Instead she found herself possessed of a steely resolve, stronger than it had ever been in the days when vying for the attention of a handsome man had been sport and competition. Gabriel MacInnes was hers, damn it. No Orinn woman would ever have dared trespass on the chosen of a Dyim, recognizing the danger to life and limb if she should even try. Apparently these human women were going to have to be taught the same lesson.
Rowan tossed her head, threw back her shoulders, and reached within to the brightly glowing flame at her center. Instantly her ire calmed, and she felt the fire suffuse her with the old assurance, knew it lit her form so that she glowed more brightly than any human woman could ever dream. She felt primal, her beauty and desire both amplified and impossible to ignore. She breathed deeply, then started forward again, less a walk than a prowl. Inside her bag, Gabriel's cell phone jangled into life once again, slicing into her thoughts like a buzz saw. This time she didn't even break her stride, just grabbed it and threw it, with deadly accuracy, into the road. Moments later it fell silent with a satisfying crunch. Rowan's lips curved with pleasure. She felt her incisors lengthening in anticipation.
A bookish-looking middle-aged man was walking in the opposite direction, but at the sight of Rowan seemed to lose all sense of where he was going and plowed into a garbage can. Another tripped over his own feet as she passed and went sprawling onto the pavement. She barely noticed, focusing only on the task at hand. It felt amazing to cruise on the old power again, to feel sure about something. And despite all her worries, all the potential pitfalls and problems, there was no denying it: she wanted Gabriel MacInnes all to herself.
And she was going to take a great deal of pleasure in making that abundantly clear. No one dared touch the desired of the Dyadd Morgaine.
Rowan grinned as the door flew open before her without so much as a touch. She'd always been good at making a spectacle of herself, just as she'd been a master at kicking ass when ass-kickings were due. Tonight, with Morgaine's blessings, she'd get to do a little of both.
She stepped into the pub and surveyed her domain.
The goddess, Rowan decided, was back.
Gabriel was completely trapped, hemmed in on all sides by a bunch of sweetly smiling beauties. They fawned over him. They discreetly shoved one another out of the way in the constant battle to be his next dance partner. He'd thought it might be better on the small dance floor, easier to take on his determined adversaries one at a time. But if he heard one more time how adorable he was, how they'd missed him so on his too-long vacation, the Change would happen here and now, and he'd have to make a run for it, breaking through the glass if necessary.
He finally told his current partner outright that he was getting married. Lot of good that had done.
"Oh, Gabe, you're sooooo funny! You're never taken for long." A pair of big hazel eyes blinked up at him. "Can T be the woman of your dreams next?"
He bit back a grimace as Marisa Maclaren leaned into him for the umpteenth time, giggling, and wanted to die. Had he ever actually enjoyed this? He didn't remember ever feeling that his female fan club was quite this vapid and inane, but then again, he had spent less time listening and more time deliberating over who was going to be his latest flavor of the month. And, of course, how long it was going to take him to get her upstairs.
Gabriel glanced at the door for the millionth time that night. The light outside was fading fast, and there was still no sign of Rowan. It had been almost an hour since he'd managed to peel himself away for long enough to call her, and then she'd indicated she was nearly done.
Maybe she'd been tired and gone up to bed, he thought.
Or maybe she'd poked her head in, seen this debacle, and was currently burning everything in his closet. That some of the closet's contents probably ought to be burned was beside the point. They'd finally had a thaw in their little cold war, and here he was blowing it all to hell because he had too many manners to flatten women just to get away from them, which was looking more and more like the only way to extract himself ... and to escape from the undulating Marisa, who had already tried to crawl up his leg a few dozen times.
He closed his eyes. So this is what it felt like to be mated. You got to realize exactly what an ass you used to be, then figure out how to fix it so that your mate wouldn't kill you at some point in the future. He thought of Carly and her running war with Gideon over the hamper, and smiled wistfully. If only laundry were his biggest issue. He didn't know why or how God had seen fit to curse him with so many of his ex-girlfriends all at once, but instead of enjoying the promise of a warming in his relations with Rowan, he felt as though he was spending a night in hell. That the beer was incredibly good was, for once, doing nothing to change that perception.
Lori, he saw, was eyeing him again and staring daggers at Marisa, a petite brunette with considerable assets, none of which were located in her head. She was already edging closer, circling with the others like a bunch of sharks as the song ended and another began. And as his rotten luck would have it, this one was a heavy, mid-tempo rock number with a driving beat that lent itself well to lots of grinding.
He was going to have to make a run for it.
He had just begun to back away from the group of women that were as ferocious and intimidating as his own Pack in this element when the door to the pub flew open so quickly, and with such force, that it nearly blew off its hinges. Gabriel stopped dead, along with every other soul in the pub, as a vision unlike anything he'd ever seen came striding in as though she owned the place.
It was Rowan. That much registered in his fuzzy brain, if only dimly. But this was a Rowan he had never encountered. It was as though all the vestiges of being an Earth woman had been stripped away, leaving only the ruling Dyim of another realm in all her otherworldly glory.
And oh, but she was glorious. She had gone from wearing his sweats to some flowing green dress that coiled and uncoiled around her legs as she moved, suggesting length and shape and form, even exposed and creamy skin, while revealing little. Her shoulders were wonderfully bare, and whatever she'd done to her hair showed off her exquisite face even more effectively than before. That outrageous hair was fire in the dim light, as though it had retained a few of the rays of the sun.
This, Gabriel realized as all of his functioning circuits went up at once, was what Rowan was, what she might be again. A goddess who walked among men.
And she was headed straight for him.
Gabriel automatically opened his senses to her, all of him craving her as he watched her approach. Rowan, he thought dazedly. My mate.
It was painful at first. His senses were really too acute to do anything but hurt him in the pub, which was why he normally made an effort to dampen them. Turning the acuity on and off was something most Wolves learned young, and he was no exception. But it was always a shock to the system when you turned them on in a place like this, full of movement and noise and scent.
Then, all at once, his senses cleared. Where there had been smoke and noise and the cloying, nauseating sweetness of too many intermingled perfumes, there was only Rowan. His nostrils filled with her intoxicating autumn scent—leaves and smoke, candles and spice. Warmth flooded him, as well as a fierce need to be with her. Now.
Abruptly, Rowan stopped. Placing one hand on her hip, she lifted her chin and surveyed the area around him, eyes touching briefly and disdainfully on each of the women who'd been vying for his attention this evening. Gabriel felt a smile tugging at his lips, humor breaking through his awe. He didn't know how she knew who his exes were, but she sure as hell did. And the way she was dismissing them without a word, looking for all the world like some glorious warrior queen, warmed his heart. She was saving his ass, and he didn't mind a bit. All he wanted to do was shout to the rafters that she was his.
Rowan, it appeared, had her own ideas about displaying her affection. After giving Marisa a look that by rights should have caused her to drop dead on the spot, she turned her green gaze to him. It turned from subzero to scalding in less than a second, and Gabriel felt his blood rising in response. Come to me, then, he thought. Come and get me. He couldn't think of anything he wanted more. But Rowan, obstinate creature that she was, arched an eyebrow as though she'd heard him, and then crooked a finger at him.
She couldn't have been any clearer if she'd spoken. No, you come to me. Gabriel frowned. Rowan smiled, a slow, sexy curve of her lips that immediately had a half dozen indecent and possibly illegal fantasies about her running through his mind. Which was, he knew, exactly what she'd intended. But though he tried to muster a little indignation over being pushed into the position of the claimed instead of being the claimer, as he had always done, it was completely impossible. Because she wanted him. And he needed her so badly that in that moment he knew he would have crawled to her if she'd commanded it. Now he knew how it must have felt to be a villager singled out to worship a daughter of the Goddess.
But this was infinitely better. Because he knew that for Rowan to stake her claim upon him, she had to have decided she didn't want to let him go. And after this there was no way in hell he was going to let her.
Beside him, Marisa's voice sliced sharply into his thoughts, making him wince.
"Well who the hell does she think she is? Queen of the fucking universe?"
He looked down at her, at the ugly expression on a face he had once thought attractive, and gave her a pitying smile.
"Exactly. It's just one of the many reasons I love her."
It felt good to finally say the words out loud, he thought. Good to finally give voice to the intense feeling he'd been carrying around with him since Rowan had landed in his arms. Marisa's mouth dropped open so far he wondered whether it would hit the floor. Then he refocused on Rowan, and Marisa simply ceased to exist for him.
The band, a popular outfit out of Leeds who favored the sort of piano-driven electro-rock that Gabriel himself did, chose that moment to dig into their next song with a vengeance. It was dark, sensual music, especially with the added dimension of his heightened senses as he listened. And as the song wove its dark spell, he went to her, feeling as though there was no one in the crowded room but the two of them. It wouldn't have surprised him if his feet had only scraped across the ground as he was drawn inexorably toward Rowan, so strongly was he pulled. All around him, couples moved with one another, melting into each other to the beat of the song. Rowan waited for him, swaying gently, her eyes locked with his.
