I, on the other hand, understood my birth mother’s reasoning far too well. All Sarah needed was a sniff or two of exterior air, then she’d know for certain whether I’d attracted the ire of local alphas or had brought someone else to the hideout she’d married into eight years before. If the former...well, then she could presumably send our enemies packing however she’d carved out this niche for herself in the first place. The latter option would require a much stronger reaction, but I got the distinct impression my mother didn’t believe we’d ever have to cross that bridge.
A rustling from behind me proved that her entourage similarly understood both their mistress’s reasoning and the danger that lay ahead. But Sarah had even that reaction accounted for. “Wait,” the female commanded as she disappeared around the corner, ensuring that her pack not only stayed where they were standing but also provided a very capable roadblock to keep her human partner inside as well.
So perhaps my mother loved Eddie after all if she was willing to risk herself protecting a man who wasn’t even her mate?
Ignoring that particular question as irrelevant, I slipped outside on my mother’s heels. I’d half expected to find my feet frozen to the ground along with those of the cooks and butlers. But Sarah had either forgotten to include me in her order, or perhaps I possessed too strong of an inner wolf to be easily barked into line. Either way, I found myself and my mother alone under the starlight in short order.
Well, alone save the one-bodies rapidly scaling the rough stone walls.
We leaned over the side of the balcony together, breathing deeply through our noses to test that analysis yet further. “Not wolves,” Sarah murmured in surprise, clearly unwilling to embrace the notion that I might have enemies of my own that outclassed the terror she’s been hiding from for the better part of a decade.
“I told you there were far bigger problems than territorial alphas,” I started...then froze as human fingers emerged from beneath us to clasp onto the balustrade on my left side. Hand muscles tensed, then a long arm followed by a head and torso rose above the barrier that protected us from earth-borne assault.
I hadn’t expected to recognize the climber, but I did. It was Man in Black, the same government agent who had stolen my mate days earlier then nearly captured my brother in the more recent past. The male grimaced as he searched for a foothold that would allow him to release his grip on the railing, his other hand coming up to complete his ascent.
I took a single step toward the danger...only to discover that Man in Black was the least of my worries. Because another one-body had emerged on the other side of the tower while my back was turned.
I felt the second agent rather than saw him. Felt my mother’s nightshirt swish against my arm as she was wrenched halfway across the barrier, then heard her gasping inhale of breath as she tried and failed to break free of his unyielding grip.
“Where is Ember Wilder-Young?” demanded the second male into the darkness. And when I turned my back on the known danger to face my mother’s accoster, I saw one of the stranger’s arms clenched tight around my mother’s long, pale neck. Meanwhile, his free hand rose in a graceful arc out of the darkness, an object nearly hidden between his fingers sparking with the unmistakable glint of a gun.
Chapter 21
I shot him. Raised one of the pistols Sebastien had recently pressed into my sweaty palm and fired on pure instinct, directing my ire at the male who held Sarah firmly within his grasp.
I can’t even say that I knew what I was aiming at. Don’t know whether it was skill or pure luck that prevented the bullet from piercing my mother, that sent the missile a little to the left to slide through the agent’s jacketed shoulder instead.
Either way, time seemed to slow down as the male crumpled away from Sarah and onto the balcony floor. Dark blood saturated even darker clothing while Man in Black shouted words I couldn’t quite comprehend behind my back. In an instant, the tables had turned...and my stomach had turned over right along with them.
“I killed him,” I murmured, my brain turning both empty and numb in an instant. And in the silence that followed, I didn’t assess the continuing danger. Didn’t take in the fact that Man in Black was struggling across the balustrade in an attempt to either attack or come to his partner’s aid. Instead, I dropped the offending gun onto the stones beneath my feet, and my voice became the whimper of a scared wolf as I stared at the widening puddle of blood beneath the man I’d shot.
My feet might have remained frozen indefinitely. But for the first time in both of our lives, Sarah acted like a mother. Scooping up the offending hunk of metal, she slipped her bony shoulder beneath my armpit and heaved me forward as if I, rather than the agent, was the one who had been hurt.
“One more step,” she urged, whisking us both back inside the tower before Man in Black could reach our sides. Slamming the door behind us, Sarah pressed a button to seal the portal against enemy entrance then whirled us around to face the sea of eyes waiting on the other side.
OUR ENTIRE RECONNAISSANCE mission must have lasted only seconds. Or so I assumed since Sebastien and Eddie hadn’t quite made it through the crowd of frozen shifters before we returned. Now, I felt the electricity of Sarah’s compulsion ease up as she released the rest of the room’s inhabitants from her precautionary hold without a single word, and within seconds two human males followed by two dozen shifters had surrounded us even as I sagged bonelessly against the nearest wall.
Sebastien’s arm settled around my waist, his hands patting me down just as they’d done when he burst into my room fifteen minutes earlier. Or so I realized when he moved on to shaking me in an effort to bring my unfocused attention back onto the matter at hand.
“Where were you shot?” Sebastien demanded when I continued gazing woozily up at the ceiling above our heads. I was too shell-shocked to do more than notice how our mate bond had pulled unusually tight, was too confused by my own recent actions to revel in Sebastien’s tangible presence as I usually would have done.
“Nowhere,” I murmured. “I wasn’t shot anywhere at all.” Although I could see why the professor had jumped to that conclusion. He’d heard a gun go off, had seen me led back inside so distraught my mental confusion resembled the aftereffects of lost blood.
Well, I couldn’t let my mate’s worry continue. Instead, I hastened to stand, proving that I was suffering from no physical ailment. Instead, it was merely my brain that felt like it was bleeding out, thoughts leaking through my skull and sizzling through my frizzing hair with every second that elapsed.
“SHRITA found us,” I told the room at large. Then, when Eddie’s large face filled my field of view, his bushy eyebrows raised in question, I elaborated. “A government agency. Like the FBI, but more top secret. They....”
My words trailed off as I realized what the agent’s question meant. Not only had SHRITA tracked down our current location, they’d somehow cobbled together enough information to come up with my name as well.
Which made no sense. After all, I’d stayed in the shadows during Sebastien’s capture, shouldn’t have been on their radar at all.
Unless, that is, someone had survived the massacre and bombing that had decimated their compound two nights before. Unless someone had survived with knowledge of my identity as well as that of my mate....
Chapter 22
“A government agency?” Eddie was saying, oblivious to my worsening distress. “Well, that’s easily dealt with.”
Which is when I learned how humans handle thorny problems. The large male strode back across the room to his control panel without further comment, picking up an old-fashioned corded telephone then punching in numbers from memory. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, Sarah glided after him, her arm sliding around Eddie’s waist as the latter hit the button for speaker phone then launched into a string of blustering orders the moment the person on the other end of the line picked up.
“Mr. President, my tax dollars shouldn’t be sending armed gunmen
to batter down the walls of a civilian residence,” Eddie growled. Or, perhaps this was instead Bruce Edward Worcester-Green the Third speaking directly into the President of the United States’s ear. Because the male before us had expanded in bulk while waiting for the President to take his call. Now, Eddie talked over the most important human on the planet even as the latter produced a sleepy complaint about the timing of his call.
“Yes, I am aware it’s the middle of the night,” my stepfather rebutted. “But this is a time-sensitive matter that requires immediate action on your part. If you want funding to continue flowing toward your re-election campaign, then you’ll call off the raid at my address. Now.”
Eddie’s snapped order was nearly drowned out by a thud on the door behind my back, clear evidence that our safe room would be breached sooner rather than later if our host’s ploy failed to bear fruit. This time, Sebastien and I were the ones who slid seamlessly across the room without wasting a word to solidify our shared intentions. Eddie was busy on the phone, which left monitoring the invaders as a task for my mate.
As the less tech-savvy half of our pairing, I merely leaned against the wall to guard Sebastien’s back. The shutters on the windows were holding, the door bending only slightly against external assault. So after a moment of assessing immediate danger, I turned my attention to the video screen instead.
As I did so, my breath caught in relief. He’s alive, I noted, barely sparing a glance for the battering ram outside the thin metal door that protected us all from upcoming gunfire. Instead, my attention remained riveted on the male I’d shot, now sitting upright with one hand pressed against his bloody shoulder. The stranger had tried to strangle my birth mother and possessed knowledge about my identity that I couldn’t afford to have leak out. Still, I was ecstatic to realize I hadn’t killed a sentient being.
Unfortunately, the door between that sentient being and ourselves was now beginning to splinter beneath the battering ram’s assault. I nudged Sebastien to ensure he was aware of the increasing danger, then returned my attention to Eddie’s conversation. My stepfather, unfortunately, didn’t appear to be making much headway with the President of the United States.
“Yes, it is a government raid on my lawn,” Eddie reiterated. “The agency in question is SHRITA.” My stepfather glanced toward me as he spelled out the letters slowly enough to allow correction if he veered down the wrong track. But I merely nodded as he finished without a hitch. Eddie’s mind was apparently steel-trap tight.
“I hadn’t heard of them either,” our host continued. “But I assure you, they very obviously exist if the trampled grass in my front lawn is any indication. Whatever SHRITA wants, our lawyers can talk to their lawyers in the morning. In the meantime, this is no way to treat a citizen of the United States.”
And, to my surprise, the male on the other end of the line apologized profusely. I’d seen the President’s face on the news enough times to imagine the wrinkles of concern forming at the bridge of his nose, the large hand he’d be rubbing against his square jaw when faced with a thorny problem of which he hadn’t previously been aware. “If you can hold on for a moment, I’ll do everything possible to figure this issue out,” the leader of the free world offered after a moment of loaded silence. Then elevator music filled the line.
We waited out the muzak. Tinny piano melodies slid between the scents of fur and electricity as Sarah’s crew fought their urge to transition into more battle-worthy forms. And Sebastien’s fists clenched in time with the beating of my heart while the thuds on the door grew louder and more intense. Still, we held our ground, and the door leading out to the balcony also—remarkably—managed to hold up.
Then the formerly staccato pauses between beats of the battering ram grew erratic. A shout emerged from the ground below. And as we watched on the monitor, the man I’d wounded was lowered down over the side of the railing, a half dozen colleagues following more rapidly in his wake.
Within ten minutes, our enemies had packed up their wares and beat a hasty retreat. They took their floodlight and their rifles right along with them, even picked up the candy wrappers one agent had dropped in his haste to counteract the wounded man’s shock.
Then four black SUVs were rolling quietly away down the driveway, headlights popping on as the vehicles turned onto the main road and sped away out of sight. The issue of SHRITA wasn’t resolved, of course. But we were safe. For the moment, at least, we could release our pent-up breathing and return to our much-deserved beds.
Chapter 23
The dramas of the preceding evening were hard to remember when I woke to the sound of bird song streaming in no-longer shuttered windows along with the scent of yeast bread wafting up the stairs. Following my nose down to the kitchen, I expected to be met by an array of shifters still on edge from the previous evening’s assault. But, instead, Sarah was the only one inside the sun-lit space, her ruffled apron covered in flour as she flung a heavy round of dough against a thick wooden table that had obviously seen many years as a kneading station before this point.
The scene was so homey that I almost expected Sarah to look up brightly and greet me the way a real mother might. “Come on in, darling,” Terra would have said...assuming, of course, that my adopted mother had the foggiest notion how to bake and didn’t flee from the kitchen at every opportunity for fear her mere presence would make cakes fall then curdle all the milk.
I was smiling at the notion of Terra cooking when my biological mother noticed me, which may explain why Sarah merely tensed up rather than growling me back out of what was clearly her private domain. And even though the female didn’t provide a verbal acknowledgment of my presence, I accepted her continued silence for what it was—a willingness to share this space with me, temporarily at least.
Meanwhile, my wolf interceded before I could even attempt to interrogate my mother. The beast was hungry, starving. Ready to gnaw her way out through my ribs, go furry in the garden, and find her own breakfast if I didn’t feed her very soon.
“There’s yogurt and berries in the fridge,” Sarah offered, almost as if she’d sensed my internal dialogue. “If that’s enough to tide you over, I’ll be serving a full breakfast to everyone before much longer....”
The female’s voice trailed off, one shoulder rising as if to protect her slender neck. And for the first time, I opened myself enough to the moment to realize that my mother’s recent snark and evasions had both stemmed from a similar sentiment—fear. When surrounded by her posse, Sarah was invulnerable. But stuck in a kitchen with a virtual stranger, Sarah’s immediate reaction was as predictable as that of a prey animal caught in a predator’s line of sight. She wanted to flee.
No wonder Sarah had been so unwilling to spill her guts about my brother. It wasn’t that she resented my presence; she was merely terrified I was going to break this semblance of safety she’d worked so hard to create.
Which meant I needed to win her trust if I hoped to track Derek down before the deadline. Good thing we shared one obvious interest—food.
To that end, I drifted closer to the kneading counter then murmured a quiet question. “Do you need a hand?” I asked diffidently, ready and willing to be sent away if Sarah preferred to finish her morning task in solitude.
In answer, my companion’s eyes scanned the floor, the counter, the wall, everywhere other than my face as she barely managed to acknowledge my existence. And yet...the dough in her hands broke in half as it twisted and turned into its next fold. Then the smaller piece ended up on the counter beside my belly button, ready and waiting to be turned from flour and water into a resilient and strength-giving bread.
So we kneaded together. I didn’t ask my birth mother what she was afraid of or what my brother was up to. And Sarah didn’t send me out of her kitchen with the threat of a knife between my ribs either.
By the time the gluten had bound itself into elastic strands of floury goodness, the sun was a little higher above the horizon and our thuds of dough agains
t wood had gained a certain musical rhythmicity. Sarah and I still weren’t pack mates, but we’d made a little progress in that direction.
Which is exactly when my long-lost half-brother walked through the door.
“MOM, EMBER,” DEREK greeted us, dropping onto a stool in front of the counter as easily as if he came by every morning to shoot the breeze with his closest living relatives.
For my part, I was completely incapable of being so blasé...or even of remembering my less savory reasons for wanting to track my brother down. “Derek!” I shrieked, my voice rising to the register of an air-raid siren. “You’re safe!”
I pounced on him the way my wolf had once pounced upon a small pup about to tumble off a high porch railing. Pushing Derek back to his feet with the force of my arrival, arms clenched shut around his waist so tightly I might have cracked one of his ribs. Then I simply stood there and took in the younger male’s existence, unable to speak another word.
My brother smelled like moss and saw-mill lumber. Like sun crossing the forest floor after a brief spring rain. Within my chest, my wolf growled and hummed a confused cacophony of welcome, and I completely forgot that I was currently hunting Derek for the nefarious purpose of trading him for a teenager caught in a sadistic enforcer’s none-too-gentle grip. Instead, all I could think was: Sibling, brother, safe, home. Finally.
“You’re here,” I murmured into Derek’s chest after a long moment, refusing to release him long enough to see whether his face appeared the same in person as it had on video. I’d never before touched my brother in the flesh. Had no idea whether he possessed a supposedly “good” side that he always turned toward the camera for the sake of vanity or freckles that wouldn’t show up on the grainy screen. I was curious about his countenance, of course...but not curious enough to let him go.
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