by Unknown
“I’m mated to Eric?” Heat flowed into her face. She tentatively sniffed at her shoulder. It was awash with the scent of Eric’s skin. They’d snuggled in bed for a whole day . . . naked? Her heart was beating like a trip-hammer. Wasn’t that what she’d dreamed of as a teenager? Having a powerful alpha male enthralled from the moment they met, a slave to his passion—desperate to woo and win her?
And haven’t I wanted that alpha male to be Eric?
“Maybe. Maybe not. At the very least he’s mated to you. That’s how it works, if you remember. If he’s mated to you, you can pull energy from him when you’re hurt. Since his boots haven’t quite parked under your bed yet, it’s hard to say whether it’s mutual.”
She flushed at the thought of Eric’s boots on the floor, his clothing strewn across the room. But this was Eric they were discussing and she was just . . . Holly shook her head. “No wonder he’s pissed at me, then. He’s stuck with me when he could have some alpha babe.”
Cat’s voice turned incredulous. “Uh, hello? You are an alpha babe, Holly. No, he’s probably pissed for the same reason Raphael was pissed at first. It’s scarier than hell to be attracted to someone so strongly when it’s not your actual choice. You know the drill. One-sided matings don’t always work. Even with a double mating like mine, it’s not a guarantee. Raphael and I have to work as hard as any other couple to make it through the day. Plus, you’re in crisis mode down there. When there’s chaos all around, it’s really hard to convince yourself it’s okay to give in to those animal impulses.”
Holly made a strangled sound but nodded, nearly causing the phone to slide down her neck. Her hands seemed to be completely numb on her stomach. Concentrate on Cat. “I remember. You guys really had some ups and downs.”
“My advice?” Cat’s voice softened and it was almost as though Holly could feel the touch of her soft hands. “Don’t do what we did and beat yourselves up for wanting each other. When the time is right, just give in. It only makes you nuts otherwise, and you’ve got a lot of other things to think about—a lot of innocent people to protect. If you’re constantly avoiding each other, running scared, you’ll never learn to work together when you really need to. Trust me. If Eric was in that trailer, you can bet it was at someone’s instruction. Which means they likely all know, and they’ll understand what happens next—what has to happen next. Everyone will give you space.”
Great. Now everybody was going to be watching them, knowing they were going to be wandering off together. “I’m sorry, Cat, but I think you’re wrong. You have to be wrong. I mean, he’s gorgeous and yeah, I enjoyed kissing him. But mated? I don’t know if I feel that way about him.”
“Maybe you don’t. That’s the thing. Quick test. Where is he right this second? Think about him really hard. What’s he doing? Don’t analyze it. Just let it pop out.”
Holly concentrated for a second and saw him in her mind’s eye. “Sitting on the roof of the building. He’s on guard duty.” She paused, suddenly sick at how easy that was. “But I could be guessing. It makes sense that all the alphas would be watching for Marduc, or more snakes.”
“Duh,” Cat replied. “So go check. I presume there are windows if you’re in an RV.”
“Hello? I don’t have any clothes on.”
“Hello? Turn off the lights or wear a sheet,” Cat said in the same lilting tone. “Holly.” Her voice was firm. “You need to know this. Yeah, a mating compulsion is terrifying to think about, but living with it isn’t so bad. Just go look.”
Holly sighed, turned off the light over the bed, and rolled until her feet hit the floor. With the phone tucked against her shoulder, she wrapped the sheet around her and tiptoed toward the nearest window. “Oh! Here are my clothes.” They were neatly folded on the bench seat behind the table. “Hang on a sec while I put them on.”
Cat only sighed. They both knew she was stalling. But Holly really would feel better if she was dressed.
It only took a few seconds to slide into the clothes. They were her clothes, too—from the suitcase that was tucked under the table. The clothes she’d been wearing had disappeared, the pants likely returned to their owner. On impulse, she walked the three steps to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of the waiting sandwich—fat slices of pink meat on homemade bread. And hadn’t Eric mentioned horseradish?
“You’re stalling,” came Cat’s voice from the phone.
“I know. I know.” She took a deep breath, put the sandwich on the table and leaned down to look out the window. The building was at least a football field’s length away, but she could pick out Eric instantly from among all the others on the roof. “He’s there.” She said it more to herself than to Cat, but she didn’t doubt her friend had heard. He turned just then, rifle barrel resting loosely on his shoulder as he stared intently at the trailer.
Did he know she was watching?
“YOU’RE GOING TO drive yourself nuts if you keep staring like that.”
Eric started at the sound of Tony’s voice and turned his head. Tony hadn’t moved from his perch on the other side of the building.
“I can feel her, moving around inside the trailer.”
“Yep,” the other man said, never taking his eyes off the distant landscape. “You get used to it.”
Eric sighed and moved the automatic rifle so it hung from the sling over his shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe I should have just told her.”
“She’s a bright kid,” Tony replied, his eyes constantly moving from side to side, sweeping the darkness for any sign of movement. “She’ll figure it out on her own.”
“She’s not a kid.” Not anymore.
The other man shrugged. “She’s younger than me. She’s a kid. If you’re younger than me, you’re a kid.”
“I’m thirty-six.”
Tony flicked his eyes toward him, showing a flash of blue-white light. “Month?”
“June.” His eyes moved back to the trailer. She was eating now, and enjoying it. It made him smile. But it quickly faded when the creepiness of it settled over him once more.
“Okay, so you’re not a kid. You’ve got a month on me.”
They were silent for a time and Eric let the cold wind fill his nose with scents. There were animals out there, but they weren’t shifters. All the predators in the area were making the rabbits and deer give the whole area a wide berth. He shook his head. “This sucks, y’know?”
“The Marduc thing, or the mating thing?”
“Both.”
Tony finally turned and walked across the roof. He pointed to his old spot. “You. Over there. Use that sniffer of yours, and I’ll watch for little slithering lights.”
“Why?”
Tony leaned in close enough that Eric could smell his scent, which was an odd combination of gun oil and wildflowers. Tony lowered his voice to such a soft whisper that Eric had to really listen to hear him. “Because if you’re spending all your time watching your mate, you’re not watching the trees. Since I don’t give a shit about your mate, I’ll take this watch.”
A growl tried to bubble up but Tony just pointed to the end of the roof. He didn’t back away or smell afraid. “You’d win a fight against me, but I’m not the one who put me in charge of this gig. Talk to the man over there if you have a problem with your job.” The tall blond man on the far corner of the building turned his head. Antoine would likely have no sense of humor if he decked the wolf.
“Fine,” he said, his voice hissing with frustration. “Just watch closely.”
Tony’s ready smile, empty of meaning or emotion, flashed in the dark. “Always do.” As he walked over the crest of the roof peak, Tony continued to talk. “See, this is how it works. It’s all about adjustments. All you gotta do to make it through a mating is make adjustments.”
“What kind of adjustments?” Eric couldn’t believe he was talking about this, much less asking for advice. But Tony was recently mated too. Maybe there was something to be learned f
rom him. Eric sat down on the roof edge and turned his body so he could see both the vista and Tony in his peripheral.
“Like what just happened here. I told you to walk over there because you didn’t volunteer to do it. When you fully come to grips with the mating, you’ll be the one to suggest it—you’ll know that your judgment can’t be trusted when your mate is at issue. My mate’s not here, or you’d see a totally different side of me. She’s in my head twenty-four/seven, and I know she’s fine. If she wasn’t . . . well. Same with cat-boy and the snake king over there.” He thumbed his finger to the other end of the roof,
“If Ahmad is the snake king, I am not ‘cat-boy.’ ” Antoine’s quiet, dry voice drifted on the breeze. “However, as far as the mating is concerned, Tony’s correct. I find myself more . . . focused when Tahira is elsewhere.”
Ahmad let out a small noise that wasn’t quite a growl or a hiss. “Tuli has informed me that the moment I find myself less than my best, I should locate her. She will be happy to, as she so coyly phrases it, ‘kick the shit out of me’ to get my mind back on task.”
Eric couldn’t help the sudden burst of laughter. The others were making the same noises, so hopefully Ahmad wouldn’t knock him off the building with a burst of power.
“She could do it too,” Tony said as an aside. “That’s the trouble with mating with an alpha female. My wife’s turning into one all of a sudden, and it’s killing me. Male wolves get all these protective instincts after mating and the women want to kick our asses for it.”
“Indeed,” Ahmad added in an unusual display of comradery, while inspecting the edge of the broadsword in his hand. “Wolves aren’t the only species to feel the urge to protect. But there is one truth from the animal kingdom that is equally true for our kind. The female is more dangerous than the male.”
Antoine’s dry French-accented voice found Eric’s ears as the scent of frustration and embarrassment rode the wind. “My worst mistake to date was to tell Tahira to stop putting herself in danger. It is apparently a supreme insult—or so my sisters have informed me. She immediately joined Wolven, just to prove she was fully capable of defending herself.” He shook his head in frustration.
“And she got my wife to join up too, I might add.” Tony’s voice was sarcastic. “Thank you so much for that little bit of reverse psychology.”
Eric’s laugh choked off as his own words to Holly started to pulse through his brain. “Crap. I just did that.” At Tony’s raised eyebrows, he explained. “I just yelled at Holly for nearly killing herself to get us out of that hindsight.”
“Speaking as the person she saved by being reckless, you’re screwed, Thompson.”
Eric turned his head to the other two men, but they just shrugged.
Great. Just perfect.
The door to the fire stairs at the end of the roof opened and Ivan stepped out. “Antoine?” He kept his voice so low that Eric had to struggle to hear over the wind whistling. “Phone call, from Josette. I will take your place here.”
Antoine’s mood abruptly shifted, turned serious as death. He swore under his breath. Nobody had heard from the other seers since this all started. Antoine strode toward Ivan, surrendering his rifle and bolting down the stairs.
Ivan walked to the corner opposite Ahmad and began to stare out into the distance, his stance alert, and his scent worried. A call from Aspen usually spoke of bad things to come.
Eric wasn’t sure he wanted to know the details of that call.
It must have lasted only a few minutes, because it didn’t seem like any time at all before Antoine was back. The scent that preceded him didn’t speak of a warm and happy conversation. “Ivan? Ahmad? She would speak with you both now. Bobby will be there as well. Please hurry. The connection isn’t very good.”
Antoine turned to Eric and Tony. “You will be alone up here for a few moments, so be alert. I must go collect Holly.” As he passed them the weapons he’d taken from Ivan and Ahmad he raised his brows and said, “And no, I don’t know why my sister wants to talk to her, so don’t ask.”
HOLLY SLIPPED OUT the back door of the RV, into the cool night. She adjusted the makeshift backpack, made from some grocery bags and twine she’d found in the cabinet and started hiking away from the camp at a brisk clip.
She just needed to move for a few minutes, to think and to plan. There was no doing either one while stuck inside that trailer. Everything was happening so damned fast and nothing made sense.
Was sneaking out reckless? Yeah, probably. And she had to admit she’d like to have her phone with her. But the call from Cat had eaten more than minutes. The battery was drained, so it was on the charger.
Lightning flashed in the distance, the beginnings of the storm that had been brewing over California a few days before. Already she could taste rain on the cold wind.
A flash of movement caught her eye and she paused to look. What the hell? A dark-skinned woman, completely naked and sporting white hair to her knees, was striding purposefully into the darkness. She was holding the hand of a young blond girl, dragging her along. The child’s face was utterly blank, as though she was sleepwalking. Holly recognized the girl from the camp, and the woman with her was not the girl’s mother.
“Hey!” she called out forcefully, causing the woman to turn her head. “Where do you think you’re going with her?” There was a shock of surprise on the woman’s face, but it quickly disappeared and her broad features turned dark and angry. The woman picked up the child and tossed her over her shoulder like she was a sack of flour as she began to sprint away.
“Come back here!” Holly sprinted after her, putting on a burst of speed in an effort to catch up. But the woman was no slouch when it came to running. Even barefoot, with cactus ripping at her naked legs, she was putting distance between them. Holly sniffed the air to catch the woman’s scent. It was strongly musky, unpleasantly so. She realized she’d smelled it before—on the hillside while kissing Eric. Could that be Marduc’s human form? Shit!
But then another scent came from behind her—masculine, powerful, and very angry.
Holly skidded to a stop as something leapt over her, but still nearly ran into the biggest cougar she’d ever seen in her life. His eyes were level with her neck, so he barely had to look up to see her face.
“You had no authorization to leave the camp.” She recognized the voice, despite the slight growl from his animal throat. Antoine Monier wasn’t someone to trifle with, but even so—
She pointed to the rapidly disappearing form. “That woman! She has one of the children from camp. We have to get her!”
Antoine turned and stared into the distance. “I see nothing. I’ve been following you for several minutes and you’ve been running alone.”
“No, I haven’t!” She felt her temper rising, even though he could probably strike her down with a single blow. “She’s there, Councilman Monier. Use your nose and ears if your sight isn’t working. I can see her just as clearly as I could see that feather.”
That widened the golden eyes of the cat and he raised his nose in the direction Holly was pointing. “Merde! It is faint, but I can detect it. Still, my sister Josette would speak with you back at camp. Go back and take the call, and be quick about it. I will track this thing.”
Holly looked at him dubiously, but he seemed to be able to follow the scent as he raced off into the night, altering his path in the direction Holly could still see the hint of movement from. She didn’t like it, but to refuse a member of the council was a death sentence. She wouldn’t be much good to anyone if she was dead. And, he was one of the most powerful and vicious on the council.
She turned and ran, full out. Her heart was racing from more than exertion when she reached camp. “I think Councilman Monier’s in trouble,” she said to Ivan who was waiting impatiently for her. “I saw Marduc—at least I think it was her—and he took off after her. She’s got a girl from camp, and I think something bad is going to happen.”
Ivan looked
toward the roof. “Tony, Eric, come with me. We might need someone who can shoot on the run.”
Tony nodded once and handed his rifle to Eric. Then he slid down the roof’s edge before grabbing the gutter with gloved hands. He dropped to the ground and then held up one hand. Eric tossed down the weapons before taking the same path down.
“Which way?” Eric asked, his scent both worried and determined as he pulled out the clip to verify the ammo in his gun.
There was something about the way he was standing that made her want to throw her arms around him and hold him tight. It made her heart flutter with an odd sort of panic when he stared into her eyes. After a long moment where her mouth was so dry she couldn’t speak, Holly pointed to where she had come from.
Finally, she could get words out. “That direction, probably about a half-mile away. But I don’t know how much farther they’ve gone since.”
Tony adjusted so that the rifle was dangling down his back, the barrel pointed at the ground. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his pocket and turned it on. Eric did the same. “We shouldn’t have any problem finding them. Let’s hit it.”
Eric turned to her as she was walking in the door. “We’ll be on—” he paused and looked at the red display on the handset. “Channel eight. We’ll go down to three if the storm kicks up. Let the others know where we’ve gone—so they know where to send the body bags.”
Nobody was laughing. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out into the darkness. The look on her face made Eric pause and let out a slow breath. He reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly for a brief second before leaning in for a sudden kiss. It was so soft and tender that her stomach clenched. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Go talk to the seer.”
She walked in the building as they took off at a run. Bobby Mbutu and Councilman al-Narmer walked past her, their dark faces ashen—abject fear in their scent. She wanted to ask what was happening, but they quickly got into a waiting brown sedan and drove off, tires spitting up a cloud of dust.