House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) Read Online Free PDF Page A

himself.
    It was unheard of, for a shifter to have that sort of power, yet all the standard childhood tests had confirmed it: once Danika Dropped, she’d become a considerable power among the wolves, the likes of which had not been seen since the elder days across the sea.
    Danika wouldn’t just become the Prime of the Crescent Citywolves. No, she had the potential to be the Alpha of all wolves. On the fucking planet.
    Danika never seemed to give two shits about it. Didn’t plan for her future based on it.
    Twenty-seven was the ideal age to make the Drop, they’d decided together, after years of mercilessly judging the various immortals who marked their lives by centuries and millennia. Right before any permanent lines or wrinkles or gray hairs. They merely said to anyone who inquired, What’s the point of being immortal badasses if we have sagging tits?
    Vain assholes , Fury had hissed when they’d explained it the first time.
    Fury, who had made the Drop at age twenty-one, hadn’t chosen the age for herself. It’d just happened, or had been forced upon her—they didn’t know for sure. Fury’s attendance at CCU had only been a front for a mission; most of her time was spent doing truly fucked-up things for disgusting amounts of money over in Pangera. She made it a point never to give details.
    Assassin , Danika claimed. Even sweet Juniper, the faun who occupied the fourth side of their little friendship-square, admitted the odds were that Fury was a merc. Whether Fury was occasionally employed by the Asteri and their puppet Imperial Senate was up for debate, too. But none of them really cared—not when Fury always had their back when they needed it. And even when they didn’t.
    Bryce’s hand hovered over the golden disk. Danika’s gaze was a cool weight on her.
    “Come on, B, don’t be a wimp.”
    Bryce sighed, and set her hand on the pad. “I wish Danika would get a manicure. Her nails look like shit.”
    Lightning zapped through her, a slight vacuuming around her belly button, and then Danika was laughing, shoving her. “You fucking dick .”
    Bryce slung an arm around Danika’s shoulders. “You deserved it.”
    Danika thanked the security guard, who beamed at the attention, and ignored the tourists still snapping photos. They didn’tspeak until they reached the northern edge of the square—where Danika would head toward the angel-filled skies and towers of the CBD, to the sprawling Comitium complex in its heart, and Bryce toward Luna’s Temple, three blocks up.
    Danika jerked her chin toward the streets behind Bryce. “I’ll see you at home, all right?”
    “Be careful.” Bryce blew out a breath, trying to shake her unease.
    “I know how to look out for myself, B,” Danika said, but love shone in her eyes—gratitude that crushed Bryce’s chest—merely for the fact that someone cared whether she lived or died.
    Sabine was a piece of shit. Had never whispered or hinted who Danika’s father might be—so Danika had grown up with absolutely no one except her grandfather, who was too old and withdrawn to spare Danika from her mother’s cruelty.
    Bryce inclined her head toward the CBD. “Good luck. Don’t piss off too many people.”
    “You know I will,” Danika said with a grin that didn’t meet her eyes.

 
    3
    T he Pack of Devils was already at her apartment by the time Bryce got home from work.
    It had been impossible to miss the roaring laughter that met her before she’d even cleared the second-floor stairwell landing—as well as the canine yips of amusement. Both had continued as she ascended the remaining level of the walk-up apartment building, during which time Bryce grumbled to herself about her plans for a quiet evening on the couch being ruined.
    Chanting a string of curses that would make her mother proud, Bryce unlocked the blue-painted iron door to the apartment, bracing for the onslaught of lupine bossiness, arrogance, and general nosiness in all matters of her life.