“And me a winikin.” But it was more a question than a statement, because that had never seemed to bother Sven. If anything, he’d been the first one to ignore the traditions when it came to class and status at Skywatch.
He shook his head. “No, never. When we first got here, I kept things to myself because I was trying to cope with the what-the-fuck shock of becoming a Nightkeeper and dealing with the magic and everything that comes with it.” He paused. “And let’s face it… you hated it here.”
“I… Yeah.” Even now, her chest tightened when she thought back to those months. She had bitterly resented being indentured without permission, and to the one person who could pull strong emotions out of her without even trying—or seeming to notice. Except he had noticed… and he’d sent her away.
“Then, when you came back, there was no way in hell I could say anything. Jox was right when he chose you to lead the winikin, and I knew I couldn’t fuck with that.” He shifted, looked at her with eyes that reached inside her and kindled sparks of desire amid the confusion. His voice roughened as he said, “I wanted to, though. Seeing you, being around you… Gods. So I took off. But I couldn’t get you out of my head. And when I got back here and saw you again… everything was suddenly right in the world, because I could talk to you, tell you some of what I had figured out. I couldn’t tell you how I really felt, though, because things were still so unsettled with the winikin.”
“But—” She had to break off and swallow past the huge lump in her throat. “None of that has changed. If anything, it’s going to get worse.”
The corners of his mouth turned up in rueful acknowledgment, though his eyes stayed very serious. “You’re not kidding.”
“Then why…” In the end, she could only get out, “Why now?” She was floundering in emotional waters that were way over her head.
His expression softened, going almost sad. “It’s because of what you said about regrets… and what you did about it.”
“What, you mean jumping your bones?” The words came out fast and brittle.
“Don’t.” He reached toward her but stopped short of making contact. “The humor-as-defense thing doesn’t work on me. I’ve had way more practice at it. Besides, I’m not just talking about the sex, though that was fantastic. I’m talking about not letting moments get away from us.” He paused, looking over at the cave paintings. “You’re right, you know. We may not have all that many moments left, and we owe it to the gods to use the ones we’re given to the fullest, and live without regrets.”
“That’s not exactly what I said.” Her voice didn’t quite tremble, but it sure as hell wanted to, because suddenly this all felt very real and important.
A corner of his mouth kicked up, then flattened again. “Okay, so I’m interpreting a little. But here’s the thing. I don’t want to go into the last three months of the countdown without you knowing that I have feelings for you that go way beyond what happened here today. And maybe us having a chance to see what could happen between us for real.” He paused, his expression caught somewhere between wary and expectant.
If he had kissed her then, she thought she would’ve gone up in flames, thrown herself at him, and agreed to damn near anything. He didn’t so much as lean toward her, though, leaving it her decision. She nearly cursed him for it.
“I…” She swallowed and tried again. “I don’t think… Damn it.” She rubbed both hands across her face, trying to get herself centered enough to have a conversation, or even a logical thought process. But that wasn’t easy when one part of her was busy singing a happy chorus of hormones, while another part was sending up warning buzzers. As she lowered her hands, though, her eyes were caught by the new mark on her forearm.
Gods. How was she supposed to deal with all that had happened in such a short time? Zane, Lora, Sven, the cave, the mark… it was all suddenly too much. Panic had her heart racing and sweat chilling her forehead; claustrophobia had her stomach knotting so tightly it hurt. “I can’t do this right now.” Her voice broke on the words. “I need some time, some space.” The last was nearly a whimper.
“Are you okay?” His face instantly falling into concerned lines, he reached for her.
She edged back, out of reach. “Yes. No. I need to get out of here.”
“You… Oh, right.” His disappointment was evident, but so was his understanding. He of all people would get what it meant to feel trapped and unable to deal, needing to run free.
Without another word, he nodded, palmed his knife, and called his magic with a few murmured words.
She didn’t feel anything this time, but there was a low rumbling sound and the stone slab began to move. Relief slashed through her, followed by a sharp twist of grief. She didn’t let herself dwell on either, though, as the doorway cracked open.
From outside, Mac gave a joyous bark. A burst of radio static erupted from Sven’s armband, followed by Dez’s voice, a low growl of, “Tell me that’s you, Sven, and that you’ve got Cara and you’re both okay.”
“It’s us,” she called. “We’re fine. I’m coming out.” Without waiting for Sven, she surged through the widening crack and back out into open air and into a whole new reality, with no idea of how she was going to deal with the changes… or what tomorrow was going to look like.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Skywatch
“Hang back here for a minute,” Sven said in an undertone, waving Cara into the shadows of the cacao grove beyond the winikin’s hall, where the celebration was still going strong even though it was nearly two in the morning. “I’ll check things out and give you the all-clear.”
In the starlight he could just see her spine stiffen and her head come up, but he couldn’t see her expression, and vice versa. Which was probably for the best.
After the briefest hesitation, she nodded. “Roger.”
The two syllables were about all she’d said directly to him since they left the cave and reunited with Mac and a dozen very worried teammates. And for the thousandth time since then, Sven wished he’d kept his damn mouth shut.
In the middle of the cave, the magic, and the aftermath of the kind of sex that was guaranteed to make a guy say too much, too soon—telling her had seemed like the right thing to do. Hell, it’d seemed like the only thing he could do, because deep down inside, he’d known that if he didn’t tell her then, he might not ever do it.
That probably would’ve been better, though. It’d been bad enough when he had been the only one running from his feelings. He was an old pro at it, after all. For him to add that onto her plate now… Shit, bad timing.
So much for the whole “no regrets” thing. He didn’t regret the sex—that would be like saying, “No, thanks,” to breathing, especially when it had been just the one time, no harm, no foul—but he badly regretted bringing the other stuff into it. Because what was he offering her, really? He was the same guy he’d always been, and that guy wasn’t good for anything more than a short-term fling. Dozens of women could attest to that, and Cara knew him better than all of them put together.
Go? Stay? The thought-glyphs appeared in his mind at the same time a warm, furry body pressed against his leg, almost hard enough to knock him off balance, in the canine version of, Get your shit together and let’s do this.
“Stay,” he told Mac. “Protect.” Actually, he would’ve liked to have the coyote with him for the recon, but he had a feeling it’d take some doing to peel his familiar away from Cara. He wasn’t sure how much Mac understood about what had happened, but the coyote had been practically glued to her since they got out of the cave, bristling when anyone so much as got too close to her.
Then again, so was Sven.
He had managed to hold his frustration in check through their debriefing on the winikin’s treason, the coyote cave, his and Cara’s shared vision, and the nahwal’s message. He hadn’t let on to the others that anything sexual had happened between them, hadn’t even let himself look too long at her, trying to figure out wha
t she was thinking. Instead, he’d done his damnedest to focus on helping come up with a plan to deal with the traitors.
In the end, it had circled back around to the two of them anyway: Cara needed to be in on their arrest for the obvious reasons; Dez had wanted only one mage involved, so the winikin wouldn’t feel like they’d been ganged up on; and Sven had volunteered with enough of a back-off glare to keep the others from chiming in.
Yeah, they could both probably use some distance, but he’d be damned if he took it at her expense this time. Besides, he wanted to get his hands on Zane.
Moving quietly, he crossed the packed-dirt open space between the grove and the training hall, then eased up the stairs for the second time that night, which brought a flash of disbelief at how much had changed in… what, six hours? Less? Christ, that was a mind-fuck.
The porch was deserted, the noise level muted compared to what it had been before, and when Sven eased to a window and took a look inside, he was unsurprised to find that there were only twenty or so winikin left. Those twenty were the hard cores, though: hard-core drinkers, hard-core rebels. And they were sitting at a central table, riveted to whatever Zane was saying.
The bastard’s body language was animated, but his eyes were cool and hard, like part of him was standing back and watching his own performance, weighing it. Was he trashing Cara’s leadership style and making a full-on argument for his own, or was he manipulating things more subtly, pointing out flaws in a seemingly positive way and trusting the others to reach the conclusion he wanted? Or, hell, maybe he was singing her praises, planning to play the bereaved suitor and friend when her body was discovered, and only then letting the others convince him to take command.
Lora was there too, sitting on the other side of the table, looking as rapt as the rest of them. Cara said she’d acted like she’d been brainwashed, as if Zane had found a way to give her the certainty and security she craved, albeit his own twisted version of them. As far as Sven was concerned, though, a weak character was no excuse for attempted murder.
Fuckers. Anger burned his veins at seeing them there, acting like it was nothing to have left Cara tied up in a flooding cave. If he hadn’t gone looking for her, or Mac hadn’t been able to track her… Shit. Forget Dez’s plan to question them; he should just fireball their asses where they sat.
Instead, he waved for Cara and Mac to break cover, and did his damnedest to harness some of the rage that snarled and snapped inside him. Because the plan wasn’t just to bring the traitors to justice; it was to keep Nightkeeper-winikin relations intact while doing it.
When Cara got up close beside him at the door, he said in an undertone, “They’re all at a central table. I’ll go in first; you stay behind me in case he panics and starts shooting.”
In the yellow illumination coming from the porch light, there was no mistaking the stubborn I’m in charge here set to her jaw. “That’ll make it look like I’m hiding. Nope, I’m going in first. You’ll just have to move fast if he threatens me.” She pinned him with a look, then lifted the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun she held across her body. “And remember, I’ve got this and you’ve got cuffs. Only use magic as a last resort.”
“Yeah, I got that part.” He didn’t like it, but he got it. A few days ago, the idea of a Nightkeeper blasting away at a bunch of winikin would’ve seemed ludicrous. Now it was far too easy to imagine, along with the political shitstorm it would create. “I’ll do my best.” He wasn’t promising any more than that. But he also wasn’t going to argue with her about going first, because she had a point. He needed to look like backup, not heavy artillery. So he eased open the door, which led to an entryway that would let them stay concealed for the first ten or fifteen feet. “After you.” His voice softened. “And, Cara?”
Her eyes went wary, then slid away from his. “Let’s just focus on the job, okay?”
“I was just going to say that I’ll be right behind you.”
“Oh.” Faint color touched her cheeks. “Thanks.” Then, without another word, she slipped through the door.
And as Sven followed with Mac at his heels, he put the other stuff out of his mind—or tried to—and brought up his magic to a background buzz, ready to defend or attack at a moment’s notice. Because right now, it didn’t matter what had happened between them or where they were going to go from here. All that mattered was not letting Zane and Lora hurt her again… and paying them back for their betrayal.
Cara’s heartbeat thudded unevenly as she crossed the short antechamber leading to the main hall. The adrenaline pumping through her body didn’t come entirely from anticipation of the coming showdown, but she couldn’t dwell on what was happening between her and Sven.
She had to focus on the here-and-now, and do her best to get through this confrontation—hell, call it what it was: an arrest—while keeping the rest of the winikin as intact as she could. Dez, the Nightkeepers, and, hell, the war effort and therefore the whole freaking earthly plane were counting on her to not let her people decompress.
The knowledge had her pausing just shy of the doorway and taking a deep breath that whistled in her lungs.
She heard Zane’s voice coming from the room beyond, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying over the belligerent staccato of U2’s Rattle and Hum. It sounded like he was joking, but his tone carried an edge that raised the hair on the back of her neck and made her feel suddenly trapped, drowning. Claustrophobia pressed in on her without warning, but she dug her fingernails into her palms and shoved it away, pissed that she’d given him that much power over her, even for a few seconds.
The anger cleared her head and unlocked her feet, though, and before she was aware of even having made the decision, she was through the door and beelining for her betrayer.
Zane’s back was toward her, like he’d been trying to prove that he didn’t need to watch the door, and Lora was staring so raptly at him that she didn’t notice Cara’s entrance. The others, though, caught sight of her immediately. She knew their names, knew their stories, but in that moment she didn’t see them as individuals; she saw a potential stampede. And as a rancher’s daughter, she knew she needed to deal with that or risk getting flattened.
Their party-reddened eyes went from her to Sven, and their expressions fired at his invasion of their turf. Some shouted; others surged to their feet and sent chairs flying.
Cara bellowed, “Freeze!” and fired the sawed-off from her hip, making her own ears ring and aiming way over their heads, going for shock value rather than bloodshed.
It worked. They froze. All except for Zane, who whipped around. For a second, there wasn’t even a spark of recognition in his face, as if he’d already wiped her from his memory banks. Then he got it, and blankness turned to astonishment and dawning horror.
“That’s right.” Cara leveled the sawed-off at the center of his chest. “I got out of the cave. Guess you should’ve killed me yourself after all, huh?” She was watching the faces of the others, and was relieved to see the anger and disgust that had been aimed at Sven and Mac now shift to confusion.
Zane sagged back against the table hard enough to make it grate a few inches across the floor. “That’s impossible. The gods led me there. They told me they would take you in exchange—”
“They didn’t tell you shit,” she said flatly. “You came up with all of it on your own so you’d have an excuse to take over the winikin. You and Lora both.”
As if that had been her cue, the woman in question gave a low, broken moan, then turned dead white as Mac came around and stood right by her with his teeth bared and his ruff bristling. A few of the others shifted uncertainly, but their glares were aimed at Zane and Lora, not the coyote or his master.
Cara, though, was very aware of Sven standing right behind and to the right of her, letting her handle things even though he probably wanted to tear Zane apart. She didn’t let herself think that it was very like what her younger, more idealistic self had imagined, with Sven as h
er destined mate and protector, and the two of them fighting to save mankind.
The reality was at once very close to that, and yet so very far away.
Zane’s eyes darted around the room, to her, to Sven, and then back to her. “Lies.” He hissed the word, then glanced back at the others. “What did I tell you? She wants to get me out of the way and bring her master on board as the leader of the winikin. It’ll be just like before the massacre—we’ll be no better than a drafted army. Cannon fucking fodder commanded by leaders who hide behind invisible shields.”
And even though only seconds earlier he’d all but admitted to attempted murder, a couple of the winikin looked at each other, then at her. She felt Sven square himself, and knew she had to defuse this, and fast.
Exhaling softly, she addressed the others, members of a herd that was suddenly thinking of stampeding again. “Zane lured me to the training grounds, knocked me out, and carried me to a cave miles outside the compound—one that he’s never told any of us about, even though it could be a valuable asset. There, he and Lora bound me to an altar and left me to die in the floodwaters.” She paused, not letting the memories come. They crowded close, though, choking her slightly as she said, “I would have died if Sven and Mac hadn’t come after me. They saved my life.” She paused for a beat. “But that doesn’t make him my master. My allegiance is to the winikin.”
“Then what’s with the ink?” Zane nodded to her wrist. “That’s not just the coyote’s mark. It’s his mark… and you weren’t wearing it when you went into the cave.”
She didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her look down to where her sleeve had ridden up. “I didn’t go in there voluntarily… And you said it yourself—the cave has coyote magic.”
He sneered. “So does the coyote mage.” To the others, he said, “You’ll see. She’ll bring him in on decisions, bit by bit, until one day we’ll wake up and he’s in charge. Meanwhile, she’ll be spreading her legs and giving up whatever he wants—”
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