Mated to the Moon (Portal City Protectors Book 6), Georgette Clair [best classic books to read .TXT] 📗

“Have you found the artifact?”

Darvin sighed. “Not yet. The trail leads here, but nothing new just yet. I’m going to be in the underground tonight to see what I can call up.”

Adonis frowned. “Be careful with that.”

“I know, I know. I’m recovering, but it’s the only way to get the truth. I’ll sip lightly.”

Recovering is how many succubae and incubi referred to themselves when they no longer fed on human life essence in their sleep until they died. Instead, they worked in bars or clubs that specialized in the fantasy worlds they could produce. Clients went home happy and the demons were fed. Win-win. They were regularly monitored, however, to make sure they wouldn’t slip.

Doing the work outside of those designated clubs was risky.

“You come home if you need to recharge, do you understand me?”

“Sure thing, Boss. As much as I love to see naked flesh, yours is not on the menu.”

Adonis laughed. “That’s why I’m safe. So if you need to, come home.”

Darvin swallowed. “Yeah. I promise.”

Adonis disconnected the call before reaching into his closet for another pair of slacks and shirt to put on.

“You have an incubus in your employ?”

“I have a lot of paranorms at my command.”

“And the artifact?”

“Something I’m not willing to share until I’m sure. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

Fabiana cocked her head to the side. “It could help with the war.”

“Maybe,” he commented before putting on briefs and the rest of his clothes. “Let’s go.”

He waited for her to take his hand before he pulled her from the room. She was almost sad that she hadn’t looked further than the black-and-red bedspread and black walls. Oddly, it didn’t feel dark and dangerous, but instead like a decadent slice of warmth hidden in the back of the house.

When they exited the room, she realized they were at the end of a long hall, where doors on either side opened and closed as wolves paired off, some behind Adonis and Fabiana, and others to the front. They moved as one toward the tall wolf who’d driven the car.

He was light to Adonis’s dark, cold to his warmth.

He wore all white, from his shirt to his slacks and shoes, his sable hair the only darkness around him. Even his eyes, a dove gray, almost looked unreal. She would have thought he wasn’t a wolf if she hadn’t seen him in action before.

“Raphael, meet my mate Fabiana. Fabiana, this is my beta, Raphael. If you ever need anything and I’m not around, he can get it for you.”

“Hello,” she whispered under his hard gaze.

“Why can’t I smell you? Scent is important to lock in for protection,” Raphael clipped.

“It’s a mystery I’ve been trying to figure out. I know she has a scent, I’ve smelled it, but it goes in and out.”

It shouldn’t be coming at all, but maybe that had something to do with their mate bond. Fabiana would have to study that further. For now, she needed to break this line of questioning.

“This little waif is the Alpha mate?”

Fabiana stiffened at the whispered comment, but Adonis was fluid, his revenge exacting. She almost groaned in frustration when he spun and punched the offending wolf in the mouth.

“Watch your mouth,” he warned before looking own at his hand. “Dammit, I just got cleaned up.”

“Maybe you should stop hitting things,” Fabiana quipped.

“Things should stop being offensive to my mate.”

“It’s not something I haven’t heard before, Adonis.”

“And it will be last time you hear it now.”

The glared at each other before she released a frustrated scream and stomped off.

Stupid, arrogant, violent men.

“You’re right. She’s a lioness in disguise,” Raphael stated loudly behind her.

“Told you.”

She gave them both the one-finger salute.

It wasn’t until Fabiana was down the stairs in the middle of a sort of living room that she realized what she’d done.

And Adonis hadn’t even attempted to punish her for it.

Chapter Seven

It was the same. For weeks.

Someone said something he didn’t like in regard to Fabiana.

Punch.

It took two days for his men to stop cracking what they thought were jokes about Fabiana.

A week for women to run scared when they saw her coming.

And a third week where she ran to their lab—because the Moonstone lab apparently was the site of scientific exploration matched with magic—in order to hide away and be alone.

Adonis was a fiend, one who ensured everyone was too afraid to breathe in her direction. Quite frankly, Fabiana had reached her limit. She’d always wanted to be a true member of a pack, a wanted wolf who laughed with those she could and joked with others.

And yes, maybe she could see things differently in how Adonis moved with his people than Primo. Okay, so he was a little punchy. But his men respected him, and most who were on the receiving end of one of his hits got up an hour or so later with a direct apology to her and Adonis before they good-naturedly clapped him on the shoulder and told him he was getting soft.

He was getting soft because they woke up in an hour instead of two.

It was like the wolves here had lived in violence all their lives and answered to it. They recognized Adonis was stronger than them all, and he cared for them with a single-minded focus she could appreciate.

They nearly worshipped him, this wolf who took in strays and made them into something.

This man who didn’t look to blood ties to create his closest advisors.

Raphael—or Raph as only Adonis called him—had been with Adonis since they were children and had never left his side. He bled with him as they created the pack they now led together, and Raph