Shadowmated, p.6
Shadowmated, page 6
Then the twinge in my paw extended upward and grew into the same sort of ache that had preceded the loss of a tendril of tattoo a day and a half ago. My breathing, already ragged, cut off entirely as a shard of torment iced my bones.
Pain grew. Exploded. No, this wasn’t the same as what I’d experienced while reciting desert poetry to Hailey. This was worse. Much worse.
I stumbled and would have fallen if Orion’s shoulder hadn’t caught me. His steady presence kept me upright and moving forward, but he wasn’t much better off than I was. Even through our fur, I could feel his skin rippling with spasms that matched my own spasms. His panting was far faster than I would have expected from the pace of our run.
We were losing ink—I knew that without having to part fur and peer at skin to check on it. We were losing much more than a mere tendril, a reminder that the time before the prophesied deadline was drawing short.
We couldn’t afford to let pain slow us down, however, not with the Bellwethers still pursuing. So I righted myself and did what I’d been trained to do. I forced my mind to focus on something other than pain, to set my body at a distance so I could carry on.
The outpack’s new fragment of poetry provided just enough puzzle to keep my feet moving through ice and ache. “Once close as kin, secrets kept, blood not hearts entwine…”
That first line suggested that sister matebrand didn’t refer to a replacement connection waiting to form between myself and Orion. It sounded much more like a new matebrand marking the skin of a sister.
Not Celeste, though. Despite the current wall between us, our hearts were and had always been entwined.
And we weren’t related by blood either. I was certain of that since Celeste had discovered data about our parents at the same time she’d learned she was a genetic werewolf.
In the notes hidden within Julius’s study, she and I had been represented by our first names while three of our parents had been marked by scientific codes of letters and numbers. Our mothers were X3 and X7 and my father was Y1, which I took to mean that all three were werewolves stolen from their packs and forced to breed in captivity. Only Celeste’s father was granted the honor of a first and last name—Julius LeBlanc.
The important part was that none of the coded or uncoded names matched, meaning Celeste wasn’t my blood sister. Instead, we were just what I’d always assumed—sisters of the heart.
Now I wished I could go back and pore over that data in search of someone who might be related to me genetically. Lacking that opportunity, I ran through every possibility I could think of instead.
Vega was my only known blood relative, and she was clearly my aunt instead of my sister. I also knew that my mother and father had been killed by the Council soon after I was born.
Which left only one possibility—my sister was older than me, had been conceived by one or both of my parents before I was forced upon them in a Council lab.
Finding that older sister had to be my top priority. Because the final words the outpack had given us—“Compelled by”—suggested my blood sister needed help…
Not that I was in a space to help anyone other than myself at the moment. Even helping myself appeared less and less likely. Because while I was still lost in thought, my foot slipped into a yawning emptiness on my left. I scrabbled sideways, managing to regain my balance. But in the process, a pebble spun out into the darkness, one that fell so far I couldn’t hear it strike bottom.
The width of the crevasse that loomed darkly beside us was nearly as extreme as its depth. At least seventy feet—far too wide to leap across. Still, despite the dangerous dimensions of canyon, it presented an opportunity. Because the aroma wafting over from the other side lacked the peach-rot scent of the ground beneath us. If we could find a way over…
I assessed the situation, finding that Ari and Hailey had dropped back to run behind me while I wasn’t paying attention. Our pursuers were still within sight, albeit lagging yet further than when last I’d checked. Meanwhile, in the lead, Orion sped toward a jagged outcrop sticking straight up out of the earth at the edge of the crevasse. The rock was tremendous, obscuring our view of the crack behind it while also blocking our path forward.
Orion veered around the crag, but he didn’t turn right again to continue along the crevasse on the other side. Instead…he strode straight off the edge of the earth, not even trying to backpedal before dropping into darkness.
He hadn’t gathered his haunches and sprung. Had instead slowed slightly as if gauging his location then stepped forward as calmly as if empty air wasn’t beneath him.
He knew what he was doing. So I didn’t hesitate. I followed.
Above me, as I dropped, I could hear Ari and Hailey following our lead.
We fell. Air pushed fur into my eyes and it took me longer than it should have to realize Orion was shifting. Furless and two-legged, he continued plummeting as I joined him in humanity…
…Then he wasn’t beneath me any longer. He’d grabbed onto rock and swung himself into what I now realized was a ledge indenting the side of the vertical cliff face.
Seconds later, I was at the same level and cactus-scented hands were there to help me follow. Not that I needed Orion’s help. Instead, I vibrated with pleasure as a handhold—there was an actual wooden bar attached to the stone!—allowed me to swivel my body’s vertical momentum to the horizontal. Unlike a marathon run in fur form, this I’d trained for.
I wanted to laugh out loud as my gymnastics lessons finally paid off. But I maintained silence, knowing the Bellwethers would be above us at any moment. Knowing also that Ari and Hailey might need our help.
Hailey’s feet struck the ground beside mine just as I turned back toward the emptiness of the crevasse to assist her. Her grin looked only slightly brittle in the reflected moonlight as she whispered, “That was fun.”
It had been. But Ari wasn’t able to transform himself as speedily as the rest of us. The teenager was still half wolf when he reached the handhold. There was no way paws could cling to a wooden dowel…
Orion grabbed the teenager’s left front leg and I grabbed his right front leg and we pulled him in between us, fur transitioning to skin beneath our fingers while Orion’s naked proximity did funny things to my insides. The two of us took a long step backward at the exact same moment, dragging Ari along as he finished shifting. Then we were pressed up against the wall while the sounds of wolves approached above our heads.
Claws clicked across stone. Hoarse panting proved I wasn’t the only one who’d found the marathon exhausting. But they didn’t slow or stop. They must not have taken the time to follow our scent trail.
Which made sense. It was faster maintaining a sight line on your prey, a sight line the Bellwethers must have assumed they simply lost due to us picking up speed on the far side of the rocky outcrop.
Eventually, though, they’d use their noses, would discover they weren’t following our trail after all. And when that happened, we needed to be long gone.
To that end, I felt along the wall, expecting it to end within arm’s reach on my left side. That space had seemed dark and solid a moment earlier. Now, though, my fingers didn’t strike stone the way I’d expected them to. Instead, there was much more open air than I’d thought was present.
Air scented by fur. And when my fingers made contact, it wasn’t with rock but rather with warm skin that I knew didn’t belong to Ari, Hailey, or Orion. Not when all three of them were on my right side rather than my left side.
We weren’t alone on this rock ledge. No, we shared it with a dominant werewolf.
Chapter 10
Before I could react, Orion pushed past me. A slap of hand against skin broke the silence, but it didn’t sound like an assault. Especially not when paired with a murmur from Orion that was almost too quiet to carry the extra distance to my ears.
“I’m in your debt.”
“We’re even,” the male voice countered. “You kept my pack safe for almost a year then gave them back to me.”
Despite both men’s cordial tone, the air stank of alpha musk. And I realized who Orion must be speaking with—the alpha who I’d decided wasn’t likely to have any information about outpack poetry. Prince.
As a newcomer to the desert with the smallest clan anywhere along the outpack boundary, I’d half expected Prince to lose so much standing during his oil-rig imprisonment that he had to flee afterwards. But he and Orion had made an alliance before that point, each promising to protect the other’s pack if necessary. As a result, Prince’s clan had spent the months when they lacked an alpha enfolded into Orion’s hidden canyon homeplace. This secret entrance to Prince’s territory must have been an escape route shown to Orion in case his pack mates needed to be similarly evacuated.
In other words, the pair had each other’s back. Which meant I should have relaxed. Would have if I hadn’t been the one responsible for Prince getting trapped at the oil rig in the first place.
Since that had been my doing, I was prepared when a large male hand emerged from the darkness beside me, groping for my face. I wasn’t the one who blocked the offensive, however. Instead, Orion grabbed Prince’s wrist, his throaty growl descending into silence only because wolf claws once again plinked above our heads.
We all froze. Waited as what sounded like a single wolf sniffed back along the path in the opposite direction. Chief Bellwether must have realized we were no longer in front of them. Had sent back a scout to figure out where we’d gone.
So fast. I’d hoped for more time. Orion must have expected more time also or he wouldn’t have wasted our single spare moment talking to Prince. Now, even our breathing sounded too loud as we waited to be discovered.
On the other hand, without knowing about the wooden handhold, surely it would seem impossible for anyone to survive a fall from where we’d stepped into thin air. The wolf above us would nose around, puzzled. But surely he couldn’t find us…
I was wrong. The scout didn’t nose around. Just passed right by where we’d stepped off the edge.
Maybe we’d gotten unbearably lucky and the passage of so many feet had covered up our scent trail? Regardless, all five of us pressed our backs against the cool stone wall behind us, waiting until the scout passed out of earshot.
And as my thundering heart rate slowed, I was able to pay attention to the way Orion’s hand grasped Prince’s wrist inches from my eyeballs. Both of their arms boasted tattoos, although only Orion’s were magical in nature.
In addition, only Orion’s were intimately familiar to me…or at least, his tattoos should have been familiar since they mirrored my own. But only half of the inky remnants that had been present a few hours earlier now marked Orion’s left forearm. Meanwhile, skin that had recently been inked had gone bare while also appearing sunburned, just the way my skin now felt.
I lifted my own arm and winced when I saw the paucity of tattoos there. We’d lost so much so fast.
“My fault.” Orion’s breath in my ear was prickly as cactus thorns. “I asked the outpack for assistance with the special effects. Didn’t expect the cost to be so great.”
So he hadn’t merely rolled around in the desert sand and picked up static electricity before facing down Chief Bellwether. That was disappointing. Still, I couldn’t let Orion take all the blame when I shared just as much fault.
“I asked the outpack for help too,” I breathed back. “Didn’t give it what it wanted afterwards either.”
“While we’re apologizing,” Hailey murmured from beside my right shoulder, “I failed you. I didn’t have time to think through my question before I spoke it. It came out too vague to provide useful information.”
“And I’m sorry you had to haul me in here.” Ari sounded younger than sixteen, his words muffled as if he was speaking to his chest. “I should have been able to shift faster. Everyone else…”
“Never apologize for being who you are,” Orion interrupted, and I finally understood why he’d brought such an untried youth along on tonight’s mission. Ari was here for his own sake, to grow and learn, while Orion was being an alpha, solving two puzzles with a single foray.
Because what helped a single pack mate grow was good for the entire clan. That seemed especially true now as the exchange between Orion and Ari warmed all four of us.
Prince was the only one who remained chilly. “Let’s assume you all accept each other’s apologies,” he growled, less cordial than he’d been before being manhandled. He shook himself free of Orion’s grip, at which point it became clear that there was a rather innocuous length of cloth in the hand he’d initially extended toward me. “And now I intend to blindfold those of you who aren’t Orion’s pack mates, those of you who have no right to know the path we’ll be following. Unless, of course, we need to stand here and argue the point until your pursuers come back.”
Orion didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. Couldn’t complain when Hailey and I smelled like Vega the same way Ari smelled like Orion. We weren’t members of his clan and Prince had every right to decide what we saw in his territory.
So we let soft cloths cover our eyes, let Prince knot the blindfolds tight. Then I reached out to Orion for guidance, my fingers just barely grazing skin before he slid out from under my grip.
The scent of Prince’s surprise preceded his murmur. “You’d prefer I lead your mate?”
I wasn’t Orion’s mate. That was the whole point of his evasion. Still, my throat tightened. If I was going to walk an unknown path through total darkness, Orion was the one I wanted by my side.
And I could have kissed Hailey because she very ably deflected attention away from me. “Well, if I get a choice, I’d rather be led by someone more… More…”
“Don’t leave us hanging,” Prince murmured after a moment. “Finish your sentence.”
Only Hailey didn’t finish her sentence. And, from the scent filling the air, I got the distinct impression she hadn’t been entirely selfless in what was apparently a request to get her hands on the younger alpha.
It was unusual to hear someone who was usually glib and self-confident turn tongue-tied. But my friend had faced quite a night, the culmination of which had involved killing a man due to an alpha’s compulsion. If what Hailey needed right now was to enjoy a handsome stranger’s proximity, I could definitely help her make that happen.
Especially when I wanted the exact same thing.
So—“I’m sure Prince would be glad to guide Hailey,” I said into the darkness behind my blindfold. Then more tentatively, “Orion, I don’t think my hand on your arm is going to make a difference.”
Neither alpha argued the point further. Instead, the heat of Orion’s skin was there waiting when I reached toward him. My fingers curled around the hard lines of his forearm. And even though I shouldn’t have been able to feel embedded ink, I knew where bare skin ended and tattoos began.
“We’ll have to be silent,” Prince said, his voice slightly thicker than usual as if he was as affected by Hailey’s touch as I was by Orion’s. “Part of our path will pass close to where your pursuers are likely to gather.”
“Understood,” Orion rumbled. Then he was guiding me toward the area that had seemed like solid rock at first before opening out into air when I reached toward it. It was a doorway, I guessed, as we passed through then continued down a seemingly endless flight of stairs. Our careful footfalls were louder than they would have been in the open desert, which made me think rock walls pressed in around us. But I wasn’t paying all that much attention to where we were going. I was entirely focused on who I was going there with.
Because my world had narrowed to Orion’s corded muscles, to the steady beat of his pulse just barely tangible beneath my fingertips. He moved with a grace and confidence that was both comforting and exhilarating, that made me graceful by proxy even though I couldn’t see where I was placing each foot.
At one point, Orion had to guide me around a sharp corner. The rough stone wall scraped my naked shoulder…then Orion was twisting us both away from the barrier, was swinging me off my feet…
I should have felt out of control. I was out of control. It was pitch black behind my blindfold and Orion was manhandling me in such a manner I didn’t even have command over my own body.
Instead, I was elated. More alive than I’d ever felt before. Entirely human and also, somehow, entirely wolf.
Then my feet touched back down and we continued onward. Continued until dry air brushed my cheek, suggesting we were outside. Out of danger?
A murmur from ahead of us suggested that was likely the case. “If you’re feeling guilty about Blade, don’t be.” Prince’s words were as sweet as my proximity to Orion. “Some wolves shouldn’t be pack leaders. Your actions made the world a safer place.”
I was glad Prince was easing Hailey’s angst and also glad danger had passed. But I made no effort to remove my blindfold. There was no need. Not when Orion’s footsteps and mine were perfectly matched despite our height difference. We strode along as easily as if our mate bond still existed, allowing me to look out through his eyes. Or perhaps he was looking through mine and I was the one guiding a blindfolded partner. It was hard to tell the difference when we were so perfectly in sync.
Whatever the reason, when light peeked around the edge of the cloth, I felt not relief but rather disappointment. We stopped, Orion’s cactus-flower scent enfolding me as he carefully unknotted the blindfold from where it had become entangled in my hair. Then he retreated and I blinked against the headlights of a familiar van.
I wasn’t ready, but it was time to let the darkness go.
Chapter 11
“Told you,” Orion’s sister Maya groused as the four of us slipped into the van, leaving Prince behind in the glow of headlights.
“You were right,” Orion agreed easily, jerking his chin upward in a farewell to the other alpha while Maya’s mate drove us away along a narrow country road and Maya distributed clothes to those of us who had recently been wolves. Orion pulled a shirt over his head then continued speaking to his sister. “I’m glad you were close enough for me to page you via the pack bond. Thanks for contacting Prince also. And for the sand.”
