by KH LeMoyne
Today the change made little difference in his mood or that of his wolf.
Both wanted to stay with Lena. And while he shared his wolf’s need to protect its mate, his desire for closeness was more conflicted. He posed a danger to her.
Fury drove him farther into the forest, his path toward a faint pinpoint for Shanae. Oddly, he owed that insight, the brief flicker of awareness, to Lena. His clan connection had surged stronger with her touch.
He’d almost paid her back in the most callous and selfish way possible.
Lacking the mating bond, he’d still gained access to her energy and extended his own power. Not an intentional act on his part, but that hardly mattered. He’d stopped the transfer the moment he noticed her physically falter, but the damage was done. Lena would be fine, but when she realized the danger he posed and his violation of her will, he doubted she’d forgive him.
Worse, how could she trust him with a lifetime of temptation within his grasp? The last thing he wanted was to harm her—to leech the energy from her body. Hell, he craved the woman, hungered for her to the point of painful need. He’d lain awake last night, barely yards from her campground, to stay close.
He didn’t fool himself that one day or night of sexual release would end his craving. He’d been warned—no, promised—of the eventuality of such a joining. He’d long ago lost his belief in the truth of that promise. Legend stated the intensity of shifter bonds increased with time, strengthening with sensual familiarity. But he brought an immutable and perhaps unstable addition of alpha energy to the mix, the reason he needed patience. They would never reach the point of mating if he didn’t find a way to control his natural alpha instinct to use the power offered to his beast.
His paws pounded the pine needle blanket beneath the tall trees. His nostrils flared, analyzing the elements, mentally extracting those organic molecules and narrowing down Shanae’s scent. The process consumed his thoughts until he reached the top of several boulders. Finding nothing, he snorted in frustration.
The scent was gone.
Peering below him, he studied the river’s course. The falls lay to the northwest. Eastward promised home. He closed his eyes and recalled the faint line he’d seen as he stared into Lena’s eyes, the flash of Shanae’s light stronger than before while he touched his mate. He could contact the others and have them search, but he felt a subtle premonition. Their success didn’t lie in a straight line.
He glanced behind him. Lena would undoubtedly head over this smaller ridge and parallel the next set of mountains. His course would follow hers. Logic dictated Shanae’s strategy and kept her in denser cover and more familiar ground to hide her path—an unexplainable game of cat-and-mouse.
Dropping his chin to the rock, he stretched full length. Butt in the air, nose alert, and claws flexing, his stretch unkinked the small tweaks from his run but provided no insight. Lying down, he let the sun beat on his fur as his mind absorbed the earth’s magic.
Having never pulled energy from anyone at the same time he held his clan’s web open, there was the possibility he’d misread what he’d experienced with Lena. Perhaps Shanae’s past trail had projected itself, not the present one?
He certainly had no way to decipher what impact his mate had on his abilities. She was human and not part of the family, which should make her influence negligible. As an alpha’s mate, bonded or not, she evidently held a wellspring of changes for him.
A puzzle to work on later. One piece required his current attention—practice in controlling his absorption of her power—forming dams to his instinct to devour power. Perhaps he could trigger a flow toward her instead of siphoning her energy. Once practiced, his mind and body would follow the familiar pattern.
Picking his moments with care, he could ease into the process. Depleting his own power if she chose not to claim him was a risk. Up until now, too little power had never been his problem.
Flipping his feet beneath him, he stood and shook off his lethargy.
Practice. When the instinct rose, he’d fight it back. He risked Lena’s life, and over time his own sanity, if he didn’t find a solution. The power mustn’t control him. That much he’d also learned from his father.
With one last reluctant stretch, he shifted back to human and sent a strong pulse of power in the direction of the rise before him. Then he punched a number on his phone.
“Yes, boss,” Wharton said, his breath almost as loud as his response.
“I’ve a location for you and Trim.” A shiver of awareness trickled down his spine, and Deacon glanced around, searching for the glint of binoculars or a flash of man-made color. The absence of hunters should have been reassuring. Instead, it signaled an increased danger. His wolf bucked inside him, clamoring for release to head toward Lena. Struggle between his personas was rare. He’d claimed control of both man and beast when he’d risen to alpha, but this situation unsettled both of them. “Don’t head farther than the Cabinets’ farthest edge, and keep an eye out for others.”
“Shifters?”
“Maybe.” His bones, his gut didn’t make that connection. Not quite, though the vibrations he detected held no familiarity. “Or something unexpected. Just stay alert.”
8
A guttural noise, too shrill to qualify as even a growl or a roar, resonated from behind her. Lena shrugged off the chill lodged between her shoulder blades, but a nagging worry persisted. She and Matthew had reached the edge of the plateau and planned their way down. Day two of her search and even longer since Shanae entered into the forest.
Focus. Clusters of treetops obscured a clear path below, but outbreaks of rock and naked dirt slopes promised a slow, uneven descent. Graceless, and through more of a scramble, they broke through the tree line and onto a dense deer path.
Lena squinted against the leafy green backdrop and scanned the small clearing they’d entered. The location was isolated and secure, making it a good hiding place. But the path ultimately fed into the valley—the only way to the next mountain ridge without a vertical climb. No matter what Shanae’s background, Lena didn’t see her taking her son up a sheer rise.
The noise echoed again above them, and Lena realized uneasily the clearing also offered an equally good place for an attack.
Why the thought trickled through her brain, she wasn’t sure but paid attention. Instinct saved lives. She’d listened to stories from other rangers who swore their ongoing safety hinged on acknowledging gut responses.
She lifted the sonar device and pointed it toward the rising cliff face to her left. Nothing.
Another scan toward her right caught a red flicker of birds in the tree and something long and lean skittering farther on. Elk most likely.
“Is there a way to fine-tune this so I can weed out images by body size?” she asked, turning toward Matthew.
He frowned and then held out his hand for the unit. Crouching on the ground with the device on his thigh, he brought up an administrative screen filled with lines of programming language. “I planned for contingencies of wind and water, but not human versus animal.”
Lena leaned closer, watching over his shoulder as he tapped. His fingers flew, line after line of code unraveling from his efforts. All she recognized were numbers in metric.
“Will those weed out the four-legged creatures?”
Matthew grunted but kept typing.
A twig snapped, and Lena glanced around the forest bed. A flutter of commotion several feet away turned out to be three large birds picking at the carcass of some animal. Lena swallowed hard and turned back to Matthew’s crouched form. He remained focused on the task she’d given him as if there was nothing else in the world.
Likely true. She had to hand it to him, stress hadn’t broken him. He didn’t express his anger, but he didn’t let it consume him and slow him down. Instead he’d withdrawn into his technology, pausing when they took breaks to work on each of the prototypes he’d brought along. With single-minded determination, he applied whatever ene
rgy he had to his tools.
At first she worried he was a bit too focused. Then he’d adapted a second device for underwater search for her to carry in her pack. Not that she wanted to use that tool.
His heart must be breaking, realizing they might need it. If their search went to the water, they both knew that meant the end to a happy conclusion. Maybe it was his way of cushioning the impact of loss. Hard to tell. Lena tried not to look at him too closely.
She’d never had a husband, much less a child. No one stayed in her life that long.
While Matthew subconsciously prepared for the worst, she did the same, planning how to defuse him somehow. The tightly focused husband and father could easily devolve into a man ravaged by loss and grief. Happy ending or not, decompression was inevitable, no matter how he tried to stave it off. Matthew might not realize it, but she considered making sure he returned home in one piece part of her job.
Be prepared for any event. A response ingrained in her from years of training. Matthew Philmont was holding it together. For now. He’d worked his way off Lena’s suspect list the way a glacier carves a canyon—with slow, steady progress. She respected the man. His logic guided his approach. He developed his tools. He made whatever changes she needed. He let her do her job without interfering.
Another point in his favor.
None of that changed their circumstances.
“Here.” He handed back the unit. “You’ll have to run a scan for each body type separately. Selection is from the option at the right of the screen. I’m not sure I can help you with what each one is, but you can at least isolate each animal.”
Lena lifted the device again. A large narrow red figure appeared. The dimensions refined on the screen as the people had in the motel. Four legs and antlers came into focus and disappeared from the screen. Handy. What didn’t fit the human profile, the system identified and weeded out She could also bring them back with a touch of the screen.
She swept the mountains again. One by one, nonconforming images appeared and disappeared. Switching to the smaller body type, she ran through the sequence again. More creatures corresponded to the reduced size, making the process longer. One figure flickered in and stayed for a full minute, then disappeared. Perplexed as to what would confuse the device, Lena ran the scan again.
The image was gone—then suddenly reappeared. “Can you explain this?” Holding the device in position, she nodded toward the rock face on their right. Several rises there signified the potential for caves. Small caves, but smaller would be safer than a bear’s den.
Over her arm, Matthew tapped the body-type selection again. Another tap, and he switched to the adult profile. She moved the device gently to sweep the same area.
“Nothing now.”
He nodded as his eyes closed for a second. “It’s registering too long to be a random glitch. At least that’s my take. I’d also like to believe that Shanae and Trevor are out here together.”
“Don’t let your mind get ahead of us.” Lena glanced back and forth from the angle of the device to the target, memorizing their path. Not moving her gaze from their destination, she let the device hang around her neck and headed through the brush. “Keep an eye out and follow me. If you see me head toward a ditch, shout out.”
“Got it.”
A bird screeched to her right. She ignored it. As long as they kept chirping, nothing was far enough out of the ordinary to distract her.
They made better time than they had earlier in the morning, but the sun had risen far enough for the sun’s glare to hit them in the face with the shadows behind them.
Finally, they reached the scope’s target.
Lena reached the foot of a steep rise and glared up at the point ten feet above them that the device indicated. There was no way a small child would get up here. Not unless he’d been hoisted.
She couldn’t think of a good reason for a mother to leave her four-year-old child up there.
Snout in the dirt, Deacon nudged at the underbrush. Beneath the pine needles and branches, a faint hint of female wolf lingered. Paw-sized markings of fragrance dotted the forest. However, the crisscross of the now-familiar wolf pup, two new wolf packs, and a heavy scent of unfamiliar shifters interlaced with something metallic and oily he’d never smelled before was overwhelming his senses. He still couldn’t determine a reason for Shanae to cart around the wolf pup? Especially with the risk of real wolves becoming defensive in protecting their young?
Deacon forced his way through the dense crush of branches and shifted to human as he exited on the deer path. “Wharton. Trim.” Wolf shapes appeared from the trees and dissolved into two-legged bodies beside him.
Dressed in black and green respectively, they blended with their backgrounds. Wharton lifted a foot to the rock in front of him and bent forward with a sniff. Scowling, he jerked backward. “You want us to find whatever stinks so badly?”
“Yes. If they give you trouble”—Deacon looked toward Trim—“I want at least one alive.”
She crossed her arms and nodded. “I’ll extract everything they know.”
Wharton glanced around them. “Every trail I’ve found indicates they overlay her path. I don’t think they’ve found her yet, because they’re swirling around like we are.”
“Why is the cub still with her? It’s not like we keep wild pets,” Trim added. “Seven years wouldn’t change her that much.”
“I’m sure we’ll find out.” Deacon cycled through the several text messages from Chisholm, one from Breslin, and two from Grizz. Nothing urgent, or they would have called instead. “We have no blood so, for whatever reason, she seems to be shadowing a wolf pack.”
“Better to hide with animals and confuse whoever is following her,” Wharton muttered as if puzzling through the same problems bothering Deacon. “The Northeast territory alpha wouldn’t challenge you, much less choose this treacherous approach. Due north—Gauthier’s an aggressive monster, though I don’t think he’s stupid enough to breach your borders.”
“We can’t rule anything out. If forced to flee, she’d never trust anyone from either clan,” Deacon responded. None of his clan would.
“Unfortunately, sadistic doesn’t begin to cover the stories about Gauthier,” Trim added before she shifted and trotted nose down into the brush.
Deacon waited for Wharton. He’d lingered behind, barely bothering to cover his need to speak privately. While Deacon held the lion’s share of the magic as alpha, his omega possessed unique powers of his own. Power that few in the clan were aware of. Even Wharton wasn’t comfortable with his powers, and Deacon respected his caution. If shifters realized he could temporarily bleed their powers and read their thoughts, even though he flushed the ability through his system as quickly, he’d become the target of persecution. His disposition also quieted heightened aggression and fevered spikes into emotional plateaus. Fortunately, his abilities didn’t couple with a corresponding ambition, but convincing others of something not inherent to the rest was a hard sell. “What else did you get?”
“Chemical modifications.” Wharton sniffed again, and his face contorted as if he’d swallowed a foul taste.
“Drugs?” Shifters were immune to the effects of drugs and alcohol. Their rapid metabolism didn’t allow chemicals to latch on to fat or muscle long enough to linger in their system.
“It’s not combined with Shanae’s traces, but I sense it in the wolf pup’s scent.”
Deacon spun away, staring at the segment he’d just tracked. His kind revered the animals of their origins. No shifter would test on animals. Much less do so in another alpha’s territory. How had Shanae been dragged into a mess so contrary to the nature of his people? He nodded over his shoulder to Wharton. “Track them. Quickly. I’ll let Grizz know I need him to meet us sooner.”
Wharton turned, his shape swirling in a blur of denim and cotton turned gray and white. Ears tucked against his head, he launched toward the trees to catch up with Trim.
Chemicals
? Deacon let out a slow breath, puzzled. Shanae’s degree was in business management. Her employment connections ran parallel with small businesses in marketing and administration. Or at least they had when he’d checked on her after she’d married Matthew Philmont. Her husband’s background ran to mechanical engineering and computer science. Again, no real fit with drugs, much less chemical alterations targeting shifters. It would take a shifter to understand the internal nature and makeup of shifter DNA, which, combined with the non-clan shifters he scented, escalated the threat level of this mission.
Gauthier’s clan didn’t embrace the same concept of shifter families that Deacon and six of the fourteen international alphas practiced. Violent, bred and trained for fighting and destruction, Gauthier’s clan never displayed the motivation, dedication, or skills for the academic rigors of scientific experimentation. Deacon kept an eye on their borders. His secret ear on their activities had unearthed nothing.
Which left him with either another clan or humans.
Both options brought more people into the mix. More people to get in the way of this mission. He’d never credited humans with the same skills as shifters, but he knew better than to underestimate some of them. Lena, with her persistence, resourcefulness, and commitment, had fair odds of succeeding.
He had no problem with that. Because if Matthew became an issue, Deacon expected her to contain Shanae’s husband.
However, with the mystery thickening and the risk increasing, he could cover only so many angles at once with his few resources.
Letting loose his wolf, he dove back the way he’d come, allowing instinct to take the lead. Wolves fought for survival. Everything was in the moment: this minute, this meal, this fight, this domination or submission. His wolf would find Shanae, pushing back the worries his human side carried for his clan member.
