A Wolf Apart by Maria Vale

Author:Maria Vale [Vale, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2018-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 18 days

Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 18 days

“You’ve got to pull yourself together, Elijah,” Max hisses, carefully patting the wisps of hair to cover his bald spot. “Jesus. This whole evening, you’ve just been sitting there like you don’t care.”

He shakes his hand, and one furtive strand makes a bid for freedom and falls to the floor of the steel-clad bathroom of the trending midtown branch of Roan.

He’s right. I don’t care. I didn’t want to be here. I brought the plastics industry to HST. I came up with their new branding: Americans for Progressive Packaging. I should not have to be here for this. I don’t care that they like me and admire me. This is like watching sausage being made, and I don’t have the stomach for it.

I don’t want to watch HST’s lobbying arm decide where to place advertising. How to distribute campaign contributions. Which laws to block and how to slip their agenda through local and national legislatures like a virus. Which nonprofits might give APP moral credibility in return for cold, hard cash.

It’s all so that no one will question the extravagantly disposable status quo.

The Pack would be appalled if they knew I’d had anything to do with this.

Shoving the cuff links into my jacket, I hang my jacket over a coat hook and roll up my shirtsleeves.

“Well, Elijah?” he snaps. “Do I have to remind you who these people are?”

“No, I know perfectly well.” I put my hand on the latch to the stall. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to vomit.”

• • •

I’ve lost all hand in my frantic attempts to contact Thea. She’s put me on her call block list.

In the dull light of the taxi, I lift my chin, checking what is left of my injuries. We heal quickly, and the swelling is gone—the bruising too—and as I move my face from side to side, all that’s left of the hole made by Tiberius’s canine is a slight indentation below the inner corner of my eye. The cab stops and I untangle my legs, dropping my feet heavily to the street in front of Testa’s dark-green door.

On second thought, I adjust my tie, loosening it so that I look more like a busy, serious man taking some well-deserved time off, rather than a desperate, lonely wolf, trying to pretend that the only woman who has ever mattered to him doesn’t matter anymore.

“Excuse me?” A woman looks at my hand on the knob. She turns her head up and to the side, as women often do when they’re about to take a selfie. She is perfectly beautiful. Brown hair dyed with reddish-purple stripes curls in layers around an oval face of fine symmetry. She has a tight ass that yields almost indistinguishably into her finely chiseled waist before finally conceding to a slight curve at her pert breasts. “Will you be my escort?” She looks at me from under her lowered lids. Then she bites her lower lip.

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