go watch her,” Remi grumbled before he headed inside.
Dev growled low in the back of his throat as he met Fang’s irritated smirk. “I know. Dev, go watch your brother.”
“And find me someone else to guard the door.”
“Where’s your ear p…” Dev’s voice trailed off as he remembered that one of Aimee’s favorite things was to nibble Fang’s ears in the back room when no one else was around. Disgusted with the thought of his baby sister touching anything male in a sexual way, he grimaced. “Never mind. I’ll grab Cherif. You can’t miss him. He’s the one who looks like me, but isn’t.”
“That could also be Quinn.”
“Don’t remind me.” It was hell to be one of four identical quads. Only Aimee and the Dark-Hunter Acheron had ever been able to tell them apart.
And Dev’s wife, Sam. She’d never once confused him with his brothers, which was one of many reasons he loved her.
“Double time, Bear!” Fang snapped. “Don’t need your brother starting some shit while we’ve got humans around to witness it!”
Letting out a bear growl in his throat, Dev went to find Remi before the bear really did eat the Daimon, and start another war they didn’t need to fight.
* * *
Medea screwed her face up at all the humans in the dark, noisy bar as they swayed to the music of the house band of shapeshifters they’d ironically named The Howlers. Gah, how she hated them all. Though to be honest, it would be quite a feast for her should she choose to indulge, not that she needed their blood to feed—unlike the others of her kind.
For her, it was just fun payback.…
More tempted than she ought to be, she forced herself to ignore all the throats that would be so easy to rip open and searched for her half brother’s familiar face. Though she and Urian were technically enemies who fought on opposite sides of this war, he was still one of the few people she considered her friend.
Right now, she had dire news he needed to hear.
“Hey, baby! You looking for me?”
Medea curled her lip at the cheesy come-on line. Worse? The filthy human stank of cheap alcohol and some cologne he must have bought off a clearance drugstore aisle. “Out of my way.”
“Ah, now, why you want to do me like that, baby? Be nice and stay for a bit.” He put a rough grip on her arm to hold her by his side.
Laughing, she bit her lip seductively. “Sugar, you have no idea what I really want to do with you.…”
His eyebrows shot north. “Oh yeah?”
“Ummm-hmmm.” She stepped into his arms as she dreamed of gutting him on the floor.
An instant later, he was snatched back and shaken like a dog would do to its favorite toy. “Take a hike.”
The human started to attack, until he caught sight of the man who’d grabbed him. That took every bit of bluster out of him, and he quickly dashed away.
Not that Medea blamed him. This Were-Hunter was huge, even by their inhuman standards. Tall. Well muscled. His caramel skin would make any woman’s mouth water. And to her instant horror, she wasn’t immune to his charms.
In fact, she was strangely breathless as her gaze went to a pair of silvery blue eyes that practically glowed. Between that and his black hair, she’d almost think him a Dream-Hunter. Indeed, his powers were strong enough to be godlike.
The air around her was rife with them. It crackled in a way that was reminiscent of Acheron Parthenopaeus—an Atlantean god who pretended to be a Dark-Hunter for reasons only he knew. More than that, she couldn’t even tell what breed this particular Were-Hunter belonged to. Bear, wolf, bird, lion, leopard, panther, tiger, dragon, jaguar, cheetah, or jackal. He was that powerful.
“What are you?”
Falcyn felt an odd half smile curve his lips. A rare, rare thing for him. But then it’d been a long time since he’d seen a morsel as tasty as this one. Her white-blond hair was an unusual shade, but natural. And it contrasted sharply with her black eyes.
And she wasn’t just a Daimon. There was something a lot stronger inside her. Something he could taste and smell. The scent of it was like honey to his tongue.
“Hungry,” he whispered.
She actually rolled her eyes and stepped around him.
A sound rumbled out of him that was even more rare than his smile. So rare, in fact, that it took him a few seconds to realize it was a laugh.
No one had ever been so dismissive of him. Mostly because he ate those idiots and picked his teeth with their bones. And before he even realized what he was doing, he was after her.
She paused in the crowd to turn around and glare at him. “Oh, I see. You’re a dog. Well, Fido, I’m sure there are some nice little humans over at the bar who’d like to take you home and pet you. I’m not one of them. So go on, boy.” She clicked her tongue like a human would do their pet or a stray they were trying to get rid of. “Go on! Shoo!”
As she started to leave, Falcyn licked his lips. “So you’re the queen bitch of the Daimons. They told me you were something else. But how many of them know you have demon blood inside you?”
She quirked a brow at his question, then gave him an insidious smile that made his cock jerk. “Before or after I kill them?” Her gaze narrowed as she swept a gimlet stare over him that said she was sizing him up for battle. “And you’re wrong about my title. The queen would be my mother.”
“Then what would that make you?”
“Daddy’s most precious little girl.”
He belly-laughed. Something that made every Were-Hunter near them step back and gape.
That finally took some of the bluster out of her, as she caught sight of their uncharacteristic reservation.
And fear. Especially since they never feared anything.
Except him. Yeah, he was that dangerous.
“Who are you?” she asked with a note of reservation in her voice.
“Wrong question.”
“How so?”
“It’s not so much who am I … as what am I.”
Medea felt a tremor of fear finally roll down her spine. “You’re not one of them, are you?” The Were-Hunters had been created aeons ago by the king of Arcadia in a desperate attempt to save the lives of his sons from a curse placed upon their mother’s race by the Greek god Apollo—Medea’s own grandfather. Seeking to elongate the lives of his sons, the king had bargained with a Sumerian god to magically splice their DNA with animals.
It’d worked, and the Sumerian god and Arcadian king had created two races of shapeshifters. Those who held human hearts, called Arcadians—human in their base forms, they could take animal form—and the Katagaria, who had animal hearts and were able to shift into humans.
The “man” in front of her shook his head slowly to indicate that he fell into neither group. As he said, he was something else entirely.