Wild Embrace (11 page)

Dorian climbed up
the tree at the far end of the play area. Even though he knew he shouldn't, he kept climbing past the branch where his mom had told him he had to stop until he got bigger. He kept climbing and climbing and climbing until the branches got too far apart and he couldn't go any farther. Curling up against the trunk, he folded his arms and stared at the dark green leaves all around him.

Stupid, they were all stupid, he thought, his eyes burning.

When he heard his mom calling out for him, he didn't move.

“Dorian! Sweetheart, I know you're up there!” she called up.

Then the tree shook slightly and he knew she was climbing up to him. “Hey,” she said when she reached his branch. “That's quite a scowl.”

Folding his arms even tighter, he tucked his knees into himself.

“I see.” Her smile was deep, her blue eyes sparkling like they always did. “No talking, huh?” Hitching herself up beside him, she kicked her legs gently outward, her sunshiny hair in a braid down her back. “You climbed far today.”

Now he was in trouble, he thought, feeling mutinous and not the least bit sorry.

Except instead of being angry with him, his mother winked. “You did well, baby.”

“I'm
not
a baby!”

She held up her hands, palms out. “Sorry, kitten, but you'll always be a baby to me. You know Emmett's mom still calls him her baby and he's bigger than you.”

Dorian had to think about that. His mom was right. Emmett was a juvenile and really nice, and yesterday, his mom had said, “Baby, come help me with this,” and Emmett had rolled his eyes and sighed but he'd gone over with a grin.

“Okay,” he said, deciding if it was okay with a big boy, it was okay with him.

Reaching over, his mom brushed his hair off his face. “What's wrong?”

Dorian scowled and huddled deeper into himself. “Nothing.” He wasn't going to cry. No one would make him cry.

Face softening, his mom cupped his face and rubbed her nose against his. “I love you, my beautiful, strong, perfect boy.”

He blinked really hard so he wouldn't cry. When she drew back, he could still smell her. It was the smell of his mom and it made him feel like he was being hugged all over. But today, it wasn't enough. “I don't wanna come down,” he said, his claws pricking the inside of his skin.

His mother looked at him for a long minute before nodding. “All right, baby.” Leaning over, she kissed him on the cheek. “I'm going to go home and start dinner. Your favorite meat loaf.”

Dorian thought about going with his mom when she left, but he wasn't sure he wouldn't cry. And he
wasn't
going to cry. Not because of the stupids. Swallowing the thick thing in his throat, he breathed in and out and tried to get his leopard to stop clawing him inside. It hurt, but the leopard was really angry and sad, and it was hard.

Until another scent filtered into the air.

Dorian stared wide-eyed as Lachlan stopped on the branch
below him. “Come down, Dorian,” his alpha said, the dominance in his brown eyes making Dorian's leopard come to attention. “We're going for a walk.”

Dorian really didn't want to come down, but his leopard pushed him to obey his alpha. “Yes, sir.”

It was harder to climb down than it had been to climb up, but Lachlan didn't help him, simply waited for him at the bottom. Even when Dorian slipped and skinned his palms, his alpha didn't offer to help. Getting down, Dorian looked up with a small grin. “I did it.”

Lachlan ruffled his hair, his hand big and warm. “I knew you would.”

Dorian slipped his hand into Lachlan's and they started to walk. His heart thudded inside his chest when his alpha led him past the edge of the safe area where the cubs were meant to play—he'd tried to go past it a few times, been scolded. He still tried sometimes, with his best friend, Mercy. They both wanted to know what was outside. Now he was going to see.

Excited enough that he was a little less angry and sad, he looked around at everything as they walked. The trees were much bigger the farther out they went, the spaces between them less. “Is it fun running here?”

“Yeah.” Lachlan grinned and when he met Dorian's gaze, Dorian saw his alpha's eyes now glinted yellow-green. “Sometimes, we play a game where we aren't allowed to touch the ground.”

Dorian looked up at the thick canopy above. “All the way?” he asked, awed.

“Yes. You'll be able to do that, too, one day. You're already the best climber in your age group.”

“No, I'm not.” Head down, he kicked at the pine needles below him. “I can't do things like everyone else.”

“That's true,” Lachlan said and, dropping Dorian's hand, lifted
him up with a grip under his arms; the alpha put him on a standing position on a huge boulder.

Dorian could now look straight into Lachlan's eyes. It was hard because Lachlan was alpha and Dorian was just a kid, but Dorian didn't look away. “I'm not a leopard.”

“Did someone say that to you?” Lachlan's voice held a growl.

Shaking his head, Dorian swallowed and folded his arms again. He wasn't going to be a tattletale crybaby. Especially since the cubs who'd been so mean weren't even his real friends or pack. They were just visiting from another pack. He'd only been playing with them because Mercy and Barker were grounded.

“I'm not dumb,” he said instead. “I
try
really hard to shift, Lachlan! I don't know why I can't do it!” It made him so angry and hot inside and it hurt.

“I know you try hard.” Lachlan put his hands on his hips, the leopard in his voice as he spoke. “The fact that you can't shift doesn't have anything to do with that.”

“I know! I'm latent!” Dorian didn't really understand what that was; he just knew he hated it. “Why can't Shayla fix me?” The pack's healer could fix everything else, even Mercy's broken leg when she'd slipped and fallen on the rocks by a waterfall.

“Dorian, you're a smart boy. I'm not going to patronize you by telling you things will be easy for you,” Lachlan said, speaking to him in a way no grown-up had ever done. “It's going to be harder than it is for your friends.”

Dorian stared at his alpha, his leopard at attention. “What do I do?”

“You're not only smart but strong,” Lachlan said. “One of the strongest, most dominant young cubs in DarkRiver. I think you could be a sentinel one day.”

“But I can't shift.”

“Neither can Zeph and he's my sentinel.”

Dorian frowned, having never really considered that. Zeph was human, but he was still DarkRiver, even if he couldn't change into a leopard. “He's really good at stuff.”

“Yeah, he is.” Lachlan held his gaze. “You can become good at stuff, too. You just have to work hard and never, ever forget that you're a member of DarkRiver. What keeps us strong as a pack are our members. I can't have you giving up.”

Dorian growled. “I don't give up!”

“Yeah, that's what I figured.” Lachlan looked at him without blinking, his eyes leopard again. “So, what will you do the next time someone makes you feel bad because you can't shift?”

Dorian thought about his angry-sad feelings, and he thought about Zeph who was so good at stuff, and he thought about how his mom and dad said he was a wonderful son, and he thought about what Lachlan had said. Then he nodded. “I won't let them,” he said, his leopard standing straight inside him. “Just 'cause I can't shift doesn't mean I can't do everything. I just gotta try harder.”

“Good.” Lachlan nodded up toward the canopy. “You want me to start teaching you how to climb from tree to tree?”

“Really?” Dorian jumped down to the ground, landing easily because his cat told him what to do. “Let's go!”

Dorian lay high
on the branch above the battle zone, his body as still as stone. The leaves rustled around him, but he didn't move, barely breathed. Inside him, his leopard was contained, held back with sheer willpower. It had taken him time to learn to do that, to contain the animal so it didn't claw him bloody on the inside.

For a long time, he'd woken curled up in agony as the leopard fought him for a freedom he couldn't give it. At first, he'd cried out and his parents had run in to pet him and cuddle him. It was kind of embarrassing to think about now, but, like his mom said, he was their baby so he just had to suck it up. Because she still petted and cuddled him even though he was fourteen.

His little sister Kylie always giggled when Mom did that. And then he had to growl and chase the real baby of the family around the house and tickle her until she shifted into her cub form and tried to tickle him back using her paws.

He grinned within, while remaining unmoving on the outside.

At least Mercy's mom did the same hugging-cuddling thing to her. And both his mom
and
Mercy's mom did it to Lucas and Vaughn—who were older—so none of them could hassle one another. But these days, his parents didn't need to come to him at night anymore. His leopard did still get out of control at times, but he
didn't scream, just woke up breathing hard and fast. Then he used the techniques Emmett's mom had taught him to calm himself.

Keelie called it meditating.

Dorian would get ribbed so hard if he admitted to meditating, so he called it mental discipline. Just like the discipline his friends had to learn to deal with their own leopards. Only they were learning how to balance their wild instincts with the human part of their nature, and he was learning to keep his trapped and angry leopard from driving him insane.

There.

Zeroing in on the tiny movement, he used the same mental discipline to hold utterly still, so that his scent wouldn't shift along the air currents. He'd already messed up his scent trail using a few other tricks, so if he stayed motionless . . . He took the shot.

“Fuck!” Lucas glared up at the tree as if he could see Dorian, the splatter of green on his T-shirt marking him as a “kill.”

Dorian grinned but didn't shift position as, growling, Lucas came up his tree to lie down on the branch beside him. “How the fuck did you make that shot?” he said on a subvocal level. “From here you can't even see where I came out.”

“I knew you were there.” Dorian had practiced and practiced until he could make these shots blindfolded. He didn't need to see his target to hit it. “Just like you always know where we are, even if we hide our scent and stay out of sight.” The only reason he'd got Luc today was because his seventeen-year-old friend hadn't expected him to make the shot.

“Yeah, well,” Lucas said in that same subvocal tone. “That doesn't give me much of an advantage with you guys. I don't even know how Mercy does that thing where she disappears from sight.”

Dorian hadn't figured that out, either, and it was one hell of a trick. What he had figured out was that Lucas would one day be
his alpha, and that these exercises were meant to hone them all. Because DarkRiver wasn't the happy place it had been when Dorian had been a cub. The ShadowWalkers had hurt them—Lucas's parents were gone, and he'd been wounded badly before the pack found him.

Dorian and Mercy would probably be too young to join the hunt for the ShadowWalkers when it took place, but they could help protect their packmates while the hunters were gone.

Now Tamsyn was the healer even though everyone said she was too young. Dorian thought she was amazing, so calm and gentle. She reminded him of Shayla. Lucas's mom had trained Tammy, and Dorian was sure she'd be real proud of her student. “You think Nate and Tammy are gonna have cubs?” Dorian didn't usually think about stuff like that, but his mom and Mercy's mom had been talking about it that morning.

Lucas made a sound low in his throat. “I dunno. I heard Emmett's dad say Nate was being stubborn because he thinks Tammy's too young.”

“Yeah, but she's a healer. They're, like, cub magnets.”

“Adults.”

“Yeah.”

They fell silent for long minutes, and then Dorian felt it. A faint whisper along the air currents, a bare hint of a familiar scent. He couldn't see Mercy but he knew she was in the trees to his left. Shifting with extreme care so as not to give away his position, he closed his eyes and listened. And then he took the shot.

The curses that sounded from the canopy were so colorful that had Mercy's parents heard her, she'd have been grounded into the next century. “I'll get you for this, Dorian!” Jumping down to the ground, she glared in his general direction and he realized exactly why she was so pissed.

He'd gotten her in the face, the green bright against the pale gold of her skin.

“Shit,” he muttered. “That'll leave a bruise.” Because his job was to be a sniper, he was using relatively small paintball pellets rather than the larger ones the others had been issued, but at that velocity it would've hurt regardless. “Her mom's going to smack me. I don't even want to think about her dad.”

“Yeah. Sucks to be you.”

Watching Mercy wipe off the green paint using her forearm, he tracked her as she strode over, sniffed around to confirm their location, then climbed up the tree to join them. “Sorry, Merce,” he said. “I wasn't aiming for your face.”

A scowl but no real anger from Mercy, his friend as quick to forgive as her temper was hot. “Don't worry about it.” She finished cleaning off the paint. “Tell me what gave me away.”

“Caught your scent, but it was your gun that gave me your exact position,” he said. “You should've primed it earlier.” The faint click had been all he needed.

“Damn.” She looked at Lucas. “What gave you away?”

“I was overconfident, knew Blondie was here but didn't think he'd make the shot before I got him.”

The three of them fell silent as a unit as something changed in the air.
Vaughn.
The jaguar changeling moved differently from the leopards, was quieter, a shadow. That made him near impossible to hit at night, but it was late afternoon now, which meant Dorian had a slightly better chance if he didn't screw up.

Falling into the quiet space where he could hear his pulse as a soft echo in his ears, slow and easy, he didn't look. No, he just was. And when his body wanted to turn in a hard motion and his finger wanted to squeeze the trigger, he did it before his conscious mind realized Vaughn had doubled back on him.

Vaughn didn't swear like the others. He just snarled. “Next night hunt, Blondie,” he said. “Your ass is toast.”

Dorian allowed his body to relax now that the exercise was complete. Jumping down after Mercy and Lucas, he grinned at the jaguar. “Bet you ten bucks I can hit you at night.” He enjoyed giving himself a challenge, enjoyed pushing himself.

“Like taking money from a cub.” Shoving a hand through the thick amber of his hair, Vaughn looked at Lucas and Mercy. “Who do you put your money on?”

“Lucas.” Mercy placed her hands on her hips, her tone snarky. “He's a black panther, you idiots. You think you're going to see him?”

That
, Dorian admitted, was an excellent point. So far, he'd never managed to take Lucas down on a night hunt, but neither had he managed to hit Vaughn. The two of them were really good at night. Just like Mercy was really, really good at dawn. She was a ghost. He was still considering that when Nate appeared out of the trees with an unfamiliar male by his side. The guy looked like he was around Luc's or Vaughn's age; his green eyes were a little wild in his dark-skinned face, as if his leopard was just waiting to explode out of his skin.

Taking in the scene, Nate gave Dorian an approving nod. “We'll talk through the exercise tonight at dinner,” he said. “For now, I want you to meet Clay. Lachlan's just accepted him into DarkRiver.”

The older boy didn't smile, didn't look particularly as if he wanted to be in a pack, but he nodded at their greetings.

“Clay's been on his own for a while,” Nate said. “I want the four of you to store your paint guns and take him for a run, show him around.”

On his own?
Dorian didn't know any cats that young who'd been on their own. Wild cats might be okay with a solitary life, but changeling cats were human, too, and they needed to be with pack. Even
the loners didn't always roam alone. “You like paintball?” he asked Clay as they walked to store their guns in back of a truck Nate had parked some distance away.

“Never played.”

“Here.” Mercy passed him her gun. “Have a go at some trees. It's pretty fun.” A scowl. “Except if Blondie here is shooting at your face.”

“Hey! I said sorry!”

Clay looked from one to the other, a slight easing in his expression. “Jeez, you hit a girl in the face?”

Mercy punched Clay in the arm at the same time that Lucas choked and Vaughn hissed out a breath. “She's not a girl,” Dorian told the confused guy. “She's a dominant and she can probably kick your ass in hand-to-hand combat.”

“Huh.” Clay stared at Mercy. “Really?”

Mercy raised an eyebrow, then looked her far bigger opponent up and down. “You want a demonstration?”

She put Clay on his ass three minutes later. Slapping her hands together as if dusting them off, she said, “And my work here is done.”

Getting up, Clay settled his shoulders, and Dorian wondered if he realized they were all waiting to see how the big stranger with the green eyes would react. It was obvious to all of them that Clay was very, very dominant as far as the pack hierarchy was concerned, but working as an effective unit had to do with more than simple strength. If Clay was one of those dominants who couldn't handle a strong female, then they were going to have a serious problem. Because Mercy wasn't the only dominant female in DarkRiver.

“I want to learn how to do that,” their new packmate said to Mercy. “Will you teach me?”

Mercy smiled as the rest of them blew out quietly relieved breaths. “Yeah, sure.”

It was strange, but a half hour later, as they ran through the forest, Dorian realized he understood more about being a leopard than Clay did, even though the older boy could shift. It made him wonder what had happened to Clay to make him so close to his leopard—and yet so unaware of how to be a cat in a pack.

He didn't ask, though; he understood that sometimes, a guy just had to be who he was. Luc, Vaughn, Mercy, Nate—none of them treated Dorian as any different than them. He knew he
was
different, but his latency no longer made him angry-sad as it had when he'd been a cub. Lachlan had helped him a lot, as had his parents. Then, one freezing night, when he was only six, he'd run and run and run, and somewhere in there, he'd come to a kind of peace with himself.

It still hurt deep inside, and he knew it probably always would, his leopard horribly wounded, but he was a valued member of the pack and that was what mattered.