Moon Glamour by Aimee Easterling (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

shifters because it was more focused. I dismissed the wolf scent and jogged to catch up with my maybe-boss.

“I chose you for this job because of your special abilities,” Marina continued as we wended our way past the recommended donation box. She ignored it while I dropped in a ten-dollar bill.

“Special abilities?”

“Furry abilities.”

My feet froze on the stairs I’d been following her up. My nostrils flared again.

But there was no wolf scent about Marina. No fur. No wildness. She shouldn’t have known what I was capable of.

Still, I disabused her of that notion. “I don’t use any furry abilities on the job.”

Not since making a deal with the local alpha, that is. Not since Harper had begun attending boarding school so close to the heart of Rowan McCallister’s pack.

“What, never? Well, no matter.” Marina’s voice was perfectly museum appropriate as she dismissed my refusal to use my wolf and returned to the object of her fixation. “Before the current owner took possession, the item had been in my family for generations.” She paused long enough to spear me with eyes bluer than the sky. “I’m not asking you to steal, Athena. I’m asking you to return what’s already been stolen.”

Again, she turned away, this time leading me into a well-lit gallery. We didn’t speak as she made a beeline for a glass case housing a metal bracer.

It was a decorative arm cuff, meant to be worn at the wrist. Three inches wide, made of pounded gold and silver.

The pattern portrayed a running wolf.

I shivered. A wolf...like me? Like the scent outside? Like the world I did my best to steer clear of?

Ignoring what felt like more than a coincidence, I focused on the sign beside the artifact. What I saw there made me shake my head in disappointment.

Of course Marina had lied. All of my employers lied sooner or later.

“This is over a thousand years old,” I noted, raising my eyebrows. “It was dug up last month somewhere in England. You couldn’t even bother dreaming up a story that matches the obvious facts?”

“It was stolen from a cemetery,” Marina countered. “A cemetery in which my ancestors were buried. Do your research. Then cash the check if you want the job.”

The sweetness of rose petals wafted past my nose as Marina turned away. She was leaving. Walking out on me.

Which was good. Safe. And yet....

All those zeroes prompted me to call after her. “What’s to prevent me from cashing the check then disappearing?”

At first, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. But Marina spun in a cloud of flowing fabric when she reached the arch separating the gallery from the hallway. Her hair looked more blue than black there. Her teeth appeared werewolf sharp.

“I wouldn’t recommend it. Harper would regret anything that prevented me from receiving my prize.”

Her use of my sister’s name chilled me down to my marrow. My breathing didn’t slow until the scent of rose petals had faded to nothing on my tongue.

Chapter 3

I hadn’t decided whether to take the job, but I did my due diligence anyway. Wasted precious minutes pretending I was interested in other items in the gallery beyond the bracer so the security footage wouldn’t look so suspicious if this turned into a crime scene.

In fact, I was snapping photos of a Viking’s helmet when the scent of wolf once again surrounded me. This time it was closer. Stronger.

I whirled...then relaxed as I took in the same ugly shifter I’d met downstairs.

“You’re very recognizable,” I greeted him.

I’d intended my words as a compliment, my face blindness meaning that I often couldn’t pick out people I’d met only once or twice or, let’s be honest, seven times before. The stranger didn’t take it that way.

Instead, he sidestepped as if once again opening up my escape routes. His face tilted away from me so I could only see the unscarred left side, and his voice was apologetic as he rumbled, “I didn’t intend to startle you.”

“I wasn’t startled,” I began. But my nostrils flared and proved me wrong.

Because I didn’t smell wolf now. I smelled wolves, plural. More than this single gentleman in a shifter’s malleable skin.

I spun, not quite comfortable with having the wolf I knew at my back but even less comfortable with being unable to see the wolves I didn’t know. There were two of them. Both just as tall as the one behind me but totally different in every other way.

The one on the left was white, tattooed, and decked out in studded leather. A biker or biker wannabe. Definitely someone I’d cross the street to avoid passing alone at night.

The one on the right was black, clad in a suit that could only be tailored. As perfectly featured as Marina while still exuding virile masculinity. This one the chatty girls would have eaten up.

Still, something about his eyes suggested his gentility lay only skin deep. His wolf scent was overwhelming. The hairs on my arms stood on end.

So I was relieved that the biker spoke instead of the more dangerous man beside him. “What’s this?” he asked, his eyes skimming over me then rising to meet those of Mr. Ugly. “Tank?”

Tank’s answer confirmed his identity. “She was here when I arrived.”

For half a second, I relaxed into the already familiar rumble. Scary men stood between me and escape, but Tank wasn’t scary. He was gentle beneath his massive exterior. The kind of man who forced himself into a small box for the sake of skittish teenagers.

And...his breath was hot against the back of my neck.

Maybe not so safe then. Tank had advanced without me realizing, sandwiching me between himself and the other two shifters. His earlier sidestep now seemed less like politeness and more like baiting a trap.

A trap I’d blithely strolled into.

I swallowed. Tried to talk my way out of a situation that would have been better avoided. “Look, I have a card in my pocket from the local alpha. He’s granted me permission to hunt