Sassy Ever After: Wise Sass Mates (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  At any rate, she was feeling fearless.

  Besides, she could totally leave an anonymous envelope of cash here later to make it up to the Peterson’s for their stair runner.

  She opened her knife and slid it under the first section of carpet.

  Chapter 16

  The brown wolf loped along, hanging close to the rear boundaries of the backyards lining Hinkson Avenue.

  He was shadowing the silver car that contained the woman he loved and hated. Eventually she would lead him to the thing his human wanted.

  At last the silver car pulled over, so the brown wolf hid in the rhododendron forest behind the house.

  He heard her talk with her friends, then enter the house alone.

  The brown wolf darted up onto the back porch, sailing over the stairs two at a time.

  He sniffed around. At last he found what he sought.

  He stood up into his human form.

  Then he lifted the pot of scarlet geraniums, to reveal the key underneath.

  This fucking town.

  Why did anyone bother to lock anything if they were just going to hide a key right next to the door?

  Not that it did him any good without knowing where he was supposed to look.

  The librarian, Angus Wolfe, had been drunk at the Seven Veils two months ago when he bragged that he’d found treasure in the Historical Files room at the library.

  “It’s stupendous,” he’d said, lisping comically after too many celebratory drinks. “It will change everything!”

  It was a shame he hadn’t been more forthright when questioned under duress.

  The “accident” had him out of commission, at least temporarily. Which meant the treasure needed to be located as quickly as possible - a task that was turning out to be rather difficult without access to the files room.

  He’d tried everything to get in there.

  But when he saw that fat bitch was back in town he figured he’d had it made.

  Too bad she was so snotty.

  And so goddamned alluring, in spite of her asinine behavior.

  His wolf slavered and moaned at the idea of mating with her.

  She was chubby and crude, and yet somehow he wanted her like no woman he’d ever encountered.

  He thought of that old teacher and wanted to vomit thinking about the man’s scent on Bianca Silver.

  No matter.

  He was going to take what she had led him to, and then he was going to make her see the light. He’d have Anderson’s scent off her in no time and mark her himself, permanently.

  She’d find it hard to give him any lip when she was his mate. And it would serve her right to be in his thrall after she’d shown him such disrespect.

  Zach Greenfield slipped the key into the lock on the back door and quietly turned the handle.

  Chapter 17

  Bianca had finally worked the carpet off the step.

  The thirteenth tread was indeed a tiny trap door.

  Though the shag carpet had given her hope that perhaps the journal wasn’t missing after all, she’d been sad to see an actual hinge at the back of the step when she removed it. Sure it would make it easier to open now, but it meant that the journal had probably been found in the seventies when the new runner was installed.

  She tried lifting it, but it was stuck. She had just begun to pry her knife under the tread when she sensed someone on the back porch.

  Fighting panic, she tried to use her newfound senses.

  Her ears told her only that someone was there.

  Her nose told her that the scent was… familiar.

  Maybe it was Mei or Addison, just covering their bases, or trying to help her since it was taking so long.

  Bianca hurried in her work.

  The knife slipped, and she cut her thumb. A tiny bead of blood welled up on her skin.

  She sucked it off, and tried again.

  The tread lifted with a pop just as the back door opened and someone entered the kitchen.

  Torn between running and trying to grab the journal, her brave side took the reins for the second time that night, and she lifted the tread.

  It squealed in protest.

  She thrust her hand into the dark space, trying not to think about the dust and spiders that were surely lurking there.

  She felt the leathery shape and grabbed it as footsteps headed her way.

  This wasn’t Mei or Addison.

  The scent was masculine.

  “Bianca,” a deep voice said.

  Oh, god.

  Zach.

  She dashed up the back stairs, hoping she could make it to the main staircase before he got to her. Thank god these old houses always had plenty of ways in and out.

  She heard him behind her, running up the back stairs, only a few feet away.

  Suddenly there was a crash and a stream of terrible curse words.

  The step. She’d left it open and he must have stepped into it and fallen.

  There was silence for a moment.

  She remembered herself and kept moving, finally reaching the second floor hallway.

  A roar sounded behind her, and claws skittered across the pine floor of the hall.

  No.

  She knew she didn’t have time to turn and look, but she did anyway.

  As if in slow motion, the brown wolf glared at her with yellow eyes as is gathered itself and leapt at her.

  Bianca screamed as she flew through the air. She landed at the edge of the main stairway and teetered for a moment.

  For one glorious instant she thought she had regained her footing.

  Then she felt her ankle give out.

  Bianca fell onto her back and slid down the stairs until she landed in a crumpled pile in the center hall, the journal slipping from her grasp at some point along the way down.

  She stayed conscious long enough to see the front door open, upside down.

  “Bianca?” Mei asked.

  A furry streak flew down the steps and attacked.

  The last thing Bianca saw as the darkness blurred the edges of her vision was the brown wolf tackling her friend.

  Chapter 18

  Ian had just arrived home and was headed up the steps when a screech of tires on his quiet street roused him from his dreamy plans for the evening with Bianca.

  He turned to see a yellow VW pull up and Bianca’s friend Addison leap out. The tall African-American girl looked terrified.

  “Ian,” she cried, her voice hoarse.

  Bianca.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Please, you have to come with me, now,” she said.

  “I can’t leave Bianca,” he said. Though as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew to his bones that she wasn’t here.

  She had left him a third time.

  And now there was danger, real danger.

  Without another word he ran to the car with Addison.

  “We went to find the journal, it was stupid and I’m so sorry. She went in, and he must have been there already. We heard a scream. Mei went in and when I heard the growling, I ran…” Addison began to sob.

  “Don’t talk, just drive,” Ian said, fighting the urge to shift and run to protect his mate. He needed to know what was going on first, or he could be putting her in more danger.

  They pulled up outside the house. It was almost full dark now.

  There were no lights on inside.

  Addison jumped out of the car without cutting the engine and dashed up the stairs and in the front door.

  Ian cursed her foolishness even as he applauded her nerve. Bianca had good friends, loyal friends. Even if the three of them were beyond careless, it was good to know they really cared about her.

  Inside Addison knelt on the rug next to their other friend, Mei.

  Mei was sitting up, but seemed to be dazed.

  “He jumped on me, and I hit my head on the way down. I don’t remember anything,” she said.

  Bianca wasn’t with her.

>   He searched the first floor, inhaling deeply. She wasn’t there.

  He dropped into his wolf, jeans and t-shirt shredding in the transformation, and landed with a click on his front paws.

  He lowered his snout to the floor. He recognized the scent at once - the same one from Bianca’s invitation.

  Zachary Greenfield.

  The silver wolf howled with fury, and ran out the back door, following the soft scent of his mate, and the stink of his enemy.

  Chapter 19

  Bianca trembled in her bonds.

  Zach had brought her back to his basement apartment and tied her up with a thin, but surprisingly strong nylon rope.

  Now he paced the floor in front of her, the fluorescent overhead lights shining in his dark hair and making his cheekbones look sharper than ever.

  At least he’d had the decency to put on a pair of jeans so she didn’t have to stare at his package.

  The nerve. He probably thought Bianca was shaking with fear. He was wrong.

  She was shivering with rage.

  And something else as well. Her whole body had that feeling she sometimes got at night, where she couldn’t keep her legs still.

  “Where is the treasure?” Zach demanded for about the hundredth time.

  “I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about,” Bianca answered, enunciating each syllable carefully as if she were talking to a kindergarten class, although she imagined most kindergarten classes went a little lighter on the f-bombs.

  “Then why were you breaking into that house?” he asked.

  “We wanted to get the journal, it’s an important historical document,” she told him.

  “You don’t break into places to get historical documents,” he said.

  “You don’t break into places to get historical documents,” she corrected him sweetly.

  “Where’s the goddamned treasure?” he yelled, his face marred with fury.

  How could she have ever thought he was handsome?

  “What makes you think there’s any treasure?” she asked.

  “Angus Wolfe said so. He was drunk at the Seven Veils and he was yelling about it. I had to bring him outside so he didn’t tell the whole world,” Zach said.

  “What exactly did he say?” Bianca asked.

  “He said he had found something in the files, something that would lead to treasure, the most remarkable discovery of our time,” Zach said.

  Bianca gasped, realizing that Wolfe had meant the journal. Only someone as stupid as Zach Greenfield would think he meant literal treasure.

  “What?” Zach asked.

  “Nothing, that’s just… amazing,” Bianca said.

  If she told him there was no treasure, she wasn’t sure what he might do.

  She hoped he wouldn’t kill her.

  “Zach, what are you going to do with me?” she asked.

  “I’m going to find out where my fucking treasure is,” he said.

  “No, I mean, once you find it. Then what?” she asked.

  Zach knelt by her side.

  She looked purposefully away from him, but he brought his hand under her chin and tuned her to face him.

  His eyes were burning yellow.

  “Then, my little piglet, you’re going to have the night of your dreams. Anderson might have marked you but I’m going to cover his bite with mine. You’re the luckiest girl in Blue Creek, Bianca Silver. You’re going to cook my meals and suck my cock every night for the rest of your life,” he said with a sneer.

  Bianca fought the urge to vomit.

  “Y-you don’t even like me,” she stammered.

  He pressed her hand to his crotch. Beneath his jeans, a monstrous erection strained for her hand.

  “I don’t have to like you. I just have to want you,” he told her. “You’re a disgusting little know-it-all, but I’ve always wanted you. And now you’re mine.”

  A strange sound filled her ears.

  It was as if she had been submerged in water, and she was listening to a building on the shore being demolished.

  Bianca’s vision blurred around the edges.

  And her sense of smell expanded beyond anything she had ever imagined before.

  She could smell what Zach had eaten for breakfast through the light sweat on his forehead. She could smell the fabric softener in his jeans, the acrid flavor of her own fear, and the mold in the walls of the basement room.

  “Ohhh,” the sound of the air rushing out of Zach Greenfield’s lungs was like a symphony of repulsiveness.

  Without really thinking about it, Bianca lunged at his neck and bit down hard.

  Her teeth sunk into his skin like a fork popping the casing of a well done sausage, and her jaw locked down on the tendons that connected his head to his spine.

  Zach tried to wriggle away, but she leapt on top of him.

  Only then did she register the fact that she had paws instead of hands.

  That was why the ropes weren’t holding her anymore.

  She had shifted.

  Bianca was a wolf.

  A pain in her own neck alerted her to the fact that her enemy had a weapon. Her knife. He shoved it repeatedly into her, until she saw red before her eyes, but still she hung on.

  The sound from Zach devolved into a gurgling coo that jangled in her sensitive ears, so Bianca shook him like a rag doll to stop the horrid sound.

  Another scent joined the mix - this one warm and lovely, like a wood fire on a chilly winter night.

  A moment later, the window above them broke open and a silvery shape leapt in.

  Bianca dropped her enemy to greet her mate.

  Blood flowed from her neck and muzzle and dripped onto the floor below. She stood proudly. Her mate would see that she was brave. He would be so pleased with her.

  But as he rose into a man, she smelled the anguish on him.

  “Oh god, Bianca, I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  The words bounced around in her head, meaningless in her confusion. In her wolf form, she understood his body language better. It spoke of shame and sorrow.

  Bianca whined and lowered herself to the ground. Something beneath her moved. She realized belatedly that it was her own tail, tucked between her legs.

  Chapter 20

  Ian sat on a chair beside the bed in the girls’ big mid-century modern house on Forest Lane, morning sunlight streaming through the big window.

  Addison was at the hospital with Mei, who was getting stitches and pain relief after her attack.

  Meanwhile, Bianca had been asleep for hours. As soon as she’d passed out, she had shifted back to her human form.

  Unfortunately that made it harder for her to heal.

  Her bleeding had stopped but she was still out cold.

  Ian had brought her back to the house where her friends were staying. If she wasn’t up by 8 AM, he would have to bring her to the hospital and risk them discovering that she was a shifter.

  “Bianca, my angel, please, please come back to me,” he whispered.

  She slept on, her lashes kissing her pale cheeks.

  She looked so young. She was so young.

  His heart ached.

  Why had he ruined everything?

  He knew now that Zach Greenfield had invited Bianca to the scenting ceremony. It wasn’t her choice to come looking for Ian. It wasn’t his choice to pull her into his lifestyle.

  He’d been so happy, so hopeful for their future.

  But the way she had cowered before him in her beautiful white wolf form was terrible. She was unhappy. And he couldn’t bear it.

  “Please, darling, if you won’t come back to me, just shift. Shift once more so that you can heal. I’ll leave you alone. You’ll never have to see me again,” he promised her, though his wolf howled in his chest.

  She sighed.

  Then suddenly, she was melting into the sheets.

  And before his eyes, a beautiful white wolf slept on.

  “Thank you,” he whispered into her silken ear
.

  Satisfied that she would at least be physically okay, he dozed off in the chair at last.

  When Addison came home with Mei, he excused himself and went back to his house.

  It tore his heart to leave Bianca, but he had promised. And some part of her had heard him and honored her end of the pact.

  He drove home slowly. Flashes of harsh sunlight stabbed into the car from between the overhanging trees, as if he were driving through strobe lights at a dance club, when he’d rather be at a funeral.

  He wondered at the purpose of his good job and pretty house now. Wondered what he was supposed to do with the sea of love that still threatened to overflow his heart.

  Chapter 21

  Bianca held her hands over her eyes.

  Though the last few days had been darker than any she’d ever known, she was grateful to her friends for trying to cheer her up.

  “Okay, you can open them,” Mei shouted.

  Bianca opened her eyes and then grinned.

  “Guys, wow,” she said.

  She was back in her own third floor apartment. But it looked nothing like the trashed mess it had been when she’d last seen it.

  The cozy little flat was clean again, and her furniture was all right side up and arranged properly.

  But now there was so much more. There were throw pillows and blankets, plants and curtains.

  Best of all, there was a canvas print over the mantel - a blown up picture of the three of them from spring break, smiling in front of the tent they had managed to raise together on their camping trip.

  “It’s amazing. It’s… it’s totally amazing,” she breathed.

  “We love you, Bianca. It’s been hard, and we know you want your space, but we want you to know that we adore you and we’ll be here for you,” Addison said in her soft voice.

  They all flopped down on the sofa.

  “So, what now?” Mei asked. “Popcorn and a movie?”

  Bianca wanted to be excited, she really did.

  But somehow, since Ian had disappeared, she felt like all the light was out of the world, as if her very soul were missing.