Shadowmated, p.8
Shadowmated, page 8
The scent that carried along with her words didn’t lie—I was Vega’s pack mate. And I depended upon that connection. The bond we’d formed had kept me sane after Orion broke our matebrand, had let me build a place for myself in the weeks between then and now.
I’d learned to be a wolf under my aunt’s steady supervision, to hunt with other wolves and live with other wolves and laugh with other wolves also. The idea of losing that pack bond made me light-headed.
But the imprisoned shifter children might not have allies like I’d had in Celeste while growing up among humans. Plus, my sister would take action to free those kids with or without me. I couldn’t afford to fail her again.
Meanwhile, the power of the outpack seemed to crackle just beyond the edges of my hearing. It reminded me of the prophecy, of the fact that Gabi might be my blood sister. Was that why the two deadlines coincided so precisely? Could I kill two birds with one stone by taking a single irreversible step?
So—“No,” I told my aunt, feeling our bond strain even as I spoke the words. “I have been in the past, but I’m no longer a member of your pack.”
I expected our connection to sever immediately. And I expected rage from Vega when that happened.
Instead, the thread of our bond stretched but didn’t break, which meant I could feel my aunt’s headache as she rubbed her temples. “Give us a moment,” she said to no one in particular. And even though her words lacked compulsion, pack mates seeped further into the darkness. Celeste and Finnegan stepped away also, heading toward the van that Donovan was turning around in preparation for a speedy exit.
Only Orion stayed beside me, his eyes as dark as the black had been behind my blindfold. Not as warm, though. Not nearly as warm.
Which was fine because I wasn’t feeling particularly warm toward him at the moment either. “I can handle this on my own,” I muttered, trying to tell Orion with a jerk of my chin that his current behavior was far from appropriate. He might be an alpha, but this was Vega’s territory. Over-the-top aggression would only make matters worse.
To my surprise, Vega was the one who excused Orion for keeping his feet planted. “You can’t expect an alpha to be rational about his mate. But you can be rational.”
“I am being rational…” I started.
My aunt shook her head. “You’re being young and impulsive. You think it will be easier without an alpha telling you what to do. Or perhaps you think it will be easier to join another pack, one led by a man who’s clearly so besotted with you that he lets his wolf make idiotic snap decisions. I made a similar snap decision once, stepping into my sister’s shoes when your mother went missing.”
“If this is a cautionary tale, I don’t understand its purpose,” I rebutted. After all, Vega had become alpha of her pack as a result of that snap decision. Under her leadership, the clan had survived months of incarceration then bounced back from the joint trauma. Her choice, from the outside, appeared entirely sound.
Vega shook her head. “Of course you don’t. You’ve only seen your uncle acting as my second, in which role he does an admirable job.”
There was no sweetness to Vega’s words, but there seldom was sweetness to her words. I’d only seen her acting as something other than an alpha a few times, most recently when she and I stole a Saturday morning to attend a local farmer’s market together. Outside the confines of pack central, Vega had relaxed, tasting cheeses and not correcting vendors who suggested recipes she could cook with the “daughter” by her side.
Vega must have sensed the memory via our shared pack bond, because her subsequent words referenced that day also. “When we came back from the farmer’s market, do you recall how your uncle greeted me?”
“Sure. There were problems the two of you needed to deal with, things that required the alpha’s immediate attention.” It was why we hadn’t ended up preparing any of the suggested dishes, had instead dumped our purchases in the communal kitchen to be taken by anyone who craved fresh ingredients.
Beside us, Orion shook his head and upper body, the action very lupine but the subsequent words far more like his usual self. “There’s no love lost between your aunt and her mate.”
Vega’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t rebut his assertion. Instead, she continued speaking to me only. “I mated in haste and now I regret at my leisure. Don’t make the same mistake I did.”
Abruptly, the lack of sweetness surrounding Vega came into sharp focus. What must it have been like to spend decades mated to her sister’s hand-me-down fiancé, a man who didn’t particularly care for her company? To share the center of their pack with a mate-in-name while sharing nothing else?
Frustrating. Exhausting. Lonely. The emotions flowed down the pack bond from my aunt to me, the first time she’d ever opened up in such a manner. And, simultaneously, I saw myself through her eyes, a gem of unexpected brightness gleaming within a long-accepted life of duty. Vega hadn’t corrected that vendor at the farmer’s market because, for just a little while, she’d wanted to pretend his words were true.
That I actually was her daughter. That she had family not just a pack.
Which made what I was about to do worse. So I was glad when Orion broke the silence between us, delaying the inevitable.
“Whatever Elspeth decides, I propose an alliance, an exchange of clan mates. Ari for Hailey. He could use a chance to grow into his skin and she could learn from seeing more than your pack. Nothing permanent,” he hastened to add when Vega’s head started shaking. “Their pack bonds will remain intact. But it will keep open the line of communication we’ve enjoyed over the last month. Consider it an apology for my recent behavior and a show of future goodwill.”
That wasn’t all it would do. Orion knew that Hailey and I had become close during the time I’d spent as her housemate. He was ensuring I had a friend beside me in the upcoming emptiness, that I wasn’t being forced to hastily rebuild a pack bond or accept the matebrand due to a wolf’s fear of disconnect.
And Vega understood that also. She could have made what was to come worse for me, hoping I’d crawl back with my tail between my legs. Instead, she nodded at Orion. “Acceptable.” Then, to me: “Be certain this is what you want, Elspeth.”
Once you step off the path, it can be hard finding your way back onto it.
The words bubbled up out of my memory in Gabi’s voice, but they were no less true due to their source. I’d rejected the Council last month, burning that bridge behind me. Now I was about to burn another bridge, this time knowing full well the repercussions, this time understanding that what I had with Vega was unconditionally good.
But I’d grown as much as I could beneath her thumb. And I had duties I couldn’t fulfill while begging permission for every activity.
Decision made, the wolf inside me did the honors. She took the thread of pack bond between her teeth and gnawed until it snapped.
And when I felt around for any remnant of connection between myself and my aunt after that, the link that used to bind us was completely gone.
Chapter 13
Half an hour later, I clutched the potted cactus that was one of my few possessions, swaying inside a van full of two additional people and a lot more gear than had been present before the roadblock. Because Vega hadn’t sent us away empty-handed. Instead, the guys who’d been my housemates drove up not long after I lost the ability to feel them down the pack bond, my possessions and Hailey’s ready to be traded for Ari’s person. And even though our friends had packed in haste, they hadn’t skimped. We barely fit inside the van along with everything they’d brought.
Despite that congestion, I was emptier than I’d ever felt before. Empty, and also stifled as if we’d used up all available oxygen. I pressed my face against the cool window and wished I was alone in the desert that expanded out on the other side of the glass.
“…could have asked me,” Hailey was saying. Her shoulder pressed up against mine in what seemed like an effort to stay away from the shifter crouched beside her in the aisle. Or perhaps it was a request for moral support.
I should have cared. Should have at least looked over to check on her. But I just closed my eyes and let the movement of the van shake me until my skull rattled against the unforgiving windowpane.
“I was on the alpha track,” my friend continued. “And now I’m what? An ambassador?”
“It’s hard being away from your pack at a time like this,” a female voice murmured. Maya. That was Maya crouching in the aisle doing the job that should have been mine.
Or at least I thought it was Maya. The emptiness inside me kept trying to reach out, to latch onto the living, breathing people inside the van. The people who were wolves like me. Who could be part of a pack I was also part of…
But even though I’d done exactly what my aunt hadn’t wanted me to do, I clung to her admonition as if it was a compulsion. I couldn’t afford to form a pack bond just because I felt empty. A commitment like that had to be thought through rationally.
I certainly wasn’t thinking rationally now.
Neither was Hailey. “A time like what?” she demanded. “If you’re referring to the fact I killed someone today, it wasn’t my first kill.”
“Killing someone with a human face is very different from killing a rabbit,” Maya answered, voice just as calm as it had been previously. In response, I felt Hailey’s tense muscles soften just the tiniest fraction where her arm was pushed up against mine.
Maya had said the right thing, for which I was deeply grateful. She was a healer who knew how to fix even invisible wounds.
Again, the tendril of need inside me reached out. I needed healing. Needed to be included the way Hailey was being included.
No. I bit down on both the tendril and on my own tongue, tasting blood and focusing on that pain and salt to prevent instinct from taking over.
I used to smell salt on my own skin even right after a shower. It was Vega’s pack aroma, the one that let me relax in the knowledge an alpha was looking out for me. That I was part of something larger than myself…
“Where does Julius think you are right now, Celeste?” Orion’s voice rose from the seat behind me. He of the star-speckled eyes and the rope-strong forearms.
This time, the emptiness surged in a different direction. I didn’t need to join a pack. Instead, I could choose a mate.
And what better mate than Orion? Someone who’d proven himself over and over to be exactly who he presented himself as. Who was strong enough to hold me up. Who accepted me not despite but because of my contradictions.
“At a conference,” Celeste answered as I bit harder into my tongue, reminding myself that I wasn’t a damsel in distress who needed to leap into the arms of the first man who showed up to rescue her. “He won’t expect me home for days,” she continued, “so Finnegan and I can help save the kids.”
“Saving other people’s children will get us ready to have children of our own,” Finnegan agreed, sounding very much like someone who had spent most of his life in solitary confinement and lacked all knowledge of social norms. I mean, what kind of creep brings up wanting his girlfriend to pop out babies on day three of dating?
Perhaps someone who’d already gathered that nurturing young people was at the core of my sister’s character. Because Celeste’s reply came out soft rather than biting the way mine would have been. “I hope you’re good with diapers.”
“I learn quickly,” Finnegan promised, as if he wasn’t already weaseling his way into Celeste’s heart fast enough.
Their exchange made one thing clear—Finnegan wasn’t someone I was interested in choosing as a pack mate. Instead, he was an unknown quantity that we couldn’t afford to bring along in our search for stolen shifter children.
The emptiness inside me was uninterested in that kind of thinking. It reached out to Orion another time. He was protecting my sister. Didn’t that mean we were connected already? If so, what would be the harm in formalizing our bond?
I shook my head so hard the motion made me dizzy. I refused to re-create our matebrand until I was 100% ready to commit for the right reasons. And the issue of Finnegan was important. I had to focus.
Luckily, I knew a way to make that happen. The wolf inside me made thinking harder, but she could make it easier also. All I needed to do was—
I let my inner beast out just enough to shift fingernails into claws. I clenched my fists until sharp points bit into soft human palms. And I used one of Gabi’s lessons to focus my thoughts onto an entirely different track.
On Gabi, actually. Because she was the only lead we currently had about the location of the stolen shifter children. Children who must feel even emptier than I did currently.
“The rest of us need to get to Texas,” I told the people who weren’t my mate and weren’t my pack. “But Finnegan will stay behind.”
Finnegan wasn’t the only one we left in Arizona. Donovan also returned to Orion’s pack to stand in as alpha.
But all of the people I’d itched to form bonds with came with me, flying across New Mexico to the state where I’d spent my childhood. Which is why, twelve hours later when the afternoon sun was fading toward evening, the disquiet inside me remained, merely stifled beneath an intent focus on our upcoming mission.
Other than keeping my head on straight, the process seemed simple enough: Break into Gabi’s living quarters. Plant a tracker. Follow from a distance when she moved the children. Last but definitely not least, we’d set the kids loose.
Steps one and two would be the easy part, performed on the familiar turf of Gabi’s downtown penthouse apartment, a spot I’d visited multiple times back when I still worked for the Council. The building boasted a gym of the sort that came with a juice bar and heated towels. Still, despite the frivolousness of the atmosphere, Gabi put in an hour there every evening like clockwork.
“It has the basics,” she’d told me once. “Treadmills to run on. Weights to lift. Enough to take the edge off. Sometimes, close and easy beats perfect.”
I ignored the thread of yearning inside me that rose with that memory. Close and easy might beat perfect when stretching your muscles. It didn’t when making life-altering decisions like choosing a pack and a mate.
I refused to consider making any life-altering decisions this evening. Instead, I was staying as focused as Gabi had trained me to be.
“We’ll have an hour, but we should plan to be gone in half that,” I told Celeste, Orion, Hailey, and Maya. All of us except Celeste were hunkered down in the back of the rental car, staying low so cameras wouldn’t pick us up as my sister pulled into the level of the underground garage earmarked for residents’ guests.
“I don’t like the idea of you being visibly involved,” I continued, this time addressing my sister only. I was still hoping to talk her out of taking part even though she’d become electronically implicated the moment she scanned her key card to get us into the parking garage.
“Gabi expects me,” Celeste countered, lips barely moving and eyes focused ahead of her. She’d never been involved in a real mission previously. But she’d trained with me and Gabi as a child, so she knew there could be eyes on her now. “Me not showing up would put her on guard,” my sister continued, voice calm in the way I knew meant she was furious but was saving the tongue-lashing for later. “Plus, I’ll be there to sound the alert if she leaves early, so you’ll have leeway to do more than plant a tracking device and run. We’ve already come to an agreement on this.”
We had agreed. The same way we’d agreed to impound Finnegan within Orion’s pack as a kid-glove prisoner. In other words, I liked Celeste’s role in this operation just about as much as she liked leaving the man she’d taken to calling her soul mate behind.
And just like Celeste had tried to argue her way out of that decision, I was trying to argue my way out of this one. I belly-crawled closer to the front seats then dropped my voice, even though shifter ears meant everyone else in the car could still hear me. “This means you can’t go back. You’re really ready to sever ties with your father?”
Celeste craned her head to meet my gaze, her voice going so fierce her lips clearly moved this time. “I was ready to sever ties with Julius weeks ago. I’ve just been waiting until the kids were freed.”
Which they weren’t. The fact Celeste couldn’t see that, the fact children were no longer her top priority despite them forming the focus of her chosen career, sat like a smelly lump in the air between us.
Still, all I could do was beg Celeste to be careful as she stepped out of the elevator ten minutes later on the gym level. Hailey and Maya, I knew from Orion’s quick glance at his cell phone, had beat her there via the stairwell. They were ready to produce a distraction or even spirit Celeste away if necessary. We weren’t letting her walk into danger alone and she wasn’t the one planting the tracker.
So I should have been able to relax into the mission as the doors closed between myself and my sister. Mirrors reflected Orion’s steady presence beside me as we rose up the center of the forty-story building. Celeste, Hailey, and Maya were fully prepared to do their parts down at the gym level. I needed to trust all of them, even though they weren’t my pack mates.
I’d just gotten my head back into the game when the keypad sparked and the elevator ground to a halt.
Chapter 14
“Stuck in an elevator?” Maya’s voice sounded amused as it rang out of Orion’s cell phone speakers. Meanwhile, the faint sounds of human chatter in the background suggested she was just where we’d planned for her to be—at the juice bar with a slanting view of the spot where Gabi liked to work out. “That’s the monkey wrench?”
