“Wh-what?”
“You know something. Stop lying and trust me. Tell me what’s going on.”
Even her breath stopped. He risked a glance over his shoulder, taking in the huge dark pools her pupils had become. And the rigid line of her mouth and jaw. She glared back at him.
Damn contrary woman is going to get us killed.
But even as he thought it, the Wolf at the heart of him growled in approval. She was fighting past the fear. Wolves valued strength and he was no different. He reached back to keep her behind him. “Then we walk.”
To her credit, she didn’t fight him. Her feet shuffled as they moved, slower now, alongside the road.
They didn’t see the first piece until they’d managed another hundred feet or so. The dirty string of flesh was more splatter than substance, giving them only a reason to pause. Soon enough, there was more. So much more.
Hunks of meat littered the ground, blood draining beneath them into muddy black puddles. Not as a trail, but as refuse. It also spattered the trees, the violence visible in every thick drop wending its way down the bark. Entrails drooped from tree to tree, like gruesome garlands. If he didn’t know better, he’d think that whatever kind of creature it was had simply exploded.
But he did know better.
“Stay here.” He moved away from Lia, leaving her where the pavement met the earth to stoop closer to the desecrated creature. As expected, smooth edges on all sides of the pieces. No claw marks, as Betha said.
Whatever this had been, it was large. Indentations and crushed impressions on the meat reminded him of the boot print he’d found in the mud the night before. No discernible tread, but extreme pressure. This wasn’t a killing. It was eradication. Hatred given violent, physical form. As if chopping the creature hadn’t been enough. He’d had to flatten it. Grind it beneath his boot.
Tate glanced up at a scruff of sound and found Lia staring up at the hanging entrails, her face devoid of any expression whatsoever. Not horror, not terror. Skin so waxen he could see her blood vessels on her cheeks from five feet away.
“Lia, come back over here.” A soft command. Shock had to be behind that mask. Scaring her more wouldn’t help. “Over here, behind me.”
Where it’s safe.
Except he wasn’t sure of that, either. The only marks in the dirt were the ones they had made. No boots, not even anything from the victim. Either the killer was an expert at removing his tracks…or he’d dumped this all here. For them.
Darting a look at the trees, Tate realized too late that the blood all slashed downward, not up as he’d first thought.
Trap
. “Lia!”
She turned her head to him, blinking slowly, then faster, as if she were waking up. One step, that was all she took, but it all turned into a blur. He leaped for her but he was too late, too fucking late. Something dark crashed down from the branches above, swinging into her and knocking her to the ground.
The silence was what burned him like acid. Two steps felt like two miles as he crossed them to shove the massive deer head off her, the sharpened antlers leaving holes where they’d bored into the dirt. She hadn’t even screamed. She just lay there beneath the huge stag head, one heavy enough to have broken her bones on impact. As if she’d disappeared into a part of her mind where none of this was happening to her. As if she’d been there before.
Small mercy, the stag had drained most of his blood wherever he’d been hanging, leaving only an imprint stain on the belly of her T-shirt. Even after the animal was gone, she lay still, barely breathing. Until he reached out to check her for injuries.
She rolled out of his reach, scrambling to steer clear of the bloody mud and refuse with only mild success. “Don’t touch me.” The mumble was nearly slurred, but she found her feet, backpedaling onto the road. “Don’t touch me!”
“I’m not touching you,” he snapped, clasping his hands into fists to keep them at his side. She needed touching. Needed holding, to make sure she was all right. To center her. Shit, to center
him
. Why was she able to slip into and out of a near-catatonic state so fucking fast?
“Don’t,” she said again, her dazed eyes meeting his for a half second, then skittering away, revealing a slice over her cheekbone that went up into her hairline. Another inch up and over and that sharpened antler could have gone through her eye.
His eyes shifted, fangs dropping and claws tearing through his fingertips too fast to hold back.
She kept her face downcast, turning the wound away from him. Did she understand the sight of it was more than he could handle? If she did, she would have come to him, let him hold her and calm the ragged edge of his rage with the physical reassurance that she was fine.
Instead, with an outstretched, shaking hand against him, she whispered, “Just don’t.”
Against
him. An elemental rush of rage flared. He didn’t care that he had no rights to expect anything from her. That she’d been keeping him at arm’s length from the beginning. It was all he could do not to shake an acceptance out of her. He would if she didn’t have blood across her chest. On her hands as she curled her knees up under her chin.
It’s not her blood. You’re tasting her fear. You’re her protector. That’s all it is. Rein it in, Tate. Rein it the fuck back in.
Unhinging his jaw to speak like a civilized person was almost more than he could do. “I won’t.”
For now.
He looked up at the tree branches, but there was nothing to be found. No strings, no trap, not even a scent to follow. As if they’d been crossing paths with a ghost. He turned his gaze at her again, at the streak of blood on her cheek and the carnage all around. “Maybe demon is a better word.”
Lia’s stare fixed on him again while she pulled the open sides of her threadbare flannel shirt closed over her chest. Over blood that should never have been there. In his heart, the Wolf raged, trapped and impotent against a quarry he couldn’t even fucking find.
“Can you run?” He barely recognized his own voice.
She nodded, tightening the straps on her pack almost as an afterthought. He stood, knowing she must see the Wolf in his eyes by the gulp she swallowed.
“Good, get going.”
When she didn’t stir, he stood and circled her, measuring her fear, simultaneously checking the trees for movement of any kind. So much as a leaf flutter and he’d be on it. But there was nothing.
He set his sights back on Lia, her rigid stance, the grimness to her face.
You, I’ll deal with soon enough. Once you’re safe.
First, he was leaving this asshole in the dust. “Move!” he barked, and for once, she didn’t need telling again.
Lia reluctantly pulled the shirt down over her body. She hadn’t chosen it. Would never have chosen something like this. As soon as they’d gotten deep enough into the town, Tate had all but dragged her into the nearest shop with women’s clothing in the window and maneuvered her into a dressing room. Minutes later, a shirt was tossed over the curtain along with a gruff order to put it on. She could have been difficult and told him she’d wear one of her other shirts, but nothing was clean. And she didn’t think pushing Tate’s buttons right now was the smartest move she could make.
Which meant she was stuck with the shirt. The color, an emerald that made her eyes almost glow, would draw way too much attention. The fabric wasn’t any better. Some kind of ribbed cotton, it hugged her body gently. The short sleeves capped her shoulders while the round neckline scooped over her breasts like a cartoon barmaid’s blouse. The swells of her breasts beneath it almost looked generous, cupped by the fabric with a ribbon underneath. Either the shirt was a liar or the mirror was.
She smirked into the glass, the novelty of seeing herself full-length wearing off quickly. Brushing at her uneven, overgrown bangs, she wished she had a pair of scissors to clear it out of her eyes again. She hadn’t realized how long her hair had really gotten, the braid end well past her butt. Usually she brushed it and braided it to keep it out of the way, never giving it any kind of attention. The jeans were old but not too shabby. Asher allowed her into towns they passed to wash her things and fill up on supplies, but only for a short amount of time. Always with the knowledge that he was watching and she would never know from where.
Thinking of Asher invariably brought her gaze to the exposed wound at her neck. Always red, always hot, it had never fully healed. Not in over two years. It felt as fresh as the day she’d awakened in that chair, feverish and agonized. She stepped closer to the mirror, stretching her neck a little to see it better. Teeth marks scored a warped circle where her neck met her shoulder. A constant reminder of everything that had been stolen from her—her rights, her life, her choices.
Laurel…
No, in that she had to be honest. Laurel, she’d left behind. Had risked everything to give her a chance.
She
was the one who’d failed.
She turned away and lifted the scarf from the hook, wrapping it carefully over the stinging skin before shrugging her flannel overshirt onto her shoulders. At least the bite never got any worse, right?
Of course, that didn’t mean other situations never did. If any further proof were needed, one only had to take a look at the seething Wolf waiting for her to come out of the dressing room.
Once they’d reached the outer edges of the town, he’d allowed her to walk instead of run. She’d needed the break by then, not that he’d given her much of one. Question after question had come at her.
Are you all right?
Why the hell did you move? I told you to stay by the goddamn road.
What do you know about this killer?
There were more, but they all seemed like variations of the last one.
What do you know?
It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to translate that one into
Why won’t you trust me?
She hadn’t answered a single one.
If she valued either of their lives, she wasn’t going to. She’d been stupid out there. Stupid to give in to the pull he had on her, stupid to have moved from the spot he’d put her in. But while he’d knelt, inspecting the kill, she’d seen the gleam of something in the tree branches. In her scared mind, she’d thought it was the edge of a black blade. The blade of the axe Asher liked to wear on his back. What she’d have done if Asher had jumped down, she didn’t know. Probably what she’d done when the antlers had come her way.
Gone away. Been completely useless to Tate, but she hadn’t been thinking. She’d simply reacted, tried to put herself between Asher and his prey so Tate wouldn’t know how close he was to his own death. She touched the scratch fading on her cheek briefly before shaking herself and dragging on her pack. Hard to say how successful that plan had been.
She stepped out, reining in her surprise that Tate wasn’t immediately scooping her under his wing to escort her out of the building. Instead, he waited nearby, his back to the wall, those eyes of his searching the room like a sentinel. Before the curtain was completely open, he’d locked onto her, but he didn’t move a muscle. His gaze flickered a startling Wolf yellow, a muscle ticking in his cheek with his still unebbed anger.
Yeah, not very successful at all.
“Come on, we still need to get across town.”
She followed, prepared to be as obedient as possible, just to expedite things. If they hurried, they’d get through to the highway again in just a few hours. Dread tightened her belly as she checked the sun again, allowing herself to revel for a second extra in the warm rays. If only they could strengthen her for tonight, when she’d have to face Asher. Then again…“Would you mind if we found something to eat again while we’re here?”
Better to have the nutrients to heal already absorbed or she’d be right back where she’d been this morning.
Tate shot her a disgruntled look.
Lia raised her chin. She couldn’t back down on this. “I’m hungry.”
His gaze flickered, the anger suddenly interrupted by something she almost couldn’t define. Almost. But she decided she had to be wrong. Why would admitting she was hungry give him any sense of satisfaction? In the end, it didn’t really matter. His mask of calm came down and the Tate she could almost feel beneath her skin disappeared. “Fine.”
As meals went, she could do worse than pork chops with hearty cut vegetables, potatoes dripping with gravy and a bowl of slaw on the side. Throw in the Ma-and-Pop diner atmosphere of aged booths with pale blue leatherette and Formica tables and a bottomless glass of fruit punch, and she was
this
close to cheery. It certainly made the penetrating glare from the other side of the table much easier to ignore.
She was about halfway through her food when the silence apparently got to be too much for him.
“Tell me something, Sunshine,” he began, putting on what she was starting to think of as his “endearing big brother” face. The one that said he was patient and understanding, even while being overbearing.
This should be good.
“You won’t tell me what you’re up to—” He paused, as if waiting for her interjection.
I’m not that easy to bait, Mister-General-Sir.
“Then why don’t you tell me where you’ve been?”
“What, you mean which states?”
“I mean anything. Where were you born? Where have you traveled? Ever find anything interesting on the road? Better yet, you said you had a family once. What were they like?”
Lia stared at him while she chewed, wondering what on earth he might be getting at. “They were…nice.”
“Nice? That’s it?”
She shrugged. “What else is there to say? They were good people. Hard workers, great parents. I last saw them during the raid that killed them. They didn’t deserve what happened to them.” No one deserved what the squads did. Slipping into your house in the dead of night before dragging you from your bed with guns to your face while they demanded answers to questions you couldn’t answer. And then they fired. “What about yours?”
“Mine?” He blinked, looking honestly surprised.
Hmm, asking the questions was a hell of a lot more fun than being under the microscope herself. “Your family, what was that like, growing up with the Alpha? Did you always know what he was?”
His chuckle had more than a healthy amount of derision in it. He seemed to weigh answering her or not, but apparently he decided to go with a quid pro quo approach and started talking. “Pale’s no saint or anything, honey, so get that out of your head. Angels don’t exactly sing when the guy walks into a room. He’s just a man—a good man, don’t get me wrong, but being an Alpha didn’t exactly do him any favors.”
“So he was born that way?”
He nodded, almost shrugging. “There’s a scent to him. A dominance no amount of ass-kicking seems to dent.”
“You kicked
his
ass?”
Her lack of faith in his skills at least brought the real grin back to his face. “We sure as shit gave it a good try.”
“I take it that’s a no, then?”
“Yeah, it’s a no. We didn’t always know what to call him, but we recognized he was different from the beginning. The Wolf in him is closer to the surface than anyone else I know. He has to be stronger to keep it in control. It makes him just a little faster, a little stronger than everyone else. More focused. Other than that, he’s just like you and me. A pain in the ass from sunup ’til sundown. He was as a kid, he still is. I expect him to stay that way until he’s old and decrepit.”
“I was actually a pretty easygoing kid,” she volunteered, her belly pleasantly filled, something in her warmed by his slowly relaxing posture. If she used her imagination, this could almost be like two people just sharing a meal together. Way more comfortable than two people circling one another like suspicious animals.
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Sorry, not buying that. You’ve got stubborn down to your bones. That doesn’t come from a few years of shit happening. I doubt you could pull off happy-go-lucky even back in diapers.”
She couldn’t help but giggle a little. He wasn’t wrong. “My mother used to tell me I was going to go unconscious eventually because I’d hold my breath if I didn’t get what I wanted.”
He lifted his coffee cup for a quick gulp. “That I can believe.”
“You would.” She dipped her bread in the gravy. “So, tell me, how do a bunch of orphans become the last hope for shifter kind?”
“Well, it’s pretty simple. Our mother—”
That got her attention off her food. “You knew your mother?”
“Not the one you’re thinking of, no. That woman dropped me in an orphanage in South Dakota when I was two days old. I guess I have to be happy knowing she thought she was doing the right thing for me, but it’s hard to have an opinion on someone you never met.” He shrugged, dismissing the topic with a casualness that was as honest as it was sad.
She couldn’t imagine not knowing the woman who had given her life, but she knew it wasn’t like that for most of their kind. The way shifters had devolved after the loss of their packs and their cultures, rape and violence, abandonment and remorselessness had become the norm. To people like Tate and his mother, life wasn’t always given. Sometimes it was taken…and sometimes it was forced into being.
“My
mother
was a woman named Moira. She didn’t run an orphanage at first, she just took in children as her own. Shifter, human, she didn’t care. We were all just kids needing a mother and she was determined to give that to us.” His face softened, the hardest edges fading as his eyes took on a faraway glaze. “At first it was just the four of us—Pale, me, Mina and Ty. Aaron we found when I was about five, but the place didn’t really start taking in other kids until I was around ten. Then they were everywhere, but it made her so damn happy, we didn’t mind. I think it made her feel like she was in a pack or something.
“She loved to talk about the old ways. About how shifters were supposed to take care of each other, how we’d find mates and raise pups and all that shit no one does anymore. It was like, no matter what had happened to her, she still had all these dreams for what the world could be again, if someone was willing to try to make it happen. After she died, Pale decided to be that person. We decided to help him.”
“So it’s really real then? Resurrection?”
He nodded, solemn and still. “It’s home.”
Home. She’d had one once, a place of safety that made your heart warm just to see. To remember. “My home was in Iowa,” she whispered, thinking back. “At 218 Humboldt Lane. Can you believe I still remember the address? I haven’t seen it in years but I can still see the numbers on the side of the house. Horton wasn’t a much bigger town than this one. Everyone knew everyone else on our block. We had a neighborhood grandmother, and the kids had run of the entire street, especially in the summer. Most of all, I loved our house. It had brick all around the bottom and Mom’s roses were twined up the porch supports. And it was blue. The only blue house on the block. I used to love waking up to smell the roses peeking in the windows. Or Mom’s fresh bread…”
The corner of his mouth lifted and his eyes unfocused a little more. “My mother used to make fresh bread, too. She’d let the loaves cool on the window sill and we’d bet each other to try to steal one without her noticing.”
She could just imagine how tantalizing that smell must have been to a trio of young boys. Walking stomachs, all of them. “How’d that go for you?”
“Almost lost a couple of knuckles to her wooden spoon,” he replied with a laugh that sounded almost as rusted as her own. “She was a freakin’ sharpshooter with that thing. I got cracked in the back of the head with it once—” The present came crashing back to him, it seemed, because his stare fixed on her pointedly.
“You learn to be a good pebble thrower in the facility,” she replied, not in the least bit sorry about the rock she’d thrown. “Doesn’t look like sticks or stones have hurt you very much.”
“Funny.” The hot edge of his anger seemed averted, at least, despite the sarcasm. He wrapped his big hands around his coffee mug, looking down into the dark liquid. “So, you were in one of those kid camps?”
She almost had a bite of chop to her lips, her hand locking in place as she realized what she’d admitted. She pushed the meat into her mouth, searching him for some kind of reaction, but his expression was as calm as a pond in winter. “That what you all call them on the outside?”
His nod was slight. “Those of us who know about them. Didn’t think anyone came out of them alive.”
They don’t.
Lia put her fork down, her appetite waning. How many kids had she seen taken from their dorms, never to come back? How often had they come from the test rooms, wishing they’d never returned? Too many, and most of them young. Too young to tempt a scientist with the promise of fertility to study. They’d been used for chemical warfare development. For anything that required spare parts or basic nervous systems. They’d been little more than lab rats, plentiful and expendable. “It’s not common, no.”