Stephan shifted, but kept a defensive position between Elijah and Vash.
“Alpha.” His voice was calm and controlled. “How do you want to handle this?”
Elijah faced him. “I’ll inform the others. Take whoever you need and see Rachel buried as well as possible. Then take these cameras and set them around the perimeter in ever-widening circles. If you need help setting up the feed, Vashti will assist you.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Stephan’s immediate compliance might’ve soothed him, if that had been even remotely possible. Before his Beta walked away, he stopped him. “Stephan…thank you. For everything.”
Giving a brief nod of acknowledgment, Stephan gathered his clothes from the ground and moved away.
Elijah set off toward the caves. Remorse weighted his shoulders and stung his eyes. He’d never wanted this, never wanted the responsibility of making such brutal decisions or having the power to see them enforced.
“Hold up, Alpha.” Vash drew abreast of him, swords still in hand. “I’m coming with you.”
The way she strode by his side, armed, offered her support without words. They were a united front. Allies. He almost laughed at the terrible absurdity.
“You have to put it away, Alpha.”
He came to an abrupt halt, his hands fisting at his sides.
“Wanna take it out on someone?” she asked softly, facing him and sliding one blade into its scabbard. “I’m your girl. I’m always up for a heated sparring match. But you’ll regret carrying that baggage in front of the others. Trust me. I know.”
“Do you?” he challenged. “Have you killed someone you promised to protect with your life?”
Amazingly, her beautiful amber eyes softened with something like sympathy. “I’ve done some horrible things, things I’m not proud of and have a hard time living with. It’s part of the job of being a leader. I’m not saying you should suck it up and get over it, because you’re not going to get over it. That’s also part of the job—if you stop caring, you’re worthless. I’m just saying you can’t stand in front of your troops seething with guilt, because that implies culpability and this was an assisted suicide. Rachel had to know she couldn’t possibly win against you or me. She was ready to go, and this was how she chose to do it.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” His friendships were precious to him. As frustrated as he was with Rachel, she was still a friend and a pack member and he ached from her loss.
Vash shrugged. “Nothing will. But you didn’t do anything wrong. It was a shitty thing to do, yeah, but it had to be done. For her sake, my sake, your sake, and the sake of this alliance that we both really fucking need. As I said, if you wanna knock it out, I’m here. Just don’t take it in there.”
“There will be more,” he muttered, respecting her counsel and appreciating—however reluctantly—that
she’d offered it. “The others didn’t know what they were getting into when they orchestrated this revolt, and many of them aren’t going to be happy with the decisions I’m making.”
“Fuck ’em. Until they’ve been in command, they can’t know what it’s like.”
He snorted.
She
knew what it was like, which created an unexpected affinity between them.
She smacked him on the shoulder. “Ready, puppy?”
Fuck. She was hot as hell but totally crazy. Irreverent and unpredictable, too. Yet when he’d researched her, he’d heard the stories of her hunts—she was like a lycan on the scent when she pursued, dogged and unwavering, dependable for those who hunted with her. And now it seemed there was a method to her madness.
He growled. It’d been better when the only thing he admired about her was her tits. “Stick close to me.”
“I’ve got your back.”
“Fine. Make it easy for me to have yours.”
She glanced at him as they entered the main cavern. Blood still stained the ground from his earlier fight and he was trudging in more, his wounded leg leaving a crimson trail in his wake.
Throwing his head back, he howled, a purely inhuman sound. Within moments, the space began to fill. Vash appeared startled by the number of lycans who poured in. “Jeez. Who knew so many furries could fit in one cave?”
Elijah waited until the room was so full that a mere five feet of clearance surrounded them. He relayed the
recent events without inflection—starting with Vashti’s arrival and ending with his reason for taking the life of a packmate. His remorse and frustration roiled, twisting around his vitals, but he contained them, even as he expressed sincere regret that they’d lost one of their own.
As some of the lycans in the room shifted into their lupine forms, Vash lifted her blade and set the flat of it against her shoulder. While her pose was casual, it conveyed her battle readiness. The beasts paced and she tracked them with her gaze.
“I’m asking you to trust the orders I give and the actions I take,” he finished, “whether you understand and agree with them or not. If you can’t, I won’t stop you from leaving and I won’t think less of you. If you stay, some of you will be on the move tomorrow and working with vampires. In either case, try to get some rest tonight. Things will be stressful for all of us for the next while.”
He started forward, heading for the cavern he was using as sleeping quarters. The female who’d announced Vash’s arrival the day before stepped into his path. Sarah was a young Omega—he guessed mid-twenties—and exceptionally pretty, with long straight black hair and tip-tilted eyes.
“Alpha.” She met his gaze shyly. “Allow me to tend your wounds.”
He almost brushed her off, his emotions too volatile to welcome company. But her earnestness touched him. While there were many who would challenge him, there were others who needed a different sort of guidance—
a soft touch and gentle words to go along with a firm hand. It was the sort of leadership he longed to provide and hoped he could eventually achieve once their situation became less precarious. “I’d be grateful if you would, Sarah.”
Battery-operated lights lined the passageway. Gesturing at his office, he spoke over his shoulder to Vashti. “Grab your bag.”
She muttered something under her breath, but complied. She joined him a few minutes later in his room, entering at the moment he had his hands on his fly. He shed his ruined pants and sat on the military locker placed at the foot of his air mattress. Sarah sank to her knees between his spread legs and opened the first-aid kit.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Vash queried tightly.
Elijah looked up at her, noting the rigidness of her jaw and her narrowed gaze. Nudity was nothing to a lycan, but perhaps it meant something to Vashti. Wondering if the vampress could possibly be feeling as proprietary about him as he felt about her, he reached out and tucked Sarah’s hair behind one ear. Vash stepped closer, the hand not holding her duffel wrapping tightly around the hilt of a blade strapped to her thigh.
“Where’s my room?” she demanded. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
“You’re standing in it.”
Her gaze lifted from his cock to his eyes. “What?”
“You’re rooming with me.”
“Like hell.”
Canting his arms back, he gripped the rear edge of the trunk and stretched his wounded leg out. “It’s the one place I can trust you’ll be safe.”
“I can damn well take care of myself.”
He took a deep breath, released it. “No argument, but the odds are against you.”
“If I can’t fight off a pack of puppies, I deserve to bite it.”
“And Syre would come down on me in a swarm of vamps. How much shit am I expected to have shoveled on me?”
That knocked her back a bit. She looked at the queen-sized air mattress, clearly debating the risks and benefits of sharing it with him.
“We’re both adults,” he pointed out. Then he groaned softly as Sarah smoothed ointment over his torn skin. He’d be healing faster if he was eating properly, but he was quickly becoming undernourished on the sparse amount of food to be found while roughing it. “Nothing will happen that you don’t want.”
“I don’t want anything besides you keeping your end of our agreement.”
“Then you’ve got no worries. Why don’t you show me those property specs you mentioned?”
Vash stared at him for a long moment, then muttered something beneath her breath and dug in her bag. She set it down on the ground a moment later, her hand emerging from the depths with a folder clutched in her grip. She looked at Sarah, who was tying off a bandage. “Are you done yet?”
Sarah’s gaze searched Elijah’s face for instruction.
He dismissed her with an easy, “Thank you, Sarah.”
The lycan closed the first-aid kit and said, “I’ll get you some dinner, Alpha. Esther made an awesome venison stew.”
“I appreciate that.” Ideally, they’d each be eating their own deer, but they weren’t in a position to dine well under the circumstances. Instead they were divvying up what they caught among everyone, which kept them alive. Barely.
“Also…” She offered a timid smile. “I’d like to stay with you when you make the arrangements to send some of us out with the vampires.”
“Aw,” Vash crooned with syrupy sweetness. “Puppy love. How touching.”
Sarah rose to her feet with graceful dignity, but the look she shot Vashti was poisonous, a rare display of hatred from an Omega.
“I’ll work something out,” Elijah answered, his decision taking into account her innate Omega gift for soothing and comforting others. She’d be best utilized in a support position, rather than on a hunt.
“Thank you, Alpha.” She left the room in a calm, graceful glide.
Pushing to his feet, he rolled his shoulders back, feeling better already. He felt Vash’s gaze slide over him and he glanced at her with an arched brow.
“Will you put some damn clothes on?” she snapped.
“Why don’t you take yours off?”
She bared her fangs. “In your wet dreams, lycan.”
He shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
T
hey were on the road before dawn and across the Utah/Nevada border before midmorning.
Vash gripped the steering wheel and tried not to think about the restless night behind her. Elijah, damn him, had slept like a log, which said more clearly than anything that he didn’t consider her a threat at all.
She’d tried to work. There was so much to be done. But she’d been distracted by the way he had stretched out next to her with one arm tossed carelessly over his head, showing off beautifully defined biceps. And the way the sheet had clung tantalizingly low on his hips…A tiny tug would have revealed all of his impressive assets.
Vash loved a healthy man’s body as much as the next woman, but Elijah’s was a work of art, his powerful frame covered in mouthwatering ridges of muscle she wanted to trace with her tongue and hands and—
“These are all warehouses,” Elijah muttered, looking over the property listings she’d printed out.
“Warehouses with plenty of parking, room for a helipad, top-of-the-line electrical systems, and air-conditioning.” She glanced at him. “I know how touchy you lycans get when you’re overheated.”
“It’s not easy being furry.”
It took a moment for the levity of his dry statement to sink in. Looking out the windshield, she felt her lips curve. He was feeling more himself, it seemed, and she was relieved. His pain yesterday had moved her, made her see him in a far more personal way than she would’ve wished. His sincere grief proved his strength of character in many ways—he’d taken an action he knew would cost him personally to benefit the many. She respected both that toughness and his willingness to shed tears without shame.
“These properties are expensive,” he said bluntly. “Syre’s making a hell of an investment in an alliance that hasn’t been tested.”
“I’ll kill you if you double-cross me. Stake your head on a pike for other lycans to see.”
“You’re expecting me to screw you over.”
“Your breed’s track record isn’t so hot. Your ancestors ditched us for Adrian to save their hides and you just ditched Adrian, once again to save your ass.”
His gaze seared her profile. “You’re skipping over millennia and multiple generations. With the average lycan lifespan being two hundred and thirty years, there’s not a single lycan in existence who’s been touched by what happened to the Watchers. Most of them couldn’t even tell you which angel they’re descended from.”
Yet the memory of her fall was as fresh to her as if it had occurred mere weeks ago instead of lifetimes. “So if you forget an obligation, it doesn’t count?”
“Not what I meant. It’s just a tough sell enforcing promises made on behalf of someone who’s centuries away from being born.”
“Your great-great-grandwolfies made that decision for you. A shame you can’t ask them about it.” Familiar bitterness coated her tongue. “I expected fidelity from the angels who served beside me. We made our beds—it’s not a tough sell thinking they’d be honorable for lying in them.”
“I was told the Fallen who became lycans hadn’t broken the laws the rest of you did,” Elijah said.
Vash shot him a scathing glance and became even more irritated by how delicious he looked. She would’ve thought that after seeing how impressive he was naked, seeing him dressed would be no big deal. But he managed to make the casual attire of wide-legged jeans and plain black T-shirt look stunning. He was a big, brawny hunk of a male, capable of taking on a woman of her strength and force of will in a way very few men could. That got to her. Made her hot and hungry for the greedy touch of a passionate man’s hands.
His
hands. The hands she’d watched stroke over his bare skin in deliberate provocation.
Of course, she wasn’t even sure she remembered
how
to have sex anymore…
She looked away. “That’s a cop-out. We all lost our way in some manner or another. We were tasked with observing and reporting. Any sort of contact with
mortals was outside our scope as Watchers—seeing, talking, hearing, touching, teaching. But we were scholars. We thirsted for knowledge, the giving and receiving of it. We couldn’t resist the desire to interact.”
He tucked the property spec sheets back in the file. “But you didn’t. Not like the others did.”