Branded by Fire p-6

by Nalini Singh

The tiny Eurasian woman beside him frowned. “We can’t know that.”

  “Where the hell is Claude then? I haven’t seen him for twenty-four hours.”

  Mercy left them arguing in low voices and headed over to rejoin Riley. “Chance of collateral damage?” she asked, looking around in the unexpectedly cloudy morning light. At least the fog was manageable, barely licking at their ankles.

  Riley shook his head. “None. Other warehouses are empty. Bowen and his team swept them for vagrants on their way out, and I did a second sweep.”

  “Good.” She rubbed her forehead. “Bomb squad’s setting up now—they might be able to find and disarm the device using one of their bots.”

  Glancing around to ensure that everyone was out of the danger zone, he nudged her to follow. “We need to clear the perimeter.”

  As they walked, Mercy could sense his wolf clawing at the surface of his skin. Her leopard wasn’t much better. But she knew it was worse for him. It was just the way nature worked—the mating dance could push a predatory changeling male close to insanity. Riley was holding it together. For her.

  And for a wolf changeling of his possessive, intensely protective nature to fight the instincts of his beast . . . it had to be a trip through hell itself.

  I wish I could fix it so I’d be the one who’d have to leave my pack.

  It had been no false promise. She knew he’d do it if it was in any way possible. Riley would give up everything to keep her from being hurt.

  He’s got a heart as big as Texas—he’ll die for you without blinking. But he doesn’t expect anyone to do the same for him.

  Maybe, she thought, her own heart expanding past all fear, all worry, it was time Riley learned what it was to be mated to a leopard. That leopard was finally ready to take a leap in the dark, trusting he’d catch her on the other side. And for her, it was very much a conscious decision—she was too strong, too independent, to fall into this by chance.

  She slid her hand into his, twining their fingers together. Leopard and woman were both in agreement—this man, this wolf, he was strong, he was smart, and he was willing to fight for his mate, no matter the cost to himself. The leopard could do no less.

  Riley shot her a smile that was the merest curve of his lips. “There goes my macho image.” But his hand tightened around hers. Masculine heat, callused palm, the touch of a man who’d never let go.

  Her soul grew painful with need, with an emotion unlike anything she’d ever before felt. “I have something for you.”

  He tugged her over the perimeter line—given the size of the explosives mentioned in the e-fax, as well as those found in Nikita’s building, the blast wouldn’t make it even halfway to this distance. But no use in being stupid—they intended to wait behind a deflective wall set up by the bomb squad. And Riley didn’t stop until they were on the other side of that wall. “Yeah? What? Is it shiny?”

  Her cat wanted to tease him back, but someone interrupted before she could say anything. It was Indigo. “I’ve got everyone else moving,” the lieutenant told them. “You two going to stay here?”

  At their nods, she continued. “Fire crews are waiting one street over like we agreed. Soon as anything goes, they’ll haul ass.”

  “Good.” Mercy glanced at her watch, holding on to her impatience with her teeth. “The tip said it was set to blow in about ten minutes.”

  They both waited until Indigo had jogged away before resuming their conversation. “So,” Riley asked, “what have you got for me?”

  Taking his hand, she placed it palm-down over her heart. It would hurt like a bitch, she thought, but he was hers to protect as much as she was his. “Me.” And she opened up her soul, laid herself bare.

  The mating bond shoved through her body like white lightning, hot and wild and right. Incredibly, wonderfully right. His energy was different from hers—wolf, not leopard—but it laced itself with her own until their combined strength was far greater than either would’ve ever been alone. “Wow.”

  He blinked, swaying on his feet. “Damn.”

  She gripped his chest to keep him upright, a difficult feat since she was feeling intoxicated herself. They both almost fell over, laughed, and then they were kissing. The physical connection between them had never been in any doubt, but the mating bond added a new resonance to it, until she could feel his touch in every cell of her body. “Mmm, I like.”

  Riley heard Mercy’s words but couldn’t respond, his wolf still stunned from the impact of a bond he’d always known about, but never truly understood. This wasn’t anything like he’d imagined—it was more, it was better, it was . . . damn fucking amazing. Sweeping his tongue into Mercy’s mouth, he groaned.

  Some time later, he raised his head. “That building’s supposed to explode soon.”

  “Hmm.” Dreamy eyes looking into his. “Who cares.”

  Riley felt like agreeing. “We’re drunk.” He didn’t dare approach the subject of her sentinel bond. He could feel his own blood bond to Hawke strong and sure, which meant his precious Mercy had lost a chunk of her heart. He’d make it up to her, he vowed, love her so deep and true that it would bury the pain of that devastating loss.

  However, right then, she looked so content, he didn’t want to break the moment, didn’t want to destroy their mingled joy. His mate, his mate had given herself to him. It was more than he’d ever expected from this wild, independent leopard he adored. Stroking a hand over her hair, he held the beauty of the moment tight to his heart, a secret treasure no one could ever take from him. Mercy’s gift. “I think,” he said through the thickness of emotion, “this is better than being drunk.”

  “Yep.” She dropped her head to his chest and rubbed her face against him. He knew what she was doing—rolling in his scent. He wanted to do the same. Preferably with her all long, lean, and naked below him.

  They stood there for several minutes, getting themselves under some sort of control. At long last, Mercy glanced at her watch. “One minute to time of detonation if the tip was legit.”

  “I hope it wasn’t.” Because if it was, then things were going to get ugly.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know about internal Alliance politics,” Riley said, “but I don’t like the way they use up their people like they’re nothing.”

  Mercy nodded. “And if they kill—Oh, my God!”

  Riley followed her gaze skyward to see something plummeting in what looked like an uncontrolled dive. It was too big to be a normal bird. “Hell.” He looked around for something to cushion the blow, but the entire area was old-fashioned concrete and wood. “Flare your wings,” he said to the falling bird between gritted teeth. “Slow it.”

  “Come on, come on.” Mercy rose on tiptoe, as if she could reach up and catch the other changeling.

  Three seconds before impact, it was as if the falling one heard them. His wings spread, though one looked strange . . . broken, Riley realized. It slowed his descent from killing to crippling. The changeling also managed to shift his trajectory so he slammed into a pile of old wood instead of the concrete, but he came down hard, a falcon in full animal form.

  They were both running before he hit, heading back toward the building. Riley hated that his mate was going into danger, but his wolf respected her strength. This was who she was, and she was perfect. The falcon lay as if dead, but when Mercy put her hand on its body, she nodded. “Alive.”

  Riley gauged the bird’s weight. “Big son of a bitch.” Carrying him in animal form would be awkward, but if he was this big as a bird, he was likely bigger as a human. Bird changelings did seriously weird things with their weight when they shifted, but in general, their animal form was smaller. In the end, it took both of them.

  He slid his hands under the falcon’s back half, while Mercy took the front. “Ready?”

  “Go.” They headed away from the scene, knowing they only had seconds.

  But they didn’t even have that. They smelled the ignition at the same moment. Riley l
ooked at Mercy. “Shift!” Their animal bodies were lower to the ground, would take the impact better.

  Laying down their burden even as they shifted, they covered the injured changeling with their animal forms as the world turned to fire around them.

  The wolf’s howl lifted above the city, mournful, sad, so desperately sad that everyone who heard it felt their heart tremble in echoed grief. Running from the Palace of Fine Arts at a speed that made the humans in his way gasp and wonder if they’d really seen what they thought they had, Hawke followed the sound to a patch of concrete not far from a collapsed building. Dust and smoke clogged the air, but he didn’t need to see to find them.

  A large gray wolf stood in front of an unconscious leopard. The wolf was licking at her muzzle, patting her face with his paw, trying to nudge her to wakefulness. But the leopard lay still, so still that it was almost as if she wasn’t breathing.

  A falcon lay a little to the left. It was alive. Good enough. Hawke turned back to those who were his own and knelt down beside them. The wolf didn’t turn to look at him, all its attention focused on the fallen leopard. When Hawke went to check the leopard for injuries, he moved slowly, ensuring the wolf knew he didn’t intend to do harm. Even so, the wolf stood ready to strike, those amber eyes watching Hawke’s every move.

  That was when Hawke noticed the wolf’s left back leg was broken. He didn’t tell the male to sit. Instead, he focused on finding the leopard’s injuries. The most dangerous one was obvious the instant he looked at the downed feline’s side. A massive gash split the black and gold of her soot-covered fur, probably caused by flying debris.

  Hawke swore and pulled off his T-shirt to stop the blood flow. He could’ve helped the wolf, but sharing strength with a leopard was beyond his abilities. It agitated the alpha wolf inside him—this leopard, this woman, was Pack. He had to help her. “Hold on, Mercy,” he murmured, shoving a hand into his pocket to close around his cell phone.

  It proved unnecessary.

  Lucas ran out of the smoky haze that very instant, followed by Tamsyn. Behind Tammy and Luc, he saw two other falcons land and shift. In normal circumstances, they’d be dead for having invaded another predator’s territory, but Hawke knew they’d likely been coming in early for the meeting at the Glade.

  “Lara had to stay at the hospital,” Tammy said in a quick-fire report. “One of your young men is having a bad reaction to the tranquilizer they used.” A glance at the wolf who stood in silent watch. “Can you take care of Riley?”

  “He won’t let me,” Hawke informed her. “Not until Mercy’s okay.”

  “Men,” Tamsyn muttered but she was already removing his wadded-up T-shirt and checking the wound. “It’s bad, but she’s a fighter. Come on, Merce.” Putting her hands over the wound, she closed her eyes.

  Hawke could feel the healing energy emanating from her, though her energy was unfamiliar—feline. Healers calmed everyone when they began working; however, the injured wolf stood guard, ears raised, but mouth closed. Watching. Waiting. If anyone made a wrong move, that unfortunate individual would find their jugular sliced clean through.

  Riley was in no way rational right now.

  Placing one hand on Mercy’s head beside Hawke’s, and the other on Tammy’s shoulder, Lucas frowned. “Sascha’s got her, I think.”

  Hawke knew Luc and Sascha had a strong connection, but he hadn’t realized it was telepathic to a degree. A twinge of envy uncurled in his gut. Like the leopards, changeling wolves mated for life. He’d never had that chance—the girl who would’ve grown into a woman he adored had died decades ago. And now his wolf walked alone.

  It was as well, he thought, that Riley had mated. They needed a strong male-female bond at the top of the leadership structure. It would center the pack, anchor it. Now he felt the strength of that mating bond flow into Tammy, and through her, back into Mercy. Changeling healers fixed things with touch, but the energy had to come from somewhere. Riley nudged at Mercy’s nose with his own, touching her with one careful paw.

  That was when Hawke felt something tug at him. Similar to when Lara drew power during a complicated healing. He glanced at Tamsyn. “You feel that?”

  A distracted nod. “It’s from Riley.”

  No, Hawke thought, it wasn’t. It was coming from him, too. And that meant Riley and Mercy had completed the mating. His gaze met Lucas’s.

  “You can’t have her,” the leopard alpha said, as if he’d read Hawke’s mind.

  Their eyes clashed, alpha to alpha, wolf to leopard. The air stilled.

  “Fight over her later,” Tammy hissed, her voice a lacerating whip. “Come on, Mercy, wake the hell up.”

  But she didn’t. No matter how many times the wolf tried to nuzzle her back to consciousness.

  CHAPTER 53

  The Councilors didn’t bother to have a full meeting to deal with the Alliance issue. They simply agreed on a course of action and dispatched squads to take care of it. If the Alliance wanted a war, they’d get a war.

  But the chairman had miscalculated on one crucial point. The Council chose stealth, not public violence. With the recent surge of hostile behavior by Psy, overt bloodshed would’ve run counter to their attempts to calm the populace. Instead, things were taken care of with such subtlety, it was impossible to prove Psy involvement.

  And the Psy didn’t kill everyone. Instead, minds were scanned and dossiers built. The one called “the chairman” had escaped the net, but three of those at the top of the food chain had been tracked and eliminated. The others would be found sooner or later. The worker bees had been left alone . . . with their memories of what had happened intact. Their leadership had abandoned them to take the heat, knowing the assassins would come.

  The Psy had had a century to learn the cold logic of demoralizing the enemy.

  Now, the paramilitary arm of the Alliance was crumbling from within.

  CHAPTER 54

  Lucas and Hawke stood looking down at the badly injured male prone on the hospital bed. “What the fuck happened, Adam?”

  “I got shot out of the sky. Like a damn plane.” Ignoring the myriad other wounds that marked his body, the tall, heavily muscled man stared at his shattered wing, having remained in half-shift form to allow the wing to set properly. “Fuck, that’s going to take weeks to heal.”

  “Only reason you’re not dead,” Hawke pointed out, “is because you’re alpha in waiting.”

  “Wing leader,” Adam corrected, an odd catch in his voice. “It’s you four-legged beasts who have alphas.”

  “Insulting us?” Hawke drawled, though his mood was anything but buoyant.

  Lucas looked over, his own face drawn. “I don’t think he realizes he’s in our territory and we can bury his body where no one can find it.”

  “Ha-ha.” Adam’s sarcasm was rendered less effective by the fact that his normally copper-colored skin was dull with injury—where it wasn’t black-and-blue. “Is Naia here? Our healer?”

  “Yeah, she was on your tail. With one of your wing-seconds.” Hawke raised an eyebrow.

  “Shut it,” Adam snapped. “She’s one of the highest-ranking members of the wing. She needed to be at the meeting.” A wince. “Jesus, my head hurts.”

  “Naia had to shave off your hair to check for injuries,” Lucas said. “Turns out you’re too hardheaded to hurt.”

  Hawke folded his arms, forcing himself to focus on this problem and not the one he could do nothing to solve. “But you’re not as pretty anymore without those long, silky—what’s the word—yeah, tresses.”

  Adam was giving Hawke the finger when a softly curvy woman with the mystery of the Greek Islands stamped onto her features walked into the room. “Out,” she said. “Both of you. He needs to heal.”

  “We’ll go, Naia,” Lucas said, his voice quiet. “But we need to know what Adam brought into our territory.”

  “Nothing,” Adam said.

  “I might believe it if I heard it from Aria.” Hawke scowled.


  “There’s been a change in the structure of our wing.”

  “What change?” Lucas asked when the other man fell silent.

  “Aria’s dead.”

  Hawke sucked in a breath. “Hell. I liked her.”

  “She had a good life,” Naia said, eyes drowning in sorrow. “She was a good wing leader.” A short glance at Adam, and Hawke understood without words why Naia, and Jacques—now the second-highest-ranking member of WindHaven, had come with Adam. Aria hadn’t only been their wing leader, she’d been Adam’s grandmother. They’d probably been worried he’d blow the negotiation by picking a fight with either Lucas or Hawke just to let off steam. Both men would’ve understood, but it would’ve delayed things.

  “She was,” Lucas agreed. “So we have to deal with your feathered ass now.”

  “You’ve been dealing with me for years,” Adam reminded them. “Now there’s no filter so we have to become friends.” The sarcasm fairly dripped. “Did you get the bullets?”

  “No. One went through your body, the other shredded your wing and disappeared.” Hawke didn’t like it. His men would shoot down an enemy, but only after checking with him. Lucas had already told him it hadn’t been one of his people. “We’ll find out who it was.”

  “Jacques knows the location,” Adam murmured, the words hazy. “He was . . .”

  Naia waved them out as Adam lost consciousness, exiting herself a few minutes later.

  “How did Aria die?” Lucas asked.

  “Old age.” Naia’s face was sad, and yet there was peace in it. “We knew it was coming. She somehow survived her mate’s death, perhaps because she was wing leader, but the life went out of her—she only lasted six months after he took his last breath. There was no foul play.”

  Which made it less likely that someone had targeted Adam. Since neither Lucas nor Hawke liked unknown threats in their territory, they went out with Jacques. What they found was unexpected—spent shells and eight dead men with chips in the backs of their necks.