A Love Untamed (23 page)

A scent tickled his far more sensitive bear's nose. A sweet scent. Human? Glancing back at the mom and cub, who'd moved off slightly, but not nearly far enough, yet, he decided to follow the scent for a ways, see where it led. Maybe he'd gotten lucky at last even if he had lost his favorite leather jacket.

And that's when he saw her. A woman of perhaps thirty, she was walking across the grassy embankment below, a shotgun slung over one shoulder, her stride long and confident. Tall and slender, her auburn hair curling in a ponytail down her back, she was striking to watch even dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.

Sabine?

As if possessing a sixth sense, she turned and saw him, then turned away and continued, as if the sight of a grizzly bothered her not at all. And maybe it didn't.

But he'd be damned if he was going to lose her now. He started after her, lumbering down the hillside, for a moment forgetting just exactly what he looked like.

She turned, suddenly, raising her shotgun.

Oh hell. He pulled up fast.

Wait, Sabine. I just want to talk to you.

Her head jerked back, her eyes widening, then narrowing as she took aim and fired.

Pain exploded in his shoulder.
What the fuck did you do that for?
Maybe she wasn't Sabine. Maybe she was human and thought he was some kind of devil.

“Go away!” she shouted at him, and shot him again, hitting him in the neck.

He swayed, shifting back to human without meaning to. Christ, he was still bleeding. Not stopping. Why wasn't he healing? His vision began to narrow.

“You're a Feral Warrior!” she called.

Okay, so she was Sabine. And she'd still attacked him. He didn't bother to answer her. Slowly, he lifted his hand to his neck and felt the stickiness.

Gun aimed at his heart, she stalked toward him, her eyes flashing green fire. A beauty. Two beauties. Now four.

His world began to tilt. Why had she shot him when she knew what he was?

But then he realized he knew. Sabine could see into a man's soul. Apparently she'd done just that and found his to be as black as his hair. But he knew that. He'd been afraid he was the worst of the grizzly line. Now she'd just confirmed it.

He hadn't even realized he'd gone down until he felt the mud sinking into his wounded shoulder.

Another face swam in his vision. Blond, pale, lovely. A visage long departed from this world. Had she come to welcome him to the afterlife?

“I tried, Hildy. I tried.” Then his vision went black.

“M
el, behind you!”

Almost too late, Melisande turned and attacked the Mage. Fox could swear she hadn't even heard his shout. As he lunged at the nearest rider, knocking his sword arm up with one hand, cutting it off with his other, he kept an eye on Melisande. She was shaken by Castin, he could see it in her eyes, in everything about her.

Fox grabbed the bloody stump of his opponent, pulled him off his horse, and beheaded him. The wind, already furious, kicked up another notch, blowing with stinging force, clouds blotting out the sun as Mother Nature fumed over the deaths of her Mage.

A shiver stole over him.
To your right!
He almost listened, though he knew better, almost saw the Mage swinging at him from the left too late. Fox barely missed being skewered by the sword, though he wound up taking a deep cut across his left biceps. Grabbing his assailant's wrist, he yanked him close and cut off his head, too. Usually, the Therians avoided killing the Mage whenever possible, if only because the Earth took their deaths so poorly. But not today.

He began to shiver in earnest, the false intuitions bombarding him until he could barely hear himself think.
To the right! Left! Behind you!

Fox shut down his mind, focusing on his senses, his warrior's instincts. Only those. He killed another horseman and turned to find Castin battling two foot soldiers, Melisande fighting another.

As the battle raged, Mage deaths piling up, the weather turning increasingly foul. The remaining foot soldiers rushed them, two running straight for Melisande with orders, no doubt, to kill the Ilina. His heart in his throat, Fox called on the magic to shift . . . and nothing happened.

His scalp prickled with disbelief. The darkness within his animal spirit apparently thought he'd be more effective in his animal and didn't want him to reach it. So Fox lunged for them in human form, taking on both of them until Melisande dispatched the sentinel she'd been fighting and took on one of his.

Side by side, they fought. Blood flew, heads rolled, Mage died, and the ground shook from the fury of the Earth. Black clouds blotted out all but the faintest trace of sunlight until they fought in near dark.

And, finally, the battle against the Mage, the first battle, was over.

It was the battle to come, the one with Castin, that Fox dreaded. Because, without a doubt, Castin had just saved their asses. And now Fox was going to have to kill the bastard. Or, worse, stand by and let Melisande do it.

M
elisande whirled on Castin with a snarl, her bloody sword tight in her hand.

The whoreson stared at her with confusion. “Melisande, wait. Talk to me.”

“Talk to you?”
she cried. “You traitorous, lying bastard. What in the
hell
do you think I have to say to you?”

Castin gaped at her. “You think I had something to do with that night.”

“You betrayed me in the most heinous of ways.”

“No. Never.” He lifted his free hand in a motion of surrender even as his right hand remained firmly clamped around the hilt of his sword. “I had nothing to do with what happened that night, Ceraph. I don't even
know
what happened. As my chieftain knocked you out, I was tackled to the ground and trussed up before I could fight my way free.”

“Liar!” Melisande advanced on him slowly, the screams ringing in her head, the need to kill him,
to end this,
a writhing, living thing breathing fire down her neck. All around her, the bodies lay, bloody, lifeless.

So many dead.

Castin took a step back for every one she took forward. “I was sold to wolverine slavers, Melisande, without explanation, without cause. It was five years before I escaped and returned to my clan lands, but my clan was gone. Rumor had it they'd been destroyed, slaughtered by another clan.”

Melisande snarled. “They were slaughtered by
me.
For what they'd done to me. And for killing my sisters.”

Castin blanched. “Those fucking blackguards. They must have used me to lure you, then disposed of me before I could try to stop whatever they had planned.”

He was speaking. Some part of her brain was hearing him. But mostly she heard only the screams in her head. Enough talk.

She lifted her sword and ran at him, attacking him. Castin lifted his own blade and parried her blows. Time ceased to exist. Hatred burned until all she could see was light and red and blood.

“Mel.
Angel.
”

She was trapped in a berserker's haze, needing blood, needing to kill,
needing to end this.

A second attacker joined the fray and she struck at him, too, her blade finally sinking through flesh.

Fox's stunned, pained eyes penetrated the haze. A red stripe bloomed across his chest.
Blood.
It was Fox she'd struck, Fox's flesh her sword had pierced.
And he wasn't healing.

She stumbled back, staring with him at horror. “No. Not you, too. Not you, too.” The screams rose and rose as if they wanted to rip out her eardrums and crush her mind. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I never meant for anyone to die. My fault, my fault.”

She covered her ears with hands coated in the blood of the dead.
So much blood.

“Goddess help me,
it was all my fault.
”

F
ox lunged for her, grimacing at the pain searing his chest. She'd sliced him from shoulder to shoulder, but her blade hadn't gone deep, thank the goddess, or he'd be a dead man. He grabbed the blade from her hand before she skewered him again, then gathered her against him as she sank to the pavement.

While she'd pressed Castin, the landscape around them had made another of its abrupt changes, the labyrinth propelling the three of them into the next stop along the gauntlet. They stood in the middle of a deserted street, now, in the middle of a deserted town that looked like it hadn't been inhabited since the 1960s. An old rusted-out station wagon sat parked against one curb, an equally decrepit truck against another. The street was lined with shops—a diner, a druggist's, a tailor's—but the windows were all broken, the proprietors long gone.

“Easy, pet.” He cradled her against him, sinking to the ground with her where he could keep an eye on Castin. The male had turned pale at her accusations and appeared honestly shaken. In his arms, Melisande quaked, her skin like ice where it touched his own.

“My fault,” she whispered over and over. “My fault.”

“Mel.” He kissed her forehead, stroking her head, her shoulder, her back. “It's okay, pet. It's over. You're safe.”

But she shook her head, looking up slowly to meet his gaze, her eyes twin pools of agony. “I killed them. Ninety-six sisters.
I killed them.
”

“No, luv. The Mage killed them. They poisoned all of you.”

Tears began to run down her cheeks in a hot, bitter torrent. “I was the one who sought out the Mage potion master. My hatred for shifters was so great that I couldn't bear the thought of Ariana marrying one. I was certain she would never be happy with Kougar. I told myself I was protecting her, that I was protecting all of us, when I sought a potion that would keep their mating bond from fully forming.”

Fox's gut cramped, the rest of the story so clear, now. “He took advantage of you.”

“Yes. He was not only the potions master but the poison master. The potion he sold me was designed to wipe out my race. The Mage didn't want an Ilina-Feral alliance any more than I did. They died”—she choked on a sob—“ because of me. Two-thirds of my race dead because of me
. I killed them.
”

Fox held her close, her sobs tearing at his heart. And he thought he finally understood why she'd been so desperate to return to that unfeeling state in which she'd lived for so long. It wasn't the trauma of the cheetah attack she couldn't live with. It was her guilt over the deaths of her sisters.

“Shh, luv. It wasn't your fault.” He stroked her hair, kissed her temple. “It wasn't your fault. You never meant for them to die. You were just doing, as you've always done, what you thought best.”

Slowly, her tears subsided. With a shuddering breath, she wiped the moisture from her face, then looked at his chest, her mouth tightening. “I did that to you.”

“It's shallow. And healing.” He cupped her cheek. “It was an accident, Mel. You must learn how to forgive yourself.”

She looked at him with deep, shattered eyes. “You forgive me?”

Fox smiled at her tenderly. “Of course.” He kissed her softly, then set her on her feet and rose beside her.

Melisande turned to Castin, her arms crossed protectively. Never had she looked so fragile. “You really didn't know what your chieftain meant to do to us?”

Castin shook his head, misery in his eyes. “I would never have allowed you to be hurt, Melisande. I cared for you far too much.”

Fox's animal growled with displeasure, Fox barely managing to keep from doing the same.

“I always wondered what became of you,” Castin continued. “I had nightmares for centuries, you calling out for help and me unable to answer. But I never again crossed paths with an Ilina, and I had no way to find out if you were all right.” His eyes narrowed with pain. “What they did to you . . . it must have been terrible.”

“Yes.”

Fox gripped Melisande's shoulders, pulling her back against his chest. “That's a story for another day. Right now we need to find the key, and Kara, and get out of here.”

Castin nodded, his expression slowly returning to its usual warrior stillness. Beneath Fox's hands, he felt Melisande straighten. She stepped away from him, taking a deep breath. And when she turned to him, the strength was back in her eyes.

“Better?” he asked.

For a moment, she said nothing. But she nodded briefly, telling him she was still hurting, of course she was. But she was too strong and too stubborn to let it keep her down for long.

“Let's have a look around.” But as he reached for Melisande's hand, the shifting magic tore over him without warning and he shifted into his fox.
Feck.
He tried to shift back, could feel his animal fighting to help him, and failed.

“Did you do that on purpose?” Melisande asked.

No
. His gut told him they were going the wrong way. Which made no sense considering they weren't going either way. But in his animal form, he'd gotten neither shivers nor goose bumps and couldn't tell if the intuition was true or false. A moment later, another intuition hit him.
Look up.
He did and saw nothing
. Sniff the sidewalk to your right. Lift your left hind leg. Lie down and go to sleep.

The intuitions were flooding his head until he could barely think through them.
Stop it!
he shouted. His fox let out a pained whimper.

“Fox?”

He felt Melisande's hand in his fur, felt his animal leap with pleasure at the warmth of her healing gift. And all of a sudden he could shift again. In a spray of colored lights, he was once more standing on two feet.

She gazed at him worriedly. “What happened?”

But before he could answer her, he heard a shout.

Fox's head jerked up at the sound of the familiar voice.
“Kara.”