Here, suburbia unfolded around us, still sleepy but less silent than the area we’d started out in. The occasional passing car made us bristle with caution. Then the wail of a not-so-distant siren sent us diving behind a trash can, crouching in its stinky shadows until the sound faded away in the direction from which we’d come.

  Could the Council pull strings and summon local law enforcement? I wasn’t certain, and I wasn’t willing to make any assumptions. Still, we couldn’t stay there forever. After what felt like an eternity, I shook off my jitters and met Orion’s gaze, trying to decide whether it was worth shifting so we could make a plan.

  “...me in, we can speak via the mate bond.”

  His words in my head felt like a caress, but not one I’d solicited. I twitched and instinct had me dropping onto my tailbone so I could scratch my ear with one hind leg, as if Orion’s silent voice was a flea I could scare away.

  His chuckle came along the same route as the words that followed it. “You don’t have to scratch me out. Just close the door and your mind is your own. Try it.”

  Close the door? We were outside, striding down a sidewalk side by side again. There were no doors in sight that weren’t already closed against the dark.

  Then a visual appeared in my mind’s eye of a corridor with Orion at one end and me at the other. He had a door knob in his hand, and he demonstrated pushing the barrier nearly shut to separate us before letting it swing back open again.

  If he could do that, then so could I. I reached for the knob...and fell on my face there in the real world. Fur was all that saved me from a scraped chin, well that plus Orion’s nose easing me back upright. His eyes, so dark until now, glinted again with starlight. He thought I was funny.

  “Most of us learn this as pups speaking to our alpha,” he reassured me, the rumble of his voice somehow even deeper and more soothing when it came from inside my own head. “Takes time to get the hang of it. Maybe try again when you’re not in motion.”

  I didn’t trust the pleasure spinning through me, and I wasn’t a pup who needed coddling either. So I set my paws to pavement again, heading in the same direction we’d been going. Half of my attention stayed on the physical world while the rest focused on walking down the corridor visible only inside my mind.

  It was ungainly moving human feet at one tempo and wolf feet at another. Not much harder than swinging a sword with my left hand, though, while wielding a knife with the right. Soon, I managed to grab the imaginary door knob, slamming the barrier shut between me and Orion with only a minor hitch to my lupine stride.

  Instantly, the night chilled around me. The quiet inside my head turned deafening. I’d spent my entire life with no mate bond, so why did I feel so alone now?

  I had only a moment to ponder whether Julius would have heard about my desertion already. To wonder what he might say to Celeste, how she’d respond…

  Then a tap on the imaginary door reminded me of Orion’s presence. He was both beside me and, if I allowed, inside me.

  I turned the knob and let him in.

  “You’re worried about Prince,” I sent down the mate bond as our paws left pavement and hit desert sand hours later. “But I only took the alpha from that pack. Later, in a different pack, I did much worse...”

  I didn’t have to say the words of the ensuing explanation. That was the benefit of our newfound connection. Yes, if I wasn’t careful, thoughts I’d intended to keep to myself flowed toward Orion, which would have heated my cheeks if I’d been in human form. But the leakiness of the mate bond was also a help.

  Because I wouldn’t have been able to admit the full awfulness of what I’d been a part of if I’d had to wrangle each re-understood portion of the past into words. I could, however, open the door and let that new knowledge flow out.

  And Orion encouraged the flow as I shared how, two months ago, it had taken several of us to dismantle the pack where blood magic had expanded past the leader. At the time, I’d been impressed by the drones and real-time satellite footage the Council had used for aerial reconnaissance. I’d willingly joined in the attack force, armed with tranquilizer darts used to subdue without harming. Then, after the main battle was over, I’d watched a team of bloodhounds scour the countryside to bring in stragglers.

  No one was left behind to spread the rot.

  Now I shivered despite heat enveloping my tired muscles. New information made the past twist behind me, and I suddenly wasn’t so sure whether the pack we targeted had actually been rotten. Even if it had been, what had happened to those men, women, and children after they were knocked unconscious and turned over to the Council? By traveling back toward Orion’s home base, was I bringing a similar fate down upon Maya and Donovan and Ari and Sue now?

  “They’re on alert,” Orion reminded me. “And we’re not returning to pack central.”

  Instead, we were aiming for a bunker he’d set up in outpack territory a long run from the assisted-living facility and a short run from his hidden canyon home. The single underground room was stockpiled with food, water, clothing, and ways to contact the outside world without being intruded upon. It was far enough from his pack so we wouldn’t be leading the Council directly to his doorstep if they found a way to follow us, yet also close enough so he could speak to clan mates via the pack bond after we arrived.

  It was where Orion went to be alone. That knowledge drifted down the mate bond toward me along with the sensation of stifled loneliness only a new and introverted alpha could feel when surrounded every moment by members of his pack. The combined yearning to get away and to be fully part of his own community vibrated between us like an open wound.

  That was why he’d escaped to the desert the night we’d met. He’d been eluding his responsibilities when he found something entirely different. Something that felt like a desert flower uncurling after a rare, soaking rain.

  Orion’s vision of me was nothing like how I saw myself. In his eyes, I was sassy, outgoing, and independent. Each of his perceived weaknesses was countered by what he saw as my strengths.

  In his head, we fit together like puzzle pieces. I swallowed despite the dryness of my throat, the warmth I’d been feeling at having my own confession reciprocated abruptly turning cool. We barely knew each other. If I became part of a wolf’s puzzle, would I lose the family I currently called my own?

  That wasn’t the issue now. With a head shake, I brought us back around to the more pressing problem. “You don’t need to be part of this,” I sent down the mate bond, using words instead of letting the fullness of my thoughts flow between us. “It’s my job to infiltrate. I’ll just be infiltrating the Council instead of a wolf pack this time.”

  Because there was no question that was what I’d do next. If I’d been involved in improper takedowns the way it seemed I might have been, then I needed to fix my mistake. Free the innocent prisoners and make sure nothing like that full-pack wipeout ever happened again.

  Orion didn’t bother answering me in words. Instead, I saw Prince’s face in his memory, saw fragments of the sandstorm during which they’d met. Orion had made a promise to the younger alpha while they sheltered together away from the elements and he intended to keep it. That was why he was joining me now.

  Well, that, and the other. The connection between us. The one Orion cherished and that I wasn’t ready to trust.

  “Ideas for tomorrow?” I asked, ignoring the second part of his sharing.

  And I was glad he transitioned over to words this time as he countered my question with a question. “Have you decided if you want to trust Gabi?”

  That was a tough one. I’d always thought Gabi had my back. I’d considered her an honorary part of my family. Plus—“Gabi is our most obvious route in. She’s the one who should know why I was sent after you in the first place.”

  That assumed, of course, that my coworker’s change of heart hadn’t been a lie. That her plea for me to contact her wasn’t just an elaborate ruse intended to reel me back into the fold.

  “Julius gives the orders,” Orion observed, retreading old ground we’d hashed out once already. He thought we should head for my home, pretending to trust my father while actually using Julius’s connections to figure out what was going on at a deeper level.

  It made sense. But I couldn’t quite talk myself into walking in that familiar front door with a fake smile on my lips. Couldn’t imagine introducing Orion to Celeste while planning to stab her father in the back, albeit metaphorically.

  I’d braced myself against the possibility that Gabi might betray me, but Celeste and Julius were the only family I’d ever known.

  “We don’t have to decide now.” Orion’s footsteps were slowing. Then he shifted upward into humanity so he could lift what looked like a boulder but actually turned out to be a rock-styled trapdoor.

  Beneath lay a ladder leading down into a small dark space that was mostly bed. We’d reached the bunker, which meant I could stop forcing my body beyond its limits. Could admit that my legs had gone rubbery and my throat sore from lack of moisture an hour ago. That I’d kept on running through sheer strength of will and was now ready to collapse.

  I was even more ready to table the conundrum that had kept my brain moving as fast as my legs for the entire journey. Had my entire life been a lie? Who could I trust? How would I have to rewrite my past once I determined the answers to those questions?

  “It’s okay to rest.” Orion’s voice in my head was like an arm around my waist, holding me upright. “Some seeds rest an entire season before sprouting. Leave your problems until tomorrow. Sleep.”

  It was an excuse, but I let exhaustion draw me toward the soft bed waiting at the bottom of the metal ladder rather than making a decision that night.

  Chapter 13

  When I woke, I was curled around a warmth like I’d never known before. Fur tickled my chin, but I didn’t want to put space between us. Not when the heady scent of cactus flowers enfolded me, coming from both the wolf in my arms and the clothes Orion had lent me before we fell asleep.

  Instead, I nuzzled deeper into his fur, letting pure contentment wash over me. For the first time ever, I felt truly safe and cared for. Like I was exactly where I belonged.

  And, if I was honest, that’s why I tabled the issue of breaking the mate bond yet again. Not because being able to speak silently with Orion was an asset we could use in whatever lay ahead. Not because the tattoos, I was pretty sure, had managed to transfer energy from me to him and wake him up after the syringe had slipped out of my fingers back in the medical facility. Instead, I just wanted to keep drifting in this sea of relaxation, knowing I was entirely safe.

  I did crack my eyes open for a moment, though, long enough to find out that the bunker was pitch dark and completely silent save for the synchronous sounds of our breathing. Nothing intruded to remind me of the outside world and the decisions to be made that day. Instead, time trickled past while I slipped in and out of slumber. Time...and memories of the single incident when I’d felt almost this warm.

  Two little girls huddled in a single bed to slow our heart rates while thunder crashed outside our bedroom window. “Are my feet too cold?” Celeste had whispered.

  “Of course not,” I answered, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. Her toes were like blocks of ice as they insinuated themselves underneath my calves.

  But it felt so right to snuggle up close together. Inside me, my wolf was soothed in a way she’d never been soothed since entering this big, drafty house and becoming part of a new human family. Even Celeste’s feet warmed before too long.

  We were both sound asleep when frigid air replaced the quilt we’d tucked around ourselves. “What are you doing?” Julius demanded, his shadowy form looming above us.

  “It’s...” Celeste started, but he didn’t give her time to answer.

  “You’re not wolf pups. You’re human children. Get back in your own bed.”

  The next day, the stacked bunks had been replaced by twin cots, each in their own room. Doors closed at night, not to be reopened until breakfast. And Julius sat me down and explained the difference between wolves and humans. Told me how much he loved me and also opened up about his past in a way he never had before.

  “I was raised in a werewolf pack, did you know that?” he asked me.

  Julius never shared stories about his own childhood. So I’d shaken my head with wide eyes, hoping silence would tempt him to elaborate.

  “I couldn’t shift because my mother was only half-werewolf,” he said after a long moment. He wasn’t looking at me but instead at a past that, then, had seemed so distant it might as well have involved dinosaurs. “So they cast me out.”

  “Just like me.” My voice was a squeak.

  “Wolves,” he confirmed, “can’t love like humans.”

  The flaw in his argument was so obvious that even a five-year-old could see it. “But I’m a wolf. And I do love you and Celi.”

  “You’re not a wolf though. I’ve lifted myself up above the animals who raised me and so can you. You only have DNA to overcome, after all, not a mixture of nature and nurture.”

  I must have made a confused sound because Julius laughed shortly and his voice had turned warmer than I’d ever heard it when he elaborated. “It’s simple, really. You’re my daughter and nothing will ever change that.”

  I might not have understood DNA and nature and nurture at the time, but I thoroughly understood the word daughter. Celeste was Julius’s daughter. Being his daughter felt like the greatest gift in the world.

  The next time it stormed, my bed had felt empty and cold without Celeste in it. But I’d hugged Julius’s words to my chest and fallen back asleep anyway.

  Because I had a family now. That had been enough to make it worthwhile to act human at all costs.

  Back in the bunker, that reminder forced me to unfold myself from around Orion’s heat. Feeling around in the dark for the satellite phone he’d told me was safe to use, I did my best not to shiver and to instead stay focused on mundanities. The phone’s signal was bounced through various relays, so as long as I kept my call short it couldn’t be used to track our location.

  Then warmth returned in the form of Orion’s voice. “Sleep well?”

  His words were scratchy but entirely human even though he’d been furry when I slid away from him a moment earlier. He must have felt my absence the same way I felt his. Now, a rustle suggested he was pulling on clothes.

  I nodded, only realizing after I did so that he couldn’t see me...and that it didn’t matter. Orion had felt my nod through the mate bond.

  He hadn’t spoken down it, though, so I voiced my question aloud also. “What does it mean to be matebranded?”

  Because I was pretty sure most mated werewolves didn’t end up with tattoos like ours. I’d spent enough time in packs to see that.

  This time, I was the one who felt rather than saw Orion’s reaction. He’d tensed up. Turned careful the same way I had when I came close to those peccaries two nights ago.

  “It’s old magic,” he rumbled after a long moment, no elaboration traveling down the mate bond. Or maybe there would have been elaboration, but he’d nudged the door mostly shut between us. “There’s a lot to explain,” he continued. “About the phone—you won’t get reception down here.”

  His answer felt like an evasion...and also like a valid reminder that the communication device clutched in my hand was important. My family had expected me to come home yesterday. Whatever was going on between Orion and myself could be teased apart later.

  So I left the cocoon of warmth and darkness and I picked my way up the ladder one-handed. Pushing the trapdoor open, I stepped into the light.

  “Elspeth! Daddy was so worried about you!”

  This wasn’t my sister’s regular planning period, but one of her colleagues had taken my call and brought Celeste to the teacher’s lounge when I said it was an emergency. I hadn’t explained why I was using the school’s landline instead of my sister’s cell and her co-worker hadn’t asked.

  Celeste noticed and asked, but she didn’t give me time to answer. Instead, she tossed out half a dozen additional questions before ending with the one she actually wanted a reply to: “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” I answered when there was space to get a word in edgewise. “My cell phone is toast, though. And this job looks like it’s going to take longer than anticipated.”

  “Because the perp got away. Gabi called and warned Daddy. She also said that you’re...mated?”

  Usually, our sisterhood trumped everything. But sometimes, Celeste was confused by my lupine side. Her tone of voice suggested now was one of those times.

  “Gabi told Julius that?” I asked rather than trying to explain the way my tattoo was stroking itself against my skin softly and seductively. Like a cat twining itself around my arm, begging for scratches. I knew Orion had come up the ladder behind me even before a steaming mug of something that smelled delicious entered my field of vision from above and behind.

  As I accepted the hot drink, I hoped for one split second that Orion would settle down beside me. Our thighs would touch and the warmth that had suffused me inside the bunker would be rekindled. Proximity, I was finding, was even more powerful from someone I was mate bonded to than from a sister.

  Orion must not have felt the same yearning though. Because he stepped away in the direction of the sun, blocking the glare that had forced me to squint while losing track, for one short moment, of Celeste’s words.

  She’d been rambling on about what she’d overheard and what she’d guessed, half of which made no sense. That, plus the distraction of Orion’s presence, explained my lack of focus. Now, though…

  “Wait,” I stopped her, caught by her most recent assertion. “Julius told Gabi to let Orion go?”

 

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