Wanted: Fevered or Alive

by Long, Heather

  The Morning Star brother raised his hands and retreated with a laugh. “Save your temper for our quarry. She’s all yours.”

  Yes. Yes she is.

  It was mid-afternoon when they arrived at the fort, and business as usual. They’d brought a string of horses with them, three year olds Micah had earmarked for sale. The five horses gave them all the excuse they needed.

  “Do all the talking,” Jason reminded Jimmy. “Remember, don’t touch me.”

  He nodded once. “Understood.”

  Inside the gates, Jason dismounted and pulled off his hat. He made a patient show of checking his horse and then Jimmy’s while the quartermaster strode out to discuss the cost of the horses. Finding the newcomers wasn’t hard, he’d spent enough time in the fort that Jason had a passing recognition for most of the minds, releasing his shield he let the drowning mental conversations crash over him.

  The strangers were present and one by one, Jason shut off the voices of soldiers, standard thoughts until he narrowed his focus. Turning toward Jimmy and the quartermaster, he kept his face blank as though only half-listening. Across the yard and leaning just inside a doorway stood a man who fit the rough image Quanto shared with him.

  Willing the man to look at him, Jason waited.

  Contact. Their gazes locked for the space of a heartbeat, but it was all Jason needed. He slipped inside the ugliness of the man’s mind. We need to get onto the ranch again. There’s a lady at the house they’re keeping hidden…that has to be her.

  They wanted Evelyn Lang, but the woman they thought was her had to be Olivia. Needing to find the other two kept that one alive, but Jason memorized his mind. It wouldn’t take much to find him again. Slipping out, he walked over toward the water pump. Another man glanced up from where he was whittling. His gaze drifted over Jason and the contact, gave Jason his access point.

  Man number two had been identified.

  The third man, however, didn’t make an appearance. Jimmy drew out the haggling, and Jason turned to lean against the fence and crossed his arms. He focused on the two men he had found, and when the third still hadn’t made an appearance—he gave the man in the doorway a nudge. When his attention went to the gates followed by an impatient thought—Jason knew exactly where the man was.

  On his way to the ranch.

  They’d split up, hoping to catch the Kanes unaware. Tension wound him up tight and Jason retreated to his own mind. “We’ll take the last offer,” he told Jimmy and the quartermaster without a care for what the actual number had been.

  Jimmy nodded, and the quartermaster filled out a slip of paper that he handed over. The payment would come through when their next shipment of gold arrived. Jason didn’t give a damn about the money. He and Jimmy were on their way out within minutes.

  “We have one on the ranch, I’m going to send word to Micah.” He said without preamble. “Keep an eye out.”

  Not bothering to wait for a response, he flung out a mental call to his sibling and Micah’s response was immediate. Keep an eye on the house and any women on their own. We have someone on the ranch looking for Kid’s lady.

  I’ll take care of it.

  The swift acceptance without question wouldn’t have been there even a few months ago and he still had to ask. Olivia?

  I’ll take care of her brother. Don’t worry.

  It helped, trusting Micah at his word, he retreated to himself once more and reined in as soon as they crossed the river. “We’re waiting for nightfall.”

  Jimmy nodded. “They aren’t following, at least not yet.”

  It took them a short time, but they stashed the horses in a copse of trees with access to grass and water before they found a place off the trail to keep an eye on the fort and the path from the ranch.

  The sun was halfway down the western sky when they caught sight of the rider. Jason had checked with Micah no less than three times. Only his brother’s patient reassurance that Olivia was safe kept Jason in place.

  Passing by them, the rider glanced toward the dark wood Jason stood in and their gazes met. That bitch is there, I know they’re hiding her. We’ll find her and when we do, I’m going to cut her head off.

  Another string of invectives followed it, but the man was exhausted, furious—and frightened. Witnessing Evelyn’s talent in action had terrified him and that terror had turned to hate. Vile filth preoccupied the man’s thoughts and Jason clenched his fist. He needed him back in the fort before he killed him.

  But he wouldn’t live through this night. Piggybacking his thoughts to the man’s, he rode with him. The soldiers yelled out a challenge at his approach, but whatever answer the man gave satisfied them. Jason noted his name and the name of the other two men with him. A nudge within his thoughts revealed the fourth man—the instigator behind the murder of Evelyn’s father—had returned to Tennessee. Noting his name and the location, he filed that away.

  The man’s friends were waiting for him in the stables. Jason smiled internally. All three together would make this much simpler. A distant part of his mind noted Jimmy shifting near him, but he followed Jason’s instructions and didn’t touch him.

  After a hurried conference, the three men went inside to eat and drink. Patiently, Jason continued to be a passenger, noting every topic of conversation, every name and every bit of the story. They’d told no one else about Evelyn, they didn’t think anyone would believe them. Not even Colonel Stanley, though he’d questioned them so closely it had concerned the men.

  His death had been divine providence—or so they’d decided.

  Night blanketed the land and the darkness brought cooler temperatures and Jason waited. The men had begun to drink and he encouraged their choice, subtle nudges, until they’d finished up three bottles of rotgut between them. Their thoughts slurred on the way to their beds.

  One by one, their minds slumped into unconsciousness and Jason told their hearts to stop beating, he leap frogged from one mind to the next. And then withdrew with a snapping force as the third man stopped breathing. Stumbling back three steps, the world spun as he reacclimated to his own mind.

  Jimmy caught him before he walked into the fire and steadied him. “You look like hell.”

  “They’re dead.” It was the last coherent thought he could manage. Checking Olivia’s place in his mind, he found it secure and let the blackness take him.

  Chapter 16

  Olivia, Terror

  A scream clawed its way out of her throat and fear had jolted her from uneasy sleep. The door to her rooms burst open.

  “Miss Olivia?” Shane’s voice cut through the unearthly silence and a babble of voices filled the hallway behind him.

  “Olivia?” Micah called her.

  Then Sam.

  Heart in throat, she shook her head. “Find Jason. Find him. Something’s wrong.”

  “Stay with her.” Sam said curtly to someone and then footsteps raced away.

  “Go down and put water on for tea,” Scarlett ordered quietly and more footsteps headed away. “Shane, go fetch Noah from his cabin. We’re better off having him right here if we need him.”

  The bed next to her depressed and Scarlett’s hands clasped Olivia’s. “I’m going to stay right here with you until we hear anything.”

  Olivia didn’t really listen. Something was dreadfully wrong and it was worse than when Jason had been shot—she’d felt his heart beat then, knew he still breathed. Tears burned unshed in her eyes and her heart thrummed brutally in her chest. One hour dragged into the next. Olivia drank the tea Scarlett pressed into her hands and paced.

  Mariska and Cody arrived within the second hour and the wolf female took Scarlett’s place, holding her hand. She repeated over and over that Jason would be fine, but Olivia couldn’t really process that information. Not when the agonizing wait continued.

  Maybe if she’d agreed to being bitten, she could have gone with him—been there to protect him from whatever happened. Instead, he’d had to leave her at the ranch,
surrounded by his friends and family. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Micah had come to check on her several times nor did the fact that they didn’t leave her alone—at all. Shane had even taken a sentry position just outside her room when she’d retired for the evening.

  It seemed to take forever before she heard the horses arriving and the call of masculine voices. Micah and Sam were back, as was Jimmy, but strain as she might—she couldn’t hear Jason’s voice.

  “Olivia.” Mariska squeezed her hand, but Olivia pulled free.

  “Look out the window. Tell me they have him with them. Please.”

  “He is,” Cody’s answered before she’d made it a step. “They’re bringing him inside—and no, I don’t smell blood.”

  She shuddered. Even though he’d meant it to be comforting, the idea of Jason bleeding was too fresh and too close to the last time he’d been hurt. The thunder of boots in the hall preceded their arrival. Mariska caught her arms and drew her back. “Let them in,” she told Olivia softly. “Noah’s here…and there’s no blood. No sign of injury.”

  “He did what he did,” Jimmy told her around the shuffling as they got Jason on the bed. She listened to every sound and pulled free of Mariska’s grasp to circle the bed. Trailing her fingers over the covers, she climbed onto it, sitting on her knees and touched a hand to Jason’s chest.

  It rose and fell. Relief flooded through her.

  “Like I said,” Jimmy said after a moment of silence. “He did what he did. Said the men were dead and then he dropped.”

  “I’m not finding any injuries at all.” Noah’s voice added to solemn chatter, but Olivia concentrated on the feel of Jason’s heart beating beneath her fingers. He’d told Jimmy the men were dead. But he’d told her that if he lingered too long in the mind of a person who was dying, death tried to take him, too.

  What would happen if he stayed in the mind of three people? And what of everything else that he’d done lately? Reaching out to Kid across the miles, scanning the town, and the fight with Stanley. He’d told her he’d not killed any of the soldiers that day, merely put them to sleep.

  But wouldn’t it all take a toll? What cost to him for when he let her use his eyes?

  “We’re going to let him rest and I’ll keep checking on him,” Noah continued speaking.

  “We’ll stay,” Sam announced and Micah concurred.

  “No,” Olivia turned her face to the room. “I’d like to be alone with him for a while. You can leave someone in the hall or close by, but I think what he needs is quiet.” She kept touching him. He’d told her that she brought him silence, but that was before—she could only hope she still did.

  “She has a point,” Cody agreed. One by one they trailed out, with Sam being the last to go. She had no idea why she knew he lingered, but she did.

  “He’ll be all right.” Solemn and certain, his belief bolstered her. “I’ve known him all his life and I’ve never seen him as he is with you, Olivia. He’s not going anywhere, not while you’re here.”

  Biting her lip, she swallowed back a sob and nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The door closed behind him and Olivia took several minutes to calm herself down before beginning to strip Jason out of his clothes. When she dragged a coverlet over him, she settled in and pressed her head to his chest. “You have to be all right,” she told him in as no nonsense a voice as she could manage. “You have to wake up, but if you need to sleep—then I’ll be right here until you do wake up. I won’t go anywhere; you don’t have to worry. Just come back to me.”

  Closing her eyes, she listened to the steady drum of his heart beneath her ear and waited. Please come back to me. She prayed. Please come back. It was a litany, she repeated over and over in her mind. She wanted to tear down the wall that separated them—a world without Jason was such a dark and fiercely lonely place. Surviving four years in Boston had been bearable only because she’d known she was coming back to him. She could wait an eternity as long as she knew he was there at the end.

  He had to be there.

  Shhh… His voice whispered through her mind and his hand came up to fist her hair. I’m not leaving you, I promise.

  Lifting her head, she touched his face. “Jason?”

  Shhh… The whisper trailed through her like a ghostly caress and the wall tumbled down, he was there like a blaze of light in the darkness and the sense of him filled every part of her mind. No scratches, as promised.

  I can hear you.

  I know. And it sounded a little smug. But you should be sleeping.

  A choked cry escaped her and she sniffled. I was waiting for my husband… Exhausted, and strained beyond belief, but he was aware of her and she of him. His thoughts streamed through her, the knowledge of his actions and the toll they had taken, but beneath it all was a satisfaction. It was done.

  Kid was safe. His lady was safe.

  And Olivia was safe.

  He had no regrets, none at all.

  Under those thoughts were others, a secondary voice that questioned how could she live with him if he never changed? When would she realize that she needed someone better than him? Someone kinder? The odd echo to her own worries perplexed her and she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him fiercely.

  I want no one else but you.

  Good. He told her, but there it was again—the idea that she might change her mind.

  Never.

  Confusion clouded the stream of thoughts and then one by one they slipped away and she felt the curtain closing. She fought it and dug her nails into his chest. Don’t…

  You don’t need to see those things.

  It’s you, I will always see you, don’t shut me out.

  Olivia…

  She scrambled, she had to show him. He had to know what he meant to her. I love you, Jason. All of you. The kind parts. The lonely parts. Even the dark parts. Do I like that you kill? No. Do I believe you do what is necessary? Yes. Will I ever turn away from you because you do what you believe is necessary? No. Don’t turn away from me. Please.

  The curtain hesitated and drew back a fraction and he was there, the mental hug enveloped her and she burrowed deeper into it.

  Love you so much it hurts. The confession ripped her apart. I only want you to be safe and happy. You are so beautiful, so kind, and mine. But I’m selfish, Olivia. I don’t want to share you with anyone. I don’t want to let you go. But I also don’t want to smother you.

  Tears poured down her face and she laughed a little. As if I would let you…haven’t you learned how stubborn I am?

  I’ve always known how stubborn you are. The fatigue in his mental voice tugged at her.

  Sleep, rest. We can fight later…

  Olivia, he resisted her order. About the wolf thing…I see you wrestling with it. No. You don’t have to change for me. If you want to try—to see—to be a wolf, if that’s what you want, I will support you. But not for me. Never, ever for me.

  He cupped her face and she felt the stroke of his finger as he traced her mouth. “Do you understand?” Raw, and hoarse, he fought his exhaustion for her. “I love you as you are.”

  It shattered her, cutting the last thread of hesitation within her and she leaned into his touch. “And I you. Always you, Jason. It’s always been you.”

  Shuddering, he dragged her against him and locked his arms around her. “I will never let you go.”

  When the curtain began to close this time, she let it. He so needed sleep, but it remained parted at the center, a low-level of awareness—like a mental kiss—and she sighed. It was selfish on her part, but she wanted it to stay that way. So much for bringing him silence…

  The mental chuckle echoed the rumble in his chest. Don’t you know—I see and hear no one else when you are around because you are all I want to hear.

  A smile curved her lips, and she pressed a kiss to his chest. “Sleep,” she ordered. “I’ll want to fight later, I’m sure.”

  “All right,” he agreed and long after his breathing slowed, s
he lay there—listening to him. Even in sleep, his mind embraced her. They really would never be alone again.

  Exactly as it should be.

  Jason, Homecoming

  It took him days to recover fully. He’d pushed his limits farther than he’d ever managed before, but he didn’t regret it for an instant. Olivia was a constant presence in his mind—and a constant source of acerbic observation when he began to get down on himself. He’d thought it would be maddening, but it was her and he loved having her near no matter where he was. Yes, it revised his plans. The bond between them was a thing of wonder, particularly whenever he began to question his value to her. Then and only then did she invade him with thoughts of love and affection.

  No one, she’d told him rather tartly, was allowed to denigrate him. Not even him. Should he feel the need to fight about it, he only had to let her know. Jason chuckled and his father cut a glance toward him.

  “What’s funny?” They’d taken a wagon out to head to the fort, the arrival of a new major required a visit from Jed Kane and Jason had gone along to scan the man. He felt not an ounce of remorse for his invasion of the major’s privacy. The man had known nothing of Fevered, Colonel Stanley, or MacPherson. He’d been exactly as he’d appeared to be, a bit on the youngish side, and more interested in making a good impression than a mark on the world.

  For that, Jason would keep an eye on him, but leave him be. Still, it was important for Jed to cultivate a relationship with the soldiers, particularly after the recent rash of deaths.

  “I was thinking about—” The world slammed sideways on him and for a moment, he felt like he’d been dropped into the center of a very large bell and someone struck the other side of it. The world expanded, and with it came the surge from the ranch.

  Every single mind flickered to life across his mental landscape and he shielded Olivia automatically. The wave of thoughts struck him, one after another, but instead of slicing through him they flowed over like water in a stream. A distant part of him acknowledged the wagon stopped moving and Jed’s hand on his arm.