by Nalini Singh
"Any luck?" Finn asked from where he was patching up a young woman's broken arm using healing abilities that were changeling, not Psy, and yet that indisputably had a psychic component.
Aden had checked to see if they wanted him to leave when the patient came in, but both had motioned him to stay. "Nothing new," he said in response to Finn's question.
"Done." Finn patted the shoulder of his packmate, and she headed out, her embarrassment at having slipped in the rain and fallen off her aerie balcony still evident in the faint red flush of her skin. Apparently, she hadn't thought to use her claws in time.
Coming over, the healer looked through the microscope. "Yeah, this is way beyond my pay grade."
Aden took the implant, put it back in its case, and slipped it into his pocket. He had a feeling the answer to his question about its origin wouldn't be an easy one. He was considering which scientists could be trusted to examine it, should the Aleines not agree to help, when a sharp sound cut through the room.
Finn's head jerked up, his eyes flashing to brilliant yellow with faint traces of green near the pupils. "That's the emergency siren."
Chapter 22
REMI'S VOICE CAME on over the speaker system seconds later. "We have a lost cub. Jasper may have snuck outside and become turned around. All trained personnel head out now." What followed were numbers and compass points.
Aden realized the alpha was sectioning off people to make sure the entire area around the network of aeries was searched. "I can assist," he said to Finn when the healer grabbed a coat. "I'm fully trained for search and rescue and so is Zaira." It was a little-known facet of the Arrow mandate, but they'd quietly assisted in a number of difficult rescues over the years.
"You think you can keep from getting lost out there?"
"Do you have a compass?"
Finn took off his watch and threw it to him. "It's got one built in. You two should go to the northeast quadrant. It's the biggest. I have to stay close to the aeries in case they locate him and he needs medical attention." Then he was gone.
Aden hit the corridor to see Zaira coming down from their aerie. She was already wearing the big outdoor camouflage jacket the changelings had repaired after Finn ripped it getting to her wounds, and she was holding his. "I assumed we would help," she said, no sign on her face of the woman who'd bitten his lip.
The sense of loss in his gut was raw, but he was used to putting his own needs aside for the good of the squad. Today, he did it for the needs of a scared, lost child. Having already strapped on Finn's watch, he shrugged into the jacket and told her to stay within visual sight of him. "We don't have the advantage of following scents and the location is unfamiliar. You may become disoriented without a compass."
"Understood."
Hoods up, they headed out into the pounding rain, the area already at near night-darkness because of the heavy cloud cover. Other searchers shouted out the boy's name multiple times, their eyes flashing night-glow in the darkness every so often when the different groups came close before separating again. Realizing it was possible the child could hear them, given the acute nature of changeling senses, Aden and Zaira also called out at regular intervals.
With every minute that passed, the risk to the child rose exponentially. Aden understood changelings had greater immunity to the cold, but he had a feeling cubs were nowhere near as strong as their parents.
When Zaira held up her hand, head tilted, he stayed silent.
"This way," she said, running left over ground that had become slippery and muddy, her face dripping water. "It may be nothing, but I thought I heard a faint growling sound."
Reaching a heavy copse of waterlogged trees that looked like they might be maples, they began to scan the area. Aden saw nothing . . . then his foot slipped out from under him in the mud. He would've gone sliding down into a steeply sloped gully if he hadn't grabbed on to a tree limb. His mind immediately putting the pieces together, he followed the line of sight to where he would've fallen if he hadn't stopped himself, and saw a glint of golden fur through the wind-driven sheets of rain.
"Zaira, I see him!" He slid down the embankment in a controlled descent as Zaira shouted to the other searchers.
Bringing himself to a stop a couple of feet from the tiny leopard cub curled nose to tail on himself, his fur pasted to his body, Aden opened his jacket and lifted the child against him before checking for a pulse. He couldn't feel a beat and the small body was so cold. Zipping the jacket closed, he ran back to the embankment and began to climb it. He'd taken only a single step when Remi bounded down.
Aden unzipped his jacket to hand over the icy body of the cub. "Get him to Finn." Remi was faster and more sure-footed in this terrain and the child was critical. "I can't feel a pulse."
Racing up the incline using claws that had sliced out of his boots, Remi disappeared back toward the aeries. It took Aden longer to climb up the muddy incline and Angel was there to help haul him over the final edge when he reached it.
"Thank you." He could've done it himself, but the help had been offered in good faith and should be acknowledged.
The man slapped the side of his neck in a nonthreatening manner, holding his hand there for a second before letting go. "Good spotting, Arrow."
The three of them made their way directly to the infirmary once they reached the aerie trees. There were a number of changelings in the corridor outside, each with a strained face. Someone threw Aden, Zaira, and Angel towels and, taking off their jackets, they wiped their faces. Changing out of their waterlogged pants and socks would have to wait.
"How did he get out?" Jojo's mother asked, her arms hugging her body. "We're so careful."
"He's seven." A packmate linked hands with the woman. "That's what cubs do at that age. Sneak out, explore. The poor baby just got lost."
Beside Aden, Zaira spoke in a muted tone. "He's so small."
"Yes." Aden could still feel the boy's fragile bones, the chill of his body. "I'm going to see if I can offer any assistance." When he reached the infirmary door, it was to see Finn and Remi bent over the small feline body, faces grimly intent. Two more people, a man and a woman who had their arms tight around one another, stood not far from the bed.
Seeing no other patients who needed medical aid, Aden was about to step away when he saw Lark enter the corridor, a bloodied towel wrapped around her hand. "I'm fine," she snapped at a packmate who made a sound of concern. "Just a stupid cut while I was fixing one of the generators. How's Jasper?" Her wet hair and clothes said she must've headed directly to the generator after Jasper was located.
Aden had ducked inside the infirmary by then and returned with the tools he needed. "I'm a trained medic," he said to her. "I can seal up your wound."
Her lips curled up into a snarl. Before she could snap at him, a packmate nudged at her and spoke in a subvocal whisper--Aden could see the man's mouth moving but could not make out the words.
Snarl turning into a deep smile almost at once, Lark held out her injured hand. "You found Jasper?"
"Stay still."
"Definitely a medic," Lark said dryly. "Clearly has the bedside manner down pat."
A faint ripple of laughter that quickly faded.
Ignoring it all, Aden ran the sealer over the cut once he'd calibrated it to the right strength and after he'd used a scanner to make sure there was no nerve damage. "It's done," he said. "The skin will remain tender for a day or so, so be careful not to injure it again."
"Got it, doc."
When high-pitched and scared crying suddenly sounded from the other room, the relief was palpable. A minute later, Remi officially confirmed that Jasper would be all right and the crowd dispersed. Aden and Zaira, however, remained. Walking quietly to the infirmary door, the two of them looked in.
What they saw was the cub, now in his human form, curled up in his mother's lap while his father stroked his hair, his face. One of the boy's hands was in Remi's, the other in Finn's. He was sobbing, but Aden saw no despair
on his face, none of the hopelessness that was so often on an Arrow child's face.
Zaira was the one to articulate it. "He feels safe. He can cry because he feels safe."
"Yes." It was something neither he nor Zaira had ever known.
Unlike Zaira's sadistic mother and father, Aden's parents hadn't beaten him, but they had left him alone in a squad of assassins after making sure he knew he was a sleeper for their rebellion. He'd never been able to lower his guard, never been able to forget that should he be discovered, he'd end up dead and buried.
Chapter 23
BO WAS HAVING a rare night off from his duties as the security chief of the Human Alliance, kicking back with close friends at a trattoria on a Venice sidewalk when his phone buzzed with an incoming call from Riaz. Even though it was after midnight in Venice, Bo didn't hesitate to answer--the SnowDancer lieutenant never called simply to chew the fat.
He said, "Be a few minutes, guys," to his friends and, grabbing his beer, answered the call while walking to a bridge that overlooked the sleepy canal next to the outdoor table where he'd been seated. "Riaz."
"Bo, I got a question for you."
"Shoot." Up on the ornate bridge--which led to a half-submerged building that still had people living on the upper floors--he leaned his back against the railing and took a sip from the ice-cold bottle in his hand.
"What the fuck is the Alliance doing buying up isolated patches of land marked for expansion of changeling pack territories?"
Bo paused with the beer bottle halfway down. "Say again?" Frown getting deeper and deeper as Riaz explained, he said, "Look, I'm away from the office. Give me a couple of hours to figure out what the hell is going on and I'll call you back."
Once at the office, he brought in his senior people and they dug through the documents Riaz had e-mailed. The general reaction was, "What the fuck?"
"We own these parcels of land," the lawyer in the group told him. "The titles are all in the Alliance's official name, complete with our correct real estate identification codes. Those codes aren't secret, so anyone could use them to make a purchase." He scratched his head. "That's never been an issue because the code equals ownership, so people make damn sure they enter their own."
"Did we pay for these parcels?" Heads would roll if that was the case--Bo knew damn well the Alliance needed that money for other initiatives. "Are we looking at someone acting without authorization?"
The CFO held up a hand and swiped through several of the flat-screen computers laid out in front of her. "There's definitely no money missing from our accounts."
"But why?" Bo's lieutenant asked, confusion in her eyes. "Someone just randomly buys all this land for way beyond market rates and gives it to us?"
"We'll figure that out later." Bo turned to the lawyer. "No question it's ours."
"Certified and legal."
"I want you to start proceedings to transfer it across to the changeling packs who were intending to buy it." He had to repair the Alliance's relationship with the changelings--it wasn't yet solid enough to bear this kind of blow, especially since Bo hadn't exactly been a prince the last time he'd been in SnowDancer and DarkRiver territory.
"They'll insist on paying fair market value for it, so take the money and put it in a reserve fund in case we do get hit with unexpected bills." Frowning, he added, "Place the fund under the conservatorship of me, Hawke Snow, and Lucas Hunter." If no one turned up to claim the money, he and the alphas could hash out what to do with it.
"We'll get on it."
Bo knew that would take care of the short-term problem, but it didn't answer the underlying questions: who the fuck had bought that land and why?
Chapter 24
ZAIRA LAY IN the dark staring up at the skylight. She couldn't actually distinguish it from the rest of the ceiling, the aerie under the cloak of night and the world outside lashed by rain. Beside her, she could hear Aden's steady breathing, knew he'd put himself into a resting state that nonetheless meant he was alert to any threats. She should've done the same, but her mind was too full of thoughts that kept circling.
And her self, it was too full of aloneness again.
Curling her fingers into her palm to keep from reaching out to Aden as the feral and violently possessive want inside her pushed her to do, she focused on her breathing, regulating it to the point that she could control her heartbeat; and sometime in the hour after she first began, she fell not into a resting state, but into true sleep.
A sleep so deep that, once again, she dreamed.
Of the heaviness of the cold pipe in her hands, of how the rust had stained her palms, of the wet sound of metal hitting the pulpy mass that had once been a skull. Her arms kept rising and falling, rising and falling, until strong, pain-causing hands hauled her away, her heels dragging on the floor.
In front of her, she saw the crushed ruins of her father's head, her mother's, and felt nothing but a vicious satisfaction. They wouldn't hurt her again. When others tried to take the pipe from her, she refused to let it go, though her hands were slippery with blood from the blisters that had formed on her palms; her skin tore off as the pipe was forcefully wrenched from her grasp. The blood that covered her hands was orangey, mixed with the iron of the rust. More blood flecked her face, her clothing.
Later, when the ones who had pulled her off her parents called her a monster, she didn't protest. Because they had made her a monster and she owned what she was.
Jerking awake on that thought, heart thumping, Zaira could almost smell the blood, almost hear the sound of the pipe doing catastrophic damage. No, that wasn't right. The pipe had just finished the job and given the rage inside her an outlet. It was Zaira's mind that had turned her parents' brains to soup.
It hadn't been enough. She'd had to destroy their physical bodies before she could allow herself to believe that it really was over, that they were dead, that they wouldn't hurt her anymore.
A rustle beside her. "Zaira." Aden closed his hand over the back of hers, warm and strong.
Blood a roar and her mouth dry, she didn't speak, just stared up at the ceiling again . . . and then she turned her hand so that her fingers locked with Aden's. "I was as small as Jasper when I did it." She sucked in air that hurt going in. "As small as him when they hurt me."
"You were smaller," was Aden's grim response. "They hurt you for years."
"How could anyone do that?" In her mind, she'd always been the monster; she'd forgotten she'd also been a tiny, scared child fighting for her life.
"Because some people are evil--and some are not. You're not."
Bones feeling as if they were shaking within her, she tried to hold her focus, couldn't. "Aden." She didn't know what she was asking him, but when he broke their handhold, it was a brutal shock.
"Lift your head." His breath against her ear, his body closer.
Able to feel herself devolving into panic, she obeyed his order because it gave her a way to hold off the collapse. He slid his arm under her head and, curling it around her stiff shoulders, tugged her toward him. "Turn in to me, Zaira," he ordered when she remained rigid.
Touch had never been Zaira's friend. It had meant pain and abuse when her parents had her, cold-blooded training and more pain when she was with the Arrow Squad. But this was Aden, who had held her so many times already. She was the one who'd done the hurting. Forcing herself to turn, she didn't protest when he rolled onto his back and tugged her down over his chest, her head on his shoulder and her breasts pressed against his chest and side.
They were both dressed only in T-shirts and sweatpants, and the thin cotton fabric of the tees didn't stop the heat transfer between them. Zaira wasn't sure how long she lay there unmoving before her bones began to stop trembling and her heart calmed, the scent of Aden in her every inhale. It was warm and quintessentially masculine and deeply familiar.
Lifting her hand, she placed it on his chest, right over his heart. His pulse, steady and strong, gave her a rhythm to lock on to and use to n
ormalize her breathing. When he ran his hand up and down her back, she didn't protest, the contact further easing the excruciating tension inside her. His hand was big, strong, and so was he. Most people didn't consciously realize it, but Aden wasn't a small man. He was lithe with muscle, his strength intense.
"I'm sorry I bit you." She didn't know why she'd done that; maybe she'd wanted to scare him, but part of her thought she'd done it because she wanted to keep him. Like an abused animal clawing at someone trying to do it a kindness because it didn't know any better.
"I saw one of the RainFire females bite her mate earlier."
"Was she angry with him?"
"No. It appeared to be an affectionate act."
Her mind thought that over, considered it from every angle. "They're changeling, have more primal drives."
"Some drives are universal."
She jerked at the feel of his teeth biting down on her ear. "Why did you do that?"
"Now we're even and you have no cause to feel as if you crossed a line."
Reaching up, she rubbed at the bite, the abused, broken, uncivilized thing inside her not quite certain what to do. "You bit me," she said again.
He brushed away her hand and ran his thumb over the spot. "Does it hurt?"
"No." It had just been the unexpected nature of it that had bewildered her. "Biting is acceptable in changeling society, not in Psy."
"I haven't heard that rule."
Thrown off center by his behavior, she turned and tucked her back against his side, holding his arm possessively where it curled around her upper body. "Are you going to bite me again?" The insane rage that was part of her needed parameters to handle this.
"Maybe."
She frowned at that answer, too confused to be worried about the breakdown in her discipline in allowing the facial expression. "I'll bite you back."
"Okay."
Her frown deepened as she realized he was determined to win the argument, determined to show her that there was nothing wrong with the fact she'd gone vicious on him. Since she couldn't think of a good counterargument, she decided to see how far he'd take this--twisting around, she bit him again, this time on the jaw.
