by L. L. Raand
“I am Callan, captain of the guard. I’m afraid your trip has been for nothing. The Alpha is not here.”
“I’d like to wait.”
He shook his head, and his chest flexed beneath the shirt. Oh, he was striking, all right. Powerful and domineering. No wonder you rarely saw more than two Weres together in public. The sheer physical force of them would make humans nervous. Even the Alpha’s guards kept out of the public eye as much as they could. Well, they had before tonight, but she bet that would change. The lengths to which the Weres, the Vampires—all the Praeterns—must have gone to remain undetected was staggering. And depressing. But that wasn’t her battle, at least not tonight. Over twenty-four hours had passed since the assassination attempt. She hadn’t heard a single word from Jody or any of the Weres. She’d been cut out, cut off, and she couldn’t allow that to continue. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t witnessed what she’d witnessed. And what about the next call she received from her anonymous source, telling her another girl was on her way to the emergency room with a lethal fever? If no one would answer her questions, she was going to be forced to report what she knew. She didn’t like being without choices, and the closed ranks of the Weres and the Vampires were leaving her with none.
“It’s imperative that I speak with your Alpha.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I asked Dasha to bring you here because you didn’t seem to understand the situation. Either you leave our territory immediately, or I will be forced to detain you.”
“Excuse me. You seem to be the one who doesn’t understand the situation.” Becca climbed down from the vehicle to face him on equal ground. Never mind that he was a foot taller than her and twice as wide. She could never best him physically. She couldn’t stand up to any of them, even if she’d had a gun in both hands. But she didn’t fight with her hands, she fought with her brain. At least when it was working, which she couldn’t always count on around Jody Gates, at least.
Dasha slipped around the front of the vehicle and stood midway between her and the captain. Dasha’s presence was oddly comforting, although she wasn’t foolish enough to think she’d found an ally. But at least Dasha had stood up for her when the perimeter guards had not wanted to let her pass, and she didn’t feel quite as alone as she had just a few minutes before. “I was with the Alpha when she was shot. For all I know, she might be dead. Either you prove to me otherwise, or tomorrow’s headlines will force you to tell the world where she is.”
Beside her, Dasha tensed. Callan’s eyes blazed, and the bones in his face morphed from handsome to deadly. A menacing sound rolled from deep in his chest, and Becca sucked in a breath. Her insides quivered, and she prayed her legs would hold.
“I see you’re still instigating trouble,” a cool voice remarked from the shadows close by.
Becca tried like hell to contain the surge of excitement that just hearing Jody’s voice stirred, because the damned Vampire would sense the racing of her blood. The last thing she wanted was Jody Gates to know the sound of her voice jacked her temperature up ten degrees. Slowly, she turned, and Jody stepped into the small circle of light. She looked terrible. Always thin, she’d still exuded katana-like strength—slender, razor-edged, graceful, and utterly deadly. Now she appeared emaciated and verging on fragile, her pale skin drawn tight over the sharp bones of her face, her eyes deep pools of fathomless darkness above cratered cheeks. An unfamiliar hollowness filled Becca’s chest.
“I thought you might be here,” Becca said. “How did you know I—”
“I sensed a human in the Compound.” Jody smiled wryly. “I couldn’t think of anyone else foolish enough to come here. This isn’t a safe place for you.”
Becca hadn’t let anyone tell her where she belonged in a very long time. She’d had a lifetime of someone else telling her what she should and shouldn’t do. Becca folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Oh really? And just why is that?”
Jody glanced at Dasha and Callan. “Would you give us a few minutes, please.”
Callan growled, and Dasha moved over next to him.
“She threatened the Alpha,” Callan said. “She’s not going anywhere. I’m taking her to the detention—”
Suddenly, Jody was inches from Callan, her face close to his, her eyes a brilliant crimson. “I claim blood rights. Touch her and I will drain you, Wolf.”
Callan growled. The air around Dasha’s body shimmered like heat waves over blacktop, and in her place stood a huge black-and-brown wolf, lips drawn back and gold eyes narrowed. Oh, this wasn’t good. Jody did something, Becca had no idea what, but Callan shuddered, his face contorting as if he’d been stabbed. Dasha emitted a high-pitched whine and slumped at Callan’s feet. Oh fuck. This was bad. And what the fuck were blood rights?
“Jody,” Becca said urgently. She wanted to touch her but wasn’t sure how aware the Vampire was of her presence. Jody’s expression vacillated between fury and desire. Oh crap. She’d seen that look before. Jody needed to feed, and now she had two Weres in her thrall. “Jody. Stop. They’re not going to hurt me. Let them go.”
Jody’s gaze slid from Callan to Becca, and the fire in her eyes struck Becca with such force her stomach clenched. Her skin flamed, and her breath caught in her throat. She stifled a moan. Jody’s need was so fierce Becca felt it in her own core. How could Jody stand it? “I’m fine. They’re not going to do anything to me. Now stop it. Whatever you’re doing to them, stop it.”
Dasha whimpered softly and Callan groaned. Jody’s eyes flared again, then she shuddered, and the Weres sagged backward. Dasha whined unhappily, and Callan cursed most inventively.
“A moment alone, please,” Jody said.
“Five minutes,” Callan snapped. “Then she leaves with a promise not to endanger the Alpha, or I take her.”
Jody grasped Becca’s arm and pulled her away. “You don’t seriously think you can threaten to expose the Were Alpha and just walk out, do you? With their Alpha in danger, the Weres will kill anyone they sense is a threat.”
“You look horrible,” Becca said. “What are blood rights?”
Jody’s mouth twitched. “Thank you, and nothing you need to worry about.”
“Says you.” Becca sighed. Choose your battles. Right. With Jody that’s all there was. “Why are you here. Is it Lara? Is she all right?”
“It’s too soon to tell. Did you hear what I just said? You should not be here.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Jody shook her head impatiently. “Nothing. Transitioning a newling is difficult. I’m fine.”
“What about Sylvan? Is she—”
“She’s alive, that’s all I can tell you.”
“Then why can’t I see her? Where is she?” Becca jammed her hands on her hips.
“I shouldn’t have let you witness the meeting last night. You wouldn’t have seen what you saw. You need to forget it.”
“Oh really? What do you expect me to do? Just forget someone tried to kill Sylvan Mir? It doesn’t matter who she is, that’s news. But she is who she is, and someone trying to assassinate the U.S. Councilor—”
Jody gripped Becca’s shoulders, her eyes hot flames. “You don’t know what you’re getting into here. We could be on the verge of war. You need to stay away from us. Away from Sylvan. Away from me.”
“Let go of me,” Becca snapped, jerking her shoulders free. “I’m not staying away from the story. If you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll find someone else who will.”
Jody’s face tightened. “I could compel you to do as I say. I could make you think what you witnessed was merely a dream.”
Becca’s heart turned to ice. “If you do that, I will hate you for the rest of my life.”
“You may end up feeling that way anyhow, but at least you would still be alive.”
“You forget I’m already part of this. Someone tipped me off about those sick girls. Someone wants me to know, wants the world to know. You’re going to need my help.”<
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“Why do you care?”
Becca struggled for words. Jody’s question resonated with something she’d never heard from her before. Bleak resignation. She much preferred the arrogance, but she couldn’t let herself be sidetracked by emotions that might not even be real. Jody could probably make her feel anything. “Someone almost killed Sylvan. Someone is doing something that’s killing those girls. I don’t believe those two things are random occurrences.”
“I forgot. You’re after the story.”
“Of course I am. I’m a reporter. That’s what I do. But—” But what? What could she say? How could she explain what she didn’t understand herself? Just a few days ago, the story had been everything. But now, now it was the individuals who mattered. Those nameless girls mattered. Sylvan mattered. So did Jody, damn her. Becca didn’t know how she felt about that, so she said nothing.
“I have to go,” Jody said. “I can’t leave Lara with Marissa—”
“Marissa? Marissa’s here?” Becca regretted the question as soon as she voiced it. Nothing like announcing she was jealous, which she wasn’t. Just because the attractive—all right, admit it, beautiful—doctor had a massive case of the hots for Jody and practically offered her a vein the instant she saw her didn’t matter to her at all. Not one tiny bit. “Good, you look like you need to feed.”
“She’s here for Lara.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not your concern. You need to learn to stay away from places you don’t belong.”
“I’ve heard that all my life,” Becca said, and the ice around her heart turned to stone. She’d been told way too many times she was the wrong sex, the wrong color, the wrong everything to let anyone or anything tell her what she could think or feel or do. “I don’t let anyone tell me where I belong. Least of all someone with something to hide.”
“Then you and I have nothing else to discuss. Good-bye, Ms. Land.”
The night was instantly cooler, emptier, as if some vital force had suddenly disappeared. Jody was gone, and Becca stopped herself from looking around for her. She wouldn’t see her. Jody was a master at disappearing. Just another reason not to give a damn about her. She strode to the vehicle where Dasha waited, thankfully no longer in wolf form. “I’m done here. For now.”
Chapter Five
The roar of a powerful engine shattered the predawn quiet, and Sophia Revnik rushed outside onto the wide flagstone porch of the sentries’ barracks. Vehicles had been rolling in and out of the Compound all night, but this one was different. The Rover was back. The Alpha and her centuri had returned. Sophia’s blood rushed as the heavy vehicle rumbled closer and the vibrations from its oversized wheels coursed through the ground and into the stones beneath her bare feet. She’d been trying to sleep and hadn’t been able to, not while Niki and the others were on a hunt. She couldn’t rest with injured in the Compound either. She was a medic, and even if she didn’t understand what was happening to Lara, she’d sensed the unrest in the Pack. One of their own was in danger. She’d waited to be called, choking dread filling her chest, but no word had come.
Sophia paced, every step stirring the queasy feeling in her stomach. Her wolf prowled with her. Flight. Fight. Tangle. Her instincts warred with her reason, and her body pulsated with need. She gripped the porch column and pulled the night into her chest. Her wolf clawed at her, tested her resolve, more restless than she’d been since the last awful heat. She shivered. The moon rode low, and the sky shimmered with an orange glow in the east. Almost dawn.
The Rover careened into the Compound’s central courtyard, and the doors flew open. Andrew, the twins, and Max jumped out. The muscles in Sophia’s throat closed, and a surge of adrenaline electrified her skin. Niki, where was Niki? She vaulted the railing onto the hard-packed dirt.
“Max, where’s—”
“There.” Max jerked his head toward the rear of the vehicle.
Finally, finally Niki leapt down—shirtless, sex-sheened, powerful and wild. Sophia breathed her in—earthy and rich, redolent with battle lust. Like the others, Niki wore only unbuttoned jeans. The sleek thin line of red pelt bisecting the lower portion of her etched abdominals drew Sophia’s gaze like a magnet. Niki’s scent deepened, pheromones flooded Sophia’s nostrils, and her sex clenched in answer. She felt herself get wet. She met Niki’s hot gaze, compelled to acknowledge her readiness by the thrum of need that had been building in her belly for hours. Wanting to signal her willingness. She struggled so often to contain her instincts, but not tonight. Tonight she wanted. Needed.
Niki’s eyes narrowed and a warning growl resonated in her chest. Sophia shuddered and looked away. Why should the rejection surprise her? Niki always refused to take her, even when she was in frenzy. If Sophia wasn’t so close to frenzy herself she’d admit it was better this way, but damn, it still hurt.
“Is everyone all right?” Sophia asked.
“All fine.” Niki braced her hands on her hips, taking Sophia in. She’d scented her long before the Rover stopped. Sunshine and saplings. Even in the semidark, Sophia’s shoulder-length platinum hair shimmered around her delicate features. Her full breasts beneath her white tank top were tight-nippled, and her eyes, normally deep indigo, glinted with chips of white diamonds. Niki’s clitoris jumped and her stomach cramped. Sophia never tangled with Weres more dominant than her, venting her sex frenzy with beta Weres unlikely to incite a mate bond. Sophia was a healer, not a killer. She deserved the one thing Niki could not give her. Tenderness.
“Any word of Lara?” Niki winced inwardly at the harshness of her tone, but hiding her need when it rode her so hard had her wolf straining at her throat. She ached to be grounded in Pack. She needed the touch of another wolf now more than ever. Struggling with Drake, submitting to her, had flooded her with hormones. Her skin burned, and the pressure in her depths made her crazy to release. She didn’t dare risk going any closer to Sophia. Sophia would tangle with her, willingly by the intensity of her scent, and Niki didn’t want that. Her need, not Sophia’s. No. That’s not the way she wanted it. She rubbed her abdomen, trying to dull the throbbing that grew by the second.
“Sophia?” Niki said. “How’s Lara? Did the Vampire take care of her?”
Sophia seemed not to have heard, her gaze following the movement of Niki’s hand as she rubbed her stomach.
“Niki, let me—”
“No,” Niki growled. She was too close to the edge to be around Sophia now. Sophia would come to her at any second, and she would not be able to resist. Her canines throbbed and her claws shot out. She backed up a step. Sophia slipped closer. “No!”
“Niki,” Sophia murmured, “you need—”
“I need to see Lara.” She took another step back. In the span of a few days since Sylvan had taken a mate, the order of the Pack had shifted, and the changes had left her feeling displaced and impotent. Now one of her closest Packmates might be dying. She wanted to rip and tear her enemies to shreds, and she wanted to fuck. She was so close to the edge her wolf prowled her skin.
“The Vampire is with her and won’t let anyone in,” Sophia said.
“She’ll let me in,” Niki snarled. She didn’t want Jody Gates in the Compound, even if the Vampire detective had come to look after Lara. Gates might have saved Lara’s life by offering her blood while Lara’s heart healed, but now…now Lara would probably turn—and be what? Part Were, part Vampire? Whatever she was, to survive she’d need Gates, a Vampire Niki did not trust. Niki’s breath caught, remembering what had happened after the detective had become so depleted feeding Lara. Gates had been in danger of dying herself. To keep the Alpha, badly wounded, from giving her own blood to revive the Vampire, Niki had torn open her own jugular and let Gates feed from her instead. The erogenous chemicals in the Vampire’s bite had made her orgasm. Instantly, continuously, releasing time after time until she was hollowed out and empty. The thought of baring her neck to the Vampire filled her with loathing, but her glands swelled in anticipat
ion.
“I have to go,” Niki said.
“Your call is so strong,” Sophia said. “It’s all right, Niki. I wan—”
“You don’t want this.” Niki wouldn’t use her, even if the want was mutual. She hungered for more than pleasure, she craved the ecstasy, the mindless oblivion of a Vampire’s bite. “And neither do I.”
“Niki—”
“No.” Niki wrenched her gaze away from Sophia, bleeding from the pain in Sophia’s eyes, and loped away.
Gray strained in her shackles, the rough surface of the cinder-block wall scraping her bare back. She counted the approaching footfalls, ignoring the burn and the wet, thick blood pooling in the hollow at the base of her spine. Three men, one light and quick, one stumbling, one heavy and steady. She sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring at the acrid odor of sick sweat, cigarette smoke, and testosterone excitement. Her six-by-six cell was windowless, but the pull of the moon was inexorable, calling to her even in the dark, dank confines of her prison. Not yet sunrise. Early for the first test of the day.
Deep within the fabric of her being, her wolf paced restlessly. She never rested anymore. The weeks of captivity, the constant torture, the unrelenting hunger kept her close to the surface. Gray had barely learned to shift at will before the humans with hoods hiding their faces had caught her running alone in the forest and had thrown nets of woven silver and steel over her, dragging her from Pack land to this place. Once, shifting had been her greatest joy. Now she struggled not to. She wouldn’t let them have her wolf—it was bad enough they forced her to give them her victus. She would die before she would surrender her wolf to their probes and machines.
The thin light from the naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling in the hall outside her cell barely reached the back wall where she was shackled. The last of the light disappeared as the guards approached her cell, and she drew herself up on shaking legs. When had they last brought any food? She hadn’t shifted, hadn’t run in weeks. She was dying, but she would not let them see her weakness. Then the fingers of light crept back into the cell, and the guards moved on. They had come for Katya, not her.
