Change of Heart (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 3) Read online

  The unwelcome news set a clock ticking over our heads, as if we needed more incentive.

  “Krista,” I called over the noise. “Hey, girl.”

  Whipping her head toward my voice, Krista beamed for the split second before she recognized me. Then it registered I wasn’t whoever had earned that smile, and the flush drained from her cheeks. Panic bright in her eyes, she bolted around the corner.

  “I’ve had a long day,” I grumped, “but I don’t smell that bad, do I?”

  Midas leaned in, ran his nose along my jaw, his breath warm on my skin. “You smell like—”

  “Woo later.” I ducked out of his reach then broke into a jog. “Chase now.”

  Unable to stop the grin from spreading, I didn’t fight it. The hunt was in my blood, the same as his.

  Nudging me aside, he took point and followed his nose. Now that he had a lock on Krista’s scent, he could track her. She must be terrified to have Midas on her trail, but she wasn’t doing herself any favors by running.

  “That girl should try out for the Olympics,” I panted. “Are you sure she’s not a gazelle shifter?”

  Laughter tickling the back of his throat, he called back to me, “Our foremothers ate most of those before they migrated to Earth from Faerie.”

  I stumbled, but then I narrowed my eyes on his back. “You aren’t serious.”

  Pretending not to hear me, he didn’t answer, just kept shouldering through the masses.

  “They were people, right?” As I hit my stride, my breathing evened out. “You ate people?”

  “I’ve eaten people,” he confessed, now that I was at his elbow. “How about you?”

  “Um, no.” I had devoured victims’ essences but not their flesh. “I don’t eat people. I am people.”

  “You live through hard enough times, and that ceases to matter.”

  Without knowing his age or much of his history, I was in no place to judge him for what he had done to survive.

  “People are safe from me as a food group unless they start coming chocolate-covered or bacon-wrapped.” I elbowed him in the ribs. “Then all bets are off.”

  The look he shot me gave me ideas about other things I wouldn’t mind tasting covered in chocolate.

  Ambrose wavered into being, a watery echo of his usual self, to protest the dirty turn of my thoughts.

  That’s what you get for listening in, perv.

  Krista led us a good mile away from the clubs in Midtown before she stumbled and tipped into a wall. I put on a burst of speed, but she was too far ahead, and I couldn’t catch her without Ambrose to loan me extra oomph.

  As if coming to the same conclusion, Midas unleashed his inner beast, let it claim his skin, and used those precious seconds while Krista recovered to corner her. Carefully, he took her wrist in his jaws while he waited on me to catch up to them.

  “I’m sorry.” Krista went limp in his grip and sagged over his furry shoulder. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

  Midas didn’t see the hand she slipped into her pocket, but I did, and I lunged for her. I captured her wrist, twisted it, and watched a hypodermic needle full of goddess knows what hit the pavement. Faete, most likely.

  “Cooperate,” I warned her. “This will go easier if you do.”

  The girl went limp in my arms, her broken sobs heart-wrenching, but I didn’t loosen my grip. I didn’t trust the calculation in her eyes. Or the fact that, despite all the noise she was making, her cheeks remained free of tears. Her sniffles were dry, forced, and touching her made my skin crawl.

  A quick swipe from my modified pen bound Krista’s wrists behind her back with a sigil, and I checked her twice before pivoting toward Midas. Scarcely breathing, he watched the scene unfold. The blank slate in his crimson eyes had me tasting cold fear in back of my throat.

  Five

  The last few seconds flashed through Midas’s mind, as brilliant as lightning, and he glued his paws to the asphalt while his brain chewed over how those few seconds had changed his life. Forever.

  The seismic shift in his chest, in his perception of the world, happened so fast it gave him whiplash.

  “Midas?”

  Krista seeks comfort from him, from pack, her fingers digging in his fur.

  “Did she get you?”

  Hadley tackles her, binds her hands behind her back, sets her aside and away from him.

  “Midas.”

  Krista sits on the pavement as the wrongness wells in her and sobs as if her world is ending.

  And then his shifted on its axis with a groan that reverberated through the marrow in his bones.

  The urge to bristle at Krista’s rough treatment had stung the length of his spine, that he recalled clearly.

  This is Hadley, he had reminded himself. My mate wouldn’t hurt my people.

  His…mate.

  Hadley was his mate.

  “Midas?” Hadley knelt beside him, her eyes wide and dark. “Did she get you?”

  The weight of his revelation made him dizzy, and his stomach lurched until he tasted bile, but at least time had snapped taut again.

  “Shift for me.” She cupped his chin. “I can’t see a frakking thing through all this fur.”

  Magic spilled out of his pores and splashed onto her hand where she touched him, but she didn’t flinch.

  “Where did she pop you?” She reached for the hem of his tee and yanked it over his head without ceremony. “There’s no mark.” She smoothed her trembling hands over his bare torso. “Where is the mark?”

  “Hadley.” He captured her wrists and restrained her before she stripped him naked in the alley. “She didn’t inject me.”

  “Thank the goddess.” Her eyes slid closed for a long moment. “I thought I didn’t see it in time. I thought I was too late. I thought…”

  “I’m okay.” He drew her against him. “Thank you.”

  With his realization ringing in his ears, he had let his guard down, and it almost cost him dearly.

  “I can’t breathe.” Her nails dug into his shoulder blades. “My chest hurts too much.”

  “Sorry.” He relaxed his grip. “Am I holding you too tight?”

  “No.” She hauled him back, nestled her face into his chest. “It’s not that.”

  “Adrenaline,” he murmured, tightening his arms around her until the shakes quit. “It will pass.”

  “Not adrenaline either.” Voice muffled by his chest, she braced as wild laughter punched through her. “Terror.” She tipped back her head. “Unmitigated terror.”

  Holding Hadley was no hardship, but they had to figure out what Krista had done, where the other teens had gone. He just couldn’t find it in him to let Hadley go. He might have held her all night, marveling at what he had discovered, if she hadn’t rallied the strength to release him.

  “All right.” Her tears left his skin damp. “I’m good now.”

  They rose together, neither of them steady, and faced the girl who had folded her legs under her, lotus style.

  “Where did I go wrong?” She leaned forward, invested in the answer. “The dry eyes, right? I’ve never been good at crying on demand.”

  Hadley’s voice rang clear. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Krista.” Rolling her eyes, she channeled her best teenage rebellion voice. “Who else?”

  Midas’s gut tensed with the possibilities, and he sank power into the question. “Who are you?”

  “I am…embarrassed to have been caught, that’s who.” Her jaw set. “I’ll have to do better next time.”

  The girl shimmered, warped, and a muscular black horse sprouted where she had been sitting.

  The magical restraints had either broken or had been bound to Krista’s skin. Either way, they were gone.

  “A púca,” Midas growled and jerked Hadley aside. “Get back.”

  “I thought those were fluffy bunnies.” She punched her hand into the night and withdrew a sword. “That is not a fluffy bunny.”

  The mare rose on its hin
d legs and pawed the air, walking forward to force them back, then broke into a punishing gallop that smashed the addled partygoers under its hooves.

  “I have to shift.” He let the magic sting his skin. “It’s the only way to take it down.”

  “She’s coven,” Hadley said, the request for permission clear.

  Seven hearts. That’s what they owed Natisha. This might be the first.

  “We honor the bargain,” Midas bit out, then surrendered himself with a throat-rattling song of mourning for the girl the witchborn fae coven had killed for the use of her body.

  The clopping noises gave away the púca’s direction. Hadley would have had no issue tracking it alone.

  Anger scorched his tongue, and he snarled his hatred for Krista’s killer with every exhalation. Saliva pooled in his mouth, and he wanted nothing more than to rip out the creature’s heart for what it had done to a child of the pack.

  An equine scream reverberated between the buildings where the púca had fled, and Midas shot ahead of Hadley.

  “This belong to you?” Bishop stood with his hand fisted in the horse’s flowing mane. “You don’t see too many of these on this side of Faerie, thank the old gods and the new.”

  “She’s coven,” Hadley confirmed from behind him. “She was wearing a pack member. A teen girl.”

  “That so.” With a pulse of blistering magic, he unraveled the horse, its shape twisting and writhing until it shrank into a snarling man. “You killed a girl for her skin?”

  “I’ve killed lots of girls for their skins,” he spat. “What’s one more?”

  “Your job was to lure the pack teens to Greenleaf.” Hadley made it a statement, not a question. “Why?”

  “Why not?” The man twisted in Bishop’s hold. “You’re not pack. What does it matter to you?”

  “Hadley is the future potentate of this city,” Bishop purred next to the man’s ear. “She’s not as forgiving as Linus, and he’s not exactly known for looking the other way while his people are preyed upon.”

  Midas snapped his head toward her, and the hard set of her delicate features almost convinced him Bishop was right.

  “No one preys on the kids in my city.” Streetlight glinted off the wicked blade in her small hand. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll show you mercy.” She stuck her empty hand into the darkness and drew her second sword. “Or I’ll gut you now and figure it out for myself.”

  “Kill me.” The man lifted his chin. “I won’t betray my coven.”

  A kick from Bishop took out his knees, and he hit the pavement in a kneeling position.

  Knuckles gone white where she gripped her blades, she clenched her hands tighter. “Where are the other gwyllgi teens?”

  “As good as dead,” the man spat, “if they aren’t already.”

  “Last chance,” she offered, a fine tremor in her voice Midas doubted anyone else would have noticed.

  “You will die for this,” he hissed. “My kind will wear your skin as—”

  Hadley walked up to him, rested a blade on either side of his throat, and cut without further hesitation.

  The scissorlike motion, fueled with inhuman strength, lopped off his head and left Bishop holding it by the hair.

  “Goddess,” she breathed and swallowed convulsively. “That bastard.”

  A final act of cruelty had stamped a vicious smile on the man, and death had frozen it there.

  Except it wasn’t his face but Krista’s that gazed at them with eyes gone dull and lifeless.

  The petite body collapsed in a heap, a best friends necklace slung free across the asphalt, and fresh blood wet the parched road while Hadley stared and stared at half of a jagged heart-shaped charm.

  “We have to move fast,” Bishop said softly, a reminder of their gruesome bargain. “We need the heart.”

  Midas traded skins in a flash of red magic and approached them.

  “Give me some room.” She wet her lips. “This is going to get messy.”

  “You don’t have to do it alone.” Midas didn’t budge. “We’re in this together.”

  Hadley, who was the bravest, strongest, most spirited woman he had ever met, couldn’t face him.

  “You’re not a monster.” He sank his fingers into the curls at her nape. “Tonight, you slayed one.”

  That earned him a slight tilt of her head, but she ignored him in favor of Bishop.

  “Claim the heart like we practiced,” Bishop urged her. “I can get it to the box before it stops beating.”

  “It’s not like we practiced,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I’ve killed in the heat of battle, to defend myself, to protect others, but this…” Her throat worked as she struggled to swallow. “Never like this.”

  “I know, kid.” He cursed under his breath. “I know.”

  “Let me borrow one of your swords.” Midas held out his hand. “Let me do this for you.”

  The offer made his gut rebel, but Krista was his, and he owed it to her to make her death count.

  “You heard Linus.” Hadley sheathed one but kept the other. “Natisha set the terms with me in mind.”

  Midas fought the growl, but he failed to throttle it. “This is not what he meant.”

  “We can’t chance it.” She sliced Krista open using a precise Y incision then set to work opening her ribs to reach the delicate organs underneath. Hands steady as a surgeon, she freed the heart, and it pulsed in her hand as she passed it off to Bishop. “There.” She stared blankly at the corpse and vanished her final blade. “Go.”

  The shadows licked over Bishop as he walked through them, and his footsteps faded with him.

  “I need to call the cleaners.” Hadley’s rock-steady hand shook until she dropped her phone. “Frakking hell.”

  “I’ll do it.” Midas took her phone and sent the message. “There.”

  Switching phones, he texted Ares with an order to round up more enforcers to finish sweeping the clubs and surrounding area for the remaining teens.

  How many times had he hit the clubs in search of kids being kids? Or ducked in and out of every bar with a reputation for serving minors? Or checked cabins for squatters and found teens using them for sex? He couldn’t count them. They were a monthly occurrence, the result of hormones and bad decision making.

  Tonight should have gone the same way, with the row of youthful offenders lined up in front of his mom to await their punishment. Now he had to live with wondering if he had brought more enforcers if Krista would have been found in time, if the other kids would have been home already, if he could have spared Hadley the nightmares this guaranteed her.

  “Thanks.” Her wobbly smile didn’t fool him. “One down, six to go.”

  Before he could think what to say, she lurched to one side and threw up everything in her stomach.

  The incessant chatter of her teeth, the loose way she swayed on her palms, shot alarm through him.

  “You’re going into shock.” He caught her and rubbed her back. “We need to get you to Abbott.”

  The girl had already been dead when Hadley killed her and cut out her heart, the coven saw to that, but Midas couldn’t blame Hadley for struggling to process what she had done when Krista’s likeness stared at them from where Bishop had set her head on the pavement.

  “Abbott will fuss at me.” She sucked in air, great heaving gasps. “I don’t want to be fussed at tonight.”

  “I’ll take you home then.” He got his arm around her before her knees buckled. “How about that?”

  “I don’t want to bring this home,” she said, her voice empty. “Goddess, I don’t know what I want.”

  “I have an idea.” He scooped her up then sat in the empty street. “Let me place a call first.”

  “Okay.” She buried her face in his shirt. “Okay.”

  Chin on top of her head, he held her while he made arrangements for still more enforcers to meet them and claim the body. It wasn’t Krista, not really, but the witchborn fae wearing her skin was a
ll he had to give her parents.

  Gwyllgi required no waterproof tents, insulated sleeping bags, or crackling fires to enjoy a night beneath the stars, but they often mated other species less at home in the forest. For that reason, the pack had an unusual number of permanent campsites on their property for mates and children less suited to exposure to the elements. As of last fall, there were even three isolated one-room cabins designed to fade into the surrounding trees.

  A good third of the pack had fought his mom on building the cabins, small as they might be. The permanent campsites were already an eyesore, they argued. The den was meant to be a wilderness oasis, a place to shake a long week of working downtown out of your fur. Not walk manicured trails or choke on pungent mosquito repellent.

  Mom decreed the pack had to accommodate all its members, and then she bit anyone who dared oppose her vision.

  There was a very good reason why Tisdale Kinase was alpha of the largest gwyllgi pack in the Southeast.

  Sharp teeth were only the tip of it.

  Tonight, with Hadley’s mental wellbeing hanging on by a thread, he was grateful for the cabins. He carried Hadley into the closest one, woke her for a shower, then heated up chicken soup from a can in the pantry. She was asleep on the bed, bundled up in an oversized towel large enough to dry a wet gwyllgi, before the first bubble broke the surface in the pot on the stove.

  Guilt churned in his gut over leaving Midtown before the teens were located, but Mom was always telling him half of being an alpha was learning when to delegate. Ares was his right hand, and the enforcers were highly trained members of elite teams. As much as it twisted him up inside, he had to believe he’d made the right call. Hadley teetered on the breaking point, and it was his duty—no, his privilege—to help her regain her balance.

  After pouring the soup into a bowl for himself, he took it outside to eat on the dirt porch so as not to waste it.

  “What happened?”

  The fact his mother had hunted him down was about as surprising as the sun rising in the east.