you’re gonna hit a home run soon as you find your man”—was there a hitch there, a subtle tightening of his facial muscles?—“and start making the attempt.”
Continuing to watch him with a care she’d avoided for years, Garnet said, “I’m hoping.” Ruby and Steele weren’t Garnet’s only siblings—she had six others, a near-impossible number in changeling terms. Four sets of twins, plus Garnet.
“Ruby’s definitely carrying one, right?” Kenji’s tone had an odd undertone she couldn’t quite decipher. “I didn’t miss another set of Sheridan twins?” he added as they began to walk side by side, Kenji automatically shortening his stride to accommodate hers.
“Definitely one this time.” Fur ruffled by what she’d sensed in his voice, Garnet turned to look at him, came up against a wall of good humor.
Her eyes narrowed.
Kenji had been good at hiding things as a child, too, had learned to do so in the midst of the war zone that had been his parents’ relationship. Why hadn’t she remembered that at twenty-one? Because, she admitted, she’d been young and inexperienced, a dominant predatory changeling swimming in hormones, her pride a touchy thing. She’d also been more than a little in love with Kenji Tanaka.
She’d wanted to claw Kenji bloody. Pride alone had stopped her.
Kenji had been a couple of years older. Old enough to have predicted her response . . . to have counted on it?
“My brother Jasper,” she said, her brain gnawing at the issue like a wolf with a bone, “you remember him?”
“Sure. He’s in Alexei’s sector.”
“His mate is carrying twins. They’re ecstatic.”
Kenji’s grin sliced through her heart. “I hadn’t heard. I’ll have to give him a call. What’s a good gift for twin pups?”
There he went again, being the amazing, generous boy she’d grown up with instead of the daredevil lothario he’d become in his early twenties. “Nothing matchy-matchy,” she warned him. “According to Jas, he’s still scarred from his matchy-matchy childhood.”
Kenji’s chuckle went straight through her, making the tiny hairs on her arms prickle. “I remember how your brothers would constantly want to swap clothes with me and their other friends. We got the best of the bargain, though.”
Shoving down her primal response to him once more, Garnet nodded. “Mom’s an amazing tailor.” One who was secretly working on three adorable baby tuxedos—one for Ruby’s pup, two for Jasper’s pups. “This is my office.”
Revel was at the computer behind the dark wood of her desk when they entered. “Fingerprints on the knife are a match to Shane’s,” he said as soon as they shut the door behind themselves, his face set in harsh lines. “I ran the program twice to be sure there was no mistake.”
Garnet’s gut tensed—but dealing with the tough and the hard was part of a lieutenant’s job. Folding her arms, she set her feet apart. “Show me the location of the prints.” Something about them had been niggling at her ever since she took a quick look at the scan of the murder weapon before assigning Revel the task of identifying the prints.
Revel put up the images on the large screen on the back wall of her office. Then, coming around to the front of the desk, he pointed out the four slightly smeared but readable prints on the handle of the blade. “Perfect.” He paused, his hands on his hips. “Honestly, it’s a little too perfect. If the room hadn’t been locked from the inside, I’d be tempted to say planted.”
Kenji moved closer to the screen, the artificial sunlight making his hair gleam blue-black. “This knife is pristine except for those four prints. The others we saw in the set all had smudges, signs of repeated handling.”
“Shane did handle them.” Garnet had visited with him over his collection about three months back, curious to see an ancient knife another packmate had described to her. “He enjoyed sharing his hobby with others, talking about the history of the knives.” She could still remember how his square-jawed face had glowed as he spoke about the workmanship, the hands through which each blade had passed.
To Shane, it was about the art rather than the utility of the blades as weapons.
She took a few steps forward, until she stood with Rev on one side, Kenji on the other. Both strong. Both intelligent. Both blood loyal to SnowDancer. Both beautiful. But only one made her heart thunder and her blood grow hot and her temper fire as violently as her passion.
Damn it.
Gritting her teeth, she focused on the blade that had taken