Page 7 of Protected By Her Mate

As if reading my mind, she says, “Before you decide the tragedy of my dead husband is the reason I became a fire investigator, it’s not. I started down this career path before Ramón was killed.”

I nod, trying to ignore the steady beat of her heart, the flutter of her pulse, the whooshing of her breath, but instinct tells me to monitor her life signs the same as I do my own. I shake my head and try to refocus on the conversation.

Leaning against her desk, I cross my arms over my chest. “What made you decide to become an investigator?”

A mischievous glint enters her eyes. “I’m a fire bug.”

I frown. Fire bugs are arsonists. “You’re a firefighter who sets fires?”

“I used to.” The grin teasing her lips has me gripping her desk hard enough to snap it if it were made of weaker material. “I’ve been obsessed by fire since I was a child. Got in trouble a few times setting fires in the neighbourhood. One of them got out of hand and burnt down a shed and half a fence. I had to work two jobs the summer I turned 14 to pay it all back.”

I shake my head, but smile, her amusement at her own story warming me. “A well-meaning fire investigator took you in hand?” I guess. “Taught you to stop the fires rather than start them?”

“Nope again.” She laughs then shrugs. “There was no praise Jesus moment leading me down this path. I’ve always loved fires and figured fighting them put me in close proximity to them. After a few years of fighting them, I wanted more of a challenge. I wanted to understand fire, so I learned about accelerants and explosives and landed a job as an investigator.”

“I’m impressed,” I tell her truthfully. “You’re young for that kind of a career trajectory.”

She shrugs and moves a box from a wooden chair to the floor, waving me to sit before maneuvering around the piles and sliding into the chair behind her desk. “I knew what I wanted to do after high school, and I went for it. I became a firefighter when I was eighteen and an investigator four years ago when I was 29.”

I sink into the chair she cleared for me. “As I said, young.”

She frowns at me, her eyes drifting over my face. “How old were you when you became a cop?”

I try not to snort at the question. “I’ve been with the NYPD for fifty-eight years.” Her eyes widen at my admission and her head tilts as she continues to peruse me.

While humans are aware of shifter immortality, I find the ones who live in large human-dominated cities like New York often forget how long-lived we can be. Shifters my age are somewhat rare. Immortality doesn’t mean we can’t die. We do, as evidenced by the dead shifter at our crime scene.

Charlie’s thoughts seem to drift in the same direction. “Our victim was a shifter.”

I nod. “A shifter pathologist will perform the autopsy.”

“We know the cause of death isn’t natural,” she says, her voice becoming matter of fact as she fires up the laptop on her desk. She looks at me pointedly. “Tell me what you saw at the scene.”

I take myself back to the warehouse, the scent of smoke heavy in the air, the body sprawled out on a metal bedframe, jaws stretched wide as if to rail against his fate. “The deceased is a male wolf shifter in his prime. I’ll get you his birth date when I’ve had a chance to check the Wolf-Haven records.”

Her tone is sharp as she asks, “You knew him?”

“Not well,” I admit. “His name was Greystone Boulder-Wolf.”

“You’ll have to take yourself off the case,” she snaps, her brows lowering in annoyance. “You can’t investigate the death of someone you knew.”

I rub the bridge of my nose, pulling from the deep well of patience towards humans I’ve had to cultivate over my years of working with them. “I’m over 700 years old, there aren’t many wolf shifters in existence I haven’t at least heard of. I didn’t know the deceased; I knew of him and could name him on sight. I have no biases toward him.” Not entirely true. He was once a lesser advisor to my brother Fallon when he was king of Wolf-Haven. I don’t harbour warm feelings toward the shifters who helped my brother commit atrocities against our brethren. But I will investigate Greystone’s death the same as I would for any other shifter.

She continues to eye me, eventually saying, “I don’t suppose there are many shifters in your division?”

“A handful and I’m the only detective.”

She sighs, but nods firmly. “Then you stay on the case.”

It’s cute that she thinks this is her decision to make, but I allow her to take the dominant position in our case.

Our case.

I haven’t had to work with a partner since Edith Thornton, the Pinkertons and the Rangers.

“I haven’t had a partner in years,” she murmurs.

I wonder if she’s subconsciously reading my mind.

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