from you.”
“He was never mine to begin with. Besides, I think he’ll be good for you.”
Colin decided he wouldn’t bother to change clothes. If he was going in to meet a client as part of Heavy Lifting, he was acting the role of tech support. Being in a hoodie and jeans was practically required. No one expected much from the geek of a security team.
Kevin finally asked the real question, “What was it you needed to tell me?”
Colin faced his brother, ready to have it out.
Kevin was trying to be brave, trying not to hope for much from their mother, but Colin could smell the wishes on him.
Colin gave him what he could. “She knew you were fine, that you were a good werewolf, a good enforcer. She was proud of you, in her way.”
“But she didn’t ask about me, did she?”
“I’m sure she knew she’d be seeing you later.”
Kevin dipped his head, swallowed, forced a smile. “Was that what you wanted to warn me about?”
“She doesn’t really care about either of us, I don’t think, Kev. I’m sorry.”
Kevin nodded, hands clenching into fists at his side. “She cares, but as if we’re lost pieces of art she once created. Like we were songs she wrote and gave to some other singer to perform. She cares because she thinks of us, when she thinks of us at all, as leftover parts of herself.”
Colin would have replied that maybe she felt that way about Kevin, but she didn’t think of Colin as anything but a mistake. But if it helped his brother in any way to believe that, Colin wasn’t going to stop him.
“So long as you don’t expect anything from her.”
“I know better,” Kevin said, and maybe he could even convince himself.
“Are you sure about that?” She’d had her claws deep into Kevin, before she left. She’d been shiny and special and wonderful, Alpha and mother. Certainly Kevin, who admired strength and women and glory, would have found her difficult to resist.
“I’m sure.”
Colin met his brother’s eyes, green like their mother’s. Like his. “Okay then, let’s do this thing.”
9
Cold-Hearted Wolf
Normally they would have met with Lexi Blanc and her team at the venue to do a walk-through. But the amphitheater was a beastly drive. It was atop a mountain in the middle of nature. Plus Heavy Lifting knew the layout well enough already. They’d run a couple of ops there in the past. So instead, they met with Blanc at her rented house in Mill Valley. Of course, she’d rented an entire house for the weekend. She couldn’t possibly stay in a luxury hotel suite like an ordinary celebrity.
There was no bodyguard waiting for them, which was a mite disturbing. Judd assumed they’d been hired to augment her existing team, not to replace it. The place smelled like humans, plus the slight pong of wrong Alpha, plus mossy garden and damp redwood.
Blanc’s stylist, Risa Ostrov, met them at the door. She ushered them inside, not even bothering to introduce herself. She was a short female of indeterminate age. Judd wasn’t great on human ages until their hair started going gray or falling out. Risa’s skin was artificially tan and artificially tight, sort of stretched back from a beaky nose, towards blonde hair cut in a sharp bob. She was like a human corn chip, the kind with the powdered cheese flavoring. She wore a very long dress, probably designer, the exact color of nacho cheese, which added to Judd’s chip theory.
The house was an insane 1970s Nor Cal bachelor pad, built down the mountainside, full of fancy stairs and sunburst inlay. There was a sunken marble tub in the middle of the living room floor. Most everything else was glass – sculptures, vases, furniture.
Judd didn’t really want to go inside the place. It was made for humans or cat shifters, something with a great deal more grace than werewolves. Risa led them through and over to some open sliding glass doors.
Lexi Blanc was relaxing with her team on a glass-enclosed patio that nested in the treetops. She looked even more like Colin in person than she had online. The major difference, aside from gender, was that Blanc tried too hard and Colin didn’t try at all.
She was drinking a beverage but Judd couldn’t smell what it was because the stench of human chemical fragrance dominated – perfume, body wash, and hairspray. It was hard to even smell that Blanc was werewolf at all, let alone Alpha. Judd wondered if that