Chapter 21
Pedro dropped the concealment the night before the operation.
Not all of it. Just a small section, chosen specifically.
It was over the part of town nearest the store and the inner wards stayed intact.
The reservation stayed invisible. The full scope of the Clan remained hidden.
What Pedro opened was a window, small and carefully framed, showing exactly what they wanted Hernandez to see.
Through that window, Hernandez would not see three people.
He would see the edges of a community. Shifter signatures, far more than he’d counted, moving through the area around the store.
He would think his blood probe had finally cracked the old shaman’s work, and he would trust what he saw, because he would believe he’d learned it through his own spell work.
But he’d be wrong. He just wouldn’t know it.
Pax stood with Pedro in the old man’s front room while it was done and felt the change as a shift in the air. Then, Pedro lowered his hands.
“Done,” he said, sounding tired. Pax had never once heard Pedro sound tired.
This had cost him. “He’ll move tomorrow.
He needs tonight to arrange his men and prepare himself.
He’s disciplined. He won’t move too quickly, even when he believes the advantage is his.
” A pause. “But he won’t wait past tomorrow, either. His pride won’t let him.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Before noon.” Pedro lowered himself into his chair with great care. “Be in position before dawn.”
“We will.” Pax moved toward the door, then stopped. “Pedro. After this is over, I want to talk to you about the Clan, and what comes next regarding Mark Pepard’s invitation. I think you should be part of that conversation.”
Pedro just smiled faintly. “I have always been part of that conversation. I’ve just been waiting for you to realize it.”
Pax shook his head, then went out to his truck and sat in the dark before starting the engine.
He thought about this land, and the people who had kept the Clan alive in it against odds that should have buried them.
Pedro’s quiet power. Rodrigo’s patience.
Diego’s mother’s face. Mr. Leeland and his newspaper.
Finally, he started the truck and drove to the store.
The store was dark, but a light was on in the apartment above. Pax went up to the back door and Bree opened it. He’d texted her to say he was on his way over and she’d been waiting for him. He kissed her hello, then they walked up the back stairs to the apartment.
Mr. Leeland was still up, which was a surprise, since the old man usually turned in early. He sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a piece of paper covered in his careful handwriting.
“Workshop curriculum,” he said, when Pax glanced at it. “For when this is over. I’ve been thinking about expanding into masonry.” He looked at Pax over his reading glasses. “Assuming we’re still having workshops.”
“Oh, we’re still having workshops,” Pax replied with a grin.
“There’d be a riot if we shut that down now.
Everybody’s enjoying them too much, and the kids you teach have already started putting their new knowledge to good use in their homes.
A lot of things are getting fixed around the res these days. ”
Mr. Leeland nodded, a satisfied little smile on his face, and went back to his notes.
Bree handed Pax a cup of tea he hadn’t asked for, and he took it and sat down.
The three of them had a companionable evening as Mr. Leeland talked through his ideas, talking more than a bit about masonry and the challenges of working with local stone.
Pax asked questions because he genuinely wanted to know the answers.
When Mr. Leeland finally went to bed, he put his hand on Pax’s shoulder as he passed. It was a brief touch that spoke volumes about the man’s affection without a word being spoken.
Pax marveled at how much his life had changed in such a short time. He felt the imprint of the old man’s hand on his shoulder and was touched by it. Somewhere down the hall he heard a door close as Mr. Leeland went into his room.
“He likes you,” Bree said from the counter, her back to him, rinsing cups.
“I’m glad.”
“He always has, you know. You and Ari, both. I think he was concerned when I started hanging around you two after you came to work for him that summer you were seventeen, but he soon learned he could trust you two to look out for me.”
He got up and crossed the kitchen and put his hands on her shoulders, and she stilled, then leaned back against him.
“I will always protect you, Breelee, to the best of my ability.” He spoke the words like a vow and held her close.
“Tell me it’s going to go the way we planned tomorrow,” she whispered.
He pressed his mouth to the top of her head. “It’s going to go the way we planned.”
She turned around in the circle of his arms and looked up at him, open and unguarded.
“I know it might not,” she said. “Plans don’t always work out. But I needed to hear it.” A smile tipped up one side of her mouth and he was enchanted, as always.
“I know.” He held her face in his hands. “It’s going to be okay, babe. And when it’s over, we can finally get to the good part.”
“I can’t wait for the good part.” She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, they locked on his. “Stay tonight.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
She took his hand and led him down the hall, and into the soft darkness of her room. Neither of them reached for the light. The desert glow coming through the curtain was plenty for a man with a jaguar’s eyes.
He’d expected urgency. The night before an operation usually ran hot and fast in a soldier’s blood, and he’d braced for that. What rose in him instead was patience. He wanted to go slow tonight. He wanted to memorize her.
“You’re looking at me as if I’m going to disappear in a puff of smoke,” she whispered, reading him the way she always did. “I’m not going anywhere, Pax.”
“Neither am I.” He cupped her face in both hands and kissed her, unhurried and thorough.
She let him undress her in the dark with a care that made her breathing go ragged, and she stood for it while he honored every inch of skin he bared with his hands and his mouth.
When she finally tugged his shirt over his head and spread her fingers across his chest, his heart was pounding under her palms, and he made no effort to hide it from her.
His jaguar, for once, had no jokes to offer. The cat lay quiescent inside him, watchful and reverent, its whole considerable attention fixed on the woman in his arms. Even the beast understood that this night was special.
He laid her down and loved her slowly, learning her responses all over again, catching the soft sounds she made with his mouth so they wouldn’t be heard.
When he finally joined them, sliding deep into her welcoming warmth, she sighed his name into the dark and wrapped herself around him, and he had to hold still a moment just to bear the sweetness of it.
Then he moved, long and unhurried, savoring every small hitch of her breath, holding his own pleasure at bay until she had crested twice beneath him.
Only then did he let go, following her over with his face buried against her neck.
The words he had never yet spoken rose up in him and stayed unsaid.
Not tonight. When he gave her the words, he wanted nothing hanging over them.
He wanted that statement to be a beginning, not a shield against whatever the morning might bring.
So he told her with his hands, and his mouth, and the warm shelter of his body, and trusted her to understand him.
Afterward, she curled into his side with her cheek over his heart, and her breathing went long and even as sleep took her. He pressed his lips to her hair.
“Sleep, Breelee,” he whispered. “I’ve got the watch.”
He lay awake for a long time after she fell asleep.
He wasn’t worried, exactly. He knew from long experience that worry wasted the hours before an operation, and he’d trained that out of himself long ago.
No, this time he lay awake because everything in him was switched on, and all that awareness kept coming back to the warmth of his mate beside him, the sound of her breathing, and the desert dark resting soft against the window.
He’d spent the night before an operation in a lot of places. Tents, vehicles, barracks, and on one memorable occasion, a narrow stone shelf in a mountain pass. He’d learned to sleep in all of those places. He’d learned to find stillness and hold it against what was coming.
He found that stillness here more easily than anywhere he’d ever been, but sleep was more difficult. Not when he had his mate in his arms. Every moment spent next to her was precious.
He thought about Pedro’s skill, Rodrigo’s steadfast, quiet power, and Elena saying finally to a room full of jaguars, when he’d announced his mating with Bree.
He also thought about the Clan members who would be taking up positions before dawn, trusting him to lead them.
He thought about that blasted drainage culvert outside Salt Lake City and what had run through his head as he hid in it.
How he wanted to be home. With the Clan.
And his twin. He hadn’t understood what he’d find when he got here, but it was better than any dream he could have imagined.
Except for Ari. He still didn’t know what his twin was going to do, and how they would answer the question waiting on the other side of tomorrow.
His brother needed his own version of this.
Pax didn’t know what shape Ari’s happiness might take, only that it would surprise them both when he finally found it.
Bree shifted in her sleep and turned toward him. He gathered her in, and she settled. He closed his eyes and finally rested.
Pax was up two hours before dawn. He dressed in the dark so as not to wake Bree too early, then crept out of her room and into the kitchen. He needed coffee this morning of all mornings, and set about making it. When he turned from the counter, she was there in the doorway, watching him.
“I thought you’d be able to sleep later,” she said softly.
He shook his head. “I have to coordinate the others, so I need to be ready before everyone else.”
“You sound like a general,” she observed wryly, her lips tilted upward.
“Nothing so grand. But I am in charge today, and I take that seriously,” he told her.
“I know,” she replied softly. “You care for your people.”
“And you,” he added, holding her gaze. “I care most about you, Bree.”
Her breath caught at his intimate tone and he realized he’d been sort of lax about giving her the words. He loved her, but he hadn’t told her so. Not in words. Now wasn’t the time for declarations, but he’d do it soon, he promised himself. He sensed hearing the words were important to human women.
A shifter woman would know without being told, but he was going to have to muster up the words and the right time and place to make his feelings known to Bree. He’d plan that campaign as soon as he finished with this one.
“After this, we’re going to make plans for the rest of our lives together,” he promised, moving closer to her. “It’s going to be such a good life, Breelee.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he took her into his embrace.
“I know it is. It already is, even with the threat hanging over us,” she said, her voice low and filled with emotion.
“That threat ends today,” he reminded her.
She nodded, her head moving against his chest. “You be careful out there and make sure you come back to me in one piece.”
“Always.” He kissed her slow and deep. When he lifted his head he gazed deep into her eyes. “And I want you to stick to the plan.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” she joked and he chuckled.
“Now you’re getting it,” he quipped, amused by her nod to his time in the Navy. He kissed her again, then let her go. “It’s time I got on with it. Ari’s going to have my head if I don’t check in with him soon.”
“Go. But be safe,” she told him as he reluctantly walked toward the door.
“You too, babe. I’ll see you after the dust settles.”
*
Hernandez saw it at midnight. He’d been checking the ward boundary every few hours, a discipline he’d kept since he’d sent out the probe. There had been nothing to see until midnight, when things suddenly changed.
He stood at his window, reached out with the dark sensing, and didn’t move for a long time. What he sensed was just too tempting.
Magical signatures with shifter energy. Far more than three. They were moving through the area around the hardware store as if they were on familiar ground, unhurried and unguarded, because they believed they were hidden. They believed the wards held.
The seam he’d been searching for had opened. Not completely. He still couldn’t see through to the reservation itself, and the inner layer of the old shaman’s work remained as opaque as ever. But the outer layer had cracked, and through the crack, he could finally see.
He counted.
Not three. Not just a family. There were more of them. A group larger than he’d expected, centered on the town itself and using a human-run hardware store as its gathering point. He had known his estimate needed revising. He had not imagined by how much.
If the shifters were centered around the hardware store, then it was likely the res was just a human settlement.
The shaman’s presence was to be expected in such locations, so he put that aside to focus on the shifters he could now sense in the town.
They were a much more alluring target for his interest and if he did this right, he could siphon off all their power and increase his own standing exponentially.
Licking his lips, he picked up his phone and made some calls.
By the time he finished, all of his cartel soldiers had their instructions.
He was going to move on the hardware store.
He would take the jaguar first and break through the rest of the ward in one action.
He’d remove the man who’d interfered in Salt Lake City, and establish that this territory was under new management now.
He was thorough. He was prepared. He had more than enough backup from the cartel goons.
Hernandez poured himself a measure of whiskey, as was his ritual, and stood at the window looking down the street at the sleeping town. He savored the view with the satisfaction of a man whose patience had finally paid off.
It never occurred to him that what he was seeing might be exactly what someone wanted him to see. He was too good at his work for that thought to surface.
That was his mistake.
He drank his whiskey, went to bed, and slept well. In the morning, he would end this.