Well, she might be annoying, but she wasn’t stupid.
At least he finally had something he could use to get her on the ground. “You’re always free to leave the Underground and try your luck with the humans. Maybe we should start with the owner of this orchard. Think he’ll shoot first or second when I tell him I spotted a shifter stealing from his trees?”
The straight line of her mouth turned into a mutinous little rainbow-shape. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, honey, you wouldn’t believe the things I dare.” Neither could he, not with her strangely compelling scent taking his imagination places the little cutthroat up there probably wouldn’t appreciate. “Now get your ass out of the tree or I’ll help the farmer load the gun.”
“That’s supposed to inspire me to trust you?”
“Who said anything about trust?” He bent to pick up her bag from under the root when she suddenly jumped down, nearly landing on his arm. Tate glanced up, counting a good eight feet from where she’d climbed to where she now crouched, her eyes hard as frozen emeralds, guarding the pack as if it were the gateway to the Holy Land. If he didn’t know better, he’d expect a hiss and a scratch. “You sure you’re not a cat?”
Jumps like that on weak bones tended to cause breaks, but she hadn’t so much as flinched, not even as she stood to her full height. “
Don’t
touch my stuff. Never touch me or anything of mine.
Ever.
”
Tate straightened, his frown a hard thing against his teeth. She was even thinner than he thought. Taller, too. The top of her head actually came all the way to his chin. But that height didn’t work in her favor. She looked as though a hard Santa Ana breeze could knock her over. Old, worn boy-jeans hung on her hips, rolled cuffs too wide around her calves. True anger, flash-burn hot and fluid, coursed through him. How long had she been running on empty before she found the Underground? And why hadn’t their people tied her up and poured food down her throat? Shit, he might have to do that himself. A few more days like this and she’d be too weak to eat. His jaws ground together.
Not acceptable.
“You deaf or you just like people yelling at you?”
He lifted his hand in mock surrender, stepping back. She wanted to carry her bag, fine. Hard as it was to fight the urge to protect, he did it. Because something else bothered him even more than the clear marks of starvation. The look in her eyes as she’d stopped him.
For a half a second, she’d looked…scared. Terrified. And not of him.
No doubt about it. This assignment had
Aw, fuck
written all over it.
Twice.
But it didn’t matter how bad his instincts said this was. What mattered was that she was alive, still strong enough to recover. He’d deal with the rest later.
He watched, keeping a distant expression on his face as she shoved her arms through the bedraggled loops of her pack. Not nearly as heavy as his, her gear still looked like too much for her spare frame. He was tempted to grab it from her before she fell over, but that was a fast track to getting clawed in the face. She didn’t seem to mind the weight any. Of course strays never minded anything except death or rape.
He only minded when she started walking without him.
Oh yeah, this one was a ray of fucking light. “You could stand to work on your manners there, Sunshine.”
“That’s not my name.” She kept walking.
He glared at the back of her pack. “How about sweetheart then?”
“How about you kiss my ass?”
He angled his head a little, noting the taut, high curve of said ass before her rolled sleeping mat blocked the view in cadence with her step. That option he could see himself going with. Put a few pounds on her and that thing would go from distracting to mouthwatering. He made a mental note to look for low-hanging fruit as they passed through the trees. “So, what should I call you then?”
“Nothing. You should leave.”
He whistled, long and low. She was either drunk on piss and vinegar or just plain reckless. “That’s not going to happen. I told you, someone is hunting our travelers. The Alpha takes the protection of his people seriously and so do I. I’m here to protect you and eliminate any and all dangers to the Underground, whatever they might be.”
She stopped walking, finally turning to look him in the eyes. That brilliant gaze had a knife-edge to it. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”
He didn’t pay it any mind. Playing with knives was his idea of fun. “I don’t know. You cutting up shifters in the woods?”
“What if I am?” Calm as you please, no less aggression in her stance or ice in her glare.
It only made his answer easier. “Then it’s a promise.”
She stood still as marble for an entire second before nodding curtly and starting that shouldn’t-be-sexy walk again. “My name is Lia. Lia Crawford.”
He watched the tail of her braid snake over the back of her pack, another burst of the hunger her scent inspired fulminating into a full blaze of heat in his belly. Oh, she was going to be a pain in the ass every second of every day until he figured out what to do with her, that much was obvious.
Whether he was going to taste her or throttle her first, however, he couldn’t begin to figure out.
“So I guess that means you’re not from around here.”
Lia kept her eyes forward, ignoring what had to be the four-hundredth uninvited—and unanswered—remark from the man at her side. Her mouth hurt from clamping her lips around the toothbrush she’d shoved in there to keep from gnawing
him
into a stub. Two hours and her belly burned from the scent of the crisp apple being crunched less than a foot behind her. Despite the sweet peppermint flavor of her toothpaste, her mouth watered for a taste. She’d wanted those apples. Hadn’t even bitten into her first one when the scent of a shifter—of a
male
shifter—drifted on the late summer breeze, confusing her with its lack of dirt and sour sweat. She’d been ready for a fight anyway.
Nothing could have prepared her for him.
He’d be beautiful if he wasn’t so rugged. Sharp angles formed his face into a lean but definitely masculine shape. And yet the bone structure somehow sculpted him in a way that was almost…pretty. His skin had a golden cast to it, but weathered, as if he had spent a lot of his time in the elements. It made for a disconcerting combination. Especially his eyes, which tilted—just a little—at the corners. Dark lashes wreathed the edges, outlining the startling gray color.
At first she’d thought it was the distance that made his eye color hard to make out. When she’d jumped down so close to him, she’d realized they were the steely shade of the sky just before a storm, the focus just this side of blistering. A strong, straight nose led down to a mouth that could have been etched in stone. Gold hair, darker than hers, thicker too, curled at his brow beneath the hat brim. As she walked, she tried not to wonder what the rest of it would look like if he took the hat off.
It was a strange thing to wonder. It had been so long since she’d viewed males as anything other than something to avoid. In some cases, to hate. Or pity. But this one…this one she had a feeling she could look at for hours on end. At least until he spoke.
“How long have you been on the road, then?”
Lia swallowed a sigh. If she sighed, it would only encourage him, and this was not a man who needed encouragement. So far, he’d asked about her family, her history, her health, her future plans, the age and durability of her shoes, and whether she had a particular affection for the letter
X.
She hadn’t said a word in response, but that hadn’t stopped him from filling in the answers for her, each one of them more ridiculous than the last. If it kept up much longer, she was going to find a rock large enough and stuff his pretty mouth with it.
“You’re going to have to talk to me sometime, Sunshine.”
Watch the tassels, Lia…
She’d been able to ignore most things by just walking forward, watching the ends of her scarf slap her knees in tandem with her unending steps.
Left,
tap.
Right,
tap.
Left,
tap…
Stupid, really, to wear it in the summer heat, especially since the once-thick burgundy knit had to wrap twice around her neck to be short enough to only hit her knees. The heavy pack on her back had her sweating as it was, and the scarf made her feel as if she were on fire. But just the thought of
not
wearing it…
Her hands clasped into fists around the soft fabric, accidentally pulling it taut, scraping the over-sensitive flesh at the base of her neck like tiny shards of glass. All too aware of the man just a foot away, she barely kept herself from flinching as she slid her hands down the lengths of knit, loosening the tension as she went. She didn’t stop walking to soothe it. She didn’t even lift her head when a car passed above them on the highway overpass. She simply kept walking, calmly removing her grip and subtly moving her neck from side to side—as if she might have just been stretching—loosening the binding until the irritation to her skin abated.
Without question, she was not about to touch it or relieve it in any way.
He
would notice. She’d rather walk a thousand miles on rusted razor blades than face that. So she kept going. Kept ignoring the handsome complication at her side. Kept her eyes on the slap of the scarf tassels. One foot in front of the other, one breath in, one breath out.
“My sister tried to give me the silent treatment once,” he said to no one in particular. “I followed her for four days straight singing ‘999 Bottles of Beer’ at the top of my lungs. I know there’s only supposed to be ninety-nine, but what’s the fun in that, right?” He began whistling the cheery tune, the notes coming out in a brow-raising pitch. “I’ll last a lot longer whistling than singing, don’t you think?”
Her foot skid on the ground.
She could
hear
the smile in that whistle.
Just watch the damn tassels. He’ll give up eventually. You’ve survived worse…
She tried picking up the pace, but his legs were longer and he seemed to have energy to spare. She tried yanking out her toothbrush and spitting pointedly in front of his boots. He just sidestepped the puddle without missing a step. Losing hope, she put the toothbrush away before she broke off the end and stabbed him with it.
With nothing else to occupy her time except listening to him, the road stretched interminably ahead while the sun sank faster and faster to the west. Worse, the whistling was turning into a piercing ringing in her ears. In her brain. Reverberating up and down her nerves until her skin crawled and her eyes tried to roll up in her head.
Usually, when she walked, the only noises to bother her were crickets and bugs or birds. Maybe a stray dog or cat. Nothing as loud as this, not for this long. No matter how she twisted away from him, or changed her pace, he was right there. Whistling. Setting her senses warping from misery. When she finally had to put her hands over her ears, he actually got louder. But when he laughed—he actually laughed at her!—lights began popping on the edge of her vision.
“Don’t you
ever
shut up?”
“Of course not. I’m a lawyer, I’m trained to talk for days.”
“You don’t look like a lawyer.” He was far too outdoorsy and weathered for that.
“I wasn’t born one. Wasn’t born rich, either. Took a lot of hard work to get where I’m at.”
Lia pointedly looked around the deserted road and the dusty path they were walking.
The lines around his eyes crinkled and not with humor. “I can look the part when I want to.”
His grudging tone wasn’t about to get under her skin. “When is
that
going to be?”
“As soon as you quit the silent treatment and we get you to safety.”
She stared at his smug expression, not the slightest clue what he could really want from her. “You said you were taking me to the next safe house. I never agreed to act like your best friend until we got there.”
“I’m not asking for friendship.” Flinty gray eyes stayed trained on hers and his voice had all the inflection of a steel beam…so why did she get the distinct feeling he was looking at her entire body like it was his personal buffet? “I just don’t like being ignored.”
Lia rolled her eyes, turning to start walking again. “You’re a
Wolf.
You should already know being ignored is your only chance not to get dead.”
A big hand grazed her arm, sending a bolt of pure terror spinning through her. Before he ever had a chance to make full contact, she was a full five feet away, cold sweat breaking out with a sharp sting all over her body. “What are you doing?”
Genuine confusion put a crease between his brows. “What’s wrong with you?”
Heart racing, practically out of her chest it felt like, she searched the trees over his head for movement. A twitch. Anything. “Nothing.” She forced herself to look him in the eye again. Swallowed, even though her mouth and throat had gone dead dry. “I told you not to touch me, Wolf.”
“I apologize.” The words were solemn, but his face said questions were being formed. He had intelligent eyes, despite the hours of childish behavior. She could practically hear the calculations happening in his head. In fact, the longer she looked at him, watching his features relax from the lines of laughter to a more natural grimness, she realized he’d been playing with her all along. Testing her. The wind rustled the leaves, bending the brim of his brown hat flatter toward the side of his head. Whatever he’d been after, he had his answer.
Or so he probably thought.
I’m not that simple, Wolf.
Lia shook her head at him and started walking again.
“It’s at least another day and a half on foot to the next safe house. In your condition, probably more.” He fell in step beside her. She spared a sideways glance at him. He had a nice profile, she noticed with a queasy feeling in her stomach. The light of the setting sun liked all the strong planes there, illuminating the shade of his irises to the color of morning fog. She sucked in a breath when those eyes turned her way, the intensity she’d felt earlier back in full force. The teasing jokester was gone, almost as if he’d never existed, which was something of a relief. She hated jokesters. “We walk for another hour, then we find a place to camp.”
The queasy feeling morphed into a spiked ball in her gut. Not again…“I’m fine walking in the dark.”
“You’re staying up out of pure stubbornness and you know it. If I thought you’d eaten in the past two days, maybe, but I don’t want to have to carry your skinny ass the next ten miles into town after you pass out. We’ll camp.”
“Please. I’ve gone way longer than this without food.” A lie, but he couldn’t know that.
“You don’t
have
to.” The bite of irritation in his voice wasn’t subtle.
Yes, I do.
She could have said so, but there wasn’t any point. He wouldn’t understand and his life wasn’t going to last much longer anyway. If he ran, his life would only end sooner. She looked at the horizon again, the orange and gold light starting to streak across the sky like a fire banking to its final embers.
“What’s your name again?” She wanted to be sure she remembered it, like she’d memorized the others who’d made the mistake of forcing their protection on her. Just like this one, they had no idea she already had a protector. The very worst kind.
“Why? I thought you didn’t like talking.”
“I don’t.” She shifted her pack and turned her gaze back to the tassels so he wouldn’t see her guilt. “But it’s better than hearing you whistle.”
That earned a chuckle from him. “You’re lucky I wasn’t singing. Mina says her eardrums still bleed at the memory.”
Mina…Mina…
The tassels stopped clipping her knees as Lia came to a slow stop. She’d heard that name before. In the safe houses. She remembered it because she’d thought it was pretty, and the guides, both male and female, had said it almost in reverence. The way Lia herself had once spoken about her mother. “Isn’t Mina the name of the Alpha’s sister?”
He turned his head to her, that measuring gaze on her face again. A short nod.
“The one who takes care of the orphans that make it through the Underground.”
Another nod, even shorter.
“But t-that’s just a coincidence, right? I mean…Mina’s a common enough name.”
“I guess it is.” Except he sounded like it wasn’t.
Lia swallowed, dread welling up from her gut, icy cold and seeping into her muscles. “What’s your name again?”
But she knew. He’d told her in the orchard, it just hadn’t registered.
“Tate. Jensen Tate. The Alpha’s my brother too.”
She closed her eyes. For a second, a terrifying, sickening second, she thought she might fall down right there. The air left her lungs, and her joints slid against each other as if they weren’t connected anymore.
The Alpha’s brother. One of his
generals,
as they called the Alpha’s siblings in the safe houses. One of the four men who’d led their adopted siblings to the hidden town of Resurrection, collecting strays along the way. There they’d built a place where shifters could be safe. Could live without fear of death just for being born monsters. Words escaped her unbidden, lost in a wheeze. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“I had to. I told you, this side of the Underground is being shut down.”
She forced her knees to tighten, her eyelids to rise. “You said you were sent to protect me.”
“I was.” He crossed his arms, suspicion drawing his brows together. “Something you want to tell me, Lia?”
Yes. Run. Run as fast as you can.
It was on the tip of her tongue, but the words were pointless. If he ran, he’d die. If he stayed, he’d die. Because of her.
No, not again.
She shook her head. “No, I just didn’t think the Alpha wasted his best men on insignificant strays like me, is all.” She twined the red scarf in her fingers. As saves went, it was almost believable.
He stared at her for a long moment before nodding and gesturing for them to continue down the road. He didn’t say anything else for a long while, which was fine with her. She walked mindlessly, her eyes on the ends of the scarf again.
Right,
tap…
Left,
tap…
The soft cadence didn’t soothe this time.
Her mind whirred, spinning with options and possibilities. With desperation. And when the sunlight faded completely, leaving them in complete shadow, she knew what she had to do. She just wasn’t sure it would be enough.
“I’ve been waiting for your call.”
A husky voice, nearly a purr, tingled its way through the sat-phone and into Tate’s ear. The corner of his eye twitched. Of all the strays he’d met and cared for, Betha Rhodes was by far the most sarcastic, difficult and outrageous. He hastened to add deadly to the list. What he didn’t like adding was the knowledge that somehow, the little mountain lion shifter—who he’d once almost mistaken for a doll left behind in the snow—had grown into a knife-wielding, death-dealing sex kitten.
“How many times have I told you not to use that tone with me, Betha? It creeps me out.” Like having your baby sister stick her tongue in your ear.
He watched Lia from his spot against a tree. They’d found a small clearing in the brambles, reasonably sheltered and not likely to be disturbed without a loud warning. Lia lay on her side atop her pallet, arms crossed, knees drawn up to her middle. She was twisted up in that giant scarf and still wore her scuffed-up tennis shoes, but her eyes were closed and if he didn’t know better, he’d think she was sleeping.