Page 23 of Last But Not Leashed
“Just what I wanted to hear before I’ve had coffee.”
“You may have some tea. Coffee might make you sick, and I value my life. You get soup and tea. If you don’t like it, wake Ethel and take it up with her.”
As far as threats went, I considered Allison’s fairly potent. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get a full dose of Ethel fresh from sleep and grumpy enough the rest of the pack worried for their lives. “I think I’ll pass.”
“Wise man.”
“What are your questions?”
“What the hell did you do to get a half of a million dollar live bounty?”
My mouth dropped open, and for a long moment, I stared at her. “What?”
“You’re worth half a million dollars. Ethel’s bounty is for a hundred thousand dollars, and it’s conditional: they only pay out if you’re also captured, and the terms are pretty strict. Ethel isn’t to be scratched. Yours is a live bounty, but if you need to be beaten into submission, that’s okay, as long as you’re not disfigured. Someone really wants you, and we want to know why.”
“You’re serious.”
“I guess you have no idea why someone would pay so much for you, do you?”
“I have no idea. Insanity?”
“So, there’s no scorned lovers in the wings?”
“Why would you come to that conclusion? Absolutely not.”
She grinned at me. “Jerome thinks it’s because of your fur color and access to the hybrid form. You’re an exotic.”
“I don’t exactly advertise either,” I growled. “I’ve been careful.”
“Until your first mauling at the mall, yes. The bounty was placed on Tuesday morning.”
“That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
“We have a suspect list.”
“Is it something a conspiracy theorist would concoct?”
Her grin widened. “Maybe.”
“Not interested.”
“Don’t be a spoilsport.”
“Still not interested.”
Allison huffed. “Fine, be that way. It’s likely one of the employers on one of your contract jobs is behind the bounties. It’s not unheard of for an exotic CDC contractor to be targeted, and anyone with a passing knowledge of lycanthropes would go after Ethel to control you. That your price tag is so high indicates you’re the one the buyer wants. What other tricks do you have?”
“I don’t. I was as vanilla as the son of a lycanthrope gets before infection. I didn’t develop any other abilities after infection.”
“That you know of. Have you checked?” she challenged.
Why did I like Allison too much to actually strangle her? “I’m a lycanthrope. I don’t need any other abilities.”
“But what if you could fart rainbows?”
The rest of the pack choked on their laughter, and I glared at the bastards. If they woke Ethel, I’d practice my non-existent fighting skills on them. I growled a warning. They ignored me.
Bastards.
