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

if she was disagreeing with the entire notion. “He’ll grow out of it. Or they’ll get sick of kowtowing. Either way, it won’t last.”

These words, though, weren’t firm like her earlier ones. And maybe that’s why she turned away from me. Turned back to her neighbor, leaving me to chow down alone.

To chow down...and to return to my original task of assessing the room. It was a large banquet hall, rectangular tables crowded with dining shifters. Too loud to use voices to arrow in on Samhain Shifters. Still, after a moment I picked out Lupe, then an eyes-on-the-back-of-my-neck sensation drew my attention to Tank.

He met my gaze for one split second then turned away, almost as if he didn’t want to acknowledge our connection. Or, no, as if he was pointing out Ryder without having to raise a finger.

Five tables down, the tattooed biker waggled his eyebrows at me. In reaction, the veins on the side of Tank’s neck bulged for one split second. Ignoring their half-friendly and half-not interaction, I tried and failed to pick out Butch.

Odd. It wasn’t as if a tall, elegant black guy would be easy to hide in a room full of folks with skin tones ranging from light peach to burnt ochre. So where was he?

I frowned but lost the thread of that thought as the room fell silent. “Our guests,” Rowan said, his words no louder than if he’d been speaking to the person across the table, “will be shown the utmost courtesy.”

Despite the levelness of their alpha’s voice, it felt like everyone around me held their breath in order to hear him better. Shifters who’d been eating dropped half-finished rolls and food-covered forks. Eating or not, every eye focused on Rowan.

Then, without being asked, eight shifters pushed back their chairs.

The pack bond. That had to be how Rowan was providing instructions. Because the eight split apart in perfect synchrony, two heading toward each of the Samhain Shifters in attendance.

“Are you coming?” Jasmine asked. She was one of the eight, as was a male who’d sidled past half a dozen diners to reach us. Without addressing him or waiting for an answer from me, my seat mate started in the opposite direction from where the others were heading.

Or, no, that wasn’t quite right. We were all being taken in separate directions. Rowan was splitting us up. Making sure our team didn’t have a moment to compare notes and make a plan.

Jasmine swiveled back to face me. “Athena? Don’t you want to see the garden?”

I had a feeling it didn’t matter what I wanted. That the garden was where I was going regardless.

And Lupe wasn’t arguing. Tank and Ryder weren’t throwing their weight around.

So I shrugged and made nice. “Sure.”

I SAW MY TEAM MATES occasionally over the course of the day, but we never came close enough to speak to each other. Instead, we passed by from a distance, the endless tour no less restraining than being locked in the barracks had been.

But at least there were snacks, which kept my wolf happy. Well, that’s not quite true. When we walked in the door of the gymnasium at the same moment Tank walked out of it, my wolf nearly broke free of our civilized behavior and pushed me after him.

Smells like strength, she prodded. Safety. Home.

Quiet, I responded, even though she was right.

“So that’s why you wouldn’t dine with my brother,” Jasmine observed, drawing me back to the present. I tensed, expecting a jibe at Tank’s ugliness. Instead, she added: “I can see why.”

“You think Tank’s attractive?”

Jasmine raised her eyebrows. “Attractive? No. Powerful? Yes.” Then, changing the subject with her usual facility, she led me over to a bay of workout equipment. “Pick your poison.”

I opted to start on the only one I knew how to operate—a treadmill. My wolf, however, saw no purpose in running in place when we could be running after Tank. I had to remind her that hunts required stealth and patience. We’d barely reached a detente when Ryder entered through the furthest door.

“Time to go,” Jasmine told me, hopping off the machine that had been guiding her into strange contortions.

My wolf was willing, but I wasn’t. Instead, I wiped my face with a hand towel, giving myself a second to think.

Because the issue of guides-turned-guards had nagged me while I followed Jasmine around all day long. If Rowan never gave us a daylight moment alone then locked Tank, Butch, and Ryder away for the night, we’d be hamstrung. Left at Rowan’s mercy in order to finish our job.

Lupe, I hoped, was powerful enough to force the issue of our shared door staying open. After all, she’d managed to wiggle me out of Rowan’s grip previously. But I’d seen no evidence that the McCallister alpha would show equal restraint toward her underlings.

He certainly hadn’t treated me with much respect.

Which left me and Lupe wandering the halls tonight, hoping to find our team mates. Chances were we’d end up bursting in on random strangers. It would turn into a sticky mess.

“Athena?” Jasmine called from the far door. “Are you coming?”

Across the room, Ryder raised shaggy eyebrows.

The guys needed their own way out of locked rooms and I now possessed that solution. Because the bulging seam of my jacket hid my ace in the hole—a pair of lock picks. It felt strange to pull them out and leave them behind in the used hand towel. Because...what if I needed them? What if I was giving up my only escape from another day of eating insects and prowling the confines of a tiny cell in lupine form?

Pack, my wolf murmured before I could shush her. Help them.

We weren’t pack. We were simply team mates.

Still, when I glanced back as I followed Jasmine out the door, my belly warmed at the sight of Ryder pocketing my offering. Worst-case scenario, at least one team mate would have a way out of his cell tonight.

Chapter 31

The rest of the day