Even wolves didn’t enjoy being drenched to the bone.
Waterproof and thickly lined, the jacket should keep the E from hypothermia while they were outside. “It’s icy out,” he said when the E hesitated. “You can’t escape if you’re too cold to function.”
She took the jacket, pulled it on, then did up the zipper. He had to help her roll up the sleeves and did so quickly. That done, he got on the chair and hoped it would hold their combined weight. He only needed it to do so long enough to get her out. He had other ways of hauling himself up.
She climbed up to join him, her movements jerky but her jaw set and her eyes raised up toward freedom.
“One, two, three.” He lifted her with his hands on her waist. “Get your arms over the top of the trapdoor.”
She did it in one go, this woman who weighed less than nothing but whose empathic power was a storm; even quiet, her sadness swirled around him. He gave her another lift up to help her out, waited to catch her should she fall. She didn’t. Instead, her small face looked down at him from the trapdoor, her large eyes fathomless.
Dropping to the floor, he picked up her pet, then got back on the chair to lift the small blanket-wrapped body up to her. She leaned in so far he thought she’d slip, but she managed to take hold of the cat without disaster. Yet she didn’t pull back. “Hurry.” It was a rasped whisper that ruffled his wolf’s fur, made it prick its ears. “He likes to hurt people.”
Yeah, she was an empath, couldn’t help looking after others even when her own life was at risk. Like the healers in his pack—who he made a point of avoiding. Sometimes a man just wanted to brood in peace. How Lara had caught him today, he had no idea: his wolf was of the opinion that she and the maternals in the den were in cahoots, probably had a secret comm network.
Today, he had to get this little healer to safety. The predator in him would like nothing better than to lie in wait and tear her teleporting coward of an abductor to shreds, but his priority had to be the E. Stepping off the chair, he repositioned it slightly before moving back all the way to the broken door. A punch of speed, his wolf taking control of his movements as he used the chair to launch his body skyward, slammed the sole of one foot against a wall . . . and grabbed the lip of the open trapdoor.
The E had jumped back when he erupted toward her, watched him in breathless quiet as he hauled himself up. Soon as he was out, he closed the trapdoor before grabbing a large piece of rock he’d noticed in the corner, and weighing the trapdoor down. The weight wouldn’t stop a teleporter, but whether that teleporter had any visual coordinates that would permit him to teleport outside the bunker was a good question.
Alexei couldn’t take the risk, had to move the E away from this location.
“It’s stormy and the rain might’ve turned to ice,” he told the E afterward. “You’ll get wet and cold.”
No flinch, nothing but a steady stare that might’ve been disconcerting if he hadn’t been aware that she couldn’t get into his head unless she was a powerful telepath who wanted to smash his mind open. The latter idea just didn’t sit right—not with the depth of the grief she’d broadcast, and not with how gently she held the body of her aged pet.
Alexei had also never heard of an E who went around doing violence except in self-defense—and even then, they had to be pushed to the furthest edge—so he was going to play the odds and assume she wasn’t an enemy. The whole enemy operative angle made no sense in any case—the “trap” required far too much time and patience with no guarantee of success.
Pulling out his phone, he sent a message to Hawke: I have the E. Taking her to the substation. It was the only secure shelter around for miles. She’s no threat.
The response was immediate. Are you sure, Lexie? Not stated but understood was that the Psy race might’ve left Silence behind, but many of them continued to believe they were the master race, changelings and humans their inferiors to be manipulated and used.
I’m sure, he assured his alpha. She’s more afraid of me than I am of her. The strange flatness was gone; he could taste the sharp bite of her fear below the grief—and yet she’d warned him to hurry when she could’ve tried to run the instant she was out. I’ll message again from the substation—we’ll be slow.
He secured the phone in the side pocket of his cargoes. “We can’t carry your pet’s body far,” he said quietly, very conscious of their relative sizes and making an effort to sound nonthreatening. Before his world fell apart, he hadn’t been apt to growl or snarl except when pushed to it—he tried to channel that distant Alexei. “We have to walk at least a half hour.” No, that was wolf speed. It’d be much longer at her pace.
She clutched her pet closer, but nodded. “In the open.” A whisper. “Under the sky.”
Blood hot with a need to go for her captor’s throat, Alexei nodded. “Under the sky.” Promise made, he exited first to ensure it was safe outside.
The rain was relentless, but it hadn’t turned into snow.
The E came quickly after him, and though the rain soaked her within seconds, she stood staring up at the turgid gray sky with a radiant look on her face, her hair an electric halo that seemed to crackle under the energy of the storm. At that instant, she was the essence of freedom.
His wolf watched her in primal approval. “Let me.” He held out his arms for her pet. “It’ll slow you down and we need to move.”
A glance around at the rocky and inhospitable terrain before she accepted his offer. Her lips were pressed tight and he was sure tears mixed with the raindrops on her face.
Alexei might eschew the type of intimate skin privileges his packmates loved and craved, but he’d never stopped holding packmates who needed touch. It was part of being a dominant, part of being a SnowDancer lieutenant. The E was crying out for comfort—but would likely scream if he engulfed her in his arms. Even the wolf understood they had to go gently.
Gritting his teeth, he hauled his instincts into line.
“Follow me,” he said. “Step where I step.”
The E’s movements were jagged and ungraceful, but she had control of her limbs. He knew she had to be weak—she was too thin and moved with too little coordination for it to be otherwise—but though he kept an eye on her, he didn’t halt until ten minutes later.
He’d taken them on a route that put a slight rise between them and the hidden bunker. No one would spot the two of them unless they came over the same rise. “Here?” He’d stopped at a spot that would be under full sunlight on a clear day.
Her breathing uneven, she nodded and picked up a broken piece of stone, then began to dig. Placing her pet’s body on the ground, Alexei used his claws to accelerate the process. Her eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t stop her movements, and they worked side by side under the chilling rain.
The tiny grave didn’t take long to dig.
She put her pet’s body inside it with gentle hands. Her tears fell like rain as she pushed the dirt back to cover the hole.
When she began to pick up other pieces of stone with fingers that shook from the cold, he realized what she was doing and helped her build the cairn. He made sure it was solid, but before they placed the last stones, he deliberately nicked his finger using a broken stone shard.
The E made a small sound.
“It’s to make sure no animals disturb your pet,” he told her as he rubbed his blood on the inner stones, placing it in enough crevices that the rain wouldn’t wash it away. Every other creature in this area knew that the SnowDancer wolves were the apex predators. The merest hint of wolf scent and any scavengers or curious ramblers would give the cairn a wide berth.
“He’ll be safe,” Alexei told the E while the rain pounded down on both of them. The tangled mass of her hair had lost its buoyancy under the weight of the water, was limp enough that it highlighted both the dramatic bones of her face and the lack of flesh on those bones.
Silently—and with painful care—she put the last stones in place. “Bye, Jitterbug.” A husky whisper, one hand on the cairn. “Thank you for being my friend.”
Tenderness and pity crashed inside Alexei. The depth of the empath’s grief, paired with the way she appeared so broken, it told him too much, none of it anything but enraging.
Giving her the only privacy he could, he kept his gaze on the rise over which they’d come until she was ready to leave her pet behind. Jitterbug. A name that conjured up a tiny, fast kitten who bounced and played and probably made her laugh.
That cat hadn’t been a kitten for a long, long time.
Shrugging aside the hot burn of his anger, he led the E in the direction of the substation. The Sierra Nevada den was powered by solar energy harnessed by miniature panels scattered throughout their territory—partly to utilize the sun’s energy across the day, but mostly so an enemy couldn’t take out one area and cripple them.
A few of the larger panels hadn’t yet been replaced, but the vast majority were now so small they could be hidden among the rocks on the high slopes of the mountains, could even be placed on tree trunks that got kissed by sunlight at a certain point in the day. Thousands of tiny cells working together to create a jolting current.
The solar grid hadn’t ever let the den down, but SnowDancer also had a small hydro station as backup just in case, and it was this hydro unit the substation serviced.
Beside him, the empath stumbled a third time, almost cracking her knee against a slab of stone. He caught her as he had before, but this time, he closed his hand around her smaller and colder one while holding eye contact. “We’ll get to safety faster this way.”
Her fingers didn’t curl around his, but—despite the acrid bite of her fear—neither did she pull her hand away, and they continued on. He didn’t much feel the chill; changelings had far better cold tolerance than humans or Psy. He’d be even more resilient in his wolf form and could move like liquid through this environment. But the E couldn’t follow the wolf and he had no idea how she’d react to his other form.