Huntress Bound

by Aimee Easterling

  For a moment, silence hung heavy in the room. Mr. Shepard narrowed his eyes, and I saw a fox-like sharpness lying beneath his messy facade. The older male didn’t buy my mate’s lies, considered it far too fortuitous that such a strange accident might occur on the same day he’d chosen to rifle through Sebastien’s files for reasons of his own.

  But I’d offered my mate the single shred of believability he craved. And apparently these government officials—whoever they were—didn’t possess sufficient authority to wrest the truth out from behind Sebastien’s poker face by force.

  Instead, Man in Black packed the laptop away in his briefcase before Sebastien had time to object. “You won’t mind if we fix it up for you then,” he said, the words not really a question. Opening the top desk drawer, the agent added an external hard drive and a few other items I couldn’t quite see to his stash before returning to his feet.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Shepard wasn’t done interrogating my mate quite yet. “Who was present during this wood-carving incident?” the older male demanded, taking a step forward and dropping all politeness in one fell swoop.

  If the male had intended to strike beneath my mate’s guard, he was bound to be disappointed. “Me,” Sebastien answered easily. Raising his eyebrows, he seemed neither concerned nor chastised by Mr. Shepard’s tone.

  Instead, the entirely human professor paced forward to meet his opponent as boldly as any werewolf, gaze firmly affixed on the other male’s face. “I told you as much already. And I’m pretty sure that type of information isn’t covered under the terms of the grant. So if you’ve gotten everything you need here, I suggest you leave and let me finish out my Sunday morning in peace.”

  Chapter 6

  A glance passed between the two DARPA officials. They were debating—what? Taking Sebastien into custody? Torturing him in search of additional secrets? Or perhaps using some sort of fast-acting truth serum to attain that same end?

  Whatever potential tricks the duo had up their sleeves, Mr. Shepard was the one to pull the plug. The older male shrugged so subtly a human might not have noticed, at which point Man in Black became all humbleness and apologies in an instant. Offering my mate a crisp new business card, he promised to return the damaged laptop better than ever by the end of the next business day. “Sorry to have bothered you,” the younger male concluded, reaching out for a farewell shake.

  And, within moments, they were gone. The unctuous Mr. Shepard, gun-wielding Man in Black, plus half a dozen other agents who peeled away from their stations to hop into vehicles and beat a hasty retreat. I lowered my lupine nose and sniffed along cooling scent trails to ensure that no sneaky government officials had remained behind. Then, mind finally at ease, I leapt back through Sebastien’s open window into the now-empty bedroom...and was immediately enveloped by the scents of anger, posturing, and absent mate.

  Find him now, my wolf demanded as Sebastien’s aroma filled our nose like a balm. My animal half urged me toward the door, whining at the barrier that stood between us and our human partner. And if the knob hadn’t been unturnable using lupine paws, I really might have lost the tussle over command of our shared body right then and there.

  Luckily, the barrier was effective at knocking at least a modicum of sense back into the wolf’s tunnel-vision head. Within seconds, I’d slipped back into my human skin, assembling a hodgepodge of borrowed clothing before padding down the hallway in search of our human mate.

  To our delight, Sebastien hadn’t gone very far. When I entered the kitchen, I found him seated at the counter with bowed neck and steepled hands, the thoughts running through his head nearly visible in their abundance. So I fully expected to be greeted by a storm of recriminations when his gaze finally rose to meet mine...or at the very least by a cascade of questions I couldn’t begin to answer if I valued both of our lives.

  Only, the professor didn’t open his mouth at all. Instead, my mate’s dark-chocolate eyes softened as I stepped out of the hallway, and he rose to his feet to open up the refrigerator door without a single word.

  For my part, I hesitated on the dividing line between hallway and kitchen. I was suddenly blindingly aware of what would happen next. Danger, destruction, possibly even death were all following on my heels like so much tracked-in dirt. As such, the honorable path involved making lame excuses then fleeing from this human’s abode without a backwards glance.

  After all, the danger stirred up by my brother had already carried over to threaten Sebastien’s innocent neck. So far, there were merely one-bodies invading the professor’s home while slavering after Derek’s data. But the repercussions would inevitably spread into the lupine community...at which point Sebastien would land himself in far more trouble than was presented by Man In Black’s measly gun.

  Go, I told my feet, angling them toward the door and preparing to leave behind the only being to whom my packless wolf was currently bonded. But it was impossible to force myself to withdraw while Sebastien assembled a carton of eggs along with a rather tremendous pile of vegetables on the granite counter top.

  “How about some breakfast?” the professor asked, turning back around to face me at last.

  Our mate wants to feed us, my wolf whispered, sliding our feet across the cool tiles in the wrong direction entirely. The front door was receding behind our back while our mate’s warm scent grew stronger by the moment. How could we turn down such an obvious indication of his affection? How could we skip out on a bonding ritual my wolf had been awaiting for an entire lifetime—our first meal with a beloved mate?

  And as my stomach growled its agreement, I gave in to the inevitable. My inner animal had spoken and my gut was in sympathy. Looked like we weren’t going to abandon this human after all, at least not quite yet.

  DESPITE HIS EARLIER geniality, Sebastien descended into contemplative silence as we sat down together over our respective omelets. His gaze remained glued to his phone, fingers swiping and tapping at lightning speed while he perused items apparently more fascinating that the person on the other side of the small table that graced his breakfast nook.

  “Do you want to talk about this morning?” I started, the feeling of being abandoned by someone who was still physically present prompting me to open up a subject I’d resolved not to broach.

  But Sebastien merely shook his head. “Later,” he countered absently, not bothering to glance away from his screen. “I need to check on something first....”

  In the silence that followed, I craned my neck, trying to figure out what was so fascinating that it trumped me and the omelet both. As best I could tell from the sliver of screen currently in view, my companion was paging through old emails. But I couldn’t quite figure out who the messages were from or what they pertained to...which, I’ll admit, was maddening for someone unaccustomed to being left out of the loop.

  Patience wasn’t a particular strong suit of mine. So, despite the warmth filling my belly as I consumed food prepared by my mate’s own hands, I only lasted a few short seconds before setting down my fork. Time to turn to an information source of my own—my father.

  “Safe to send sensitive files over the Lupanet?” I keyed into my phone without the benefit of a greeting. Because Wolfie was the obvious one to crack the code of my brother’s inexplicable files...assuming the werewolf-only version of the internet was less dangerous than the human connection that had drawn government agents down upon my head only a few minutes earlier, that is.

  “Probably,” came Wolfie’s curt reply. “Wait.”

  Then the response I’d been typing lagged as Dad tunneled directly into my device, sucking out all of the information I’d intended to share...and possibly more as well. It was a good thing I wasn’t withholding any secrets from my father, because he perceived no need for boundaries between what was in his head and what was in mine. Which, after all, made perfect sense—we were part of the same pack after all.

  Or we had been. Ignoring the ache in my gut at the memory of those recently severed bon
ds, I continued typing up an explanation of where the files had come from and how they related to my missing brother. I didn’t mention the dawn visit by human officials, though. Nor did I air the topic of misunderstandings with my not-quite-mate. Those problems, I figured, were on a need-to-know basis...and Dad didn’t yet need to know.

  Instead, I merely chewed, swallowed, and waited for the two most important men in my life to finish their respective tasks. And since my phone was busy, I gave in to my wolf’s desire to consider my mate’s chiseled countenance instead.

  Sebastien looked even more handsome in the morning light than he had yesterday evening. But what I saw beneath his appealing features was less to my liking. Because a tension marred his brow and pinched at his skin, suggesting that Sebastien’s understanding of our current predicament ran deeper than he’d previously let on.

  I’d originally assumed that my mate had brushed off my willingness to talk about the government officials out of an inherent chivalry. But could Sebastien instead be harboring a secret of his own? Was I the one who should have been nudging at my companion’s boundaries, seeking entrance to guarded mysteries that would impact not only his life but also the safety of my pack?

  “Data is encrypted. Do you have the key?” Dad texted at last, drawing me out of my circling thoughts. And, gladly, I latched onto any reason to drop the doubt of my mate into a dark hole in my brain labeled “Deal with later.”

  “Key?” I answered my father instead of delving deeper into my misgivings. The image that immediately sprang to mind in response to his request was small and metallic and meant to open a door. But that didn’t make much sense in context.

  And, apparently, a physical key wasn’t quite what Wolfie had in mind either. “A password to unlock the files,” he explained. “Could be on another thumb drive, words in a video Derek sent you, or even text on a sheet of paper.”

  I paused, digesting Dad’s clarification. My brother thrived on being enigmatic, so much so that hundreds of sentences could be the password we needed to continue with our digital chase. I’d need to peruse a buttload of saved videos to track that information down...a task that couldn’t be carried out with Sebastien on the other side of the small kitchen table.

  “Not yet, but I’ll look,” I answered at last. Then, changing mental gears now that forward momentum on Derek’s disappearance had officially hit a snag, I found myself staring down instead at the cupcake sitting untouched in its box beside my plate. “I miss you, Dad,” I tapped into my phone, allowing myself to devolve into a puddle of digital mush at long last while imagining the love my father had baked into every crumb of the coveted dessert.

  While waiting for Wolfie’s response, I lifted the box’s lid and snagged the barest taste onto my fingertip. Last week, a similar cupcake had salved my wounded soul, and I hoped this sampling would do the same. So I sucked creamy frosting into my mouth as gently as ever I’d whisked a meringue into perfect peaks, then sat back and waited for sweet sensations to enfold me.

  Home, family, pack. Soon I’d be encircled by my father’s incorporeal arms, hugged as tightly as if he was physically present right there in Sebastien’s kitchen. Soon I’d remember that a werewolf is never truly alone.

  But the air around me remained cold and devoid of connection. My bond to Wolfie was gone, my bond to pack similarly severed. Which meant my only connection to the outside world lay in the bunched-up and knotted mess that ran between Sebastien and myself.

  “We miss you too, Buttercup,” Wolfie answered after far too long, the words appearing strangely cold and lifeless on my cell phone’s screen. Sighing, I shut off the device and returned my attention to the less-then-palatable eggs congealing on my plate. Maybe I wasn’t so hungry after all.

  Chapter 7

  “You didn’t have to drive me,” I said into the silence of Sebastien’s vehicle an hour later. “It’s a short walk and I’m not due to open up the coffee shop for a while yet.”

  As I spoke, I shivered at the chill that drifted down the mate bond and into my gut. Despite the harmony with which Sebastien and I had rinsed our dishes a few minutes prior, I couldn’t help feeling like we were running a three-legged race while irrevocably out of step.

  Sure enough, unanswerable questions hovered in the ensuing silence. “Why are you here? What are you up to? What really happened last night?” Sebastien wanted to ask.

  When he actually opened his mouth to speak, though, my companion merely asked: “Do we have time to swing by wherever you’re staying and pick up your things?”

  Unfortunately, even that query wasn’t easily answered, not when my suitcase was currently located within a locked room to which I didn’t possess a key. “Probably not,” I admitted, trying to decide whether I’d be better off breaking into my sister-in-law’s abandoned apartment or buying a range of personal items to replace the ones in my abandoned luggage. Three throwing knives, a cell phone, and a cupcake weren’t going to keep me operating in human territory for very much longer.

  Maybe I should just ask Sebastien to take me shopping, I thought wryly as I glanced down at the stained blouse and baggy sweat pants I currently had on. Despite the typical male aversion for browsing through stores, I had a feeling the gesture would have gone a long way toward mending the rift between us.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite ready to pull my companion deeper into the werewolf world from which I’d come. So I made no complaint as the SUV turned into the southern entrance of the college and pulled up outside my place of employment without further comment from Sebastien. For his part, my driver remained resolutely silent as he sat drumming fingers against the steering wheel and waiting for me to depart.

  So that’s it then. My heart raced as I envisioned stepping onto the pavement and out of Sebastien’s life altogether. Because while the professor had allowed me to spend the night when I’d arrived on his doorstep pants-less and desperate the evening before, no sane human would invite me back for round two the following afternoon. Not after being treated to unrequested naked snuggling, unexplained laptop drilling, and a half dozen government pursuers. Between them, the three events proved more than adequately that I wasn’t the sweet, young human I was trying to emulate.

  No, my wolf countered, refusing to move out of our current seat. She didn’t care about shifter law, didn’t give a fig that we’d be putting Sebastien at risk by taking him into our confidence. Instead, she tugged at the mate bond, winding the immaterial rope around and around her furry body until she resembled nothing so much as a mummified wolf. The snugness of the tether felt unbelievably good against the insides of my skin.

  And perhaps I wasn’t the only one who sensed the change in our connection. As I took a deep breath and opened the escape hatch represented by the passenger-side door, Sebastien spoke at last. “When should I pick you back up tonight?”

  Surprise sent my gaze skittering upward to meet that of my host. “You don’t have to....” I began.

  “I want to,” Sebastien countered, his words firm enough to stifle any qualms. The male hesitated, then offered more than I would have expected. “Your brother....”

  And, finally, the professor’s former silence made sense. Because this time around I could feel what Sebastien meant down the mate tether. And the sensation went a long way toward filling the deep, dark hole in the pit of my stomach.

  My mate was concerned about me. Was trying his darnedest not to scare me off by asking too many pointed questions or digging into an obscured past that I hadn’t offered to elucidate. He thought that he’d failed my brother by pushing too hard too fast and he didn’t intend to repeat the same mistake a second time around.

  The least I could do was to put Sebastien out of his misery on that one small point.

  “Derek is as skittish as a feral kitten,” I told my companion. “But I’m not my brother.”

  Something passed between us then. An understanding that transcended words. An acceptance of the mate tether that, while not sufficient
to complete our bonding, nonetheless tightened the connection between our two separate selves with a linkage much more cohesive than the one that had gone before.

  “I’m off work at five,” I added after several long seconds of shared silence. “Thanks in advance for the ride.”

  And the smile that spread across Sebastien’s lips in response to my words was enough to repay me for the whole sorry mess that had come before. “You’re welcome,” my mate answered, voice the texture of warm, glistening honey. Our eyes locked together like a reciprocated mate bond, and this time it was clear that my companion meant every word.

  WITH SEBASTIEN’S SMILE still overwhelming my senses, my footsteps were jauntier than they had been all day as I rounded the corner and swiped my key card beside the coffee shop’s front door. But something froze me in place before I could step inside. Hairs rose along the back of my neck and my wolf growled deep within my belly, my skin prickling with the awareness that I was being watched.

  Luckily, the door was in sufficient shadow so the glass acted as a mirror. As a result, I paused for one long moment, pretending to fumble with the key as I scanned my surroundings in search of any item out of place.

  Nothing. The shrubs were just as carefully sculpted as they’d been the day before, the sidewalk as empty as I’d expect on a weekend morning while school was out of session. Even the rooftops—or at least the ones I could see from my current vantage point—were devoid of life without so much as a pigeon in sight.

  False alarm? I asked my wolf. But she disagreed, begging me to change forms so we could utilize our more powerful lupine nostrils to hunt down whoever was perusing us from somewhere just out of sight.