by Dee Tenorio
“So?”
She rolled her eyes. “So most people prefer to be called by it.”
He didn’t even register the argument. “You’re not answering the question.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Why not?”
For some reason, her lips felt like curling upward. “Because I wasn’t.”
“Here’s a tip for you.” He shifted his pack as he turned to face her. The grin on his face gave her the strangest wiggle in her belly. “You ever hear that expression about a dog with a bone? Well, Wolves are worse.”
The smile got away from her, just for a second, but she knew he saw it because his grew, wide and wolfish. Warmth rose to her face, stinging her cheeks until she wanted to rub at them with her palms. Instead she scoffed, “You’re an idiot.”
“Which somehow doesn’t blind me to the fact that you’re still not answering the question.”
Her cheeks cooled, her smile fading with it. He wasn’t kidding. She could already tell he’d keep picking and prodding, just like the day before with the endless whistling. The teasing was just another mask to get past her reserves. The steel-eyed hunter behind it was still watching, trying to lure out his prey. Did he know she was starting to see through him faster?
“There’s nothing much to tell.” She shrugged. “I had a family once. The squads came one night…now I don’t.” Except Laurel.
Her hands clenched the scarf again, as they always did when she thought of the little girl she’d had to leave behind. The one she’d been so desperate to save. The one she’d failed the most.
Part of her was smart enough to know that the odds of Laurel being alive were pathetically low, but she couldn’t allow herself to listen to it. Asher had brought her proof of Laurel’s capture, and however she might hate him, she couldn’t truthfully claim he’d ever lied to her. Hurt her, yes. But lied…no. As long as she had a thread of hope, she wouldn’t let it go. Couldn’t.
“So you just wander around out here?” Tate asked, oblivious to her mental meanderings. “No real goal in sight?”
“I’m on the Underground, aren’t I?” Everyone knew the goal of the Underground was to get to Resurrection, wherever in California it might be.
He shrugged, the motion hitching up the tightly stuffed pack on his back. “That’s no indication. You might just be in it for the food.”
The choked sound that escaped her took a full second for Lia to recognize as her own laughter. “Get a lot of scavengers on the trail, do you?”
“We get a lot of everything. Scavengers, users, true believers, even a few feral strays from time to time.” He tipped his head her way at that. “Trust is a rare commodity for a shifter. If all we can do for them is give them a meal, then we’ll do it. Our job is offering them the chance to survive. Their job is to take it…or not.”
“You think I’m one of those? A feral stray?” Someone who’d gone more beast than human, surviving on Instinct alone.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Though I thought feral was a given.”
She shot him a frown, but he just continued, unperturbed.
“Then again, I’ve yet to see you attack anything but me.”
“Nothing else nearby seemed to need it.” At least her grumble earned a displeased sideways glance from him.
“You don’t hunt, not as a Wolf or a human, or you’d have more meat on your bones and you’d have the first clue how to clean your kills.”
“Maybe I just don’t like killing.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, though the tone was dubious. “But we Wolves need more than an apple a day, if you know what I mean. Our bodies were made for heavy meat intake, require it. So if you’re not hunting for yourself and you have obvious biological needs, why are you dragging your heels between safe houses?’
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are.” His tone had a hard edge that clapped her mouth shut. “You’ve practically starved yourself to death and you won’t accept help of any kind.”
For a damn good reason. “I’ve been letting you help me.”
“You don’t have a choice about that.”
Stopping, Lia leveled him with a glare she hoped sizzled his astronomical arrogance at least a little. “There’re a lot of things I don’t have choices about, but you don’t get to decide what any of them are.”
Tate turned back her way, moving into her space as if he had every right. He looked down on her, those eyes mesmerizing, boring into her until she knew the true meaning of singed. But she refused to look away. His large hand grabbed hers, gripping at the wrist and lifting it between them. “The last thing I saw you do with this hand was try to claw my face off.”
“So?” She threw the word back at him, not caring if it was reckless. “You had it coming.”
“So, I don’t think this injury has anything to do with your healing.”
“I never said it did.”
“You don’t say anything, Lia,” he growled, leaning closer toward her face. “And what you do say always sounds like a lie.”
Usually when her heart sped like this, it was because of fear. Standing toe to toe with him, though, there was no fear at all. Just a frisson of exhilaration she couldn’t explain. “Then why do you bother asking me questions?”
His gaze traced her face, stealing her breath as it coursed over her lips. When he met her gaze again, his strangely beautiful face looked carved from stone. “Because something about you makes me think your lies are the only way to the truth.”
Her lips tingled, the feeling growing stronger as she realized he was leaning down. Coming closer. Her heartbeat advanced to the uneven thrum of wild horses. She should stop him. Should shove him away. Should run…but she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t move, because she wanted that touch. Wanted to know the texture of those firm lips. Wanted the heat and the flavor of him in her mouth. In her memory. She breathed him in, that cool, woodsy scent of snow and soap and man.
You’re going to bleed for this… The sudden thought did nothing to halt the recklessness roaring through her in a way it hadn’t since she’d first escaped the research facility. She didn’t care.
Just as her eyelids fell closed, his mouth millimeters from hers…he pulled away.
Blinking, she stared up at him, startled by the black expression that drew his brows together in what could only be called suspicion.
“Do you smell that?” he asked, his hand circling her upper arm as he turned, searching the old road and the trees lining it.
“Smell what?” Fear broke through, finally. Had he somehow scented Asher? How? It wasn’t possible. The suit, the drugs…even when Asher had been throttling her bare-handed, she’d been unable to scent him. How could Tate?
But he still turned, his arm scooping her close to his back. Protectively.
No, don’t protect me. She tried to slip out of his hold, but he only pulled her against him tighter.
“Stop fighting me.” He stiffened, having taken another deep inhalation of the late afternoon breeze. “There’s something out there.”
He knows. He knows!
Whole body tensed for danger, his threatening rumble vibrated through her chest and echoed across the empty road. “I smell Death.”
Blood, too much of it to be anything but dead, assaulted his senses as the faint breeze blew past them. Fairly fresh, stained with acids and the other odors that resulted from muscles releasing involuntarily. Given the speed of the wind, a lazy drift that dissipated almost as quickly as it came, it had to be at least another fifty yards ahead.
His eyes scanned the road stretching southeast. Not a soul in sight, especially with the day more than half gone. The mostly flat terrain had trees and foliage to either side, but that would soon thin out as raw countryside gave way to the outskirts of a small town. Some kind of suburb, most likely. Close enough to run to. But they’d have to pass whatever it was he was smelling.
Worse, for all that the stench assaulted his nose, was
the scent of Lia’s terror that flooded his senses. At his back, her hands fisted in his shirt, sharp knuckles digging into his skin.
“We have to turn back.” Her thready whisper could have been nails on a chalkboard, the way it made his ears twitch.
“We can’t. The safe house is on the other side of that town.”
“We can’t go this way,” she whispered, her breath almost louder than her voice. “Please.”
That damn note of absolute fear enraged a part of him so deep and primal, it took everything in him to keep from shifting to better defend her. She should never sound like that. The woman was infuriating and strong.
She. Did. Not. Whimper.
The tingling sensation at the back of his neck melted into the feeling of his fur rippling through the surface of his skin. The change was starting.
Logic. Logic would quell the Wolf, would clarify the ringing questions being drowned out in his mind by the need to protect. They’d lose too much time if they backtracked. Would have to head to an alternate safe house. Not acceptable. Whatever was ahead would give him clues about what he was facing, clues he needed. Calling it in would take too much time—this kill was fresh and vital details could get lost. Betha was good, but she didn’t have the strength of his senses. And she didn’t often track murderers.
He’d seen far too many.
The Wolf stilled, locked on its course. The more he knew, the better he could protect. “Stay behind me. If anything happens, run. Lose yourself in the town.”
“Tate, no.”
“Tate, yes,” he corrected, but as he did, the questions in his mind snapped into place. Her fear was too stark, too absolute, to be something she didn’t know. “What are we walking into, Lia?”
“Wh-what?”
“You know something. Stop lying and trust me. Tell me what’s going on.”
Even her breath stopped. He risked a glance over his shoulder, taking in the huge dark pools her pupils had become. And the rigid line of her mouth and jaw. She glared back at him.
Damn contrary woman is going to get us killed. But even as he thought it, the Wolf at the heart of him growled in approval. She was fighting past the fear. Wolves valued strength and he was no different. He reached back to keep her behind him. “Then we walk.”
To her credit, she didn’t fight him. Her feet shuffled as they moved, slower now, alongside the road.
They didn’t see the first piece until they’d managed another hundred feet or so. The dirty string of flesh was more splatter than substance, giving them only a reason to pause. Soon enough, there was more. So much more.
Hunks of meat littered the ground, blood draining beneath them into muddy black puddles. Not as a trail, but as refuse. It also spattered the trees, the violence visible in every thick drop wending its way down the bark. Entrails drooped from tree to tree, like gruesome garlands. If he didn’t know better, he’d think that whatever kind of creature it was had simply exploded.
But he did know better.
“Stay here.” He moved away from Lia, leaving her where the pavement met the earth to stoop closer to the desecrated creature. As expected, smooth edges on all sides of the pieces. No claw marks, as Betha said.
Whatever this had been, it was large. Indentations and crushed impressions on the meat reminded him of the boot print he’d found in the mud the night before. No discernible tread, but extreme pressure. This wasn’t a killing. It was eradication. Hatred given violent, physical form. As if chopping the creature hadn’t been enough. He’d had to flatten it. Grind it beneath his boot.
Tate glanced up at a scruff of sound and found Lia staring up at the hanging entrails, her face devoid of any expression whatsoever. Not horror, not terror. Skin so waxen he could see her blood vessels on her cheeks from five feet away.
“Lia, come back over here.” A soft command. Shock had to be behind that mask. Scaring her more wouldn’t help. “Over here, behind me.” Where it’s safe.
Except he wasn’t sure of that, either. The only marks in the dirt were the ones they had made. No boots, not even anything from the victim. Either the killer was an expert at removing his tracks…or he’d dumped this all here. For them.
Darting a look at the trees, Tate realized too late that the blood all slashed downward, not up as he’d first thought. Trap. “Lia!”
She turned her head to him, blinking slowly, then faster, as if she were waking up. One step, that was all she took, but it all turned into a blur. He leaped for her but he was too late, too fucking late. Something dark crashed down from the branches above, swinging into her and knocking her to the ground.
The silence was what burned him like acid. Two steps felt like two miles as he crossed them to shove the massive deer head off her, the sharpened antlers leaving holes where they’d bored into the dirt. She hadn’t even screamed. She just lay there beneath the huge stag head, one heavy enough to have broken her bones on impact. As if she’d disappeared into a part of her mind where none of this was happening to her. As if she’d been there before.
Small mercy, the stag had drained most of his blood wherever he’d been hanging, leaving only an imprint stain on the belly of her T-shirt. Even after the animal was gone, she lay still, barely breathing. Until he reached out to check her for injuries.
She rolled out of his reach, scrambling to steer clear of the bloody mud and refuse with only mild success. “Don’t touch me.” The mumble was nearly slurred, but she found her feet, backpedaling onto the road. “Don’t touch me!”
“I’m not touching you,” he snapped, clasping his hands into fists to keep them at his side. She needed touching. Needed holding, to make sure she was all right. To center her. Shit, to center him. Why was she able to slip into and out of a near-catatonic state so fucking fast?
“Don’t,” she said again, her dazed eyes meeting his for a half second, then skittering away, revealing a slice over her cheekbone that went up into her hairline. Another inch up and over and that sharpened antler could have gone through her eye.
His eyes shifted, fangs dropping and claws tearing through his fingertips too fast to hold back.
She kept her face downcast, turning the wound away from him. Did she understand the sight of it was more than he could handle? If she did, she would have come to him, let him hold her and calm the ragged edge of his rage with the physical reassurance that she was fine.
Instead, with an outstretched, shaking hand against him, she whispered, “Just don’t.”
Against him. An elemental rush of rage flared. He didn’t care that he had no rights to expect anything from her. That she’d been keeping him at arm’s length from the beginning. It was all he could do not to shake an acceptance out of her. He would if she didn’t have blood across her chest. On her hands as she curled her knees up under her chin.
It’s not her blood. You’re tasting her fear. You’re her protector. That’s all it is. Rein it in, Tate. Rein it the fuck back in.
Unhinging his jaw to speak like a civilized person was almost more than he could do. “I won’t.”
For now.
He looked up at the tree branches, but there was nothing to be found. No strings, no trap, not even a scent to follow. As if they’d been crossing paths with a ghost. He turned his gaze at her again, at the streak of blood on her cheek and the carnage all around. “Maybe demon is a better word.”
Lia’s stare fixed on him again while she pulled the open sides of her threadbare flannel shirt closed over her chest. Over blood that should never have been there. In his heart, the Wolf raged, trapped and impotent against a quarry he couldn’t even fucking find.
“Can you run?” He barely recognized his own voice.
She nodded, tightening the straps on her pack almost as an afterthought. He stood, knowing she must see the Wolf in his eyes by the gulp she swallowed.
“Good, get going.”
When she didn’t stir, he stood and circled her, measuring her fear, simultaneously checking the trees for movement of
any kind. So much as a leaf flutter and he’d be on it. But there was nothing.
He set his sights back on Lia, her rigid stance, the grimness to her face. You, I’ll deal with soon enough. Once you’re safe.
First, he was leaving this asshole in the dust. “Move!” he barked, and for once, she didn’t need telling again.
Chapter Seven
Lia reluctantly pulled the shirt down over her body. She hadn’t chosen it. Would never have chosen something like this. As soon as they’d gotten deep enough into the town, Tate had all but dragged her into the nearest shop with women’s clothing in the window and maneuvered her into a dressing room. Minutes later, a shirt was tossed over the curtain along with a gruff order to put it on. She could have been difficult and told him she’d wear one of her other shirts, but nothing was clean. And she didn’t think pushing Tate’s buttons right now was the smartest move she could make.
Which meant she was stuck with the shirt. The color, an emerald that made her eyes almost glow, would draw way too much attention. The fabric wasn’t any better. Some kind of ribbed cotton, it hugged her body gently. The short sleeves capped her shoulders while the round neckline scooped over her breasts like a cartoon barmaid’s blouse. The swells of her breasts beneath it almost looked generous, cupped by the fabric with a ribbon underneath. Either the shirt was a liar or the mirror was.
She smirked into the glass, the novelty of seeing herself full-length wearing off quickly. Brushing at her uneven, overgrown bangs, she wished she had a pair of scissors to clear it out of her eyes again. She hadn’t realized how long her hair had really gotten, the braid end well past her butt. Usually she brushed it and braided it to keep it out of the way, never giving it any kind of attention. The jeans were old but not too shabby. Asher allowed her into towns they passed to wash her things and fill up on supplies, but only for a short amount of time. Always with the knowledge that he was watching and she would never know from where.
Thinking of Asher invariably brought her gaze to the exposed wound at her neck. Always red, always hot, it had never fully healed. Not in over two years. It felt as fresh as the day she’d awakened in that chair, feverish and agonized. She stepped closer to the mirror, stretching her neck a little to see it better. Teeth marks scored a warped circle where her neck met her shoulder. A constant reminder of everything that had been stolen from her—her rights, her life, her choices. Laurel…