He didn’t understand it. Sure, Ferguson was pretty. He enjoyed looking at her, no question, but he met, charmed, and fucked beautiful females all the time. He never wavered, got pulled off task…or wanted to take any of them home.
Halfway down the hall, he murmured a command. Magic flicked out in front of him. The electronic keypad lit up. He punched in the code with his mind, then watched the steel door depicting dragons in full flight swing wide.
Without breaking stride, he crossed the threshold. The scent of cedar and wood smoke curled against his senses. He breathed deep, allowing the cool recesses of the room to envelop him.
Reacting to his presence, twin desk lamps flipped on. Light poured across the steel-framed, glass-topped desk and modern office chair behind it. He loved the space he’d commandeered as his own. Everywhere he looked, old-world charm complemented modern décor. Slick gray couch with matching square backed armchairs—check. Centuries-old coffered ceiling and dark paneled walls—double check. A fireplace surrounded by a plain stone mantel so tall he could stand upright inside it—triple check. The white marble floors with thick black veining covered by a muted area rug in cool tones rounded out the picture, softening the hard edges, making him feel at home.
He murmured. Fire leapt from his skin, streaming across the space to land inside the grate. The smell of scorched sap and evergreen rose as the seven-foot-long log started to burn.
Ignoring the snap, crackle, and pop, he rounded the end of his desk. The Bloomberg terminal woke. Stock prices and the commodity index rolled across the double screens. Blue light poured over his keyboard, reaching out to touch the photo album sitting in front of it. An old school way to store photographs—thick, bound by dark green leather, full of information he wanted to know and should never have read.
“Fuck,” he growled, scowling at the stupid thing.
He never should’ve taken the album from The White Hare. Sometimes curiosity equaled disaster.
Goddamn her.
He wasn’t going to make it another forty-eight hours.
Kruger knew it, had been fighting errant urges since the moment she walked into his sphere. Admitting the weakness sucked, but denying his interest never got a male anywhere. The last few hours had been torture. The need to know more about her made him itch, stoking his imagination, making him want to go back and see her again. To dissect the struggle and figure out what drew him to her.
His reaction to the she-devil defied all experience.
His eyes narrowed on the album. Fucking innkeeper. Annoying wee firebrand.
Ferguson McGilvery had accomplished what no one else ever had—wormed her way under his skin with her bad attitude, stubborn spirit, and pretty green eyes. She’d turned him inside out in less than five minutes, shaking his foundation while filling him with doubt. He’d shouted at her, for fuck’s sake. Slammed his fist against her goddamned desk. Lost his cool completely, his ethics forgive him.
He didn’t hurt females. He preferred charming a lass, not yelling at her…or threatening to kill her.
Kruger yanked the chair away from his desk. Fire burned holes in the leather. His magic repaired it a second before he sat down. Heavy springs whined as he leaned back, inflicting his six-foot-seven, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame on the innocent piece of furniture.
He frowned at the album again. The entire mess was Mavis’s fault. Ferguson’s godmother had screwed him over by muddying the waters. Now, the way forward lay in shambles. There was no clear path for him to follow, which made him question everything—his mission, the drive behind it, and the secret he clung to like a raft of rats fighting to stay afloat as floodwaters rolled in.
Dread settled like a stone in the pit of his stomach.
With Ferguson in the mix, he couldn’t think straight. Bad news, given how high the stakes had become, and what her arrival meant in the long term.
The White Hare constituted a clear and present danger.
He’d believed Mavis to be a real innkeeper. After meeting Ferguson, he now knew the truth. Her godmother had been little more than a placeholder—a weak substitute when compared to Ferguson’s magical bloodline. She was a powerhouse, a high-energy female who possessed the kind of magic that would not only connect to the life essence of the inn, but feed it.
With a full-blooded innkeeper in residence, The White Hare would grow more powerful by the day. More Magickind would be drawn to the Parkland, seeking safe space and sanctuary. The cosmic crossroads would become crowded. Aberdeen would be transformed into a hub, upping the chances he’d be discovered. Which meant, no matter how much Ferguson intrigued him, he couldn’t give in…or leave her to her own devices.
His brothers-in-arms could never know. The second his pack learned the truth about him, he’d lose everything. His home. His family. His future inside the Scottish pack.
All of it hung in the balance. Every day The White Hare remained open, the risk of exposure grew. Sooner or later, one of the supernatural guests who frequented the inn would wander into town—or cross his flight path—and recognize him. Show him the wrong kind of respect. Give him the kind of due he didn’t want. Make his brothers dig deeper into his past and figure out his origin.
Silfer’s son, in their midst. The offspring of the arsehole responsible for Dragonkind’s fall from grace and the centuries of hardship that followed.
Rolling his shoulders to break the tension, Kruger learned forward and flipped the photo album open. A mistake—he should stuff the thing back inside his mental vault and forget about it. Or better yet, return it to the bookshelf he’d taken it from inside her study.
Stealing a piece of Ferguson’s history was stupid. Knowing more about her—seeing her baby pictures—only made things worse. But he’d needed to understand her background, her parental line, along with where she’d been for the better part of thirty years.
His best guess? Somewhere in America. The Midwest, probably. Her accent gave her away. Her baby book did the rest.
Her sire’s name was right there, in the middle of the album, written in bold scrawl on a branch stretching out from her family tree—Icabod McCrae, eleventh innkeeper descended from the House of Antegaul.
Following the outstretched limbs, Kruger ran his fingertip over the tree, zigzagging over the collection of her ancestors. So many names, though Ferguson’s wasn’t there. Neither was her mother’s. His eyes narrowed on the blank spaces above twisted branches. An oversight? Or had she been left unnamed for a reason?
Excellent questions. A mystery he itched to solve.
Could be her mother and sire had had a falling-out. Divorce happened all the time—even among Magickind. Could be something else, though.
Icabod McCrae hadn’t let his family go by choice. The former innkeeper had shielded Ferguson by sending her away.
The last name told him a lot. Ferguson didn’t share one with her sire—a point of pride for most Magickind. Bloodlines, and the traditions that accompanied them, were all-important. A male as powerful as Icabod would never have given Ferguson a different name unless absolutely necessary.
Something stunk in the Parkland. Something dangerous. Maybe even deadly, considering Ferguson’s sire was no longer running The White Hare, and hadn’t for thirty years. Nothing in the album explained why, and Kruger wanted to know the reason. He needed to understand—