Burned

by Dean Murray

  "Yeah. That's the thing, Alec. We've been watching for the right chance to throw our weight behind the rebellion, but haven't seen anyone come along who had a snowflake's chance of succeeding—until you. When I promised to come help you, I wasn't promising as Shawn the no-account rebel. That operation had my dad's full approval. I was going to bring the cream of our fighting strength down there to help bust Agony out—everyone who we thought was trustworthy."

  "Everyone who was trustworthy, or everyone he figured he could disavow if things went badly?"

  "Both. Dad has been quietly shuffling things around inside of the pack since I manifested my hybrid form. He's got a lot of the paper tigers still reporting to him, but most of the best, most dependable hybrids—the ones who have an ax to grind with the Coun'hij—all report to me in some form or fashion."

  "You ever wonder if your dad is just setting you up, Shawn? After all, it wouldn't be the first time that an alpha decided to eliminate his competition via external means."

  "No, Alec, the thought never even crosses my mind. My dad is many things, and he can be a real bastard when the circumstances call for it, but I've never doubted his loyalty to the crown or his love for me. This is the real thing."

  A spark of anger started growing inside of me. Everything Shawn said was seductive. It was powerfully convincing precisely because it was exactly what I wanted to hear. Two years ago it would have worked on me just like Shawn and Ulrich had planned, but I'd been through too much—seen too many terrible things—since then.

  I thought I had the spark under control, but then my beast got behind the emotion and pushed. The spark exploded into a bonfire and my claws punched into the wall next to Shawn's head.

  "Stop lying to me, Shawn. If any of what you've just told me were true, you wouldn't have left me hanging in the wind down in New Mexico. Agony died because you weren't there to back my play."

  I'd been watching Dax and Vicki out of the corner of my eye. I'd expected them to shift forms and come crashing toward me. When you really got down to it, I'd been expecting Shawn to shift forms and do his best to rip my throat out, but nobody was behaving like they should have.

  Dax started forward, but Vicki grabbed his arm before he could take more than a step. She didn't look happy about it, but she also hadn't attacked me. Out of anyone there, she was the last one I'd been expecting to pour oil on troubled waters.

  Even odder, Shawn hadn't shifted. He wasn't even looking at me. He was looking at Vicki like she was his personal totem.

  "You had a leak, Alec. I don't know who it is, or why they sold you out, but the Coun'hij knew that an operation was going down. You kept things compartmentalized, so we didn't know that you had a second group down there to help you. We thought our pulling back would be enough to convince you to call off the rescue. If we'd known that you had an entire other force in reserve, we would have shown up and helped out."

  "I didn't have another force in reserve. That was all Dream Stealer—I didn't even know that he was going to be there. We went forward because we had access to a hybrid with an ability we figured would let us carry the day. We were right—at least until Brandon showed up. I wasn't compartmentalizing, I just didn't know what was going on. That's our biggest problem, we aren't a unified force. We're nothing more than a bunch of little fiefdoms who can't even agree to work together half the time."

  Shawn ran his hand through his hair. "Yeah. I wish you'd told me about this hybrid with the game-changing ability. Maybe that would have been enough. You're right though. If we had one key leader who called all of the shots then we'd stand a heck of a lot better chance of winning this war."

  I gave him a sardonic grin. "Are you and your dad ready to subordinate yourselves to someone else?"

  "No—at least not yet—which means that we're part of the problem."

  I looked around the room we were standing in, noting the thick carpet and expensive leather upholstery. I'd seen more luxury in a few rooms back at the estate, but not many. In some ways Shawn and I were practically the same person, and in others we were as different as night and day.

  We'd both grown up groomed for leadership, both grown up with silver spoons in our mouths and a knowledge that money was never going to be in short supply. We both apparently wanted the Coun'hij overthrown, but that was where the similarities ended.

  Shawn had a good relationship with his father, and had been trusted enough that Ulrich had given him the cash necessary to buy one of the hottest clubs in Chicago and outfit it in whatever style he wanted.

  I'd had to steal my billions, and if my father and I ever saw each other again, one of us wouldn't walk away from the encounter. I took a deep breath and realized that there was one more similarity.

  "Neither am I. I guess that means I'm part of the problem too."

  Shawn looked like he wasn't sure whether or not it was okay for him to agree with me. He settled for just shrugging.

  "What you said earlier about coming back here and ripping my heart out if I was trying to screw you over. That wasn't just an idle threat, was it? You really thought that you had a chance of making good on your promise."

  The sudden change of topics caught me off guard. I nodded before I'd had a chance to think through my response.

  "Yeah, I wasn't just talking to hear the sound of my voice. Why?"

  It was a risk. I hadn't come right out and told him that I'd manifested an ability, but the implication was there.

  "I…I can't tell you why I'm asking, Alec. All I can say is that the answer is important."

  He was…not lying exactly, but definitely holding something important back. Any thought I'd had about trusting him with my secret evaporated.

  "Let's just say that I now have access to…assets who you aren't prepared to deal with. Assets who are willing to accept me as the leader of the rebellion."

  It was a lie and we both knew it, but that was the point. I'd just sent exactly the message I'd wanted to send to him. I'd told him that I had someone who made me a player, and I'd lied, so he knew that there was something else going on, something that I wasn't willing to share with him.

  Shawn met my gaze for several seconds and then nodded. "If that's really the case, then maybe it's time I talk to my dad about changing our tune. If you have the ability to get to me then maybe you really are the best man for the job."

  I kept the smile I was feeling off of my face, but it was hard.

  "You didn't invite me here for a bunch of posturing, Shawn. You're either a better liar than I think you are, or you're telling the truth. What do you want?"

  "It's the Tucson pack, Alec. Jaclyn Annikov and all of her people aren't going to last the week unless someone does something."

  Chapter 2

  Adriana Paige

  Rest Easy Hotel

  Arcadia, Florida

  I'd spent too much time in bed over the last few days, but I couldn't seem to bring myself to care—not even enough to get out of bed when I heard a knock at my door. I didn't particularly care who was out there waiting for me, but the fact that the door opened a second later told me everything I needed to know about my visitor.

  Nellie had been with Isaac's group for months now. She'd been one of the wolves who'd been working their way around the perimeter of the building while I'd been in the center…while my parents had been killed.

  She'd spent days stuck inside the bunker in Wyoming with all of the rest of us, but I hadn't gotten to know her very well until after the big…fight…in Minnesota. Taggart, Cindi, Tristan and I had split off from Isaac and his people within twenty-four hours of defeating the vampires.

  It had been a necessity—keeping that many people hidden from the Coun'hij while they were gathered together in one spot was the next best thing to impossible—but it had been more than that. I hadn't wanted to see anyone I didn't have to. Isaac, Heath, even Dominic, they had all been reminders of the fact that we'd failed my mom and dad. I'd brought all of my closest friends and we'd come loaded f
or bear, but in the end it hadn't been enough.

  We'd killed the vampires—Alec had killed the vampires—but it hadn't been enough to save the two people I owed everything to. If there'd been a way to go off completely by myself—without Taggart, Cindi and Tristan—I would have. Unfortunately there wasn't. Taggart was the one who had all of the cash, and I'd already had a very brutal crash course on just how dangerous the world actually was.

  He was right to refuse when I told him I wanted a hundred thousand dollars and time by myself, but it didn't make it any easier to hear. Once I knew I wasn't going to lose Taggart, I couldn't really refuse Cindi. She'd lost just as much as I had.

  Tristan just never gave me a chance to tell him no. He'd just always been there with his bags packed every time I was ready to leave. That was a pretty big accomplishment for someone who was barely to the point of getting around without a wheelchair, but it was more than that.

  Tristan had given up a lot to be there for Cindi and me. He was probably wanted by the police back home, and it was a virtual certainty that his parents had disowned him by now. He'd given up a billion-dollar inheritance and a promising career in football because he knew that we needed his help. He'd done it all without being asked.

  I couldn't turn him down—not even knowing that he was eventually going to break Cindi's heart. From what little I'd seen, he'd been great to her ever since Alec had rescued her from the vampires. He was attentive and sensitive—perfect in every way but one.

  He liked Cindi, but he liked me a lot more. He was going to cause her problems down the road, but I couldn't deal with the future right now. It was all I could do to deal with the present. If Tristan could help Cindi pull herself back together before he did something stupid that ruined everything between them then I was on board. Call me short-sighted, but it felt like the least of several evils.

  Somehow in all of the craziness of our departure from Minnesota, Nellie had managed to attach herself to our group. Isaac ran a much more democratic organization than most shape shifter alphas. He probably could have gotten away with ordering Nellie to leave us alone, but he wouldn't—not unless he was sure she was stepping over some kind of boundary.

  I would have said she was violating my privacy, but nobody asked me and Taggart was overjoyed to have someone else around who could help ride herd on his three human charges. Nellie was just a wolf—and therefore only a half-step up from a cocker spaniel in the preternatural pecking order—but she was still faster, stronger and more deadly than any human. Her presence meant that Taggart could feel safe closing his eyes when he needed to sleep. She might not be able to fight off all of the big bads out there, but she could at least hold them off for the few seconds it would take for Taggart to wake up and get into the fight.

  It was almost humorous to think of Taggart—the fearsome Dream Stealer— babysitting three damaged humans and a submissive wolf. He'd gone his own way for centuries, considered too violent to fit into any conventional pack, but somehow that had all changed over the last few months. He was the best protector anyone could have asked for.

  I knew that I was breaking his heart, that he was more and more concerned about how despondent I'd gotten, but I just couldn't bring myself to care. I slept fitfully when I slept at all—scared to death of going back into someone else's dreams—but I rarely got out of bed.

  Nellie was the only person who seemed to be able to cut through the storm clouds. She cared about me, but not so much that she wasn't willing to kick my butt a little when she felt like it was necessary. She was the one who made me eat when I wanted nothing more than to just starve to death. For a few days I'd almost thought she was going to get me back outside walking around and pretending that I was a normal human being.

  It was odd. I knew that Taggart cared about me, but his company never seemed to do anything to dull my anguish. Nellie on the other hand seemed to be able to buffer the worst of my pain simply by sitting next to me and holding my hand. Just having her around put a layer of gauze between me and my emotions.

  That had all changed somehow when we arrived in Florida. Days before that I'd become so sleep-deprived that I'd started having waking dreams—hallucinations really. They had always been disturbing, but in Florida I'd started seeing Alec in my dreams.

  That was the last straw for me. Intellectually I knew that Alec couldn't have known that the vampire leader had twenty tons of machinery suspended over my parents' heads when he'd come crashing into the center of the building and sucked away all of her energy. He'd been doing the best he could, and he'd saved the lives of Taggart, Isaac, Dom, and Heath. He'd even saved Cindi. He'd saved the lives of almost everyone I cared about, but all I could think about was the fact that he'd failed.

  He'd been the one who'd sent the machinery crashing down that had killed my parents.

  I tried to tell myself that it wasn't Alec I was seeing, but it didn't work. It was Alec and I knew it. He was older looking, and sterner, with unforgiving eyes, but it was him.

  I'd started out ignoring him—and the shadowy presences just outside my field of vision—but it didn't work. He didn't go away, didn't disappear to be replaced by some other hallucination. I was reaching the end of my rope.

  Ignoring the fake Alec hadn't worked, and at some point I was going to start yelling and screaming at him. Once that happened, Taggart was going to have no alternative but to sedate me. I could see it all bearing down on me, an unstoppable freight train, and I just couldn't bring myself to care enough to get off of the tracks.

  As it always did, Nellie's presence took away the smallest part of my anguish, but the effect never lasted for very long. It went away sooner than normal when I saw that she wasn't alone.

  There was a reason that I'd given her a key to my room, but not given one to Taggart. Our shared ritual of hot coco in the evenings had fallen by the wayside. Underneath all of the concern, Taggart's eyes had become too judgmental for me to spend time around him.

  "We have news, Adri. Alec has heard rumors that the Coun'hij is preparing to take out the Tucson pack."

  Taggart obviously wanted some kind of response from me, but I didn't give him one. He sighed and then continued.

  "I know you don't know anything about the Tucson pack, Adri, and I know that you don't want to be reminded about Alec right now, but those are real people out there. They have people who love them, and they're in terrible danger. If Alec's intel is right, the Coun'hij has decided to start purging dissident packs. They're starting with Tucson because they are small enough that Kaleb figures they can be eliminated in one fell swoop, but big—and strong—enough that it will send the right kind of message to anyone who's been thinking about declaring openly for the rebellion."

  "You're right, I don't know anything about the Tucson pack, and I don't want to. If you want to save them, then go ahead. Take Nellie, call up Isaac and Heath, and go meet up with Alec. You don't need me and I'll be better off without you."

  Taggart turned to Nellie. "Leave us."

  To her credit, Nellie looked like she wanted to argue with him. She cared about me every bit as much as he did, and she could see what was coming as well as I could. She wanted to tell him this was a bad idea, but arguing with a dominant—especially a dominant as strong as Taggart, one who was obviously just looking for a reason to let his anger off its leash—was a bad idea.

  Taggart waited until she was gone and then pulled a handgun out from the back of his waistband. It wasn't just any gun, it was my gun. It was the gun that I'd used to drive Brandon off, the gun I'd used to shoot vampires after…after Mom and Dad had been killed.

  That gun had been a promise of power, of never being defenseless again. It had been my own personal talisman, and it had all been a big lie. It had failed me. I'd stood there powerless, unable to move while my parents had been executed.

  He tossed my weapon on the bed. "Pick it up."

  "Go away."

  "This isn't you, Adri. The girl I knew wouldn't have let herself spend
twenty-three hours of every day in bed. The Adri I knew was a fighter. She was willing to go head to head with the most dangerous things out there in the darkness rather than just roll over and die."

  "That Adri was nothing more than an illusion, Taggart. I'm sorry that you had to find out this way, but it's better for you to find out now rather than later."

  "If that Adri wasn't real, then pick up that gun and end it. If you're not willing to fight then you're betraying your father—the man that I watched face death looking his killer in the eyes. More than that, you're betraying Isaac, Heath, Dominic and me. We all put our lives on the line for you—not your parents, you. We went up against something that still gives me nightmares because we cared about you and thought you were worth saving."

  I opened my mouth to tell him that I hadn't asked any of them to risk their lives, but I couldn't remember if that was true. It was all a big hazy mess of repressed memories. Everything from immediately before and immediately after my parent's death was too blurry to pick out anything useful from it.

  I could remember the instant when my parents had been crushed in perfect, painful detail, but everything else had faded away into nothing.

  The flare of anger I'd felt at Taggart's words was new. It wasn't one of the emotions that had taken me over since the fight. It wasn't safe. I looked at the gun lying on the bedspread, scant inches away from my fingers, and felt an overpowering urge to pick it up.

  Taggart wasn't done talking though. "Do you want to know the worst part? You've betrayed Alec, and that is a transgression I never thought I'd see you commit."

  "How dare you! How dare you mention his name to me. You of all people. You spent weeks telling me that he couldn't be trusted. First it was because of who his father was and then it was because he'd addicted Brindi to his touch. You had a hundred reasons why he was wrong for me."

  "Yes, and all of them were wrong. He—"

  "They were right! He killed my parents, Taggart. Don't you tell me to pick up that gun. If I pick it up I won't use it on myself. I'll hunt Alec down and use it on him."