by KH LeMoyne
Wharton growled and moved several paces closer for a full-body attack. Then Lena was jerked backward as a paw swiped and missed her face by a hair.
“Survive,” Deacon reiterated.
But the feral master still maintained the communication channel and her surrogate’s body as well, in a horrifying display of her utter disregard for his well-being.
“I’m not hiding,” Lena said, purposefully widening the channel she used for Deacon to those around her to hear. “I’m here. I also know what you are. You can’t hide from me.”
Several of the ferals whimpered. The one wiggling in Breslin’s jaws gasped. “Please…end me.”
Eyes so like Grant’s held her gaze, and her heart stuttered for precious seconds. Blinking back her regrets, Lena bent closer. She wanted to save him. For selfish reasons and to protect his youth. In all likelihood, he was doomed. She’d led teams. She could assess danger and risks. She couldn’t stop fate or the monster controlling him. She’d proven fate always won two horrendous times. She took her stance. “You can’t hide from Deacon.”
“You play at being smart, but you know nothing.” The strangely garbled voice sounded deep and farther away.
Neither fooled Lena. The ferals’ commander wouldn’t risk entering Deacon’s territory, but she’d be as close as she could to control her small army.
“We’ll find you, and Deacon will destroy you.”
“Really.” Deacon’s voice sounded strained with forced humor. “Are you assigning me tasks?”
“This is me. Accept it.”
“Graciously.”
There was a strange silence across the common channel. A pointed response all its own. Then the wolf in Breslin’s hold struggled, his efforts desperate.
“Kill her.” The wolf gagged and slashed, evidently lacking control of his own body.
Lena grabbed one of his ears and angled the captive wolf’s head so he couldn’t look away from her, even as she struggled to be gentle with the abused creature. “I know you can see me through his eyes. So listen to me, you coldhearted bitch.”
“How dare you—” The female’s screech rang loud enough that everyone winced.
“Yeah. Overestimated yourself, didn’t you? Do you think you’re the only one with special skills and the ability to learn fast? Let go of this child. He deserves better than you. They all do.” Lena shook the wolf’s head. It frothed at the mouth, but Breslin held him in those large, powerful cougar jaws.
Lena leaned closer. “Leave our people alone. We know you now. Because I can see you too. So can the alpha. Your eyes, your face, the nasty scar along your left eyebrow.” Oh yes, for a brief moment, she glimpsed the evil stepmother to the ferals. Not actually enough that she’d recognize her at the supermarket, but the devil was in the details. “Which means every lieutenant. Every adult shifter. Every stray and rogue who takes the oath and shares his alpha’s vision will know you. Run. Hide. Scheme. It won’t matter. Deacon will find you. Here’s a tip. When you feel that itch on the back of your neck, it’ll already be too late.”
Lena stepped back as another feral lunged.
Then a long, fierce roar ground its way out of her throat. Deacon’s roar. The ground trembled, and every feral slammed belly flat to the dirt. Heads lowered and ears back. Not one raised their eyes to look in her direction. The brutal crunch of the feral’s vertebrae echoed in the night, punctuating the alpha’s anger.
Lena dropped to her knees, massaging her raw neck. Deacon’s message had ripped from her stomach and assaulted her throat, leaving her feeling like she had vomited gravel. “Jeez, did you have to do that? We already had them.”
“No one,” he shouted across all channels. “No one harms you, Lena.”
With a sigh, she forced the channel to him closed. It hurt. Her brain throbbed, and her body ached. And while she needed the comfort of his touch, he needed a timeout. She pressed a shaky hand on the ground to boost herself up, but Hansen gently gripped her elbow while Wharton supported her on the other side. Standing a bit wobbly, she silently admitted she could use a timeout as well. She brushed back stray strands of her hair and gazed around. Amazingly, none of the humans in the diner had come to check the noise.
Breslin shifted into human and moved closer, his gaze taking in the other two as they released her. “We’re too far away for anyone to hear us. Besides, they’re used to animal noises around here.”
Hansen swiped his hand over his mouth and shot a look at the Taser whip she still held. “Putting yourself up as a decoy could have gone very badly. I’ll admit, you certainly came well armed.”
“It helps to have friends with cool gadgets.”
He braced his fists on his hips and glanced at the fallen bodies, a mix of dead and unconscious. “Helps to have backup too. I hope you remember that.”
Determined not to cower beneath his lecture, she slowly retracted the Taser tip, then wrapped the whip back into a neat coil and tucked both inside her pocket. “I’m guessing Deacon called in the troops?”
Wharton stalked forward and stood beside Hansen. “Getting you two together for a chat was my only order.” He stared over his shoulder at the nearly empty parking lot outside the diner. “You caught our interest when you walked out into the middle of nowhere by yourself. Even Deacon doesn’t usually do that without someone knowing.” His softer warning lingered.
“He’s accountable to his team.”
“You are too.” Hansen shook his head with a glance toward Wharton. “What? With no one else here, I’m not backing off until she picks her own squad.” He shrugged. “Besides, my training says we don’t leave team members alone to take on the enemy. Unless you object to my presence, sir.”
“Sir?”
He cracked a lopsided grin. “You don’t strike me as a ma’am, and you didn’t take too well to being called alpha.”
“I’m not—” Her voice broke, the exhaustion of battling for the souls of children and losing finally catching up to her.
Palms up, Hansen ducked his head, giving her privacy, and whispered, “Just a title, sir. No offense intended.”
Wharton turned his head away, giving privacy to the tears tracing down his female alpha’s face as she knelt by the dead teenage shifter. Breslin wasn’t as gracious.
“He wasn’t clan.”
“He was still worth saving. He didn’t want to be possessed by some power-hungry mental case.” Lena lifted her chin as if to challenge him, and Hansen took a step closer to stand at her back. She exhaled. “What will you do with—”
Ah yes, the bodies. Not to mention the ones still alive.
Breslin grimaced but gingerly lifted the corpse at his feet and waited as Hansen wrapped a blanket around the body. Wharton held back a remark. Unable to help himself, the soldier was already doing his alpha’s bidding. Not that he blamed Hansen. Wharton felt Lena’s grief with a greater push, one that kept him riveted in stillness and bound in sympathetic pain.
His expression sympathetic, all calculation erased, Breslin tilted his head her way. “I’ve been ordered to take him to the lab for samples.”
She winced, then straightened her shoulders and stared at the blanket as if bracing herself.
Hansen moved before her, cutting off her view. “Once his remains are released, we can bury him and honor his death, if that is your wish, Alph—”
She turned away, hiding her expression. “That seems appropriate. This battle—this challenge—is sadly a war for our children.”
Wharton shook his head with a smile. Like a true alpha, she claimed all of them as hers. Whether she was willing to admit it or not, he’d sensed her convictions, her tie to his species from their first encounter. Alpha? Yes. Mate for Deacon? Well suited. Most important—she was family.
Lena walked back toward the motel without a backward glance, leaving them to clean up the bodies.
Two ferals roused and hightailed it for the border, but their uneven pathetic gait didn’t even offer a good chase, much less inc
entive for any of the team to bother. Of the remaining few alive, none was able to shift, and their brain matter appeared scrambled. Several lay twitching with spittle pooling beneath them.
“What should we do with them?” Hansen asked.
Wharton glanced toward Breslin.
“Trim wants the survivors rounded up and put in isolation for assessment. She’ll meet you two with this garbage a mile from Black Haven.”
Hansen watched Lena. “Got to love a strong woman.”
Breslin clipped Hansen across the top of his head. “She’s taken.”
“Now you’re admitting she’s an alpha?” Wharton asked, prodding for a reaction from the iceman of the team. If Breslin conceded to Lena’s role, then Deacon’s squad could present a unified front of support. Not that Lena needed their help. However, support from family was better than the begrudging obedience of a shifter complying with his oath.
Breslin shrugged. “Her behavior is logical and consistent with an upcoming alpha.”
Hansen scratched his head. “True. Having a chronic case of the vapors wouldn’t have gotten her promoted in the park service. She’s always been this way.”
Wharton sighed. Hansen epitomized the risk of learning you were wrong about your enemy. The pendulum swung from despising a villain straight through to hero worship. But how Lena’s team trailed around after her was Deacon’s problem. At least he hoped so. “Don’t you have a car to fill with cretins for Trim?”
With a scowl, Hansen accepted the blanketed body from Breslin and lumbered away. Wharton remained in place, keeping an eye on the few struggling misfits.
“The woman’s also got damn good aim,” Breslin muttered as he strode in Lena’s direction.
Breslin appeared beside her as she approached her motel room and grabbed the small duffel bag she’d stowed in the shadows outside her door.
“You need a ride home.” He didn’t really ask a question, so she didn’t bother with an answer. However, home tugged at a warm, tender place somewhere deep inside her.
“Ford’s safe. He’d gone over the boundary, but Deacon found him.”
She’d succeeded in saving the kid and surviving. Not a bad night.
He crossed his arms over his chest, his head cocked, waiting for her reply. “Most of the orphans get jumpy and run after their first shift. Sort of a rite of passage. There’s not usually a posse of ferals waiting, though.”
An offhanded compliment, she supposed, if she wanted to take it that way. “I need my backpack.”
“It’s already in my vehicle.” He almost smiled as she scowled at his audacity.
“I was counting on your cool alpha logic.”
“Are you coming home?” Deacon’s tone held uncertainty.
“Totally given up on your rules, haven’t you?”
“I’m beginning to realize I would give up anything for you.”
“I don’t think we need to go that far. I do have one request. And it’s a deal breaker.”
Deacon didn’t respond.
“You can’t keep shutting me out. It’s all or nothing. Trust me or let me go.”
The silence chilled her, but she swallowed hard and breathed in courage. It had been a tough day, but so successful that it didn’t really seem like time to give up.
“I will grant you your wish. But if harm comes to you, I will wrestle angels and even hell itself, because I refuse to remain in this world without you. I love you, Lena.”
Her heart stuttered and her stomach clenched, but Lena bent her head and bit back a smile. She would no more let death take him than he would her, because their love went in both directions. A life of synchronicity stood within her reach, harmony of like souls bonded for a purpose so true to the singular joy in her life—the beauty and bravery of shifters. To be hours away from claiming the one who held her heart seemed impossible, but reality and single-minded purpose had proved itself tonight in blood and furor.
She swallowed against the tightness of her throat and turned to Breslin. “Why did you wait for me?”
“I was ordered to stay until you needed a ride home.” He paused a second and then scrubbed his face. “Orders were to bring you back alive too.”
“Everyone assumes what I need.” That they assumed correctly irritated her, but she rolled her shoulders. It wasn’t as if she got to pick and choose. A life with shifters, one she’d been certain dictated her destiny, came with as much helpful interference as it did with incredible wonder.
He looked away. “Just doing my job.”
Right. Don’t shoot the messenger. Halfway between being pissed and relieved, she slung her bag his way. To his credit, he caught the duffle and even managed to open the passenger door of the SUV before she could get there. “Sorry. And thank you,” she said.
Breslin said nothing as she got in, but frowned until she fastened her seat belt.
Several silent minutes grew into more.
“Trim mentioned you were looking into whether more children were missing.”
He stared straight ahead, and the minutes ticked on. “We’ve confirmed three so far.”
Her heart dropped to her feet, and her fingers gripped her thighs. The denim gave her an outlet for her frustration. Even though Trevor was safe and home with his parents, the idea that more shifter children were at risk made her wish she’d had enough power to terminate the feral master. “Already taken, or did someone find them in time?”
“I found one of them. The boy had gotten lost on a camping trip. The other two are being tracked.” He glanced her way, then dug into the center console and tossed his phone into her lap. “There’s an alert set up.”
She flicked aside the top screen and searched until she found the lines of alerts. Each one originated from Deacon’s public e-mail sent by Shanae within the last several hours. Each one targeted a different segment of his territory, each to a lieutenant alpha in charge, all issuing orders for a chain of escalation regarding children in shifter families, regardless of whether they were full-blood shifters or not.
Two alphas had escalated missing teenagers, one in the Seattle area, another in Portland.
“Shouldn’t you be helping search instead of being here with me?”
“I’ve done what I can for now. If they need me, I’ll hear from them. For now, my time is better spent determining if there are more.” He slowed behind an old Chevy truck and then quickly swerved left and passed the elderly man driving. “Not getting cold feet about going back, are you?”
Like she’d admit that to him. “No.”
He laughed. “Right. No one will find out from me that the future female alpha tried to run away.”
She snorted and wrapped her arms around herself. “I wasn’t running.”
“Sure you were. Right into that feral pack so you could divert them from Ford.” His face turned toward her for a second. “You’ve got stones.”
“Yep, I’m one cold, hard bitch.”
“Not what I said.” He paused a few minutes. “Cold and detached would have waited to see what the feral would do to Deacon on that mountain.” He took the phone back from her crossed and clenched hands and put it back in the console. “Cold and detached wouldn’t have mourned Hansen’s siblings.”
“You know about that?”
Breslin pursed his lips, still staring out the front windshield. “Hunting down Grant’s mother was the last job I had before I pledged to Deacon.”
Stunned, Lena waited. What else could she do? Grant’s past was a never-ending story that seemed to have touched everyone. “Did you—kill her?”
“No. But I found her. I also found the children she’d murdered.”
Lena tried not to breathe, to choke back nausea.
“Out of a half a dozen children, there was one tiny baby still alive. The rest—”
“What happened to the baby?” Lena managed to force out, not wanting to know the horrors of the others that couldn’t be saved.
“His family was gone, so he was brought ba
ck to Black Haven. Raised by the Romalds.” Breslin sighed. “Deacon named him Wharton.”
Lena closed her eyes. A lone tear escaped, but she kept her thoughts quiet. Explanations on how everything was intertwined eluded her.
“So the nerves now?” Breslin asked, breaking her silence.
She stretched her neck and debated talking. But this was one of Deacon’s trusted team. The team she’d see for the rest of her life, if she was lucky. He had insights into where she was headed. “About Deacon, no. The alpha thing—I understand split-second decisions. I’ve been in the heat of the moment and handled tough choices. That’s instinct. The bigger issue”—she waved her hand yet no inspiration dropped out of the air into her brain—“this is everyone’s happiness, everything Deacon’s worked so hard to save. He deserves the best.”
“He wants you.”
That wasn’t quite the endorsement or even rationalization she’d hoped for, and she frowned at him.
His laugh came more easily this time. Low and warm like caramel, making her shoulders drop and her facial muscles go lax. “That’s all that matters. The alpha shit—will work itself out in time.”
The flash of white on each tree beside the road turned the scenery into a kaleidoscope of black and white. Lena’s lids grew heavier as she silently calculated how long ago she’d actually slept.
Breslin leaned toward her and rummaged behind her seat. Then he deposited a paper bag in her lap and dug a bottle of water from the console and put it in her cup holder. “Eat and get some sleep. It’ll be a bit before we get back.”
Lena plucked at the paper.
Tomorrow morning, Friday morning, was the clan meeting. Shanae’s presentation of Matthew and Trevor headlined the agenda, but it would be her one chance to step forward and claim Deacon with the power of her feelings still hot from the fight. Any time later would look like she’d had doubts, and she wouldn’t do that to him. He deserved as solid a support as he gave.
“We’ll make it in time.”
Stunned, she stared at Breslin. Had she spoken out loud?
