Prickly Business (10 page)

Avery jerked back like he’d been slapped. “A class?”

He sounded scandalized, and it was all Dylan could do to keep from laughing at the outrage coloring his face. He almost expected Avery to clutch at nonexistent pearls next.

“A.
Class
?” he screeched. “You expect me to find my
drishti
in a room full of people? Is that even possible? And then what? Bikram?” Avery’s eyes rounded further, and his head shook from side to side. “I can’t. Not hot yoga. I’ll melt. Literally. I’ll never survive without Sven.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What is this guy to you?”

“I already told you.”

“Seems to me there’s more to it. You fucking him?” Dylan didn’t bother keeping the snarl from seeping into his tone.

“What?” Avery gasped. “No! Besides, I’m not his type. His boyfriend is a bear. Literally. As in grizzly. He’s dating that bear shifter, Warren Harting.”

“The guy who owns the shipping company?”

“One and the same,” Avery supplied.

Dylan’s eyes narrowed at Avery. “But what aren’t you telling me?”

Avery muttered something too soft for Dylan to hear, which was saying something, considering his wolf’s exceptional hearing.

“What was that?” Dylan pushed.

Avery turned his glare on Dylan. “He introduced me to Victor.”

“You see”—Dylan pointed a finger at Avery—“that right there is why you need to worry about yourself and not all this other shit.” He reached out and covered Avery’s mouth when it looked like he’d dig himself in for an argument. “Shut up and listen. You see where all of this”—Dylan flashed the envelope—“has gotten you. Get over yourself and move on. It’s time to take care of your own shit. The alpha is always looking for people willing and able to help the pack, but you have to go to him and ask for help. He’s not going to come to you.”

When Dylan backed away, Avery looked… unsure, for the first time.

“Come on,” he sighed and nudged Avery back toward his bike. “Let’s go see a man about some payback.”

“I can pay part of it,” Avery grumbled as Dylan turned to hook the helmet over his head.

“I said no. Why are we still having this discussion? You’re going to need the money you have saved. Especially now.”

“But—”

“No.” Dylan cut him off and got on the Harley. Then he kick-started it to life, the roar of the engine drowning out any further discussion.

“W
ELL
,
WELL
,
well, if it isn’t my favorite little
erinaceid
.” Victor’s squirrely voice already worked Dylan’s nerves, and they’d just walked in.

Dylan rolled his eyes at Victor’s butchered pronunciation of the scientific family name for the hedgehog. Obviously, someone knew how to use Wikipedia.

Dim lighting did nothing to soften Victor’s sharp features. If anything, they were further pronounced, shadowed purposefully by his choice in seating, like some wannabe gangster. Dylan rolled his eyes.

Victor sat in the corner booth. His porcelain skin all but glowed in the dark. Long, greasy hair gathered at his nape, à la Travolta in
Pulp Fiction
. The black-and-white pinstriped suit he wore covered a powder pink shirt decorated with a skinny electric purple tie. It hurt Dylan’s retinas to look at him too long.

“Hey, Victor. I—” Avery glanced at Dylan then back at Victor. “Uh, we wanted to bring you your money and say….”

When Avery hesitated, Dylan tossed the envelope in front of Victor, where he sat surrounded by four other guys Dylan sort of recognized but didn’t know by name. Who did Victor think he was—the Godfather?

Victor glanced down at the cash and back up at Dylan, like he had only just noticed him standing with Avery. A sneer split his face. “Good thing the hedgehog has such a…
respectable
wolf watching out for him.”
Respectable
came out as if it were the filthiest thing he could think of.

Dylan ignored the barb and glared down at Victor. “You’ve got your money. Call off your hounds and leave Avery out of your games. I mean it.”

“Or what?” Victor leaned forward and the men around him tensed, ready for action.

It was a rare occasion for Dylan to worry about being the vulnerable wolf in a group. He knew in this room, of the five men before him, he was the strongest. But not in an unbalanced fight—five against one.

Dylan didn’t acknowledge Victor’s question; instead he said, “He’s finished, Vic. Don’t let me find you sniffing around him again.”

“Avery’s a big boy,” Victor purred and fixed his gaze on Avery. “Aren’t you, Avery?”

“I am, Victor.” Avery spoke up to Dylan’s surprise, his tone stronger than it had been since they’d arrived. “I’m done. You—” His voice cracked and he shook his head. “You sent your guys to…. They were going to hurt me, even if they didn’t kill me. I can’t do this. Not anymore.”

“Oh, come on,” Victor chortled. “Josey’s a big puppy. He was only playing. I made him promise not to hurt you, only to”—Victor flapped his hand back and forth—“convince you to pay up. And look. Here you are. Task accomplished.”

“Enough,” Dylan snapped. “It’s over. You have your cash. You’re even. Leave Avery out of your shit.”

Ignoring Dylan, Victor leered at Avery, rose, and rounded the table. He didn’t stop until he invaded Avery’s personal space. It took everything Dylan had not to rip the guy apart for simply being near his mate.

Shorter than Avery by at least three inches, Victor had a good twenty pounds on him. Dylan watched with a curious eye and wondered how Victor ever struck fear into anyone. He looked like an overdrawn bad guy caricature.

Victor knuckled the collar of Avery’s jacket and pulled them closer. “You’re always welcome here, Avery. I’ll even open a credit line for you,” he murmured. “VIP.”

Oh, hell the fuck no.

Without a thought to what he was doing, Dylan grabbed the back of Victor’s neck, then slammed him face-first into the nearest table. The room around them exploded in chaos, but Dylan ignored it and leaned in close to make sure Victor would hear him. “Stay the hell away from my mate, or the next time I will rip you apart. Slowly.”

Dylan didn’t resist when unknown hands gripped his arms and yanked him off Victor. He continued to glare at Victor, even as Victor straightened and dusted himself off, pretending ignorance at Dylan’s words. Though Dylan saw the truth behind the mask the man wore. You didn’t mess with a wolf’s mate. Ever.

Victor righted his jacket and cleared his throat. “This will be your only warning, Green.”

“And this will be yours.” With little effort, Dylan ripped away from the men holding him. “Don’t fuck with me or my mate.”

He ignored Avery’s gasp and turned to leave.

“Come on, Avery. We’re leaving.”

He didn’t have to turn to know Avery was on his heels.

T
WO
WEEKS
later, Avery was still reeling over everything that had happened the afternoon he had gone with Dylan to see Victor. Talk about a day for mixed signals. One moment Dylan pushed him away, and the next he acted all protective and growly, proclaiming Avery his mate in front of Victor and sundry. It left Avery’s head spinning.

He hadn’t heard from Dylan since, which was as much a disappointment as a relief. He shouldn’t
want
to hear from Dylan. They weren’t officially mated, and the money changed nothing. Dylan had made that clear. He thought Avery was a snotty brat—and maybe Avery was, in some ways. Okay, so “maybe” was probably a stretch. Still, Dylan’s insistence on helping him and his possessive behavior during the confrontation with Victor had contradicted his words and actions from earlier that day.

How much of it was
Dylan
, and how much was the mating instinct? All shifters possessed the instinct to some extent, though, in general, hedgehogs didn’t give much credence to the idea of fated mates. Even when couples raised children together, they rarely shared a space—Avery’s parents lived in separate wings of their plantation-style mansion, and neither of them had a claiming mark. Avery’s older brother seemed inclined toward permanent bachelorhood. He wasn’t sure what his sister and her husband did.

Avery was one of the few hedgehogs he knew who had grown up wanting to find his mate. He’d simply thought when they met they’d be more… compatible. Or at least in the same social class. He’d said as much to Dylan the night they met at Jaden’s twenty-first birthday party—a moment that mortified him to remember. He’d sneered at Dylan’s blue-collar job and upbringing. Sure, it had been mostly in response to Dylan teasing him about being a hedgehog. But, in the end, it seemed maybe Avery was the classless one. Or perhaps the tactless one.

It hadn’t really been about Dylan being a wolf either. Not entirely. Interspecies matings were rare, but they’d been known to happen. Some, like wolves and coyotes, were more commonplace than others. But while their animal natures might cause them to clash on occasion—personality conflicts between predatory and prey species had to be expected—it wasn’t as if those problems couldn’t be worked through if they were both invested in the relationship. And therein lay the issue.

Was there any point in hoping? Avery kept telling himself he didn’t want Dylan, but he felt the yearning for his mate down to his
soul
. The instinct told him Dylan was his perfect complement, the sweet to his sour, the smooth to his sharp.

It went against his nature to do as he was told. Why should he want this person because destiny had dictated it should be so? Yet how could he not? He’d never heard about even one instance of a mated pair breaking up. Didn’t that mean he should fight to regain his mate’s good opinion?

But then, they weren’t mated yet. Despite the pull between them, either one of them could still walk away. Only once their bond had been consummated, once Dylan had claimed him—wolves marked their mates with a bite, given by the stronger shifter—would they be officially mated in the eyes of the pack.

What chance did they have of getting to that point? Avery had hurt Dylan back then and made an awful first impression. If he could go back, he would behave differently. If he could go back, he would—No. There was no going back. His only hope of gaining his mate would be to change Dylan’s opinion of him now, in the present. And Avery would bet the mess he’d created with Victor did little to help his cause.

The sound of his phone ringing dragged him out of his thoughts. Thankfully. He’d been riding the fast track toward maudlin, and that was somewhere he most definitely didn’t need to go.

Avery sat up from his slumped position on the couch. Jaden’s name flashed across his iPhone screen, as it had many times the last few weeks. Avery hesitated a second before accepting the call. “Hello.”

“Hey, stranger. It’s about time you answered one of my calls. What’s been going on, man?”

Jaden’s hurt tone sent a slice of shame through Avery. He’d been neglecting his best friend for nearly a month. Jaden deserved better.

Throat tight, Avery toed the area rug beneath his coffee table. “Sorry, Jay. It’s been… it’s been crazy.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been worried, you know? Wouldn’t you be if I went off the grid for a few weeks?”

Jaden’s understanding only made Avery feel worse. “Yeah.” He swallowed thickly. He owed Jaden more than a vague excuse and a quick apology. Jaden merited an actual explanation, no matter how much the situation embarrassed Avery.

After the Victor ordeal, he’d spent the last couple of weeks job hunting. Over two dozen resumes had resulted in only one interview. An interview that hadn’t ended in a job offer due to his “lack of experience.” What a waste of time. And, of course, none of the jobs had related to his journalism degree in any way. He’d been scouring the Internet for postings from online newspapers, blogs, magazines—anything connected to the field he’d studied. Not one hit anywhere.

It was enough to depress the most cheerful of individuals, and Avery didn’t fit into that category on even his best days.

“What’s going on, Av?”

Avery raked a hand through his hair and dragged himself off the couch. “I’ve got a lot to tell you. Want to meet up for lunch somewhere?”

“Sisters?” Jaden asked.

“Sure. See you there in half an hour?”

“Yep.” Avery disconnected the call and got dressed, taking special care with his appearance. Just because he felt miserable didn’t mean he had to look it. He had a reputation to uphold. It didn’t matter that they weren’t going anywhere fancier than a coffee shop.

He paired his tightest, olive-green skinny jeans with copper-colored Iron Ranger cap-toed boots, a white, short-sleeved button-up shirt, and one of his favorite thrift-store finds: a dark-washed Dior Homme denim jacket. It amazed Avery sometimes what some people donated. Not that he couldn’t have afforded a brand-new one—at least when he had been getting his allowance—but it made him feel a bit more environmentally conscious to buy secondhand sometimes. Probably a good thing, now that he thought about it. For the immediate future, he’d likely have to restrict his clothes-shopping to what he could scrounge up at his favorite second-hand shops. Or maybe give it up entirely. It wasn’t as if his closets weren’t already stuffed full.

With his hair combed and his dark Wayfarer sunglasses in place, he headed out to meet Jaden. Sisters Coffee Company wasn’t far, so he walked, enjoying the breeze and the rarity of unclouded skies and bright sunshine. Soon October would hit, and with it, cooler temperatures. For now, most days were in the sixties, which Avery could cope with, though he kept his loft a little above seventy year round. His hedgehog nature meant he hated extremes of any kind. Too hot and he wanted to splat out under an air conditioner. Too cold and he ran the risk of his body going into hibernation—even in his human form, which could potentially be disastrous. If it went unnoticed, he ran the risk of sleeping until he starved to death. Not exactly the way he wanted to go.