Branded by Fire (34 page)

Surprised by the affection from a leopard who’d been all but stone a few months ago, she felt every one of her emotions threaten to come to the surface. Damming the storm back with effort, she touched his hand in thanks. “I will be.”

He let her go without further comment, but she knew he’d be keeping an eye on her. It made her cat settle—today, she needed the comfort of Pack, of knowing she was part of a cohesive and vital unit. How could she possibly exist without the blood bond that tied her to DarkRiver so fundamentally?

When she arrived at Tammy’s, the healer took one look at her and dragged her into the kitchen. “What’s the matter?”

“The Bakers?”

“Gone exploring in the woods. They’ve got an escort. My babies are at playgroup. Now talk.”

She just blurted it out. “If I mate with Riley, will we be able to have kids?” It was another part of the dream, something she’d always imagined. If she couldn’t . . . it would hurt, no doubt about it.

“Of course you will,” Tammy said at once. “I’ve been researching that ever since you two showed an interest in each other. Inter-changeling unions between predatory species aren’t that common, so the info is scattered and incomplete.”

Relieved, Mercy rocked back on her heels. “It’s because the animal prefers its own kind.”

“Yeah.” Tammy leaned over and took Mercy’s hand, eyes shining. “But sometimes, the human heart loves so deeply that it overcomes the objections of the animal.”

Mercy felt a knot form in her throat.

“I’m so glad you have that,” Tammy continued. “Of all the sentinels, it’s you I worried most about.”

Startled, she stared. “Me? Why?” When Clay had almost gone rogue and Dorian had come close to self-destructing? “I’m probably more stable than anyone but Lucas.”

“Exactly,” the healer said. “People tend to ignore the ones who seem okay. And we shouldn’t. You’re an integral part of the pack, and I worried that we’d left you too much on your own.”

Mercy rolled her eyes. “You worry way too much. Shall I tell you how alone I’ve been lately?” She didn’t wait for an answer, pulling out a chair and turning it around to sit with her arms on the back while Tammy perched on a stool at the counter. “Ever since word got out about me and Riley, I’ve had an uncountable number of teenage girls sidle up to me and ask if wolves are good lovers.”

Tammy choked. “No!”

“Oh, yes. Their eyes, they are wandering.”

“Oh, dear God.” Tammy looked torn between horror and laughter. “If the teenagers start dating, Hawke and Lucas will both have aneurysms.”

“Oh, you haven’t heard the best part.” She paused. “An entire pack of male juveniles cornered me the other day to ask if I didn’t think leopards were good enough for me.”

Tammy rubbed her forehead. “I think I have a headache.”

“You don’t get to have a headache. Only I get to have a headache.” She tried to keep a straight face. “When I pointed out that I could gut them all with a butter knife but that I might have difficulty doing the same to Riley, they turned green. You might have to pet a few later on—I think I scared them off sex with leopard females.”

Tammy was looking a bit green herself. “Do I want to know more?”

“Probably not.” She ran a hand over her face. “Enough stalling, Tammy. Will my babies shift?”

“Yes, absolutely.” Hopping off the stool, she went around the counter to pour some coffee. “I didn’t realize you were concerned about that.”

“I heard that when two different changelings mate, the animals cancel each other out and the child can’t shift.”

“Old wives’ tale.” Tammy made a face as she brought the cups to the table. “Makes no sense genetically. Genes don’t cancel each other out.”

“But some are recessive and others aren’t,” Mercy said. “How’s that work with changelings?”

“We screw up those neat genome charts the biologists like to keep,” Tamsyn said.

“So we don’t know what’ll happen?”

“No. We do. All healers keep extensive records, and I’ve been on the phone and on e-mail with hundreds of healers across the world over the past few days.” She took a sip of coffee. “We’re pretty sure what goes on, even though scientifically, we have no proof.”

“I’ll take healers over science any day.” Especially when it came to changeling genetics. They confused normal scientists. Having been best friends with Dorian since childhood, she knew that better than most—the other sentinel had been born latent, unable to shift into the animal form that was his other half. His parents had taken him to the best M-Psy out there. None had been able to help. It had needed a woman locked into his very soul to do that.

“Okay.” Tammy put down her coffee and took a deep breath. “You know how you and Riley are always fighting over dominance?”

Mercy nodded.

“Yeah, well, your babies are going to have the final word on the subject.”

Mercy stared at Tammy. “How final?”

“Very. When two changelings of different species mate, it’s the more dominant one in the pair whose genes are expressed as far as shifting goes.” Tammy’s eyes gleamed with hidden laughter. “Of course, no one knows when things get set in stone—it might depend on who’s feeling more feral the day you conceive.”

Mercy’s hand fisted even as wonder bloomed inside of her at the thought of carrying a child. “We’re not bonded yet.” There would be no babies until her leopard accepted Riley without boundaries, without conditions, with absolute trust.

“I guessed . . . do you want to talk about why?”

“No. We’re dealing with it. I’m just glad to know if we do make it through, our babies will be able to shift.”

“You don’t mind that your kids might not shift into cats?”

“They’ll shift. That’s what matters.” She squeezed Tammy’s hand, knowing the healer understood. “Dorian never talked about it—he’s so fucking male—but I know how much it hurt him not to be able to go leopard. I’ve been way more worried about whether or not my kids
would
shift, than what they’d shift into.”

On the other side of the world, Councilor Kaleb Krychek drove home through the pitch black of night on the outskirts of Moscow. Putting his vehicle on automatic navigation half an hour from his destination, he used his organizer to connect to the house’s security node—he always checked his defenses before he ever entered the zone he considered safe. He had no personnel at his home, no one who could betray him. But the entire area around his property was alarmed and protected. He knew if a butterfly landed on his balcony.

He also knew when people had been creeping around where they shouldn’t be.

Tapping into the full security logs, he saw the presence of a number of bodies a hundred feet beyond his outer perimeter. Of course, that wasn’t his actual perimeter. He’d set alarm lines well into the fields that surrounded his isolated home, all the way to, and
across
, the properties of his neighbors.

Kaleb liked his privacy.

He double-checked the data. No way to tell if the people lying in wait were human, Psy, or changeling. Their estimated body weight tilted them toward non-Psy, as Psy of the same size and height had a slightly lower bone density. He rechecked the data for the third time, putting it through the filters of his own mind.

He knew the BlackEdge pack—the wolves that controlled the greater Moscow area as far as changelings were concerned. Selenka Durev, their alpha, didn’t like him, but she was willing to work with him to keep the city peaceful, so long as he kept his nose out of her business. The agreement worked because Kaleb had no interest in changeling affairs—though he kept a very close eye on Selenka and her pack. Wolves were smart, dangerous, and could be lethal adversaries, as Nikita Duncan had discovered in her own region.

His agreement with BlackEdge had put him in close contact with several changelings. He was a Tk, used to manipulating kinetic energy. He’d watched their movements, noted the way their muscles and bones shifted without even realizing he’d taken in the data. Now he compared those movements against the intruders.

Not wolves. And not bears, either, the other major group in the area. At present, the StoneWater clan had a wary truce with BlackEdge. The bear changelings moved less gracefully, but with a distinctive style that was as good as a brand. Neither matched. And since both BlackEdge and StoneWater would kill any other changelings who came into their territory without permission, that meant this was most likely a human assault force.

He looked up through the windshield, the entire security check having taken him only three minutes. The next question was—what did they want? Surveillance had to be the answer, as there was no way they could get past his security. He glanced at his organizer and pulled up the data again.

And saw what he’d missed in the first sweep.

Humans had learned to compensate for their lack of psychic or shifting abilities. Especially in the area of weapons. The portable guided missile launchers almost hidden in the mass of body heat were likely primed and ready to level his house the instant he stepped inside. A fast, quick kill. The only way to take a cardinal Tk by surprise. Too bad he knew they were there.

CHAPTER 45

Several hours after the wrench of leaving him, Mercy tracked Riley to the former Alliance hideout on the Embarcadero. His wolf flashed into his eyes when he saw her, and it was all she could do not to press close, and simply savor the warm masculine scent of him.

It wasn’t professionalism that held her back. It was the knowledge that to do what she craved would be to torment them both. “What’re you doing here?” she asked.

“I always do a pass through here in case one of them doesn’t realize it’s been made. Might get a new trail.” His gaze never moved off her, his jaw a brutally hard line.

Such control had to hurt.

She couldn’t let him hurt.
Closing the distance between them, she stood so they brushed shoulder to thigh. He sucked in a breath, his hand shifting to lie on her lower back. “I can’t be near you and not touch.”

She nodded. “Who were we kidding?” The humor was fragile, the truth inescapable. “But that’s not why I came.”

Riley watched as his cat took out a small datapad and pulled up a map of the city proper. “Something bugs me about the tips we’ve had about possible Alliance movements.” She overlaid the map with the location of those tips. “If we remove the clear outliers, and focus
only
on the tips that really had some substance behind them, we end up with this.”

He leaned in, until the wildfire vitality of her filled his every breath. “A very rough circle.” He studied the diagram. “It’s still a massive area. Includes the warehouse Bowen and his group are using.”

“I know, but all this”—she waved a hand—“the bomb making, the cloak-and-dagger stuff—seems too coordinated for a small hit like that.” She pulled out a laser pen and began making
X
s. “If it’s revenge they’re after, for the squad we took out, they could hit our pack HQ, the central CTX station, a couple of other places, but most of our stuff is spread farther out—toward Yosemite.”

“You think it has to do with the Psy. That corpse?”

“Yes, and because then, the centralization makes sense. Plenty of Psy targets in the city.” She annotated major Psy institutions, including banks and, nauseatingly, schools.

He knew why—the Alliance had given them no reason to believe it had a conscience.

“But why San Francisco?” he asked, playing devil’s advocate. “It’s not a logical choice—we know to be on the lookout for them. We’ve already disrupted their operations to a degree.”

Mercy pursed her lips in a way the wolf found fascinating. He’d never seen that expression before, never seen that facet of her. “A particular target?” She shook her head almost at once. “There’s nothing unique about these places. They’re important and it’ll cause chaos on a major scale if they go down, but the Alliance could find the same caliber of target in New York, Los Angeles, a dozen other cities.”

The wolf came to attention. “But we do have one thing no other city does.” Taking the pen, he put an
X
on one of San Francisco’s most well-known buildings.

“Nikita?” Mercy’s mouth dropped open. “No.”

“What better way to leave a mark?”

“Flaming idiots!” she yelled, igniting without warning. “Whoever the fuck is driving this operation needs to have their head examined, preferably after it’s been ripped off! No way would anyone be this much of an imbecile!”

To Mercy’s surprise, Riley chuckled and leaned down to press a kiss against her parted lips. “God, my mom would’ve loved you.”

Her heart almost stopped. “Riley?”

“She was a lieutenant,” he told her, his voice husky. “So was my dad. They died defending the pack.”

She turned to wrap her arms around him. “They were protectors.”

“Yeah.” He nuzzled into her neck, as if soaking in her scent. “My dad, he was the strongest man I ever knew, but he used to turn to putty in Mom’s hands.”