Hostage to Pleasure

CHAPTER 39

Despite the Psy soldiers’ night-vision equipment, Lucas had the clear advantage. This was his territory and he knew every inch of it. “Why shouldn’t we kill you?” he asked the black-garbed male who came forward to meet him.

“We have no quarrel with you.” The man’s eyes were flat, his voice toneless. “We ask permission to enter your territory to hunt a Psy fugitive.”

“Permission denied.” Lucas folded his arms. “I don’t make a habit of allowing enemies into my territory.”

“This fugitive may be dangerous to you and your people.”

Lucas smiled and it was nothing friendly. “Then the fugitive will die.”

“We would prefer to capture this one alive.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you—you don’t always get what you want?” He sensed Mercy moving around to flank the soldiers on one side, while Clay took the other. Desiree had proved available at the last minute and was holding a watch position high in the trees to Lucas’s back. She was a good shot—not sniper good like Dorian, but good enough to blow out Psy brains all over the forest floor.

“Cooperation will be noted by the Council,” the Psy male said.

Lucas felt a chill spread out from his heart. He let it feed into his eyes, into his voice. “Tell your Council that we never forget our dead. And we never forgive. Enrique might be gone, but the rest of them are still fair game.”

A silence and he knew the Psy man was telepathing. “Is that a threat?”

Lucas knew without a doubt that someone else was now looking out from behind those dark eyes. “No, simple fact. If your men aren’t out of here within the next ten minutes, blood will spill.”

“Your people will die, too.”

Lucas lifted an eyebrow. “It’s going to be night-dark for another hour at least, the forest is thick with trees, and we’re leopards in familiar territory. You want to take us on, go ahead.”

“This fugitive is extremely dangerous. If we leave, the responsibility for any deaths or injuries resulting from her being at large is yours.”

“Noted.” He paused. “But if you want her alive, give us an indication of how long since you lost her. Betters our chance of running her down—we’ve got no problem handing your mess back to you.”

A pause that spoke of decisions being made. “We believe she’s been in the forest for an hour maximum. She’s armed.” With that, the Psy soldiers left in military lines. Lucas scented Clay and Mercy escorting them out. “Dezi,” he said, after the echoes of their departure had faded from the earth beneath his feet.

Soft whispers of sound only an alpha would hear and then the vibration of Desiree’s feet hitting the earth. She walked around to stand beside him, long and lean, with bronze skin brushed with gold and waist-length hair braided into what looked like a thousand sleek plaits. Her rifle, she’d slung across her back. “I saw nothing suspicious.” She wrinkled her nose, green eyes so dark, they looked black in this light. “They smell like shit but that’s no news flash.”

Lucas nodded. These Psy had given off the cold metallic smell that made changeling stomachs turn. Vaughn’s theory was that it denoted Psy who were so deeply enmeshed in Silence, they’d never find a way out. “They weren’t lying about the fugitive. Think you might be able to pick up a trail?”

“Possible, but this group of lunkheads messed up the scent markers. If I go deeper, past their blanket of crap… maybe.”

Lucas pulled out his own cell. “I’m going to call Jamie and get more people out here,” he said, referring to Dezi’s training partner. “You start on the trail.” His grim mood turned to amusement as she shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I’ll call your mom, too, let her know you extended your shift.”

“Damn it.” She kicked at the blanket of pine needles on the forest floor. “I forgot my cell and she gets worried if I don’t check in after a night shift. I keep telling her it’s bad for my tough-ass image, but…”

“Meenakshi hasn’t quite gotten used to her delicate angel turning into a soldier.” In human form, Dezi’s mother was a petite powerhouse with Dezi’s skin and those startling green eyes she’d brought with her from a region in Kashmir. A star in the world of classical Indian dance, she loved both her mate and her daughter to pieces, but was still stunned her baby had grown up into such a lethal young woman. Not that Dezi couldn’t dance. “You were cute in a tutu.”

Desiree scowled. “Why don’t you ever forget shit?” She turned on her heel without waiting for an answer. “Should’ve been an elephant instead of a leopard.”

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?”