He just didn’t want to take the risks to get them.
So until Gausto crossed that final line, the prince had been finding a hell of a lot of advantage to letting Gausto take all the risks while the prince repeatedly disavowed him.
Jet gave him a look that said she’d picked up on a good part of his thoughts. “Maybe later, then,” she suggested, intent in her gaze.
“Maybe,” Nick agreed, and a deep part of him meant it. Within the past year, Gausto had cost the Brevis Southwest too many losses. No one yet even knew the cost of the previous evening.
Because Gausto had wanted. He wanted the Liber Nex; he’d come away with his personal ability to use Core workings forever muzzled. He’d wanted the power held in the San Francisco Peaks of Flagstaff; he’d barely escaped the mountain, bleeding and damaged. Now he wanted…what?
As far as Nick knew, this latest assault had one main objective: to take out Nick himself.
While doing as much harm as possible along the way, of course, because why not take advantage of circumstances?
“You say maybe,” Jet said, putting aside the empty mug of the juice she’d finished in swift order, her slender throat moving with each deep swallow, “and you think about yes and no.”
“It’s complicated,” Nick said. He gestured with a tip of his head and she considered him, amber-gold eyes holding such contemplative expression that Nick took it as warning—a mistake, to assume her straightforward. A mistake to assume anything about her at all, except for the truths she freely offered.
A gift, that she consented to come to him at that gesture, to stand before him as he rose and put a knuckle under her chin and contemplated her features—not soft features, not tender or delicate, but strong bones and exotic angles not the least bit overwhelmed by amazing eyes, large and tipped and thickly lashed. She eyed him back in the same fashion, no more self-conscious about her nudity than she’d been to start with, and Nick shook his head ever so slightly, unconscious betrayal of his amazement in her. He had to close his eyes to take in the enormity of it—this wolf before him, become brilliantly, beautifully human—and when he opened them, he let a hint of a grin take the corner of his mouth and he kissed the fruit juice away from her upper lip.
“Clothes,” he told her. “And then I have an idea about Gausto.”
She watched his mouth a long moment before responding; she touched her lower lip, as if contemplating the memory of sensations there. Then she headed for the back bedroom, her easy, athletic strides unaffected by her exposed condition. Without bothering to turn back and throw the words over her shoulder, she said, “Does it involve killing him?”
He absorbed the low undertone of her voice. The intent there.
Jet, it seemed, had made her own decisions about how to handle Gausto’s incursions on her pack.
“It’s complicated,” he said again. “We have certain hunting rules. Gausto has broken them, but it would be best if we didn’t.”
Jet made a disgruntled sound. She disappeared into the bedroom, and Nick stood in the kitchen nook feeling unaccountably alone.
He took a deep breath, straightening his shoulders; stretching his spine. He scrubbed hands over his face and through his hair, hunting the layers he normally held in place—between himself and the world, himself and other people, himself and…himself.
It hit him with a spark of shock that he didn’t have to do that for her. That she not only knew what he was, but she reveled in it. A slow, quiet grin made his chest feel lighter than it had in a long time.
Sentinels dead, brevis in disarray, Nick himself unable to help, and here he was with a grin in his heart.
From the bedroom, Jet made a profoundly startled noise—a pained noise. Nick flung his foolish grin aside. “Jet!” But he’d only taken one swift step when it hit him, the merest echo of what she felt as she cried out again and lightning ripped through his body and sent him down. What the—? More than pain—a bereft and empty sorrow, a gaping absence of—
Self.
Jet wailed the ki-yi-yi of wolf fear and pain and loss and suddenly he knew, breaking through the unexpected impact of it all to crawl forward, up to his feet and then running—staggering, bouncing off a wall or two and never quite making it upright before he slung around the corner into the guest bedroom and tumbled back down beside Jet.
Gausto. Gausto and his amulet and his threats. He’d told Jet to bring Nick in; he was making sure she didn’t forget—didn’t think him incapable of following through on his threats. And now, even as the pain faded, as Jet quit jerking in agony and the echoes of it slipped away from Nick’s body, she curled up around herself and sobbed like a heartbroken child—her wild ferocity abruptly gutted, her self-sufficiency destroyed.
Nick pulled her into his lap, warm skin reassuring against warm skin, and wrapped his arms around her, and rocked her gently while she clung to him and mourned even that brief absence of her wolf. Dazed himself by what he’d felt in those moments, his own thinking stripped down to the bare core.
The Septs Prince had had his chance to stop this man; he hadn’t done it.
Now Nick would.
“Where are you?” Marlee muttered, typing furiously into the instant messaging window. Furiously, because she had only a moment here by herself, while the others put their heads together over the recent security breaches—hunting Marlee, if they but knew it, and leaving her out of the hunt itself simply out of habit.
Typing furiously, indeed; typing at all because she was desperate. She was in the middle of it, she was in far, far over her head, and she hadn’t heard from Gausto.
Because she was beginning to suspect that she wouldn’t.
Used…and used…and used. For years, used. And now discarded?
Unfamiliar footsteps made her whirl in the office chair; she was beyond pretending her nerves weren’t stretched to the limit. But then, it hardly mattered. After the previous night, they were all on edge. It was only natural that they’d all be affected.
All of them except Dane Berger’s executive administrator, apparently. He still looked too slick, too groomed. Where Nick Carter always looked like a man about to break free of the constraints of civilization that he placed on himself, this man looked like someone trying to be what he wasn’t. Reaching, rather than restraining.
And therefore dangerous in an entirely different way.
“You’ve got the look of someone about to fold,” he said.
She found herself on her feet. “I was right! You—” She stopped herself, shook her head. No point in that. Not exactly, anyway. “What did you do last night? Do you think they’re not going to realize that Annorah was drugged?”
“Of course they will.” He shrugged. “And who made that last pot of coffee in Carter’s community room yesterday at the end of the day? Knowing that some of the others would be working late?”
His words landed cold and hard in the pit of her stomach. “But I didn’t—and I wasn’t there to see who would drink what!”
He waved her protest away with a manicured hand. “Doesn’t matter. Put it together with all of this—” a gesture at her cubicle space “—and it’ll be enough.”
“But why?”
A raised eyebrow, supercilious and even cruel. “My dear, surely you can see they’re going to need a scapegoat. Much better to direct them at only one of us. And you and your second thoughts…did you think they wouldn’t be noticed? You were well-groomed, but you’ve outlived your usefulness.”
“My—” For an instant, she was speechless. “I’ve been working for something all this time. A better balance—a more equal way of doing things—”
“Yes, yes,” he told her, standing there in the doorway in his overly fussy lightweight tan suit and his limp, too-fashionable hair and his plucked brows and looking down his nose at her—sensible attire, her feet in flats and her Scooby-Doo lunch box peeking out the edge of her cubicle. “The thing is, my dear, we want so much more. So sad for you!”
And
he left.
Jet looked at the full-length mirror in the guest bedroom. There she was. Human. By choice, for the moment, but perhaps not always.
Her image glared back at her—an unforgiving expression, paired with a stance that barely fell short of belligerent. Angry at Gausto, angry at this new world she found herself in, angry to be caught up in this conflict between two factions that had nothing to do with her life.
Hadn’t had anything to do with her life. Now…it had become her life.
The clothes weren’t as fresh as they’d been the day before, but she’d spent enough time not wearing them at all…they’d aired nicely overnight. All black, in spite of the hot sun—because it suited her. Mere leather slippers of shoes on her feet, because that suited her, too. Smooth flesh, faintly tanned; long legs and curves and breasts she hadn’t quite gotten used to having at all except that they seemed so important to this body.
So important to Nick, to judge by the amount of attention he gave them.
Human now. That was fine. Her choice, at the moment.
Human always?
Never her choice.
Nick came up behind her, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “Feeling better?”
“Angry,” she said. “Feeling angry.”
His mouth quirked, ever so briefly. “I see that.” Still looking at her through the mirror instead of directly, he passed a thumb over her damp cheekbone. Her eyes shone more then; her nose was a little red, and her cheeks, too. She touched her lips, confirming what she saw—still plump, still wildly kissed.
She narrowed her eyes at her image. With the slightest lift of that plump-kissed lip, she growled at herself.
Nick raised his brows. “What was that for?”
“Reminder,” she told him. “Warning. This crying thing…it happens. But it doesn’t stop what has to be done.”
“Ahh, Jet.” He stepped up against her back; he enfolded her defiance into his embrace from behind. And though she could feel that he was again aroused against her, that didn’t seem to be what this particular embrace was about. Not as his hand spread across her belly and pulled her in, the other arm encompassing her shoulders; his head nestled in beside hers. He nuzzled aside her naturally short, crisp hair and kissed her neck.
“What?” She twisted to look at him directly instead of finding his gaze in the mirror.
He laughed, muffling it with the ticklish hollow of her neck. “You move me, Heart. That’s all.” He released her, and turned her away from the mirror. “About what has to be done—”
“I’m going back,” she said firmly. “You will not turn me away from his throat again.”
“Unless,” he said, a hard edge into his low voice, “I get there first.”
She stiffened. “We,” she told him.
Something glinted in that pale green gaze. “Yes.” And then he seemed to give himself an infinitesimal shake—bringing himself back to this moment. “But not like that.” He didn’t have to explain what that meant. They both knew what Gausto deserved, and that it involved teeth and ripping flesh.
She frowned, stepping back from him just enough so his hands fell away.
“Jet,” he said. “He’s got an amulet linked to the one inside you. He’s got people who will pick up some of his work where he left it off—and we can’t kill them all.”
“We can try.” All too easy to bring to mind certain of Gausto’s men—those who had poked and prodded her upon arrival as wolf, those who had jeered her those first days as woman, those who had put hands on her—
No, come to think of it…those two hadn’t come back. She didn’t know if she’d crippled them or if Gausto had sent them elsewhere.
“It’s…complicated,” he said, and his jaw hardened in brief frustration. “He’s hurting my people, Jet. Stealth amulets. If the rest of the Core doesn’t know about them, they will soon. So I need to find information. Samples. Something that will help us formulate a defense. Especially while brevis is compromised.”
“And we can’t do that if we run straight at them,” Jet said, reluctant in that conclusion—but seeing it clearly all the same.
He shook his head. “You need to take me in,” he told her.
She stared at him in shock. “No!”
He stood his ground—physically, and with the energy of his intent. “Just as Gausto asked.”
She narrowed her eyes. “No. That is not being we.”
He laughed—short, without humor. “It can be. If we work together. It’s the only chance we have to get everything we need out of it. The amulet he’s using on you, your pack’s freedom, intel on the new stealth techniques he’s using against us. And Gausto himself.” He hesitated. “Jet, I’ve been dealing with this man for a long time. With his family, with his people. I know how to do this.”
“You!” she said, and her emotions careened unfamiliar and wild. “Have you been captive in this den of his? Have you been his experiment? Have you watched what makes him feel important and seen his expression when another of you dies?”
“None of those things,” he told her, and instead of reeling back from her sudden intensity, he stepped right up into it. “That’s why I need you.” He hesitated long enough for that to get through the churning sensations in her chest, the floundering thoughts—memories tangled with intent. “I know how to approach it, Jet. You know how to handle the fine points once we get there. If you take me in, you’re still in the position to do that. Gausto may think he has me, but it’ll be our way to have him.”
She kept her narrowed gaze on him, unconvinced—too horrified at the thought of turning him over to Gausto to see past it. “He wants to hurt you. I heard what he told his prince—his dominant. He has no retribution, only hate. He has no justice, only cruelty.” She looked at him in sudden surprise. “I wouldn’t have known that before spending time with you. The differences.”
“Jet—”
She hadn’t expected to see him nonplused. “He doesn’t use the same patterns we do, wolf. He is twisted.”
“Jet,” he said again. And then, eyes closed briefly as he took a deep breath, only to open them and pin her with pale green alpha honesty. “That’s why I need you. That’s why we have to do this thing. Because of what he is. For so many reasons, we have to stop him. And this is how.”
She growled again, the noise slipping out of her in spite of herself. “We free my pack.”
“Yes.” He met her gaze straight on.
“We take his power over my wolf.”
“Yes.”
“We find how he hides his amulets from you.”
“Yes.”
“And your people can’t help.”
“We can’t go to them for help,” he said. “There are some I trust…but I can’t reach them without exposing us to those I don’t.”
“So we do this alone.”
The slightest shake of his head. His eyes glittered hard—intent and readiness. “Together.”
“Together,” Jet agreed. She waited long enough for him to see her acquiescence, her own readiness. “Tell me your how.”
But she didn’t wait so long that he could see beyond it to the resistance—the part of her determined that Gausto would never get his hands on this man—this wolf—of hers.
For Gausto, in all he had so callously done with and to her, for all he had killed her pack members…he had also cherished them—in his own way, for his own means.
Jet had a good idea what he would do to one whom he called enemy.
Marlee stared at her keyboard, her heart pounding. I wasn’t wrong. I had good reason for everything I did.
But maybe Gausto had been the wrong partner.
Because maybe, if the strong-blooded Sentinels needed some balance, their mission was nonetheless a valid one. And their opinion of the Core…
Probably not too far off the mark.
And so Marlee had been working with a man who had done just as she should have expected…if her thoughts hadn’t been so full of fear an
d resentment that she grasped for any opportunity to make herself feel better.
She couldn’t even say when it had started. So young, with the little strong-blood who hadn’t yet learned his own strength. The badly broken bone she’d gotten for his failure—the betrayal she’d felt when he hadn’t been punished. Extra training, that’s all he’d gotten, while everyone made so sure he knew it wasn’t punishment, simply necessity.
Marlee, at four years old, thought that a few hours in time-out would have been fair. Even learning, later, that the boy had been restricted from running for the same amount of time she’d been in the leg cast…it hadn’t seemed enough.
She frowned, thinking about that. Six weeks of no running…to an active boy, it was indeed a significant punishment. How he must have chafed! And he certainly would have understood what it meant to be injured and mundanely human—something all the strong-bloods had trouble grasping as children, when they healed so fast themselves.
So why…? Why did she think of that time as though the boy hadn’t been punished?
It doesn’t seem fair, does it? That’s what the nurse had said to her—a brevis employee, another light of blood like herself. A woman checking her toes for swelling and proper circulation while the boy played with his friends—for he still played freely, if not allowed to run. And Marlee the child, wounded and hurting, sorry for herself and feeling unprotected, less important…
Marlee had agreed.
But now that she thought about it, she hadn’t started feeling those things until after this woman started her daily after school follow-up care.
Scowling at the keyboard, she forced herself to think back through all the resentment and childhood hurt, back to right after it had happened. In the hospital…right before she’d been allowed back to school…before the nurse had taken up her care in the Sentinel after school training program.
She’d had ice cream. She’d had attention. She’d been…
Special.
And yet somehow, once she’d spoken to that nurse, she’d never felt special again. Reassurance from her parents meant nothing. Smiles from her teachers, nothing. It seemed there was always someone in the background, whispering in her ear—the unfairness of it, the entitled attitude of the Sentinel children, the way they used their abilities to get what they wanted. And eventually, Marlee had seen enough and heard enough that she didn’t need those whispering adult voices in her ear.
Sentinels: Wolf Hunt Page 14
