With a low growl in his throat, he fought for control.
He'd come for one thing and one thing only. To save his friends. But standing within reach of the woman he'd thought dead for a millennium, he found himself wanting more. And needing answers.
"Why,
you soulless bitch?
"
The question came out as a snarl. "Why sever the mating bond? Why make the world think you were gone? Why make
me
think you were gone?"
A shadow passed over her face, her mouth tightening as if in pain though he knew that to be a lie. The soulless felt no pain but the physical.
She swallowed visibly, her expression hardening to granite. "I severed the bond because I could. Once I embraced the dark spirit, I had no need of you, Feral. No desire to touch you or be touched by you again. And I still don't. The Ariana you knew no longer exists. And
I
have no interest in you."
Even though her words didn't surprise him, her cold dismissal turned like a blade in his gut, igniting his fury.
His hands fisted until the blood began to throb in his palms. "Why did Melisande reconnect the mating bond?"
She looked away. "A perverse bit of mischief. Go away, Kougar. There's nothing for you here."
As her gaze returned to his, brown contacts blocking any glimpse into her thoughts, he struggled to hold on to his thinning control. And felt it slipping through his fingers--fingers about to erupt in claws.
Ariana flushed hot, then cold, as she stared at Kougar, at her mate, at the man she'd loved for a thousand years.
She'd forgotten how tall he was, how broad his shoulders, how muscular his arms, as he stood before her now in a white-collared shirt and black pants, clothes torn and bloodied as if he'd been fighting. She'd forgotten how his presence filled a room, how it filled the entire castle, until she could hardly breathe through the need to be in his arms, to feel his body sliding against hers, sliding into hers.
He couldn't know.
Never had she struggled so hard to control her emotions, to hide what was in her heart and head. Never had doing so caused her so much pain as it did now as Kougar stared at her with eyes as pale as ice, filled not with tenderness but with pain and a growing fury. Not with love but hatred. A hatred she must fan.
Her stomach clenched and churned. What she was doing was cruel beyond measure. But she had no choice. Her cruelty just might keep Kougar alive.
Soulless, soulless, soulless
.
The chant pounded in her head as she focused on keeping her expression closed and hard even as emotions clawed at her in a wild battle--longing and fear. A storm of devastating love and aching grief that had lived within her for an eternity.
Inside, her heart trembled, on the verge of an emotional meltdown. She narrowed her eyes, dropping her lids to mere slits, trying to hide the sheen of disastrous tears even as she fought back the emotion, fought for control.
Goddess, she loved him. She'd never stopped loving him even when she'd hated herself for it, for the destruction that love had wrought. So many dead. So much grief.
But the danger wasn't past for the Ilinas.
And thanks to Mel, Kougar was in danger again, too. Damn, Melisande! She never should have reconnected the mating bond without Ariana's knowledge. Without her consent!
Mel knew Ariana wouldn't approve, which was why she'd gone behind her back. Melisande might not care if Kougar, or any Feral, lived or died. But Ariana did. Too much. And he would die if that poison started flowing again. The only thing saving him was the miserable, mangled state of their mating bond.
And she
must
keep it that way.
Kougar took a threatening step toward her. Within the flaying hatred in his eyes she saw flashes of a pain that nearly drove her to her knees.
"Why are you here, Kougar? Why now if you've known I was alive for over twenty years?"
"You're going to free two of my friends from a Daemon spirit trap."
Oh, sweet goddess
. She couldn't help him.
Struggling for control, she yanked the icy mask tighter over her features. "No. I'm not. I don't give a damn about your Ferals." Which was partly true. Most of his men had been as opposed to their mating as her maidens had been. Only Horse and the Wind had ever been friendly to her. But whoever the two were who were lost, they were Kougar's men. If she could, she would certainly save them. For him.
But she couldn't help him. And she couldn't keep up this pretense much longer! She had to get him to leave.
Lifting her chin, she gave him her haughtiest, coldest look. "Go, Kougar, and don't come back. You're not welcome here."
In a flash, his anger ignited. She'd pushed him too far.
A chill of fear skipped down her spine as his eyes turned the pale gold of a cougar's, as fangs dropped from his mouth. One moment he was standing still, the next he lunged, grabbing her around the throat with a wickedly clawed hand. Fiery pain exploded as his claws pierced the sides of her neck, as warm blood ran down into her scrubs. As he slammed her back against the wall.
Too late, she fought him, her instincts off, her gut-deep belief he'd never really hurt her causing her to move too slowly when it suddenly became obvious he would.
"You
bitch.
" The words were a growl in his throat, his furious face mere inches from her own as his hot breath wafted over her chilling flesh.
She began to tremble from a combination of shock and the knowledge that without her unique Ilina weapons, she was virtually helpless against his far superior strength. If he chose to rip out her throat, she couldn't stop him.
That alone wouldn't kill her. Ilinas, like all immortals, healed almost any wound within minutes. Only if he took her heart would she die. But if she died, so too would her maidens. Her life force would dissipate, spreading to the other Ilinas. And with it, the poison she'd protected them against for a thousand years.
As badly as she wanted to protect Kougar, her first responsibility must be to her maidens.
"Kougar." Her voice gurgled with the blood in her ruptured windpipe.
He flinched, his gaze dropping to her neck, to where the blood ran in rivulets, soaking her top. Almost as quickly as he'd attacked, his claws and fangs retracted, but he didn't pull away. His large hand remained closed around her throat as her pulse beat against his palm.
His gaze locked on hers and held as her wounds healed, as the pain in her throat died a quick death. And still he watched her, pale eyes probing, digging too deep. She tried to look away and couldn't, her parched heart drinking in the sight of the man she'd longed for, whom she'd missed, and loved, for a thousand years.
In so many ways, he hadn't changed. His hair was much shorter than he'd worn it in those days, his beard trimmed to encompass only his mouth and chin. But he'd always exuded a powerful pull on her physically, nearly overwhelming in its intensity, and that hadn't changed. For a thousand years, she'd blamed herself for giving in to her feelings for him. But standing within the heat of his body, enveloped by his raw, masculine scent, snared by the power of his eyes, she remembered all over again how impossible he'd been to resist.
But she must resist him now. His life absolutely depended on it.
He released her neck but continued to crowd her, forcing her to meet his glittering diamond-hard gaze. "You're going into that spirit trap, Ariana. You're going to get them out."
She swallowed the words of regret. The soulless regretted nothing, and he must believe her soulless. "No. I'm not."
He growled low in his throat, the sound of an animal, his hand tightening around her throat. "Seventeen Ferals died in one of those traps six hundred years ago."
Seventeen.
Her mind reeled.
"Horse died. You could have saved him. You could have saved them all."
Sweet goddess, Horse had been one of his oldest and closest friends. What must it have done to him to have lost so many in a single blow?
"Now the Ferals number only nine, or will once the new fox comes forth. The Mage have acquired dark power and are coming too damn close to freeing the Daemons.
We cannot lose two more.
"
Her heart ached, her fingers clenching at her sides as she fought to hide the sorrow fisting in her chest and present a callous front.
She swallowed, clearing the blood and emotion from her throat, layering her voice with ice. "I couldn't have helped them, Kougar, even if I'd known. Even if I'd wanted to. And I can't help the ones in there now. You're mistaken if you believe I can breach a spirit trap."
Only by turning to mist could she possibly get into the trap and out again. And if she did, her maidens would die.
She could see Kougar's anger mounting. She could feel the pulse of it battering her through the mating bond. "The Ilina queens possess that ability, Ariana. You know it as well as I."
"Queens of old, perhaps, but not I." She needed to get away from him. Even if she hadn't seen him in centuries, she knew this man. No one had ever lived who was more tenacious.
With his friends in trouble, there was no way he'd simply turn his back on her and leave. No way. He'd hound her and threaten her, demanding she help him until he finally broke through her facade and discovered the truth.
That she still loved him. That she'd always loved him.
A truth that would, quite literally, kill him.
"I'm not the woman you knew, Kougar," Ariana snapped. Even through the contacts, her eyes stabbed at him. She'd never been one to give up or give in.
Kougar crowded her against the wall. Though their bodies didn't quite touch, her body heat permeated his clothing, sinking into his skin. His hands fisted, slick with her blood as his gaze fell again to the red smear that had soaked into the neck of her shirt. Never had he expected to actually touch her, let alone hurt her. Ilinas were notoriously quick to turn to mist when threatened. Yet she hadn't. And despite his fury, drawing her blood had shaken him.
"You ask the impossible, Kougar." She slid her hands between their bodies, grasping her wrists as she murmured something beneath her breath.
Too late, he recognized the chant he himself used to travel back and forth to the Crystal Realm.
An instant later, she was gone, and he stood alone in the Grand Corridor.
"Ariana!" His angry shout hit the walls, echoing back on him over and over. He couldn't follow her. And his awareness of her through the mating bond told him that she was no longer in the Crystal Realm.
Four days he'd waited to catch her.
Four fucking days!
Fury detonated within him, and he slammed his fist into the nearest wall, shattering no fewer than half a dozen bones in his hand. With a roar of pain and frustration, he held the hand still for the long seconds it took to heal, as the emotion swirled, then drained away.
She'd claimed she couldn't help him. Which wasn't all that surprising since he could hardly expect the soulless to possess compassion.
But nothing about that confrontation had gone as expected.
When he'd attacked her, she hadn't turned to mist. He'd been almost as surprised as she had that his claws had found purchase in her neck. And when she left just now, instead of simply turning to mist and disappearing as any other Ilina would do, she'd murmured a spell of transport, like a non-Ilina. As if she couldn't turn to mist.
And an Ilina queen who couldn't turn to mist certainly couldn't breach the spirit trap. If she'd been irrevocably injured or altered in some way, in
that
way, his only chance to save Hawke and Tighe was gone.
No fucking way.
"Melisande!" His voice echoed through the crystal hall, over and over. "Brielle!"
He waited, his muscles rigid, his breath tight in his chest. As he opened his mouth to yell again, Melisande appeared, hovering before him. A slip of angry female.
"Why isn't she turning to mist?" he demanded. "Why does she need a transport spell?"
Cold eyes flinched, but Melisande's expression remained defiant. "She's not your concern."
"Like hell she isn't! She's the only one who can save two of my warriors. Why did you reconnect the mating bond, Melisande?
What's the matter with her?
"
The woman's chin lifted. "Find another way to free your men, Kougar. You'll get no help from us."
His fangs and claws erupted, and he lunged at her, reaching for her throat as he had Ariana's even though she was already mist and he knew his claws would go right through her. For his efforts, she zapped him with her Ilina energy, lighting a fiery pain in every molecule of his body.
He struggled against the agony and, with a growl of pure fury, threw himself backward, out of that energy-induced inferno, slamming against the wall behind him. As he straightened, Melisande stared at him, her aura reddish orange, her sapphire eyes flashing with an anger to match his own.
"Don't
ever
touch me, Feral," she hissed between bared teeth. "If I didn't think it would hurt her more,
I'd kill you.
"
He growled between his fangs, drawing on his full size and power to intimidate. "Then tell me what I want to know. Why isn't Ariana turning to mist?"
"Because she can't."
"Why not?"
"The dark spirit . . . changed her."
Melisande's words almost made sense, but the blond Ilina had always been a lousy liar, and she was lying now.
"Tell me the truth!"
Instead, she disappeared, leaving him once more alone in the hall. It was all he could do not to slam his fist into the wall a second time. It wasn't over. It was
not
over.
So long as Hawke and Tighe lived, he would never give up.
Yet his hands were all but tied. He couldn't stay in the Crystal Realm more than a day before he started weakening and had to return to Earth, but once he left, he couldn't return until Ariana did. And unless he missed his guess, she'd stay away as long as she could now that she knew he'd come after her.
Which meant he had to find his answers immediately. Before he was forced to leave.
As he turned to begin the hunt for an Ilina who would tell him what he needed to know, something on the floor caught his eye. A flash of white--a card in protective plastic splattered with a single drop of blood. He bent down and picked it up. Turning it over, he stilled. Ariana's pensive face stared back at him from a photo ID that read
ANNA SMITH, R.N.
A nurse. Not just pretending. Was she living among the humans, then? If she truly couldn't turn to mist, then of course she was. No corporeal creature could live long in the Crystal Realm. Not even an Ilina.
He stared at the card, then tapped it against his hand, a savage smile lifting one corner of his mouth.
The hunt was on.
Deep below Feral House, Wulfe watched as Esmeria, the most gifted of the Therian healers, touched the forehead of the human male lying unconscious in one of the three now-occupied cells in the Ferals' prison block. Long ago, all Therians had been shape-shifters, before the race had mortgaged most of its power to defeat the High Daemon Satanan and his horde. Now, only one each of nine of the ancient shifter lines still retained the power of his animal and the ability to shift. The nine known as the Feral Warriors.
"It's time." Esmeria glanced at him as she rose, running fingers through her short, dark hair. "I'm amazed these humans have been able to last five days without food or water. That energy Olivia fed them must have been powerful stuff."
The humans had survived the battle from hell in Harpers Ferry five days ago, only to face an uncertain fate when the Ferals had realized they couldn't steal their memories. And goddess knew, they'd seen too much--shape-shifting Ferals, three Daemons that hadn't existed in the world in millennia, and the gruesome deaths of three of their friends.
During the battle, Jag's new mate, Olivia, had fed them all a potent life energy, the humans included. The Ferals never killed needlessly, but neither did they hesitate to take the lives of humans who in any way threatened the anonymity and safety of the immortal races. Humans could not be allowed to carry tales of shape-shifters into the human communities. Too many odd occurrences might start to make sense to the more open-minded, and a witch hunt of colossal proportions could too easily ensue. The mortals, with their firepower, could end up destroying the only ones who could save them from Satanan's hell if the Mage succeeded in freeing him and his Daemon horde as the idiots seemed determined to do.
No, humans whose minds couldn't be cleared were a danger the Ferals could not tolerate. And yet, after so much carnage on that field of battle, none of them had had the stomach to end three innocent lives. So they'd brought the trio back to Feral House in hopes that the energy they'd consumed would wear off and make them once more susceptible to mind-clouding. They'd kept them unconscious as long as they could.
Esmeria stepped out of the cage. "All three are in need of liquids and some real sustenance, though nothing critical. Just feed them the next time they wake up. Since the unnatural energy is starting to wear off, you may be able to clear their minds now." The woman shrugged. "Or it might take another few days. It's impossible to know."
When Esmeria had gone, Wulfe shucked off his pants and shifted into his wolf. He curled up on the cool stone floor, where he could watch two of the captives and hear all three. The humans had been put in separate cages divided by thick stone walls. He lay in shadow, out of sight, in case any of them awoke suddenly.
Nearly an hour later, he heard footsteps on the stairs, his wolf's hearing identifying the one approaching by both scent and sound. His chief, Lyon.
Wulfe shifted back into his human form but didn't bother to pull his pants on. He wasn't a Feral who could keep his clothes on when he shifted and would just have to take them off again when he returned to wolf--the far more comfortable form for lying on the floor of the prison block.
Lyon appeared from the long passageway that led from the mansion's basement. When he reached him, Lyon extended his arm in greeting, as the Ferals always did. Touch was an important need to the Therians, particularly the Ferals, with their ties to the animals within them.
"Any change?" Lyon asked.
"They're still out. Any word from Kougar?"
The chief of the Ferals shook his head, a low growl rumbling from his throat. "I
hate
not being able to do anything for Tighe and Hawke. I trust Kougar to do what he can, but there's no way to know if he'll succeed.
We can't lose them.
"
Lyon stared into one of the cages. "The sooner we get these three stripped of their memories and out of here, the better. I don't like that they're here. And I sure as hell hope you can get into the male's memories if it turns out he's blind, as you suspect."
Minds were clouded and memories stripped by staring into the eyes. A blind person offered no easy entry. Possibly, no entry at all.
Wulfe shrugged. "I'll do what I can." Tighe would do better. He was the best at clouding human minds. But Tighe wasn't here and, goddess help them, might never be again.
The soft rustle of clothes on stone told him one of the humans was stirring, and he shoved back the grief that tried to crowd him at the thought of his friends lost in that spirit trap.
The blonde was the one stirring. He'd taken watch enough times over the past days to be well acquainted with which human lay in which cell. The blind male, who'd been ignored by the Daemons even though he'd been staked with the others, was in the cell out of his direct line of sight. The other two were females--the one with the lip ring who looked to be still in her teens, and the blonde who, he was certain, was older than the other two by at least eight to ten years. She was thirty, or close to it, her limbs long, her face pretty but for the three-inch gash one of the Daemons had opened in her cheek.
Wulfe had healed the cut enough to stop the bleeding, but she was going to have a hell of a scar. And if anyone knew a thing or two about scars, it was he. He rubbed his jaw, feeling the soft brush of day-old whiskers. Whiskers that did little to hide his own disfigurement--the hideous marks that had long ago transformed him from a male women admired into one from whom they ran.
At the sound of a soft feminine groan, he and Lyon both stiffened. "You'd better talk to her, Roar," he said quietly, reaching for the jeans he'd tossed against the wall. "She doesn't need any more terrorizing."
Lyon grunted. "I don't have much luck with terrified humans . . . or females who think they're human." Wulfe knew Lyon referred to the night he'd plucked their new Radiant, Kara, out of her human world with all the finesse of a bear in a flower garden. She'd adjusted beautifully, but apparently that had been one hell of a night. For both of them.
He and Lyon eyed one another, each looking to dodge this particular task, each certain the prison block was about to erupt in screams and/or tears.
"We need Kara," Wulfe muttered, pulling on his pants.
Lyon nodded, relief flooding his eyes before he turned back to the passage that led into the house. "I'll get her."
"Use your cell phone."
"It won't take but a few minutes."
"Coward."
"Not denying it." With a quick, feral grin, Lyon disappeared into the passage, leaving Wulfe alone with the waking human female.
Dammit.
Safe in the shadows, Wulfe watched as the woman struggled to sit up, working her way back to full consciousness. Her blond hair was straight and mussed, her casual clothes wrinkled, but not visibly damaged. Confusion clouded soft gray eyes beneath knitted brows as she looked around. Lifting a hand, she touched the wound on her face and winced, then jerked and slowly turned to stone.
Remembering.
Her jaw dropped, her eyes at once flaring and tightening with pain and a horror few humans had experienced in the last five thousand years, and none had lived to tell about.
Here it comes.
Wulfe tensed, prepared for a flood of tears and a few good screams, even before he showed his ugly face.
But no tears came. Instead, she shot unsteadily to her feet, grabbing the bars of her cage. "Xavier?" Her voice was hoarse with lack of use and raw with fear. "Xavier!"
The fear wasn't for herself, he realized. Not directly. He noted the modest diamond solitaire on the third finger of her left hand. Was the male her intended mate, then?