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Chapter 1
The body had its throat ripped out. I’d done my fair share of throat-ripping during the last few days, so I recognised a wolf’s handiwork when I saw it. I exchanged a meaningful glance with Greg. This was not good. The last thing I needed with the Werewolf Council on my land was a dead body.
‘You can go,’ I said to Thea and Archie. Greg and I couldn’t talk freely with witnesses present.
Thea was trembling in Archie’s arms. Finding a corpse hadn’t exactly been in their plans for a romantic stroll. The poor girl was wearing a pretty dress; even though she was white-faced and shaking, she still looked beautiful. She’d clearly made an effort for her rendezvous with Archie. Evidently things were heating up between them – though perhaps not so much right at this moment.
Archie was looking a little resigned. I guessed finding a cadaver was a whole new level of cock-blocking. ‘Come on,’ he murmured softly to Thea. ‘Let’s get you a nice cup of chamomile tea.’
Ares snuffled at Thea, blowing warm air into her face. A tremulous smile appeared and she stroked the deadly unicorn's soft nose. ‘I’m okay, Ares,’ she reassured him. He gave her another nuzzle then a distinct push towards the mansion before fixing Archie with a red-eyed glare.
Archie glared back. ‘Of course I’m going to look after her, you overgrown donkey.’
Ares snorted.
Thea and Archie walked away, his arm still around her shivering shoulders. She was in shock; she’d already been through so much with her brother Ace’s death and her other brother Beckett’s manipulation, and I hated that she was being exposed to more violence here where she should feel safe. I waited until they were out of earshot before I spoke again. ‘This is less than ideal.’ I sighed.
‘Not the best,’ Greg agreed.
I looked down at the body and recognised the paling skin. ‘It’s Scott Larsden.’
‘Someone’s cleaning house.’ His tone was grim.
Scott Larsden was the Council member who had video-called us after Ace Frost’s death. He’d questioned us intensively, but in the end he’d grudgingly cleared us of any wrongdoing – incorrectly, of course, since I had indeed killed the bastard. Fortunately, my deadly unicorn Ares had eaten the corpse and there’d been no evidence to suggest we were responsible. Later, we’d found a USB-drive full of blackmail material and the contents had told us that Scott had been a very naughty boy. One of the first acts I’d planned as Queen had been to make an example of him, but some rude prick had beaten me to it.
Ares was snuffling at the corpse optimistically. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘You can’t eat him – we don’t know where he’s been. Plus, there are too many strangers here. We can’t have Larsden disappear, too.’ People would start thinking there were dark goings-on in the Home Counties pack, and we couldn’t have that. Even if it was true.
We only kill our enemies Esme huffed in my mind. If they’d respect us properly, we wouldn’t need to show them our trousers and smiles.
I laughed despite myself. Show them that we’re not all mouth and no trousers, I corrected, snickering aloud.
Greg shot me a knowing look, ‘Esme?’
‘She’s hilarious. Not on purpose, but even so.’
I am often intentionally entertaining, she argued.
Sure she was. In my head, I gave her a pat.
I stared at the body; this was going to be a nightmare. Larsden had been killed before I’d had the chance to lay any crimes at his door and, even more importantly, before I could find out whom his buddies were.
Larsden had been a part of a black tourney, an illegal underground fight club. The participants hadn’t always been willing and they’d often had to battle to their deaths. There had been evidence that details of lone wolves had been passed on to Ghost, the griffin who’d organised and directed the tourneys, and the USB-drive confirmed that it was Scott Larsden who’d passed on those details. A number of deaths could be laid at his door, including that of Elena’s brother, Jackson.
I’d asked Elena to use her journalistic skills to investigate Larsden and now Larsden was dead. It felt too much like a coincidence. I murmured my suspicions aloud. ‘Elena?’
‘It’s possible,’ Greg agreed. ‘She knows there are no cameras out here.’
After the murder of Mark Oates and a subsequent attack on Archie, we’d installed a tonne of cameras inside and around the mansion but there was nothing this far out in the grounds. Someone had known that when they’d killed Larsden here amongst the roses.
I knelt down and lifted up Larsden’s hands to examine them. ‘No defensive wounds,’ I noted.
‘He trusted his killer and they sucker-punched him?’
I considered that. If he was right… ‘That makes it more likely it was a fellow black-tourney organiser who killed him, rather than Elena.’ I stood up. ‘Lord Samuel’s note to me said he suspected council members Aitkin and Ramsay, so I suppose that gives us a starting point.’ I bit my thumb. ‘I could call Voltaire and ask him to share information about what he found on the other USB drives.’
Greg snorted. ‘Peaches, you used your piping skills to control him.’
‘To save him from a black witch!’ I protested.
