My conscience prickled. “Then maybe Ryuu should have thought of that before he left Wink.”
We reached the door to my room, and two guards in casual attire lounged on the floor reading books. Katsuo marched me over the threshold, cut his eyes toward the pair and lowered his voice. “Our parents didn’t leave. They were exiled. They didn’t choose to abandon their home of forty years, their friends, their jobs—their lives. They were forced out, and every member of our family was turned out with them. All those faces? They should be familiar. They used to be Hayashi skulk members. They used to be your family too.”
Shock glued my feet to the spot. “That’s not possible. My dad would never…”
“Your dad is a tyrant, Mai. I’m sorry, but he is.” Katsuo’s fingers tunneled through his hair. “He has plans for you, the same as he had plans for your sisters.”
“Leave my sisters out of this,” I growled.
“Your sisters are all mated to powerful, wealthy reynards.” His breathy laughter mocked me. “Do you really believe the gods so love your father that when fated mates were handed out, they earmarked all the best males, those living on property surrounding his own, those rich and influential, for Hayashi daughters?”
Rage vibrated through the soles of my feet, pushing me hard to change so I could rip at him with sharp teeth. Thierry had drawn the same conclusion before, but she wasn’t right then and he wasn’t right now. They couldn’t be. It would mean my sisters’ lives were all lies. It would mean my life was a lie. It would mean my father arranged their marriages and then lied about the matches. Had my sisters gone along with him? Had they been forced into it? Or, like me, were there hazy gaps in their memories too?
Answering him meant giving him the satisfaction of knowing he was unsettling me. “I hope you find your sister.”
Shaking his head, he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him. I drifted toward the window, wishing a tangle of black hair would cascade in front of the glass, that Gen’s pale face would glower at me and rebuke me for costing her Chiffon. But the only girl in the glass I saw was my reflection, and she looked small and lost enough to be Gen’s twin.
For years the desperation to find a mate had ridden me to rash acts of impulsiveness with guys. Thierry thought I was a flirt, and I was, but gods it hurt to know you had a missing piece out there you couldn’t find. I had lost count of the number of males I had tested and the dizzying tally of nice guys I pretended I could be happy with even after they failed.
I braced my forehead against the glass and tried to push thoughts of Ryuu from my mind. It didn’t work. His face was lodged like a splinter in my skull. The hunger in his gaze when he looked at me… It might have melted my knees had I been a free woman instead of his captive, able to choose to be the focus of his attention instead of having no choice but to withstand it.
He might think bending me to his will would get him everything he wanted, but hearts were fickle things, and mine had never cared much for being told what to do or who to love. He might find a way to force me into a union, but souls weren’t cards shuffled by the hands of fate. Mates had to play their cards with everything they had and win or lose honestly. Ryuu had stacked the deck, for now, but if he kept inciting my father to action, then his house of cards would soon fall.
Chapter 5
The rattling doorknob drew my eye. I bet it had seen more action in the past two days than in the past two years. Maybe even in the last twenty. I had taken a step toward it, figuring Katsuo had returned to report that Gen had been found, when it swung inward with a bang. The tall woman who stepped into the room glowed with emerald fury, her left fist a cascade of runes sliding over her skin, illuminating the floor and darkened hall behind her. Thierry’s murderous glare fastened on me, and the magic in her hand fizzled.
“Mai.” Two long strides later, she wrapped me in an oxygen-depriving hug. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I hugged her back, relief wet in my eyes. “Are you all right?”
“That freaking dart hurt coming out.” She rubbed her neck. “The sedative short-circuited my mojo for a few hours.” She lowered her left hand and flexed it, her voice going distant. “I had to feed to throw it off. Now I’m good as new.”
Knowing how much that private admission cost her, I lightened the mood by punching her in the arm. “What took you so long?”
“You’ve been missing for forty-eight hours.” With a snort, she shook off her somber mood. “I’ve been hunkered down in the woods for thirty-six of them, including during what I’ll generously call an escape attempt.” Her eyes sparkled. “The way you let that dog pounce on you and pin you down was inspired.”
“Shut up.” I shoved her. “I didn’t see you offer any assistance.”
“I wanted to see how far you got,” she admitted. “The less these people know about me being here, the better.”
Cold fingers of dread traced my spine. “Does the conclave know you’re here?”
A spark of magic lit her palm. “I figured it was best if they weren’t made aware of the situation. Yet.”
“Tee, these are innocent people.” I gazed out the window. “You can’t hurt them or let anyone else harm them either.”
Her lips pressed into a mulish line. “Let’s get moving. That kid can’t hide forever. We need to be gone before they find her.” She jerked her chin toward the hall. “We can talk on the way to the car.”
Nodding that I understood, I followed her out, past the same pair of guards. One had shifted into his fox form and curled into a soot-colored ball. The other slumped against the wall, snoring loud enough to be an alarm of its own. “What did you do to them?”
“Sleep enchantment.” She patted her hip pocket. “Don’t leave home without them.”
I checked the pulse of the nearest guard. “Are you sure…?”
Her eyebrows knitted together. “I’m not that bad with spellwork. Shaw says I’m improving more every day.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Shaw was her mate, a master spellworker and an incubus. He also wasn’t an idiot. Piss her off by critiquing her inspired spellwork, and he would be the one going hungry for a few days.
I threw up my hands, palms out. “I was just wondering how long the effect lasted.”
“Thirty minutes,” she grumbled. “Shaw mixed the herbs, if that’s what you’re worried about. He hasn’t cleared me to use my own enchantments on live subjects yet.”
Thank the gods.
We hit the half wall and climbed over it, striding into absolute darkness lit by her magic. The porch loomed ahead, and I walked to its edge, straining my ears. Whistles rose. Voices strained. They hadn’t found her yet.
Gen’s fading scent covered the porch from our earlier escapade. “Did you see which way the girl went?”
“Yep.” Thierry decided on a way down and shoved me toward it. “That’s why I said it won’t take them long to find her. She’s a smart cookie and coolheaded. Otherwise, they would have located her already.”
I shimmied down one of the support piers anchoring the porch. Thierry landed in a crouch beside me, nostrils flared as she oriented herself to our surroundings. When she started walking, I was slower to follow.
I cast a backward glance over my shoulder. “What about my dad?”
“Mr. Hayashi agreed to give me time to handle the situation before he took matters into his own hands.”
We hit the grass and crawled along the same path Gen had used earlier. Apparently Thierry had been studying the girl’s trails and used them to reach me with as little fanfare as possible. To the left, moonlight bounced off the patchwork tent the Tanabes called home. Drawing in the scents of the area, I tasted Chiffon, Gen, Ryuu and Katsuo in the back of my throat.
A spate of sharp yips pierced the night, and my knees locked in place. Those voices were familiar. Oh no. No, no, no. I reached out and caught Thierry’s ankle. She twisted sideways and raised her eyebrows.
I wet my lips. “Do you hear tha
t?”
“Foxes barking. So?”
“Those aren’t just any foxes.” I rose on my knees, barely able to see over the tops of the wheat stalks. “They’re Hayashis. That’s our skulk call you’re hearing.”
When the skulk hunted as a whole, we used the series of short yips to locate one another. If they were using it now, it meant they were waiting on me to answer. Maybe they even thought I was the one who had gone missing and that the Tanabe skulk was trying to locate me. They probably had no idea what they were rushing into except that—like Thierry—the chaos presented a prime opportunity to extract me.
“This will end badly.” Dad would have sent our sentries, fighters who were skirmish-trained, when this skulk had left bookworms to guard my door. Nothing against bookworms, but I doubted many rescuers would halt their escape attempts while the guards finished reading to the end of the chapter. Thierry had knocked them out with magic before they knew what hit them. “I have to intercept them.”
“Mai.” Thierry tackled me. “The cavalry has arrived. Stop trying to hamstring them, and let’s get out of here.”
I shoved her off me and climbed to my feet. “These are innocent people, Tee. We can’t let them get hurt because of me.”
“Whatever happens isn’t your fault. It’s theirs.” She pulled magic into her runes. “They took you. They had to know that was the dumbest dumbass thing to do, and yet here you are.”
“I can’t explain it.” I barely understood the overwhelming urge to protect these people myself. I pleaded with her using the puppy eyes she so often turned on me. “Help me keep them safe.”
“Fine.” She set off at a lope. “Let’s secure the kid first. I don’t want to risk her being used as leverage.”
A sour taste coated the back of my throat. I had a bad feeling I was about to understand the full scope of my dad’s willingness to recover me, and I was equally certain the actions of my skulk’s enforcers wasn’t something I could unsee. Thoughts of Ryuu, of Katsuo and their family, bumped around in my head looking for an outlet I couldn’t give them.
Please don’t let us be the bad guys here.
Bypassing the tent, we hit a trail that wound down toward a stream. I sneezed once, then three more times in rapid succession. Someone had dumped a ton of lavender-scented washing powder on the ground, and the potent smell made my eyes water.
“Gen?” I asked through a voice gone nasal.
“The kid?” Thierry grinned. “Yeah. She doused the whole area while you and Hot Stuff were eating. She was serious about not being followed.”
As limited as resources were, she was going to be in big trouble for wasting supplies when her brothers caught her. They wouldn’t thank her for their stuffy noses either.
Fox calls dimmed behind us as we ran deeper into the high grasses bordering the stream. I no longer heard whistles or shouts. No doubt the Tanabe skulk had gone dark to keep the Hayashis from pinpointing their locations.
“She was following the stream the last time I—oof.”
Thierry hit the ground hard. Ryuu pressed a knee to her gut and cupped her throat in one of his wide palms. He stared up at me through eyes brimming with so much fury I wondered how he could see through them.
“You’re not leaving,” he informed me.
Light poured into Thierry’s runes, and her fingers twitched. I rushed toward them. “Tee, no.”
Ryuu studied her hand, scowled at the runes and then dismissed them and her. “What are you doing out here?”
Idiot man. “Looking for your sister, what do you think?”
“From there it looked like you were trying to run away.” He growled. “Again.”
“Look, we’ve covered this already. I’m not apologizing for wanting to go home.” I pointed at Thierry. “She’s probably the last person who saw Gen. Her nose is ten times better than ours put together. Get off her. Let her up. Let us help you.”
“Or…don’t,” she wheezed, runes dancing over her knuckles and hunger bright in her gaze. “I owe you for that dart.”
Whatever he saw in her eyes, Ryuu eased his grip on her throat before turning to me. “I want your word you won’t run.”
I thought about blowing him off and doing what must be done, but some indefinable thing had changed between Ryuu and me in the past two days. In another time, under different circumstances, I would have called it the beginnings of trust. Or at least of understanding.
Thierry’s hoarse chuckles sputtered to quiet shock when I said, “You have it.”
In a single fluid motion, as if they had choreographed it, Ryuu rolled to his feet at the same time Thierry leapt to hers.
“You would accept my word at face value—” I snapped my fingers, “—just like that?”
“Yes,” he said with conviction before turning to Thierry. “Where did she go?”
“She’s a smart kid.” Already the roughness in her voice was receding as her body healed the damage. “She covered her trail to reach the water. She’ll know she can be tracked if she crosses near here. My guess?” She pointed toward a distant bend that carried the water out of sight. “She’ll stick to the water, use it to mask her scent.” Thierry lifted her chin, filled her lungs. Her nose wrinkled. “I can smell wet dog from here.”
All I scented was the crisp bite of clean water and the loamy punch of decomposing earth. I aimed a stare at her. “You’re scary sometimes, you know that?”
Ryuu removed his shoes then waded into the water. It hit him above the knee, which put it about waist-high on Gen. Thierry and I followed on land. It should have been easy keeping stride with him while he fought against the current, but he plowed upriver with single-minded determination. In fact, if I hadn’t known better, I might have suspected the current flowed around him to avoid his wrath for slowing him down.
“So that’s the guy, huh? He’s got that drag-a-woman-to-his cave vibe going for him.” Thierry kept her voice low enough the constant babble drowned out our conversation. “And we’re helping him, why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated makes it sound like you’re getting attached.” She left the thought hanging. “Wait. You’re not—are you?”
“I’m not attached.” Holding myself accountable for the brat’s disappearance was only right. “I’m confused.”
“Well,” she mused, “we can both agree on that score. Are you sure his chiseled jaw has nothing to do with it?”
The night politely hid my blush. “These people used to belong to my skulk. It’s not crazy or hormonal for me to want to help them.” I grimaced when thorns raked my legs through the thin fabric of my homespun pants. “The thing is…I don’t remember most of them. Isn’t that weird?”
“Are we talking family reunion with third cousins twice removed or are we talking people you would have seen on a regular basis?” She leapt a fork in the stream, scented it for an indication Gen had taken the branch and then powered ahead to keep even with Ryuu. “How old were you anyway?”
“I was twelve when Katsuo left the skulk.”
“So this was a year before we met?”
I nodded, though even she didn’t have eyes in the back of her head. “His father was the accountant for the skulk. He handled all Dad’s money, and you know how Dad is when it comes to his finances.”
Some of our more outspoken relatives called him Midas behind his back, and I don’t think it was because everything he touched turned to gold so much as everything gold he touched ended up in his back pocket.
“How long did Mr. Tanabe work for your father?”
“I got the impression he followed Dad out west when he formed the Hayashi skulk.” And Dad was no spring chicken. “I would say thirty years or more.”
She glanced back at me. “Why did they leave?”
“Dad said Mr. Tanabe got an offer from a relative up north, near the area where they grew up.” Dad was from Vermont, so I had no reason not to believe him. “He told me Mr. Tanabe decided to move his family
closer to their people.”
Thierry paused, head cocked before trudging ahead. “How often does mass relocation of a family happen?”
“More often than you’d think. If a child marries well, the family might choose to follow the child into the new skulk they’ll be forming. It gives them a status boost instead of staying locked in the current hierarchy. It also gives the couple a built-in power base. Sometimes, if the rule of a reynard and vixen is challenged, the couple will reach out to family and offer them incentive to move in order to beef up their supporters’ numbers.”
“Makes sense.” She swatted a mosquito. “So you haven’t given these people much thought then.”
“It’s like I mentally wrote them off when they moved. Katsuo was my best friend, and it’s like I remember him from a TV show that got cancelled instead of real life.” A frown tightened my forehead. “Dad bought me a pony that day. I remember, because the family that moved into Katsuo’s house the next week bred quarter horses, and their eldest daughter taught me to ride.” I added softly, “He called it serendipity. I even named the horse that.”
“There’s a quick way to find out what your dad is hiding, if he’s hiding anything at all.” She paused. “Ask him. You’re the biggest daddy’s girl I know, Mai. If you confront him and do that lip-trembling thing, he’s going to cave.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my hands up my arms. “You’re probably right.”
“You’re worried Ryuu might be telling you his version of the truth.” She gentled her tone. “If you feel strongly enough about what you’ve learned so far that we’re out here facing down ticks and chiggers to rescue this girl, don’t you think you owe yourself the whole truth?”
“When did you get to be so wise?” I half-mocked.
“Wise is a strong word for someone with my track record.” She shook her head. “You’re talking to the girl who mated an incubus, who allowed her father to crash on her couch until he returned to Faerie, resulting in her father deciding the best way to help Shaw and me achieve relationship bliss was to monitor Shaw’s feeding schedule, which, yeah. You haven’t lived until you’ve walked in on your father filling out a spreadsheet that coincides with your sex life.”
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