by Vivi Andrews
Zoe, Tyler and Kelly were in conversation with a pair of wolves, chatting like old friends. No one would suspect the wolves had been such giant pains in the ass with the way everyone was playing nice now.
Grace eyed the petite Alpha at her side. “Would you really have sent us away empty handed if we hadn’t paid you with secrets?”
“Giving you something for nothing makes me weak in the eyes of my pack,” Amala said, her eyes on the others rather than Grace. “I can’t do that. But I would have found another way to get the information to you if you insisted on being a fool.” Dare moved into the cavern then and Amala’s gaze instantly found him. “As it is, I may have difficulties because I accepted such a paltry secret in exchange for so much.” She held up the flash drive Grace had given her, filled with Organization data. “This may help.”
Grace frowned in the direction of Dare. She didn’t like Amala, but the idea that Dare could challenge her because she hadn’t negotiated hard enough with them…when it was for the greater good of all the shifters…that didn’t seem any more just than anything else that had happened since they crossed into Black Lake territory.
“Why did you cage Dominec?”
“He tried to kill Soren.” Amala shrugged.
“Then why chain me up and not the others?”
“The others were unimportant. Melissa identified you as the leader of the group.”
“Melissa?”
Amala petted the white wolf and Grace remembered her name. She’d never seen the shifter when she wasn’t in canine form. “She has a unique skill for identifying dominance among unfamiliar shifters. I wanted to test the mettle of the female lieutenant Lone Pine had sent me. The others were prisoners in their own way, they just didn’t know it.”
“So the chains were a test.”
Amala hummed agreeably.
“Were you trying to establish dominance? Make us so grateful when we were released that we would already feel like we owed you something going into our negotiations?”
“Was I? Goodness, that would be rude, wouldn’t it?”
Grace glowered at the little Alpha. “I do not understand wolf culture.”
Amala laughed, a bright tinkling sound of delight. “No. That’s obvious.”
The others all looked over at the sound of her laugh. Grace frowned at the group. “Who are Zoe and Tyler talking to?”
“I suppose you would call them my lieutenants,” Amala said.
“But you don’t call them that.”
Amala simply shrugged. Her head tilted, like she was listening to something only she could hear and then she turned toward one of the side tunnels. “Ah, here’s our archive now.”
The twins appeared, flanking the oldest woman Grace had ever seen. Her hair was a pure, gleaming white, woven into a thin braid that hung over her shoulder to the middle of her chest. She was thin and small, with a perpetual squint and a slow, shuffling step that was aided by a gnarled, knobby walking cane. She glowed with a serenity that made her beautiful, in spite of the lines that age had carved into her face—or perhaps because of them. Behind her, a young woman with auburn braids trailed with a duffle bag tucked under one arm.
Their slow, methodical progression carried them halfway across the cavern before Grace twigged to the truth.
“Your Archive is a woman?”
“We practice the old ways,” Amala said and Grace realized that this woman not only possessed all the secrets Black Lake had amassed, but also the entire history of the pack. It was a tradition, but one she’d had no idea any shifters still kept.
“The twins will accompany you, of course,” Amala went on. “To ensure her safety and bring her home. And to make sure she is treated with the respect our most revered pack mate deserves.”
“We aren’t without honor,” Grace growled under her breath as the processional approached. “You can stop implying we’re untrustworthy any time you like.”
“And you can stop pretending we’ve ever been allies,” Amala replied sweetly, just as softly. “Trust is earned and just because we’re both shifter races doesn’t mean we’ve never been enemies. Perhaps if you still kept Archives, you would remember our history.”
Amala smiled broadly, stepping forward with outstretched hands to greet the Archive. “May I present our most revered and honored pack elder, Maeve Marie.” The beautiful white-haired woman inclined her head as Amala continued the introductions, though she did not speak.
The two women were of a height and their features could have been similar enough that they were related, but it was hard to tell with the distance of half a dozen decades between them. Amala took the duffle from the woman who had followed the Archive into the room, setting it at her feet and dismissing the woman with a nod.
“Is everyone ready to go?” the Alpha asked cheerfully.
“How do we get out of here?” Dominec asked, eyeing the dozens of tunnels shooting off the cavern.
Amala smiled. “I hope you don’t mind,” she cooed. “Precautions. You understand.”
The one thing Grace was coming to understand was that Amala’s smiles were warning signs. Sweetness and innocence was a warning shot off the port bow coming from her.
So it was no surprise when she felt a prick in her arm and looked down to see a tranquilizer dart sticking out of her sleeve before the world faded to black.
Well, shit.
“Grace. Grace, can you hear me?”
She came to with the scents of the forest around her and Kelly’s face bent over hers. At least from the feel of the snow beginning to melt beneath her shoulder blades and soak into her clothes, she hadn’t been sprawled on her back for long.
Bright sunlight pierced through the branches above her—late morning, if she had to guess, though she couldn’t guess what day it was. From the way her stomach was wrapping itself around her spine, she had a feeling it had been at least twenty hours since their first encounter with the oh-so-friendly wolves.
Grace levered herself up to a sitting position, pinching the bridge of her nose where a headache was already beginning to form behind her eyes. Fucking sedatives. Last time adrenaline had pushed the groggy feeling right out of her system, but this time she woke up feeling like she’d just been on a three-day bender. Achy and all around gross.
Kelly caught her arm, helping her into a sitting position like she was a freaking child, and the first thing she saw was the SUV, with the creeper twins perched side by side on the hood. The wolves had dumped them all the way back at the car.
The Archive—Maeve—was wandering around the campsite where they’d parked the SUV, humming to herself. Several feet to Grace’s right, Zoe and Tyler were groaning and sitting up as well, while a few feet beyond Dominec lay still as a stone.
Grace glared at Kelly, irrationally irritated to see him so chipper when she felt like she’d been flattened—though thankfully that feeling was retreating the longer she was awake. “Why didn’t they knock you out?” she grumbled.
“They did.” He helped her to her feet. “I woke up first.” He nodded toward Dominec. “I don’t think they were taking any chances with him this time. I don’t know how much they gave him, but the last thing I remember is seeing him go down hard.”
Grace knocked away his solicitous hands and shoved him in Dominec’s direction. “Go make sure he’s still breathing.”
When Kelly obeyed, she turned her attention to the creeper twins. On the plus side, they weren’t sitting in identical positions this time—one dangled a foot over the edge of the car, the other sat cross-legged like she was about to meditate. They’d even styled their hair differently. One had a pair of braids with a thin royal blue ribbon acting as a headband while the other wore a similar bright green ribbon and a single high ponytail.
“River, I presume?” she asked the one with the blue ribbon and the dangling foot. The wolf half
bowed with a grin. “And Cadence.” The meditative one with the green ribbon and the ponytail smiled serenely. “Not to be repetitive, but your hospitality still sucks.”
River reached behind her, revealing what appeared to be a fast food bag. “And to think we were going to share our Tim Horton’s with you,” she said with a surfeit of innocence, extending the bag.
Grace didn’t trust the wolves, but she didn’t see how it would do the creeper twins any good to poison her now, so she took the proffered bag and dug into it, the scent of greasy breakfast sandwiches making her stomach growl noisily. The wolves had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure none of the cats would ever be able to find their way back to Black Lake. And it looked like the Archive and the twins had been twiddling their thumbs for a while, waiting for the tranqs to wear off. More wasted time.
“Is all the cloak and dagger stuff necessary?” Grace asked after she bolted down the first sandwich.
“Is Lone Pine’s big old fence with guards patrolling it really necessary?” River asked.
Touché. Grace didn’t bother asking how they knew about the fence.
“Well, if it isn’t Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Adorable,” Zoe cooed as she and Tyler approached the SUV.
“Hungry?” River tossed them their own bag of Tim Horton’s.
Kelly approached as well, threading the brim of his cowboy hat through his fingers. “He’s still out, but he seems fine,” he said, indicating Dominec where he still lay motionless at the edge of the campsite. He took his own bag of breakfast sandwiches and nodded toward the lake that was just visible through the trees. “Nice spot.”
The others agreed, everyone munching away and chatting about what a pleasant campground it was, as if they were all old friends and three of them hadn’t drugged and relocated the other five.
Irritated, Grace bit her tongue, detaching from the rest of the group and heading over to check on Dominec herself.
He sprawled on his back, face turned to one side so his scars were all but hidden. He almost didn’t look like himself. She barely recognized him with his face relaxed in sleep. He seemed years younger without the harsh glitter of his dark eyes staring back at her. And she felt the irrational urge to apologize to him for seeing him this way. He wouldn’t like it. He would hate even more that Kelly and the others had seen him so vulnerable too.
He had all but single-handedly got them what they needed from Black Lake and all he’d gotten for his trouble was a higher dose of sedative, laying him low.
She crouched beside him and brushed his hair back from his brow, marveling at the silkiness of the dark strands. It seemed a contradiction for any part of Dominec to be pretty and soft, but his hair was a sinful indulgence to run her fingers through.
His eyelids fluttered and she barely had time to process that he might be coming to before he lurched up to a sitting position, flinging her hands off him forcefully.
“Easy, Dominec. It’s me. It’s Grace.”
His wild gaze pinged around the campsite before locking on her. A snarl curled his lip, revealing teeth too sharp to be human, and his eyes were shuttling back and forth from human to animal at dizzying speed.
“Grace?” Kelly called from the SUV.
She held up a hand to stop Kelly when he would have come to check on them, never blinking from Dominec’s feral stare. “Calm down,” she murmured, low and soothing. “Your eyes are doing that thing. Take a breath.” She didn’t try to touch him, keeping both hands where he could easily see them.
His breath was coming hard, but he seemed to hear her. He sucked in air through his nose, letting it out slowly through his teeth, and his eyes stayed human and dark.
“Hey,” she murmured, when he seemed to have a handle on himself again.
“They tranqed us,” he growled, his voice rough as sandpaper.
“Yeah.”
“They took my blood so they could figure out how to put me out.”
Grace grimaced. “That was probably part of their motivation.”
“I don’t like that,” he snarled in the understatement of the decade. “I don’t like being tranqed and I don’t like them.”
“That makes two of us.”
He turned his glared toward the wolves clustered at the SUV. “And now we’re bringing them inside our walls. Fucking Troy.”
“You think it could be a trap? A ploy to get inside Lone Pine?”
“Everything is a trap.” He shoved himself to his feet, shaking his head sharply when he swayed.
She wanted to reach for him, to steady him, but he held himself stiffly away from her and she knew he wouldn’t thank her if she did. But speaking of thanks…
“I haven’t had a chance to thank you for what you did back there. Getting us the Archive.”
He shrugged, still studying the wolves. “It was a necessary step.” The white-haired wolf drifted away from the others, humming to herself, and Dominec’s gaze followed her. “Do you think she has what we need?”
“I don’t know,” Grace admitted. “It’s an old tradition. It used to be that all packs and prides had living Archives, elders who carried all the secrets and stories of the pride. It was considered safer than having a written record, but in recent years the tradition has sort of fallen out of fashion.” She shrugged. “Who knows. My grandma used to tell me stories about the pride secret-keepers. How they passed on memories from person to person. How they could remember the way the air smelled on the day the first shifters were created. Always seemed like a pretty fable to me, but if this Maeve woman can remember the location of every shifter in North America, she’ll make a believer of me.”
“And if she can’t?”
“Mateo is working on alternatives. And we have at least the appearance of cooperation from Black Lake, which may go a long way in securing actual help from other shifters. And even if she can’t remember the scent of the air at the dawn of time, maybe she’ll still have useful information.”
Dominec frowned. “Why would anyone want to store memories from others?” he murmured, so low she wasn’t even sure he was speaking to her. “Aren’t one life’s horrors more than enough?”
He seemed lost for a moment and she wanted to distract him from his thoughts. “Dominec? We should get on the road.”
He nodded absently. “Of course.” Then his eyes slid from their infinity focus to zero in on her. “What did you mean earlier about my eyes?”
“What?”
“You said my eyes were doing that thing. What thing?”
She felt a flush rising to her cheeks, though she wasn’t sure why. “When you’re upset, sometimes your eyes go weird—they shift back and forth between human and tiger so fast it’s like a pinwheel spinning.”
He blinked, processing that, and a wry little quirk of a smile twisted his lips. “That can’t be good.”
Then he turned and walked to the SUV without another word.
And some hollow cavern in her chest ached helplessly for him as she followed.
Chapter Thirty-One
The inn they stopped at that night was several stars better and triple the price of the one they’d spent the night at on the trip north. River had insisted the Archive could not be expected to sleep in the car so they could drive through the night to get back to Lone Pine, and had also dictated the level of luxury the Archive required in her accommodations.
The twins had begun to distinguish themselves as independent personalities—River was bouncier and more vocal, while Cadence seemed more inclined to sit back and observe, though the two took turns speaking for the Archive, whose voice Grace had yet to hear. For all she knew, the woman was mute.
She sat now, tucked into a corner of the restaurant in the inn’s lobby, sipping tea and studying the patterns of frost on the windowpanes. River and Cadence flanked her, both alert even as they munched on the last of their burgers.
Dominec had excused himself—probably in search of the nearest roof—and Grace sat with Kelly and the Three Rocks lions at another table within sight of the wolves.
Zoe and Tyler slipped away to their room before long, leaving Grace alone with Kelly, who stirred his coffee and studied the Archive across the room with a small frown on his pretty face.
“What?” Grace prompted impatiently when he didn’t explain his preoccupation.
“Her,” Kelly muttered. “She knows all our secrets. She must have been the one to tell the Alpha that you and I were lovers.” Then his gaze swung to rest on Grace. “But even then, the Alpha thought you were Dominec’s mate. Why would she think that, Grace?”
She felt a flush rising to her face and brutally suppressed it. “Who can understand wolves?”
“It seemed to help your position with them.” Kelly sipped his coffee. “Why did you really bring me along?” he asked. “Because if it was for diplomacy, I didn’t do shit.”
“You didn’t have much of a chance,” she acknowledged. “They knocked us out before you could work your magic and by the time we woke up, Amala had decided I was the one in charge.”
“You and Dominec.”
Grace shrugged. “He understood their tactics better than I did.”
“Did you kiss him for her benefit too? Like you did for me at the pride?”
“I didn’t kiss him at Black Lake. And I never told you I only kissed him for your benefit at the pride. You came up with that one all on your own.”
“So, what? You’re dating Dominec now?”
The words dating and Dominec clashed against one another, completely discordant. She didn’t have the first idea what she was doing with Dominec, but dating? No. They were definitely involved. Or at least she was. She didn’t know where his head was. Or his other body parts. “I wouldn’t call it dating.”
“What would you call it?” Kelly challenged.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you’re trying to play the jealous lover card, you might want to consider the fact that I’ve never made you any promises. I’ve actively tried to do the opposite, in fact.”
