by Nalini Singh
“Yes?”
“Can you shield me?”
Her eyes widened. “How are you still standing?” She immediately pushed a shield around his mind to block out her own broadcast. “I was hoping you were too far away.” And that he’d forgive her if he caught the edge of it—she’d had to make certain she caught the assailants in the truck so they couldn’t hurt him while he was pinned down.
“I knew it was you,” Dorian said and, voice suddenly far less strained, gave her a wave. “And it was nothing like what these fuckers are apparently feeling. I’m guessing the fact you’re connected to me through our web has something to do with it.”
“I’ll come—”
“No, stay inside the car. Keep the squirt company and tell her Dori says hello.” As she watched, he nudged a fallen assailant with the foot of his injured leg. “These bastards are all down and fucked.” He sounded pleased by that. “How long can you keep it up? Should I incapacitate?” He had a gun in hand, aimed it at a pair of kneecaps as she watched.
Sweat broke out over Sascha’s spine as she thought about what she’d done and what Dorian was asking her. But she had to see this through—the threat to Naya and to Dorian remained. “I can keep it up until help arrives.” It was the first burst that took the most energy. Though she couldn’t keep up the pulse forever, or even an hour, she knew she wouldn’t need to. “Is Lucas on his way?”
“Yes,” Dorian replied. “With half the pack—from every direction.”
That proved to not be too much of an exaggeration. First, however, came multiple humans who lived in the area and who wanted to render assistance. They’d staggered out despite catching the edge of Sascha’s blast. When she quickly pulled back the radius, belatedly realizing the extent of her reach, they ran inside their homes and raced back out with rope to help tie up the assault team.
Afterward, Sascha heard that those humans had begun calling in to DarkRiver the instant they’d seen the deliberate collision. At that point, they hadn’t even realized the man inside the crushed vehicle was a leopard—they’d simply seen danger and reached for DarkRiver.
It said a lot about what the pack had become to this city.
The human residents had helped tie up three of the downed attackers when DarkRiver descended on the scene. So did Drew and Indigo. The SnowDancer couple had been in the city when they’d received the emergency alert through DarkRiver’s network of local contacts.
Teijan also arrived on a high-speed jetcycle, as did Max Shannon. Sascha hadn’t even known the ex-cop—and Sophia Russo’s husband—was in the alert network, though she should have. He was Nikita’s security chief, and for all Nikita’s flaws, she’d already proven she’d protect her child and grandchild.
“We’re fine.” She scrambled out of the car when Lucas ran to them. She’d stayed locked inside until then, both so Dorian wouldn’t worry when he had other matters to handle and so she could keep tailoring her broadcast to keep it clear of any rescuers. “We’re fine,” she repeated as his arms locked around her.
“Naya?”
“She didn’t hear or see anything. Just got a little worried about Dorian.” Her heart thumped against her rib cage, her body starting to shake. “He’s hurt.”
“Jason’s doing some first aid.” Pulling back so he could scan her for injuries, Lucas said, “After that, he’ll take Dorian straight to an ER for deep scans to ensure there are no internal injuries. Tamsyn’s been alerted.”
“Papa!”
Lucas flexed his fisted hand and took a deep, steadying breath. Then, one hand firm around Sascha’s, he leaned down to smile at Naya through the open driver’s side door. “Hello, princess. What are you doing? I thought you were heading home?”
Naya’s response was earnest and largely incomprehensible.
“Yes,” Lucas said, clearly responding more to her tone than her words. “Papa’s going to take care of it. Don’t worry.”
Naya smiled.
Lucas reached in and over to tap her on the nose before rising to his full height beside the car again. “I’ll drive you home.” It was a growl, his panther prowling behind his eyes. “Don’t argue, all right?”
“I won’t.” Sascha’s throat was dry. Her muscles felt like jelly all at once. She needed to have him close as much as he needed to be close. But before she could surrender to the need to bury herself in her mate’s arms, there was one other thing she had to do. “I have to see Dorian.”
“Go.” Lucas stayed by the car, so Naya could see and hear him as he oversaw the retrieval operation.
While Sascha had stopped her broadcast the instant there were enough people on scene to disarm and restrain the attackers, the mercenaries remained disoriented and shaky on their feet as they were thrown into DarkRiver vehicles for transport. Dorian, meanwhile, was seated in the very back of an SUV, the trunk door lifted to block out the sun while Jason patched him up.
Tamsyn had taken the young male on as an assistant after he showed an interest in studying medicine. He didn’t have a changeling healing ability but that didn’t matter if he proved himself suited to be a medic. Another doctor in the pack would take the weight off Tamsyn when it came to a number of injuries that didn’t need her specialist attention.
The interesting thing was that Jason showed no inclination to go roaming anytime soon. It was similar behavior to that of most healers—they loved being near pack too much. If they did travel, it was for short bursts only.
“Even though he doesn’t have the healing ability,” Tamsyn had told Sascha, “I think he’s a healer at heart; he’s just going to practice the drive a different way. His grades are more than good enough to get him into medical school.”
Calm and collected, the twenty-one-year-old had stopped the blood flowing from Dorian’s head wound. He hadn’t, however, had the chance to wipe away the rust red that had already run down the side of Dorian’s face. He was too busy checking the sentinel for broken bones and internal injuries using a handheld scanner.
Dorian already had visible heavy bruising on one side of his face and no doubt his body. The colors were vivid against the surfer-gold of his skin. And his white-blond hair, it was matted dark red on the side with the wound.
“Dorian.” Close to tears, she touched her fingers to the undamaged side of the sentinel’s face.
Taking hold of her hand, he pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’m fine, Sascha darling. A little busted up, but that was those bastards and that fucking goddamn truck. You can’t scare me.”
Sascha thought of the pulse she’d sent out, knew it must’ve been horrible. And still he’d fought his way out in an effort to protect her and Naya. “Can I make it up to you?”
A curious look that was so feline, she didn’t need his eyes to change to know she was talking to the cat now. “Go for it.”
He gave a startled laugh as she blanketed him in a wave of innocent happiness that tasted of all the pups and cubs that Sascha knew. “Damn, that’s good shit.” His grin was beautiful. “You could make a fortune charging for a hit.”
Having satisfied himself the sentinel wasn’t bleeding inside, Jason glanced up from taping Dorian’s ankle. “I want some.”
Sascha poured the same sensations over the younger male.
“Whoa!” He grinned, too, held up a hand. She high-fived it before looking guiltily back at Dorian.
The sentinel crooked a finger and, when she leaned in close, he dropped a soft kiss on her lips. The affectionate touch of one of her favorite packmates, it told her he really was all right. “I’m tough,” he whispered. “Go pet Lucas. He’s freaked out.”
Still shaky inside, she left Dorian and Jason with another wave of childish joy, so pure and unfettered that it made both men collapse into laughter once more. Then she walked straight back into Lucas’s arms. He held her trembling form until she could breathe again. At which point, she st
roked her hands down the viciously taut muscles of his back.
“I’m unharmed and so is our daughter,” she whispered in a subvocal tone, aware of the sharp little ears in the car. “We’re not easy prey.”
“Damn straight you’re not.” A hard kiss, his claws brushing her hair and skin as he cupped her face with one hand. “Come on, mate. Let’s get our cub home—we have enough people here we can trust to keep us updated.”
Chapter 19
IT WAS CLAY who called them with that update, the leopard having taken charge of the scene after Lucas’s departure. They’d reached the aerie in the interim. Leaving Naya busy with her play blocks, the two of them walked out onto the balcony to talk to Clay. Lucas answered the call on visual and put the sentinel on speaker at a volume Sascha could hear but that wouldn’t reach Naya.
“It’s the same mercenary team the Rats warned us about,” Clay said. “We confirmed their identity using various back channels courtesy of Nikita’s tentacles.”
Sascha had already received a call from Max Shannon. He’d patched her through to Nikita, who’d wanted to see firsthand that Sascha and Naya were all right. Sascha had heard the ruthless tone in her mother’s voice, known that had Nikita not been as weak as she was right now, she’d have ripped the truth from the mercenaries’ minds. The fact that they’d have been drooling vegetables afterward wouldn’t have bothered her in the least.
“How the fuck did they stay under this long?” Lucas asked as Sascha’s gut went cold.
Perhaps she and her mother weren’t that different after all.
“They’re a crack team. They come in and set up, then don’t move until the timing is perfect. Makes them almost impossible to catch if you don’t get them the instant they enter.”
“It sounds like they’re talking.” Fine tremors started to race once more over Sascha’s skin.
The last word of her statement broke.
Lucas squeezed her nape. “Remember,” he murmured so low only she could hear, “you did what you did to protect our cub. Those bastards would’ve taken her, hurt her.”
Sascha gave a jagged nod as, on the phone, Clay said, “I got one of them to talk pretty damn fast by threatening him with what happened out on the road.” An edge of amusement in the sentinel’s voice.
“I would never torture anyone,” Sascha blurted out, her stomach churning at the idea of it.
“I know that, Sascha,” Clay said with unexpected gentleness. “The assholes don’t.”
His immediate agreement eased her sudden fear that her packmates would see her as a monster now that they knew what she could do.
“They were aware of DarkRiver’s strength before they took the job,” Clay continued, “but the money on the table was enough to make up for the risk. They were totally focused on Dorian as the threat, expected Sascha to be a soft target.”
Lucas’s furious growl reverberated through her bones. “Psy?” he snarled as she petted him to calm as he’d earlier done for her.
“Four Psy and three changelings,” Clay replied. “Lion, if you can believe it. Not strong dominants or we’d never have gotten the truth out of them so quickly, but strong enough.”
“Lion?” Lucas shook his head.
Seeing Sascha’s confusion, he said, “Lions are all about family, all about building a pride and sticking with it, more so than any other feline changelings in the world. Mercenary work is for loners.”
“Kicker is that these three are family,” Clay added. “Brother and two sisters.” The sentinel’s voice turned harsh on his next words. “They were hired to kidnap Naya. Sascha was disposable, but Naya was to be taken alive or they wouldn’t get the second half of their fee.”
Fury roared through Sascha, pushing aside any lingering echoes of guilt. She felt the same rage in Lucas. His grip threatened to crack the phone. “Who was the client?”
“All anonymous, with the drop-off to be arranged once they had Naya.” Clay’s eyes glittered, hard and feral. “But the lioness who’s the leader of the mercenaries isn’t stupid. She got her electronics person—her younger brother—to run a trace. Brother managed to link the first half of the money transfer back to a small company held by an ocelot pack out of southern Texas: SkyElm.”
Sascha frowned, unable to imagine why a pack of the smaller feline changelings, whose markings were also black on gold, would want to attack DarkRiver.
Beside her, Lucas’s claws sliced out, but his voice was rational. “We ever have any dealings with them?”
“Mercy was with me the entire time.” Clay tapped his ear to indicate how Mercy had attended the interrogation. “She ran the data as I got it and says we’ve never had any real contact with this pack. From what she was able to dig up, they’re well regarded in their region, though they’re not the strongest by a long shot. And they’re part of Trinity.” Clay’s voice took on the harsh edge of a growl. “It makes no sense unless it’s a setup, or—”
“—or they’re in the Consortium, too,” Sascha completed softly, because changelings weren’t a unanimous group by any measure. Each pack made up its own mind about any political alliances. Given how well the Consortium had almost pulled off its earlier attempts to foment trouble between all three races, as well as their success in snatching BlackSea’s most vulnerable swimmers, they undoubtedly had changeling members: advisers who were betraying their own people for power and profit.
“Rip the evidence apart,” Lucas growled, then proved his mind remained icily clear despite his fury. “There may be a deeper game in play.”
“What?” Clay swore the instant after he spoke. “The Consortium . . . or, hell, Ming LeBon may be trying to enrage us enough to take out SkyElm. Why?”
“To mess up Trinity, to make us the bad guys? Who the fuck knows? Use whoever you need to tear this down to the bones—and tap Nikita’s intel system through Max.” Lucas fisted his hand in Sascha’s hair. “We don’t make any moves until we know for certain. DarkRiver is not about to be played by a bunch of power-hungry bastards.”
PART 2
Chapter 20
SIENNA COULDN’T BELIEVE what Hawke had done. She simply couldn’t believe it! She’d just returned to the SnowDancer den after lunch with Kit and had intended to update Hawke on what the young soldier had told her about the mood of the city in the aftermath of Naya’s attempted kidnapping the previous day.
Kit had also shared some personal news in confidence, but he hadn’t asked her to keep it from Hawke. People didn’t expect mates to keep secrets from each other. And Sienna knew Hawke wouldn’t say a word if she told him it couldn’t go any further. In truth, she’d been planning to unload on him, because while she was happy for Kit, the leopard was one of her closest friends and she felt a selfish desire to tell him to delay things a little longer.
Only her mate wasn’t here for her to talk to. He’d left her a message on their private comm, inside their quarters. A message. “I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, stalking down the den corridor near the infirmary. “I’m going to wring His Alphaness’s neck, then I’m going to kick his—”
She halted before she slammed into her uncle Walker’s chest. “I have to go,” she said, trying to swing around him.
He stopped her by the simple expedient of putting a single hand on her upper arm. Sienna froze. She would never disrespect the man who was her father in every way that mattered. “Uncle Walker, I need to leave,” she said, her skin vibrating with her urgency. “Hawke’s gone out to confront Ming!”
“It’s a business meeting,” Walker said.
Sienna sucked in a breath. “You knew?” Betrayal was a slap across her face. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Even though she was furious with Hawke, she could understand his boneheaded behavior. Her alpha mate was so protective of her that, sometimes, he acted before he thought. And when it came to Ming LeBon, he was more feral wolf than civilized man. Tha
t didn’t excuse what he’d done, but it at least made sense.
But for her uncle to go along with it when he knew exactly how good Sienna was at taking care of herself? She stared uncomprehendingly at the planes of his face, his expression calm in the face of her rage.
“Hawke is incapable of thinking clearly with you anywhere near Ming.” Walker held her gaze with the unusual light green of his. “But you would’ve insisted on going with him.”
“Of course I would’ve insisted!” Sienna fisted her hands. “Ming is a combat telepath!” He could smash Hawke’s natural shields open with far less effort than almost any other Tp on the planet, kill him within seconds.
“Judd’s with him.”
Relief and betrayal punched into her in equal measures. “Him, too?” she demanded. “Was I the only adult Lauren who wasn’t informed of Hawke’s plans?”
Walker closed both hands around her upper shoulders, held her still when she would’ve broken away. “Hawke did this with a cool head, Sienna.” The faintest hint of a smile. “Cool enough to know it’d be better to ask for forgiveness than to convince you of the sense of his plan.”
“Don’t patronize me, Uncle Walker!” It roared out of her. “I’m not a child anymore! I’m his mate.”
Walker looked at her for a long moment, long enough that she started to want to fidget. But instead of wearing her down in that way only he could do, he inclined his head. “Yes,” he said. “Hawke should’ve spoken to you. As for Judd and me”—his expression shifted, revealing a tenderness that destroyed her—“we can’t help ourselves. You’re a piece of our heart.”
All her anger crumbled.
Falling into his arms, she let his warmth and love and strength surround her, ground her, her face pressed to the smoky blue of his shirt, her eyes hot. Walker had been the calm anchor in the ugly storm of her childhood after her mother died, the one person she’d known she could count on even when she was caught in a monster’s grip. He was the one who’d made the Laurens into a family, refusing to let go no matter what. Never once had he betrayed her.
