Hostage to Pleasure (33 page)

Smile widening, Lucas watched her disappear into the trees as he coded in a call to Dorian, very aware of the other woman who’d just moved into his line of sight. Sascha leaned patiently against a slender pine, so gut-wrenchingly beautiful that he was tempted to haul her to him for a long, hungry kiss. But he was an alpha and Dorian was a sentinel who’d bled for him more than once—that loyalty went both ways. “No confirmation that it’s Amara,” he said when the other man answered, “but at this point, they want her alive enough that they gave us the time when she went in.”

“How long before she reaches my cabin?”

“She’s not used to the terrain so I’d say it’ll be daybreak by then—if she doesn’t fall and break her leg, or run into some of the more unfriendly wildlife.”

“Could be a ruse.”

“Yeah. Dezi’s backtracking and I’m going to join her. What I want to know is why they haven’t grabbed her on the PsyNet.”

Dorian blew out a breath. “One option is that they’re using her to get to Ashaya. But . . . Faith saw the DarkMind around Amara. Maybe it’s hiding her.”

“Hell.” Lucas had deep respect for the DarkMind. He knew exactly how dangerous the entity could be. He also knew there was little chance of Amara Aleine coming out of this alive—neither he nor Dorian would allow the DarkMind’s insidious brand of evil to taint the pack. “What happens if we find her?” he asked, since Dorian was the one with the most information on this.

A pause and he heard the edges of a soft-voiced conversation before Dorian came back on the line. “Bring her here. This has to end.”

“That’s what I thought.” Finishing the call, he made the promised check-in with Meena, then coded in Jamie’s number. The soldier picked up on the first ring. Lucas gave him the location of Dorian’s cabin. “Might be guard duty, might be more.” Usually, he would’ve called one of his remaining sentinels, but since Jamie and Dezi were both being considered for that status in the future, he needed to see what they were made of.

Jamie made a sound of agreement. “I’ll probably make it just after daybreak.”

“Should be fine.” Done, Lucas put away the phone and walked over to satiate his hunger for his mate. The kiss was slow, passionate, perfect. “I’m going tracking.”

Sascha nodded. “Want me to wait?”

“Do I want my mate to wait in a deserted forest while a dangerous Psy fugitive remains on the loose? Wait, let me think.”

“Sarcasm does not suit you.” She kissed him again, laughter in her eyes. “No overt attempts at psychic interference that I could determine.”

“Good. Go home and rest.” Neither of them had slept much, but he knew it would hit her harder—she was physically weaker than he was. Simple fact. And something his protective instincts wouldn’t let him ignore. “If this is Amara, I have a feeling we’ll be needing your gift.”

Sascha’s face grew solemn. “To have a broken twin . . . That’s got to be a powerful bond—even in the PsyNet, twins aren’t separated. I can’t imagine how this could possibly end happily.” Her hand curled around his. “Dorian’s emotionally involved.”

“Yeah.”

“If he loses another woman he considers his . . .” She shook her head. “He’ll give in to the darkness. Nobody will be able to stop him.”

Lucas didn’t argue. He knew full well that if Ashaya died, Dorian would pick up a gun and go hunting. Only death would halt his quest for vengeance this time.

 
Ashaya met Dorian’s eyes. “I want to stay on watch with you.”

He scowled. “You have to go on camera again tomorrow—no, today. Catch some z’s.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, braiding her hair. “Yes,” she said. “I have to make sure people understand that the Council murdered Ekaterina and the others.”

He heard the anger and the leopard understood. For some crimes, there could be no forgiveness. “There’s one other thing you need to take care of—we’ve had indications that some human group wants to use Omega to hit the Psy.”

She blew out a breath. “I can’t retract my statement. That’ll undo everything we’ve achieved.” A pause. “I’ll make it clear the virus knows no racial boundaries.”

“Should work.”

“I never thought about that aspect of things,” she murmured. “I used Omega because it was the biggest Council secret I knew—I wanted something that would cause so many ripples that they’d forget about looking for one small lost boy.”

“You used the very thing that could’ve led to his death, to protect him.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Smart,” he said, flicking his eyes toward her. She looked so solemn and neat with those tight braids on either side of her head that he had the wicked impulse to mess her up again.

She met his gaze. “You have the cat in your eyes.”

In truth, the leopard was stretched out inside him, tense with worry. But it was also . . . happy. Because she was here. And both man and leopard would do everything and anything to keep her safe. “Whatever happens, you do the broadcast today. We need to make you so hot that your death would cause more problems than it would solve.” For one, they’d have a sniper on their trail. It was an icy calm thought.

“The Council wouldn’t have cared once,” Ashaya said. “They’d have silenced me
and
any critics. I guess things are changing, but the pace is so slow.”

“Silence has had over a century to take root,” he reminded her. “It can’t be ended overnight.”

“I don’t care so much about Silence.”

He shot her a look of utter disbelief. “What?”

“I think most Psy would break Silence if given a choice, but others would choose to hold on to it. That should be an option.”

He returned his attention to the window. “If you say so.”

“It’s not black and white.” He could feel her glaring at his back. “Shades of gray dominate.”

“Uh-huh.”

Something hit his back. “Hey!” When he turned around, Ashaya gave him a prim look. “You weren’t paying attention.”

“I just don’t get it—why the hell would anyone choose to remain an emotionless robot?” He lobbed the pillow back to her.

Grabbing it, she hugged it to her stomach. “Because there are some Psy gifts so dangerous that even we fear them on the deepest, most primal level. Silence is sometimes the only thing holding these powerful Psy back from the edge of the abyss.”

Dorian folded his arms and leaned his shoulder against the wall next to the window, from where he could continue to keep watch while facing Ashaya. “No, Shaya, that’s the one thing I won’t accept. Silence spawned the fucking bastard who took my sister’s life. I want it destroyed.” Fury uncurled deep inside him, threading through his veins with savage intensity.

“And what about the innocent people who’ll lose their minds to the blinding fire of their gifts?” Getting up, she walked over to touch his arm. “You saw the end result of that kind of degradation in the violence of that murder-suicide.”

A sheet of red rising at his back, a broken woman in an assassin’s arms. “Not my problem.” He cupped her cheek. “You’re mine. You matter. Pack matters. Everyone else can take their chances.”

Ashaya shook her head. “You don’t mean that.”

“I mean every word. I’ll do everything I can to bring Silence down.” Because as far as he was concerned, the madness, the
evil
, it all stemmed from the imposition of a protocol that had eliminated emotion from the Psy.

“No, Dorian.” She tugged at his wrist, but he broke contact and turned back to the window. “It’s the Council that’s the true enemy. Once they’re gone, once we have a leadership that cares—”

He snorted. “Psy who lead tend to be power hungry.”

“Not all.” Pushing into his space, Ashaya gripped his arm, feeling herself teetering on the edge of some crucial understanding. Then he shot her a hard look and she knew. “You’re not this bitter, hateful man who refuses to see the truth. You’re better than this.”

This time his glance was filled with cold rage. “My sister was butchered, Shaya.
Butchered
. One of the Silenced tortured her, cut her, broke her. Then he brought her home and killed her in her safe place.” His hands clenched so tight she was afraid he’d shatter his own bones. “Her skin was still warm when I reached her. I heard the echo of her scream as I ran up the stairwell and some nights, that scream haunts me until it’s all I can hear.”

She couldn’t imagine the depth of his horror, but that nameless knowing inside her, a knowing attuned only to this leopard in human skin, comprehended that his grief could also turn into a kind of poison. The wonder of it was that it hadn’t already.

His pack, she thought, recalling the look in Lucas Hunter’s eyes that day on the CTX balcony. Dorian’s packmates hadn’t just looked out for him, they’d refused to allow him to drown under the crushing weight of his tormented anguish. “You were getting better,” she said, shoulders tight with sudden realization. “Before I came into your life, you were getting past the loss.”

“You’re mine.” A flat declaration that was no answer.

“It was me,” she said, hand dropping off his arm. “I pushed you back into the poison of rage.”

“Ashaya.”
A warning.

“No,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the roaring silence of his anger. “I’m Psy and you swore to destroy the Psy. This . . . connection we have, it’s not something you were ready for, not something you’re comfortable with—”

“I’m more than fucking comfortable with you.” The words were bullets. “You don’t get to walk away from this using some self-serving psychological bullshit.”

“I don’t want to walk away!” He was inside her, this cat. And his hurt pulsed in her own heart. “I just want you to face up to the truth.”

He snarled at her, a sound that raised every hair on her body. “What the fuck do you want me to say, Shaya? That I never expected to fall for a Psy? That it kills a part of me that keeping you safe is now more important to me than destroying the Council? That the guilt of the pleasure you give me is a dead weight in my chest? Is that what you want?” A vicious question. “There, I’ve said it. But you know what?” He backed her to the window, closing his hand around the side of her neck. “It doesn’t matter shit. The leopard recognizes you, knows you were meant to be mine.”

“What about the man?” she asked, refusing to let him silence her with the sheer force of his anger. “What does the man think?”

CHAPTER 40

“The man wishes this was easy.” His finger rubbed at the ragged beat of her pulse. “He wishes you were changeling or human so he wouldn’t have to question his need to hate the Psy, so he wouldn’t have to look into his sister’s accusing face every time he closes his eyes, so he damn well wouldn’t have to feel a traitor to his own vows.”

Pain, such pain tearing through her. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Shaya, don’t be sorry. Because even while the man is wishing that, he knows that he wouldn’t trade you in for anything . . . even if that trade would bring his sister back from the grave.” The incredible depth of his guilt was a shadow that turned the blue of his eyes to midnight. “I’ll stand watch outside.” He left her without another word.

 
Ashaya stared at the closed door, her heart filled with a turbulence of emotion she was far too inexperienced to fully comprehend. All she knew was that Dorian was hurting. Hurting so badly that it threatened to break his heart. She raised a hand, rubbing it unconsciously over her own chest. She was an M-Psy—she had no capacity to heal emotional hurts. She didn’t even know how to begin.

The only thing she could do for Dorian, the only gift she could give him, was to enable his body to shift. That’s what she would work on, she thought, clinging to the familiar, the easily understood. It was a good solution, a solution that utilized her skills . . . and yet she knew it was wrong. She couldn’t sit here, willfully ignoring the truth—
she had shoved Dorian to the edge of the abyss.

The only question was, was she ready to walk over the edge with him?

Ashaya had never considered herself a coward—she’d survived the Council with her mind intact, had put her life on the line to help others escape certain death. But tonight, this choice, it was the hardest of her life. She knew that if she went after Dorian, if she accepted his pain as her own, it would be an irrevocable step.

Keenan, she thought, her mother’s heart clenching—he was already at home with these cats. This choice would take nothing away from him. But Amara . . . she didn’t know what would happen to Amara. Her twin had been with her since birth, since before birth, their minds linked, their souls connected. A single tear streaked down her face as she cried for the loss of a relationship that had never stood a chance, but that held her prisoner.

Then she stood, wiped away the tear . . . and walked outside.

Dorian was standing with his back to the hidden wall of glass, his eyes focused on the shadowy bulk of the trees that faced his home. He didn’t say anything when she opened the door and came out, as unmoving and unwelcoming as stone. But when she made a small movement toward him, he lifted his arm and dragged her close. “Don’t cry.” It was an order couched in a voice that still trembled with anger. But beneath the anger was a powerful, blinding emotion that threatened to wrench her from everything she’d ever known and throw her into the spinning darkness.

Burying her face in his chest, she wrapped her arms around him. “Then don’t hurt.” She felt something tug at her soul, inciting an odd kind of breathlessness.

Dorian went very quiet around her.

She fought the pull, knowing it would tear her from Amara. And while Amara was her jailer, Ashaya was also her keeper. Without Ashaya, Amara would kill, would murder, would become the very monster Ashaya had spent her life trying to prevent her from becoming. “I was born first,” she whispered. “She’s my responsibility.”

Dorian’s body stiffened for a moment. Then he shifted to drop a kiss on top of her head. “So was I.”