Logan
I stalk down the hallway at a near sprint, cutting around the corner that leads to a narrow stairwell to the bottom of the boat where the crew quarters are located. Down another narrow hallway, the engine room fades into view, but I’m not looking for the chief engineer.
I cut into a room, slamming my entire weight against the door, which pops open, revealing the man I’d just found in Brie’s suite.
He jumps, startled, and presses his back against the wall of what looks to be a bunk room.
I slowly shut the door behind me, turning the lock. “Your name?”
“Now, why the fuck would I tell you that?” he growls.
I eye the toolkit on one of the bunks. The other three beds are unmade. The room is a mess, actually.
I slowly draw my gaze back to his. “Name.” I crack my knuckles for emphasis.
“Trent.”
“What pack do you belong to?”
“You think I’d be scrubbing the fuckin’ floors on some rich bitch’s yacht if I had an Alpha?” he sneers, snickering.
His tone betrays the way he’s trembling, however, as I take a single step in his direction. “Give me the master key, you fucking rat.”
Trent purses his lips, his eyes flicking from side to side like he’s debating trying to move around me for the door, but there’s no way in hell he’s getting out of this room. I have him cornered between the bunk beds hugging each wall. I lift my arms, resting them on the top bunks, and smirk down at him.
“You know what I noticed?” I drawl, clicking my tongue. “It’s small enough to be, I don’t know, insignificant to the naked eye… but those scratch marks on the lock on her door weren’t there last night, or this morning, were they?”
Trent pales, but his expression remains stoney and cold.
“I’m willing to bet you don't have a key, do you?”
“I was just following orders from the captain.”
“And what would he say if I asked if you’d been directed to check the window seams in the princess’s room?”
“That I was doing my job–”
“Did your job include rifling through her things? Taking a little journey through her jewelry box? The drawer she keeps her… lacy little panties in?” I’m seeing red, and Trent knows it. “Do I need to go on?”
He bares his teeth. “Who the fuck are you, then? Parading around this boat half naked with the princess? Are you her little paramore, wolf?”
“I could be. It won’t matter to you, in the end, if I ever catch you within twenty feet of her, or her room, again.”
He smiles wickedly. I memorize his scent–like stale cigarette smoke and mildew, a rancid combination.
But something in those beady little eyes strikes a sense of familiarity. I tilt my head, smiling down at him with a bitter laugh. “Does the Spider know you’re here?”
Trent’s smile fades into a grimace. He stutters for a moment before saying, “I’ve no idea who you’re talking about.”
I lick my lips. They never do, do they? “Sure.” I relax, briefly letting my arms fall to my side, but Trent risks a step toward the door, and I act.
I grab him by the back of the neck and slam his head into the left bunk. He gurgles a scream as I press the side of his face against the cold, hard metal and lean down so I’m speaking directly against the shell of his ear. “If anything happens to her,” I growl, “I won’t even bother killing you right away. I’ll make it slow, Trent. I’ll have you weeping for your mother while I flay the meat from your bones. Maybe I’ll track her down and make her watch.”
He grunts, trying to get out of my hold, but I press down even harder until the scent of blood fills the room.
“If you think you can escape me, I promise you, I’ll spend the rest of my days hunting you down. You’ll only be rid of me when I finally decide it’s your time to go to the Goddess, if She’ll even have you.” I give him one more violent shove for good measure. “Stay away from the princess.”
“You fucking bastard,” he snarls, his teeth stained with blood from biting down on his tongue.
I let him go. He crumples to the ground in a heap, groaning and hissing curses as he cradles the busted side of his face, blood dripping from his swollen lower lip.
I back out of the room and scan the hallway, wondering where the other deckhands are, but I don’t have time to track each of them down to interrogate them. I already know something’s up, and with the storm approaching, I’m not taking any fucking chances.
I hike through the boat until I reach the cockpit. Both the captain and second officer are bent over the controls.
Louis and Charlie look up as I stalk into the room, but whatever I was about to say is stolen from my tongue as my gaze lands on the swirling black mass of clouds ten miles ahead of us, casting long shadows over the pristine water.
I spent the entire morning and afternoon on the upper deck with Brie. I’d seen a few clouds, but this…
My chest tightens as I grip the doorframe. Charlie gives me a knowing look before slowly looking back at his dashboard.
“It’s nothing to fret over,” Louis tells us both, noticing the tension in the room. “It’s slowing down. The seas aren’t as rough up ahead from what we’ve been told, not as bad as last night.”
“How long until it reaches us?” I ask.
“We’re headed that direction, but we’ve slowed down significantly. We won’t hit any weather until midnight, at least. If the storm picks up again, it’s going to miss us and move west, I believe.”
Charlie stares at Louis before turning back to his controls. The guy looks nervous, and I don’t blame him.
I came here for a different reason, though.
“The princess will remain in her room until we’ve safely passed the storm,” I tell them. “I don’t want any members of the crew near her suite.”
Louis swivels in his chair at my tone.
I debate my next move. I have a hunch Trent might be here for nefarious reasons… or it could simply be the fact a man had gone through Brie’s things, her intimate things, while I was nearby. My body should be aware that we’re no longer mates, but for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling of possessiveness. She’s not mine, but she’s in my care, and she was violated on my watch.
It will not happen again.
I eye the captain and his second officer for several seconds before saying, “One of your deckhands, Trent, is going to need stitches.”
“Why?” the captain asks, his brows raised.
“Ask him, if you want. I doubt he’ll tell you more than he told me.” I turn out of the room, watching the waves crash against the boat before dropping back down to the main suite level of the yacht. I can feel the change in the waves. The boat rocks more than it has before, creaking painfully as it shifts from side to side. The air feels different, too–thick with electricity, like striking a match would set fire to the sky still painted in shades of deep blue as day slowly fades to night.
I stop in my room to grab my duffle bag, then I knock on Brie’s door, leaning my forehead against it. I hear her moving within the suite, quick but nervous on her feet.
“It’s me,” I rasp, fighting a wave of exhaustion as the waves rattle the boat.
She opens the door immediately, just a crack, then opens it wide enough for me to step inside. I catch the door and shut it tight, switching the lock in place.
Brie looks up at me as I lean my back against the door. Her eyes are wide and full of concern as she takes me in. “What happened?”
I shake my head. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
She crosses her arms under her breasts. She’s changed out of that bikini I’d been admiring all day and into a cream-colored nightgown with thin straps. The hem brushes her ankles as she takes another step away from me, scanning my body. Her eyes lock on my hands, on the dark bruise forming over my knuckles on my right hand.
She sighs, looking up at me with those doe eyes. “Do I want to know?”
“No.”
“What is the captain doing about it?”
“That’s none of my business,” I tell her, scanning the hidden emotions flaring behind her eyes. Fear. Concern. The sudden realization I was right about the chance she could be in danger, even here, on her parent’s yacht. She hides those emotions well behind her mask of indifference, coming off as totally unaffected.
I almost wish the mate bond was still intact so I could physically feel what she’s feeling right now.
“I can make that feel better,” she says, blinking up at me.
“It’s not bothering me.”
“It looks terrible.”
“The other guy looks worse.”
Her mouth ticks into a smile she’s desperately trying to tamp back down but jumps when a wave crashes against the windows.
I look over the top of her head, which is easy enough since she’s at chest level, through the windows at sunset blocked by incoming swirling, angry clouds.
She follows my gaze, turning slowly toward the view of the storm.
The last strips of sunset filter through the windows, casting her a halo of light. The outline of her body is totally visible beneath as she walks toward the window until she presses her fingertips against the glass.
“We’ll be in Maatua in four days,” she says softly, cautiously. “What are you going to do next?”
“I’m on leave for a few months.”
She turns her head to look over her shoulder. “Are you going to leave, then? To Emberfyll?”
I want to say yes. I want to tell her I have the boat lined up, that the bonus I’ll receive for her safe arrival in Maatua secured it. I want to tell her I have bank accounts set up to automatically funnel money to the Silverhide pack despite the fact Ryan and Aviva don’t need it… but I owe them something, at least.
“I’m not sure,” I say, moving slightly in her direction.
She turns back to the window as the last rays of sun dip below the stormy horizon. The suite settles into darkness broken only by the soft light of the lamps on her nightstands.
We watch the storm funnel toward the boat, the black, angry sky erupting in strips of violet blue every time lightning flares in the distance.
I’m not sure how long we stand there in silence, but it’s long enough for me to become acutely aware of the situation at hand. We’re trapped on this boat with a man I’m not sure is actually here to scrub floors and perform basic maintenance. All of my training has my senses honed to the idea that he’s here for Brie. I’d bet my life on it, in fact. I’m the only person standing in his way, and that should be enough.
But this storm is another animal entirely.
Over the rush of the waves I can barely hear the sounds of the crew preparing for the storm above us on the upper decks. Footfalls sound in the hallway sometime later as they return below deck to hunker down for the night.
Brie ends up in bed on her side facing the window, barely blinking as rain starts to pummel the boat. I sit in an armchair nearby, unsure what to say to her to make her feel better about the situation, but honestly, she doesn’t seem scared at all.
“You like storms, don’t you?”
In the faint light, I catch her fleeting smile. “I do. I find them calming.”
I take a breath, relieved she’s not the whimpering type, but then wonder what she is, in fact, afraid of.
But then I feel an overwhelming sense of unease rip through me, igniting my wolf powers like someone struck a match against my skin. The prickle of transformation makes me turn toward the door and rise.
“Brie?”
“Yeah?”
The ship abruptly powers down. Brie sits up, alarmed.
“Is that normal? It seemed like the storm was passing right by us–”
A screech echoes from below. I crouch, pulling a pair of black gloves from my duffle bag.
“Logan, what–”
“Do you trust me?” I ask, turning for her as she slides out of bed. She opens her mouth but her response is stolen by an alarm that tears through the air, blaring violently. “Do you trust me?” I repeat over the alarm, reaching for her.
“Uh huh,” she murmurs, her eyes wide and finally showing me a glimpse of the fearful girl beneath that shell of impenetrable emotional armor.
Another scream rips through the air before cutting off abruptly.
I don’t trust the silence that follows.
Something crashes against her door, splintering the wood. Brie’s scream is the last thing I hear before shifting, the gloves transforming into my Ghost issued armour.