Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [57]
“Dammit, Luna. You should have let me bring you into the pack when I had the chance. All of this—the elders, my mating with Irina—this all could have been you.” He sighed and dropped his elbows on his knees, supporting his chin. “I think about you all the time. I smell you. You’re in me just like the daemon.”
I touched his bare shoulder with the very tips of my fingers, a gesture I’d used when we were together to gauge his mood. He let out a small shuddering breath.
“I need your help,” I said again. “I’m asking you. Please.” Please say yes. Please prove to me that this is all a terrible misunderstanding.
“How can I not?” Dmitri sighed. “You’re going to do it anyway. I know you.”
Not exactly what I’d hoped for, but I’d take it. “Thank you,” I said, all the tension trickling from me. “Really. Thank you.” I didn’t realize just how much I’d been dreading confronting Benny Joubert alone. From hard experience, I know I can’t stand up against an adult male were unless I’m phased, and it would be one hell of a trick for that to happen on this particular day.
Dmitri stood and opened the door to the bedroom. Irina jumped back, looking embarrassed. “I am coming with you.”
“No,” said Dmitri automatically. “You stay here with Sergei and Yelena, where it’s safe.”
I searched his voice for any hint of love and the concern a were would hold for his mate, but there was just cold practicality. My inner vindictive bitch did a little dance.
“Dmitri…” Irina started and flowed into a rapid-fire scolding in Ukrainian. I could tell it was a scolding because she was shaking her finger. Dmitri growled and brushed her off, putting on a T-shirt advertising Jack Daniels and a leather jacket. He snapped something else at Irina and after a few seconds of pouting she brought him his boots and slipped them on his feet.
“Gods, you get any more mail-order bride and I’m going to puke up hearts and flowers,” I said. Irina and Dmitri both glared at me.
“Be quiet, Insoli,” said Irina. “You got what you wanted, now there will be silence.”
“There will be one hell of a smack in the mouth for you, you keep that up,” I said, mimicking her throaty accent. “Let’s get this over with. The sooner I don’t have to look at your cheap highlights, the better off we’ll be.”
Irina opened her mouth to reply but Dmitri stood and held up his hands. “Enough, from both of you. Irina, stop baiting Luna. Luna, stop making it so easy.”
Irina shut her mouth, plump red lips pressed so tightly they almost disappeared. Guess there were a few advantages to no longer being Dmitri’s mate. Dominates are ugly things when they’re used to control someone lower in the pack than you.
“Fine,” Irina finally sniffed, her eyes bright with fury. “I can only hope you get your throat torn out by this man we are going to see.”
I rolled my eyes as she left the room. Dmitri gripped my arm. “Who is this Joubert guy? What’s his pack?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I just know that he’s hairy and not very pretty.” Your pack and pack magick determines pecking order in the greater scope of weres. Redbacks were near the top, from what I could tell. I should have been a Serpent Eye, the pack with no pack magick, but in a way being Insoli was better than being a Serpent Eye. They scared the hell out of most other weres, for good reason.
“Hope Joubert’s not a biter,” Dmitri muttered as we left the apartment.
“You and me both,” I said.
CHAPTER 18
The dispatcher gave me Benny Joubert’s address of record, a three-story stately home in Needle Park. Needle Park was actually the Bowers, once upon a time, a small bedroom community in the lull between Cedar Hill and the city outskirts that had been built by the sailors who came through Nocturne in the nineteenth century. Since then, fewer families and more drugs had moved in, and now Needle Park was as sad and dangerous, in its own way, as Waterfront or Ghosttown.
I parked at the curb, tucking the Fairlane between overflowing trash cans and what I assumed