Gray couldn't remain still. His mind or his body. He paced in the shadows of the car parked in the lot behind the club and wished for the first time since finding out his true vampire status that he was a Pureblood paven. Then he could flash. Like Dillon had a few moments ago. He could take the two Impures and Uma back to the warehouse so they could connect back with family, then get that hardheaded veana locked in a room and figure out what he'd just heard. Shit-what he'd just seen.
Cursing, he halted in a panel of cool moonlight and raised his hand into the light. He stared at the mark on top, squinted.
There was no mistaking it now. The outline of the jaguar was clearly stamped into the web of burn scars, even down to the rosette pattern on its fur. How hadn't he seen this lurking beneath all that ravaged skin? Maybe because the mark was the same color as his skin. Maybe because he so rarely looked at his scars-his deformity-at the ever-present reminder of the past? A past that was now called into question by what he'd learned in the Paleo from Samuel.
He ran his thumb over the mark, hissed at the strange sensation that ran through his body. Like feathers one moment and fingernails the next.
Around him, the air seemed to drop ten degrees in temperature, and when he opened his mouth he saw his breath. His pulse kicked up.
He and Dillon-true mates.
The idea was as improbable as it was unfortunate. Yes, he had a thing for Dillon. He wanted Dillon-wanted inside Dillon. But to be bound to her forever? That thought made his blood run as cold as the frigid air he existed within.
Dillon could never be anyone's true mate. She trusted no one. And if Gray was honest with himself, he wasn't completely convinced he could trust her either. After what had just happened in the Paleo-how she'd run in the other direction when lives were on the line. Run away instead of toward him, toward his cause.
That could never be the mate for him. For the leader of the Impure Resistance. If he ever wanted to get serious with a female, she would have to be a true partner, like-minded, someone who would allow him to see all of her, even the shit from her past, the scars that never healed.
There was a sudden flash in the center of the parking lot and Gray looked up. Dillon. As beautiful as ever. As impossible to love as ever. His heart stuttered, then stalled. Something was wrong. Her eyes were wide and she was running-balls out-toward him.
"We have to go now!" she shouted.
"What the hell-"
Gray heard the sound of another flash. Then another. Pop. Pop. Instinct gripped him and he leaped onto the hood of the car in front of him. Drawing out his blades, he dropped into fighting stance.
"No!" Dillon screamed. In one lithe movement, she jumped up on the hood of the car to meet him and wrapped her arms around his waist just as two Pureblood males came barreling toward them.
Gray drew back and sent both knives straight at their heads.
The moment steel entered skull, Gray and Dillon flashed away.
The Order sat at their long table in their desert reality presiding over a case regarding the thievery of several Pureblood homesteads within a large credenti in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So when Feeyan raised her head and declared, "Damn those fools! We will see each one laid out in the sun and dried until they are nothing but dust!" both Pureblood veanas who stood before the table gasped, one clutching her neck, the other rendered completely immobile with panic.
Feeyan sneered at them. "I do not speak of you." She sniffed. "Although the crimes with which you have been accused certainly could make you eligible for such a fate."
One of the veanas began to cry. Feeyan lifted her hand in one smooth arching movement, blocking the Pureblood veanas from hearing her next words.
"We have failed, Order members."
The paven to her right looked confused. "The trap we set at the Paleo was a success, was it not? The mutore accompanied Gray Donohue to the raid, and two of the Impures we're taken."
Her nostrils flared as she pressed her bride-white hair behind her shoulders. "Yes, but when the mutore flashed them back to the Impure Resistance safe house, our guards could not get ahold of her mid-flight. Only when she flashed back alone, and even then she fought them off like a wildcat. They could not contain her, and she and Gray Donohue got away."
Several members of the Order released sounds of irritation, even a call for severe punishment against the guards.
Feeyan raised her chin. "They have already been destroyed."
The paven beside her nodded, pleased. "You have made quick work with their lives, Feeyan. That is justice."
For a moment Feeyan wrestled with the idea of telling the true cause of the guards' deaths, but she knew it would come out eventually, and she wouldn't want to look like a liar and a braggart when it did. Especially when she was seeking the leadership position within the Order.
"Gray Donohue killed the guards," she stated simply, then took in the fierce sounds from each member of the Order. "We must contact Celestine Donohue again," she said over the din. "Press her further. We will have the location of the Impure Resistance headquarters and her help with bringing in her son, or she will be joining these two simpering, thieving Purebloods before us in a cell at Mondrar."
Before any member had the chance to respond, she raised her hand and swept it across in a rainbow curve, then trained her eyes on the lawbreakers before her.
Dillon was no fool. She wasn't about to let anyone take her out mid-flight. She didn't flash and remain at one location for more than a few seconds. Instead she quick-flashed from one place to the next-one country, one state, one city to the next, mountaintop, Disneyland, desert cave, ocean liner. It was manic, a total brain seizure, and when she finally touched down near the river in Eastern Vermont where her Beast brothers had found her, she dropped like a stone against the very maple tree she'd tried to hide within.
Her head spinning, she squinted up at Gray, at the blur of him as he walked toward her, seemingly unfazed.
"Why aren't you puking?" she uttered, holding her head steady.
"When you deal with hundreds of voices and conversations in your head every minute of the day, you learn how to stabilize." He crouched down beside her, utterly calm, collected, and clear. "Just breathe for a few seconds, Veana."
Dillon dropped her head back against the tree trunk and inhaled deeply through her nostrils until the spinning stopped and the stars overhead stuck in their proper places.
"What the hell happened, D?" His tone was tense, intense and demanding.
She swallowed, her throat ached. "They found me mid-flash."
"Who? Those Purebloods I lost my blades to back there?"
Her gaze shot to his. "You took them down?"
"Fucking right, I took them down. They're bleeding out on the blacktop behind the club."
"Oh good," she breathed, feeling relieved, though far from secure. "At least we weren't followed."
As Gray stared at her, his mind working the questions behind his eyes, the sounds of the night, of the forest, of the river began to swell. "You gotta give me something here, D," Gray said. "Something to fill in the blanks, a reason why were not in the Bronx headquarters right now. Who were those pavens?"
A problem. A big one that would no doubt be part of her present and future. "Sent by the Order, I think. They tried to lock on and capture me mid-flight."
Gray's face paled. "Before or after you dropped the Impures?"
The question bothered her more than she wanted to admit. He cared deeply about those Impures, and if his intense, scrutinizing gaze were anything to go by, he cared about them more than her.
She arched one brow. "After."
"Shit," he breathed, a sigh of relief.
She wanted to punch him. Actually, she wanted to bite him, then punch him.
"How do you think those Pureblood pirates knew where you were?" Gray asked, all business now that his kind were back home safe and sound. "How to get to you at the exact moment?"
"The Order must be able to track the flashes of Purebloods," she said, sitting up.
"Then we can no longer flash."
She nodded. She'd been the thinking the same thing. "That's going to be a problem if we ever want to leave here."
He glanced around at the river, the dark forest. "Do you know where we are?"
"Vermont."
He stood. "Too bad we don't have a cell. We could've called the Romans for a ride." He eyed her. "Or maybe not. If you're being tracked, I think there's only one way of getting home. On foot."
"Getting home?" she repeated, her eyes narrowing, her body tensing. She'd been exhausted a moment ago, but now, with what Gray had just said, she felt a second wind coming on.
And it wasn't blowing her back to New York City.
"We can rest for a while," he said, his gaze moving to the river. "Then we should get going."
She shook her head. "Are you insane?"
His gaze swept over her. "Maybe. But not about this. I have to make sure the Impures are all right and the warriors are warned."
She leaned forward. "The Order doesn't know anything about the Impures or the safe house." She lifted her hands. "They want me. And if I'm not there, there's nothing to go after."
"You're a smart veana, Dillon. Think." He crossed his arms, the moonlight falling over his shoulder like a shroud. "The Order will do whatever it takes to find out where you are. They'll question, torture, or kill the Impures who knew you were staying there."
"All the more reason to stay lost."
"For you maybe, but not for me. I need to be there to help them and fight, if that's what it takes."
She stared at him. "You really love walking into certain death and/or imprisonment, don't you?"
He didn't answer that. "I won't allow anything to happen to them-or to you," he said resolutely. "Rest. We leave as soon as it's light."
When he walked away, headed down to the river, Dillon dropped back against the tree trunk again. She couldn't believe it. He wanted her to go back to the very place where the Order would be looking for her. He didn't care if she was captured-he only cared if the Impures were. Frustration screamed through her. She should've just taken off on her own instead of flashing back to him. She wasn't a priority to him-even with the mark of her jaguar riding his hand.
The mark neither one of them had said anything about.