Alpha's Faire

XXII

 "So tell me then, how do you know Jexanna, Dr. Lewis?" Raphael's deep-toned voice carried chills down her very core.

She screwed up.

Shit. Why was her name even on the list of available portal mages in the first? She tried to conceal her racing heart under a facade of concentration. But she knew that Raphael Stone wasn't going to just drop this. He had a name now, someone else to investigate.

His calculating eyes stared straight into her dark blue orbs. She wasn't going to back down or give him the pleasure of seeing her slip up anymore. At least not today.

"Jexanna is —"

"Your relative right, Dr. Lewis?" Yvette piped up behind Jexanna. Her body jumped at the interruption. Alpha Stone's eyes immediately widened a bit at Yvette that blinked, unaware of the tension.

Of course, Dr. Yvette Wells just had to show up right now. Jexanna suppressed the urge to seize the woman away and stuff her in a supply closet. Anything to prevent her from talking to Alpha Raphael Stone.

"A relative?" Alpha Stone asked with a lifted brow on his stoic face. It was almost cruel how attractive that such the cold-hearted man was. Jexanna's eyes narrowed at the thought. What the hell was wrong with her? She tried to chase it away. This wasn't the time to be hot.

"Dr. Lewis's faire relative, Jexanna." Yvette looked over at Jexanna who resisted sending a look intended to kill. Instead, she screwed the biggest fake smile on her face.

"Yeah, she's an old relative. Much more like a distant cousin if anything." Jexanna sighed. "She's a faire, so she's a very distant relative." Her eyes glanced at Yvette. She stared Jexanna in the eye and smiled sweetly. Yvette wasn't this oblivious. She was smarter than this. She probably knew Jexanna's true form, so why would she even get involved in this conversation?

This couldn't be intentional, right?

"What about our college days?" Yvette asked and Jexanna's heart stopped. She was dragging this out. This was very much intentional.

"College days?" Alpha Stone inquired, confused.

"Dr. Lewis and I were roommates in college and Jexanna would often visit us." Yvette turned to Alpha Stone and Jexanna wanted to scream.

"She just needed a place to crash, most of the time." She growled, annoyed. "Jexanna's a bounty hunter. So she tends to go around from place to place."

"But yet, she's on a secret mission for Shou?" Raphael's eyes went from Yvette to Jexanna. His steeled look told her everything. He was already connecting the damn dots. All he needed was to see her reaction. She stared him back in the eye. If he wanted to find a reaction, she wouldn't indulge him.

"Are you talking about my little prodigy?" Shou's voice all made them twitch. Shou smiled as he came up to Jexanna and wrapped his arm around her waist. "She is distantly related to Dr. Lewis, but if you're eager for details. It was more like Jexanna was the result of a fling with one of Dr. Lewis's ancestors. She was abandoned at a very young age and I found her through Risa's orphanage. Jexanna was gifted with portal magic, a particularly difficult one to master. So Risa recommended that I train her, and I did."

"You're not a portal mage, though." Alpha Stone pointed and Shou simply grinned at the Alpha.

"I'm sure you're aware of my family's lineage as a Ross. We can take on the gifts of the blood we consume for a short time." Shou remarked. The Ross Vampire line was able to temporarily use their prey's abilities. Even Risa could do so, but Raphael Stone should have known this already. It wasn't exactly a secret. "I had consumed portal mage blood before and mastered it enough. So I trained her to control her abilities."