Chaos Burning by Lauren Dane Read Free Book Online Page B

sure you’d eat some of those human boys alive anyway if you went out there.”
    “Pshaw, Simon Leviathan! I don’t want to kill them. Though the eating part, well, that’s optional. Anyway, I don’t fool with humans. Too fragile. Too messy. I don’t like to hide my life from anyone I’m dating. Takes too much time and energy.”
    He of course agreed about dating humans.
    “Safer back here.” He slid from the booth and sought out the DJ. Soon enough something less dark and menacing came over the sound system. Must have done the trick because by the time he got back to his booth she’d made her way outto the dance floor where a long, lanky wolf had already danced up close.
    “Gonna be a lot quieter around here when she goes back to L.A.” Gage drained his drink and put it down. “I’m heading home for the night, folks. I told Nell I’d take a morning meeting for her. She’s more tired now that her second trimester is nearly over.”
    Meriel smiled at him. “I told her to reschedule that meeting for later in the day, for heaven’s sake. There’s no need for her to do any of this. I keep saying she needs to start delegating anyway.”
    Back home, females who were pregnant had the pack to count on for help. Like a huge extended family. Females would have their young and had plenty of time to recover as the babe would grow and mature. Here it was often different, though within Clan Owen, he could see it was much the same. And would continue to be now that Meriel had taken over leadership.
    “It’s okay. I should get to sleep anyway. She gets agitated when stuff gets moved around at the last minute and I really can’t complain.”
    “Oh! You’re sweet on Rose, aren’t you? That’s why you don’t care about moving the meeting. You want to see her.” Meriel leaned in, waiting for an answer.
    “Who’s Rose?” Simon had wondered if Gage and Lark were going to hook up.
    “She works in the IT department, which is what the meeting is about so she’ll be running it. Adorable.” Meriel grinned and Gage just groaned.
    “The two of you will be the death of me. Rose is going to walk me through the new cataloging program. It’s the one that will connect us to the national database. It’s what you wanted anyway, Meriel. We’re one of three clans to have it and we’ll do a test run. If it works out, the other clans will begin implementing it and we’ll have a lot more information at our fingertips. We can share our data with everyone, and vice versa.”
    He waved and headed over to Lark. She hugged him and kissed his cheek before Gage left.
    “You think there’s something between him and this Rose person? I thought he had googly eyes for Lark.”
    “There’s some chemistry there.” Dominic shrugged. “You can see it. But it’s not… ripe. It’s a what if sort of thing.”
    “Anyway, he knows her well enough to know she’d be a handful as a girlfriend.” Meriel snuggled into Dominic’s side.
    “Handful?”
    “She’s her own person. She likes what she likes. You should see her with her sister, Helena. Two more competitive women I’ve never met.”
    “What’s that story anyway? I just know she and her sister have some sort of tension about a dude.”
    Meriel gave him a look. “Not in the way you think. Neither of them would ever do anything like that to the other. It’s a long story and she seems to not want to talk about it. They’re very close. Someone got in the middle of it and it set them both back for a loop.”
    He respected that she didn’t want to share details if Lark would feel uncomfortable so he nodded. “I understand that.” He’d ask her himself when the time was right.

Chapter 5
    IT’D felt like she’d only been asleep twenty minutes when her phone started ringing. With an annoyed sigh, she rolled over and grabbed it. “Jaansen.”
    It was Gage. “There’s been another kidnapping. We think anyway.”
    She sat up, pushing her hair from her face, already alert.