And probably never even know it.
No more indulgence for a brevis adjutant who had to keep his priorities straight—who couldn’t risk being the weak link.
In the morning, he’d take Jet into town. She knew more about Gausto than anyone…and it was time to go after that bastard, once and for all.
Chapter 10
Almost home.
The thought came again, unbidden, as Jet lurched against stabbing pain. She yipped into the night, a bewildered cry; the wolf in confusion.
But the house was close; the scent of it came to her on the stirring night breeze. And Nick would know what beset her—for he was both human and wolf. His pale green eyes showed her instinct and wild forests and a hot, fervent response she thought the human in him tried to fight. He would understand. He can help.
She scented the interlopers too late. Not enough breeze, not the right angle…they’d waited off to the side, still and silent, and while on any other day she would have found them anyway, on this day, lurching erratically toward safety, she did not.
“Jet.”
She staggered to a stop, whining under her breath—lifting a lip at them. They wore special night goggles, eschewing lights that would paint out their positions to the casual observer.
She could see them just fine. Two burly men, incongruous in their suits. Expensive suits, as beautifully cut as the linen pants Nick had worn but nowhere near the same beneath—no long leg and amazing ass and hard torso. Shorter men, stockier…beefier. Dark hair pulled back into tight pony tails, plenty of silver flash—a stud at the ear, silver rings and bracelets. As they moved closer she got a whiff of the patchouli the Core men favored.
She growled.
“Don’t even bother,” said the first man, and he certainly didn’t seem concerned.
He should have. He should have looked at her the way a man looks at a growling wolf. He should have thought her completely capable of taking him in a single leap from where she stood.
That he didn’t…told her to be wary.
Slowly, she circled them. Letting her heart slow and her breathing ease. Tail low, head low…but not submissively. Stalking. These men had come to Nick’s house. They could not be allowed any closer.
Nick, still healing. Still pounding in her blood. Suddenly so important to her that she instantly discarded Gausto’s first rule, his primary rule. Never target his men.
They should not have come into Nick’s territory. It didn’t matter that she intended to leave it herself. That made him no less important to her. No less vital.
These men would die now.
“Nice doggie,” said the man.
“You must be kidding,” muttered the second. “Have you seen her move?”
“No worries.” The first, the shorter of them, held up his hand, a flat round object secured between thumb and forefinger. “Here. Proof.” He took on an expression of concentration, enough to make Jet more wary yet.
But not wary enough.
Pain shot through her flank, twisting her so suddenly she flipped herself, biting at it, yelping yi-yi-yi and rolling in the pale, gritty soil. Only a few moments, with all of Nick’s hounds suddenly howling in the background, and then it was gone—leaving her panting, dazed…and then instantly flinging herself at Shorty, stupid Shorty who’d gotten so close with such confidence.
Her jaws closed around his wrist; the amulet went flying. Shorty screamed in fear and bone crunched and blood filled her mouth, warm and salty and inexplicably tainted, but she let go only to whirl on the hand that ineffectively pummeled her, catching it in her teeth and closing down—small bones that had no chance against such power.
The other man gave a triumphant cry and even as Shorty stumbled back a few steps and fell, awkward and hitting hard, the pain arrowed through Jet’s flank and took her down. Not so fiercely this time, not with their focus scrambled and hers intensified. They should not have come here. Enough so that she fell short of Shorty’s throat; not enough so that she didn’t try again.
But cold metal struck the side of her head—glancing, jarring her…she tumbled to the side and when she scrambled to her feet again, she found a gun barrel in her face. She froze.
The man faced her, crouching and awkward, jamming the gun at her until he saw she respected what it meant. He didn’t even spare a glance at his comrade. Not at first. “Asshole,” he grunted instead. “She’s not nice, she’s not a doggie, and she’s not a toy.” Now he did glance, easing back a step. “Now get up.”
Jet snarled softly under her breath as Shorty struggled to his feet without the use of his arms. His companion scooped up and held out the amulet, keeping his gun trained on Jet. “Take it.”
Shorty looked down at his mangled arms—one hand a swollen mass, the other wrist broken and bleeding. “But—”
“You can use this thing better than I can. If she tries anything, then take her down.”
Jet put herself between the men and the house. Drawing a line.
The man with the gun laughed, harsh and short. “That’s what this is all about? Don’t you worry about your precious Nick Carter, little bitch. That’s not why we’re here. Didn’t he tell you we couldn’t touch him here? Why do you think Gausto created you in the first place?”
To use. A tool. That had always been clear enough. But she’d never truly understood his limitations.
“But here’s where you messed up.” The man smiled, teeth white in the darkness. “Because we can touch you.”
“Now who’s playing with her?” Shorty grunted, his voice full of pain. “Get it over with. I need a doctor.”
His partner snorted. “What did you think would happen?” He himself kept a decent distance from Jet, the gun still pointed at her. She eyed that distance—and he must have seen the look. “Gausto wants you, little bitch, but he’s not going to question me if I come back with your pelt. Not after what you just did to Arkady.”
Jet slanted her ears, narrowed her eyes. Gausto was more likely to nail their hides to the wall right next to hers. But…she’d scared them. The tense fingers holding that gun…the smell of fear saturating the air. These things told her everything: this man would shoot her and deal with the consequences. So she sat on tensed haunches, but she sat. She listened.
“Smart little bitch,” the man said. “Smart enough to know what we really want.”
Yes. What Gausto had wanted all along—for Jet to reach Nick Carter in places where Gausto couldn’t.
“You’ve still got a job to do.” The man nodded at the house, where the hounds had settled—all but for Baroo’s mournful howl of dismay ringing out over this tuckedaway little valley. “We can’t go in there. You can.”
She just looked at him. If she went back, it wouldn’t be for Gausto. It would be for herself. For what she had seen in Nick’s eyes this day.
But Nick was Sentinel Brevis. And Jet had a pack to save.
Her reticence was clear enough. Impatience flashed across the man’s blunt features. “Don’t forget Gausto has the rest of your pack—and those other dogs, too. You don’t do this, they’re dead.”
They’re dead anyway. Unless Jet could free them herself. This day had given her the perspective to see that. To understand just how Gausto had manipulated her—telling her whatever lies necessary. Faced with her innate and immutable honor, he had found ways to soften his plans, to make it seem as though what she did wasn’t at all for the bad and was much for the good. But everything he’d told her had been a lie—from his intentions for Nick to his plans for her pack.
She lolled her tongue out in an insouciant grin. It meant the same in any language.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Shorty said. “Do you really think the only thing he’s got over you is a little pain?” His arm trembled as he raised his hand, the wrist fragile and bleeding—the amulet a threat.
Jet was ready for pain—but not for the abrupt inward lurch, the distinct sensation that something tore her in two. It passed through her, sendin
g ripples of unease along her spine. She lowered her head, glaring back at him. Silent in suffering—fighting the impulse to pant her stress.
“That’s showing her,” the other man said.
“Screw you,” said Shorty. “You think it’s easy to concentrate all ripped up like this?” And he scowled at the amulet, an expression of deep effort, and—
Jet cried out, a wolf’s echoing wail of anguish as the pain ripped through her—not just her flank but her entire being. It shuddered her perceptions out of phase, shredding her very being—and suddenly her keening voice was human, a more vulnerable sound, and her front paws had turned to hands, braced against the hard ground for only an instant before she collapsed to it, sharp pebbles and sand grinding against sensitive skin.
Human. Human against her will, as Gausto had done to her once before—but this time, human with no wolf at all. Emptiness filled her; she floundered, searching, hands clenching around dirt while all her strength went to water and breath turned to a gasp. The world reeled around her; she barely heard cruel laughter. She barely felt the hard kick against her side, sending her sprawling against a cholla cactus. She choked on useless air and emotions so large they couldn’t possibly fit in her body, boiling up to consume her. Another kick; she made no move to defend herself.
Because who she was…was gone.
Nick struggled with roiling claws of internalized poison, a hiss and steam of invading energies and murky images of strife. A snarl against his ears; a flash of gleaming white teeth; dogs howling. A woman, wailing in the night. A clash of muscle and bone, the snap of redlimned wards knotting into place, a woman wailing in the night. Corrupt Atrum Core power fizzling out in his hand, amulets gone to powder and ash. A woman wailing—
Nick jerked awake with a wild shout, braced upright in bed with his arms shaking and his heart pounding, and he didn’t have the faintest idea why.
And still, abrupt alarm slammed home in his chest. Jet.
It made no sense. She slept, down at the other end of the hall. She’d returned to her own room and she slept.
And yet…
Jet.
“Stop that, you dickwad.” The man’s voice rang sharp and clear. “Give me that!” An outraged cry of pain and protest, and suddenly Jet flooded with completeness again. The wolf washed back in to fill the empty spaces, giving her back her nature, her strength, her very essence. And if she sobbed with relief, she nonetheless snapped immediately back to awareness of her surroundings, pinning down the location of the two men.
“What the hell—” Shorty said, sputtering with anger, his two useless hands held protectively close to his chest.
“You dumbass idiot! What’re you going to do, tell Gausto you got so carried away with convincing her that you broke her? ‘Give her a taste of it,’ he said. ‘Explain the situation.’ That’s all. She’s got to be able to carry out her orders!”
“No,” Jet said, startling them both. She yanked a cactus spine from the back of her arm and tossed it away; she climbed to her feet and stood before them, unabashed at her nakedness. They stared, through night goggles, their jaws momentarily slack.
“Shit,” said the uninjured man. “Just—”
“Ker-ist,” said Shorty.
“No,” Jet said. “I will take no orders. Not from you. Not from Gausto. Tell him he has this one chance to let my pack go.”
The uninjured man snorted. “Did you not understand what we just did to you?”
“I just did to you,” Shorty echoed.
The other man held up the amulet. “Did you think we could only do it once? Don’t you get it? Gausto put an amulet inside you. And digging it out will trigger it off—permanently.”
“It changes nothing,” Jet said.
“Little bitch, it changes you. Whenever we want. It changes you completely. If the drozhar triggers it, you’ll never turn back into a wolf again. You’ll never feel like a wolf again. Your pack dies, and you die inside. Isn’t that right? Or did you want to be one of us?”
Jet growled deep. “I will never be one of you.”
“I would clap for you if I could,” Shorty said. “Clap, clap, clap. Very noble. Now, you’re going to finish what you started. You’re going to take Carter down, and you’re going to bring him back to Oro Valley.” He shrugged. “And then Gausto will release your people and you can take them home.”
Jet didn’t believe it. The instant she had defied Gausto, she’d sacrificed herself. That they would even try to tell her otherwise meant not a single word they said could be trusted.
Except the part about what Gausto could do to her.
She believed that. She believed it utterly.
Nick staggered out of bed, lurched to the door frame, putting a hand out to catch himself. “Jet?” he said softly, and then cleared his throat. “Jet?”
And kicked himself for obsessing over her, when he was already paying the price for just that. For yearning for her, when indulgence had already gone so wrong. When the morning would mean leaving this game he’d let himself play, and taking her to brevis and—
Outside, the dogs kicked up an anxious howl, mellifluous tones ringing through the night, coming in clearly through the open door.
The open door.
“Don’t even think,” Shorty said, and his voice was tight with the pain and shock of what she’d done to him. “Don’t even think that Nick Carter wants a piece of you after this. You think he cares why you did what you did? You think he trusts you?”
“What does she know?” the other man said. “She’s a pet.”
Shorty snorted at her. “He’s going to take you in to his brevis offices and dump you off at their research labs. Maybe he’ll make nice and stick you in one of those apartments they keep, but it’ll be the same thing. You’ll be a prisoner. If you think it’s going to be different because he’s your own kind, think again. He’s Sentinel, little bitch. That’s the only kind he cares about.”
She wanted to growl at him. She couldn’t quite muster it.
Deep in her heart, she believed it could be true.
After all, he’d been Sentinel all his life. They were his pack. She’d known him only for a day, and even if they’d taken that time in the desert…even if they’d wooed one another as wolves do, and drawn each other in with heated promises and powerful unspoken vows…
Well, she’d been the one to betray him, hadn’t she? It didn’t matter that those moments together still meant as much to her. Maybe they’d always meant more to her. She, after all, was the wolf from the heart up. Nick Carter had been born the human.
“Bring him to us,” said Shorty. “If you want to live. If you want your pack to live. Bring him to us.” He stopped, reeling slightly. “Dammit, Lyev, I need a doctor.”
The other man relented, went to support his companion. But he didn’t take the gun off Jet. “You heard him. Unless you want to live your life like…that.”
That. Writhing out the agony of being completely closed off from her wolf.
Forever.
Chapter 11
Jet let them leave. She stood numb and trembling, and she let them leave.
Forever.
As if she had any choice. Gausto would never let her go; he would never remove the amulet. She’d seen the gleam of hunger in his eyes during her training. He wanted what she had, and he’d do whatever it took to get it.
Forever.
So tempting, to run after them—to throw herself into submission and do just what Gausto wanted. To bring them Nick Carter. Surely they were right—he was human as much as wolf, and what had passed between them in the desert had not touched him as it had touched her. Even before she’d done what she’d been sent to do…so desperate to save her pack.
He’d had plenty of time to think about that. And unlike her, he had a lifetime of practice in navigating human ways. He knew how to protect that which was important to him. He knew how those things balanced in his life.
Jet knew nothing. She knew only emptine
ss and homesickness and the struggle to understand a world which had turned so suddenly strange.
“Please,” she whispered after Gausto’s men, knowing they couldn’t possibly hear her—and that she wouldn’t have said it if they could. They headed back for the dark lump of a sedan sitting off the side of the road—walking without grace through the uneven desert in their shiny shoes and expensive suits, one man now grudgingly helping the other.
Without taking her eyes from them, she reached for her wolf—her blessed wolf, the very heart of her. The response washed through her…a cool flush of pleasure flashing down her limbs and sweeping down her spine, and then she was on four feet and black-furred, night vision sharpening and nose drinking in the scents—sage and brittlebush and bird-of-paradise, warm caliche and even the horny toad dug in for the night not far away.
Gausto promised only betrayal. And Nick, in the end, would consider himself already betrayed.
Jet threw her head back for a single mournful howl of anguish, and flung herself into the night—wolf, and wolf alone.
Jet was gone. Nick swore, short and sharp, lurching out into the yard just as he was. No clothes, only flesh and alarm. The dogs already milled in distress; Baroo pressed his nose against Nick’s leg.
They’d taken to Jet, all of them. They knew pack leadership when they saw it.
“You’re safe,” he told them, heading out the gate—out into the desert, not even sure if he could yet clothe himself in fur. As the gate latched behind him, a howl split the air, a fine line of sound slicing through the night in lilting minor key. Jet, calling to her missing pack…calling out into empty darkness.
It had the feel of farewell to it.
“Damn well think not,” he said, grabbing for his elusive wolf. In the distance, a car motor ground smoothly to life; tires crunched and spun against nature’s gravel.
The wolf slipped away from him. Still oppressed by the poison…still evasive. “Damn well think not,” he repeated, and dug in, hand wrapped around the black powdered steel of the gate. Sweat broke on his forehead, between his shoulder blades, and still he hunted himself, finding the threads of that other shape—refusing to let go. Pulling the wolf into existence in a way he’d never experienced, never even known he could. Not with the wolf always fighting so hard to break free.
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