it,” Nick said, as if he didn’t see it. “Head down below and get geared up; I want you in Pine Bluff by midafternoon.”
“Halfway there,” Ian said, on his feet and reaching for the door handle while the rest of them still shifted in their chairs—Sandy reached for a last swallow of her tea, Annorah stretched, and Ruger…
Ruger just glowered.
Mariska gathered her folder and stood, tucked together in a tidy button-down blouse with the wood buttons and natural material that meant it was Sentinel kosher—it would follow her if she took the bear, absorbed by the earth magic until she needed it again. Her slacks held the wrinkle of natural cotton; Ruger would bet she wore the moccasins he’d seen the previous night. Mariska Bear came prepared.
And she’d known what she was doing when she pried her way onto this team. She’d known what she was doing to him.
She’d taken away the one thing he truly had left to give them.
She met his current glower with uncertain honesty—with a note of pleading. “Ruger—”
He wanted to growl. He didn’t. He leaned back in the chair, one arm hooked over the back of it, his legs sprawling into the space left by Ian’s departure.
“Ruger—” Mariska said again, dismay in those big dark eyes and on that wide mouth.
Ruger only shook his head. “Just one night,” he said softly—knowing the others would hear, and not caring.
Mariska cared. The woodsy brown tones of her skin went a shade paler. She pulled her folder off the table and left, moving with a stiffness that hadn’t been the least bit apparent any of the times they’d made love the night before.
Just one night.
But it would never be enough.
“Ruger. You wanted to talk to me?”
Of course Nick knew what was coming. And Jet, too; she gave them a glance over her as she headed out the door, leaving Ruger alone in the room with Nick.
So Ruger didn’t mince words. “No,” he said. “I don’t need any damned babysitter. Especially not one I can’t trust.”
“I trust her,” Nick pointed out.
Ruger stood, going from sprawled to upright and tense, his anger hitting the surface faster than he’d ever expected. “This isn’t about whether I need help—I damned well don’t. This is her bid for something bigger than Western Brevis has given her. That’s not the right reason!”
“Doesn’t mean she can’t do the job.” Nick didn’t react as Ruger reached the desk, looming tall; he rocked back in his pricey office chair, still relaxed—except Ruger knew him well enough to see the wolf bloom to life behind those pale green eyes.
“It does if I won’t work with her,” Ruger said. “She lied to me. She used me.”
“Is that what this is about?” Nick said, and now his voice was soft enough for Ruger to take notice. “Your pride?”
A rumble of anger pushed at his chest; Ruger ground his teeth, fighting to keep it to himself. “It’s about,” he said distinctly, “the fact that I don’t trust her.”
“Then you have a problem,” Nick said. Oh, yeah. Far too relaxed in that desk chair, the desk between them and the dual monitors off to the side, the rest of the surface populated with neat paperwork. But even as Ruger struggled with anger, Nick sighed. “If I didn’t think you could take care of yourself, you wouldn’t be going at all. But she made some good points when she came to me yesterday morning. You need to be able to concentrate on what you’re doing—to go deeper than is possible if you’re watching your own back, and to work faster. There’s too much at stake for us to take chances—we’ve lost too much already.”
Exactly. They were shorthanded; they were licking their wounds. They needed every active field agent they could get—and that meant not wasting extra manpower on an assignment with which Ruger didn’t need help—didn’t want help.
Didn’t want the help of a woman who had already thrown away the heart he’d so rarely offered.
“I don’t need her there,” he growled at Nick. “I don’t want her there. And no good will come of having her there.”
Nick inclined his head. “She’s yours,” he said. “Make the best of it.”
Once, Ciobaka had been a dog—immersed in the now of being canine, his world full of scents and natural cinders crunching under feral paws.
Now he was dog, and yet more. He saw more, heard more, comprehended more… but understood nothing.
He sat in the cage that had once easily held him, but now required lock and key. The cage sat in a vast and unnatural underground space, the ceiling arching overhead and sly sky tubes bringing in enhanced sunlight to turn darkness into an illuminated artificial cave. At night there were fake lights, driven by a thing called solar power.
Human things surrounded him—a stack of crates and cages, a dissection table, a long wall full of things electrical and whirring. To the far end, the men slept in cots; beside that section, Ehwoord had his own den. There was a tiny place where the humans snatched food, and a tiny toilet closet. Crammed beside this stood a black, molded chest with a lid and drawers and foam, and it held shiny metal weapons that stunk of oil and acrid powder, and none of the men touched it at all.
Ehwoord’s places were brightly lit at all times. No one would guess at the man’s importance otherwise. He was of advanced years and weakened body, although it seemed to Ciobaka that Ehwoord grew strangely straighter with the passing days, his sparse hair thickening, his lines softening, his voice growing sharper even as his temper grew more erratic.
Ehwoord fussed endlessly with metal disks and leather thongs, and he captured and caged many small creatures with thin crunchy bones and juicy meat. He didn’t eat them, as only made sense; he changed them—and changed them again.
“Ehwoooor,” Ciobaka said, as much as lips and tongue would allow. “Wahwaaaah.”
One of Ehwoord’s subordinates—Tarras—smacked the metal bars of Ciobaka’s enclosure with a baton. Ciobaka snarled horribly; the man flinched.
“Tarras,” Ehwoord said, his voice tight as he barely glanced aside from his current scratching notations, “don’t annoy Ciobaka. Ciobaka, don’t frighten my people. And the phrase you’re looking for is want to. Not wanna and certainly not wahwah.”
Ciobaka pushed breath up toward his nasal passages. “Wahnaaa.”
“Freak,” Tarras muttered, and went back to the task of cleaning small animal cages. Like Ehwoord’s other subordinates, he had swarthy skin tones, dark hair pulled back into a short club at his nape, and shining silver pieces at his ears and neck.
“An improvement,” Ehwoord said of Ciobaka’s enunciation. “But you nonetheless may not have this gopher. He and his little friends are doing me a great service with their deaths.”
“Toopit,” Ciobaka said with some disgust.
