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  It was only for a fraction of a second of course, and then the humans resumed their activities, feeling foolish perhaps, and only a little uneasy as he began to move among them. Lara dropped her phone back into her purse, curious.

  There were only three or four loup garoux at the party, and all of them were just as riveted, and as perplexed, by the sudden appearance of the heir designee as Lara was. One of them, a music producer with several multi-platinum records to his credit, sidled up to her and murmured, “Well, well. To what do we owe the honor?”

  She gave him a brief scowl of annoyance and turned away, reaching for the fizzy drink she had recently set aside. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”

  She sipped the drink and moved toward the balcony but kept Nicholas Devoncroix in the corner of her eye.

  It wasn’t, of course, that Nicholas was a recluse; not by any means. He was well known to enjoy expensive parties and the most exclusive clubs, and he always had at least one gorgeous loup garou female hanging off his arm. Three years ago, at a huge pack ceremony Lara had not bothered to attend, he had been anointed leader pro-tem of the pack, which meant that over the next several years he would co-rule with his father, learning and proving himself, while the power passed gradually and peacefully into his hands. In that capacity, he spent most of his time earning the trust of the industrial and political leaders, the financiers and innovators who quietly ran the world on behalf of the pack. He was occasionally seen at a state dinner, or in the company of other famous and influential leaders, both human and loup garoux. He did not, however, socialize casually, particularly with humans and particularly not at a party like this. It simply wasn’t protocol. And, for someone who was already positioned to take over the pack that more or less controlled the financial, technological and political destiny of the world, there was very little point in it.

  Lara wondered idly whether he would come over to her. It would be a deliberate snub if he did not, although she had certainly done her part to snub the pack and all it stood for over the years. Nonetheless, as a matter of good manners, Nicholas was required to greet and inquire after the families of each member of the pack who was present. The intricately tangled web of human diplomacy is only a shallow imitation of the protocols that govern the lupinotuum.

  Lara went out upon the balcony, where the sea breeze played with her hair and tickled her skin, and the ocean, two stories and some hundred yards away, created a pleasant susurration in the distance. Not far off shore a boat was anchored, all dressed up with tiny white lights like a Christmas tree, and beyond it a fishing boat with a big search light on the prow crossed the horizon. Even the sea was never quiet off the coast of California. The night was studded with the glow of windows in every direction, and the light hurt her sensitive night-vision eyes. So she chose instead to rest against the rail, fix her gaze on the distance, and look at nothing at all.

  There was a man with a beard and glazed-over eyes sitting on the floor in the corner, stroking a Maltese dog. But for the glitter of its marble-like eyes—and the smell, of course—one would have been hard-put to determine the dog was real. On one of the wooden chaises, two human women were locked in an embrace, and from another, a man absently sipped a drink while filming them with a small video camera. The clatter of activity from inside spilled through the glass doors. Lara tried to follow Nicholas’s scent, but the ocean breeze made it difficult to do so.

  And suddenly it wasn’t.

  She knew that he had come onto the balcony first because of the prickling in her skin, a hundred million tiny hairs being pulled toward his electrical charge. Then his scent infused her: the smell of thunder, rain on hot stones, kinetic energy. There was no other scent in the world like it, and no real words to describe it. Among their species, the very presence of that scent excited nerve endings, quickened senses, stirred blood. It was genetic.

  He let the glass doors close on the cacophony inside and came over to Lara. The little Maltese in the corner bared its teeth and then whimpered and ran away. The man with the glazed eyes continued to stroke to empty air.

  Lara turned to face Nicholas Devoncroix. As he did her hair, charged with the electricity of his presence, floated in strands away from her shoulders and toward him, just as it had done the first time they had met as children all those years ago. She caught it back impatiently with one hand.

  “Miss Fasburg,” he said politely. “Your health?”

  He didn’t really want to know about her health of course. It was just a greeting. She tried to meet his gaze but instinct kicked in and she bowed her head as dutifully as any other pack sycophant. She really had no choice. His sexual chemistry was vivid, and that low-level thrum of his energy could act like a hypnotic on an unsuspecting female. The sensation caught her off guard, and then made her defensive. And then, because she was annoyed with both herself and with him for making her feel that way, she extended her bowed head into a low, court curtsey, her hand uplifted to him in the manner of old.

  She replied, “Excellent, thank you.” And, with a smirk hidden by her bowed head, added, “Your Majesty.”

  He did not take her extended hand, and she was left to straighten from the curtsey without the benefit of his assistance—which was no small feat in four-inch Manolo Blahniks. His face showed no humor whatsoever.

  “And your family?”

  Lara was beginning to regain her equilibrium, both physically and emotionally, and she reclaimed the drink she had left on the rail. “I really couldn’t guess.”

  He said, “I saw your mother in Paris last week.”

  That surprised her. “Did you?”

  “She expressed a certain …” he made a deliberate pause over the word, “concern, regarding your welfare.”

  It was all she could do not to stare at him. “Why?” What she was thinking was, Why are you still talking to me?

  His expression was utterly phlegmatic as he answered, “Apparently there was a photograph of you posing nude atop some pyramid or another. It seemed a bit dangerous to her.”

  The photograph to which he referred was actually one of Lara’s favorites. It had been taken at Chichen Itza, and she was captured in the process of stepping off one of the high steps into the clear blue Mexican sky. The photographer had wanted to make a statement about sacrifice, and apparently he succeeded because the photograph won a very prestigious award and went at auction for a great deal of money.

  Of course Lara had excellent balance and she couldn’t imagine the princess had really been concerned for her safety. If anything, she would have been pleased.

  “And there was that distressing video of you and the Brazilian millionaire …”

  Lara tried to think which one he meant.

  “And the rumors about your intentions with the young Sheik have concerned us all, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

  Lara stared at him. His delivery was perfectly flat, his expression utterly composed, yet she caught the very faintest trace of humor around the corners of his eyes and inhaled a whiff of it from his skin. And she couldn’t believe it: he was teasing her.

  She said, “Did you really see my mother?”

  He inclined his head. In better light, she might have detected a smile. “At a reception at the Libyan embassy. I was negotiating oil rights. She was looking beautiful. She sends her love.”

  Lara was for a moment at a loss for words. She took a sip of her drink, trying to compose herself. Her heart was fluttering with confusion, and of course he could hear it. She said, in a moment, “What are you doing here?”

  “I had business with the host.”

  “Oh.” She glanced around. “Who is the host?”

  He seemed amused. “One of your cousins, actually.”

  “Oh,” she said again, and felt a little foolish. This was not a familiar feeling for her, and she blamed Nicholas Devoncroix for it. “What kind of business?”

  His look told her she had gone too far. The heir designee does not explain his business to anyone.
She shrugged, and half turned back toward the rail, sipping the drink which had, unfortunately, gone flat.

  He glanced around until he spotted the spiral staircase that wound to the ground floor and nodded toward it. “This noise hurts my head. Walk with me.”

  Surprise speeded her pulse, but she kept her composure otherwise. “Why?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Because I am your pack leader and I command it.”

  Lara caught a soft laugh in her throat. “Not yet, you’re not,” she told him. “And not my pack.”

  He replied without missing a beat, “Because I’m bored and would enjoy the chance for an intelligent conversation.”

  She turned and regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. She smiled slowly. “Now,” she said, “you have my attention.”

  They went down the winding steps, through the jungle garden and past the pool that glowed with such surreal underwater lighting it looked as though a space ship had landed there. Now and then they passed humans having surreptitious sex against a wall or brokering deals of one sort or another; drinking, eating, smoking, laughing too loudly and talking too loudly. The whole of it could easily give one a headache after a time, and Lara was as glad to be away as Nicholas was.

  They crossed the wooden boardwalk and when they reached the beach Lara slipped off her shoes and carried them by the straps. Nicholas kicked out of his loafers and left them in the sand, but she loved her Manolos. Besides, they’d cost over eight hundred dollars, US.

  There were still humans on the beach, even at 1:30 in the morning, but they were few and far between, and the sound of the surf and the taste of the spray drowned out their presence nicely. A subtle moon cast blue-green shadows on the distant foam, and the sea looked like a great black sheet of cellophane, gently rolling this way and that.

  Nicholas said after a time, “What do you see in them?”

  Lara’s nerves went taut. She felt like a child in a schoolroom. “In who?”

  “Humans.”

  She laughed a little, and hoped her relief was not too evident. For some reason she had thought he had brought her down to the beach to say something of importance; now she realized that he was simply looking for idle conversation. She began to relax. “In general, or is there one in particular you have in mind?”

  He slanted a glance toward her. “You are as impudent as ever, I see.”

  Lara shrugged. She barely remembered having two words with him from that long ago summer, but if she had given the impression of impudence, it was not one she regretted. She said, “We’d all be somewhat the worse off without them, you know. Something a prospective pack leader might be well advised to keep in mind.”

  “I find them tiresome.”

  “I find them fascinating.” And, she wanted to add, they adore me. It’s good to be adored. But she didn’t say it. She wasn’t that impudent.

  He said, “I have a diamond mine in South Africa that appears to have paid out. A human has offered me twice its actual value. Should I sell?”

  Lara was interested. She loved word puzzles. “Has it really paid out?”

  “No.”

  “Then absolutely you should sell. Take the money, invest it for the pack, and in a generation or less, when human technology has been unable to detect what you already know is there, you’ll buy it back at half what you were paid, reopen it and make your fortune. Meanwhile, the human company will have paid the taxes, fought the wars to keep it safe, and done all of those other boring but necessary things that crop up when matters of great value are involved. Really, Nicholas, I may adore them, but I’m not an idiot.”

  He laughed. It was an oddly thrilling sound to her ears. “So I see.”

  She felt oddly out of her body, walking along the beach with him, chatting as though they were old friends, and yet rarely had she been so fully in it. The wind played with her hair and tossed the folds of her little silk dress this way and that and brought with it the taste of sea and salt. She was richly, acutely aware of the cold wet sand between her toes and the flow of Nicholas’s hair around his shoulders. Every now and again she would become aware of his scent, so sharp and powerful and completely out of place in her comfortable human world. It was intoxicating.

  And puzzling.

  He said, “Of course, there is a flaw in your reasoning. Human society is infuriatingly unpredictable. In a generation’s time they may have blown up the mine, been invaded by a foreign power, or sold it to the highest bidder a dozen times over. They might have closed up the entrance and built a city over it, or filled it with poison gas, or used it as a nuclear test facility. Or they might, of course, have accidentally stumbled upon its hidden resources. And then where would I be?”

  “Regretting you’d ever taken the advice of a human-lover you picked up at a Malibu party, I suspect.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Which is why you are pack leader and I am not.”

  He stopped unexpectedly and scooped his fingers through the wet sand, bringing up a handful of sea snails, still alive in their shells. His sense of smell was really quite extraordinary. He closed his fist on the bounty, cracking the shells, and popped the tender meat of one in his mouth. Then he surprised her by scooping out another and offering it to her on the tip of his finger.

  There is quite a bit of ritual and protocol within the pack that surrounds the giving and taking of food, particularly between those of vastly differing status. It might have seemed like a casual gesture; it was far from it.

  Lara took the little bit of cold meat on her tongue. It tasted like salt and sex, and the particles of sand from Nicholas’s finger. He watched as she swallowed, his face planed by moonlight, his eyes shadowed. He cracked another shell, ate the contents, and discarded the remnants. They started walking again.

  “I don’t visit the ocean often,” he said. “I’m put in mind of that summer we spent in the Greek isles, with your family. It was the last time I saw you, I think.”

  They had strayed close to the tide line, and a froth of cool water covered Lara’s toes, splashing Nicholas’s white jeans. She said, without looking at him, “You did me a kindness then. I never thanked you.”

  And he replied simply, “I never expected it.” He added, “I confess I’m curious though. Who was it who did that to you? No one ever spoke about what happened. My father would have seen them punished.”

  There was a particularly savage custom regarding First Hunt called “hobbling,” in which the youngest, weakest and slowest members were cut off from the rest of the pack and bound, forelimb and rear limb, to the prey, and left to fight or run until they either escaped the bonds or killed the herd beast. It was the finest kind of torment, to be bound to the screaming, panicked animal, dashed against boulders, flung to the ground, battered senseless, all the while tasting blood and breathing hot terror, unable to escape, unable even to gain purchase with teeth or claws, until finally the poor beast died of fright or the victim managed, somehow, to rip out its guts and chew her way free.

  Of course the practice was considered barbaric and had been outlawed for centuries, but no one would pretend that it didn’t still go on. Those who were smart enough and fast enough would never know the terror and humiliation of First Hunt hobbling. Those who were not could only hope no one ever found out.

  Lara had really never had a chance. She was a natural target for the crueler young loup garoux, and she lacked the confidence to even try to escape them. She had never truly believed Emory could protect her, and as soon as the hunt started it became more important to her that he should not witness her humiliation than that she avoid it, so she tried to hide in the confusion. She was captured immediately, of course.

  Nicholas had found Lara, so badly battered that she was barely conscious, and freed her from the corpse of the beast. She lost consciousness with the effort of transforming to human. She had always quietly admired the honor in him that caused him to say nothing about the manner in which he had found her, but then their own peculiar brand of honor was the hallmark
of the Devoncroix. To have brought the matter to light would have humiliated her parents and his hosts, and brought further discord between the families. And there was no point in ruining everyone’s holiday.

  She said with a shrug, “What difference did it make? Besides, all I wanted to do was forget.”

  She never did, of course. She still had nightmares.

  Another wave sloshed closer, soaking his jeans up to the ankle. “Was it from your family or mine?”

  Lara laughed a little, uncomfortably, and slanted a glance up at him. “Yours, of course. And it was two of them—your nephews, Anson and Nieles. I think they only meant it as a game,” she felt compelled to add. “They didn’t intend any disrespect to your father.”

  “Ah, I should have guessed.” His tone was mild. “They were incorrigible little brutes, even then.”

  She couldn’t help remarking, “A characteristic for which the Devoncroix are somewhat renowned. No disrespect, of course.”

  There was a spark in his eyes, and a small, speculative smile played with his lips as he glanced at her. “Of course.”

  She said, feeling bold, “Why are you here?”

  He walked with his hands clasped lightly behind his back, his head tilted upward toward the stars so that his hair was combed back from his face, his strong neck exposed. He had the air of someone who knew his own appeal, and wore it easily. He said, “We’re launching a new satellite next week. Some of the technology is being developed in California, and it’s behind schedule.”

  “I see.”

  “And also, to attend this party.”

  “I should imagine you could attend any party you cared to.”

  “Yes, but you are never at any of them. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  Lara was a little taken aback. “Probably because I’ve never been invited.”