Beau said, forcing himself to look the woman in her uncanny, almost colorless eyes. He swallowed. “Just who are you, anyway?”
The woman laughed frostily. “Oh, you wouldn’t know my name, even if I told you. But recently I’ve been going by the name Rosalind.”
The sound of Rosalind’s laughter sent a bolt of ice-cold fear straight down Beau’s spine. Instinctively, he moved to place himself even further between Annie and Rosalind.
We must get our mate out of here, his hippogriff insisted, growing ever more frantic by the second. Beau knew that, no matter what else happened, he had to get Annie to safety.
“Rosalind,” Beau said. If she saw humans as so unimportant, it was possible she could be persuaded to let Scott and Annie leave. He opened his hands. “Whatever you wanted to get out of this, you can’t get it out of these humans now. Whatever your goals are, they’re better served by letting them go. If you need a hostage, then you’ve got me.”
“Beau, no.” He heard Annie’s frantic voice behind him, and a moment later felt her hand on his arm. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
He wanted to turn and face Annie, but all his instincts were screaming at him not to take his eyes off Rosalind for a second. She smiled, seeming to reveal somehow each and every one of her teeth.
“And separate two fated mates?” she asked, her voice smooth as silk. “No – that would be quite cruel, don’t you think?”
Of course, Beau had known she’d be able to sense it. But he had had to try.
“Fated mate or not,” he said evenly. “Don’t you think it would be better to keep humans out of this? You’ve already involved them enough. You know the Shifter Patrol Corps don’t take dragging humans into shifter issues lightly.”
Rosalind let out a long, low laugh. “The Shifter Patrol Corps? Why on earth should I care about that? No. If humans want to come and join the games I run, then I allow them to. And if they break the rules, then they can reap the consequences. I didn’t force this human to do anything he didn’t want to do,” she said, lifting an elegant hand to point at Scott. “He chose it. He’s the one who came to me.”
Behind him, Beau could sense Scott stiffening as if in umbrage, and he willed him to keep his mouth shut.
“I’m not concerned with whether the people who play here are shifters or humans,” Rosalind continued evenly. “Only in balance. And if you cannot repay a debt, then the balance needs to be restored some other way.”
“How is this balance?”
To Beau’s surprise, it wasn’t Scott who ended up bursting out with a question, but Annie.
“To ruin Scott’s father’s business – his life – over a little bit of money?” Annie gestured to the massive, extravagant house around them. “To me, it seems like a lot of money, but to you? You can’t tell me you’d even notice it. Not if you can afford all this.”
Annie, please, Beau thought, don’t draw her attention.
True, he hadn’t yet come up with a way for them all to get out of here. But the thought of Rosalind training her icy eyes on Annie sent fear churning through his gut.
Rosalind’s lips twisted. “Balance isn’t always what it seems. You’re presumptuous to think you know how it’s calculated.”
“I know that if Scott had known how you were going to calculate it, he wouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place,” Annie shot back.
Beau thought that was a rather generous assessment of Scott’s personality, but right now, he had bigger problems.
As much as he didn’t want Rosalind anywhere near Annie, he could take the moment when her attention was divided to hit the alert button in his pocket, which would send out the low-frequency signal that would call the Shifter Patrol Corps agents waiting in the forest to storm the building.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, but right now, it was the only one they had.
But as he began reaching into his pocket, he felt a strong arm around his bicep. Turning, he found himself staring into the impassive face of one of the security guards.
“I wouldn’t,” the man said in a low grunt.
Beau tensed, ready to throw him off. All he needed was a moment, and he could sense he was stronger than this man, for all his bulk and muscle.
But before he could do anything, there was a sudden flurry of activity from behind him.
Turning, he could