Cipher

over what I can’t change.”

He didn’t argue. “One step at a time.” It was all either of them could ask.

Chapter Thirteen

Dixie John didn’t serve breakfast to the public, but he had a habit of opening his doors when enough supernaturals wanted an early meal—especially if Sera smiled hopefully and promised to help out in the kitchen.

Her friend slipped into the back as Kat settled at one of the hastily pushed together tables in the center of the room. No one looked like they’d slept much, except for Patrick, who followed Sera and came back with a pot of coffee. “There’s more coming.”

Kat accepted the first mug. She needed it, since alcohol combined with a mere four hours of sleep had her blinking groggily at the world. Andrew, Julio and Miguel, on the other hand, mostly looked hungry.

At least Anna didn’t seem to be faring much better. Kat pushed the second cup of coffee toward her.

“Did you get any sleep at all?”

“Some.” She sniffed the brew and took a tentative sip. “Too much whiskey last night.”

It would take a lot of whiskey to leave a wolf that hung over. Kat’s celebration had been tinged with the knowledge that more enemies could be out there. Two beers had seemed like plenty, even spaced across the hours before Andrew drove her home. She didn’t think he’d rested any more soundly than she had, but at least they’d been together. Awkward and uncertain, but together, in all their celibate glory.

It was a start.

But an uneasy tension lay heavily in the room, belying the congenial atmosphere, and this time it wasn’t just her and Andrew. The others smiled and joked, but beneath the surface a thousand tiny gestures painted a complex and curious picture.

Callum had been the one to insist she pay attention. Empathy had made her lazy when it came to people.

Leaky shields and pushy emotions meant she always knew what people were feeling. Callum had told her to watch, too, to understand body language. She could almost hear his voice, crisply enunciated and perpetually serious. Not everyone has a Rosetta Stone for the human soul, Katherine. It’s a strength.

Use it.

So she did, watching the people around her as small talk washed over her. Anna had claimed a seat as far away from Patrick as she could get, and Kat would have bet her next paycheck it was deliberate, though she wasn’t sure why until she noticed the way Patrick kept trying to catch Anna’s eye. On the rare occasions he succeeded, the look Anna shot back was more fuck you than good morning.

Sera, by contrast, wasn’t a mystery at all. She brought out toast and sausage and managed to take everyone’s requests without actually looking at Julio once. Her studious disregard had passed casual a few months ago, but Julio remained oblivious to the way Sera avoided him.

He was less oblivious to her ass, which he seemed plenty willing to appreciate, and that was one emotion Kat was heartily glad she wasn’t being forced to share.

Next to Julio, Miguel just looked tense. Since his telepathy was every bit as strong as her empathy, she didn’t blame him. Kat caught his gaze and lifted her eyebrows, a quiet question they’d asked one another a thousand times. Too much noise?

His lips pressed together in a line, an expression that almost managed to look like a smile even though it wasn’t. Then he nodded and dropped his gaze to the table.

“Are you headed out of town soon, Patrick?” Andrew asked.

“After I eat, probably.” Patrick leaned his elbows on the table, and Kat found herself staring at the way his tattoos moved when his forearms flexed. “Alec called me after he talked to you. The Conclave’s moving a little slow in agreeing to officially hire me, but Alec asked me to get started anyway.”

Andrew gestured across the table with his mostly empty juice glass. “You should take Anna with you.

She was planning on running down a few leads.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Anna interjected. “He works alone. Don’t you, Patrick?”

His jaw clenched. “Not always. Two heads can think smarter than one, right?”

“That depends on the heads.”

Julio looked up, one eyebrow arched. “Did I miss something?”

“No,” Anna said quickly. Then she shrugged. “It’s fine. The job’s important. We can pool our resources, get it done.”

No one disagreed, and the conversation shifted, turned to discussion of plans and tactics. Julio and Andrew had responsibilities in New Orleans—responsibilities she’d already kept them from. Psychics weren’t a wolf concern, not when the bulk of the threat had been neutralized. Patrick and Anna chased down crazy supernaturals professionally.

In the hour before dawn, Kat had stared at the ceiling and wondered if resolution was important enough to press the issue. To insist that Patrick let her go with him. But Andrew would follow. Even in sleep, his arm had curled around her, hand splayed possessively across her hip. They’d barely moved past kissing in the days since she’d removed him from her shields, but the physical seemed inconsequential in the quiet moments. When none of the pain mattered, because he looked at her like she was the person who made him glad he was alive.

Andrew would follow her. He’d rip out those places that had been remade with an alpha’s need to protect his people, and focus all of that protection on her. He’d neglect duty, neglect himself and everyone in the world, and it might kill the man he’d become.

He would follow her, she knew it in her bones, and that made it worth staying.

Under the table, she reached for his hand and twined her fingers with his, the soft intimacy a thousand times more arousing than the wildest empathy-induced orgasm.

Let Anna and Patrick chase her past. She was chasing her future.

The paper shredder made a very satisfying sound.

Seated on Andrew’s couch, Kat watched it turn one page at a time into tiny strips of paper with black spots that seemed entirely innocuous. There were easier ways to destroy files, of course, but she’d made Andrew stop by Jackson’s office so she could abscond with the shredder.

It was cathartic, reducing a cult’s scheme for world domination into bits of paper spaghetti.

Andrew eyed the growing pile of shredded paper apprehensively. “Are you sure we don’t need a copy? Some sort of list…?”

“Ben made me a script.” She picked up the page that listed the psychics who needed to be eliminated and stared at Callum’s name for a moment. Then she fitted it into the shredder and watched it vanish. “I can use it on the corrupted files I pulled off the zip disk if I ever need to recreate the lists.”

“So it’s better than encrypted.” Andrew nodded. “That’s smart.”

“Ben’s smart,” she agreed. Opening the next file revealed a smiling picture of her own face, twelve or thirteen at the most. Ben’s color laser printer had recreated the vivid colors of what must have been a surprisingly high-resolution scan a decade ago. Her eyes were so blue. So young. “This is what my mother saw,” she whispered, tracing the boundary of the photo. “This is when she lost it.”

Andrew stroked a hand over her hair. “She probably had reservations already, but that… Yeah, that would do it.”

“This is why she told me about imprinting when I was too young to even understand it.” She moved her finger until it passed over the neat list of her uses. Controlling people. The one thing she’d never wanted to do, because she knew in her gut how horrible it could be to have someone else’s emotions guiding your choices. “My powers were out of control when I was a teenager. Puberty sucked. It wouldn’t have been so hard to break me. Remake me.”