“The apothecary wants to amputate.”
“His legs?” Rye was aghast.
“And his arms,” Darcio added quietly.
“Lord and Lady damn me,” Rye hissed. “Better to put a dagger in his heart! Better he hadn’t survived at all! What man could live like that?” Rye was so upset that he surged out of his seat and began to pace furiously back and forth before the fire. “Chayne would rather die.”
“So would we all,” Darcio agreed gravely. “Chayne will refuse. If he can’t, Reule will refuse on his behalf. The odds of his surviving so radical a surgery—”
“At the hands of that quack,” Rye interjected.
“—are nonexistent to begin with,” Darcio finished. “Better he die, intact, from the fever. The Pack can keep his pain to nearly nothing. Even so, it will be a long and terrible death, not the kind a Packmate deserves.”
“Why is he awake now?” Rye asked, swallowing convulsively as he glanced back up at the ceiling.
“Reule is with him. I don’t think even our Prime will be able to put him to sleep this time, though. The fever alters the mind so much, it’s impossible to soothe and guide it. I think he’s trying to talk Chayne into allowing drugs.”
“He won’t do it.”
“He will,” Darcio contradicted softly. Knowingly. “Even Chayne’s principles fade under this kind of torture.”
Reule’s thoughts were heavy with Chayne’s plight when he strode into the Pack dining hall a short time later. All but two chairs were filled with his subdued Packmates. Chayne’s period of consciousness had taken its toll on all of them, each having to experience a part of their Packmate’s agony even though they’d no doubt tried to block off their empathy with him. But to be Pack meant that there was always some connection when emotion and pain ran that high, just as it would be if they were actual blood brothers.
As Reule approached the table, he paused to lay a hand on the back of Chayne’s chair. The Pack fell silent and they all bent their heads in a prayer for their suffering friend. After a moment, Reule continued on to his own seat at the head of the long table.
“It doesn’t appear…”
Reule broke off when a sound near the entryway caught his attention. The Pack watched as he surged suddenly to his feet; then five sets of eyes tracked the path of his. The entire Pack stood when they saw Mystique standing in the doorway, the surge of movement and the sound of scraping chairs on marble flooring appearing to startle her slightly.
She deserved to be startled, Reule thought with a mental laugh of astonishment. Turnabout was only fair, because the sight of her was a shocking pleasure, for all that he’d been expecting it. She stole his very breath, his every thought, and he suspected his men were equally astounded.
Para had dressed her in silver.
Para was a blessed genius.
The gown was the height of the court’s most recent fashion. A simple design: an empire waist gathered beneath her breasts, a neckline that scooped just shy of being indecent, and elbow-length sleeves edged in a fall of lace to match the brief train sweeping over the marble floor. She wore wristlet gloves, probably more to hide the damage to her hands than for fashion, and a lady’s fan swung from her wrist.
But her hair…
Para had dressed the bloodred locks in a high twist, but had left a single thick coil to bleed down over her pale throat before springing to a stop against her corseted bosom. It revealed delicate ears and accented the frailty of her small neck. She wore a simple silver medallion around her neck, the chain thin and the charm itself no bigger than a thumbprint. Her silver crepe overdress and the cloth-of-silver gown beneath it glittered brilliantly around her body, offsetting her bold hair color as well as the sparkle of diamond drop eyes that were smiling at him.
Reule could smell the divine scent of her first thing, sweet and clean, smelling of vanilla flowers and that compelling fragrance that was purely hers. He felt his entire body react to it instantaneously. Every nerve awoke and drew to attention; every muscle pulled to tense readiness to anything she might need.
He stepped toward her, extending his hand palm up in welcome. She was smiling at him, but he felt her hesitation prickling along his skin as she let her prismatic eyes drift over the Packmates standing at respectful attention. Reule followed her gaze to his men and found them unabashedly gaping at her. She didn’t realize that their stares and speechless lapse in manners was to be taken as a divine compliment.
“My lady Mystique,” Reule said strongly as he stepped up to take her hand in his, gently drawing her into the room once her tiny palm had settled within his. “We are thrilled you could join us.”
He brought her to the table in just a few steps and she bumped her body into his as she sought the protective shelter of his build. Reule looked down into sparkling irises as her smile trembled on pretty pink lips.
“Pariedes said this was what Sánge women wear,” she whispered to him, touching her hand to her dress self-consciously as she peeked at the males staring at her once more. “I don’t think it’s what I’m used to wearing. Have I done something wrong?”
“No, kébé. You look beautiful. I believe my Pack is merely surprised to see how much you’ve changed since they last saw you,” Reule explained, raising his voice to a firmness designed to snap their attention to him. “Gentlemen,” he said, turning her toward them, “I introduce Mystique. Mystique, these are my Packmates. Amando, Prime Envoy,” he began, going around the table from left to right. “Saber, Prime Defender. Delano, Prime Assassin. Rye, Prime Blade. Darcio, Prime Shadow.”
Each inclined his head in turn as he was introduced, some murmuring her new name in greeting. Mystique looked at each carefully as she was introduced, trying to guess at what some of the titles they bore implied, attempting to match each one’s duty with his stature and demeanor. In the end, it was the empty chair that drew her full attention.
“One of your friends is missing?” she asked Reule curiously, even as Amando shifted away from the chair he’d been seated in, in order to take the empty chair she spoke of just to his left. It left a place for her at Reule’s left hand.
“Yes. Chayne is ill,” Reule explained.
Mystique might still be new to this Sánge world, but she knew a ripple of emotional reaction when she felt one. It whipped strongly through every last man at the table. This led her to believe that Reule’s simplistic explanation didn’t quite reveal the truth of the matter. It wasn’t her business, though, and she could tell a discussion would be painfully unwelcome. She wisely kept quiet as she was seated.
“We trust that you’re feeling much better,” Rye said as the men got comfortable once again. “You certainly look well.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I feel very much better. And I’m starving!”
The remark earned her warm masculine chuckles and she clasped her nervous hands together in her lap. How was it, she wondered, that she could so easily face Reule and his imposing ways, but suddenly she felt overwhelmed and out of balance around these other men? It didn’t feel like a natural state for her. Somehow, she suspected that facing up to men had never been difficult for her. It must be something else putting her on edge.
As the servants entered the room with large trays piled high with hot food, Mystique took the opportunity to peek at Reule from beneath her lashes. The instant surge of excitement that rushed over her gave her goose bumps. She shivered deliciously. He was freshly bathed and dressed for dinner. She could smell it on him, that wonderful soap he used, the dampness still in his hair, and the crisp, clean scent of his clothes. Sitting just at his elbow, she was close enough to feel the heat his big body generated. He was by far the best-looking man at a table full of beautiful male specimens.
He sent her entire body into a fury of sensual activity. Her pulse soared, her temperature spiked, and her breath grew scarce. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he thinking about her? Was he angry with her for her earlier flirtations? Did he think she loo
ked pretty? She hoped so. She liked the dress well enough; Para had gone through a lot of effort to see she had clothes that fit her properly, but she’d already decided that she hated this corset more than she hated not knowing her real name. Why on earth did Sánge women wear such ridiculous things? Para said it was to keep one’s figure in shape, but when she had tried to point out that starvation had robbed her of any figure, Para had ignored her and stuffed her into the silly contraption anyway.
However, as Mystique watched Reule’s eyes drift her way quite a few times while they were being served, she quickly realized that the rigidity of her posture and the resulting thrust of her breasts was actually far more flattering than she’d realized. She sat up even straighter, giggling inside when the movement instantly attracted Reule’s attention. Maybe, she relented, there was something to be said for corsets after all!
Feeling much better and far more confident all of a sudden, Mystique turned on a brilliant smile and began to chat with the others at the table. It only took her the span of a single soup course to figure out who was suspicious of her and who wasn’t. Saber and Delano were reserved but polite, and they never looked away from her once. Both sets of eyes studied her as though she were a puzzle to be figured out. Darcio and Amando were congenial and open, and bandied brilliant humor about with ease. They took great pleasure in making her laugh until she was little more than a fit of giggles during the appetizer. Rye, she realized, was on the fence. He wasn’t sure what he thought of her, but at least he was giving her the benefit of the doubt through dinner so they could have pleasant conversation.
There was only one man’s opinion that truly mattered to her, in any event, she thought as she pushed at her food with a fork and spent a few more minutes sneaking peeks at him. She sighed, trying to tell herself that she really ought to be worrying about other things. She ought to worry about who she was and where she was from and what had happened to her.
But she wasn’t.
No. What she felt, and she felt it soul deep, was that she was right where she was supposed to be. Right where she needed to be. So long as that didn’t change, she was content. Besides, forcing herself wouldn’t be likely to help her remember anyway. So she focused in the present.
And a little to her right.
Mystique flushed when she found herself colliding with Reule’s direct hazel eyes. There was something in the way he looked at her that set more than just her skin on fire. His eyes were full of hunger. Far too much hunger for a man nearing the end of his meal. She tried to steady her abruptly quickened breathing, but her heart was pounding so hard that she needed the added oxygen to keep from passing out in the snug corset. Mystique was a little outgunned at a table full of telepaths and empaths. She was afraid everyone knew what she was feeling and what she was thinking. Mostly, she couldn’t care less. One of the plusses of living the life of a blank slate was that she had no obligation to perform for anyone’s pleasure. As a guest in a foreign place, she supposed she ought to use care not to alienate those who sheltered her, but she’d already made a champion of the strongest voice in this Sánge keep.
However, these men were important to Reule because of their political positions alone. Only there was something else. They were closer than that to him. These were friends.
No. These were brothers, she realized. It was as though the same blood flowed in the veins of every man there. There was a harmony between them that buzzed just beyond her normal perceptions. A connection beyond position and duty. It was so powerful that she felt rather breathless all over again. This time when she looked at Reule, it was with the knowledge that he was the sort of man who had earned the complete loyalty and devotion of these other potent males. It was a heady realization and, without even thinking of curbing the impulse, Mystique reached out to cover his hand with her own, her small fingers slipping against his palm.
She saw his pupils expand suddenly with the contact, felt the kinetic energy of his surprise and delighted in the smile touching gently at the corners of his lips.
Reule looked down at the small hand covering his own and let his bemusement come out in a smile. No one outside of the Pack would ever think to touch him, but she did it all the time. He had to remind himself that it was because she didn’t know the finer points of Sánge etiquette, but he couldn’t help thinking that it wouldn’t matter to her anyway. There was something about her that said she did what she wanted without much concern what others thought.
Reule closed his fingers around hers in a gentle squeeze and felt her delight over the gesture. In fact, the entire table felt it, which was how intense an emotion it was. Reule felt the Pack react with startled silence for several beats before Amando, sitting to her left in Chayne’s chair, leaned forward to grab another breadcake from the diminished pile.
“This trip will only be for two weeks because we’re just going to Harth Outpost in the Pripan Desert, the last on our circuit before winter,” he said to Mystique as if they’d been in mid-conversation about it. “Unfortunately, the Pripans haven’t a clue about decent cooking. I sorely miss breadcakes when I’m traveling.”
“Cook always packs his saddlebags full of the stuff and sets out a huge plate whenever she knows he will be at table.” Rye snorted out a laugh. “He has her charmed, you know. Most of these”—he gestured to the food—“are his favorites.”
“If he weren’t charming, he wouldn’t do me much good as an ambassador, now would he?” Reule said dryly.
“That’s all well and good, but you will begin complaining yourself when he comes home for winter and we get served nothing but breadcakes for dinner each night.”
“I sense a great amount of jealousy at this table,” Amando rejoined, leaning back with an unconcerned air as he popped bits of breadcake into his mouth. “Mmm. Mmm.”
Mystique spoke up. “Since this meal is a send-off in your honor, I think it only natural your favorites be served.” Reule watched her lean closer to Amando, and a hasty, unruly instinct made him tighten his hold on her hand, reminding her that he was there. As if he were being…
Territorial.
Damn. Reule knew well enough what trouble territorial impulses amongst the Pack could be. Amongst Sánge males in general it was bad enough, but in the Pack it was a disaster waiting to occur. Reule forced himself to relax his grip and made very certain he made no emanations to Amando or any of the others. He did so by keeping his attention fully on Mystique, easily allowing himself to become lost in the delicate prettiness of her features and the sinful beckoning of her figure. He watched the movement of pale pink lips as she spoke, the flash of white, even teeth as she laughed at something Rye said. She bent her head to Amando as he murmured a confidence into her ear and Reule’s vision was filled with the ivory line of her bared throat, his keen eyes automatically picking out her pulse as it fluttered quickly beneath her skin.
In that instant Reule’s entire body lit up like a bonfire, the rush of heat sinking to the base of his spine and flooding low in his groin until he was hard and aching with want. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so overwhelmed with arousal before that he would react without control in a public venue. Oh, he’d reacted in public before, but it’d been something he’d allowed himself or used purposely in flirtation with a woman. But never had it controlled him. He went to draw his hand away from Mystique, not wanting to alert her to his untoward desires, but she held him with strength that prevented a subtle removal. In that delaying moment, he remembered she wasn’t ’pathic in any way, and it allowed him to relax his effort to withdraw. As long as he kept control and didn’t emanate, she might remain ignorant of his boorish baseness.
“What does that mean?” he heard her ask, drawing him out of his fixation with his reactions to her.
“When we say ’pathic, it refers to any of the ’pathic powers. All Sánge are ’pathic. All Sánge are, to some degree, both empathic and telepathic. Some of the more powerful Sánge have a third ’pathic ability as well,” Darcio explained.
“Each member of the Pack has a third ’pathic power, for instance.”
“I see. How do you filter through all of that information?” she asked. “How is it you keep from going mad? Forgive me, but this place is filled with people who are filled with thoughts and emotions…”
“There are two kinds of ’pathic abilities,” Reule answered her. “Autopathic and interpathic. Empathy is autopathic. That means that for all of us, it’s always switched on. The only control we have over it is to build walls within our own minds against the information it’s trying to feed us. Not all empaths can do this. Jakals, for example, cannot block out the emotion they sense.”
“Not that they would even want to,” Delano said, his contempt coming out in a grunt of displeasure.
“We believe the Sánge can create walls because of our telepathic ability. Now, telepathic ability for us is interpathic. That means that, for the most part, we have to work at being able to use the ability. We don’t automatically know everyone’s thoughts. We have to consciously scan for them.”
“Unless—” Darcio prompted needlessly.
“Unless,” Reule agreed, “someone is intentionally projecting their thoughts or the thought is being ‘screamed.’ Meaning, being experienced so loudly within the mind that it can’t be ignored by any telepath in a certain radius or with a personal connection to the projector. Also, telepathy is usually limited by proximity, though for some it is only possible with eye-to-eye contact. There are many gradations of ’pathic power amongst the Sánge.”
“I understand,” she said thoughtfully. “Thank you for that explanation. However, it’s good to know one doesn’t need to be ’pathic in any way to know how furious Delano is with you all at the moment for telling me such details.”
She didn’t even look at Delano as she said this. She simply reached for the spice shaker on the table and began to pepper her meat lightly, as if Delano’s reaction didn’t bother her in the least. And to Reule’s delight, it didn’t bother her in the least. He could easily feel her amusement at Delano’s suspicious nature, and the shock the Assassin was now experiencing that she had not only noticed, but had boldly brought it out into the open. Reule had to admit, it was a pretty audacious thing to do considering the company she was keeping.
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