She’s out there. Jet is out there. Out there and running, if he didn’t mistake that howl. He didn’t know why. He did know that she was desperate—and that she would never simply leave her pack.
He would have said she wouldn’t simply leave him, either. As little as he knew her—the details of her, the everyday things—he had nonetheless seen the grit of her. The soul. Laid bare, in a wolf’s quick and easy assessment—in the space of a romp. Pure communication, unfettered by sly human half truths or double-talk, defining the profound nature of that which had sprung to life so quickly between them.
That which could not simply be discarded, not even with betrayal between them.
Not willing betrayal.
He’d seen that much in her golden eyes, even as the amulet had taken him down.
At that memory, the wolf in him steadied, built power…burst free, a shout turning into a quick hard snarl. Bitter Core workings wavered in the air, poison forced out and away and dissipating into the night.
Right back at you, Gausto.
Nick threw himself into a steady lope, following a scent trail so fresh and clear that his eyes could all but see it. But he didn’t answer Jet’s call. She’d decided to go; she wouldn’t welcome him. He had no intention of telling her he was on his way.
Not that he needed to. She’d figure it out. And as fast as she was, he’d be hard-put to keep up with her at all.
Then don’t.
He knew this territory. She didn’t. She knew to skirt the edges of the city until she could find a place to cross I-10 between Oro Valley and Tucson. But she’d do as any wolf would, following the terrain—sticking to the natural paths created by the wild denizens of this area.
Nick knew those paths. But he also knew the terrain between—the shortcuts over rougher ground. And now he let his body settle into the rhythm of four feet and lolling tongue, hitting a small nameless wash that led to the Pantano, floundering briefly in that deep, soft sand, and scrambling back out the other side. Cut south and west and down through another—but he’d taken miles from the looping path that Jet had likely struck—a path that ran just alongside the high ground, and on which she would have felt safe.
Nick found the path. He didn’t have to wait long.
Jet trotted into view, a metronome of motion—emotionally numbed, and not paying attention as she should. And even when she saw him coming from above and behind…three hard sprinting strides and he was upon her, pacing her another two strides and then grabbing hard at her ruff, taking her down. They rolled together, thick fur protecting them from the cholla and prickly pear until the thick base of a looming saguaro stopped their struggle.
She snapped back at him, then, a desperate gesture. He closed his jaws over her muzzle in alpha admonishment—taking the chance that her wolf’s nature would respond so quickly, so instinctively, it would buy him time. A moment, that’s all—and he got it, long enough to step over top her, and in the stepping…the change. A hard change, and fast, pushing the energy out in ways he’d never done before—taking another chance.
Jet yelped; she spasmed briefly beneath him—before his shifting energies pushed out the change in her, turning her from rangy furred wolf to long-legged and smooth, the sweet and salty scent of exertion, sweet and salty scent of tears, strong to a nose still sensitive from the change.
“Damn,” he said. “You’re not crying.”
“Damn, I am not,” she told him, all but snapping the words…but in a voice suspiciously free of its normal mellifluous tone. But then, so very clearly crying, dammit yes, she reached out—she outright grabbed him. She pulled down his head to kiss him so fiercely that he immediately lost coherent thought, immersed in scent and soft skin and the utterly amazing sensation of lips both pliant and needy. Her fingers scraped through his hair, tugging at him; one long, strong leg hooked high behind his thigh.
He realized, in a dim corner of sanity, that he was about to take her right here in the desert, this wolf woman he’d known for such a short time—that he was about to take her hard.
That it was exactly what she wanted.
Even more dimly—somewhere beyond her lips and tongue and the crush of her breasts against his chest, all gathering a whirlpool of sensations so out of control as to head for out-of-body—he realized that her frantic need was less about want and more about desperation, a feral newborn woman cornered between circumstance and the very real bond that had sprung to life between them. Understanding and desire and mutual need—two souls alone, finding each other in the desert.
But mutual need didn’t make the moment right.
Willpower, he had none of. If it was up to willpower, he’d bury himself in her hard and deep and fast, thrusting them both to clawing need and beyond. But it was not willpower that made him break off with a guttural gasp of physical disbelief. It was the equally fierce need to protect her, the knowledge that she floundered in a world that made little overall sense to her and that she reached out in grief as much as passion. Trying to fill a void.
So he pulled back from her kiss, torn by her noise of protest and his own fierce disbelieving groan. He rolled to his side to pull her in close, tucking her head into the hollow of his neck and shoulder and holding her tightly.
Tightly enough to make it clear: he had no intention of letting her go. Tightly enough so that he still ached to be inside her, nestling them together in a way that sent trembling rebellion through his body. She pushed her hips against him, so…utterly…perfect…
“Jet,” he said, a strangled sound—barely a word at all. In that instant she understood—she was being held, not loved, and she resisted it.
But this moment wasn’t about overpowering her simply to prove that he could. It was about changing where she was. Putting a stop to the frenetic and the fears. And yes…about claiming her.
She’d asked for him. She’d prodded him and demanded of him and now he told her yes in the most primal way possible—the way she’d understand the most deeply.
And she bit him.
She bit him hard, sinking her teeth into the muscle between neck and shoulder. He stiffened, capturing her in a blanketing hold, inexorable but not the least bit tight, enough strength behind it so it never needed to become that way. She fought him in silence, teeth bared, her breath gusting against the hot throb of teethmarks, a tiny grunt of effort escaping—
Until quite suddenly, she didn’t.
She settled. Her panting eased; her breath came in small puffs against that same shoulder she’d bitten.
Into that calm and silence, he murmured, “Good, now?”
She thought about it; she nodded. Nick eased his hold, relaxing onto the harsh ground. She, too, slowly relaxed, accepting this new kind of contact. Not sexual, not hot. Not defiant, not grabbing or needy—because he was right there, already giving her what she needed. Instead of easing away, she gave the ragged throb of his shoulder a solicitous lick.
Warm and cool, intimate and gentle…it thrilled him all the way down to his toes. She settled against his erection, accepting the moment.
He supposed he could consider it progress. Certain parts of his body called it otherwise. He rested his face briefly against her head—glossy hair short and wild, caressing his face. “What happened?”
A hesitation. “They said you would imprison me. That you could not forgive me.” Her voice had never sounded so other, with the faint blending of one syllable into another, the melody behind it.
“They?” he repeated sharply. “Gausto’s people were here?”
“I think I brought them,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder, looking down toward the gleaming, rounded shape of her ass.
Nick couldn’t make sense of it. He went back to her initial words, said, “Forgive you? For what, being tortured by the Core?”
She licked his shoulder again; it took him unaware, and he pushed himself against her with a quiet rush of breath. She flexed to meet him, completely natural and unselfconscious, and said, “H
e did not call it torture. He said he was doing me a favor, to make me more than what I had been.”
“Mind games.” Anger surged hot in his chest. As woman she was exquisite; as wolf she had nonetheless been whole. “Jet, Gausto lied to you, he manipulated you, he threatened you and those you love, and he bullied you—all while you had no context for what he wanted from you. The amazing thing is that you broke from him anyway. I’m alive because of you.”
She whispered, “But you have been so very sick because of me.”
“Because of Gausto, dammit.”
She gave a little alto growl into his collarbone, and he laughed, short and a little dark. “Lest I forget who you are,” he noted. What you are. “And how, exactly, do you think you brought them here?”
“Those men said he put an amulet inside me,” she said, and sniffed into his neck, burrowing a little closer as the cold night air closed in around them—their sweat drying, their muscles cooling. “Gausto won’t be happy. I’m not supposed to hurt them.” And then, “I’m not sure about that man at the gas station. I don’t think Gausto would care about him. He would care about drawing attention. Be one of them, he told me. Don’t give them anything to look at.”
Nick snorted. How could anyone with eyes not look at Jet? But then her words penetrated more deeply. “What gas station?” he asked. “When?”
So she told him. In the unusual voice to which he could listen forever, she told him of her run to the gas station, of acquiring coins most expeditiously, of defending herself against the man who had grabbed her. She told him of calling brevis from numbers instantly memorized from his phone, and didn’t give him time to wonder if she had an eidetic memory or if it was simply a skill a wolf would have—a wolf who had to remember every experience of her life in order to survive.
She told him of Gausto’s men, and of her fears for him. She took his hand and ran it down along her side, to the scar just beneath her final rib and the sleek muscle there. A scar divoted the flesh, short and deep. “I thought it was from the dart, when they first captured me,” she said. “It was…a weapon, as much as dart. But Gausto…he put something inside me when they took out the dart.”
“Son of a bitch,” Nick breathed. “That son of a—” But he cut himself short, for she was tensing up again. Not frightened—not of him. Not physically frightened. But overwhelmed, perhaps. Ready to shift and return to her wolf’s world.
For an instant, he wondered if it might not be better that way. Let her turn back…let her run. Let her be free of it all while he dealt with Gausto—and kept the man too busy to find her. And when that was over, he would no longer have the means to look for her—to follow his amulet connection.
Nick would make certain of that. If Gausto hadn’t already guessed what so very few people knew—Nick’s ability to short out most amulets with a targeted surge of just the right energy—he’d damned well know it before this was over.
And then Jet said, “It does more than just find me. It takes away who I am.” She took a short, sudden breath. “When I find him, I will take away who he is.” A simple statement, said quietly. But Nick heard the difference in her voice—the alto throatiness gone hard, the complete focus on her own words. More than just a wolf bitch, now. A wolf bitch with a mission and a grudge and with deep intent.
After so many heinous crimes committed, so many of both Sentinel and Core laws broken, so many good Sentinels hurt…Where before Nick had been patient, biding his time—waiting for Gausto to cross that one, final, irrevocable line…
Now he was done waiting.
“Tell me,” he said, teeth clenched enough so the words came hard, “that doesn’t mean what I think it means. It takes away who you are.”
“It is agony,” she said, so quietly the words hardly registered. “I would tear out his throat for it.”
So quietly that anyone listening carelessly might not have heard the intent in her voice.
He held her more closely against the encroaching cold of the night, blanketing her with his body. Still aroused, but with a different kind of ferocity. His immediate impulse—to protect her from that experience—gave way before understanding.
He didn’t need to protect this woman from anything.
She growled slightly, a surprised sound. Too tight. Nick forced himself to ease up. He forced himself to think sensibly. Jet didn’t need his protection; she didn’t want his world. She wanted to free her pack and return to what she’d known.
And he had no room for a personal vendetta. Not when brevis was likely rocked by his absence…vulnerable. Because Dane Berger was no leader, not any longer. Out of touch, distracted…he would try his best, but he’d been leaning too hard on Nick for too long to be of any real use. And those who had resented Nick’s assumption of leadership in the void left by the aging consul…they wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation—inserting influence, stirring up trouble. Creating a mess that Nick would have to clean up before he could get back to the business of dealing with Gausto.
After a single day.
Imagine what it would be like if he indulged himself, if he took another day, or another on top of that—
Gausto would end up dead, that’s what. And Nick would then have the time to clean up whatever had happened in brevis.
Unless he didn’t. Unless one day was all it would take for things to go too wrong to fix. Sentinels could die in a day, if the Core was ready to pounce.
Nick reached for Annorah. A long shot, that—the middle of the night. But she would wake, if the mental knock was strong enough. And suddenly—now that he was back to himself, the last of the amulet’s poisons flushed away by the energy surge of his shift to the wolf—he had to know how things were. He had to tell them what he’d learned—warn them of Gausto, who—having made his move—would now strike hard, breaking written and unwritten rules of their cold war pact with the Core.
But Annorah didn’t respond. Annorah felt strangely…absent. His call should have had the sense of a pebble tossed into water—tiny ripples of reaction, of impact.
There was nothing.
“We need to get back to the house,” he said, suddenly not even sure they’d be safe there—even though the Septs Prince would surely execute Gausto for breaking that final rule of engagement. “We need to get out of the open.”
She made a noise of protest—not wanting to be pulled off her own path.
“You can’t stay out here,” he told her.
She pushed back from him—rolling gracefully to her knees, and up to her feet. Bare feet in front of his face, bare toes wiggling in the gritty sand. “I make up my own mind.”
He found his feet just as swiftly as she. Cold air crowded him. “This battle has been raging for generations beyond count, Jet. What happens next is beyond what you or I want or care about. We do what we have to. We do what’s good for the world.”
“If I want my pack to live,” she murmured, and they didn’t sound like her words. More like words she’d been told…words she was repeating. Words that had sudden meaning for her. She straightened, her eyes an eerie whiskey-tinged gleam in the darkness. “I,” she told him, a warning in her tone, “do what is good for my pack.”
Chapter 12
Marlee sat at her cubicle, a thumbnail drive clutched in her hand.
Audio files. Voice mail .wav files, saved from the previous night.
Before she’d deleted the originals from the system.
A woman none of them knew, trying to help a man that brevis had not only come to know, but to fiercely support.
Most of them.
Not everyone on Berger’s staff. They’d sensed Carter’s assumption of the consul’s role in the wake of Berger’s preoccupation and distraction. They resented it. They made no effort to smooth the way for Carter, no matter if his needs were great or small.
And now, she knew, some of them had done worse.
She wasn’t alone here in brevis, working under Gausto’s hand.
Sh
e might even be the least of them. Kept in the dark, used for her limited, stated goals—keeping the balance.
What if she’d been the one messing up the balance all along?
Without the Sentinels, she suddenly realized—clutching that thumbnail drive so very tightly, seeing it clearly now—the Core would run amock. They might think much of themselves, these field Sentinels who assumed so much of this organization’s power—but they filled a role. They might well cross the line to arrogance, and they might mess with people’s lives in ways they shouldn’t.
But so had she.
And so suddenly she wasn’t sitting in her cubicle, the stressed problem-solving tones of her department in high pitch all around her, but heading to the community room in Nick Carter’s section—below the apartments, separate from the consul’s section of that floor. Most Sentinels thought the consul and adjutant worked closely together, one commanding the other—but when Carter had arrived nearly two years earlier, Berger had shown little interest.
And Carter had shown no hesitation. Almost instantly brevis became more active, starting with the small things—patrols more frequent, reports coming in regularly—data gathered and information sources established. From the murky awareness that the Core was in the area and doing their own thing—with the assumption that if that thing went out of bounds, the Sentinels would learn of it and stop it—to the more proactive strategy of mapping activity, logging incidents…putting people in place to get in the Core’s way.
The beginning of the end for Gausto.
Come to think of it, the beginning of the requests from Gausto that had made Marlee less comfortable. Interfering with Dolan Treviño’s adveho earlier this year…that had been hellishly ticklish stuff, and only Gausto’s assurances that it would inconvenience, not truly harm Treviño, convinced her to do it at all. And Gausto had been telling the truth, hadn’t he, because Treviño had been just fine. Misusing the adveho system, most likely—that Sentinel Mayday, spread across the miles through an intense mental message made possible by skill and training. Only to be used in life-or-death situations.
Sentinels: Wolf Hunt Page 11