Adam strolled over to the desk and stood, looking down upon the vampire, Honey at his shoulder.
Marsilia gave him a horrified look. Stefan flashed him a quick smile before turning his attention to a painting hanging some distance away. It was not the painting of Marsilia. From his position, Adam couldn’t see the subject other than there was a lot of blue, maybe a seascape. Elizaveta found an oil painting done in the classical style, the rape of Leda, Adam thought, because there was a muscled and naked woman grappling with a human-sized swan. The two goblins and Smith were on the far side of the room speaking softly—very softly if Adam couldn’t hear it. If he couldn’t, then neither could Bonarata.
Bonarata figured out what had happened pretty quickly, Adam thought. His intimidation tactic had been turned on its head. The minute Bonarata looked up, Adam had the upper hand.
Adam was fighting down amusement when the door next to the desk opened—and his wolf recoiled with horror and pity and revulsion as a dark-haired woman came in.
She could have been beautiful or ugly or anything in between, and Adam would not have noticed. Every hair on his body, every sense belonging to the werewolf and Alpha and pack understood that the werewolf who came into the room was wrong.
“Jacob,” she said in a perfectly unremarkable tone as she set a large envelope on the desk in front of Bonarata. “Annabelle gave me this for you. She says that the architect has redrawn the section in the house in Seattle.” She turned to look at Adam and stared blankly at him.
Her wolf was dead. And not dead. And so was the woman. Or not. Whatever she was confused his wolf and sent him into a frenzy of horror.
“Good,” Bonarata said. “I’ve been waiting for these.”
Adam thought that he was supposed to be nervous that the vampire was building a home in Seattle, but he had no emotion to spare for the vampire; his wolf was too focused on the damaged wolf. She wore a silver collar, though there was no marring of the skin where it rested—so it was not real silver. White gold, maybe. Her neck was covered with scars of bite marks and so was every bit of skin he could see that wasn’t on her face. Her clothing had been chosen to display as much of that scarred skin as possible without being tacky.
Adam wasn’t the only one reeling. On the far side of the room, Smith forgot himself far enough to utter a low growl.
“Lenka,” said Honey, in a low voice that held the same horror that Adam felt.
While Adam had been paying attention to the broken werewolf, Bonarata had come to his feet, effectively putting an end to the dominance issue he’d begun. Adam was very far from caring about whether he or Bonarata had the upper hand.
“Lenka,” said Honey again, taking a step toward the wolf, who looked at her without recognition.
Honey said something in a tongue that had a nodding acquaintance with German, her voice taut and frantic.
The broken wolf said something in reply in the same language, then turned to Bonarata. “I am sorry. You told me to speak only in English. You must punish me.”
She sounded . . . eager, though her scent carried bitter horror.
Bonarata smiled. “It is of no matter. You were accommodating our guest.” And then Bonarata made a mistake. He turned to say something to Honey.
Distracted by Marsilia, Bonarata had not paid much attention to Honey the day before, and he hadn’t paid any attention at all to her while indulging himself trying to get one up on Adam. Honey was worth looking at normally—dressed as she was to attract attention, she could stop traffic.
“You—” said Bonarata, and that’s as far as he got, because as well as traffic, she apparently was pretty good at stopping speech. But mostly because Bonarata was an addict—and Honey fit his craving like a bespoke suit.
Honey, uncharacteristically, didn’t see Bonarata’s reaction. She was only paying attention to Lenka. Adam wasn’t entirely certain Lenka saw it, either, since he was watching Bonarata and Honey, but there wasn’t a werewolf in the room who wouldn’t have smelled Bonarata’s sudden interest. Lust had a very distinctive scent, be it a human, werewolf, or vampire.
“Honey,” Bonarata said slowly, his voice deepening. “Honey Jorgenson, correct?”
Lenka looked at Bonarata. Then she drew a knife from somewhere and struck Honey. Or rather she struck at Honey, who moved and thus caught only a thin slice across the front of her shoulder.
Kill that one, said Adam’s wolf as clearly as he’d ever heard anything. He’d heard other werewolves say that sometimes their wolf spoke to them—and a couple of those he respected too much to discount their word. But in the nearly five decades he’d been a werewolf, he’d never had it happen to him. She is broken. Kill her.
Honey was a fighter, born and bred. Adam had spent the better part of three decades teaching her martial arts, but she’d had a good foundation before that. Lenka had no style, but, like some of the men he’d known in the Rangers, she showed every sign of having killed a lot of people. Honey moved prettier—but Lenka moved faster.
His people started toward them as soon as Lenka pulled her knife. But they stopped when Adam waved them away. “Honey was attacked. She has the right to finish this. Lenka broke the guesting laws.” The rest of them could interfere, but then the expectation would be that they subdue Lenka. If he left it as Honey’s battle, she could take it all the way to the death because Lenka had struck the first blow.
Bonarata moved around his desk. “Let me put a stop to this.”
But Adam stepped in front of him. “No. She attacked Honey unprovoked. This is a legal fight by guesting law.”
Bonarata snarled at him, “She’ll kill your wolf.”
Adam took a step backward and turned at the same time, putting some distance between him and the vampire and allowing him a clear view of the fight. Let Bonarata see for himself how likely Honey was to die in a fight with any werewolf, let alone one who was underweight and broken.
Lenka was changing, her facial bones moving subtly under the scarless skin of her face. She took a kick in the ribs and let her body move with it as her hands snaked down to grab Honey’s leg. But Honey saw it coming and dropped her body into a shoulder roll that brought her back into the outer circle of combat.
Honey was holding back.
Adam told her the words the wolf was whispering in his head. “Kill her, Honey. The woman you knew is not in that body anymore and cannot be brought back.”
Honey didn’t look at him, though he could tell from the stiffness of her shoulders that she had heard him and didn’t like what he’d said. Across the room, Smith met his eyes and nodded agreement. He, too, understood what Adam’s wolf had known instinctively.
Bonarata turned to Adam with a hiss. “She is mine.”
Adam assumed he meant Lenka, but given his addiction, he could have meant either one of them.
“Then you should have kept better control of your wolf,” Adam told the vampire. “If she had not attacked Honey, we would have left her alone.”
Bonarata growled soundlessly, but Adam heard it just the same. The vampire turned to the fighters and said, “Lenka, kill her for me.”
Adam was pretty sure that Lenka was doing her best to do just that. Those words had been aimed at Adam.
After that, everyone was silent, only moving to get out of the way—and Elizaveta was both quick and graceful for a woman of ahem years.
The room was mostly empty of furniture except for the small desk Bonarata had been using. And the desk didn’t last. Lenka ripped off a delicately carved leg and broke it over Honey’s thigh—a hit that was meant for her knee.
It was the table leg that got Honey’s head on straight. Up until that point, despite Adam’s order, she had been fighting defensively, unwilling to seriously hurt the other wolf. Honey tore off a second leg. When it broke off with a sharp point, instead of using it as a club, she used it as a modified lance.