Chapter 6

Chapter 6

While I do not wish to have her out of my sight, I believe we must permit this to ensure her continued cooperation. We cannot reinitiate any of the previous measures, not at this late stage. The risk to the fetus is too high.

The most important thing is to keep her calm—and the risk is manageable if she wears the biomonitors I've supplied. We can teleport to her if she shows any signs of medical distress.

—Private message from Dr.Nils Verhoeven to Charisma Wai (48 hours ago)

IT WAS LARK who spotted the small black jet-chopper passing over RainFire lands deep into the night hours. She was also close enough to the far northern border that she saw that same chopper come down on the small landing pad that had been put into place on their neighbor's land a month ago—on the heels of the construction of a one-bedroom insulated cabin.

The Scotts hadn't bothered to remove the bunker already on the other side of the property—probably too much work and effort.

"I didn't wake you," Lark said to Remi the next morning, "because it was just the one person. Pilot." Biting off a piece of buttered toast, she chewed and swallowed.

The two of them were sitting at a table with Angel, another one of Remi's sentinels. The dining aerie was fairly quiet, filled mostly with packmates coming off the night shift—it tended to be a mix of security and infirmary crew, with the odd other individual thrown in, depending on their duties.

The majority of those filling plates from the mixed dinner/breakfast spread just lifted a hand in a wave before taking their plates to find solitary corners—or tables with other cats who also didn't want to talk just yet.

With cats, you had to respect the need for time alone.

Then there was Lark, who had obviously been a bear in a past life. Elfin face, petite frame, midnight skin, and a delicate pixie cap of hair that was a vibrant pink today thanks to her wholesale love of dyes that didn't last through a change into leopard form, Lark loved company as much as she loved sharing gossip.

"I couldn't get any specifics," she added now, "because of the way our neighbors constructed the landing pad right behind the house. Pilot got out and walked straight in via the back door."

Remi didn't scowl at the idea of sleeping through a possible threat; a good alpha trusted the people he put into senior positions. An alpha who tried to micromanage predators like those in RainFire would soon find himself alpha of nothing. Cats did not fuck around with idiots who wanted to put them on a leash.

Considering Lark's intel, he took a drink of his orange juice. "You sure it was only one person?"

"Yep. They were piloting one of those tiny hoppers meant for short-distance flights. Clear glass dome. Only space for two inside, and I saw a single silhouette."

"They probably took off from the outskirts of Sunset Falls," Angel murmured, his black hair tumbled after the night and his cheekbones as striking as ever. "There's that small hangar and attached runway where out-of-region folks can park private air vehicles for when they visit this part of the Smokies."

Remi nodded at the mention of the nearest township as Rina Monaghan slid into the seat next to him with her own breakfast. Tall and curvaceous, the blond sentinel wore her hair in a high ponytail and could separate your head from your body if you pissed her off.

His leopard had snarled in pride when she'd asked to join his pack.

Despite his excitement at having attracted such a strong young leopard to RainFire, however, the first thing he'd done was ask Lucas what he thought about losing Rina. He'd known she must've already spoken to her alpha, but it would've been a bad move on his part not to have that discussion himself.

The last thing RainFire needed was to make an enemy of the powerful pack that had been the first to call them friend. Lucas had been beyond generous in his support of Remi's bid for the position of alpha, had even lent Remi some of his own people for the initial construction of RainFire's aeries.

A gift from one alpha to another, an offer of friendship that Remi did not take lightly.

"Now that she's fully mature," Luc had said, "Rina's too strong and well-trained to be anything but a sentinel, but we already have the max number we need. The only reason we haven't already lost her is that she's fucking loyal to her own." A tightening of his jaw. "I don't want to let her go, but it's time. She'll be an asset to your pack."

As it was, RainFire was top-heavy in terms of dominants—an emergent pack needed more sentinels and senior soldiers than an established one. They also needed energy of the kind that prowled under Rina's skin, hungry and wild. She'd no doubt been a nightmare as a teen, but adult Rina had mastered iron discipline over her furious instincts.

"What're we discussing?" she asked. "Anything I need to know for the morning shift?"

Once Lark had caught her up, Remi said, "Lark, you able to tell if the pilot was a man or a woman?" His mind filled with an image of the eerie eyes of moonstone blue that he'd seen five months earlier, but the woman with those eyes had been in no state to pilot anything.

"Nah." Lark yawned. "Pilot's head didn't touch the top of the hopper's dome is about all I can tell you, but those domes are high enough to fit you or Angel, so it isn't much."

"Don't worry." Angel's distinctive ultramarine eyes shifted to tiger gold, the gleam in them amused. "Remi's going to go up there to satisfy his curiosity anyway. You might not have noticed, but our alpha has a slight interest in our neighbors."

Remi gave their resident tiger the finger. Angel was the quietest of the sentinels, but he'd also known Remi the longest, a blood brother who'd always intended to walk the path of a loner—until Remi asked him to help set up a new pack. The other man had pinpointed Remi's fascination with Auden Scott the first time Remi mentioned the strange interaction.

"As if you're not as curious." He shoved a hand through his shower-damp hair. "I'm also pissed off, in case you failed to notice. I thought we had a real shot at getting that land." All else aside, he hated having a possible threat on his border. "Why would a Psy even want a place like that when they know they can't use it for shadow ops?"

Lark shrugged after swallowing a forkful of scrambled eggs. "I dunno. Some of them are reclusive. I mean, have you met your Arrow bestie?"

"Aden isn't reclusive. He lives in the Valley with other Arrows." A place to which Remi had been invited, to attend the squad's first-ever high school graduation ceremony. The invitation had been a symbol of trust between their two groups—as RainFire's agreement to allow playdates between their cubs and Arrow children was a symbol from their end.

"Krychek then." Lark pointed her fork at him, while Rina—never talkative in the mornings—ate a bacon roll and listened. " Wild Woman reported that he lives in the boonies with his mate, and my Moscow bear friends on the forum confirmed it."

"Ah, Wild Woman ," Angel said after a leisurely sip of his coffee, "that bastion of investigative reporting."

"Fuck you, Stripes." Mild words. "Try to borrow my copy next month and see where it gets you."

A tinge of red on Angel's cheekbones that had Remi's shoulders shaking and Rina looking over with a very interested expression on her face.

"Oh, do tell, Angel," he said, poking at his friend. "Secret fan?"

"This is why I was a loner," Angel grumped before throwing back his coffee. "I hate people."

Remi and Lark both laughed, while Rina smiled a slow smile.

Their newest sentinel rose soon afterward. "I want to do a full sweep today, through all quadrants."

"Wait for me." Lark scrambled up, too. "I'm going to get into my pjs and catch up on the latest episode of Primal Lives they just hadn't been around when he lost his mother. Angel alone had witnessed his grief. Their friendship had only been of six months' duration at that point, born when they'd ended up working the shutdown shift of the last operating oil rig in the world.

You'd never usually find a changeling on a site like that, but they'd both had their reasons to choose work that hurt their very nature. And, despite the nascent character of their friendship, the then-nineteen-year-old tiger had come home with a similar-aged Remi when Remi's mother realized she was sick in a way nothing could fix.

Angel, the boy who'd walked alone since he was sixteen, had then stayed with Remi and Gina for seven months…all the way to the end. Gina had hardly slept toward her final rest, and the tiger had sat up with her during the times when she'd ordered Remi to sleep. He didn't know what they'd talked about, but they'd had their private jokes neither would explain to him.

His friend had made his mother laugh in her last days and it was a gift Remi would never forget. Angel had also been one of Gina Denier's pallbearers on the day they'd laid her to rest in a sunny meadow, with no headstone or other sign to mark her grave.

It was the changeling way and what she'd wanted.

"Close to the earth, Rem-Rem. So that my body nourishes the flowers that bloom in the spring."

The other pallbearers had been his mother's closest friends, four women who'd wanted to mother Remi in the aftermath because that was their way. But Remi had only ever had one mother, and he couldn't accept their kindness. After doing the last thing his mother had ever asked of him and laying her to rest in that field eleven years ago today, he'd left with Angel—because Angel let him grieve and run and rage without trying to make it better.

"Just remembering her," Remi said today, and though his sorrow would forever be a part of him, the loss had long ago stopped being an open wound. He could remember the good times now, laugh about how often she'd allowed him to think he was getting away with mischief as a cub. "Thinking how she would've been the warm core of RainFire had she had the chance."

"Yeah, your mom knew how to love with open arms. I miss her."

Angel rarely made such emotional statements; he'd come too late into Gina's life for Gina to bathe him in maternal love as she'd wanted to do, Angel already closed off, remote. Yet there had been the laughter, and the nights when they'd spoken of things that made Gina squeeze Angel's hand while she shook her head in affectionate denial.

Remi had never asked Angel what his mother had told him not to do, what his friend had shared with Gina between them alone.

"I'm thankful every day that she was my mom." Feeling a rustle under the table, Remi reached in without looking and grabbed a cub in leopard form by the scruff of his neck.

"Snuck away from your parents, did you?" he said with a grin, and nipped the cub on the nose before cuddling him against his abdomen. Asher wasn't much more than a year old, all soft edges and playfulness and affection.

"She told me you'd be an amazing alpha if you'd only give yourself the chance," Angel said, his eyes on the cub who was currently trying to chew the tongue of Remi's belt. "Did I ever tell you that?"

You were her greatest pride.

Remi's entire body stiffened at the memory of Auden Scott's whispered words. "No. But I knew what she thought." He let the cub put small paws on the edge of the table so the boy could peer at Angel. "I just didn't believe her."

Angel reached over to tug on the cub's ear, making Asher emit happy sounds. "She'd be so proud of you, Remi. For the pack you've built, the family you've created for all of us—this asshole included."

With that, Angel pushed away from the table to head off for his sleep cycle. Pretty standard for the tiger. He could only do so much emotion before he had to hit the cutoff valve. Remi knew some of why, but he had the feeling that perhaps Angel had told his mother all of it.

As for Remi…

He touched the mobile comm he'd put on again today. He'd started wearing it more often after his encounter with Auden Scott. Wasn't that a kicker, that it had taken a Psy with haunted eyes and an uncanny way of staring into forever to make him accept the final gift his mother had ever brought for him?