Darkness Bound (28 page)

Hawk was intercepted on his way to
kalum
’s cave by a messenger, a lanky boy of sixteen named Zaca, who had unkempt hair, a long, loping gait, and a thousand-watt smile he flashed at regular intervals. He was barefoot and bare-chested, and wore only a loose pair of tan cargo shorts, which were slipping down his narrow hips. He ran up beside Hawk just as he jumped down from the rope.

“Big Daddy wants to see you.”

Hawk tried not to smile at the ironic nickname for Alejandro. He liked the kid, who reminded him of himself at that age, wild and smart-alecky, though Zaca’s easy smile earned him a lot more friends than Hawk’s scowls ever had.

“The Alpha finds out you’re calling him that, you’re in a boatload of trouble, Z.”

“It’s not like anyone’s gonna tell him!” Zaca scoffed.

“Really? Not even Big Daddy’s big brother?”

Zaca went white. The smile dropped from his face. “I . . . uh . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

Hawk put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, I was only trying to warn you to watch what you say. Things get around. And Big Daddy has a terminal case of PMS, if you know what I’m saying.”

He winked, and Zaca breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah. I guess so. I’ll be more careful.”

“Any idea why he wants to see me?”

“He’s called an emergency meeting of the Assembly. It’s about the girl.”

His nerves immediately stood on end like a thousand exclamation points. Hawk studied Zaca’s face. “What about her?”

Zaca hunched his shoulders up to his ears, spreading his hands open.

Right. As if Alejandro would ever tip his hand. Hawk decided his visit to
kalum
could wait a few more minutes.

“All right. Thanks for the heads-up. And remember what I told you.” He gave Zaca a friendly shove, which Zaca returned, dancing on his toes with boxing fists, taking jabs. Hawk pulled him into a headlock just to show him who was boss.

“I give!” Zaca shouted to the ground. “I give!”

Hawk released him, and gave him a slap on the back of his head for good measure. Zaca loped away, smiling, but turned after a few paces. “I totally had you, old man. I just let you think you won because I feel sorry for how feeble you are.”

“Old man! Feeble!” Hawk lunged forward, and Zaca darted off, laughing.

“Punk!” Hawk shouted after him. The smile he’d repressed before spread over his face as he watched Zaca run.
Good kid. His father must be proud of him
.

That errant thought momentarily paralyzed him, as did the ache that blossomed in his chest when he imagined having a son of his own, a son who smiled and made friends and breezed through life as if it were an all-you-can-eat buffet and he was the only one in line.

Real life sidled up beside him, sucker punching him right in the gut. Family? Future? Peace? Those things were for other people, better people. For the infamous Bastard there could be one thing only, and that was disgrace.

By the time Hawk arrived at the Assembly meeting place, his mood had sunk a shade below black.

Unlike his own home, the meeting place was easily accessible by ladders, and was linked to the rest of the colony by the network of suspension bridges through the trees. When he entered the room, Alejandro looked up at him over the rim of an overfull wineglass. Perched on his elaborate chair, he was flanked on both sides by the members of the Assembly, who were seated at the curved tables. The atmosphere in the room felt as warm as a morgue.

“You wanted to see me?”

Alejandro looked irritated by Hawk’s abrupt greeting. “I see a few days alone with the human hasn’t improved your manners.”

“It hasn’t been easy,” he said, jaw tight.

“Understandable. You must be finding it excessively hard to have someone invading your privacy, having to actually hold
conversations
.”

“We’re not doing much talking.” Hawk willed his face to show nothing, aware he was treading on thin ice. From the corner of his eye, he saw Alejandro’s brows rise, and he thought a bit of obfuscation was in order. “She’s still healing.”

“Ah yes. I understand
kalum
gave you something for her pain?”

Hawk’s gaze snapped back to Alejandro’s face. He wore a tiny smile, the meaning of which Hawk couldn’t guess.

How much did Alejandro know? Was he being played?

“Yes,” he agreed carefully. “She’s been sleeping a lot.”

“Sleeping,” Alejandro repeated tonelessly. Only his smile was wry.

“She’s recovering from being beaten with a cane,” Hawk snarled, unable to keep the anger from his voice. “So yes, she’s been doing a lot of sleeping. She needs to heal!”

Alejandro swallowed a long draught from his glass, then lowered it and stared at Hawk with penetrating intensity. “As you can imagine, I’m anxious to get to know our new friend a little better. She’s so . . .” He paused to lick his lips. “Interesting. Don’t you agree?”

The words, the tone, and the lip smacking were all designed to nettle him . . . and they did. Hawk enjoyed a vivid vision of Alejandro on the floor beneath him, eyes popped wide, face red, thrashing and gagging as Hawk strangled him with his bare hands.

When he didn’t react, Alejandro asked, “How long do you suppose this ‘healing’ will take?”

Hawk controlled his breathing. As best he could, he kept his posture relaxed, though a vein began to throb in his temple. “I can’t be expected to know how long it takes a human to heal.”

“Good point. They’re unpredictable, these humans, aren’t they?” Alejandro tapped his fingers against the wineglass. “For instance, her offer of
belu
for you. What on Earth do you think could have prompted such a magnanimous gesture?”

Alejandro’s smile grew wider, his expression all wide-eyed innocence, and Hawk thought,
He knows
.

It wasn’t forbidden for him to be with Jacqueline, not exactly. The Law explicitly forbade him from impregnating human females, but not bedding them. As long as he kept his secret and his silence, the occasional dalliance outside the tribe was frowned upon, but tolerated. Especially since he was unmated, basically unmarriageable.

But Jacqueline Dolan was a special circumstance. Brought to the colony at the Alpha’s behest, an enemy combatant they were trying to turn to their side, use for their purposes, she existed in that intangible gray area between friend and foe, property and person . . .

Savior and sacrifice.

Any decisions regarding intangibility belonged to the Alpha, by default. For as long as she remained in the colony, her fate remained in Alejandro’s hands.

Also, she’d been meant as a
punishment
for Hawk. Not a reward. The Alpha would
not
be pleased to find out they’d been doing anything other than irritating each other.

So when Hawk finally answered, he chose his words carefully.

“She offered
belu
for Nando as well.”

Alejandro nodded. “Odd, don’t you think? Though if I recall correctly, her exact words were, ‘Even the reason he hit Nando was my fault.’ Which leads me to believe . . .”

Alejandro took another long drink of his wine. Around the tables, nervous glances were shared.

“That she only did it for you.”

The room was deathly silent. Morgan’s eyes were burning holes in Hawk’s skull. He realized there was only one direction this conversation was headed: down.

Alejandro stood, gazing down his nose at Hawk. He smoothed a hand over his shining dark hair and said, “I want to see what the two of you got up to in the city. I want to inspect our insurance that Jacqueline Dolan will write the article she was brought here to write.”

He paused, and the room held a collective breath.

“I want to see the pictures. Bring the disc to me.”

A command, a challenge, and a threat, all rolled into one. Hawk had endured it his entire life, these sneered directions, this total lack of respect. He’d endured it because he’d never had anything worth standing up for.

Any
one
.

There was no way in hell Alejandro or anyone else was ever going to set sight on those pictures. Those were for him, and him alone.

So was Jacqueline. She’d finally given him reason to stand up for himself.

Which Alejandro obviously knew.

So be it.

Hawk put his shoulders back, rose to his full height, looked Alejandro dead in the eye, and said, “No.”

Alejandro had anticipated this answer, evidenced by the expression of smug satisfaction that appeared on his face. “One hundred lashes for your dis—”

“No,” Hawk said again, louder. He took a step toward the dais, and Alejandro’s eyes widened in surprise. “No lashes. Not ever again. I’m finished taking orders from you.”

Alejandro’s face flushed red. “Guards!”

Before Nando and his team could leap forward from their positions, where they stood stiff and blank-eyed in a line behind the dais, Hawk shouted, “
Naparqudu
ana sepiya, ak kalbu
!”

Lie at my feet, weak dog!

They were ritual words, known by all but spoken only by a
sananu
.

A rival. A challenger to the Alpha’s throne.

Everyone gasped. The guards froze. Morgan leapt to her feet, as did several other Assembly members, everyone horrified and bug-eyed, looking at him and each other in astonishment.

“You
dare
!” Alejandro shouted, lips drawn over his teeth in a vicious snarl.

“Oh, I do,” said Hawk, his voice low and dark, blood boiling like black lava through his veins. “I definitely do. And mark my words, brother . . . you’ll be sorry I did.”

Chaos.

Shouting, chairs overturned, the crash of a vase as someone knocked it over in their rush from the room. Almost all the guards ran out, followed by several of the Assembly members, the wine boy, and the scribe, who abandoned his pen and paper on the table, all of them shoving and jostling, in a great hurry to spread the news.

Alejandro was panting, seething, wanting to kill him on the spot, but he couldn’t. No one could, which gave Hawk great satisfaction. According to the Ancient Ways, the Alpha and the challenger had to meet at sunset on the day of the challenge to do battle, with the entire tribe as witness. Once the ritual words had been spoken, not even the Alpha could strike until the appointed time.

So for the moment, Hawk was untouchable. He sent Alejandro a bitter smile.

“The Arena at sunset, then,” hissed Alejandro. “And then we’ll finally see what the Bastard is made of.” Flicking a lethal look at one of the remaining guards, he added, “Get a pyre ready at the Well of Souls.” He looked back at Hawk, his green eyes glowing hatefully bright. “
Salsu Maru
is going to burn.”

Since ancient days, cremation had been their preferred form of burial, and Hawk knew that win or lose, someone was going to be on that funeral pyre tomorrow morning.

Because the gauntlet he’d thrown down was a winner-takes-all proposition.

The challenge of a
sananu
was to the death.

“Sunset,” said Hawk. Then he turned and strode out of the room.

Jack awoke with a hangover so colossal it felt as if her brain was using jackhammers and dynamite to make a break from her skull.

There was pounding, copious pounding, accompanied by dizziness, the urge to vomit, and a violent twitching of the skin beneath her left eye. She sat up—bed? Why was she in bed? Whose bed was it?—and looked around the room she found herself in.

It appeared to be some kind of tree house. Large and open and beautiful . . . she’d never seen it before in her life.

The urge to vomit became an irrefutable order, transmitted from her angry brain to her queasy stomach, which she immediately obeyed.

When the last of the heaves died, Jack looked down at the polished wood floor. It was splattered with the contents of her stomach, which seemed not so much disgusting as physically impossible. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything.

She was having trouble remembering much of anything at all.

Towel
, she thought. In this situation, a rational person would go find a towel and clean up this mess. One couldn’t be expected to think clearly when faced with such a large—weirdly green—mess on the floor. Whoever’s floor it happened to be. She’d figure out what to do next after she’d cleaned up.

Satisfied with her plan in spite of the agony in her head, Jack wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, stood from the bed, and looked around the room.

Standing was a mediocre idea, at best. The room became a sideways slipping blur, and she sank back to the mattress on gelatinous legs, shaking, her skin covered in a cold sweat.

“Okay. Just take it easy for a minute. Just sit here for a minute, and get your bearings. Nooo rush.”

Clearly, she was no longer in New York. But where on Earth was she?

“All right. You’re functioning at ten percent physically and mentally, best-case scenario.” She was going to ignore the fact that she was talking out loud to an empty room, and cut herself some slack. “What you need is a big glass of water. And Advil. And a towel. Let’s just focus on those three things, and we’ll go from there.”