by Nalini Singh
The rain that hit her face felt like a thousand needles digging into her flesh.
Ice chilled her blood.
Everyone should’ve come in the instant the weather turned from irritating but bearable to deadly—her people weren’t stupid and neither was Kenji. But according to the roster on the opposite wall, no one had made it back. No one.
Chapter 7
About to hit the emergency callback alarm that would blast out a high-pitched noise that was uncomfortable for wolf ears but highly effective in making them pay attention, she spied a couple of wet wolf bodies. Pulling the heavy door fully open, she let in the rain and the wind so her packmates could whip through the opening.
When the two sentries looked back at her, their gray pelts plastered to their bodies, she said, “Did you see Kenji or Pia?” The roster confirmed they were the only ones still out there; she’d have been alerted if anyone unauthorized had headed out, or if someone hadn’t made it home.
Both wolves shook their heads, one of them sneezing midway. Lifting a paw to his muzzle, he rubbed.
“Go,” she said to the bedraggled pair. “Get dry. They must be on their way back in.”
The two went to the door instead and poked out their noses. She tapped them both firmly on those noses, to their yelps and offended looks. “Don’t even think about going back out to look for them. Then I’ll have four people to worry about instead of two. Go get dry. Now.”
Giving in, they padded off down the corridor, their paws leaving muddy prints on the stone and their bodies dripping. It’d be gone soon enough. One of the maternal females’ favorite punishments was to make miscreant kids and juveniles clean anything that could be cleaned. Since this was a wolf den with plenty of mischievous pups, dirt was rarely allowed to linger more than ten or fifteen minutes.
She looked back out into the rain, her pulse in her mouth. Kenji was familiar with this area and he was one hell of a tough wolf, but it wasn’t his own region. It was possible he’d become turned around in the vicious weather. As for Pia, she was a smart, experienced senior soldier. If she wasn’t back, there was a problem.
“Jem, I just saw Josephine and Roan. They only now come in?” Revel stepped up beside her, his eyes on the storm and his slender body humming with barely contained tension. “Something’s wrong with Pia,” he said without waiting for a response from her. “I’ve had this growing bad feeling over the past half hour. Couldn’t stand it anymore, came to check she’d returned.”
Garnet had serious respect for the twin bond—she’d seen it in action with the twins among her own siblings. Steele would probably know the instant Ruby went into labor despite the fact that they were in different dens at the moment.
Not that she’d needed Revel’s statement; her own instincts were screaming at her. “I think we’d better go out, look for her and Kenji.” Unlike the exhausted Roan and Josephine, Garnet and Revel were fresh, would be better able to weather the storm.
Her blood roared in her ears, her mouth dry as she began to tug up her sweater, then thought to hell with it and decided to go straight into the shift. She could always get more clothes; she didn’t want to delay a second. And much as she liked Revel’s fiery twin, it was Kenji at the forefront of her mind. He had to be okay.
He was so dominant in her thoughts that when she caught a flash of white the split second before she would’ve gone into the shift, she thought she was imagining things. But no, it was Kenji’s T-shirt that had caught her eye. He had a limp wolf in his arms, and he looked like he was about a second away from collapse. Garnet and Revel took off into the rain at the same instant, heading straight for him.
Revel gathered his sister’s wolf form into his arms, while Garnet wrapped an arm around Kenji’s waist, pulled one of his own arms over her shoulders, and all but dragged him to the den. “Close the door!” she yelled to a couple of juveniles who’d come over with mops, clearly on cleanup patrol.
“Yes, sir!” They hurried to shut out the driving rain.
Garnet, meanwhile, was struggling to keep Kenji going. “Where are you hurt?”
“Just exhausted,” he said, his voice a little slurred. “Carried Pia all the way.”
And he’d done it in what had felt like a gale-force wind. No wonder his body was searching for a place to collapse and rest. “You sure you’re not hurt?” She’d never seen him this wiped out.
“Cut on face, but that’s it.” It came out mumbled.
Since her quarters were closer than the infirmary, she dragged him there and propped him up against the nearest wall. And saw that the “cut” on his face was more like a gash; it was bleeding all down his cheek. The wound on his stomach, on the other hand, had stained his torn T-shirt a pinkish red in the time it had taken her to get him to her room. “Kenji!”
Following her gaze, he looked down, blinked. “Huh. Can’t feel that.” Then he slid down the wall to collapse into a sitting position on the floor.
Garnet bit back her fear, quickly checked his pulse while trying to put pressure on his stomach wound. Blood continued to pulse out, slow but steady. Skin chilled and water dripping into her eyes, she managed to dig out her phone with one hand, called the infirmary. “Kenji’s got bleeding wounds,” she told Lorenzo’s assistant, Gavin. “I need medical help.”
To her surprise, it was Lorenzo who entered her quarters only minutes later.
“Pia?” she asked as the healer put down his medical kit and knelt in front of Kenji.
“Heavy bruising, broken leg.” The front of Lorenzo’s shirt was damp, no doubt from his examination of Pia. “The break’s a clean one—Gavin can easily set it. I’ve made sure she has no internal injuries.”
Pushing up Kenji’s T-shirt to expose the muscled and bloody plane of his abdomen, he asked Garnet to hold up the sodden material while he shone a light on the wound, then scanned it with a handheld device. “This isn’t as bad as it looks,” he murmured in his native Spanish before switching back to English. “A deep gouge, no impact on his internal organs.”
Garnet felt no relief at Lorenzo’s words, not with Kenji slumped bleeding in front of her. Tangling her hand with Kenji’s to reassure her wolf of the steady beat of his life, she faced Lorenzo’s profile. “Then why is he out?” Kenji was a lieutenant, with the attendant strength. If it was a simple scratch, he’d have shrugged it off, kept going.
Ignoring the snarl in her tone with the ease of long experience dealing with scared and worried wolves, the healer checked the back of Kenji’s head. “Knot, just as I suspected.”
Ice cracked through Garnet’s veins. “You knew he hit his head?”
“Pia regained consciousness just as Rev got her to the infirmary.” Lorenzo continued to work, using his healing abilities on Kenji’s head wound. “She shifted, said Kenji saw her fall into a gully, came down to bring her up—he asked her to shift so she’d be easier to carry.”
Garnet hated seeing Kenji so still. Kenji was never still. Kenji was wicked smiles and color and infuriating flirtation. “Did he fall in the gully while going down to get her?”
Lorenzo shook his head, the silver in his hair glinting under the light. “He slid down part of the way after skidding on the mud. There were rocks on the slope, according to Pia.” Frowning, he shifted position slightly so he could better access Kenji’s head wound. “I’m guessing he whacked his head on one. Stomach injury probably happened when he pushed through the damaged trees at the bottom of the gully—Pia crashed straight into them. The sharp end of a broken branch could’ve raked Kenji’s stomach while he was trying to get to her.”
Unfettered respect on his face, in his voice, as he added, “Kenji might look like a pretty rock star but he’s pure wolf. That gully is some distance away, never mind how steep it is, and the storm’s brutal.”
Kenji’s eyes flickered on those words.
Fingers tightening around his, Gar
net blew out a breath. “I’m going to strangle all four of them.” Her voice threatened to shake. “They should’ve been back well before the weather got this bad.” At a certain point, there was no need for security; nature provided its own deterrent.
“Don’t blame them.” Lorenzo removed his hand from the back of Kenji’s head. “I was watching the satellite feed—it turned vicious with very little warning. They came in as fast as they could.”
“Yeah, Garnet,” Kenji mumbled, his long, talented fingers curling around hers. “Don’t be mad.”
Relief a crushing weight on her, she lifted their linked hands to press a kiss to his knuckles. His smile was faint, shaky, before his eyes closed again. “Lorenzo?”
“He’s fine, in a natural sleep. Let me deal with these cuts.” Lorenzo did so using his abilities as well as medical equipment, until both the gouge on Kenji’s stomach and the cut on his cheek were covered by delicate new skin. “A little rest and he’ll be up and running.”
Garnet’s brain started functioning properly again now that she knew Kenji was safe. Frowning, she said, “Why is Shane still out?” It had only taken Lorenzo ten minutes to stabilize Kenji.
“He got a real whack on the head—Kenji’s was just a glancing blow by comparison.”
Hand yet linked with Kenji’s, Garnet considered Lorenzo’s words. “Hit with something heavy?”
“I’d say so. You find anything?”
“No, but there was a coffee table there with a solid edge.” A little distant for Shane to have hit it as he went down, but that was the only possible source of a head injury that Garnet could think of in Russ’s living area.
Lorenzo twisted his mouth, shook his head. “I can’t rule out the coffee table, but my gut says it was a blow from above.” Picking up one of his medical instruments, he raised it over his own head, brought it down as if on the back of another skull. “Like that.”
“Can you model it to confirm your hunch?” She knew the healer had the software.
“I’m no expert at it, but I’m fairly certain my compatriot in Kenji’s sector is. I’ll send her the details, have her put it together.” He touched Garnet’s hair with the gentle hand of a healer, but his tone was that of a packmate who had the authority to overrule her in certain circumstances. “Russ is dead, Shane is unconscious, and it’s too dangerous outside for anyone to even think about sneaking up on the den. You can take a breath.”
“Athena,” she began.
“I gave her a sedative—she’s high-strung at the best of times, so sleep will do her good.” His eyes turned to steel. “As it’ll do you. An emotionally exhausted lieutenant is no good for the den.”
Woman and wolf, both parts of her knew he was right. She could all but feel the strain pounding in her temples. “Thanks, Lorenzo.”
A tug of a loose tendril of her hair before the healer left. It wasn’t until a minute later that she realized she should’ve asked him to help her shift Kenji.
“Kenji!” she snapped, putting every ounce of her considerable dominance in her voice.
Of course it didn’t have the same effect on him as it would’ve had on someone more submissive. Kenji Tanaka had always gone his own way.
Lines formed on his forehead, though his eyes remained closed. “What?” It was a growly rumble.
Shivering from the auditory caress, she said, “Shift.” He’d be much easier to dry off—plus she wouldn’t have to worry about stripping him of his drenched clothes.
And thinking of Kenji naked was not good for her blood pressure. “I’ll rub you dry,” she cajoled when he stayed stubbornly in human form. “Kenji.”
He growled at her, the bad-tempered growl of a wolf who just wanted to sleep.
“Fine,” she said, though she wanted to hold him close and never let him go. “Stay in your wet clothes. Look like a drowned rat.”
The world fractured into a shower of astonishing light and then there was a handsome black timber wolf lying in front of her. A very wet wolf who sneezed before putting his head down on his paws. Getting up, Garnet found a large, absorbent towel. Rubbing Kenji down with one hand, she called Revel with the other. “Pia doing okay? Why was she unconscious?”
“Just the broken leg—pain put her out,” Revel answered. “She’s pretty pissed about the entire situation, says she knew that gully was there but got messed up in the rain.” A short pause, his tone holding a deep vein of affection when he came back on the line. “Sorry, Pia says she isn’t pissed. She’s fucking pissed.”
Garnet’s wolf huffed in laughter inside her. “That’s definitely Pia.”
“Yeah.” He sounded distracted. “Damn it, Pia, stop fidgeting and let Gavin do his job.” A growl rolled down the line. “Shit, sorry, Jem. My sister’s being a pa— Pia, for the love of God, behave or I’ll get Grace on the comm.”
The threat to bring in their deeply submissive younger sister wouldn’t have made sense to anyone who hadn’t grown up in a SnowDancer den—and thus didn’t know that submissives could become ferally protective when one of their people was hurt. And since Grace knew full well her sister would never harm a hair on her head, she’d take shameless advantage and force Pia to rest and to heal.
“I’m calling Grace right now unless you start acting like a woman with a fucking broken leg,” Revel threatened.
Garnet raised an eyebrow at the feminine response she picked up through the receiver. “Is my Spanish rusty or did she just call you a—”
“Your Spanish isn’t rusty.” Revel’s tone was still more wolf than man. “Our mother has threatened to wash out Pia’s mouth with soap more than once.” Another small pause before he said, “How’s Kenji? Pain-in-the-ass here is worried about him.”
“Clean bill of health.” Thank God. “Just needs some sleep.”
“It’s been a long day. We should all get some rest,” Revel replied. “We can pick up the investigation in the morning—Shane might be awake by then.”
“Agreed.” Hanging up with a quick good night, she began to rub Kenji down in earnest. He protested grumpily when she rubbed too hard on his ears. “Sorry, princess.”
A growl, a clawed paw swiping at her—only he wasn’t really swiping. He was just pretending. Smiling, she finished with the towel. “You need a blow-dry.”
The growl was louder this time and held a distinct thread of insult.
“I thought you’d be used to it with all the hair colors,” she teased, combing her fingers through his damp fur. “Do you want to sleep here or in the nice comfortable bed over there?”
His ears pricked up.
“I’m not letting you on the bed if you’re going to make it damp.” She rose, went to the cupboard, grabbed another towel.
And returned to discover a gorgeous naked man on her bedroom floor, half-asleep, his skin a flawless, luscious shade between lightest brown and dark gold. All over.
Closing her eyes because damn it, this was Kenji, the one man her body seemed unable to resist, she threw him the towel. “Wake up.”
His eyes opened a little and he began to dry off with sluggish motions when she made it clear she wasn’t going to help. A woman had limits! Since watching him run the towel over the honed ridges and valleys of his body was driving her crazy with the urge to pounce and lick him up, she ducked out to grab some food. By the time she returned, he was asleep. On the floor. At least he’d left the towel over his hips.
God, Kenji Tanaka was beautiful.
All graceful lines and hard muscle and tattoos inked through a special process that meant the ink “stuck” through the shift. Her favorite was the large kanji for “love” that he’d had inked on the back of his upper left shoulder. Now she saw that there was a line of more angular, smaller letters going down parallel to the kanji. It was highly stylized and difficult to read but she was sure the lettering was in katakana.
Kenj
i had studied Japanese writing as a child, not only because his parents wanted him fluent in both spoken and written Japanese, but because he loved his maternal grandfather, who had very little English. Kenji had taught her a few things back then, but after not using it all these years, she’d forgotten the meaning behind the symbols. She’d have to ask him. As she’d have to ask about the other new pieces she’d spotted on his body.
Like the ink peeking out from under the towel high on his thigh.
Garnet’s fingers itched to tug away the towel and feast her senses on the wildly sexy man in front of her, but she wasn’t that far gone. Yet. No matter how good he smelled. Oak and fire, sin and wickedness.
Picking up the plate holding the steak she’d grabbed for him, she waved it under his nose. If that didn’t wake him up, he was truly out for the count and she’d have to do what she could to make him comfortable. But his eyes flicked open. Drawing away the steak before he could lunge at it, she said, “Get into bed.” She wouldn’t usually eat in bed, but she didn’t think anything would entice Kenji to move once he was no longer hungry.
Might as well make sure he was comfortable first.
As it was, she had to tug him up and shove him to the bed—all the while trying not to ogle his body. It was hard. She wanted to bite him. And pet him. And kick him for breaking her twenty-one-year-old heart. He sure as hell had better have a good explanation for his behavior, or she would take her long overdue revenge.
Pushing him into bed, she helped him sit up, hauled a comforter to his waist, then gave him the steak. He stared at the plate for a minute before stabbing the steak with his fork and lifting it up to eat.
Leaving him to it, she grabbed a change of clothes—sweatpants and a tank as well as a fresh pair of panties—and went to the bathroom to get out of her own damp clothes. By the time she came out, Kenji had almost finished his steak. She gave him more food and ate some herself while sitting cross-legged on the bed facing him.
