CHAPTER 17
The jaguar was impressed by Faith’s claws.
If he hadn’t been so sure of her betrayal, his temper might have thawed, soothed by her open emotionality.
But that wasn’t going to happen today. “Nikita Duncan is Council, our enemy. What were you doing consorting with her?” He understood what he’d heard, but he wanted to know if Faith would tell him the truth.
Her mouth thinned. “This is the second visit I’ve had from a Councilor. Shoshanna Scott was the first.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Anger was a fine tremor over his skin, his muscles held in savage check. He’d never physically hurt her, but damn he was mad.
“If you’d listen instead of just threatening to go jaguar on me, I’d tell you. Do you realize your eyes have gone completely cat?” She shook her head. “Nikita was here for the same reason as Shoshanna. I’ve been nominated to fill Santano Enrique’s position on the Council.”
Vaughn curled his hands into fists so tight, his bones protested. “Enrique was a piece of Psy garbage. And you want to take his place?”
Faith jerked at the verbal slap. “What do you know about Councilor Enrique?”
“Ask your fucking precious Council.” Eyes no longer even partially human, he stared at her, daring her to continue.
Lines of conditioning already stretched to the limit by her earlier vision snapped with an audible mental sound.
She was angry. Really, truly angry. Angry enough not to care about maintaining the appearance of Psy normality.
The only thing driving her to keep her voice to a harsh whisper was her awareness of the guards.
“Yes,” she hissed. “They are my fucking precious Council, the leaders of my race. How would you feel if I asked you to cut Lucas’s throat simply because he didn’t behave according to the rules I said were the right ones?”
“Lucas doesn’t hide murderers from his own people.”
“Neither does the Council.” It was an instinctive reaction. The Psy were her people for better or for worse. She refused to withdraw her loyalty so easily.
“Bullshit.” Vaughn leaned forward and, in spite of how infuriated he’d made her, she hoped for his touch. But he kept his hands to himself. “The killer you see in your visions is Psy and there are lots of others exactly like him.”
She shook her head. “Serial killers are always human or changeling.”
“Why the hell would you be having visions about races you’ve never come into any real contact with?
” He was the one who shook his head this time, a violent movement reminiscent of the jaguar, not the man.
“Christ, baby, listen to yourself—this bastard is supposed to be a vision, but he holds you prisoner. No human or changeling would have that ability.”
The endearment was rough, almost a growl, and it broke her. Because he was making too much sense. “It can’t be true. Silence ended violence.”
“Yeah, and your sister’s still alive.”
She slapped him. Hard. The second it was done, her whole body began to tremble.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She stared at the white mark on his face, now filling with blood.
“Oh, God.” This was her ultimate nightmare come to life.
“I thought my inner protections were holding, but I must’ve been wrong—I must be close to a total psychic and mental breakdown. ” Insanity by any other name.
“Shit.” He cupped her face, his hands gentle. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I went way over the line. You had a right to do more than slap me.”
She put her hands over his. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she repeated, frantically attempting to locate the fissures in her mind and coming up blank. “I’ve never hit anyone. I didn’t even know I could—why did I hit you?”
“Because Marine was your sister and I had no right to use that loss against you.” He dropped his head until their foreheads touched. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. Don’t look like that, Red. If you were a cat, you’d probably have gone for my face with your claws.”
She shook her head at the savage image. “That can’t be true.”
“We’re not human,” he said slowly. “We play by different rules and we’re never going to act civilized when in the grip of passion, good or bad. That’s when the animal is at its strongest, most powerful.”
Faith wondered if she was imagining the underlying warning . . . the underlying invitation. “But I’m not changeling. I don’t hit people.”
“Human women have been slapping men for being bastards for centuries. You were doing what comes naturally.”
“Not for a Psy.”
“Faith, Silence isn’t normal. It’s an imposition. What you are without it is normal.” His head snapped up. “Someone’s heading this way.”
She felt the brush of a guard’s mind hit her peripheral shields. “Go,” she whispered. “Go!” Her fear for him was greater than any other emotion.
“Tell me something first—are you going to accept the offer?”
She knew what he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t lie to him. “I don’t know.”
“Decide. You can’t live in both worlds.”
Then he was gone, a blur within the treetops.
Rising, she headed toward the house and away from the approaching guard.
She was afraid of what her eyes might reveal.
Because for the first time in her life, the night sky within was starting to show something other than the endless Silence of a perfect cardinal; it was starting to show vulnerability.
She could still pass for normal, could still live in her world, but she was changing.
That change had to be either embraced without reservation or irrevocably erased from her psyche.
There was no middle ground. If she became Council, she couldn’t expect the changelings to remain her friends, couldn’t expect Vaughn to visit her, hold her, awaken her.
She had to choose.
Vaughn completed his watch rotation without speaking to a single packmate, then took off into the purple glow of day turning to night.
He ran for hours, heading deeper and deeper into the Sierra Nevada, territory that had once belonged solely to the wolves.
The chill mountain air ruffled his fur in a way that usually gave him the greatest of pleasure. But not tonight.
Tonight, the human half was very much in charge and it was beyond furious. He’d mated to a woman who might reject him and walk away. Forever. It made him want to shake her until she came to her senses and accepted the bond between them. How could she not see it? Yet she didn’t.
Powered by a chaotic mix of anger and pain, he ran so far that he left everything known behind.
Only then did he take to the trees and find a perch from which to watch the night moods of the forest and think.
But thinking wasn’t what he ended up doing, his emotions too violent for anything that rational.
So he tried to wrap himself in the aloneness of the night, tried to teach himself the sound of silence, the sound he’d be living with if Faith renounced their bond.
It took him bare seconds to realize he’d been mistaken.
He wasn’t alone, the scent of Pack was strong in the panther who’d tracked him.
Lucas didn’t make a sound as he padded to a spot on another branch of the same tree as Vaughn.
Neither did he make any move to instigate a conversation, and when Vaughn took off again, he ran beside him.
It was hours later by the time Vaughn led them back to his home and they shifted. Uncaring of their nakedness, they sat atop the small hill that the cave was buried under and watched the edge of a brilliant dawn lighten the sky.
“Where’s Sascha?” Vaughn asked.
“She and Tammy stayed over at the SnowDancer den after working with Brenna.”
At the mention of the SnowDancer female who’d been violated by Enrique, Vaughn’s simmering anger exploded into full-blown fury. “You trusted her to the wolves?”
“Yeah. Hawke never breaks his word.” Lucas grinned. “And the damn wolf knows Clay and Nate will tear him to shreds if he so much as lays a finger on either of our women. They’re up there, too.”
“So much for trust.”
“Trust takes time.”
And while the economic partnership between DarkRiver and the SnowDancers had held for almost a decade, the blood alliance between the two packs was only months old. “Why did you track me?”
“Thought you might want to talk.”
“Why?” Vaughn disappeared on long runs nearly every week, the jaguar seeking solitude.
“Sascha. She said something before heading up to the SnowDancers.”
“What?”
“Her powers are developing in an unexpected way. Either that or it’s the influence of the Web.” The leopard male crossed his arms over his knees and clasped the wrist of one hand with the other. “She didn’t feel anything from you the whole day and she got worried.”
“She got worried because she didn’t feel anything?”
“She says she’s constantly aware of the presence of everyone in the Web, a hum that lets her know you’re alive. But yesterday you shut down so violently she thought something might’ve happened to you.”
Vaughn didn’t particularly like the idea of being shadowed. “I want her to teach me how to block her.”
“Yeah, she figured. She’s been working on something for everyone.”
“Good.”
“So, you hurt?”
“No.” Nothing physical.
“Want to talk?”
“About as much as I want a lobotomy.”
“Then how about we go one-on-one?”
Vaughn decided that pounding Lucas into a pulp sounded like an excellent way to work out his frustration and anger. “Fine.”
They changed back into animal form and went at it.
Lucas might be his alpha, but tonight they were simply friends.
And Vaughn was a jaguar. They were generally bigger than leopards—he was no exception.
However, Lucas was faster, a result of being born the pack’s Hunter, charged with the responsibility of executing former packmates who’d gone violently rogue.
Put together, it meant they were evenly matched in most situations, but today Vaughn was full of so much anger that he was lethal, a savage hail of teeth and claws and dangerously powerful jaws.