Jace

by Sarah McCarty; Sarah McCarty

  Jace crept forward. Ahead of them, at the opposite edge of the field, four Sanctuary vamps searched. He leaned back against the tree, blending his energy into it, covering Miri’s with an additional layer. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about the scent of fresh blood clinging to her.

  If the wind shifts, I want you to run that way. He gave her a mental push to the northwest. Hide with Derek and the D’Nallys.

  It won’t be safe.

  Those were mean-looking vamps. His energy was depleted. He could take them out, give Miri time, but he wasn’t sure he’d survive it. It will by then.

  Miri’s instinctive No screamed through his mind. He cut it off. Yes. With me dead the weres will let you live. Derek will take you to the Circle J. My brothers will get our daughter.

  Again that shake of her head.

  I thought you wanted me dead.

  The patrol was moving on.

  Yes, but I wanted to be the one to kill you.

  His eyebrow raised. I’ll keep that in mind.

  The vampires passed the point where Derek had moved off. They hesitated. One man separated from the patrol, disappearing into the shadows. Miri watched. Jace felt her fear.

  Derek can handle him.

  She didn’t look convinced.

  Jace was more worried about the three men who still hunted the edge of the clearing. They weren’t bothering to hide their energy. It came off them in powerful waves, a statement in itself. The vampire inside him rose to the challenge, wanting to take them on; the human side considered caution; the mate side of him cared about only two things: keeping Miri safe and finding their daughter. An image teased his mind, coming from Miri to him. He closed it off before it could coalesce, the ache in his chest expanding. He didn’t want to know what his little girl looked like. Not yet. Not until he found her. Right now, Miri’s pain was all he could handle.

  The attempt at connection fizzled out. Behind it rose Miri’s pain at the rejection. Goddamn, he was a coward, but he’d just found out that Miri was alive and he had a daughter. He wanted his first knowledge of his little girl to be a good one, not a panicked sharing that only conjured dread.

  The patrol moved on. Lifting Miri, shadowing to the right, moving from energy field to energy field, Jace circled behind the patrol, scanning for others, wishing they had Raisa with them. She could sense any energy, even that blocked by the Sanctuary shield.

  Against his side, Miri stiffened. This echo of thought was too hard and fast to block. Sharing minds was going to take some getting used to.

  Raisa?

  He shook his head, unwilling to be distracted by an explanation. His transceiver was blank, no static, nothing; the way it had been since the walls had come down. He didn’t know if it was being monitored or being blocked, but he couldn’t chance using it. Couldn’t check to see if Derek was okay. Couldn’t call his brothers. Couldn’t rely on them to back him up. At least not today. And today was what he had to focus on. Today they needed to get clear of Sanctuary patrols and find shelter. At the south point of the clearing there was a separation in the rock. Barely narrow enough for a man to get through. He probed. There was an opening on the other side. He would have to put Miri down. That would leave her scent behind. She shivered. The odor of fresh blood tickled his nose. He checked her neck. It wasn’t coming from there. He glanced down. Bright red smeared her thighs.

  “Miri? Sweet?” he whispered against her ear.

  The glance she cast him was anguished. She shook her head and clamped her legs together. He knew it wasn’t that time of the month. Menstrual blood had its own unique scent; this was different. This spoke of injury, but also something else. The vamps were getting closer, the anguish in her eyes stronger. He didn’t have time to question her now. And her condition didn’t leave him any choice.

  He levitated her through the opening, sweat breaking out on his brow with the effort. He needed to feed, needed strength. As soon as he had her through the crevice to the cavern beyond he set her down, sliding in after her.

  What had felt like a clearing was actually a wide opening in the cavern. The opening high in the rock wall above gave it a sense of space. There was no back exit. They were trapped.

  “Shit.”

  It would have felt a lot better if he could have shouted it rather than breathed it.

  “Jace?”

  Miri swayed. He set her down, his hand over her stomach. “Why are you bleeding?”

  Again that anguished look. This time backed by fear.

  He sent his energy within, and while he struggled to come up with the answer to his second question he had the answer to the first. Miscarriage.

  “You were pregnant?”

  She swallowed. Her expression went completely blank, but the razor-sharp edge of her fear sliced over his nerve endings. And then he had the answer to his first question. Were males were very territorial. There were some instances that triggered their primitive instincts and they could go into a killing rage. Circumstances like evidence their mate had slept with another. Cupping Miri’s chin in his hand, Jace lifted her face. “I asked you a question.”

  She licked her lips and seemed to stop breathing altogether. Her hand slipped behind her back.

  “Have you gone all quiet because you think hearing you were pregnant by someone other than me is going to upset my delicate sensibilities?”

  She blinked, narrowed her gaze, and then nodded. He eased her up, reaching over and removing the rock from her grip. “I’m not pack, Miri.” He set it aside. “I don’t go loco just because I’m pissed.”

  “What do you do?”

  Lingering damage in her throat hoarsened the whispered query. He stroked his thumb across her voice box. “I get furious and scared.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Why scared?”

  He pressed against her abdomen. “I want the bleeding stopped.”

  “It’s not like I can make it stop.”

  “But I can.” It would cost him more energy than was safe, but he hadn’t found her just to let her bleed to death. He pressed with his fingers, struggling to find the path to the wound, reaching inside, locating it through the heat. He found the tear inside and frowned. It had a familiar feel. Like a wound from a knife or a gouge from…

  This time he bit off a swear word. Abortion. Her baby had been aborted.

  He pulled her against him, pressing his lips to her hair. “Ah, Miri, I’m sorry. So very sorry.”

  Her tears wet his shirt as he healed the wound. Her fingers dug into his forearm. “It wasn’t yours.”

  He drew back to see her expression. And wished he hadn’t. Pain, brilliant and cutting, glimmered among the shattered edges of her control.

  “I know. I can do the math.” A fresh tear hovered on her lash. He watched it swell, then caught it before it could fall on his thumb, rubbing it between his fingers until it was gone. If only he could remove the memories of the last year so easily. “But it was yours, and I’m sorry.”

  She blinked uncomprehendingly, as if he spoke a foreign language. Her mouth opened, closed. On the next attempt she found her voice. “You left me, our daughter. You left me and they—” She bit off whatever she was going to say. Her arms wrapped around her torso. She finished the brief outburst with the same abruptness with which she’d begun. “You left.”

  The biggest crime a were could commit against a mate. “Listen to me, Miri.”

  The order fell on deaf ears. She struggled out of his arms. “I can’t.”

  Jace grabbed her hand, tugging her back. “You have to.”

  Her chin came up and the gold in her eyes grew more pronounced, seeming to light them from within. “No, I don’t. Not now. Not ever.”

  She had another think coming if she thought he was going to leave that subject standing between them forever. He could, however, drop it for now. “Fine, but there is something we do need to talk about.”

  She seemed to almost pull within herself, her eyes becoming as blank as her expres
sion. If the moisture of her tear hadn’t lingered on his fingers, he might have been fooled into thinking she was calm. She was a very strong woman, but beneath her outer mask, he could sense her control splintering, piece by piece, layer by layer. He didn’t wanted to see her shatter, but he had to know. “Do you know where our child is?”

  Her lids lowered. Her lips firmed. And she didn’t answer. He cupped her cheek in his hand, running his thumb along her lower lip, pulling it away from the edge of her teeth. “I can take the information from your mind.”

  That chin came up another notch. The golden-brown eyes flared with wolf rage. “So why don’t you?”

  Because it would hurt her. “I will if you force me to.”

  She shrugged as if she didn’t care. “It won’t be the first time I’ve been forced.”

  More blame at his feet. “You have to trust someone, Miri, and right now, I’m all you’ve got.”

  YES, he was. Miri stared up at Jace. Hating him for looking so much like she remembered—so strong, so in control, so damn unchanged—as if the last year that had done so much to her had passed him by. Reinforcing her growing conviction that she’d done this to herself—to her daughter—by mating outside pack approval, and now she had only him to trust to make it right. “I should never have trusted you.”

  He didn’t flinch or give any sign that her words hurt. “But you did. You did even more than that. You chose me for your mate.”

  She felt her eyelashes flicker. “Mating is not a choice.”

  “And neither is accepting my help now.”

  She pushed his hand away from her stomach. God, she wished she could say she didn’t need him. Her daughter’s face flashed before her, tiny little features, all red from the stress of childbirth. She’d only seen her for a brief few minutes. Long enough to know she had black hair like hers, the changeable between gray and blue hazel eyes like her father’s, and the sweetest little expression. She’d only had that brief time before sending her off with strangers, out in the human world, hoping she could hide in plain sight. Hoping her ancestry wouldn’t show before she could get help for her. “There’s nothing saying I have to like it.”

  His thumb pressed on her lower lip, sliding inside. His taste flooded her mouth. As if her very soul had been starving for this moment. The hunger rose.

  “No, there isn’t.”

  Against her will, her tongue touched his skin. The inner cry of bliss rolled through her. Her lids dropped as she shuddered. Cells that had lain dormant, parts of her she thought long past the point of demise, rose and screamed in happiness. Everything in her said to lean in to Jace, hand him her cares, her worries, the responsibility for their daughter. Fall into his arms and just let him hold her until all the trauma of the last year went away. She shoved at his hold. “Let me go.”

  He did, getting to this feet with that smooth grace that used to make her heart flutter. She was used to coordinated men, but Jace moved differently from weres. There was a lightness to his movement that made her think of cats rather than canines. From this angle, he looked so much bigger, so much more lethal. So damn invincible.

  “I’m going to feed.”

  “There are patrols all over the place.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  Good God, he was going to feed from the Sanctuary! “You’ll be killed!”

  “Then that should save you some trouble.”

  “But it won’t save our daughter.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to pray I live a bit longer.”

  She had been. Every day since she’d met him, she’d prayed for that. Even after she’d been taken and it had become clear that rescue wasn’t imminent, she’d prayed until she’d been ashamed of herself for clinging to hope. “I guess I will.”

  “Soon you’re going to go through conversion. We can’t stay here and I’m too weak as I am to get you to a safe place. I need to feed.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  His gaze took in her appearance. She felt every new imperfection, every mark left on her from the last year. “You’re the only thing that could.”

  She tried a different tactic, unwilling to just let him go out there into danger. “I’m a were. Weres don’t change.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  She didn’t have an answer.

  He tucked her back against a far wall. “That’s what I thought. The way I see it, there has to be something more than just leadership succession and pack hierarchy that has weres stressing about their women mating with vampires, and whatever it is, I don’t want you exposed and vulnerable when it occurs.”

  Great. More trouble. Stress drove her talons into her palms. “I could have done without that piece of knowledge.”

  “I imagine you could, but you wanted to know.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He moved toward the entrance. “Well, that’s what happens when you argue. All kinds of unpleasant things get brought up.”

  How had she forgotten how irking his sense of humor could be?

  He looked back over his shoulder. “You seem to have forgotten a lot of things.”

  He’d read her mind. She’d heard that happened between mated vampires and weres, much easier than the practiced links some weres could make. It wasn’t at all convenient to know it was working that way between them. Not now. “Not on purpose.”

  “You sure?”

  No, she wasn’t. She folded her arms across her chest.

  A smile tucked into the creases around his eyes. “You can get back to me with that answer.”

  It was a rhetorical statement. She found herself nodding anyway. Damn, was she really that programmed?

  The hint of a smile had slipped to a frown by the time Jace got to the opening. His energy reached out and pushed against her, a mental order to stay put that he backed with a low verbal order. “Remember, if I don’t return stay put until just before night and then head to the D’Nallys’.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to stay here?”

  He cut her a glance. “You’re not a day walker anymore. Leave now and the sun will turn you into a crispy critter before you make it halfway anywhere.”

  He disappeared through the opening.

  You’re not a day walker anymore.

  He seemed awfully sure of that. It could be a trick to make her stay put, but Miri didn’t think so. One thing about Jace: he never lied about important things. Just always delivered the blunt, unvarnished truth no matter how much it hurt.

  She placed her hand over her abdomen. Inside, she could feel the lingering heat of his healing. And beneath it, a disturbance that shouldn’t be there. She closed her eyes and focused inward, trying to identify the source, but there wasn’t just one spot. The discord was more generalized than localized. She spread her fingers wide in an attempt to encompass the whole of what was happening. Understanding was slow in coming, but when it did, she had to sit down. She was Jace Johnson’s mate. And it was changing her.

  JACE slipped back into the crevice, energy vibrating within him. Sanctuary vamps might be on the wrong side of right, but they had potent blood. They also had vindictive natures, and it wasn’t going to take the patrols long to find the bodies of the two men he’d fought and then fed from. He needed to get Miri out of here.

  Miri.

  He called mentally again. Nothing. The same nothing he’d run up against every time he’d probed for her. Either the woman had learned to block him or she was in trouble. As much as he wanted to believe the former because it would mean she was safe, Miri was too smart a woman to endanger them all with a tantrum.

  As soon as he entered the cavern, Jace knew Miri was in trouble. She lay curled on the ground, hands over her abdomen, face as white as a sheet. Her ribs heaved with short pants of breath. The two steps it took to get to her were two steps too many. He dropped to his knees on the dirt floor.

  “Shit.”

  “That’s my word.”

  “Wolf femal
es don’t swear.”

  “I’ve decided to pick up your bad habits,” she whispered in a strained voice.

  “Because we’re mated?”

  He lifted her off the cold ground. She whimpered and shivered. Neither sound nor motion was as strong as he thought they should be. The way she collapsed against him told him more than words about how bad this was.

  She turned her cheek in to his throat. “Because I’m sick of being nice. Nice people get squashed.”

  He brushed his lips across her forehead. “I like you nice.”

  “I rest my case.”

  She was determined to hold on to her grudge. Another shudder rippled through her. The change was beginning. Ah, hell. He opened his palm across her back as her teeth bit into the tough leather of his jacket. “I know you’re hurting, sweet, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

  She tilted her face up. He caught her head on his palm, supporting her when she would have overbalanced. “You’re done ticking off the Sanctuary?” she asked.

  “For the moment.”

  “Okay, then.” Bracing her hand on his knee, she levered herself up. Without the support of his hand in the middle of her back, she wouldn’t have made it. She was that weak.

  She bit her lip and swayed. “I’m ready.”

  The overpowering nausea rolling through her spilled over onto him. “How long has this been going on?”

  She swallowed hard, once, twice. If anything, she got a bit greener. “Since about ten minutes after you left.”

  Damn. He tucked his hand under her chin. Lifting her face. “If you need to puke, you might want to do it now.”

  “I’m not vomiting.”

  “I’m going to have to carry you over my shoulder to get where we need to go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a safe place.” At least, he hoped it was safe. And that it was still there.

  She glanced over at the crevice. “What’s wrong with here?”

  He pointed up to the aperture in the ceiling. “The sun will fry us.”

  Biting her lip, she looked around. “It might not reach the corners.”

  Like he would chance her to a “might” and a glimmer of hope. He shook his head. “We’re leaving.”