by Abigail Owen
No Seneca.
He went to the window and squinted out into the already blinding sunlight. No more rope, and no sign of Seneca anywhere outside. Holding his foreboding sense of doom at bay, he crossed the room and opened the heavy door to find the corridor empty in both directions.
Hands clenched at his sides, he considered the possibilities. With sharp movements, Gage headed to Andie’s room a few doors down across the hall and knocked.
“Is Seneca in here?” he demanded as soon as she opened the door. Over her shoulder, he searched the part of her rooms he could see.
“No.” She yawned and leaned a hip against the door, her lips tilted up. “Did you lose your mate already?”
“She was in the room when I went to shower, and gone only a few minutes later when I came back out.”
“And?”
“We got some news about Delaney and were about to come to you. She wouldn’t have just wandered off alone right now.”
Andie’s amused smile slipped and she frowned. “Where were you headed?”
“To you. We have news about Delaney.”
“Try Tieryn while I get dressed.”
He moved to another door, one more down, and gripped the door frame while he waited for Tieryn to answer his knock. When she did, like Andie, she was dressed in PJs with her hair all over the place, obviously having been woken from sleep. A quick round of questions revealed Seneca wasn’t there either.
Gage’s jaw ached from how hard he was clenching his teeth. Seeing he was about to lose it, Andie, who’d join them, dressed and, with her hair pulled back in her usual long ponytail, put her hand on his arm. “Don’t wig out. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”
“Gage doesn’t wig,” Tieryn assured the other woman.
But he was closer than she suspected. What if one of the lions from yesterday took her? What if she was hurt? What if she—”
He stopped the thoughts cold. Panic wouldn’t solve anything. Yeah. I don’t wig.
Realization struck. Of course, dumbass. Your bond.
“Hold on,” he said.
Closing his eyes, he searched for the tug on his heart that represented the bond Zula’s sorceress had established between him and Seneca at their mating. What he was getting—or, more accurately, not getting—now scared the hell out of him. He couldn’t feel Seneca’s emotions or tell what condition she was in. The mountain lion inside him wanted to scream and prowl, but he leashed his body, willing himself to hold still, and continued to concentrate.
The bond wasn’t gone, and he told himself that meant she couldn’t be dead. “My best guess is she’s unconscious,” he said to the two women waiting in silence.
“That’s not good,” Andie muttered.
Biggest understatement of the year. “She’s not in the castle.”
“How can you tell?”
“When she moves away from me, I get a pulling sensation, like a stretched rubber band. The further away she gets, the more uncomfortable it gets.”
“How bad is it now?” Tieryn asked.
He opened his eyes and rubbed at the center of his chest. “It’s getting hard to breathe.” Although that could be his own panic levels, but Gage didn’t think so.
“Do you know what direction?”
“No. And usually I can follow it.” Their link was how he’d found her on the mountainside this morning.
The two women exchanged a glance. “We can’t run out of here with no idea where to go. We need help. Let’s get Zula,” Andie suggested next.
Minutes later, when they stood in Zula’s rooms, the sensation in Gage’s chest had moved from tightness to burning. Zula, woken from bed like the others, and every inch the Seductress, clad in a slinky scarlet negligee and robe, called Edward and asked him and Beno to search the castle for Seneca.
“Start outside,” Gage insisted. “Moving away from the castle. Fast.”
“What direction?” Zula asked.
“I don’t know. Start from our bedroom window.” That damn rope of Seneca’s had to be how whoever took her got in and out.
Zula lifted an eyebrow, but relayed the message. She set down her cell phone.
“I’ll join them.” With a jerky motion, he swung to leave.
“No. We need you here.”
His mountain lion hissed inside his head. His mate was missing. Not searching for her was a physical pain. The only thing keeping him sane was that he could still feel her. She was alive. The fact that she moved further away from him with each passing moment, however…
“Why outside your window?”
“Because she snuck out this morning. She used a rope to get out our window. Now it’s gone.”
Zula crossed her arms. “Why did she sneak out? You’re not prisoners here.”
“How is this helping anything?” he barked. “She’s out there.” He flung an arm out, pointing to the window. “We have to get her.”
“Why she was out there might help us figure out where she went.”
Gage growled his frustration low in his throat, pacing back and forth. “It’s part of what she and I were coming to tell you after we dressed.”
He caught Tieryn’s curious stare. “What?” he snapped.
His old friend shrugged. “I’ve never seen you this rattled. Even when your father was killed.”
“She’s my mate.” And, he suspected, she was quickly becoming his center, his anchor, and his life. If he were a sailor, Seneca would be his north star to guide by.
“According to you, she’s not injured or afraid.” Tieryn was trying to calm him down with reasonable facts. Her efforts, while appreciated, didn’t help.
“She’s not anything.” He wasn’t sure which had him more on edge. That Seneca’s emotions and state of being were a complete blank, or that the sensation in his chest was growing worse, more intense.
“Edward and Beno will find her,” Zula said.
Or not. The words hung unsaid in the air between them. “But information may be key.”
Gage dropped to the couch, elbows on his knees. He ran shaking hands through his hair. “You already know she’s not Rick Delaney’s blood daughter. That she is, in fact, a tiger shifter.”
Zula nodded.
“Oh shit,” Andie gasped.
He flicked her a glance. “You didn’t hear about that yesterday?”
Andie crossed her arms with a scowl and shook her head. “We were sequestered all day, and no one told us anything.”
“What about when she brought you proof of Rick’s role in starting the wars?”
She flung out her hands. “I figured she had it rough—latent and submissive in his dare.”
“She’s been leading a false life for years.” He faced Zula. “Seneca snuck out this morning to train with her teacher.”
“Train?” Tieryn asked.
“Long story short, her mother, who’s dead, was an assassin. She had her daughter trained in the family business,” he said
“I’m not going to ask how she got around our sentries,” Zula said. “Who’s her teacher?”
Unsure of how much to reveal, Gage considered his response carefully. “A…powerful man. Andie knows him as Mac.”
Andie’s jaw dropped and Tieryn gasped. They both were familiar with Mac, Daje’s alter-ego. In fact, Daje was Tieryn’s uncle through her mother, Neah, though Neah shifted into a doe, and Daje into a mountain lion.
Zula narrowed her eyes. “One of the winds?”
Andie’s head snapped around. “You know what they are?”
The lioness flashed a smile of pure seduction. “I did hold one prisoner for quite some time.”
“Oyandone,” whispered Tieryn. Another of Neah’s brothers, Oyandone had been captured by the lions. Gage and Tieryn had helped rescue him as well as Tieryn’s father and several others they’d held prisoner. Seneca had wanted to go along and help, but he’d made her stay with the helicopters.
“What are they?” Andie directed the question to Zula.
“Because they sure aren’t shifters only.”
Who cared? Gage wanted to rage. He rubbed at the spot on his chest. He could still feel Seneca.
“They are demigods…ancient deities.” She lowered herself into one of the arm chairs facing Gage and crossed her legs. “Of a sort. The four winds of Iroquois legend—once shifters like us, they were enslaved by Gaoh. Yaogah, called Yaeger by his siblings, I believe you call him George, is a bear shifter and the north wind. Neogah, who’s called Neah, is a deer shifter and the south wind. Oyandone, or Odyn, is a moose shifter and the east wind. And Dajoji, or Daje, is a mountain lion shifter and the west wind.”
“That explains a helluva lot,” Andie mumbled.
Tieryn sought his gaze with hers, her face pale as, for the first time, she learned what her family truly were. With a swallow she turned to Zula. “I knew my mother and uncles were something more than simple shifters, but mother refused to tell me what. I’d guessed demigods, but never thought beyond that.” She blew out a breath. “Wow.”
Gage laid a hand on her arm and squeezed. “Daje is Seneca’s trainer, has been since her mother died.”
“So Seneca really is a trained assassin?” Tieryn squeaked, coming out of her shock at learning who her mother and uncles were faster than he would’ve expected.
Gage cocked his head. “Apparently. Though she refuses to use the skills.”
“Why was she going to tell me this now?” Zula asked.
“Daje informed her that Delaney is on his way here. They are coming by foot. I assume from the south.”
“We knew he’d declared war on the lions,” Tieryn pointed out.
“Seneca seemed to think that Daje sharing that info likely meant an attack was coming soon. That’s all he had.”
“Nothing about Sarai?” Andie asked.
He gave her a tightlipped shake of his head and her shoulders fell.
“Missss-tresss.” At the hissing voice, Gage, Andie, and Tieryn all tensed. He jumped to his feet, ready to defend, and snarled at the two men standing inside the window. Tall and bony with sallow skin, long beaky noses, inky hair and eyes—eerie eyes that appeared to have no pupil and no soul—the men watched him with disdainful lack of fear.
Gage crouched, muscles bunched, ready to spring.
“Wait!” Zula stepped forward. “They’re with me.”
Gage paused. He didn’t move, but he didn’t relax either.
Sure Gage was waiting, Zula turned her back on him and approached the two creatures. “Do you have news for me?”
“Yessss,” one wheezed. “Delaney is on his way here with an army. His dare has combined forces with those of three other Shadowcat Nation Alphas, along with defectors from the other dares.”
“How long?”
They exchanged a sly glance. “Five days, a week at most,” they answered in unison.
Gage frowned. Daje’s warning had made the attack seem more imminent.
“Thank you,” Zula dipped her head regally.
But they didn’t leave, merely watched her, giving long slow blinks, their heads cocked at a curious angle.
“More?” she asked.
“They have captured Delaney’s daughter.”
Seneca. An invisible fist took Gage by the heart and squeezed. Hard.
“Seneca?” Zula asked to confirm.
They bobbed their heads lightly in bird-like nods.
“Who has her?” Gage’s voiced ripped past raw vocal chords. “Where?”
“Delaney sent his best assassin, with instructions not to kill her.”
Thank God for that.
“Yet.”
Rage, hot and fierce, poured through Gage like lava bubbling up from the ocean floor. Before he made the conscious decision to do so, he was across the room, his hand wrapped the scrawny neck of one of the two. The creature gasped for air against his grip. The other clawed at him, cawing raucously.
“Where is she?” Gage demanded through clenched teeth.
“Gage.” Zula’s voice was probably meant to be soothing, seductive even, if she was applying her power, but it grated over his nerves like sandpaper.
She laid her hand on his arm. He growled, and she pulled back. “He’s here to help.”
Gage hissed through his teeth, but let the squirming man go. Immediately his brother, because the two had to be brothers, calmed.
The both backed up, glaring at him with those dead black eyes. “You are lucky, shhhhhiffffter, that we underssssstand your pain.”
“Do you know where she is?” he demanded again.
“No,” said the one he’d assaulted, rubbing at the bruises already forming around his pale-skinned neck. “But she can’t be far. We think they went north.”
North. At least he had a direction. The tension didn’t ease inside him.
The other man looked over Gage’s shoulder at Zula. “We won’t be back as long as he’ssss here,” he hissed.
In unison, they turned, shifted into midnight black ravens, and flew away through the window.
“Who on earth were they?” Gage turned to the woman behind him.
Zula gave a delicate shiver. “The question is more what are they? They are Huginn and Muninn, rumored to be the eyes and ears of the Norse god Odin. For me, they’ve been the source of much needed intelligence the last few years.”
“They’re creepy.” Tieryn made a face.
“Yes,” Zula said.
Gage didn’t give a damn about the birds. “We need to go after Seneca.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sarai snuggled into Zac’s arms to ward off the chill of the night. Almost time to go. They’d been traveling mostly at night because they were covering ground in their animal forms, and Zac’s polar bear would be way too hot in the Mojave Desert during the day. Thankfully the nights dropped into the sixties and seventies, depending on elevation. He was still drenched in sweat when they finally stopped at sunrise each day, but still better than the temperatures hit during the day.
They’d debated getting a car, staying in hotels, or even calling Andie or someone in the Shadowcat Nation to come pick them up. But Delaney wasn’t far behind them, and Sarai’s visions told them anything but a cross-country trek would lead to their capture, or worse in several situations.
“Ready?” Zac’s deep voice rumbled under her ear.
She sighed, travel-weary, but nodded. Thank goodness both their animals could handle long distance treks. “Yeah.”
Zac stood and helped her to her feet. He pulled his black shirt over his head, and Sarai took a moment to enjoy the view of all those muscles. Her mate was a gorgeous man, even if she did say so herself. She reached to pull her tank top over her head.
“Wait.”
She and Zac, who was now in the middle of unlacing his combat boots, both stilled, then turned slowly to face the source of that voice.
“George!” she squealed as she hurled herself in the arms of the man who stood there. She inhaled his familiar scent—pipe tobacco and fresh mint, only he didn’t smoke. He’d appeared to them in the form they were familiar with. A sexy older man, tall with broad shoulders and a handlebar mustache. Although she’d seen him in his immortal form before too—younger with dark hair and clear blue eyes and no mustache.
He chuckled as he caught her. “How are you, little cougar?”
She pulled back. “Are you okay? Where have you been?” A seriousness lingered in his eyes that hadn’t been there in the past, but otherwise, he appeared unharmed.
He cocked his head, his lips twisting under his thick gray mustache. “When the master calls…”
“What are you doing here?” Zac asked. The two men did that whole shake and man-hug thing. Neither of them was surprised to see George materialize in the middle of the desert. He’d shown his ability to teleport before. “Are we in that bad of shape?”
George sobered. “Not you. You’re fine. Daje sent me. Seneca needs your help.”
“Seneca?” Zac murmured. His brow wrink
led as he searched his memory for who that was. “You mean Lareina Delaney’s sister? The one who disappeared from the wedding at the same time as Gage?”
George hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Gage McAvoy’s mate now.”
Sarai gasped as images flooded her mind, triggered by his words perhaps. “As well as a tiger shifter and not Rick Delaney’s daughter.”
“What’s the problem?” Zac asked, stoic as always, showing zero surprise about those revelations.
“She’s the one who turned in evidence on Rick,” George said. “He’s found that out and had her taken. He will have her killed.”
“Does he know she’s not his daughter?” Sarai asked.
“No.”
Zac gave a low whistle. “That’s cold. Killing his own daughter.”
Sarai had the strong urge to bury one of her knives in Rick Delaney’s back. They’d been fighting the wrong people all this time. Damn secretive cougars.
“So what can we do way out here?” Zac indicated their desert surroundings with a wave.
“She’s not far from here,” George informed them.
“How is that possible?” Sarai asked.
They’d deliberately been making their way through lion territory on their journey to Jaxon’s dare in Idaho, the theory being Delaney’s cougars wouldn’t follow through this area.
“She and Gage are now part of the lion pride.”
Zac’s eyebrows flew up. “Since when?”
“Since the two of them disappeared. The lions took them. They made a deal to broker for peace.”
Sarai ground her teeth. As a Seer she should know these things, but her visions around Seneca were a black hole apparently, at least pertaining to the future.
“What do we do?” That was her mate. Straight to the important stuff.
George crouched down and started drawing in the sand with his finger—a map, by the looks of things. “I’m limited in how I can help you, but I can show you.”
****
Seneca smothered a groan as consciousness returned in the form of a sledgehammer in her brain. And why did she feel as though she were on a ship in rough seas?
She tried to brush her hair out of her face, only to find her hands were immobilized. Her lids were too heavy to open her eyes. Were her arms stuck under her and had fallen asleep? She tried to tug one out and realized from the jolt of pain in her shoulder that they were behind her, and bound at the wrist.
