by JC Hay
He had to hope that whoever was up in the flitter was operating on infrared and only saw the body heat and no visuals. They certainly hadn't noticed his affiliation before the attack; a deliberate attack on TJF personnel was patently stupid. While the Joint Forces preferred to stay neutral in dirtside conflicts, they vigorously defended their own. A constellation of highly trained badasses were not good enemies to make. And that was just the wolves.
Shit, Inari.
Ren hoped she'd stayed under cover like he'd told her. He'd seen what was left of rangers who'd lost their bonded partner—hell, he had no need to look further than his CO. Penzak's wolf had been killed in action just over five years ago. Breaking that empathic bond had left the old man hollowed out inside. Ren had heard the slick-sleeves call Penzak "The Ghost" for the look in his eyes, but that was bullshit. They hadn't bonded with their wolves yet, couldn't understand how deep the ties went between soldier and wolf. They weren't separate entities anymore. More like one being in two bodies.
He calmed his breathing, relaxing his mind until he could feel Inari's panicked curiosity, begging him to confirm he was okay. As soon as he was certain the flitter had left, he answered out loud. "I'm pretty bruised up, girl, but I'm harder to kill than all that."
The concern didn't lesson, but some of the wolf's panic eased.
"I'm serious. You worry too much." Ren chuckled and immediately regretted it as his bruised torso lodged a complaint. Not that he hadn't trained to work through pain and stay focused; he just didn't like to. There was a vast gulf between the ability to do a thing and actually enjoying it. "How's the girl?"
He took a deep breath and tried to assess the situation logically. Someone clearly wanted Lucia dead, probably to strike a blow against her family. Between the wreck and the missile strike, they had nearly succeeded—in her condition she’d never make it back to civilization without help.
And that’s where logic fell apart. Despite all the ugly that had passed between them, the idea of her dying alone in the desert made him alternately sad and angry. His mind drifted too easily to how he remembered her. Sneaking away from summer math classes for a date with the kid from across town. Brown skin that glowed almost gold in the red light of the sun. Clumsy kisses that got more skilled as they practiced. Hands and mouths that grew in confidence as they gained familiarity with each other’s bodies.
Her lips, curved into a cold smile once school had started back up, telling him not to overreach his station while her clique of friends had laughed in the background. Ren In-the-way, they’d teased, like he hadn’t heard the taunt most of his life.
Enough feeling sorry for himself. He had a job to do, and the rangers didn’t fail. He reached out to Inari, leaning into the sense of strength her presence lent him, and pulled himself upright. Pain lanced along his side. Felt like he'd cracked a rib. Maybe more than one. Nothing he couldn't deal with later.
After checking the sky one last time, he glanced toward the wreck. Like the aircraft, the med kit was a useless collection of burnt supplies. Great leave, Ren. Everything’s perfect so far.
He worked his way up into the rocks and back down to the clearing in the center. As soon as she saw him, Inari's tail started thumping into the dirt. The lensing effect of her fur made a blur of the rocks and scrub grasses, which contrasted with the subtle ripple where her body was. When they were perfectly still, umbra wolves could be almost invisible. Most of the time, Inari was too happy to show that much discipline.
Ren sank his fingers into the warmth of her coat, scritching into her shoulders the way he knew she liked and placed his forehead between her tufted ears. "Yeah, I'm happy to see you too, ‘Ri."
The wolf's happy calm radiated into him. It pushed the pain of his ribs out to the edges, made it easier to ignore. When he looked up, Lucia was watching them both. He gave her a half-hearted smile. "So, you want the bad news? Or the worse news?"
Four
Lucia struggled to keep her vision clear. The animal—umbra wolf, she corrected herself—gave her a headache if she looked at where she thought it was. With its mouth shut, the wolf was barely visible. Just a blurry ripple in the air, like heat shimmer, gave away its location. Logically, she knew the wolf was there, but trying to track it made her head hurt. She focused on Ren's face instead.
Not that he was any easier to look at. He really had aged spectacularly. A lean jaw beneath the high cheekbones that had been sexy even when they'd been younger. Hands that oozed strength but were absolutely tender as he cuddled his wolf. Or when he’d touched her scalp. She’d remembered his eyes as brown, not amber, but they held the same warmth they had all those years ago.
God she'd been a bitch in school. Thought she'd understood what was important; who was important. She'd let her friends goad her into being cruel for their amusement.
She closed her eyes again. Better to look at nothing at all.
Actually, no. With her eyes closed she felt like she was spinning in slow motion. She opened them and fixed on him for stability. "I assume the bad news is that whatever ship you arrived in was vaporized."
Ren coughed and winced through his smile. "Pretty sure that ship’s fine. Flew right back to the base after they dropped me off." He eased himself into a sitting position and folded his legs in front of him. "But the med kit’s destroyed, including the radio I’d planned to use to call for a pickup. I don’t suppose you’ve got a signal on your omni?”
She slapped her pockets in the panicked dance of every person looking for their omnidevice, and he could tell she didn’t have it. “I must have had it out before the crash. It was probably still in the...” She looked toward the pillar of smoke from the wreckage.
He nodded. “In that case, we're stuck out here, and shadowfall is coming up quick. It's going to get cold fast once that happens. Also someone clearly wants you dead.”
“What? How do you—?”
“Overlooking the fact the someone put a couple of AGMs into a wreck to hide evidence? Somebody put a jacketed round through your pilot. Hell of a shot on a moving flitter, so whoever it was had sniper training.” He sounded impressed, which didn’t ease her concern. “I checked for survivors as ‘Ri found your scent and chased you up here.”
“But with the flitter destroyed...” Her voice trailed off. If he was correct, whoever tried to kill her would be just as successful if she froze to death in the high plains as Tyson passed into Kronus’s enormous shadow. “Any other bad news?”
“Trouble was on special, so I bought it in bulk.” His casual fatalism made her grin for a moment, before she remembered he was talking about her life. “The closest usable shelter is about three klicks away, and while I have some pretty good painkillers in my kit, the best I can tell you is that it's going to hurt like hell to get you there."
He thought she couldn't do it. The blow to her ego hurt worse than her skull, so after a deep breath, she forced herself to stand up. The world swam dangerously, and even without putting weight on her ankle, the pain blotted out her vision. She leaned against a rock to fake some stability until her balance returned. When she felt like she wouldn’t vomit, she let her breath back out. "Okay, let's go."
The worry in Ren’s face told her she wasn’t fooling him. “How about you sit down before you fall over. We just got your head to stop bleeding, and I’m only giving myself fifty-fifty odds of catching you.” She started to protest, and he cut her off. "Sit. Down.”
Something in his words brooked no argument, and she slid back to a sitting position while he elevated her leg. When the pain had lessened, she wet her lips and tried to speak. “But you said we needed to go.”
He pulled another biodegradable pack from his thigh pocket and ripped it open. “Honestly, I'd stay here if we could, but there's still a chance your friends with the high explosives will come back for another visit. So, we’re going to have to make do with what we can. Fortunately for you, basic kit for most rangers includes a dose of some extremely good painkillers."
/> She hissed as the autoinjector fired, until the drug washed away the sting and most of her other concerns. "Do we have a splint?"
"Not exactly." He gave her an apologetic smile. “One positive of the explosion? There's no shortage of material for one." He held up two pieces of metal.
Lucia chuckled. "My hero." She braced herself for a fresh rush of pain as he stretched her leg back out, but other than a distant tugging, she couldn’t really notice anything as he worked.
He talked over his shoulder without looking at her. "As a warning, this is bad. Probably the worst I’ve seen.” After a pause he added, “Worst break, anyway.”
He pursed his lips, and she wondered what had shaken him. Before she could ask, he continued. “I don’t have any way to close your skin back up. The bone’s aligned again-I think-and I’ve dressed the wound. The brace should keep the bone from pushing back out, but...” He shrugged. “It’s really going to be better if you let me grab something to use as a sledge and drag you. Even that won’t be a picnic." He tugged a thin knife out of his pocket and split his belt in half before using the pieces to strap the braces around her leg. "How's that?"
She leaned forward to look at the metal and cloth holding her leg together and forced herself to smile. Her brain told her the pain had to be terrible, but the rangers clearly had access to some grade-A stuff. "Your brace is almost as bad as your bedside manner."
"Sorry, princess, through adversity we reach the stars."
The nickname stung, and she opened her mouth to correct him. Except that would only reinforce his memory of her. Having him drag—or, worse, carry her—for three kilometers would be humiliating. Would only make him think she hadn’t changed at all from who she’d been in school.
She refused to be that person anymore.
With a grunt she shoved herself back upright to stand on her good leg. The painkiller took her leg to a throbbing murmur rather than the blackout-inducing roar she expected. It might do more damage to walk, but she wasn’t about to be carried.
She twisted her grimace into an approximation of a smile. "Through adversity, Ranger."
The look on his face almost made the pain worth it.
LUCIA HAD EXPECTED the walk to hurt even through the painkillers. She’d been so very wrong. The first half-kilometer had burned through whatever magic he’d injected her with, and what remained was beyond agonizing. She pushed through, lying to herself that surely the endorphin rush had to be around the corner. That soon her body would dump enough natural painkillers into her blood to quench the fire that lanced up her leg with each step. Ren had started pulling away, though he kept pausing. Finally, he came back and walked slowly alongside her, but to his credit he hadn't said a word.
After all, he'd been in an explosion. If he could march, so could she. All she had was a broken ankle.
She resisted the urge to check her ankle. If the pain was anything to judge by, her foot had fallen off half a kilometer back, and she was walking on the raw and ragged stump.
To distract herself, she played “spot the wolf”—a difficult game at the best of times, even once she knew what she was looking for. The wolf’s natural ability to bend the light around itself made its camouflage almost perfect. The rapid blur of its tail or legs were often the best giveaway. It didn't help that it ran off ahead of them, scouting their path and reporting back as though it and Ren were actually talking.
After the wolf took off again, Lucia cleared her throat. "They're smaller than I expected."
"She." Ren chuckled. "And thank God. Any bigger and I'd really hate to have her over my shoulders during a drop. As it is, Inari thinks she's twice her size."
Lucia quirked her eyebrow. "An Old Earth name?"
"One of the primary kami of Shinto—good fortune, prosperity, success."
"And foxes," Lucia added. That much she remembered.
"That too." He stopped abruptly. "How long are we going to do this?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Lucia tried to take a step, but the wolf had circled back and pressed against the front of her good leg. There was no way to step past that wouldn’t involve overextending her injured leg.
She gave the wolf a wounded look. "No fair teaming up. I thought us girls were supposed to stick together." The wolf didn't budge, the bottomless black of her eyes the only recognizable part of her face against the blur of the trail that surrounded them.
"How long are you going to keep walking on that leg? The drugs had to have worn off a while back."
"You say that as though I have a choice." She nodded toward the horizon, where the sun was already dipping behind Kronus as they moved into the gas giant’s shadow. "In a moment, the sun's going to be completely gone. When that happens, it's going to get damn cold out here. The shelter you mentioned won't be a lot warmer, but anything is better than nothing."
"At least let me carry you. We won't get there any slower than if you have to crawl the last klick. You've proved whatever point you were trying to make."
The wolf still hadn't moved out of her path, so Lucia held out her arms. "Fine."
"I promise I won't think any less of you." He stepped in front of her and guided her arms around his neck. “I’m going to rely on the pressure of your arms to tell me when it’s too much. Hold tight. Squeeze when the pain means I’m jostling you too hard.”
She quietly resolved to squeeze no more than necessary. “And if I loosen up?”
“Then I’m going to assume you’ve blacked out, and I need to catch you.” He wrapped his arms around the outside of her thighs and lifted her onto his back, like a saddle. The shift in pressure made her leg flare, but not having weight on it helped immensely.
Ren felt solid as she leaned into his back. Warm. Whatever shampoo he used had a vaguely citrus smell that was definitely not military issue, a thought that amused her for no discernible reason. She tried not to think about the intimacy of their position; how if he faced her instead, it would have an entirely different connotation. The thought brought memories of stolen pleasure and lazy summer afternoons. And the bullshit her so-called friends had put her up to, when they’d found out she’d been spending time with a poor miner’s kid.
Shame burned her cheeks and chased away the gentler warmth of remembered kisses. "I have to be the last person you wanted to see."
He scoffed quietly, and the muscles of his shoulders bunched in a shrug. "It’s my job to find you. I’m glad I did."
"You’d just be happier if I was anyone else. I was absolutely a bitch to you in school. You can't possibly have a very high opinion of me."
"People change. I don’t have any idea who you are." The tone of his voice indicated he didn't quite believe that. He shifted his grip, pulling her hips tight against his back.
The change made her hyperaware of him; the strength in his arms and the wiry back she pressed against. Aware of how different he felt from when they’d been gangly teenagers figuring out what their bodies enjoyed. Confident. Sexy. She needed to change to conversation in a hurry to take her mind off it. "So, when did you join the TJF?"
"I signed up after I graduated secondary. After two years, they tapped me to attend the Ranger School on Farhope. Inari and I bonded five years ago." He paused and nodded toward the valley walls. "There are some caves just inside the valley mouth. Spotted them as we flew in. Shouldn’t be much farther."
“You’ll be glad to put me down, I bet.”
“I’ve carried other rangers longer, and they weighed a lot more than you.” He went silent for two heartbeats too long. “I can make it.”
She resisted the urge to push him about the wolfbond. No one understood it, other than the rangers, and they kept its secrets to themselves. If he wanted to share, he would. Lord knew she was in no position to make requests of him.
The sky had already turned deep purple as the bulk of Kronus blocked out the sun, and she could feel the chill seeping through her clothes. If she let him focus on walking, they’d get to shelter fa
ster. Even if being trapped in the hills with Ren seemed like a bad dream, she was reasonably certain he’d keep her from freezing to death.
Five
Ren cursed himself as he puttered about the inside of the cave, and wished for the hundredth time that he’d grabbed the med kit first. Instead, he and Lucia were stuck with nothing beyond the basic gear he always carried, his combat blade, and the few things he’d managed to scavenge from the wreckage. Once shadowfall had ended, he could think about heading back there to see what else could be recovered, but for the time being staying warm was going to be a priority.
He unhooked Inari's collar and unwound the elaborate knots until it became a few meters of line. Enough to lash together a small shelter or, in his case, shred into loose tinder to start a fire. He split the casing and pulled out the internal cords, which broke down into a puff of dry, airy material. There was plenty of burnable wood in the valley—the rainy season wouldn’t be due in the region for several months yet—so they’d have fuel enough to feed a small fire through the darkness. At least enough of one to keep them from freezing; he should be conservative with the wood in case they were stuck out here longer than he expected.
Food and water were going to be a bigger issue, but he could only control so much.
As though she could read his thoughts, Lucia spoke. "How long 'til someone comes looking for you?"
He glanced at her, where she huddled against the wall beneath his jacket. "They won't come tonight. Too hard to miss signs in the dark. But my CO would have expected a report back from me by nightfall."
She snorted, a sound that was out of place with the high-handed woman he remembered. "I notice you didn't answer the question."
"They'll be waiting to see if I'm just late. Then they’ll try to comm me instead, first calling the radio that got blown up, and probably the one in your flitter. Once I’m officially missing, then it’s prep, briefing, and loadout. If they're in a hurry, it'll be thirty-six hours." Her shoulders dropped in defeat, and he grasped for anything that might give her some hope. "On the other hand, your family's bound to be pressuring people to look for you."