realized it would shred something deep within him to have it so. He didn’t know her; he hadn’t done anything more than let his guard down for an uncharacteristic lupine romp. Or so he’d thought.
He knew better now.
Too late for that.
Barely conscious enough for the thought, gasping under the weight of the triggered amulet and the poison of it in his system, he nonetheless found it hard to reconcile the betrayal with her subsequent flight, leaving him tucked away here in the wild strip of growth protecting the outlying fairground fields from the desert.
Hard to think at all.
The amulet, triggered, hung around his neck with a stench he couldn’t avoid—corruption and coppery astringency and sharp acrid wisps of power—sickening him. His human form could have grasped the amulet and wrapped his hands around it and if he suffered for it, he could still break it. Unique, this skill in action. A mere handful of field Sentinels had seen it in use; fewer yet within Brevis Regional. She couldn’t have known. Coincidence. Luck. But it left him no less trapped. No less sickened.
And getting sicker.
He hadn’t realized it at first. Gone down hard and fast, the proverbial ton of bricks, darkness not only closing in on him but clenching down tight. He’d woken already panting, tongue lolling onto the scant, gritty leaf cover, to find her crouching over him—back to her human, clothed, and the pure wolfish scent of her cutting cleanly through the amulet stench. “I don’t want this,” she’d said, resting her hand in his thick ruff, black hair painted heavily with silver. And she’d opened her mouth to say something else, but after a hesitation, rose silently to angle out of the trees.
Moments later, a powerful motorcycle engine roared to life, settling to a growl…moving away at uncertain low speed on the off-road terrain and then abruptly smoothing out, shifting up in pitch, and winding up for asphalt…fading quickly into the distance.
The silence sat most heavily on him in that moment—the realization. Only Fabron Gausto would break the rules of the uneasy Sentinel-Core detente so completely—and only Fabron Gausto had little to lose, and everything to gain.
Gausto had already deeply embarrassed his Core Septs Prince, using forbidden blood workings on Meghan Lawrence and Dolan Treviño this past spring. But he’d been released for Core justice, for even the brevis regional adjutant—the consul’s executive officer—didn’t take the fate of a Core drozhar into his hands. Not with relations between the Core and the Sentinels already teetering.
Not with Brevis Regional Southwest so vulnerable, with field ops gone subtly wrong and bad luck plaguing them, and confidence in the ageing consul wavering.
Nick didn’t think Dane Berger—consul, Sentinel, and javelina boar—was in on the deeply buried conspiracy, but his willful blindness had allowed things to get this far. Far enough that his original adjutant had been killed and Nick, after only a year in his place, could see the growing danger.
But not well enough.
Gausto, in trying to redeem himself, had then sent a Core team to the San Francisco Peaks in northern Arizona, Joe Ryan’s high desert turf. And if Nick had initially targeted Ryan as the cause of the area’s problems and sent Lyn Maines to investigate…well, maybe it was the best thing he could have done after all. Now the Peaks were secure, and Gausto…
Gausto must be desperate. Enough for an all-or-nothing bid. Nick could all but hear that flat, arrogant voice in his head, inveigling the septs prince. Leave me my life, and I’ll give you Nick Carter. And then, because neither he nor the Core could be tied to any such operation, he’d found someone else to do it.
Someone wolf.
Pure feral grace.
Something wrenched inside him. He thought at first it came from the amulet, but a sudden flash of whiskey gold eyes, of laughing invitation—of the perfect flirtatiousness every wolf knew with her partner, pure and unfettered—and the twist of pain sent him thrashing in the underbrush.
Not just the amulet. The amulet’s working, reacting to the energies within him. That deeply, she’d reached him.
Sonuvadamnedbitch.
He took the battle inward, eyes unfocused and halfclosed, the heat of the day reaching him even in this protected shade but the panting gone beyond mere heat. It ate at him, this amulet. Wormed around deep inside his body and chewed away at the foundation of him. Worse than maybe she’d thought—or Gausto, for that matter. Because Nick was pretty sure Gausto wanted him alive.
For Gausto liked to play.
He cleared the murk from his mind, shoving away whiskey gold and edgy movement, a flash of black…he focused on his inner voice, gathering it, channeling it—pulling together a wordless adveho, sent straight to Annorah at brevis—their communications star still intensely determined to prove herself with perfection after her misjudgment during the Peaks incident. Not coincidentally, the single brevis-based operative currently in his small circle of trust.
But the adveho, the call for help that no Sentinel would ignore, went nowhere.
His focus faded; his awareness of the details around him faded, too. The scents, the sounds, the active fairgrounds so very close and yet way too far away to do him any good…
Didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. One inch at a time, rolled on his chest, head too heavy to lift. Paws, pushing against dirt and weeds…slipping, losing strength…hind legs splayed out behind like a puppy on ice. Barely budging the weight of him. But still…budging.
Try again.
And again.
Gausto wouldn’t get him without a fight. And if it meant fighting those whiskey gold eyes and pure feral grace…
So be it.
Try. Again.
Chapter 3
Jet washed her face in the tiny bathroom down the hall from her own room. It calmed her. She liked the sensation, and the soap, and the lotions—even the very basic scentless hand lotion provided in this bathroom. She liked shampoo and conditioner and flinging her head back from the faucet to send water droplets flying from her hair.
It didn’t make sense, that. She was wolf, and wolf needed none of those things. But she liked them nonetheless.
She had this time because Gausto was fielding a phone call—one he thought she couldn’t overhear. He’d never bothered to test her hearing; Jet thought he had guessed it was more acute than any born human’s but simply didn’t think it mattered to know how much.
His mistake. For Jet was a made thing, might be a temporarily controlled thing…but she wasn’t truly bound to him, not by blood nor pack nor heart.
And she knew what it was to be wild. More, she wanted it back.
Gausto had that tone in his voice, now. The deference. Only one man brought that out in him—his Septs Prince.
Gausto’s was
