She followed Owen down the stairs.
“You coming back to the party?” he asked as he shut the lights off and secured the door.
“In a bit.” She moved toward her room, but stopped. “Owen, was Troy frightened of what he saw up there?”
Owen considered that a moment. “I don’t think so. At least, he wasn’t until he saw the man disappear. That’s what made him run out of the attic.”
Selena went into her room, hoping to restore her composure before returning to the party. She sat on the end of her bed. What she’d thought had only been minutes in the attic had been more than an hour. How had she lost so much time like that?
Come back, that warm, buttery voice said in her head.
No, she answered. God, her imaginary lover had taken on a consciousness all his own. He said things she would never have thought up herself—including using a persistent French accent.
I’m real. Flesh and bone.
Did you speak to Troy? she asked.
Yes.
Fuck. She jumped to her feet and rushed out of her room. Her mind was obviously splintering into multiple personalities that were now communicating with each other. She imagined she heard laughter.
Greer was still with everyone in the game room. She watched him, hoping to catch him alone, and lucked out when he went to the bar to get a drink for Remi.
“Hey,” Selena said as she sat at the bar.
Greer nodded at her. “You having fun tonight?”
“Sure. Listen, just between you and me, what did you find in the attic when you went up there?”
Greer looked at her, then swept the room with a glance before answering. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Greer, this me you’re talking to. I need the truth. No ghosts?”
He slowly grinned. “No ghosts. Why?”
“Owen said Troy told him the man he’d seen up there asked if Troy was the leader’s son. That’s not something a kid would make up.”
“Well, Zavi calls Owen the chief. Maybe Troy was just curious about the team structure. He’s still new here. Who knows what weird things kids come up with?” Greer took the drink he’d made over to Remi.
Selena looked around the group, seeing the happy faces of her friends and coworkers—friends who would turn to enemies when they learned she was suffering a mental breakdown. Not only would Owen return her to her regular Army post, but she’d be run out of there on a Section Eight.
She’d better shut up and act like nothing was the fuck wrong. She walked out of the game room and went up to her bedroom. Digging through her dresser, she frantically searched for a pair of earbuds she knew she had somewhere. She found them at the back of her makeup drawer in the bathroom. Her hands were shaking as she plugged them in to her phone and flipped to a playlist of hard rock. She changed into her gym clothes then hurried down to the weight room. She needed to put in a workout, see if she could chase out the crazy and get back to having only one voice her head.
Halfway through a fast jog, the lights flickered in the gym. What the hell was wrong with the electrics in this old house? The gym building was one of the newer additions—it should have dependable wiring. Her treadmill had come to quick stop when the power blinked. Sweating and panting, she mopped her brow as she looked in the big mirror that ran the length of one wall. Someone was there, watching her. She just caught a glimpse of him before he vanished.
“Kelan?” she called out, turning to see who it was.
Bastion’s heart banged like a jackhammer. He was going to do it, finally. He was going to reveal himself to his mate. His emotions made the lights surge then blink out. He let one light come back on. Like an animal sensing a predator nearby, Selena drew her earbuds down and stepped off the treadmill, keeping still and silent, listening, waiting. Fearing.
“Come out, you coward,” she called out. “Show yourself.”
Bastion smiled at her bravado. She was a warrior through and through, his woman. He stepped forward, moving into the dim light.
Selena sucked in a breath as her gaze slowly moved over his upper body and face. Bastion knew she liked what she saw—he could scent the pheromones coming from her heated skin.
Their eyes locked on each other as he walked toward her, stopping just inches from her. She touched him tentatively, then let her hand linger just below his neck where his sweater was open.
He smiled, enjoying the effort she made to define his scent, something that was pleasing to her. Leather and sweet clover and a musk that was unique to him.
He leaned down, breathing in her scent as she had his. He lifted his head. Heat rose on her skin, moving up from her neck to her face.
Bastion. Je m’appelle Bastion.
She heard him quite clearly, though she tried to deny it. Bastion loved hearing her thoughts so easily. She wasn’t blocking him at all.
“I am real.” He caught her other hand and brought it to his chest. “You feel me.” He tugged at the earbuds in her fist. “These won’t keep me from you. Nothing will. And for the record, you smell sweeter than a clover field yourself.” He smiled, his eyes filled with humor.
She stiffened, offended that he was laughing at her.
“Never. I would never laugh at you.”
The moment of her sweet openness passed as quickly as it came. She poked her fingers at his chest. “Listen, motherfucker, I did not invite you in. You have to stay out of my head. How do you do that, anyway?”
“You wound me. But I will do as you wish.” Bastion tensed and looked toward the hall. Someone was coming. When she looked away, he hid himself from her.
Her friends Kelan and Greer came into the room. “There you are,” Kelan said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“Why?” Selena asked. She reached for her hand towel, but Bastion had taken it. He lifted it to his face and drew in her sweet scent.
Greer walked around the workout room. “You didn’t have your comm unit in.”
“I thought we had a few days off,” Selena said.
“Your security necklace was malfunctioning, and we had a power surge down here,” Greer said. “You alone?”
“No. Captain Hook was here with me.”
Merde. Je suis Bastion.
Selena smiled. Bastion knew she’d felt his irritation. “He’s French. And he’s just as Troy described him.”
Kelan exchanged loaded glances with Greer, then asked, “Uh, Sel, how much of Russ’s spiced wine did you have?”
“I’m telling you, he was here. He’s probably still here.”
“Uh-huh.” Kelan looked around. “And he’s, what, invisible?”
“Sometimes.”
Kelan shook his head. “You probably shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“I don’t think he means us harm,” Selena said. “If he did, we’d all be dead already.”
I don’t mean you harm. She thought of him as an intruder. He was that, but so much more. Say my name. Bastion.
Greer took her arm. “Okay. Say goodnight to your invisible friend now and come back to the game room with us.”
Selena glared at him. “You’re one to talk, you with your ghosts. I never mocked you about them.”
“Because they’re real. Why would you?” Greer shook his head.
“I’m telling you, he’s real too. Two of us have seen him now.”
Selena thought about taking a shower in the locker room, but worried he’d watch her, a thought that irritated Bastion.
I am not a monster. And see? I let you walk with them because you have no feelings for them. I have learned who I must keep away from you.
Selena gasped. Kelan and Greer frowned at her.
The others feel pain when they are near you. I punish them.
“You okay, Sel?” Greer asked.
“I’m telling you, he’s here. We have an intruder. I’m not making this up.”
Kelan nodded. “We’re learning that anything is possible. Before we saw Nick and the Ratcliffs, with their revers
ed age, or Addy with her strange eyes, I wouldn’t have believed you. Now, who knows? There’s that odd static that keeps showing up. We’ll look into it when we drop you off with the others.”
“I’m going with you,” she said.
Greer nixed that. “You’re not, because you’re not being rational right now.”
Bastion felt Selena’s anger. What I am, what I think, and what I do are none of your business, she told him.
Her words coming so clearly to him felt like a victory.
Ah. You are a natural mind talker, Selena. I knew you would be. And you are mistaken. You exist for me, and me alone.
Selena ditched the rest of the evening’s festivities, telling Kelan and Greer that she needed to shower first. Alone in her room, she leaned against her door…or at least she thought she was alone. She tested her senses, trying to see if she could tell if Bastion was with her or nearby somewhere. As far as she knew, he wasn’t.
What was he? A stalker? She had curiously intense feelings about him, as if he was someone she’d known a long while, someone she craved. Was that part of his game? Was he somehow influencing her?
She locked her door and thought briefly about propping one of the chairs from the little table up against it. But he could probably just get through that. She had no idea who he was or how he was getting around their compound without anyone seeing him or any of their tech capturing him. Even all the dogs and Blade’s old cat never seemed to pick up on his presence.
And yet he was real, not a ghost. He’d shown himself to her tonight. His real, physical self. God, he was big and smelled divine.
No. There was nothing delicious about him. He was an enemy, spying on them. An intruder.
Selena ripped off her workout clothes as she stepped into her bathroom. She turned the water on, then caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked at her face, only that, not her body. There were shadows under her eyes, lines bracketing her mouth that weren’t usually there.
It was the tension. This situation was out of control. All of it. Her. Him. Her team.
She shut her eyes, remembering his scent, remembering his intense and dark gaze as he stood before her.
Maybe this was a test of some sort, a qualification she had to meet before joining the team on a permanent basis, a last hurdle before she could separate from the Army. Maybe that was why she was the only one being affected by Bastion.
Her gaze lowered to her breasts. She shut her eyes fast, but touched the familiar scars on either side of them, tracing the shallow ridges.
She yanked a towel from a stack and hung it up next to the shower, then shut the lights off and stepped into the stall. When the hot water sluiced over her chest, she began counting backward from five to one, following the advice of one of the many counselors she’d been forced to visit over the years.
Five…four…three…two…one.
She didn’t feel any better, but at least she was breathing.
10
The hour was late, but Hawk was edgy and restless. He paced around his bedroom, then went down the stairs to the living room. He’d lived with Lion and the cubs at the house where Lion’s sister was for the past several months, but he still couldn’t get used to existing inside so many walls. The Quonset hut on the biker compound where he and the pride had lived had those big walls that curved from one side to the other. And when they’d lived in the little cabins on the mountain, it had been easy to go outside and slip into the woods at any point.
Not so here, at Kelan and Fiona’s penthouse apartment. He supposed that as college towns went, Fort Collins wasn’t huge. But they were miles from the foothills.
He took the stairs up to the rooftop deck. There at least he could feel the fresh—and bitterly cold—air. He tilted his face up to see the stars, searching the sky for familiar constellations. If he narrowed his eyes, squeezing out everything but the sky, he could pretend he wasn’t so far from the mountains, where his heart lived.
Maybe what he needed was to go for a walk. He slipped out of the apartment. Lion had been hovering over him like a controlling parent. Hawk had told Lion many times since they came to town to attend the local community college that he wanted to go back to the woods, to their wild, free days spent hunting and scavenging for food.
Lion wouldn’t listen. Times had changed, he kept saying, and they both had to change too.
He’s right.
There it was. That soft, firm, knowing voice that had been popping into his head a lot lately. Hawk hunched his shoulders as he walked into the cold January wind. At least he wasn’t alone. At least someone understood him.
I don’t want to be here, Hawk told himself. I want to go back home.
You don’t have a home.
I have a huge home, full of trees and boulders and rivers.
You aren’t an animal to live in the wild. You’re a man. You know what you have here that isn’t in the woods? Women.
This was a familiar conversation he’d been having with himself for the past week he and Lion had been here. Women were a nice benefit, but it wasn’t like Hawk knew how to speak to them—or even approach them.
But I do. I’ll help you.
Hawk felt warmth spear through him. Without his being aware of the change in direction, he soon found himself walking toward the bars on the main strip of road in Old Town. It was winter, so the doors were closed, but many of them were still full of people. The university was out of session for another couple of weeks, but kids were coming back to their old hangouts after the holiday break.
Hawk went up to one of the doors, but a burly guy out front demanded to see his driver’s license before letting him inside. Hawk dug it out of his wallet. The guy stamped his hand and then opened the door. Noise spilled outside, along with the sight and sound of young females, heated from dancing.
“Going in or what?” the bouncer asked.
Hawk stepped inside. This was so not his normal behavior. He felt like was watching himself rather owning himself.
Get a beer.
I don’t have money.
Check your pocket.
Hawk pulled out a fifty-dollar bill and frowned at it. Where had it come from? He went up to the bar and ordered something cheap. Wasn’t like he knew the different beers. Lion and he hadn’t done the bar scene yet, so they hadn’t started their education in that arena yet. Val and Max had promised to come down and teach them, but that hadn’t happened yet.
“Buy one for me?”
A girl stood by his elbow. Petite, dark-haired, her face painted with makeup that made her look more like a doll than a human.
See how easy it is? They come to you.
The bartender handed Hawk his second drink, which Hawk handed to the girl. He walked away, feeling a little spooked by her. The place was throbbing with loud music from a band everyone in the room but him seemed to know. They laughed and danced and screamed out the refrains. The room seemed to close in on him, faces spinning around, laughing at something he didn’t understand.
He set his beer on a nearby table and left. Doll-face followed him out. The bouncer stopped her, making her hand off her bottle before running after him.
“Hey! Hey—where are you going?” the girl asked.
Hawk shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets and turned the corner. She scrambled after him.
Go in the alley. No one can see you there.
Hawk turned into the dark corridor, letting the girl catch up to him at last. In shadowy space between the brick walls, her face was even more terrible than in the bar. It was pale and fake and seemed distinctly inhuman. She smiled at him and slipped her arms around his neck. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at her. While her face terrified him, her body set his on fire.
Lift her and use the brick wall for support.
Hawk did just that, liking the way he fit between her legs.
The girl stiffened in his grip. “Wait. What are you doing? I just wanted you to come back to the bar.”
You have her where you want her. No one will hear her scream. I’ll see to that.
What did that even mean? He didn’t want her at all. She was pushing against his shoulders now. He dropped her and stepped back, sickened by the track his thoughts had taken.
You idiot. You could have had her. We could have had her.
Hawk stumbled away, watching her rush out of the alleyway. He hated this night and himself and everything about this town.
When would Lion let them go home?
Lion was in the living room when Hawk returned. “Hey, where’d you go?” he asked.
Hawk shrugged and slumped into one of the armchairs. “For a walk.”
“What’s got you so restless?”
Hawk tugged at the sleeves of his hoodie. He had been taken into the pride a few months before Lion joined them, so he’d been able to show his friend how to exist. They’d grown up together, survived together, knew everything there was to know about each other. Hawk just wished he didn’t feel like a stranger to himself.
“Do you have a spirit guide, Lion?”
Lion took a moment before answering. “I think so.”
“Do you talk to it?”
“It’s a ‘him.’ Yeah. Sorta. Not out loud, just in my mind.”
“Does he tell you to do things?”
“He gives me advice. Not always in words, kind of just in knowings. Why?”
“I think I have one too.”
“That’s good. You could use one with the changes happening in our lives. Going to school and living away from the cubs and all.”
“Yeah. Do you trust your guide?”
Lion nodded. “He hasn’t steered me wrong yet.”
“I’m not sure I trust mine.”
Lion chuckled and slapped Hawk on the back. “You don’t trust anyone or anything right now. Just chill and go with it for a while. See how it all works out. We’ll be going back to Blade’s house this weekend. Maybe being with the pride will help settle you.”
Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion Page 9
