"I can't let you go in there without me unless I trust them to keep you from getting kidnapped by Marmee Noir."
I sighed. "I figured you'd say that. You have to promise me that nothing you see or learn today will ever be used against them on a hunt."
He frowned at me. "I hate it when you do this."
"The light's green," I said, just as the car behind us honked.
He drove forward, but said, "If I don't promise, you'll go in without me."
"Yep."
"Damn it," he said, softly.
"Yep," I said.
"I promise," he said.
I smiled at him. "I knew you would."
"Don't push it," he said, and he sounded genuinely angry. But he'd work through it, and once he promised, he'd keep his word. The red clan was safe from Edward, and I was safe because he was keeping me that way. Now, if I could just get through the interview with my would-be mother-in-law, the day would be perfect.
THERE WERE TWO guards at the door; they introduced themselves as Donny and Ethan. Donny was tall and perfectly bald, and he had eyes the color of orange fire. The red clan had the most trouble passing for human because of the eyes. They had tiger eyes that looked like tiger eyes, not just odd-colored human eyes. In public they wore sunglasses or colored contacts. The irony was that though all the clans disdained the survivors of attacks, the survivors looked more human in human form than the "pureblood" tigers. In fact, it was a mark of the purity of their bloodline that they had tiger eyes and hair the same color as their tiger form, even as babies.
For eyes that dark you usually needed brown contacts to hide the color, but the bodyguard standing next to Donny had soft gray eyes, the color of kitten fur. His hair was a blond so pale it was almost white, and it had what looked like gray highlights in it, though saying soft gray could be highlights sounded wrong. There was one streak of dark, deep red, from his forehead to the back of his skull. His hair was short, but had enough wave to it that he was forced to style it on top, so that it looked like he was ready for a night out on the club with his choppy waved hair and his excellent dye job. He wasn't as tall as Donny's six-foot frame, and he didn't have the shoulder spread either. He looked almost delicate beside Donny, but it was Ethan who had a shoulder holster with a Glock in it, extra ammo on the other side of the holster from the gun, and the muscle tone in his lower arms that comes from a little bit of weights, but mostly some kind of athletic something. Just from the way he held himself, I was betting martial arts of some kind.
Edward touched my arm. It startled me. I'd been staring at Ethan. That made me realize that I really needed to see Alex sooner rather than later. A vampire with an animal to call is often attracted to that type of animal. Jean-Claude found it very peaceful to pet wolves, and that was his animal to call. I realized it wasn't just the sex from home I'd missed; I was missing the touch and interaction of the shapeshifters I was drawn to, like tigers. The fact that I thought Ethan was cuter than Donny went against the way most dominant weretigresses pick mates. They tended to like the ones with the tiger eyes, but there was something . . . interesting about Ethan, or maybe I was just that hungry.
I took a deep breath, and that didn't help because they both smelled like tiger. But Donny smelled like red tiger, and Ethan smelled like more. It made me move toward him, sniff the air near him, try to clear my nose of Donny's closer, warmer scent.