Checking the area for threats and making the assessment that they were the only two out there, he allowed his attention to return to the subject of him and Indigo. “I couldn’t help it,” he muttered, feeling sulky and grumpy —though he’d have shown that to no one but the sister he’d watched over since she’d been but a babe. “My brain knew I was doing something stupid, but my hormones tell me to protect her—and right now, instinct is kicking reason’s whiny ass.”
Brenna shook her head, the late afternoon sun making the fine strands of her hair shimmer like spun gold. “The easy fix is that you grovel and she forgives you . . .”
“But?” He nudged her shoulder with his, his wolf willing to listen to her even if she was younger and far less dominant.
“But this is who she is,” Brenna murmured, her eyes troubled when she looked up. “You stood in front of a bullet for me, Drew.” Her voice hitched. “That’s who you are.”
“Hey.” He hugged her to him, kissing the top of her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Holding on to him for a couple more seconds, Brenna stepped back and started scanning again. “What I’m saying is that you protect—do you think you can handle,
The words hit hard, cut deep. But the truth had nothing to do with his acceptance of Indigo’s rank.
“I’m jealous,” he admitted bluntly, to the one person with whom he could admit the vulnerability. “I know I don’t fit the image she has in her mind of her perfect partner, and it rubs me the wrong way whenever she interacts with another male who does fit that image.” A male who was probably far more acceptable to her wolf, for all that that wolf had accepted him on a certain level.
“Even though Dorian’s mated and a leopard to boot?”
“Yeah. Stupid, huh?”
“We’re all a little stupid when we’re in love.” Her machine beeped on the heels of her statement. “Hold up.”
He waited patiently while she did a deeper scan.
“Nothing,” she said after a minute. “It was set off by some metallic content in the rocks, I think.”
Dorian, Indigo thought, moved like the cat he was. All fluid and graceful. She’d have pegged him for a leopard even if she hadn’t known his changeling affiliation. Hamilton, the leopard she’d dated a couple of times a few months back, had moved with that same feline grace.
Sexy . . . except that it wasn’t for Indigo.
Of course, in human form, Dorian was also ridiculously attractive with his white-blond hair and eyes of electric blue. In the sharp mountain sunlight, his hair burned with pure white fire, drawing the eye. Hamilton, too, had made every female head turn when they’d gone out together in public.
Indigo had appreciated the visual impact—the same way she appreciated Hawke and Riaz. Her lungs had functioned just fine, her heart continuing to beat in a steady rhythm even when Hamilton kissed her. She’d allowed the caress, allowed him to slide his hand to her nape and hold her in place as he explored her mouth—because she’d wanted to know if there was any chance of chemistry. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
In comparison, Drew only had to—
“Earth to Lieutenant Legs.”
Indigo snapped her attention to Dorian. “You pick up something, Blondie?”
“Not sure.” A feline smile that made her instincts prickle in warning even before he said, “Is that a love bite I see on your neck?”
She wasn’t gullible enough to fall for that. “I know that’s a great big bunch of baloney I see on your face.”
The leopard male laughed, utterly unashamed of his blatant fishing as he returned his attention to the scanner. “I was trying for subtle.”
“Uh-huh.” Needing to burn off this restless energy, she looked at him. “Can you keep an eye around you while you scan?” He was one of the strongest cats in DarkRiver, and he trained in hand-to-hand combat with a former assassin—she was pretty sure there were very few things Dorian couldn’t handle.
He gave her a curious look. “Sure. You going somewhere?”
“I want to do a bit of a scout around—might see evidence of places being dug up.”
Dorian didn’t tell her that was a crapshoot, simply nodded. “Hey, Indigo.”
“What?”
“You can run,” Dorian said in a neutral tone that did nothing to lessen the intensity of his expression, “but sooner or later, you run out of places to run to.”
Already loping up the slight incline to her right, she didn’t answer. But his words circled around and around in her head as she sliced through the cold mountain air. Was that what she was doing? Running? It made her wolf shake its head in violent rejection; she’d always stood her ground, taken the hits as they came. Dorian was talking out of his ass. He was a cat, so really, why was she surprised?
That kept her going for a few more minutes, until her practical nature pointed out that it wasn’t the cat she was mad at. It was Drew. She’d seen that look, seen the way his hackles had risen when she’d given him the assignment. Though, to his credit, he’d kept his mouth shut. “Not too much credit, though,” she muttered under her breath. Because the fact was, he was a dominant predatory changeling male. The words “possessive,” “protective,” and “annoying” were indelibly etched into his profile.
Just as independence, control, and stubbornness were etched into hers.
She was almost fifty meters away in the time it took her to realize what she’d seen. Stopping, she circled back to the clearing that bore several patches of spring green grass that were starting to brown—where the blades had been crushed . . . as if by the tread of heavy boots. She could see nothing that indicated a device might’ve been buried there, but she didn’t like the look of the place. Trusting her instincts, she marked the location in her mind, then ran back to get Dorian.
It took him less than ten seconds to find the transmitter. “Been here awhile,” he said as they began to dig using their claws. “Grass has grown up over it.”
“But these patches of crushed grass say the Psy returned recently, maybe to check up on it.” Narrow eyed, she felt her claw tap the edge of the device. “There.”
“Rusted a little, but otherwise in good condition,” Dorian said after they unearthed it, “and identical to the other one we found.” His gaze met hers. “What the hell are they planning?”
They met back at the starting point an hour later. Drew and Brenna had come up empty, but with the second device Indigo had found, they now had a better idea of how to structure the search radius.
“These objects can’t go anywhere near the den,” Indigo said. They’d spent too much time and effort hiding the exact location of the pack’s true home to give it away so easily. “Can you deactivate them?”
Brenna conferred with Dorian, then nodded. “No problem. Like I said, they’re fairly basic at the tech level. To be safe, I won’t even take the components down, but do all the work up here—the one Silvia found was a husk, so we’re safe on that front.”
Drew rubbed at his jaw, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t think we should deactivate them, not yet.”
CHAPTER 27
When they all looked at him, he put his hands on his hips, the glossy brown strands of his hair lifting in the early evening breeze. “If we switch off two in such close proximity, the Psy might come out to check—and we haven’t got the numbers to cover them if a whole lot arrive at once.”
Indigo’s wolf was still irritated at him in spite of her acknowledgment that he almost certainly hadn’t done what he had on purpose, but she could see the logic of his suggestion. “We should find as many of these things as possible before we start disabling them.”
“If we put all the soldiers and trainees from both packs to searching,” Dorian said, “we’ll probably find the majority of the transmitters, but as soon as we start deactivating them en masse, the Psy will know they’ve been
