The other was Dragos, who was primitive, Powerful, dom-ineering, calculating, manipulative, infernally clever and tactless, and who she adored with all of her heart. Dragos, who created as many problems as he solved and who loved her too, fiercely, so much so he had mated with her. Their lives had become inextricably entwined, and they had to work for things together now.
Which meant they needed to figure out how to be partners in more places than just the bedroom. (Because Pia was pretty damn sure they had nailed that part the first time they had made love.) Which also meant coming to an agreement about what they worked toward, even if reaching that agreement took months and sometimes felt like pulling giant, dragon-sized teeth.
The Wyr demesne and Dragos himself were facing too many challenges at once to deal with any one of them effectively. Dragos had broken several treaties with the Elves in his pursuit of Pia last May, and those treaties had not been repaired. Border strife continued with the Elven demesne, along with an ongoing trade embargo that had put several New York businesses under and was seriously hurting several more.
Internally, Dragos’s multinational corporation, Cuelebre Enterprises, had been hard-hit along with the rest of the world in an ongoing global recession. Diversification, along with aggressively streamlining and retrenching, had the corporation leaner but running strong, but that had taken harder work and more top-heavy man power at a time when Dragos could ill afford to expend the energy.
Then there was the problem of being critically short staffed. Dragos had lost two of his seven sentinels in quick succession last summer, first his warlord sentinel, Tiago Black Eagle, who had mated with the new Dark Fae Queen, Niniane Lorelle. Then Dragos lost his First sentinel, Rune Ainissesthai, who had mated with the Vampyre sorceress Carling Severan. Dragos and Rune had parted badly, and Dragos still refused to talk about it. He had moved two people into sentinel positions as a temporary stopgap, but now he had to go through the process of setting new sentinels into place.
To top it all off, there was the amorphous Freaky Deaky Something that hung on the horizon, the strange voice that Dragos had heard through an impromptu prophesy given by the Oracle of Louisville, Grace Andreas. The Oracle and her family had since relocated to Miami, where Pia and Dragos had traveled to meet with her in a follow-up consultation. Unfortunately, Grace couldn’t add much to the original vision since, as she said, prophesies did not repeat themselves.
Grace did offer them a piece of advice. “The person or Power behind the voice from the vision is either already in your lives, or it will be,” she told them. “Don’t let that knowledge weaken you. There’s no point in trying to avoid it, because those actions you take might actually cause you to come into contact with it sooner than you would otherwise. Act from your strengths, and live your lives in a state of readiness. You were lucky. You were given a warning. Most people don’t get that.”
As Pia exited the bathroom stall and washed her hands, she thought of all these things, along with the added stressor of having just left her mate. Eva and her antagonism shouldn’t even be on the list of challenges she had to face.
As Wyr canines, the psychos were a well-trained pack. They would have a strongly defined internal order she didn’t yet have a handle on. Each one would be highly opinionated and would make up his or her own mind about Pia, but none of them would go against their alpha, and no doubt several of them would take their cue from how Eva and Pia’s relationship developed. Right now Pia was just an annoying, disliked outsider they had to bodyguard. She had to establish a different working relationship with them now before Eva’s lack of respect became too entrenched.
The other two women had taken advantage of using the facilities too, first Andrea then Eva, while one remained on guard at the door.
Pia dried her hands deliberately then turned. Andrea guarded the door. Pia met the other woman’s gaze. She said, “Get out.”
Andrea’s blonde eyebrows rose. She glanced at the closed bathroom stall, which opened. Eva stalked out, her whole magnificent body flowing like gleaming black oil.
Pia said to Andrea, “Wrong response.”
Eva jerked her chin. “Go on.”
Andrea opened the door and backed out without a word.
Pia went to the door and flipped the lock. The snick sounded overloud in the silent restroom. It wouldn’t keep anybody out who was determined to get in, of course, but it was a strongly symbolic barrier—and the sound would tell any sharp, listening Wyr ears to stay out of what happened next.
She turned, leaned back against the door and met Eva’s sardonic gaze. Pia said, “I thought briefly about just kicking your ass, but we would have to take that outside, and I don’t feel like getting wet and muddy. Besides, you’re not worth it.”