In spite of knowing better.
It’s not real. It never was. It’s not personal.
It was just who he was. That quick connection, that ability to spin it into something more permanent.
Even when it wasn’t right for either of them.
She gave him a wary glance. “Did you say something?”
He turned the key. “Not yet.”
He drove her on winding roads to the other side of the small town, where the ElkNAntlers Bar & Grill scented the area with barbecue and sizzling steak. He waited for Holly at the front of the truck, and then waited again inside the entrance, giving her time to absorb the ambience—families scattered around tables, a bar off to the side, and antlers...
Everywhere. Mulies, elk and pronghorn—antlers high, antlers low, and the occasional full cape head mount. And, naturally, a few token jackalopes scattered over the bar.
The owners, Jack and Barbara, had been aiming for quirky humor. Lannie thought of it more as Dr. Seuss.
Barbara waved at them from where she unloaded a tray of glasses at the bar, raising her voice over the mixed early-evening crowd. “Hi, Lannie. Find yourself a spot.”
Holly gave the interior one final skeptical look and chose a table from afar. He wasn’t surprised when she led him to a corner, and he wasn’t surprised when her limber, graceful movement only reinforced his initial impression of her other. Her clothes might have been rugged, but the bright thermal top hugged a lean, curvy figure, and khaki pants followed the roll of her hips to perfection. Sturdy ankle-high boots should have looked clunky, but instead only reinforced the confident precision with which she placed her feet.
Something inside him tightened.
But his response to her wasn’t real. However intensely he felt her presence as the pack bond formed between them, the effect would fade when she moved on to her true place in the Sentinels. It always did.
But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t complicate things along the way. Or that he didn’t still need time to deal with how it so recently had.
She slipped into her chair and picked up the plastic-coated menu, glancing at Lannie only long enough to reassure herself that he had, in fact, followed.
Barbara appeared at their table to slap down a complimentary basket of jerky chips. “Welcome to the ElkNAntlers,” she said. “Need a rundown of the menu, or are you good here?”
“I’m fine,” Holly said. Her smile changed her face, bringing stern lines into beauty; it quite suddenly caught Lannie’s breath. Dammit. “And I’ll take whatever you suggest from the barbecue side of the menu.”
“Smart woman,” Barbara said, collecting the menu and glancing at Lannie. “You?”
“Whatever you bring her.” Lannie lifted a wry shoulder. “It’s not like I haven’t had it all.”
Barbara grinned, tucked her pencil behind her ear, and took Lannie’s menu, too. “I’ll surprise you, then.” She nodded to someone behind Lannie as she left, and a young man appeared to pour them each a generous glass of ice water.
“Drink it,” Lannie advised as Holly simply eyed hers. “The desert and the altitude will get you if you don’t stay wet.” He drank half of his in one go, knowing he’d done himself no good turns out by the well pump house, and waited until she’d done the same. “Exactly why are you here, Holly Faulkes?”
She looked at him as though he might just be a little bit insane. “Because I didn’t hide well enough or run fast enough, youbetcha.” When he didn’t rise to that, she asked, “Who’s Jody? And why is she a problem now?”
He stiffened. He hadn’t thought she’d catch it through the undertone so quickly when she had so much adjustment to do on her own account. He certainly hadn’t expected her to parry with it. Or to recognize just how it affected him.
Too little time, too much resistance. Both Holly and Jody were without the concept of teamwork that made Sentinel field operations viable—and if Holly had both Jody’s arrogant certainty that her way was the right way, and Jody’s willingness to make such choices outside the team framework, then Holly also lacked the most basic foundation of what it meant to be Sentinel in the first place. And Holly had spent her life in extreme independence.
Not teamwork. Not the faintest suggestion of it.
So he didn’t answer her. He couldn’t answer her. Not with the voices of Jody’s team still riding him, the memories of their deaths ripping through his lingering pack link.
He tried to ease the strain in his voice and only half succeeded. “Talk to me. They brought you here for a reason. A good one.”
“That’s right. Because Brevis only bothers you with the important things.” She shrugged. “Didn’t Mariska give you my file?”
“This is the story the way you’d tell it, not them.”
She sat back in the chair to regard him. “It’s not much of a story. My brother needed to hide from you and the Core. When he was fifteen, we left him stashed up near Cloudview and we went to hide in other places so we couldn’t be used against him.”
“How old were you?”
“Not very old. Eight? Nine, maybe?” She shrugged. “What’s it matter? Old enough to know that if you people had been willing to leave him alone, our lives would have been so much different. I wouldn’t have a brother I don’t even know...my mother wouldn’t have cried so much...and I wouldn’t be here now, when my life is somewhere else entirely.”
Another challenge that he didn’t take.
After a narrow-eyed interlude, she shrugged and filled the silence. “Things changed. This spring, he came out of hiding to save his turf from the Core—and to save the rest of you from what the Core had planned. He’s a good man, my brother. Maybe I’ll get the chance to know him now.” Another dark look, aimed his way. “Supposing the rest of you let me.”
Lannie could figure out the remainder of the story. “Once your brother was out in the open, Brevis realized you existed, too.” And the Sentinels didn’t allow strongbloods to roam unconnected. Such individuals had too much potential to create havoc...and Brevis had too much need of them.
He gave her a sharp glance, suddenly understanding. “Kai Faulkes,” he said. “Your brother.” The long-hidden, barely tamed Sentinel who took the Lynx as his other and who had almost single-handedly undermined the Core’s infiltration of his high mountain paradise.
“Kai Faulkes,” she said, her pride coming through in the lift of her chin.
And then the Sentinels had found her, sent a strike team and extracted her from her life. For her own protection, but not without self-interest.
Right now she probably saw only the self-interest.
“Look,” she said, spearing him with a direct gaze. “This isn’t my world. Your fights aren’t my fights. I have no training. My folks could never take the forms of their others, and I never even tried.
