Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Remi Denier quietly bought up a piece of land in the Smokies and set up a territory with a bunch of loners he met while roaming. Just heard he's sent out the call for others to join the pack."

"So he finally accepted it? I knew he was meant to be an alpha the first time I ran across him—and he was determined to break his neck on a racetrack at the time."

"I've had my eye on him for around the same amount of time. Figured I might one day have a problem on my hands—Remi's too dominant to be prowling around without a pack."

"You think he's willing to listen to advice that might make the entire thing easier?"

"I'm going to make the offer. But I like what I'm seeing so far—I don't think it's chance that he bought land right up against the border of a fallow territory under trust control."

"Smart. He holds that ragtag pack together for a full year, and he's in position to apply for a land grant. I don't like cats as a rule, but yeah, I hope he makes it."

"I mean, if we can put up with a bunch of mangy wolves, anything's possible."

—Conversation between Lucas Hunter: alpha, DarkRiver leopards and Hawke Snow: alpha, SnowDancer wolves (27 January 2080)

REMI HAD NEVER heard of Auden, but he did know the last name Scott. Few years back, a couple with that name had been on the comm channels all the time as representatives of the now-defunct Psy Council.

The husband had been big, with skin the hue of mahogany and a military bearing, his face carved of aristocratic lines that shouted breeding. His wife, slender and fine-boned with cool white skin and ice-blue eyes, had carried the same air of contempt. Oh, they'd been clever about acting the perfect, refined Councilors, but Remi had always had a good bullshit detector.

Henry and Shoshanna Scott, that was it.

The skin and eye coloring had altered in Auden, become more intense on both fronts, but no doubt about it, those two had to be her parents. Her height was close to her mother's, but her face held her father's aristocratic bones on a feminine frame.

"Well now." Remi folded his arms, and added a kick of charm to his smile, even though he knew it was wasted on most Psy. But no harm in trying. "I've been attempting to get in touch with the owner of this land for quite a while. All trails led to dead ends. You mind telling me how Ms.Scott managed to track them down?"

Auden Scott remained silent, her unseeing gaze on the trees.

Her assistant could've told him it was none of his business, and she'd have been right. Instead, she said, "Auden inherited it from her father. The records were lost after his passing—and it appears from the unauthorized structure on the land that someone made use of that oversight. Do you have any knowledge of the people who trespassed here?"

Remi's leopard growled within, not particularly interested in talking to this woman whose scent was off, too, but not like Auden's. Charisma's had that metallic undertone present in the scents of a percentage of Psy.

It wasn't as bad as before the empaths had returned to the PsyNet, but it was still bad enough. Changelings who'd had more contact with Psy than Remi had told him that the metallic edge came from those who had no real emotion in them, their growth permanently stunted by the program called Silence that had ruled Psy lives until the very recent past.

The three men carried a faint glimmer of the same scent.

Auden Scott, this woman who'd just torn him to pieces, shifted on her heel.

His cat drew in another breath, snarled. What the fuck was that in her scent? Some kind of sedative? He'd smelled nothing medicinal when close to her, and he could've sworn that Psy didn't deal much with those types of drugs—multiple Arrows had told him it messed with their psychic abilities.

Forcing his attention off her, he answered Charisma Wai's question. "Paramilitary-type unit," he said, wondering if she was as clueless as she was making herself out to be.

Everyone knew what had happened to Councilor Henry Scott—he'd picked a fight with the biggest wolf pack in the country and lost. Man had mingled with exactly the type of people who'd abducted, then brutally operated on Aden and Zaira. The two would've died if Remi hadn't been prowling around with the intent to spy on the activity up here; next thing he knew, he had two bleeding Arrows in his vehicle. "Whole unit cleared out one day roughly a year and a half ago and haven't been back since."

Aden had told him the squad was certain the unit was linked to a group called the Consortium. "They've gone quiet of late," he'd said more recently, while the two of them were scaling a sheer rock face. "Kaleb mentioned to me that while he's never been able to prove it, he's always suspected Shoshanna of being part of the Consortium, maybe even the central figure."

So whichever way you sliced it, the Scotts had been involved in all kinds of deadly games. They were likely to have been in this up to their necks.

"I see." Charisma Wai made a note in the thin computronic organizer in her hand. "Do you have any further details?"

"Nope." Remi glanced once again at Auden Scott. "Funny."

Auden focused on him, staring in an unblinking way that his leopard would've read as a challenge at any other time. Today, he was disturbed by that stare—because he was near certain she wasn't seeing him at all, her gaze directed at some sight beyond his senses.

"What is funny?" Charisma Wai asked after a glance at her boss.

Who blinked several times before her gaze turned fuzzy once more, the abnormal tones back in her scent.

A growl threatened to rumble inside Remi's chest; he fought it back because Psy would take it as a threat. "Losing track of a whole piece of land."

"Councilor Scott's passing was unexpected." A smile so false that it looked like a skeletal rictus to his eyes. "And, to be quite frank, he was wealthy on a level you can't hope to understand. This little tract of land was but an afterthought."

"Oh, ouch." Remi's grin was real. "That put me in my place."

"No offense was intended."

"Rich people things, huh?" Remi lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug to take any sting out of his words. "So, you interested in selling?"

Charisma Wai glanced down at the organizer. "We're in the preliminary inspection process, so I can't promise anything, but yes, there is a possibility the parcel will be up for sale."

Well, that he hadn't expected. And while he wanted to talk to Auden Scott, this was more important—it was pack business, was part of his duty as alpha of RainFire. That duty came first.

No one had ever had to tell him that. He'd known from day one.

"I'd appreciate a heads-up if you do decide to put it on the market." RainFire wasn't rich, far from it, but this particular parcel was so isolated and remote that it was unlikely there'd be other takers. The pack might be able to negotiate their way to it by dint of being the only interested party.

"Of course. Do you have a comm code I can contact you on?"

Remi recited it, then directed his next question to Auden. "You have any idea why your father bought this land in the first place, Ms.Scott?" he asked, to see if he could get a response out of her. "And why he hid it under so many shell corporations and false identities?"

Auden Scott ignored him.

Her mouthpiece graced him with that nauseatingly fake smile once again. "The Councilor's records indicate he purchased it when he was young," she told him. "He might've been building a property portfolio before realizing this region wasn't the most valuable in terms of future capital value. As for the rest…he was a Councilor."

Remi nodded. Even though she'd given him nothing solid, what she had said could be the actual truth. Psy generally didn't make any attempt to own property in remote areas—unless of course, they were a Councilor up to nefarious business. Nice to have a secret getaway where you could torture prisoners without anyone hearing them scream. Also made sense that he'd structured the ownership so it couldn't be traced back to him unless he allowed it.

Until, of course, an upstart pack set up shop here and ruined the whole operation.

"You have official proof of ownership?" he said. "I don't want to be a stupid changeling taking you at your word." Every changeling in the world knew that Psy like Charisma Wai thought themselves better than humans or changelings.

Humans were considered too weak, changelings too feral.

The executive assistant showed him the deed on her organizer screen. Looked official, with the transfer to Auden Scott noted as occurring three weeks earlier. If it was legit, then whoever was settling Henry's estate had lost track of this land for some time.

"I'll send you a copy at your comm code so you can verify it with the relevant authorities," Ms.Wai said. "I understand your wariness given the rogue military unit you mentioned."

Sometimes, the whole logic-is-best thing Silent Psy had going on actually worked to make them straightforward. Not often enough to balance out the other crap they pulled, but it was a small positive.

It could, however, also be used as a shield.

"Appreciate that," he said aloud. "You know where the borders are? I don't want any of your people startling my sentinels into aggressive behavior." His senior people were far too smart to attack without thought, but Remi needed Wai to see them as a threat, so neither she—nor anyone else in the Scott camp—would start getting any ideas.

Another tap at her organizer before she flipped it so he could see the map on the screen. The boundaries glowed red. "Does this align with your understanding?"

"Looks good," he said after a thorough scan. "My people have become used to running through here while it was uninhabited—I'll tell them to back off, stay within our boundaries."

"That would be appreciated." Another smile that put him in mind of a cobra changeling he'd met—man's blood really had run cold. Good thing cobra changelings were so rare that no one else he knew had ever come across one. "I wouldn't wish our security to be startled into aggressive behavior."

He gave her a small smile. "Got it." After another glance at Auden Scott, who hadn't spoken a single word to anyone the entire time, he melted back into the trees.

But he didn't go far—just far enough that there was no way they could see him. It was possible the security team was doing telepathic scans, but his Arrow friends had told him that most security specialists didn't bother with the draining task unless they were in a high-risk situation.

"Arrows do it as a matter of course," a senior member of the squad had said, "but Arrows have more psychic power than ninety-nine percent of people."

As it was, Remi could make things even harder for them.

Stripping in the shadow of the trees, he cached his clothes on a lower branch that wasn't too wet from the rainstorm, then shifted. His body broke into a million pinpricks of light before coalescing into the leopard that was his other form. The change took a heartbeat, the agony and the ecstasy of it singing through his bones.

It was pain beyond the imaginable, and it was pleasure untold.

Shaking his body to settle his new skin in place, he jumped up onto the trunk with muscular feline grace before making his way to a thick upper branch from where he could watch his new neighbors even if they were once again out of hearing range. His tail twitched lazily, but there was nothing lazy about his eyes or his mind. A mind that Charisma Wai and her security goons could no longer spot—it was Zaira who'd told him that.

Lethal assassin, Aden's lover, and the unexpected heart of the place the squad had made their home, she'd said, "You have a shield in either form, but I've noticed that once in animal form, your shield doesn't feel like a shield. I can only sense changelings in animal form because I know so many of you. To most telepaths, you'd read as an animal."

That suited Remi just fine.

So he wasn't prepared for Auden Scott to do it again: jerk her head in his exact direction and stare at the trees as if she could see through the wall of dark green to the shadowed golden pelt of the creature that stalked her little group…as if she felt the same primal compulsion that had driven Remi to keep trying to get a response from her, find out the truth of her.

He stared back, the two of them locked in a battle invisible to the world.