Her head spun with vertigo, magic and the heat of the man at her back as she took a step. Felt the bridge sway. Took another. And another. The breath backed up in her lungs as the throb of fear became a hard, hot churn of excitement, then a building sense of euphoria when her feet sped up and her body started compensating for the sway.
Behind them, fresh baying broke out, becoming suddenly sharp on the night air, closing fast. The wolfyn were coming!
“Hurry,” Dayn urged, but she didn’t need to be told.
She flew along the rest of the bridge, her heart tapping a rapid, excited beat as they neared the far side and her strides lengthened until she was hitting every second slat, then every third. And she was across!
Solid ground felt strange and static, but she bounced on her toes as she spun back to see Dayn getting to work on the pins securing the handrail ropes to the edge. One gave, then the next.
Crouching opposite him, she copied his moves, loosening the third pin and then pulling it out. One side of the bridge sagged and the whole thing twisted in the moonlight. Her stomach dipped at the sight of the structure they had just trusted their lives to coming unraveled so easily, so thoroughly. Then he gave a hard yank, the last pin came free and the bridge sagged and fell, the moon-brightened planks making it look like a dwindling dotted line. Then it was gone.
Shadows moved on the other side as the first of the wolfyn broke out into the open, moving fast and silent.
“Follow me,” Dayn said, and moved off, headed south.
She fell into step beside him without comment. And was surprised to realize that she trusted him as her leader, her alpha. She wasn’t second-guessing everything he said, wasn’t trying to understand it within her old framework. Instead, she was following where he led.
Be careful. You’ve only known him a few hours, half a day at most, argued her rational, practical, logical, boring self, projecting a warning that was quickly lost to the joy of running beside Dayn as he sped up. The wolfsbene power flowed higher again, as if called by the sheer relief of being free to run as they chose, with their pursuers left far behind.
He plunged into a loose thatch of trees and immediately veered in the opposite direction, heading them back north after making a fake to the south, to lead the wolfyn toward the southern crossing as he and Keely had planned.
The memory soured some of the relief. I used you, you used me. That’s what people like us do. The bitch’s words haunted Reda, because they were so unlike the man who jogged beside her…and yet, the wolfyn had known him for two decades, Reda for six hours or so.
The trail they were on widened, giving her room to move up and run shoulder-to-shoulder with him. But where before her blood had throbbed in time with their strides, now she felt like they were subtly out of sync, thrown off-rhythm by the questions circling around in her head.
He glanced over. “Go ahead. Ask.” His expression was cloaked in shadows.
A chill tightened her skin. “Are you reading my mind?”
“I told you, I can’t connect with you.”
There was no reason for that to sting, yet it did. Which was proof positive that she needed to get a grip on herself. “Then what is it you think I should be asking?”
“Whether I drank from Keely and made her forget about it. Yeah, I did. Wolfyn blood is powerful stuff for my kind. I needed a hit once per year, just as she needed a mate one night a year, so she could have a satisfying run during the blood moon without jeopardizing her brother’s leadership.”
Reda’s stomach gave a slow roll, not just at the idea of him drinking the wolfyn’s blood—with or without her knowledge—but also because he had so easily walked away from his long-time lover without so much as a backward glance. And only a few minutes later had been kissing her, Reda, and making her feel needed. Special. Powerful.
Don’t go there.
Dayn slowed to a ground-eating walk, shifting his rucksack. “I know it looks bad. Abyss, it is bad. Keely and I traded sex, but then I stole her blood, which makes us far from even.”
Reda didn’t know what to say, or even what more he could say that would ease the tightness in her chest, so she let it go. And after a while, the tightness eased on its own, and she thought that maybe that was part of being brave, too—letting things go.
They kept traveling for an hour. Two. The forest closed in on the road they were using, and she became very aware of the dark wall of trees on either side of them, the occasional rustles and crashes of startled creatures.
At the sound of a not-too-distant howl, she stiffened. “Is that the pack?”
“Just a loner looking for trouble,” Dayn said, voice slightly rusty from disuse. At her look, he elaborated, “A male can get kicked out of his pack if he challenges the alpha and loses, or if the alpha thinks he’s likely to challenge and wants to avoid the fight. Sometimes he can join another pack, but unless he can really suck it up and play beta, there’s usually the same problem there, too. Which means he ends up on his own, except during the moon time.”
Sliding cautiously into the conversation, she said, “Why then?”
“Because those are the only three days that tradition allows a wolfyn male to claim the Right of Challenge, which is the ability to fight the pack’s leader for the right to rule. That’s also when disputes are settled, punishments are decided, matings are formed or broken. The wolfyn have boiled most of the family stuff and politics down to these three days, leaving the rest of the year essentially peaceful.”
“Does it work?”
“It seems to.”
“Civilized.” She frowned, trying to put that into the context of what she’d just seen of the wolfyn. “That male back there.”
“Kenar. Keely’s brother.”
“He tried to enthrall me, but you stopped him.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, trying to dislodge those few seconds when she had been utterly under the big creature’s amber-eyed spell. “I thought you said they wouldn’t try that in their home realm.”
“Kenar is…” He paused, as if searching for the words. “Keely and I might have used each other one night a year, but Kenar uses everyone all the time. But he’s smart. He makes it seem as though he’s following the traditions to the letter, when he’s really bending them to suit his needs. And because he’s the alpha and he’s kicked out the very few males who stood up to him, he can control his pack almost absolutely.”
“It sounded like Candida and Keely weren’t as firmly under his control as he thought.”
His lips tightened and he glanced back southward. “I hope she knows what she’s doing. Kenar is charming enough when he gets his own way. But he doesn’t take it lightly when he’s crossed.”
Reda nodded. “I know men like that. Saw too many of them on the job.”
He cut her a look. “What job?”
“I…” She hadn’t meant to go there, didn’t know how they had even come to be talking like this, like they were normal friends out for a normal walk. Or a normal first date or something.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” he said. But in her heart, it jarred, made her think he was too often ready to move forward and not look back, just like the major.
“I was a cop,” she said.
“A guardswoman,” he said with a strange note in his voice. When she glanced over, though, he shook his head. “It’s nothing. You said ‘was.’ What happened? This is about your partner?”
“I froze.” She crossed her arms, caught herself doing it and jammed her hands in her pockets instead. “You’re shocked, I’m sure. And yes, that was sarcasm.” When he didn’t say anything, she told herself to leave it alone, let it lie. Instead, she found herself saying, “We just went in for coffee, that’s all. Benz didn’t even want to—but I was cold, tired and cranky, and our shift was going to run over because a couple of guys had called in sick, so he stopped and went in for me. And he didn’t come back out.”
Maybe it was th
e wolfsbene, maybe the crazy reality out of reality she found herself in, but suddenly the memory was right there in front of her, where before she hadn’t been able to remember any of it clearly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“SERIOUSLY, BENZ, WHAT is taking so long?” Reda killed the cruiser’s engine, pocketed the keys and climbed out, slamming the door harder than she really needed to. “Did you have to grow the coffee beans or milk the half-and-half cow yourself?”
More likely he was chatting up the pretty brunette who worked the counter at the Porthole Packie. Normally, it didn’t bother Reda when her good-looking, easygoing partner went into casual-flirt mode, even when the flirtee was a good ten years younger than him and a coed at the nearby state college. Tonight, though, the thought set her teeth on edge. She might not have been all that into the guy who had just “it’s not you, it’s me”’d her, but being newly dumped—again—really ought to earn her some priority in the coffee department. Maybe even a bonus Snickers.
Which, apparently, she was going to have to get for herself. Muttering under her breath and ignoring the curious looks of a couple of passersby—what, never seen a girl cop wearing a uniform and a mood before?—she pushed through the portholed door and into the liquor store, which, like so many of the local places, had recently been forced to diversify to stay afloat, putting in a general store section that boasted damn good serve-yourself coffee.
As she came through the door, she automatically glanced up at the curved overhead mirror, which was angled toward the register area and backed up by video surveillance.
She froze at the sight of Benz standing on the wrong side of the counter with his hands up, a gun in his face and the coed cowering behind him with her eyes closed and her hands covering her ears. Then Reda looked from the mirror to the register, and saw it was for real.
In the nanosecond it took for the perp to look over, go white-eyed and start screaming for her to toss Reda’s gun and lie on the floor, her brain snapshotted the scene—assessed the lines of sight, possible cover and the positions of the three other people in the store. She instantly saw herself pretending to follow orders but instead launching herself into a nearby display, saw it fall into the gunman, saw Benz come over the counter and take the guy down. It was training, planning and instinct all wrapped into one. And it didn’t happen anywhere but in her mind.
In reality, she just stood there.
“Get down!” The perp jumped back a step and shifted his gun from Benz to her. She saw the panic in his eyes and knew she had to react, had to get the hell out of the line of fire, but she freaking couldn’t. Her brain wouldn’t work; her body wouldn’t move.
The guy’s eyes changed. And Reda saw her own death.
“No!” Benz lunged over the counter and went for the guy, just as she had pictured, but she hadn’t provided a distraction, hadn’t done anything.
The perp spun back and fired as Benz hit him. The .38’s sharp report jolted her from her paralysis as the men went down together, but she was too slow in fumbling her weapon from its holster. The gunman got up, scrambling out from underneath Benz and bolting for the back exit.
“Stop!” she yelled. “Freeze, police!” Which just wasted time.
Besides, he was already gone, the door swinging into place behind him.
She hesitated another gutless moment—chase or stay? One look back at Benz made the decision for her. Blood pooled dark ruby-red on the hardwood floor. She grabbed her radio and called in an officer down, assistance and an ambulance needed, then crouched beside him, skidding in his blood and seeing the ragged tear in his neck.
She clapped a hand over the wound, putting on pressure like crazy, telling him to hang on, that help was on its way.
None of it mattered, though, because like the man who had killed him, Benz was long gone.
“And when the detectives started asking me about the perp, I couldn’t remember a damn thing,” she finished, oblivious now to the dark forest pressing in on either side of them, seeing only the liquor store, the blood, the expressions on the faces of the other cops afterward. “The other wits hadn’t seen his face and the video was useless. If I could have given them something…but, no. It was all gone, pfft, total fog, like my mind had locked up along with my body. I couldn’t even help that way. I was deadweight. Useless.” She glanced over at Dayn. “Just like I have been pretty much since I got here.”
He met her eyes, though his expression was lost in the darkness of the predawn that had started lightening the horizon to a deep, rich blue. “You’re expecting me to say it wasn’t your fault.”
Her stomach gave an ugly-feeling lurch. “You think it was.”
“I think it won’t matter worth a damn what I think. You’ve got to work it out for yourself and find a way to make peace. Or not.” But although his words put up barriers, the soft rasp of regret in his voice went right through them, and reminded her who she was talking to and what he’d been through. He hadn’t just lost a partner; he’d lost his family, his life, his heritage.
“Sorry,” she said, blush coming on hard and fast. “You were just asking to be nice, and I rambled on, and—”
He reached over and took her hand. “Reda, stop. That’s not what I meant.”
She swallowed, trying not to cling too hard to his hand. “Sorry. I’m not good at reading cues. My brothers say it’s because I spend too much time by myself.” Or they had before they moved away to start new jobs, new families, leaving her behind.
“I’m familiar with the concept.” He let go of her hand, but they were walking closer than before, their shoulders and arms brushing in rhythm as he said, “I’ve spent twenty years dying to get back to Elden, reconnect with my brothers and sister and kick the Blood Sorcerer’s ass, not necessarily in that order. But I’ve also spent most of that time blaming myself for not being in the castle when the attack came.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to,” she trailed off, getting it.
“Exactly. Right or wrong, what matters is that I feel responsible.” He paused. “There was a girl, Twilla. She was a guardsman’s daughter, and planned to train for the queen’s guard.”
“Oh.” It was ridiculous to feel a twinge. But she did.
“My parents didn’t approve because she was common-born and they had plans for me. We argued and I stormed out, and was gone when the castle fell. Worse, the last things between us in their lifetime were angry words and accusations.” He spread his hands; the gesture was visible now in the pink light of a new day. “I’m not proud of myself. I wish I had been a better man, a better son. Hell, a better prince. But I can’t go back and change that. All I can do is be better the next time, whatever form that next time takes.”
“Oh,” she said again, only this time it was a softer noise, one of understanding that was what he meant when he talked about moving forward and looking ahead. He wasn’t trying to get away from the past, or ignore it. He was trying to fix the future.
And in that, he was nothing like her father and brothers, who spent so much time looking ahead of themselves that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them.
Her opinion of him, which was already dangerously high, notched up again. And that, combined with the wolfsbene, made her far too aware of the way their arms brushed now and then as they walked. The contact was almost undetectable through the layers of sweaters and leather, but she knew. She knew.
Yet even though the heat of arousal stayed high in her bloodstream, her energy—at least for hiking—was rapidly fading. She didn’t say anything, though, just pushed onward until Dayn nudged her with his elbow and pointed to a narrow game trail leading away from the main track. “There. That’s what I was looking for. It leads to a hunting cabin about a mile in.” His teeth flashed. “It’s Kenar’s, and we know for a fact that he’s way behind us. The pack will need to rest, so we should be safe. I brought a couple of wards. I’ll set one down here to warn us if someone’s coming up the trail, then set the other to surround
the cabin.”
She nodded and said, “Okay.” But what she really meant was, Thank God.
The sun was coming up over the horizon, signaling the end of a nearly interminable night, but she didn’t look around, didn’t care where they were or what it looked like in the light of day. Her focus narrowed to the few feet in front of her as she followed Dayn up an incline that at times turned so steep that they were going almost vertical, using roots and rocky outcroppings as hand and footholds.
Then, finally, he crested the climb and turned back to her. “Come on. We’re here.”
She gave him her hand, trusting his strong grip to pull her up onto what proved to be a wide ledge at the base of a rock-strewn mountain face. Near the back, snugged up against the rock ledge, a small log cabin was nearly hidden among squat, scrubby pine trees that looked short, proportion-wise, but towered over the small structure.
Barely even registering that reminder that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, she followed Dayn to the cabin and obediently hung back at his gesture, too tired to insist on helping him scout the area and set the wards. As he rejoined her, he was mixing some sort of powder into the contents of the waterskin he’d carried over his shoulder.
As he reached her side, he tipped his head back and drank deeply.
Reda’s attention was caught far too thoroughly by the way his throat worked, her eyes locking on a rivulet that escaped and tracked down. She felt the tickle against her own flesh, and the sensation reached inside her to stroke the kernel of heat that was all that was left of the wolfsbene’s power.
She quivered slightly as he lowered the waterskin and offered it to her. “It’s a mild stimulant. It’ll clear the fog and keep you from going so deeply unconscious that you can’t run if we need to.”
As she took the potion, the quiver grew claws, dug in and spread through her body—a potent combination of fear and arousal that instead of freezing her in place made her want to move into him, curl against him. She didn’t let her hand shake, but as she downed the mixture, which had a mellow citrus flavor but the aftertaste of too-strong black tea, she was entirely aware of Dayn staring at her, watching her as she had watched him.
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