Alexei took a second to grab a metal chair he’d seen in her lounge.
He didn’t have to ask her to follow—she did so without a word. Once under the trapdoor, he put the chair directly beneath, illuminating the area using the light from his phone. She didn’t have a wolf’s eyes, couldn’t see in the dark. “I’m going to stand on this,” he told her. “I need you to climb up close to me and allow me to lift you up through the hole.”
He held out his arms for her pet’s body, sorry for this wild creature that may have spent its entire existence in a cage; the only mercy was that it appeared to have been deeply loved. “I’ll pass him through after.”
Her eyes flicked up to the trapdoor, an unexpectedly ferocious determination suddenly vivid on her features. Instead of handing him her small burden, she put it down on the ground with tender care. Alexei used the opportunity to shrug off his jacket so he could give it to the E. He’d looked for her own coat when he’d grabbed the blanket, but hadn’t spotted one. The sweater she was wearing appeared to be her thickest item of clothing.
As it was, he didn’t need his jacket for survival; he’d only put it on because the pack’s very pregnant healer had silently held it out with a “wear this or feel my wrath” look on her face. Alexei wasn’t scared of Lara’s wrath, but neither was he about to stress her out when she was growing a pup inside her. He’d put on the damn jacket and had been glad of it when the freezing rain pelted down.
Even wolves didn’t enjoy being drenched to the bone.
Waterproof and thickly lined, the jacket should keep the E from hypothermia while they were outside. “It’s icy out,” he said when the E hesitated. “You can’t escape if you’re too cold to function.”
She took the jacket, pulled it on, then did up the zipper. He had to help her roll up the sleeves and did so quickly. That done, he got on the chair and hoped it would hold their combined weight. He only needed it to do so long enough to get her out. He had other ways of hauling himself up.
She climbed up to join him, her movements jerky but her jaw set and her eyes raised up toward freedom.
“One, two, three.” He lifted her with his hands on her waist. “Get your arms over the top of the trapdoor.”
She did it in one go, this woman who weighed less than nothing but whose empathic power was a storm; even quiet, her sadness swirled around him. He gave her another lift up to help her out, waited to catch her should she fall. She didn’t. Instead, her small face looked down at him from the trapdoor, her large eyes fathomless.
Dropping to the floor, he picked up her pet, then got back on the chair to lift the small blanket-wrapped body up to her. She leaned in so far he thought she’d slip, but she managed to take hold of the cat without disaster. Yet she didn’t pull back. “Hurry.” It was a rasped whisper that ruffled his wolf’s fur, made it prick its ears. “He likes to hurt people.”
Yeah, she was an empath, couldn’t help looking after others even when her own life was at risk. Like the healers in his pack—who he made a point of avoiding. Sometimes a man just wanted to brood in peace. How Lara had caught him today, he had no idea: his wolf was of the opinion that she and the maternals in the den were in cahoots, probably had a secret comm network.
Today, he had to get this little healer to safety. The predator in him would like nothing better than to lie in wait and tear her teleporting coward of an abductor to shreds, but his priority had to be the E. Stepping off the chair, he repositioned it slightly before moving back all the way to the broken door. A punch of speed, his wolf taking control of his movements as he used the chair to launch his body skyward, slammed the sole of one foot against a wall . . . and grabbed the lip of the open trapdoor.
The E had jumped back when he erupted toward her, watched him in breathless quiet as he hauled himself up. Soon as he was out, he closed the trapdoor before grabbing a large piece of rock he’d noticed in the corner, and weighing the trapdoor down. The weight wouldn’t stop a teleporter, but whether that teleporter had any visual coordinates that would permit him to teleport outside the bunker was a good question.
Alexei couldn’t take the risk, had to move the E away from this location.
“It’s stormy and the rain might’ve turned to ice,” he told the E afterward. “You’ll get wet and cold.”
No flinch, nothing but a steady stare that might’ve been disconcerting if he hadn’t been aware that she couldn’t get into his head unless she was a powerful telepath who wanted to smash his mind open. The latter idea just didn’t sit right—not with the depth of the grief she’d broadcast, and not with how gently she held the body of her aged pet.
Alexei had also never heard of an E who went around doing violence except in self-defense—and even then, they had to be pushed to the furthest edge—so he was going to play the odds and assume she wasn’t an enemy. The whole enemy operative angle made no sense in any case—the “trap” required far too much time and patience with no guarantee of success.
Pulling out his phone, he sent a message to Hawke: I have the E. Taking her to the substation. It was the only secure shelter around for miles. She’s no threat.
The response was immediate. Are you sure, Lexie? Not stated but understood was that the Psy race might’ve left Silence behind, but many of them continued to believe they were the master race, changelings and humans their inferiors to be manipulated and used.
I’m sure, he assured his alpha. She’s more afraid of me than I am of her. The strange flatness was gone; he could taste the sharp bite of her fear below the grief—and yet she’d warned him to hurry when she could’ve tried to run the instant she was out. I’ll message again from the substation—we’ll be slow.
He secured the phone in the side pocket of his cargoes. “We can’t carry your pet’s body far,” he said quietly, very conscious of their relative sizes and making an effort to sound nonthreatening. Before his world fell apart, he hadn’t been apt to growl or snarl except when pushed to it—he tried to channel that distant Alexei. “We have to walk at least a half hour.” No, that was wolf speed. It’d be much longer at her pace.
She clutched her pet closer, but nodded. “In the open.” A whisper. “Under the sky.”
Blood hot with a need to go for her captor’s throat, Alexei nodded. “Under the sky.” Promise made, he exited first to ensure it was safe outside.
The rain was relentless, but it hadn’t turned into snow.
The E came quickly after him, and though the rain soaked her within seconds, she stood staring up at the turgid gray sky with a radiant look on her face, her hair an electric halo that seemed to crackle under the energy of the storm. At that instant, she was the essence of freedom.
His wolf watched her in primal approval. “Let me.” He held out his arms for her pet. “It’ll slow you down and we need to move.”
A glance around at the rocky and inhospitable terrain before she accepted his offer. Her lips were pressed tight and he was sure tears mixed with the raindrops on her face.
Alexei might eschew the type of intimate skin privileges his packmates loved and craved, but he’d never stopped holding packmates who needed touch. It was part of being a dominant, part of being a SnowDancer lieutenant. The E was crying out for comfort—but would likely scream if he engulfed her in his arms. Even the wolf understood they had to go gently.
Gritting his teeth, he hauled his instincts into line.
“Follow me,” he said. “Step where I step.”
The E’s movements were jagged and ungraceful, but she had control of her limbs. He knew she had to be weak—she was too thin and moved with too little coordination for it to be otherwise—but though he kept an eye on her, he didn’t halt until ten minutes later.
He’d taken them on a route that put a slight rise between them and the hidden bunker. No one would spot the two of them unless they came over the same rise. “Here?” He’d stopped at
a spot that would be under full sunlight on a clear day.
Her breathing uneven, she nodded and picked up a broken piece of stone, then began to dig. Placing her pet’s body on the ground, Alexei used his claws to accelerate the process. Her eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t stop her movements, and they worked side by side under the chilling rain.
The tiny grave didn’t take long to dig.
She put her pet’s body inside it with gentle hands. Her tears fell like rain as she pushed the dirt back to cover the hole.
When she began to pick up other pieces of stone with fingers that shook from the cold, he realized what she was doing and helped her build the cairn. He made sure it was solid, but before they placed the last stones, he deliberately nicked his finger using a broken stone shard.
The E made a small sound.
“It’s to make sure no animals disturb your pet,” he told her as he rubbed his blood on the inner stones, placing it in enough crevices that the rain wouldn’t wash it away. Every other creature in this area knew that the SnowDancer wolves were the apex predators. The merest hint of wolf scent and any scavengers or curious ramblers would give the cairn a wide berth.
“He’ll be safe,” Alexei told the E while the rain pounded down on both of them. The tangled mass of her hair had lost its buoyancy under the weight of the water, was limp enough that it highlighted both the dramatic bones of her face and the lack of flesh on those bones.
Silently—and with painful care—she put the last stones in place. “Bye, Jitterbug.” A husky whisper, one hand on the cairn. “Thank you for being my friend.”
Tenderness and pity crashed inside Alexei. The depth of the empath’s grief, paired with the way she appeared so broken, it told him too much, none of it anything but enraging.
Giving her the only privacy he could, he kept his gaze on the rise over which they’d come until she was ready to leave her pet behind. Jitterbug. A name that conjured up a tiny, fast kitten who bounced and played and probably made her laugh.
That cat hadn’t been a kitten for a long, long time.
Shrugging aside the hot burn of his anger, he led the E in the direction of the substation. The Sierra Nevada den was powered by solar energy harnessed by miniature panels scattered throughout their territory—partly to utilize the sun’s energy across the day, but mostly so an enemy couldn’t take out one area and cripple them.
A few of the larger panels hadn’t yet been replaced, but the vast majority were now so small they could be hidden among the rocks on the high slopes of the mountains, could even be placed on tree trunks that got kissed by sunlight at a certain point in the day. Thousands of tiny cells working together to create a jolting current.
The solar grid hadn’t ever let the den down, but SnowDancer also had a small hydro station as backup just in case, and it was this hydro unit the substation serviced.
Beside him, the empath stumbled a third time, almost cracking her knee against a slab of stone. He caught her as he had before, but this time, he closed his hand around her smaller and colder one while holding eye contact. “We’ll get to safety faster this way.”
Her fingers didn’t curl around his, but—despite the acrid bite of her fear—neither did she pull her hand away, and they continued on. He didn’t much feel the chill; changelings had far better cold tolerance than humans or Psy. He’d be even more resilient in his wolf form and could move like liquid through this environment. But the E couldn’t follow the wolf and he had no idea how she’d react to his other form.
Human or wolf, he could tear out a throat with little effort, but non-changelings found it easier to ignore that truth while changelings like Alexei were in their human form.
The E’s hand began to shiver in his not long after they left Jitterbug’s grave. The two of them were under the canopy of the trees now, the rain no longer as hard on their bodies and the snow more manageable, but the weather hadn’t let up at all. In fact, it looked to be getting worse.
Clenching his jaw as he fought the urge to tuck her against him, share his warmth, he kept her hand in his and tried to stay under the canopy as much as he could. When the wind whistled in, he used his body to shield hers. His frustrated wolf grumbled the entire time; the human side of Alexei agreed with the grumbling.
This would go much faster if he could just pick up the E and run.
Only he had a feeling she’d panic and fight . . . or go motionless and stiff. The latter would be worse, revealing bone-chilling terror. Alexei wasn’t about to traumatize her that way, not after some bastard had already put her in a cage.
To his surprise, she kept up with him the entire way. He wasn’t going fast, but neither was he pausing to let her rest—the weather was too cold for her to survive if she stopped; he’d worried she’d collapse partway. But she kept going, one dogged step after the other. Unfettered respect wiped away his earlier pity, his wolf looking at her with new eyes. This was how she’d survived in that bunker.
The woman beside him was a fighter.
The last part of the route to the substation meant crossing an empty field that, in the summer, was a favorite resting ground for wild black bears. Currently, it was full of snow turned into slush by the rain, the substation door barely visible in the gloom caused by the storm and the oncoming night. The gale-force winds almost bent them in half as they crossed that final stretch and, this time, he did put his arm around her. She didn’t attempt to break away, and he got them both to the substation.
As with all the buildings SnowDancer had built in their territory, it was designed to blend into the environment. Dug out of a small hill, the door was cleverly camouflaged with paint that echoed the surroundings, then hidden under trailing foliage. While the empath waited next to him, her bones all but clattering from the cold, he opened up the concealed entry-panel and used his palm print to unlock the door. He nudged her inside the second the lock snicked open.
She froze, a stone statue glued to the earth.
A scream of pure emotion hit him with vicious force.
Chapter 3
The ability to broadcast powerful emotion at a changeling mind appears to be a rare skill, and is currently limited to Sascha Duncan, possibly because of her mating bond with a changeling*—though the critical factor may be that Sascha also has a child who has genetic heritage from both races. Sascha’s mate and child are also connected to her on the psychic plane.
Further data is required before we come to any conclusions; at present, any inference we make would be no better than a blind guess.
*DarkRiver Leopard Alpha, Lucas Hunter
—Manuscript of The Mysterious E Designation: A World Beyond Silence by Alice Eldridge with research assistance from Sahara Kyriakus and Jaya Laila Storm (Work in Progress)
ALEXEI’S WOLF GROWLED, cold and wet and wanting out of this storm—but mostly wanting her out of it. About to pick up the damn tiny E with the huge mental voice and get them both inside, he suddenly realized what was going on.
Alexei Vasiliev Harte, you’re an idiot.
Opening up the panel again, he input an administrative code, then took her fisted hand in his—it was stiff, uncooperative. “I’m adding you to the system,” he said, a growl in his voice that came from untrammeled fury directed at the person who’d done this to her. “Put your palm on the panel.”
The E didn’t move, her breath coming in rapid gasps.
Her lips were beginning to turn blue. Alexei ran out of his already strained patience. Claws pricking the inside of his skin, he put one arm around her waist and literally lifted her up until he could get her fist on the panel.
“Spread open your fingers,” he said when her fist remained closed tight. God, he was ready to bite her. Didn’t she realize how close she was to hypothermia?
“I’m trying to give you a key.” He couldn’t help the snarl in his next words, all thoughts of being civilized
and gentle forgotten. “Or would you prefer to freeze to death outside? I’m sure a snap-frozen E would delight your captor. He could just pick you up and put you back underground.”
Emotion slapped at him: a blast of raging fury. She flexed her fingers open, pressing her palm flat on the screen of the reader. On the back of her index knuckle was a ridged white scar that might’ve come from a childhood cut that hadn’t healed well, and her nails were ragged at the tips. Not as if she bit them, more as if they’d broken and caught on things and she hadn’t cared to smooth out the damage.
Alexei initiated the scan while continuing to hold her up with one arm around her waist. Her silent fury bared its teeth at him. So, his E had anger within her. It made the wildness inside him open its mouth in a devious smile. If infuriating her was what it took to break through her trauma and panic, Alexei would push every button he could. There was a reason his alpha considered Alexei one of the best strategic minds in the pack—and why his friends had banned him from the poker table.
The scan complete, the screen flashed.
Putting the E down, he input a second authorization code, then scanned his palm again to lock in the change. He turned to see that she was staring at the panel and at his hand. He’d been careful to angle his body so she couldn’t see the authorization codes—not that she could do anything without his living palm on the screen to confirm any changes—but the lieutenant part of his brain noted her intense focus.
It was likely a symptom of her need for freedom, but until he knew more about her, he couldn’t discount an ulterior motive. “You can come and go at will.” He’d given her local access only and he’d revoke it as soon as the two of them left the substation.
With that, he scanned the door open a second time. But this time, when she didn’t enter, the tactical center of his brain told him to shrug and act unconcerned—despite his feral protectiveness toward this small, bedraggled creature he’d brought this far. “Not my job to babysit lost Es,” he muttered loud enough that she’d hear. “If having your eyelashes freeze and break off while your face turns a nice shade of blue is your thing, enjoy.”
Wolf Rain Page 3