He cupped her tear-damp jaw, his gaze dropping to the thick, grotesque gash across her cheekbone, then back up. Staring into gray eyes as deep as a storm-tossed sea, he attempted once more to cloud her mind and steal her memories, but as before, on the battlefield, nothing happened.
With a frustrated sigh, he released her and rose as she curled in on herself, swept away by the chaos of her emotions.
Kara and Lyon finally arrived, and he went to join them.
"No luck?" Lyon asked.
"No."
Kara made a sound of misery. "She's suffering, Lyon. Can't you steal her emotions as you did mine?"
"She's human."
Kara looked at him askance. "So? Until a few weeks ago, I thought I was, too."
Lyon caught Wulfe's gaze, his trepidation about going anywhere near a crying female clear in his expression.
Wulfe gave him a wry look. "This one's okay. Come on. She could use your magic touch." Lyon was the only one of the Ferals with that particular gift to any substantive degree.
He walked into the cage first and once more squatted beside the grieving woman. "Natalie? This is Lyon. He's going to help you. Give him your hand."
The woman struggled against the tide of tears, gasping as she straightened again, her gaze moving from Wulfe to Lyon with wary uncertainty.
Lyon held out his hand. "I won't hurt you."
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she slowly placed her hand in Lyon's much larger one. Almost at once, the tension began to visibly drain out of her, the tears subsiding. "What are you doing?" Even her voice sounded almost clear again.
Kara came to stand in the doorway of the cell, a water bottle in one hand, a small bag of crackers in the other. "He's a healer of sorts. He helps heal broken hearts."
Lyon grunted. "I take emotions."
Kara smiled softly. "It's often the same thing. I'm Kara. I'm sorry for all you've been through." She handed Wulfe the water and crackers.
Wulfe screwed off the top of the water bottle and handed it to Natalie.
The woman took a long drink, her intrigued gaze returning to Lyon beneath tear-spiked lashes. "That's amazing, what you can do. I feel . . . okay, now. Like I can handle this."
The moment Lyon released her, she dug into the bag and pulled out one of the crackers. Her gaze swung to Wulfe. "How long have I been asleep? I'm starving."
"Longer than you think. Eat up."
Lyon rose and joined Kara at the cage's door, his arm going around his mate's shoulders.
"Esmeria says only one bottle of water and a few crackers this first time," Kara told him. "She needs to take it slow."
Within minutes, the crackers were gone and the water bottle empty.
Lyon steered Kara out of the cage. "She needs to sleep, Wulfe."
"Agreed."
Natalie's gaze snapped to his, wariness leaping into her eyes. "You're going to knock me out again. I watched what you did to Xavier and Christy. I know you did it to me."
He didn't deny it. "It won't hurt you, and the less you hear, the better for you and us both. I'll leave you in here with your brother if you'd like."
Her tension slid away. Slowly, she nodded. "All right."
Sliding his hand to the side of her warm neck, he found the spot beneath her ear with his thumb and pressed. He caught her as she collapsed. Beneath the acrid scent of fear and sweat that still clung to her, he smelled another. Her own scent. A calm gray-eyes scent, like a warm summer breeze.
Lifting her into his arms, he laid her on the opposite side of the small cage from her brother so the male wouldn't accidentally kick her when he woke, as he was sure to do soon.
As Wulfe left the cage and locked it behind him, Lyon lifted a brow. "She didn't appear to be afraid of you."
"Why would she be afraid of Wulfe?" Kara asked.
Wulfe looked down at his chief's mate from his seven-foot height with his badly scarred face, and saw nothing but genuine puzzlement. Not for the first time he marveled at their good fortune in being blessed with this woman as their Radiant.
With a smile, he hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her to him for a hug as he met his chief's gaze. "Think of all she saw that day."
A quick smile of understanding flickered across Lyon's face. "Daemons. You're flat-out pretty compared to them."
Wulfe grinned, releasing Kara.
Lyon nodded toward the unconscious male. "Who is he to her?"
"Her brother. And she confirmed it. He's blind."
All hint of amusement left his chief's face. "Shit."
"Yeah." He felt the same way about the prospect of killing the male. But he wasn't sure how they were going to avoid it."Well, we don't have to do anything about them today. Do you want someone to spell you for a while?"
"No, I'm good."
Lyon clapped him on the back, slipped his arm around Kara's shoulders, and turned to leave.
Wulfe went to stand by the cage with the brother and sister, his gaze lingering on Natalie's tear-streaked face. A lightness filled his chest at the thought that for once, he looked damned close to normal. At least in the eyes of this woman. It was a novel experience.
Behind him, he heard the other female, Lip Ring, stirring. He turned slowly, watching as she sat up, as she opened her eyes and stared at him.
As she screamed.
Chapter Three
"Hi, Mr. McCloud. How are you feeling today?"
As Ariana strode into the ailing patient's hospital room, the elderly human looked up. Eyes tight with pain lit with pleasure at the sight of her.
"Hi, pretty girl. Did you finally transfer down here to the oncology ward?"
"No, I'm still in maternity." The poison inside her leaped to feed on the poor man's pain. Goddess, she hated feeding on others' misery, though it didn't hurt them. She took nothing from them and gave back what she could. "I'm off work and heading out, but I wanted to stop by and see you, first. I hear you're leaving us tomorrow."
He nodded, his face a mask of resignation. "Hospice. There's nothing more they can do for me here."
Stage-four bone cancer. Not only was he the quickest feed, but she'd learned he had little family and far fewer visitors than the others on the ward. So they gave to one another, though only she understood the true nature of the exchange.
An Ilina's natural energy was pleasure, not pain. But the poison inside her was another matter--a living thing that demanded the misery. Long ago, she'd discovered that the hungrier the darkness became, the less able she was to control it.
She gripped his frail hand. "I'm sorry."
"Me, too." He was silent a moment, then visibly shook off the pall. "Tell me about the Orioles. I hear they won."
As much time as she'd spent among humans these past centuries, she'd come to know and understand them well. She never failed to be humbled by the depth of their courage in the face of impending death.
"They did. They beat the Mets seven to six." She'd never acquired much of a taste for human sports, but Mr. McCloud was an avid baseball fan, and she kept tabs on the games so she'd have something to talk with him about. Something that might take his mind off his own terrible pain.
"You should have seen them in '96. What a team." While Mr. McCloud regaled her with stories of the Orioles' pennant race, the poison inside her exhausted body feasted.
For most of her years in exile, she'd acted as a midwife or maternity nurse, her Ilina nature feeding off the joy of childbirth even as the dark poison gorged on the accompanying pain. But sometime over the past couple of years, the balance had tipped. Either she was growing weaker, or the darkness inside her had grown in strength. Her feeding had had to grow along with it.
Deep inside, she felt a fluttering of panic that she was losing control. The fear that, after all these years of struggling to hold on, her strength would fail before Melisande caught the Mage sorcerer and forced an antidote from him.
And now, to make the disaster complete, Kougar was back, demanding explanations and aid she couldn't provide, their mating bond reconnected and endangering his life all over again.
She felt beaten, pummeled by emotions that had her torn between screaming and crying ever since Kougar walked back into her life three days ago and turned it upside down. She ached at the pain she knew he was in over the impending deaths of his friends. Yet she could do nothing. Nothing but ensure that he continued to hate her.
Letting his friends die ought to seal that hatred for eternity. Maybe someday she'd be able to make it up to him, when this nightmare was finally over. When they were both free of the threat of the poison.
It would happen. Melisande would find the bastard. Though she'd been saying that for nearly a millennium, she couldn't give up hope that someday this would all be a bitter memory. For a long time, she'd thought Kougar would be part of that future. Now she wasn't so sure.
If she didn't keep him hating her, he wouldn't be alive to see any future at all.
As the elderly patient's voice slowed, his eyes beginning to droop, Ariana patted his hand. "Get some rest, Mr. McCloud. You have a busy day tomorrow."
His eyes softened. "I won't see you again, pretty girl. Thank you for brightening an old man's last days."
Ariana bent down and brushed his cheek with her lips. "You'll have the best seats to all the games, soon."
His eyes crinkled. "From on high. I'll save you a seat, though you won't be needing it for a good many years."
He had no idea. She'd already lived nearly thirteen hundred and might live thousands more, despite her current inability to turn to mist. Killing an Ilina queen required cutting out her heart, which took a speed and slyness few possessed.
Ariana smiled softly, sadly. "Save me that seat." With a squeeze of his hand, she grabbed the purse she'd left on the chair by the door and headed home, her heart heavy, but the poison back under control. For a while.
The night was cool, a light fog blurring the edges of the streetlamps that lit the parking lot. As she made her way to her car, she shrugged, trying to ease the tension twisting her neck muscles, a tension she laid firmly in the lap of the mate she'd hidden from for a thousand years.
She strode through the parking lot, her gaze skimming for movement, noting only a pair of young parents hurrying toward the Emergency Room with a feverish-looking toddler in arms. Ariana's inner radar had long ago become finely tuned to threats of any kind, but she sensed none. Not even the Feral who'd become the biggest threat of all. He wasn't anywhere near. Yet.
As she'd dressed for work two days ago, she'd discovered her name badge missing, and she was all too afraid she'd lost it in the Crystal Realm when Kougar attacked her. If she had, he'd found it. All she could do was hope that he wouldn't be able to use it to track her down since the hospital's name wasn't on it. But she felt far from safe.
Kougar was nothing if not determined.
For the past two days, she'd monitored the mating bond, seeking any sense of his drawing closer than normal, but she'd felt nothing. That didn't mean he wouldn't find her, only that he hadn't yet.
If she could just avoid him for the next week or two, until his friends caught in the spirit trap had died, she felt almost certain he'd go away and leave her alone again. Something inside her twisted at the callousness of that thought. The loss of so many Feral Warriors since she and Kougar had last been together was a tragedy. She'd known none of the shifters well, but Horse and the Wind had always treated her with kindness and even gratitude for the happiness she'd brought their friend. She was sorry she hadn't been there to save Horse when he'd been caught in that spirit trap with the others. Sadly, it was the very fact that she'd come into Kougar's life that had ensured she couldn't save his friends. The Mage would never have attacked the Ilinas if they hadn't feared that the Ilinas might join forces with the Ferals against them.
She unlocked the door of her ten-year-old beige sedan, climbed in, and tipped her head back against the seat. Slowly, she unwrapped the bandage that covered her right wrist and the silver cuff set with six blood red moonstones, a cuff that she'd worn since that day she'd tried too hard to save her maidens and taken too much poison, then lost it all. The moonstones shored up her defenses, keeping her from accidentally turning to mist. Her boss wasn't fond of the bandage but preferred it to her flashing the jewelry. It was a compromise they could both live with.
With the bandage off, she pulled on the cardigan she'd left on the front passenger seat against the night's chill, started the car, and headed home. Over the years, she'd purchased three different homes in the D.C. area, rotating between them, careful to change her home and identity every fifteen to twenty years so the humans wouldn't notice that she never aged.
Each of her houses was situated at the outer edge of where she could sense Kougar and draw strength from the bond that had never entirely been severed between them, at least on her side. She was careful to stay away from the Therian enclaves, where another immortal might spot her, though she doubted any would ever recognize her. Few Therians still lived who were over a thousand years old.
The drive to her current home, her favorite of the three, a small three-bedroom Cape Cod located in downtown Baltimore, took only ten minutes. She drove into the narrow drive and turned off the ignition, the sweet scent of spring flowers welcoming her as she stepped out of the car and made her way up the pavers to the front door.
Kougar's presence remained at a distance, not as far, perhaps, as Feral House in Northern Virginia, but a good distance, nonetheless.