he knew it. He swallowed away the unease of it, settling into his own skin. Felt the aches of being there, and settled into that, too, accepting and dismissing them.
The dissonance slowly faded.
Finally, then, he reached for his larger pack sense, the one that made him ready for the outside world and whatever Brevis might ask from him. The bigger picture—the one that would ride him hard.
More so, in the wake of Jody. In the wake of her death. In the wake of all their deaths.
One more breath, deep and quiet, and then...he was no longer just plain Lannie. He no longer hummed to the tune of his own small pack but had set them—temporarily—aside, so existing pack song wouldn’t interfere with the formation of whatever was to come.
He was the unentangled alpha that Brevis had come to see.
* * *
Babysitters.
Holly Faulkes wanted to spit the words at them—the man and the woman who’d brought her to this tiny New Mexico town of Descanso. They’d driven an hour through the desert mountains, pulling her away from her family during a still-heated discussion about her past, her present and her future—and all so she could wait in this cool, shadowed feed store with its cluttered shelves and dry dust, its thick scent of hay and oats and molasses and leather.
Sentinel babysitters.
As if she hadn’t even been part of the recent Cloudview conversation, sitting beside her parents in silence—all of them tense, all of them terse. As good as prisoners in the old town hotel.
And as if she hadn’t just missed meeting her brother Kai for the very first time since childhood, hearing of his feral beauty and of the lynx that peered out from under his skin at every turn, but being whisked away from both Cloudview and her parents before the Sentinels could call Kai in from the mountains.
Sentinels. If not exactly the enemy, also not her friends. Not considering she’d hidden from them since she’d been born, sheltered first by her family and then by deliberate, active choice. God, she didn’t want to be here. And at twenty-four years old, it should have stayed her choice.
“Are you all right?” The woman eyed her. Her name was Mariska, and she was far too knowing for Holly’s taste. Far closer to bodyguard than escort, with a short sturdy form both rounded and strong—not to mention a sharp gaze that gave away more than Holly was probably supposed to see. So did her complexion, a distinctly beautiful brown shade that might have come from south India but instead came from the bear within her.
“You’re kidding, eh?” Holly said. “No, I’m not all right. Why can’t you people just leave us alone? Leave me alone?”
Mariska transferred her gaze to Holly’s hands, where they chafed against her arms in spite of the distinct heat still overlaying the fading summer day.
“Being here makes my skin crawl,” Holly told the woman, which was only the blunt truth. She’d felt it before, this sensation...on her Upper Michigan home turf, when she first started a restoration on an old clogged water feature. But nothing like this. One final squeeze of her upper arms and she let her hands fall. “You have no right to do this to me.”
But she’d always known they would. Just as she’d known that her parents would pay the price for hiding their family to protect Kai.
“Maybe we don’t,” Mariska said. “But we hope you’ll come to understand.” She lifted her chin at Jason, the tall man who served as her partner; they exchanged commentary in a silent but very real conversation, the likes of which Holly had previously seen only between her parents. Jason raised his phone, hitting the redial button. Again. Trying to reach the man they’d called Lannie with a strange mix of familiarity and deference.
“If you’re trying to reach him, why don’t you just talk to him?” Holly gestured between them in reference to the silent exchange they’d just had, only peripherally aware that the crawling sensation in her blood had eased.
“Lannie prefers that we don’t.” The woman gave her a wry look, one that said she had chosen her words diplomatically. “Besides, not all of us do that.”
“I don’t,” Holly muttered. Because she didn’t need it and she didn’t want it. She had no intention of letting someone else in her head—
It’s not real.
No way.
“What did you say?” Holly asked, a wary tone that drew Mariska’s surprised glance. Her glance would have turned into a question, had not a ringing phone pealed from the back of the store.
Jason made an exasperated face. “You might have picked up instead of just coming in,” he muttered, slipping his phone away—but he sounded more relieved than he might have.
Holly looked at him in surprise, understanding. “You weren’t sure he’d come.”
“Oh,” Jason said drily, “we were pretty sure he’d come. We just aren’t sure—”
“Shut up,” Mariska said, sharp and hasty, her gaze probing the back of the store.
It’s not real.
Holly spotted the new arrival against a backdrop of hanging bridle work and lead ropes, and understood immediately that this man owned this place.
That he owned any place in which he chanced to stand.
It wasn’t his strength, and it wasn’t the quiet but inexorable gaze he turned on her companions. It wasn’t even the first shock of his striking appearance—clean features with even lines, strong brows and nose and jaw, a sensual curve of lower lip and eyes blue enough to show from across the store. His hair was longer than stylish these days, layered and curling with damp around the edges.
No, it was more than all that.
“Oh, turn it off,” Mariska said.
Something changed—Holly didn’t even quite know what. Only that he was suddenly just a man in a casual blue plaid shirt yoked over the shoulder, half-buttoned and hanging out over jeans and boots, a heavy oval belt buckle evident beneath.
Cowboy, Holly thought, and found herself surprised by that. For the first time, she noticed not only bruises, but fresh bruises. A little smear of blood on a freshly washed cheek, a stain coming through the side of the shirt. An odd look on his face as he watched her, something both startled and somehow just as wary as she was—and then that, too, faded.
“That’s better,” Mariska grumbled, but the words held grudging respect. She exchanged a glance with Holly that was nothing to do with their individual reasons for being here and everything to do with a dry, shared appreciation for what they’d seen—a recognition that Holly had seen it, too.
The man rolled one sleeve and then the other, joining them with a loose walk that also somehow spoke of strength. “A little warning might have been nice,” he said, a quiet voice with steel behind it.
Jason held up the phone. “We called.”
“Did
