The fact that my brother hadn’t been influenced sufficiently to ask for a second care package had been chalked up to long-standing unwillingness on his part to share a mailing address. But now I saw that Derek simply hadn’t been impressed with the array of desserts I’d offered. Like Dakota, he didn’t possess sufficient inner sweetness to crave that heady rush of sugar through his body to match the sweetness within his mind.
Even a psychopath might enjoy the tiniest tinge of sugar mixed into his treats, though. Which was fortunate since I couldn’t rely on a potato chip or cracker that would need to be baked or fried in its entirety. Not when Dakota’s sedative needed to be mixed into something liquid at a relatively low temperature.
On the other hand....
I worked for several moments in silence, roasting cashews and creating a saltwater toffee that was still pliable even when no longer hot. The first batch I didn’t doctor of course. Just tweaked by taste until I thought the finished product might do its duty.
“Try this,” I said, offering a single nut to Dakota. She rolled her eyes then obediently popped the morsel into her mouth.
And something magical happened. The other female’s scent, which had been harsh and stringent up until that moment, mellowed, calmed, almost smoothed into the aroma of someone I would willingly choose to call a friend. “Not bad,” Dakota murmured after a long moment. And in her gradually opening face, I caught a hint of the wolf she might have been if raised in a loving pack like my own.
“This is the one then,” I agreed. The second batch would go faster than the first. And before the toffee thoroughly cooled, I’d mix in Dakota’s provided drug....
I RAN BETWEEN REDWOODS four-footed, a handful of toffee-covered cashews carefully wrapped in a kerchief twisted around my furry neck. This was why Dakota had gone to such lengths to sway me over to her side of the fence, I realized. Because the final stage of her plan required me to set out alone in search of my brother...alone save for the tracker beacon that would enable my backup to follow where I led.
Without a sworn vow, it would have been easy to shift onto two naked legs, to untie the cloth necklet into which the beacon was sewn, then to disappear without a trace. The deep-seated desire to protect my little brother urged me to make the attempt. Meanwhile, my mate bond acted like an anchor, its sodden length attempted to drag me backwards with each mile I placed between myself and my mate. If I ran much further, the fraying tether might actually break....
Yes, I had every reason to go back on my word. But I continued loping in the opposite direction from the one my mate bond indicated, tracking Derek with the help of a different tether created the morning before.
“It’s poetic justice,” Dakota had told me a few moments earlier as we cruised down back roads using my newfound connection to provide a rough estimate of Derek’s current location. “He builds these bonds as collateral to be used against the bearer at his leisure. You are far from the first. There was that human woman whose pup he intended to sell to SHRITA. Half a dozen werewolves that Derek tricked into providing him with accommodations, sex, money, whatever he needed that day.”
My short lupine shin slammed into an unexpected boulder, the pain warning me that I should pay less attention to the past and more to the present and future. But I only glanced at my moonlit surroundings once before returning to the misgivings tumbling through my head.
I’d been naive...and Derek had been playing me from the start. He’d nurtured our relationship, waiting until he felt confident that I’d follow him north and away from the safety of my adopted pack the minute he gave the word. He’d made one stab at turning me over to SHRITA when agents were tipped off to bring Sebastien in a couple of days earlier. Then he’d made another attempt when he set me up at Sarah’s, begging me to visit then providing SHRITA with our biological mother’s home address.
It was hard to admit I’d been tricked into bonding with such a mercenary sibling. Harder yet to relinquish the dreams I’d nurtured ever since my adoption, that my few blood relatives might understand me in a way no one else ever could.
My brother understood me alright. He understood me all too well.
And now I was returning the favor, betraying my sibling just as thoroughly as he’d initially turned on me. It had taken the unnatural impetus of one of Dakota’s fast-acting pills to get me over the final hurdle—tugging on our shared tether then broadcasting worry, fright, and the need to see my only brother soon, please, now. Tacking on a confused jumble of images intended to mimic the Ember I’d been one day prior, I’d added a vague sense of my current location then ended with a plea for him to come help me out of a tight spot.
“I’m alone,” I sent. “I need you. I can’t believe our mother chased you away....”
And it had worked. Even as the effects of the pill faded and I began doubting my own decisions, the tether between us grew taut as Derek hopped in a car or on a motorcycle to speed toward the wilderness Dakota had chosen for our long anticipated meet. Then his progress had slowed as he ditched the vehicle and continued forward either lupine or on two human feet.
But Derek wasn’t coming to find me alone. Through the trees, I caught the nearly inaudible crackle of a walkie talkie. Saw flickers of motion as camouflaged humans crept into place.
My brother had run to my side when called as I’d always envisioned. But he wasn’t the only one hunting me down. Instead, Derek had brought along SHRITA buddies for one purpose and one purpose alone—to capture his sister’s wolf.
Chapter 33
I nearly stepped on the first of the sentries. Redwoods blocked all moonlight from reaching the forest floor, and my bond to Derek promised that danger was still a tenth of a mile away. So I didn’t think much of the dark shape before me, didn’t realize until almost too late that the scent of fox piss hanging on the air was an artificial additive intended to muddle the average animal’s sensitive nose.
Some second sense alerted me just in time, though. Freezing, I scanned the undergrowth...then leapt three feet straight up in the air as a flashlight flicked on three feet away from my snout. “Shit, that’s a wolf!” a male voice bellowed. Or, well, he was probably speaking at a normal human volume. But my blood was rushing so fast that shifter senses turned a whisper into a shout.
Turning frantically aside, I fled in the opposite direction so quickly my breath caught in my chest and refused to come out in anything other than sporadic gasps. And even though my lupine feet were speedy, I fully expected a bullet to bite into my flank. Or perhaps a dart if these agents intended to capture rather than kill me. Either way, I’d failed in my mission. Had failed all of the pack mates who depended upon me to free them from the Tribunal’s grasp....
Only, nothing happened. Instead, when I paused halfway up the hillside, all I heard was my brother’s hissed voice ordering his companions to silence. “She’ll hear you,” he admonished. “Nice job scaring her away.”
“I thought you had a lead on Ms. Wilder-Young,” a deeper male voice rebutted. “Since when did this turn into a hunt for a wolf?”
And even though my chest expanded at the excellent news that SHRITA hadn’t yet discovered the existence of werewolves, I knew my leeway for making Derek believe I still trusted him was rapidly running out. After all, I might have missed a few words during my rush to evacuate the premises. But that argument wouldn’t hold water much longer if the SHRITA agent continued spelling my brother’s betrayal out.
So I cast my mind back down the tether that bound me to Derek, yanking as frantically as I might have done had I stumbled upon a band of soldiers while seeking him in the forest. “Run!” I told him. “Danger! Armed humans! Head east out of sight!”
Then I followed my own admonition. Circling around the gathered agents onto rougher terrain that would twist human ankles and confuse any visual tracking, I sprinted flat out. Leaves slapped against my shoulders while sharp sticks threatened to poke out both my eyes. But still I fled until the faintest hint of fox urine
was a mere memory in the distance. Finally, slowing, I sniffed at the air to see if my brother had followed my lead.
DEREK WAS STILL BACK there. I had no clue what he’d told his human handlers, but somehow my brother had managed to slip his leash thoroughly enough to don his lupine fur. Because as the sideways breeze shifted into a tail wind, I caught that familiar hint of sawmill lumber blending with the more earthy aromas that could just as easily have emanated from the leaves beneath my feet. Despite my blind rush into the darkness, my brother hadn’t given up the chase.
Not that I wanted him to. Still—He shouldn’t have been able to follow quite so easily.... Just as Dakota had predicted, my brother was using our recently formed bond to track me through the forest. And at our current pace, he’d eat up my modest lead before I could maneuver him into position to be caught.
Knowing that anyone close enough to smell would be close enough to see once dawn hit, I did my best to push a little extra speed into my footsteps. Derek, on the other hand, took advantage of that same proximity to once again attempt drawing me into our once-easy sibling harmony.
“Slow down, hold up,” my brother whispered down the pack bond we’d built in our biological mother’s kitchen. Meanwhile, he continued to cling to my heels as tightly as a burr sticking to the tip of a wolf’s trailing tail, no twist or turn on my part sufficient to shake him off.
And despite everything that had come before, I had no impulse to gnaw this particular sticker free. Because my brother’s words were seductively sweet, their promise of kinship irresistible. Even now, even knowing every way that Derek had manipulated dozens of other beings in the past, I wanted nothing more than to shift into my human form, to wait for Derek to catch up, then to revel in the bond he’d built between us.
Brother, my lupine half murmured. Blood. Pack mate. Kin.
So it was good that Dakota’s vow bound me to continue eluding pursuit. Good that our shared promise forced me to send feigned terror back toward my brother instead of the warning I itched to dispense. Good that another female’s willpower drew me back onto course, and that she, rather than I, led this chase.
Meanwhile, as I allowed Dakota’s self-possession to drive me forward like an arrow released from a bow, a hint of her cold calculation fluttered down upon my shoulders as well. Left, I remembered from the map I’d pored over with my unlikely partner hours earlier, my feet following the advice by turning toward one of the four capture points we’d previously scoped out. Then I pushed a little more speed into my aching paws, hoping to expand my lead in front of the one-bodies who were even now fumbling through the darkened forest in Derek’s wake.
Because our window of opportunity was dangerously slender. The capture points had been chosen because they were close to a road and easy for Dakota’s pack to access. But that precise accessibility also meant that SHRITA wouldn’t be far behind once Derek and I finally reached one of the designated spots. So I lengthened my stride and attempted to pull ahead of the male who hadn’t let up on his siren song of brotherhood one bit.
Unfortunately, my ability to lose the one-body portion of my pursuit proved more difficult than expected when every unfamiliar rock formation conspired to lead me astray. A piney aroma I’d thought would draw me onto higher ground instead led me into a box canyon, and I barely managed to claw my way back up the sheer cliff face at the far end before my brother caught up.
“Ember! Slow down!” my brother called again as I crested the summit. He was only twenty feet behind me now, his larger body lending each stride an extra few inches of distance that put my ability to outpace him into real doubt. Meanwhile, Derek’s silent urgings plucked at my heart strings as badly as ever. He sounded so worried, so frantic, like a true brother whose sole incentive was seeing his sibling safe.
Yesterday, my feet would have fumbled against the talus slope of loose scree as I heeded my sibling’s requests. I would have second-guessed Dakota’s assertions, would have paused and granted my brother the time he needed in order to explain.
But those few hours spent under the influence of psychotropic medication had provided an insight into Derek’s character that was as unforgettable as it was nauseating. My brother had come after me with SHRITA agents as backup. Even now, his trajectory was designed to herd me back south toward the one-bodies who were perilously close to uncovering the existence of shifter-kind.
So I took advantage of the same small size that had formerly proven to be my weakness. Pulling shoulders in close against my body, I slipped between a crack in the rocks too minuscule to allow Derek to follow. Then I utilized one of the pre-planned access routes designed to draw my brother into Dakota’s waiting hands.
The lava tube was barely large enough to wriggle through, the floor rough against my unprotected pads. Even moonlight was absent down here in the tunnel, and I had to pick my way slowly to ensure I didn’t fall into any unscalable pits.
Despite all that, the serpentine cavern provided a major shortcut. Derek would have to take the long way around, clambering over a mountain to access the other end of the lava tube while I could reach that same destination in mere minutes. Taking this route would win me a larger lead. And when I tumbled out the other end, I could call Derek forward one last time...while preparing the scene for his eventual downfall.
Chapter 34
The sun rose while I was picking my way through the tunnel, and I emerged to wisps of red-tinged clouds lightening the eastern sky. The scene was beautiful—dawn over redwoods—but all I could think about was blood.
Not just the blood on my paws, either. I’d cut my feet on the sharp rocks of the lava tube, and I licked all four pads clean before shifting into my human form. As a result, iron lay heavy on my tongue...but the more troublesome blood didn’t belong to me at all.
Because there was an excellent chance Derek wouldn’t survive either his capture or his time spent in front of the Tribunal. Could I really turn my only sibling over to Dakota without offering him another way out? Could I relinquish our budding bond only hours after it had been formed?
We promised, my inner wolf whispered. But despite the vow nagging at the back of our skull and promising agony if we attempted to go back on our word, I considered running. Shifting back into lupine form and heading in the opposite direction, severing all ties to Derek and telling Dakota when she eventually found me that I’d failed through no fault of my own. The other female would have no way of knowing who had initiated that broken connection. Couldn’t be sure I’d passed up an easy opportunity to draw my brother into the Tribunal trap.
But it was too late. Even as my feet turned toward the forest, Derek stepped out from between the trees two-legged. Unlike me, he must have found a way to tie clothing about his person before going wolf, because he wore a miraculously unwrinkled shirt and pair of trousers while even his hair appeared freshly combed. The younger male was as perfectly put together as always...and this time I noted the calculation behind his eyes as he stepped into a ray of sunlight filtering down through a gap in the trees.
“Thank goodness you’re safe,” my only brother murmured from within his own personal spotlight, sun turning his hair to gold. The wording and intonation were so perfect that I was drawn forward like a moth to a flame, my brother’s halo turning him into an angel in front of my eyes. And despite the fact that I knew I was being manipulated, when Derek opened his arms, my feet carried me into the offered embrace.
The last time we’d hugged, I’d noticed nothing beyond the perfection of the moment. But now I inhaled the faint tinge of bitter almond hanging beneath Derek’s characteristic aroma, a scent that seldom lingered around the honest and even-tempered. And when my brother pulled away after a long moment of shared contact, I was unsurprised to discover that Derek had spent the preceding seconds searching for danger about my person.
“What’s this?” he demanded, my kerchief dangling from one clenched fist.
“An apology,” I answered just as quickly, imbuing my words with
every hint of the confusion I’d felt when Sarah pushed my only sibling out of her kitchen without explanation. “It’s my knack, remember. Figuring out what dessert people will like then baking them that perfect dish....”
“Mmhm,” Derek murmured. How had I not noticed previously how bored my brother was when I spoke about baking? How he made the bare minimum effort required to keep the conversation afloat?
Pushing that unpleasant realization aside, I segued into the deception I’d spent half the night concocting. “You were hard to figure out,” I continued honestly. “But I think I got inside your head at last and found your favorite snack. I figured if I brought you something special, it might make up for what Sarah’s greeting lacked....”
The real Ember would have exploded into a profusion of further apologies at that point, never mind that the insult had been someone else’s fault. If this had been a bona fide meeting of the minds, I would have tried to help my brother understand how Sarah’s difficult childhood had factored into her inability to greet a long-lost son with the love that he so obviously deserved.
But my companion’s eyes were hooded. Derek was no more interested in Sarah’s rejection than I was. His only goal was to stall me long enough for SHRITA to catch up.
Luckily, our interests just so happened to coincide.
Given the need to keep me occupied for several minutes, Derek didn’t ditch the kerchief as he might have otherwise done. Instead, he gradually unrolled the fabric and drew the first morsel out, turning it over between finger and thumb. “So what did you settle on?” he asked, obviously expecting a long-winded explanation of culinary magic. The mere memory of half a dozen similar conversations made me cringe now over the innocence of Ember past.
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