The Shifting Price of Prey Read Online Free

Sort of. My boss stint was temporary and I was going to have to give it up. Something I’d thought I was okay with. Until now.
    ‘So, you’re wanting to stay the boss of Spellcrackers’ – he gave me a probing look – ‘where’s that leave Finn?’
    Finn.
    My friend. My ex-boss. My—
    Bone-deep hurt and angry disillusionment threatened to explode out of me. I shoved it back down, slammed it back in its box. I didn’t know what else Finn was.
    Three months ago I thought I did. I thought, along with being friends and working together, we were finally going to be more to each other. We’d been heading that way ever since we’d
met, more than a year ago, despite everything keeping us apart.
    Then I’d found the fae’s stolen fertility.
    And we should’ve had our chance.
    But Finn’s teenage daughter, Nicky, was one of the victims of the ToLA case, an awful consequence of which was that she was pregnant. Finn had, of course, gone with Nicky to the Fair Lands
to be with her until her baby was safely born.
    He’d asked me to go with him. I’d reluctantly said no.
    Part of me, the part that wanted Finn and damn everything else,
had
desperately regretted that no. But I knew it had been the right thing to do. He needed to be there for Nicky without
me. We needed that breathing space. And after all Finn’s declarations about not wanting me just for my curse-breaking abilities, that my vamp genes didn’t matter despite him hating
vamps with a vengeance, I needed to be sure he’d wanted me for me. Without that time apart, a tiny bit of me would always wonder if Finn and I were really meant to be.
    Now I knew.
    Two letters, then nothing. No messages, no excuses, just nothing— He’d cut me off. Something that had sliced my heart into tiny pieces. And, now I’d stuck it back together,
Finn was someone I’d promised myself not to even think about, let alone waste any more tears over . . .
    A quiet warning snort from Tavish made me look down.
    I loosened my grip on the half-full plastic bottle I’d almost crushed. It popped back into shape with a sharp cracking sound. My mouth twisted down as I tried to give him a wry smile. I
took a breath and locked my hurt, anger and all thoughts of a certain fickle satyr away.
    ‘You know I haven’t heard from him,’ I said, my tone flat.
    Tavish’s expression sharpened. ‘So, when he returns, you’ll be giving Spellcrackers back?’
    I didn’t want to, but— ‘Of course, it belongs to him and the satyr herd.’
    ‘I ken the herd elders are already asking for it. You nae think of just giving it up?’
    The herd elders weren’t so much asking as demanding I do exactly that.
    Their point: it was their money invested in the company and they’d only signed it over to me as a sweetener to get me to make little curse-breaking baby satyrs with Finn. Now their
fertility was found, albeit still trapped, I wasn’t needed, and they wanted their investment back. Immediately. Only my gut told me that if I gave Spellcrackers up now Finn would lose out
too. So I’d give Spellcrackers back to him, and only him. What he did then was his choice. I might be hurt and angry, and hugely pissed off at his fickleness but that didn’t mean I was
ready to stitch him up. Or that I was stupid.
    I picked at the broken tab on my water bottle. ‘It’s pretty convenient that Finn stops communicating right at the time the herd starts putting pressure on me.’
    ‘Aye. That it is.’
    Good to know I wasn’t the only one with suspicions. Not that my suspicions meant the cut-me-off-without-an-explanation satyr’s silence was forgivable.
    ‘But is being the boss at Spellcrackers truly what your heart wants above all else, doll?’
    Tavish’s quiet question diverted my thoughts back to the matter at hand. Spellcrackers was just a company, after all; and yeah, financially I needed to work, preferably doing something I
loved and was good at, but it wasn’t like I wouldn’t have my old