Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 Read online

  He hadn’t chained her again—she’d made no attempt to escape and he didn’t want her to be completely vulnerable if someone like Dominec should find where he’d stashed her. Though Adrian was rarely far from her.

  He’d constructed a little lean-to in the forest with sight lines on all the approaches to the cabin. It was too cold to be sleeping outside, so when his bones started to ache with the chill in the middle of the night, he’d slip inside the cabin and stretch out in front of the door for a few hours. Rachel slept like a rock. She never even stirred with his comings and goings, but he snapped awake every time she shifted and sighed. His gaze would take in every detail of her sleep-softened face, his vision sharp even in the night-darkened cabin. He’d watch her sleep, sometimes for hours, and then sneak back out into the forest beyond to keep watch—no more settled on how he felt about her than he ever was.

  She still tugged at something inside him. Something that refused to give up on her even after the way she’d betrayed him. That part of him argued that he should forgive her, that she’d done what she needed to for the greater good. But another, unforgiving part of him screamed that you didn’t betray your mate. Not ever. If she had been his, she never would have been able to hurt him. Not for any reason.

  How was she? Intoxicating. Infuriating.

  “She’s fine.”

  Grace snorted. “Yeah, if I’d been a slave to the Organization for years, fearing for my life and hating every second of it and I finally escaped, I’m sure I’d just be, you know, fine too.”

  Adrian glared at Grace while she paid for her own items, waving to the lion at the counter to add Adrian’s things to her tab as well. He waited until they were outside the store to admit, “Now that Roman has most of what he needs from her, I think she’s bored.”

  “Not surprising. Few people are as good at being inactive as cats.”

  “I don’t think she’s used to doing nothing. She’s always been an overachiever. I think she was one of those graduated-med-school-at-twenty-three types.”

  “What, didn’t Mommy and Daddy love her enough?”

  Grace was joking, but Adrian didn’t think she was far off the mark. When Rachel had told him about being the valedictorian, always-the-best-at-everything perfect daughter, he hadn’t been surprised to learn she was adopted. She’d protested that her parents had never treated her like she had to be perfect to earn their love, that she’d always known they adored her just as much as if she’d been their biological child, but all that perfection had screamed overcompensation to him.

  But it felt wrong to share any of that with Grace, so he shrugged, changing the subject. “How are the other prisoners?”

  “Pains in my cute furry ass,” Grace grumbled. “We’ve never needed a jail-type facility before, so we had to improvise, put them in an unused barn at the edge of the main compound—but the thing is hardly Fort Knox and some asshole leaked the fact that we were hiding them there to the pride at large. Three guesses which psycho ass tiger probably spilled that little tidbit. So now every shifter in the pride with a beef against the Organization is camped outside the fucking barn calling for their heads. Loudly. Twenty-four hours a fucking day. I could use you, if you’re up for watch duty. Someone with your eyesight would be invaluable on the perimeter and free up some of my guys to babysit the barn. It’s getting harder and harder to find guards who’ll keep the good guys from going all Tarantino on the helpless bad guys’ asses.” She grimaced. “Good times.”

  “Is Rachel in danger?”

  “The patron saint of captured shifters? You should hear the way the shifters she’s rescued talk about her in the dining hall. Gandhi had a worse reputation.”

  “But there could be some who don’t see her that way. Dominec—”

  “Is his own brand of crazy. Don’t judge the pride by him.”

  “I’m not judging anything.” But neither was he willing to risk Rachel’s safety on Grace’s opinion of how the pride saw the Organization doc. Things were volatile now.

  Yes, they were striking back against the Organization and even rescuing some of their own, but seeing the condition of those rescued wasn’t making the shifters feel any more kindly toward the Organization prisoners. Too many of their lives had been touched or even ruined by the Organization. Too many scars of the both physical and emotional variety could be laid at their door.

  The last thing he needed was Rachel getting in the middle things.

  And she would get in the middle. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from pointing out that not everyone who worked for the Organization was evil. All she had to do was say that to the wrong person and she’d be gutted in seconds flat.

  No. Better that she stayed tucked away in his cabin. Bored and safe.

  And beyond temptation.

  He shivered, tugging his leather jacket closed to keep out the winter wind.

  “Do you think the fact that the Organization didn’t immediately retaliate or try to get the prisoners back means they don’t know where we are?” he asked.

  Grace grimaced. “I wish I believed that. Wouldn’t it be great to be that naïve? But no. It feels like we’re being set up.”

  “Like they’re just biding their time,” he agreed.

  She nodded. “Wearing us out.” They reached a fork in the path and Grace paused, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Everyone who is remotely trained is working flat out, but how can we hit over a hundred facilities before they move everyone? It’s like fucking Sisyphus. We just keep shoving that boulder up the hill and it rolls back down to crush us again. And then I think about what Dominec did on the last raid and part of me is tempted to just sic him on them. See how much damage he can do.” She had been staring out over the pride as she spoke, but now she turned to him. “What would you do, Hawkeye? We can use someone with your experience. How do you kill an organism that doesn’t have a heart or a single brain? Our battles are successful, but we’re losing the war because we can only attack one facility at a time.”

  “At least we’re doing that much. Rachel’s group freed over a hundred and fifty shifters by smuggling them out one at a time. So we’ll fight this war one battle at a time. And we won’t give up.”

  “Even if some among us still think we’re doing the wrong thing by attacking at all?”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Running and hiding. Avoiding poking the monster.” She shook her head. “Never mind. Go bring your doctor her lotion. But be careful, Hawkeye,” Grace tossed off as she moved down the left path. “You can keep her in a box, but boredom can make us stupid. If I were you I’d find something to distract her. Or someone.”

  He was trying to kill her with boredom. That was the only explanation.

  Rachel had never been idle in her life. She didn’t know how to be. And now here she was. Useless.

  After six days of interviews, her time at the pride compound had diminished to under an hour and her hours at the cabin were making her stir-crazy. She cleaned. She wrestled the damn furniture around in an attempt to feng-shui the tiny cabin. She scoured every cupboard and closet for reading material, without success.

  She’d taken to spending an inordinate amount of time on her appearance, showering and primping with the ever-growing supply of beauty products Adrian provided for her—always when she wasn’t looking, as if it would be too intimate for him to hand her a canister of tangerine-scented shaving cream. A Southern woman knew the power of being well put together. There was persuasion in a pretty face and Rachel wasn’t above using every weapon in her arsenal to get back in Adrian’s good graces.

  Maybe she would be waiting for him naked when he came with her dinner tray.

  He’d have to kiss her then, wouldn’t he?

  Not that she wanted that. Her feelings for him were too tangled and sideways to invite affection right now. But that didn’t mean she was above se
duction to get her way.

  “Oh, who do you think you’re fooling?” she asked her compact mirror. “You want him like there’s no tomorrow.” Seducing him to get her way was just a handy excuse.

  He’d been taciturn since the latest kiss, no longer accusing or antagonizing her, but neither did he speak to her. He cared for her in as close to absolute silence as she would let him, never eating with her, just leaving the food and clean clothes—sometimes taking her dirty things away and returning with them freshly laundered the next day.

  She’d tried bringing up the kiss once when he brought her dinner and he’d turned and walked out of the room without a backward glance. When she’d dared to bring up the so called taunting the drugs had convinced him she’d done while he was in Organization captivity, rage had pulsed off him in a near tangible wave and he’d stormed out, not returning for hours.

  At this point she would talk about whatever he wanted as long as he stayed.

  When he shouldered open the door and walked in with her dinner tray and a bottle of lotion that evening, she was ready for him, greeting him with her best company smile. Catching flies with honey.

  “Adrian. I’m so glad you’re back.” Latching on to the sight of the lotion tucked under his arm, she folded her hands over her heart like it was a diamond tiara. “Is that for me? That’s so considerate of you. And the shampoo was my favorite—”

  “Don’t,” he cut off her ode to shampoo. “They aren’t gifts. You’re my responsibility.”

  “Yes, but I still appreciate—”

  “Grace picked it out.” He set the tray on the table and moved to drop the lotion in the bathroom.

  He was going to leave. Even though she was starving, she ignored the food—and the twinge of jealousy at the mention of perfect Grace—putting herself between the Hawk and the door so he wouldn’t be able to vanish on her. “Won’t you eat with me? I miss your company.”

  He frowned, but didn’t immediately charge for the door. Progress. “What game are you playing?”

  “I’ll settle for anything but solitaire at this point.”

  Only when his eyes fired with heat did she realize how suggestive the words had come out. Well, she’d wanted to seduce him.

  She twirled a lock of hair around one finger and drew it forward so the tips fell into the plunging V of the button-down top she hadn’t buttoned up all the way.

  “Please stay. You used to enjoy my company.”

  His expression darkened. “You’d do best to never mention the past to me again.”

  “It wasn’t all bad—”

  “Never.”

  Oookay. She wasn’t in a position to push him. Time to change tactics. “There has to be something I can do,” she said. “I’ll shovel latrines, if you want. Think of it as community service. Please, Adrian. What possible use am I to anyone out here?” Her plea was only somewhat ruined by the growling of her stomach.

  “Eat your dinner.” He brushed past her.

  “Adrian—” She tried to catch his arm, but he just evaded her grip, leaving behind only boredom and the click of a lock. “Shit.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Adrian didn’t come for her the following morning. No blindfold. No escort down to the main compound. Just hours of empty time ticking by second by second. This was her life now. Relegated to the cabin for the indefinite future.

  She was debating the wisdom of crawling out one of the windows and trying to make her way down to the main compound when she heard the steps on the path. Rachel stiffened, her heartbeat accelerating, instincts raising an alarm even before her brain caught up enough to remind her that she never heard her hawk approach. He was always so perfectly silent, but these steps tromped noisily up the path, accompanied by a low murmur of voices.

  Acutely aware of her vulnerability out here, too far out to call for help, Rachel scrambled for something that could be used as a weapon, landing—ironically—on the length of chain coiled neatly beside the bed. She lifted it, testing the weight, swinging it experimentally. She’d never learned to fight—perhaps she should have invested in karate lessons when she started working against her lethal employers, but she hadn’t wanted to do anything to raise suspicion. Now she felt her helplessness keenly as the voices grew closer, the footsteps clomping up the steps.

  “Dr. Russell?”

  The chain slid from her fingers. She knew that voice.

  “Kathy?” She rushed to the door, as if she would open it for the woman, remembering too late that it was padlocked from the outside.

  The lock clinked, rattled, and the door swung outward, revealing three women in their twenties and thirties and a slim, dark-haired boy of fifteen.

  Kathy, Calliope, May and Hunter—four of her one hundred and fifty-two. Here. Safe. Healthy. Free.

  An inarticulate sound of joy burst from her mouth and then they were hugging, laughing, everyone talking at once.

  She didn’t build personal relationships with all of the shifters she smuggled out—she couldn’t afford to be seen favoring them before their “deaths”, but these four had been different. Special.

  Twenty minutes later, when Rachel had sufficiently marveled at how tall Hunter had grown, how lovely Kathy looked, how happy Calliope and May were, they sat crowded around her table—May and Calliope squished together onto one chair while Hunter sprawled on the floor and Kathy perched on the futon. They each frowned when they saw the length of chain she’d dropped on the floor, but no one commented on it.

  “We aren’t the only ones,” Kathy, the unofficial spokeswoman of the group, said as soon as they were settled. The lynx shifter was the oldest of the four—she’d be thirty-eight now if Rachel remembered correctly. Kathy had been one of her first patients and among her first escapees.

  Calliope and May were younger—mid-twenties—but the two had spent more than half their lives in Organization custody before Rachel had managed to smuggle them out. As non-predatory shifter breeds, they’d been particularly defenseless. There wasn’t much the big-eyed doe or sleek, graceful otter had been able to do to protect themselves. If not for their friendship and the fact that the Organization seemed to see the wisdom in keeping them together, their spirits doubtless would have been broken years ago. Still, by the time Rachel had smuggled them out, they’d both been in such poor shape that it had required little explanation to convince her superiors that one had succumbed and the other had simply faded away after her.

  Now they looked like new women, healthy and bright-eyed. Still clinging to one another like the contact was as essential as breathing, but no longer cowering, flinching at every sound. For the first time, Rachel had heard them laugh, even their amusement harmonious and synchronized.

  Hunter didn’t laugh. He was still the same intense, silent boy he’d been when she met him two years ago. Like the girls, he’d spent more than half his life in Organization facilities, he and his mother taken when he was six years old. He’d later been separated from his mother, who, Rachel knew, had been killed after a riot in one of the D Blocks. Too dangerous to be allowed to live. He may not look it, all elbows and knees, but Hunter shifted into a black bear and even as an adolescent he’d be lethal enough to kill a full-grown man. A prize for the Organization, and one they’d attempted to train like a circus animal.

  “There must be two dozen of the shifters you helped escape who’ve made their way to Lone Pine,” Kathy went on. “Not counting the ones who were rescued in the Organization raids. I hear you’re responsible for those as well.”

  Rachel squirmed, uncomfortable with the way they were looking at her. “It wasn’t just me. A lot of people put themselves at risk to get you out. And I had very little to do with those raids.”

  Kathy waved away her protests as May and Calliope just smiled. “Several of the others would like to see you too, but we had first dibs.”

  “How did you ever
talk Adrian into giving you the key?”

  “It was his idea!” May piped up brightly. She yipped, flinching and shooting Calliope a glare. “What? Was I not supposed to say that?”

  “His idea? Why would he—never mind.” There was no point in trying to figure out how the mighty Hawk’s mind worked.

  “We all wanted to come,” Calliope was quick to assert. “We just didn’t know we were allowed until he came to us last night.”

  Rachel reached across the table, squeezing Calliope’s hand to reassure the nervous deer. “I’m so glad you’re here. And looking so well. You must tell me everything about your lives here at the pride. Don’t leave a single thing out.”

  “It is strange sometimes,” Calliope admitted, “being surrounded by animals my doe is convinced want to eat me, but the lions are really quite kind, much better to us than we ever suspected they might be.”

  “Calliope and I make a point to jaunt off for a beach vacation whenever the lions have one of their silly ceremonial hunts scheduled. Even knowing the elk and moose they hunt aren’t shifters, it still feels wrong to be here for the deaths.”

  “And you, Hunter?” Rachel prodded. “You like it here?”

  He shrugged one shoulder in a quintessentially teenage gesture. “There are other bears here,” he said, as if that said it all. And perhaps it did. Breed groups often became a sort of family out of necessity. “Kathy’s got a mate.” Hunter jerked his chin toward the lynx, deflecting the conversation away from himself.

  Rachel turned to arch a brow at the blushing lynx. “Do you?”

  The conversation flowed easily into the afternoon, pleasant and light in a way that had never been possible at the Organization. Kathy had brought a picnic hamper and they feasted on sandwiches and fruit when Hunter’s stomach began to growl ominously.

  This was why she’d risked everything, Rachel realized, as Kathy told her stories about the romantic love-match between the former Alpha’s only daughter and a jaguar who stole her away from Roman, the current Alpha. Rachel had done it so they could have afternoons like these, laughing and trading gossip and just living, beyond surviving the next minute, the next day.