by L. A. Banks
“Yes, I was. The second incident of close contact happened on the wrong side of a demon door—open wounds, blood and saliva flying as two males battle to the fucking death. I’m still standing.”
Hunter stalked away from her, dragging his fingers through his soaked hair and then shook it out wolf-style. “Third contact incident,” he said more quietly, as though the reality and emotional fatigue had finally hit him, “was fighting my own infected clan brothers when we went after the rogues up in Delta, Colorado’s Uncompahgre National Forest. What’s the old saying, baby? Three strikes and you’re out?”
“Until I hear that shit from Doc or Silver Hawk . . . until the bloodwork proves it . . .”
“You’ll what?” he said, turning to face her, his gaze hard. “Sit with your back against a wall and a gun in your hand? Sleep with one eye open, watching me for signs of transition to the species of abomination?” He stalked away from her and began yanking out tent stakes, now yelling. “I don’t even fucking know what I’ll do! You think I want my woman around me taking a risk like that?”
“I can defend myself,” she said, shouting back and lifting her chin. “Even against you, now that I know. So until we know for sure how far this has gone, or if your system is self-correcting, then—”
“I had blackouts last night!” he shouted, flinging the stakes away. “Goddamned blackouts! During that time I could’ve been a beast and wouldn’t have even known it!”
Humiliation made him walk away, sucking in huge breaths as he tried to scavenge calm from the surrounding environment. It had never been this bad before. When he’d been with Silver Hawk, he’d never lost full consciousness. His inner Shadow Wolf was always connected to his human, the link unbreakable. Last night, something very fragile in the balance snapped.
“You weren’t a beast,” her calm, gentle voice said from behind him.
“You were out for twenty minutes. What do you know?”
A firm hand on his shoulder made him flinch away.
“I’m still standing and don’t have a mark on me this morning, that’s what I know.”
He had no answer for her and didn’t try to retreat beyond the tree he was now leaning against. Hunter closed his eyes, not wanting to admit that her words offered balm but drenching himself with them nonetheless.
“Let me try to heal the obvious wounds, and I’ll keep both amulets on me, not in the backpacks.”
When he didn’t answer and didn’t try to shrug away, she took that as a yes. Slowly and very carefully she touched his shoulder, testing for acceptance, and then stood in front of him.
“I’m not giving up on you,” she sad quietly, her gaze searching his until he looked away. “We will use this hand we’ve been dealt.”
“How?” he grumbled, now looking at her with fury in his eyes.
“If you carry a little of the predators’ scent, and some of its strength, you might be able to pass yourself off as a transitioning member in human form . . . once the moon is out of full phase.”
She waited a beat to allow the concept to sink in. “And you can pass me off as your rogue mate . . . a she-Shadow, just like Shadow Falcon had been, willing to participate in any illicit activities you’re involved in. This way maybe we can get those rogues who are immersed in the toxin trade to view what happened up in the Uncompahgre as a territorial battle, not a raid by the preternatural authorities. It’s our best lead to Dexter to lure him out of hiding.”
“Yeah, well, that would be an airtight plan, except for one variable.”
She looked at him, now resting both palms along the broad width of his shoulders. “What variable?”
“Me,” he said flatly, his gaze searching hers. “I don’t know how this thing inside me is going to affect my mind, ultimately. What if we’re out among an infected Werewolf pack and you think my actions are part of the ruse, only to find they’re not?” Hunter shook his head no. “Too dangerous, too unpredictable—and for it to work, I’d have to tell my pack brothers to fall back. I’d have to go in submissive, unless I’m prepared to dominance-battle a demon-infected alpha were alone . . . and I’m not.”
He hesitated, his gaze boring into hers. “That would be the tipping point, Sasha—if I got cut again. Plus, the other side will only take an infected male and possibly a female at his side, perhaps vice versa, one at a time—not dragging a Shadow pack with them.” He looked at Sasha hard and then traced her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You’d be by yourself with no backup in a den of virally infected male Werewolves . . . not even able to be sure that you could count on me. Think about it, Sasha. What would happen if—”
She closed her eyes and gently stopped his words with her finger against his lips as she laid her head on his shoulder. His loose embrace tightened slowly as he kissed the crown of her head.
“Then I’ll be sure to take dead aim and shoot you first,” she murmured.
Chapter 4
Hands that had delivered unbelievable pleasure the night before now pulled excruciating pain from Hunter’s body as he and Sasha sat facing each other Indian style on the cold ground. It felt like a ring of fire encircled his neck, and he kept his eyes closed and jaw and fists clenched, too proud to cry out.
Sweat coursed down his temples, the bridge of his nose, his chest, and back as Sasha worked, dredging the poison up until his body began to slightly convulse. The stench was something undetectable to a normal human nose, but as a Shadow Wolf it was an offense like none other. Even an average dog might take issue with the infected Werewolf signature leaking from the lacerations left behind from a silver burn.
The whole of it caused nausea to assault his stomach once more, and the only thing he could think of was that the woman had to really, deeply care to even address something as foul as this.
Sasha wiped the perspiration from her forehead on the back of her arm, keeping her face away from her wound-soiled hands or his skin. Seeing her do that tore at his pride; they shouldn’t have been swapping spit the night before or anything else for that matter. If only he’d known before it had been too late. Never again. The only saving grace was the fact that her unpolluted Shadow Wolf system would eventually purge it, he hoped.
“I need to get this crap out of your pores . . . get you into a hot tub with Epsom salts, something to help pull it out of your skin.”
“I know—we can’t do a full purge out here without supplies,” he panted, then leaned his head back, taking advantage of the brief rest break she allowed. “I can’t carry the backpack or wear my parka . . . the scent will adhere to the fabrics and won’t come out. Eventually gotta burn my clothes and get new ones.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before?” Her hands remained on his collarbone like hot coals.
Pain, fatigue, and emotional exhaustion made him confess with a nod. He’d told her as much, but the fact that she was asking again meant that she was unsure if this had been a rarely occurring thing or something that he’d dealt with regularly. Long pauses interwoven with deep inhales accented his bursts of words. “When I was twelve—second seizure. Sweat lodge with Silver Hawk. Third time, just before the onset of alpha maturity . . . he was there, too. I told you that, remember?”
“Then you’re sure this is only the fourth seizure?”
Again he nodded, wishing they didn’t have to relive the humiliation of his youth. This time she didn’t speak but just gave him a curt nod and kept working. When the pads of her fingers traced over the abrasion again, he winced.
“Sorry,” she murmured, “but I gotta get as much of it out as possible.”
“Do it. Otherwise my pack brothers will attack on sight, no questions asked. You have to also get the scent of me off you and this contagion off your hands . . . just in case they don’t understand and rush us.”
He stopped talking for a moment and held his breath as she flat-palmed the wounds. Intense, stabbing pain balled his hands into fists. There was so much that he had yet to teach her about the Shadow culture
she’d never been raised in. Sasha had to restore not only his normal scent but there could be no significant abnormalities in his aura. Each identifier was used to tell which pack within the clan one hailed from, one’s rank, one’s history. A change in any of those family markers caused chaos within the wolf pack and then fanned outward to ripple through the entire clan.
“Every pack within the clan has been waiting for this to happen . . . waiting for my grandfather to be wrong. It’s why I was shunned as an eligible mate. They wanted to put me to death as an infant, but he was the North American clan’s overall alpha male, then, and wouldn’t allow it. But the rest tolerated my existence while spreading rumors that I could pass this genetic aberration on to my kids. Now I will finally shame him after all these years.”
“Listen, Max,” she said, taking her hands away from his wounds for a moment so he could rest. She gripped his shoulders to make him hear her through the pain. “Yeah, okay, your system is going haywire, but up until this point it merged with your Shadow Wolf, created some kind of hybrid that made you incredibly strong, able to go through the demon doors unlike the others, and gave you a battlefield advantage against the enemy.”
Sasha waited until Hunter opened his intense, dark brown eyes and stared at her. “Yeah,” she said. “You represent an unknown, but up until this point you’ve been stable within the pack, as well as the clan. Something triggered this spike—it had to be more than me.”
When he gave her a half smile she staved off the comment she felt bubbling within him by squeezing his shoulders tighter. “Think about it,” she said, cutting him off before he could even say anything. “The first time was when you were a newborn. Toxin hit your system and you began a demon-infected Werewolf transition. Doc shot you up with the same meds he gave me, Rod, Woods, and Fisher to keep the bad wolf at bay. Your system was so new that it needed the outside assistance, something to sway the balance so your brand-new immune system could go against a virulent invader.”
She watched him slowly take in her words as his shoulders relaxed under her hands. “Imagine a just-delivered infant being shot up with influenza and nothing to counteract it?”
Hunter nodded and she pressed on, needing to heal his mind and spirit as much as she knew his physical being required a purge.
“The second time, your entire metabolism shifted in puberty—I’m assuming at twelve that’s what set it off. Like any normal human’s would be at that time, your entire system was in hormonal flux and the recessive strain of this thing wrestled the Shadow Wolf within you for dominance. Twice in a row, the Shadow Wolf in you won. But I bet the second time you didn’t need as strong a shot from Doc as you did that first time, did you? Then, when you hit alpha maturity and were ready to battle for your place in the pack and the clan, again your body changed and the recessive trait came forward—but, again, I bet you didn’t need as much of the meds as you did when you were an infant. Right?”
“No,” Hunter said slowly, his unblinking gaze holding hers. “You’re right. I didn’t. My grandfather had the needles beside his loaded rifle and told me to make my wolf fight to survive, to make it stronger than the demon-wolf. Somehow I knew he’d rather shoot me himself than allow me to go on out of control. Then he tossed all but one of the needles in the fire and picked up the gun and waited.”
“And you won.”
For a moment they stared at each other, saying nothing.
“And I won that second and third time.”
“And now that you’re a man, you’re even stronger. Your wolf is unconquerable. You went through it last night and are yourself this morning. That means you’re gaining immunity, regardless of whatever might have set it off again.”
“You sound like you’ve been with the shaman.” His mouth smiled but his eyes burned with deep appreciation.
“You’ve lived within a pack, within the clan,” she said quietly, her gaze roving over his handsome face. She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, the side of it that hadn’t touched a wound. All she could think of was how he’d stayed with her and had healed the horrible gashes along her torso that would have made her own top brass give the order for her to be shot on sight, not understanding. Then, he’d fed her when she was too weak to eat, gave her a bath to cleanse her wounds. How could she ever forget?
Her voice became a low, thick rumble as she tried to get through his male barriers. “You’ve scented paired she-Shadows in heat before, and this didn’t happen. Don’t allow this thing to infect your mind or to rob you of your perception of who you are.”
When he looked away, she rested her damp forehead against his bare chest. “It was a combination of things—the previous fight, my condition, the full moon, the tumble we took through the demon doors. This will pass, Hunter. We’ll get Doc to look into it, Silver Shadow, too. But I don’t want you to give up on yourself before you’ve given yourself a fighting chance.”
She lifted her head and stared at him, her voice thick with emotion as her hands went back to the task of sealing the wounds around his neck. “I won’t give up on you. I can’t. I demand that you fight this thing the same way you fought it—no, harder than you did as a kid. You owe your grandfather’s honor that much.”
Finally he nodded, his gaze trapping hers.
The plan had been to come out of the mountains on the Canadian side and head toward an innocuous little motel, hotel, B&B, whatever, to restore Hunter to his formerly dignified scent, but twenty-plus snarls along the tree line changed all of that. When she felt Hunter bristle she slowly eased off her backpack and carefully found the edge of a silver chain inside her jeans pocket with two fingers.
Extracting one amulet and then the other as though holding a pair of guns with two fingers, she dangled them with her arms outstretched from her body.
“We’ve been battling a demon all night,” Sasha called out, hoping the truth-laced ruse would explain the scent that had alerted the pack to kill mode. She clearly needed to tell them something that might buy her and Hunter precious time. If they saw her holding silver, maybe she could cover for Hunter. It was worth a try. But she had to do something quickly. He was physically spent but in a very fragile state of mind—so fragile as to make him insane enough to lunge into full attack mode if he thought his pack rank was being challenged. His low snarl told her all she needed to know; she had to keep talking.
“We need sanctuary, not attack! Look at the broken clasps on the amulets. He gave them to me to carry to protect his mate, after what we’d been through, and in case we got separated again.”
She was no liar, nor was she a fool. Hunter had given her the amulets for her protection, to be sure. The problem now was that she’d openly said she was his mate because the packs dealt in absolutes. Later she’d worry about the fine points of the ruse. Right now they needed a safe haven. That part was no lie. It was all in the wording, though. Shadow Wolves could scent a lie a mile off, so she had to give them something with a rock-solid basis of truth.
Although the threatening snarls had abated, pure silence was often more deadly. She and Hunter turned slowly in unison as they felt the invisible pack circling. Part of her monitored the tension in Hunter’s jaw by the pulsing muscle moving beneath his skin; the other part of her monitored the dangerous vibration of the pack that was closing in on them.
Then just as suddenly as they’d been cornered, something indefinable in the very air around them eased and a huge, naked Ute tribesman stepped out of the shadows. It wasn’t that he was so tall, but it was his width that made her jaw nearly go slack. The man was built like a small truck. His line of vision locked with Hunter’s but held unmistakable relief. He crossed his massive chest with a battle-scarred clenched fist and forearm and she watched Hunter return the gesture.
“Our apologies, brother. We couldn’t be sure.”
Hunter nodded. “No apologies required, Bear Shadow. You were doing your job as pack enforcer. We expected no less.”
“You know the way to the ou
tpost?”
Hunter nodded. “Yes. By heart, as always.”
Bear Shadow glanced at Sasha, who still held the amulets out from her body and hadn’t moved. He raised one eyebrow and offered Hunter a sidelong glance with a half smile, not seeming the least bit concerned that he was having this entire conversation in the buff. One by one curious male wolves slipped into plain view from behind trees and out from the shadows, each a magnificent creature in varying hues.
“I would have given her my ward, too. We will clear the way and have eucalyptus water waiting . . . and food. You can then tell us of the battle and we will plan to hunt the creature as one.”
In the blink of an eye Bear Shadow had become a massive brown wolf again and he threw his head back and howled. The mournful song was picked up by twenty or more voices coaxing Hunter’s call to join theirs, and then they were again a part of the shadows. Gone.
Sasha slowly lowered her arms and then tucked the amulets away into her jeans pockets. It had been the most impressive display of pack cohesion and strength she’d ever witnessed. There would have been no way that a lone Werewolf could have won against such a band of brothers, demon-infected or not. If somehow she and Hunter had been considered the enemy, she now understood his very practical fear for her safety—they might have been able to stop some of them, but certainly not all before being overrun.
Bullets only worked if you could get to your weapon, and the pack moved like the wind. That, too, would have been very unlikely. One of them would have ripped off her arm before she could’ve pulled a nine, and if she and Hunter transformed, without a means of ambush, a twenty-plus to two ratio was suicide.
Hunter picked up the backpack without saying a word and hoisted it over one shoulder. In truth, what was there to say? There was no longer the need to keep the scent he trailed off their gear; the pack had temporarily bought the ruse. She’d now finally seen with her own eyes what they were up against. Hunter didn’t have to elaborate.