Storm echo, p.17
Storm Echo, page 17
But as of this moment, she was out of time.
She’d sensed the faint hum of a car coming closer half a minute ago, now heard the engine shut off.
The alpha of DarkRiver was here.
Chapter 27
I don’t know how Lucas Hunter does it. Then again, he’s a cat. They find the strangest things funny.
—Valentin Nikolaev, alpha of StoneWater, to Silver Mercant, director of EmNet
IVAN HAD KEPT his breathing even by sheer force of will until Soleil reappeared in the doorway through which she’d exited the kitchen. He’d known she was safe, was still inside the house, but he wanted her close to him when she spoke to Lucas Hunter.
Then there she was, dressed once again in borrowed clothing, her hair tumbling over her shoulders and her eyes coming directly to him. Ocelot eyes, her humanity still only a surface skin, the cat at the forefront.
Rising to his feet, he said, “Are you all right?” It was an inane question and Ivan didn’t ask such questions. Except he just had, his need to look after her a burn in his blood.
“I’m perfect.” Her gaze went to the four children at the counter, her face soft.
The twins had remained in their human forms, while the two ocelot cubs had stayed in cub form. All, however, were gathered together, huddled around a plate of cookies as well as two glasses of water—and two shallow bowls of the same.
Scratching one cub’s head, Tamsyn had said, “Your tummies won’t have room for milk and cookies since I happen to know that some small people in this kitchen already had dessert tonight.”
The twins had grinned, while the ocelot cubs had butted Tamsyn’s hand for more scratches and pets.
Ivan had watched the scene with a quiet fascination; he’d never thought about the small things that would be different in a changeling household. Never thought that when a child was in animal form, they’d prefer to drink from a bowl instead of a glass. Of course a loving home would have accommodations for either form.
To a changeling, they were both parts of the whole. It was only the Psy who so often thought in strictly limited terms, as if the world could be squared off into neat boxes. But that structured world was also the one in which Ivan knew how to exist, how to function—rules had been a necessary lifeline for a boy who’d been half-feral by the time he came to Ena Mercant’s attention.
“I don’t know what to do,” he’d said to her as she walked him to his first lesson with a tutor, the corridor around them bright and clean in the sunshine pouring through the large windows to one side. “Mama’s man said I was stupid.”
Ena’s silvery blue eyes on him. “Yet he is the one who ended up dead in the morgue from a drug overdose.” She’d paused, held his gaze. “You are a very clever child, Ivan. Never allow the words of others to steal your worth—always remember that it is the weak and cowardly who attempt to devalue others. The strong uplift without fear, share their knowledge to help others grow.”
Ivan had thought then of how Grandmother had taught him to use a knife and fork, how she’d told him that he didn’t have to hoard food, that he could always get more from the kitchen, and how she’d instructed him to put his dirty clothes in the laundry chute.
It had been so hard for him to let go of those precious possessions. He’d only really believed they’d come back to him when he found them ironed and placed on his bed for him to put away. The same day, he’d gone back for a second serving of breakfast and no one had ordered him to stop. Cousin Canto, who’d told Ivan he’d just “escaped” the infirmary after an operation, had even winked and put extra dried fruits on top for him—because he knew they were Ivan’s favorite.
Ivan had realized he could trust Grandmother to tell the truth. “I can’t be clever if I don’t know what to do,” he’d pointed out, trying to make her see. “I only know how to be the other Ivan.” The one from his life before Grandmother, before a kitchen stocked with food, and a bedroom full of sunlight where no one touched his things.
A long pause before Grandmother’s face became hard in a way that he’d already learned wasn’t about him. “Of course,” she’d murmured that day. “Very well. I shall teach you how to behave in specific situations, give you the tools to handle them as they arise—they will give you structure as you adapt to your new life.”
Ivan had long ago adapted—but he still preferred structure. It was why he’d never quite fit into Silver’s pack, though the bears had welcomed him as a relative of their beloved Silver Mercant. He saw the bears’ generosity and warmth of heart, understood the incalculable value of such beings—but he’d rather shoot himself in both feet than live in the midst of that joyous chaos.
Soleil was a changeling, too, her world as primal.
Ivan would’ve never fit into her world, either.
Hand fisting on his thigh and a film of ice over his chest, he watched Soleil with quiet focus as she went to stroke the cubs’ fur and steal a cookie from the plate, the children giggling at her attempts at stealth.
Just when he thought she’d forgotten him, she glanced over, a look in her eye that he couldn’t read … but then he felt the swipe of a cat’s claws in his mind. Not painful. Just a … flexing.
A reminder that he was marked.
Ivan stared at her, wondering if he’d tipped over the edge without noticing and was now living in a delusion. Even if he was, he didn’t care. So long as she saw him, saw the ghost who was Ivan Mercant.
Everything Ivan had done since Grandmother brought him home, everything he’d become, he’d done within the boundaries of his family. Not because they’d asked him to—but because those ties were the only solid things in his life. If he wasn’t a Mercant, he was nothing.
Until Soleil, he’d never wanted anything for himself.
He knew that the visceral depth of his need was a sign of increasing volatility. It was hot, unstable. And when Soleil walked toward him, it got hotter, even less stable.
Dangerous, so dangerous.
He was conscious of Nathan moving away to talk to Tamsyn, could still hear the children’s chatter, but it was all background noise. He should’ve stepped back, created space between them. Yet when she lifted a hand, he lowered his head a fraction … and she pushed his hair back from his forehead.
Thief. Thief. Thief.
Ivan ignored the whispers of his conscience. He wanted to close his eyes, wanted to savor what might be the last physical contact he ever had with her … but there was no more time. Moving with an assassin’s grace as the alpha of DarkRiver entered the room, Ivan tried to put Soleil behind him. A small growl before she poked him in the side with her claws, then shifted to stand at his side.
“Luc.” Tamsyn Ryder kissed Lucas on the cheek as she passed him with all four children. “Quick, my cublets. It’s cartoon time.” Her twins scampered on ahead with whoops of joy, one ocelot cub right on their heels, while she carried the smaller cub in her arms. Taking the children out of what might become a danger zone.
An older woman followed Lucas into the room. Her skin was the dark of night and her body small with fine bones, her face a symphony of lines that told the story of a life lived.
A deep tug inside Ivan, a wild sense of knowing. Family, she was family, though he’d never before met her in all his life. She turned at the same moment, saw him, and a look, bright and dazzling, lit up her eyes, her hand rising to her mouth.
Fighting his protective compulsion toward her because it was clear she was safe here, he turned his attention to the biggest predator in the room.
Lucas, however, had another target. Moving to Soleil, he gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger, the contact gentle but firm. “So,” the alpha said, “you came looking for your own.”
“Actually,” Soleil said with a wild courage that made Ivan ready himself to defend her. “I came to kill you. Vengeance for having destroyed the innocent survivors of my pack.” She made a face. “Quite ignoring the fact that I’m a healer and don’t kill people. Idiot.”
Lucas’s grin was unexpected, his cat prowling in his eyes. “You’ll be a welcome part of my pack.”
Soleil’s cat bared its teeth in suspicion. “Just like that?”
“Oh, we’ll run background on you, make sure you’re not some kind of shadow operative, but I gave my word to the survivors of SkyElm that they were welcome in DarkRiver—and I don’t go back on my word.” When his fingers tightened slightly on her jaw, she had to fight from shooting a glare at Ivan.
She could all but feel the tension in his skin, his need to protect her. But breaking eye contact with Lucas Hunter at this moment would be a very, very bad idea. The predator looking out of his eyes would view it as a weakness, or an indication that she was lying.
“The choice is yours,” Lucas said, a growl in his voice that wasn’t a warning but a simple sign of his nature. “But if you stay, you do so under my authority, as a member of my pack. You want to take another path, you need to do it away from this territory—I’ll give you safe passage out of it, and if you want to come back to visit, you’ll have to follow the same rules as any other predatory changeling.”
He was being kind. It might not seem that way to a person who wasn’t changeling, but Soleil was and she understood. Lucas didn’t have to give her a choice at all—with how she’d sneaked into his territory, he would’ve been well within his rights to simply kick her out and tell her to stay out.
But to sign her life away under the control of another alpha? It made her freeze, shudder. She knew alphas weren’t all cut from the same cloth, but the only alphas she’d ever known had rejected her at every turn. Even to the extent of leaving her in a hospital not knowing herself, her body and mind in pieces.
When it came down to it, however, there was no choice here. The way the cubs had run to her, the way they’d remembered her … Someone did want her here, did need her here. And though she was sure now that the leopards would do everything in their power to give these babies a good home, they’d need to learn things that only another ocelot could teach them. And there were so few ocelots in the country, even fewer whom the cubs knew and trusted.
“I’ll stay,” she murmured, somehow managing to hold Lucas’s gaze through teeth-gritted will; she wasn’t the senior healer, wasn’t yet even part of the pack. “I acknowledge you as alpha.”
A sudden sense of peace within her. Because her cat was a creature of pack. It could be afraid and want this at the same time. The same way it had hated but needed Monroe.
“You’re a healer,” Lucas said. “I’ll have to blood-bond you into the pack.”
She knew that, had expected it, but appreciated the warning. A second later, she realized the explanation hadn’t been for her—Lucas was very aware of Ivan standing ice quiet and predator-still, ready to intervene.
Scowling, she shot him a glance that told him to stay put—the last thing she needed was for her Psy to end up shredded to pieces by Lucas’s claws. His expression didn’t change, those eyes of his still and pristine and as apparently uninvolved. But in her mind shimmered his web, silvery and with an edge of orange and red.
Giving up on nonverbal communication, she scowled. “There’s gonna be blood. Don’t freak out.”
Ivan stared at her. She had the feeling that no one had ever told him not to freak out before. But his body eased a fraction and he leaned back against the wall, arms folded. She didn’t take that as a sign that he was calm. His web continued to hover, cold as a burn.
When she glanced back at Lucas, she was almost certain he was fighting a laugh. But, not making a comment on the interaction, he slashed a line on his palm using a claw, then slashed a fine line down her cheek.
Having expected the cut to be on her throat or perhaps on her arm, she flinched. The web went hard inside her, lines of razored steel. This time, the look she shot Ivan was very much I will handle this.
He narrowed his eyes but stayed in position.
Lucas placed his hand against her cheek at the same time. A jolt ran through her entire body as his blood mingled with her own, the impact sucking all the air out of her lungs. She inhaled jaggedly in the aftermath, staring at the leopard who was now her alpha.
“Hold on,” he murmured, the power of him a thing of teeth and claws—a power that was a shield under which she now stood. “It’s not done yet.”
A thunder of sound through her entire body, a wild pulse made up of hundreds of hearts, a roar for a single breathtaking beat of time followed by pure silence … but she knew all those hearts still sang for her. The pack welcoming a new member, welcoming her.
For this was a bond of pack, not a bond between two people as such.
Tears burned her eyes.
She hadn’t known, hadn’t understood that the alpha-healer connection was a true bond, a primal thing that now lived beneath her skin, connecting her cat to Lucas’s leopard. It was this bond that would allow him to feed her energy should she need it—and it was this bond that would allow her to heal members of the pack, whether ocelot or leopard.
It was a thing beyond flesh and blood, a wild changeling synergy. But it wasn’t intimate—not like her strange bond with Ivan. She could sense Lucas’s presence through the bond, could reach to him for help, but that was it. He remained opaque to her as a person.
Leaning in, Lucas pressed his lips to hers. A tear rolled down her cheek. Because that gentle kiss, it was alive with the energy of the pack, an energy that spread through her like a fire that healed. The cut on her cheek began to seal up—almost but not all the way. The scar, though it would last only a few days, was a public statement that she was now DarkRiver.
One of Lucas Hunter’s cats.
Chapter 28
A Mercant’s fidelity, once given, is a thing of stone. It cannot be cracked or warped except by an act of conscious malice from the other party. There are some who call us foolish for risking it all for those to whom we are loyal—but we are incapable of half measures. That is why we give our loyalty so rarely.
—Lord Deryn Mercant (circa 1510)
IVAN’S HANDS FISTED where he had his arms crossed over his chest, a hollow ache inside him. He didn’t know the mechanics of what had just happened, but he’d felt a psychic bond shimmer into place when blood met blood.
Alpha to healer. Healer to alpha.
Grandmother would be very interested in this … but he wasn’t going to tell her. This belonged to Soleil, a private and personal moment that he’d been permitted to witness because she trusted him.
He swallowed hard, hoarding yet another treasure in the box of memories he’d take with him into the cage that was his destiny. Jealousy ran hot red through his veins, warring with his relief that she’d be safe now, even when he couldn’t watch over her. He should be more evolved, a better man, but part of him was still that little boy who’d never had anything of his own.
Yet even that little boy would choose safety for Soleil over his own need.
As he watched, Lucas took a soft disposable towel that the older woman in the room had dampened with water and used it to wipe Soleil’s cheek clean. Ivan noticed that whereas Soleil’s scar had begun to seal over, the one on Lucas’s hand stayed fresh.
After getting rid of the biodegradable towel in the trash receptable meant for such items, and washing the blood off his own hand, Lucas turned, hands on his hips, and Ivan got the full attention of his eyes. But instead of speaking to him, the alpha frowned and glanced at Soleil. “You’ve marked him. There’s a bond there.”
Soleil shrugged, a comfort to her that spoke of a new trust. “My cat wanted to keep him.” Shifting to stand next to Ivan, she said, “He’s mine and he only breached your border to help me. Don’t hurt him.”
Ivan wanted to throw up his hands, the action one he’d seen from a bear and never understood the purpose of until today. “Lei.”
“What?” She glared at him, while Nathan coughed once more into his hand. “It’s the truth.”
“Trust a healer to make things complicated.” Lucas growled before Ivan could make his mind understand that she was trying to protect him. “He’s not your mate, but he’s something.”
Soleil took Ivan’s hand, the act making him freeze. He wanted to tell her to stop, that it wasn’t the right decision if she wished to be accepted into her new pack. But when he tried to break the handclasp, she dug her claws into him, her expression a fierce warning. And he remembered … Soleil Bijoux Garcia fought for her people.
Things inside him broke, a glacier crashing into an icy ocean and causing a tidal wave. He could barely breathe, the greedy need in him wanting to steal this, steal her. It would be so easy. Such an awful, soul-destroying lie.
“I have no ill intent,” he said to Lucas, because those words were far simpler, required nothing of his emotions. “My family simply wished to know more about DarkRiver.”
Lucas gave a curt nod. “Tell the head of your family that we don’t appreciate sneaking around—if she wants to know us, she can come talk to me face-to-face.”
Ivan wasn’t sure which element of that to address first. Nobody ordered Grandmother to do anything, and as for the other—“According to the bears, no one is as sneaky as a cat.”
Nathan gave up and started laughing in truth, his hands braced on the kitchen counter while the older woman snorted with amusement.
Lucas’s eyes gleamed. “Just pass on the message,” the alpha said, then turned to Soleil. “He needs to leave tonight while I decide what to do about your odd not-mating bond. I can’t have an unknown dominant near our cubs—especially when I have no understanding of mutual safety from his alpha.”
This time, Ivan spoke before Soleil could part her lips. “I’ll go.” He squeezed Soleil’s hand in silent repudiation when she stirred. “And I’ll speak to my grandmother, tell her of your invitation to meet.”
Claws raked at the mark inside his head that was Soleil’s. His cat was annoyed with him—but she walked with him to the back door, not saying anything until they were in the center of the yard. Far enough away from sharp changeling ears that they could be private.
