"Your pickup about to arrive?"
Zie Zen nodded. A second later, a Psy male in a black uniform blinked into place. Ashaya glanced at the Tk-Psy but didn't say anything as the man nodded once at Dorian, then teleported both himself and Zie Zen out of the warehouse.
"Don't you care that they know about your pack's part in this?"
"They have no real information to use against us." Dorian shrugged. "And the Council knows we hate their guts."
Ashaya refused to look at him as he moved ever closer. The heat of him seeped through her back and into her bones as he stopped behind her. She waited for him to speak but he said nothing. She'd noticed that about him. Dorian always waited. Knowing the tactic didn't make it any less disconcerting.
A breath whispered past her ear and she knew he was bending down. His lips touched the sensitive skin of her nape. Light, so light, they could've been butterfly wings. But she felt them. They burned. And still she didn't move.
"You lied about Omega being an active project."
Relieved at the topic, she said, "So?"
The next question wasn't so easy. "What was Zie Zen talking about? What haven't you told me?"
She kept her silence even as she felt her body begin to burn from the inside out.
His fingers brushed over her. Gentle, teasing touches along her neck. Invitations to surrender... to sin. "Stop," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because I can't break open. Not fully." Every time her internal shields dropped, Amara whispered to her. Ashaya was in no doubt that her sister already had a lock on her physical position.
Heat, sweet, teasing heat against the lobe of her ear. The brush of lips that looked so hard when he was angry, but felt velvety soft. It made her shiver. "Dorian, you have to stop. I told you, I can't simply forget Sile - "
"Why?"
He was so close, the lean hardness of him pressed against her like living fire.
She swallowed. "I can't."
"Why?" Insistent. Adamant.
"Because if I do," she said, shattering a silence she'd kept for more years than she could count, "then Amara will find me." She hoped he hadn't noticed her minute hesitation. Because it wasn't for herself that she feared - she would live if Amara found her.
Keenan wouldn't.
And even that wasn't the true horror of it.
Dorian pulled back. "Explain."
Ashaya wondered where to start. She'd just opened her mouth when Dorian's cell phone began beeping. He kept one hand on her hip as he checked the readout. "It's Jimmy." A pause, followed by a rapid-fire conversation. "Yeah? When? Okay, get the hell away from them. No, that's all I need." Hanging up, he filled her in. "More Psy on the streets - they obviously know you're here but not where."
"Amara." She knew in her gut that the information had come from Amara, but her sister wouldn't have given them the exact location. That wasn't how the game was played. "She - "
Dorian cut her off. "You can explain later. Right now, we need to get you out of the hot zone."
"Why can't we stay here?"
He squeezed her hip and the sensation was an electric current crackling over her body. "Telepathic scans might be illegal, but these aren't boy scouts we're dealing with. All it'll take is for them to scan one person who saw you in the car. Come on." He grabbed her hand.
To her surprise, he didn't lead her toward the parked car. They headed to the back of the structure instead. He pushed open a small door and pulled her through to the bright sunshine of the early summer's day. She was still trying to acclimatize her eyes to the light when they went through the back door of another building and then downstairs.
"Where are we going?" she gasped as they jogged down the narrow corridor and to the door at the end.
"Wait and see." Giving her a sharp grin, he twisted open the lock on the door and began to pull her through.
She had just enough time to see the exposed earth walls, the wooden beams holding up the ceiling, the darkness, before her mind revolted. "No! Dorian, no! Please!" She dragged her feet, but he was too strong and his momentum threatened to carry them through the door and into the pitch-black of the tunnel.
Chapter 25
The second he heard Ashaya scream, Dorian came to a complete stop. She slammed into his chest as he turned instinctively to catch her. The air punched out of him but he was more worried about the damage to her. Psy bones were far weaker than changeling or even human. It was the trade-off nature had apparently made for their powerful minds.
He held her to him as he ran his hands over her back, silently calling himself every name in the book. "Jesus, I'm sorry." He couldn't get the absolute terror in that begging "please" out of his mind. He'd made this proud, strong woman beg, and he hated himself for it. "Are you all right?"
He thought she might've nodded against his chest but didn't take any chances, running his hands down her arms to check for injury. "Shaya?"
"I'm fine." She pushed away from him and though she tried to appear unfazed, there was a broken wildness in her eyes that he couldn't bear to see.
"Hold on." He grabbed her hand again, felt her stiffen. And realized he'd lost her nascent trust through his own idiocy. "I'm taking you back upstairs," he said, tugging her up the same flight he'd pulled her down only seconds ago.
Neither of them spoke until they arrived back in the gloomy belly of the warehouse. It was piled up with boxes, but light came in through several narrow windows near the roof. He heard Ashaya release her breath in a rush. "Thank you."
The sincerity of it made his gut clench. "Don't thank me." He reached for his cell phone. "I almost made your mind snap."
Ashaya pulled at his hand. Tightening his hold on her, he turned. "Yes?"
"I'm not that brittle." Her face was smooth, showing no sign of her earlier panic. "I had to learn how to keep it together. I was underground in that lab for a long time."
He felt a layer of deepest respect coat his understanding of this woman who'd gotten to him from day one. "How did you do it?"
"When something has to be borne, there's no choice." She looked to him. "You know that better than anyone."
He gave a slight nod. His latency - what it had cost him, what it demanded from him - was something he rarely discussed. He was who he was and people had learned to accept that. But Ashaya had a right to an answer after he'd scared her that badly. "And you had a son to protect."
Her face softened in a way that was everything female, speaking to a part of him that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with tenderness. "Yes. The worst mistake the Council made was taking him from me." She held out her free hand. "Give me the letter."
He handed it over, amazed but unsurprised by her strength. "What does it say?"
" 'Hide and seek, hide and seek. Boo! I seeked you!' " Ashaya glanced up. "It's what I thought - she has a lock on me, but she hasn't told the searchers the precise location."
Nodding, Dorian punched in a familiar code on his cell. "I need an extraction. Quiet." He gave the details of their location.
"The Rats' tunnel - " Clay began.
"Not an option."
The other sentinel didn't argue. "I'm sending one of the vans to pick you up. It'll be" - a pause - "an old ice-cream one."
"Thanks."
"You can swap to a normal vehicle once you're out of the immediate danger zone - it's the Council's spies, isn't it?"
"Yeah. You heard anything?"
"They're sniffing, but they don't have the scent. We know where they are and we're letting them know that, too. Five minutes." Clay hung up.
Dorian told Ashaya what was happening, then picked up the thread of their earlier conversation. "Now, tell me about your sister and why she can track you when the others can't."
"It's complicated." She pulled at her hand. "Please, let go. The more physical contact I have with you, the harder it becomes to maintain what shields I have left. One slip and the Council won't have any need to physically hunt me - they'll find and cage my mind."
Releasing her hurt. The leopard clawed at the inside of his skin, until Dorian could almost feel skin break and muscle tear. "Start."
She looked at him with cool brilliance. "You have a habit of doing that - treating me like someone subservient. I'm not."
"I'm used to dominance. It's part of what makes me a sentinel." Only the strongest of the pack became sentinels. They had to be the alpha's protectors, his enforcers if need be.
"Then become unused to it in my presence," was the immediate response. "I'm not part of your pack and even if I were, I would hold equal rank."
He felt his lips curve upward. "That certain of your strength, Shaya?"
"I saw the respect you showed Tamsyn. Yet she's nowhere near as physically strong. Therefore, your pack gives women high rank. Given my abilities and focus, yes, I'm certain."
He bowed his head in a slight nod. "Point taken. But I still want to know about your sister and you still have to tell me. Right now you're a refugee seeking sanctuary. DarkRiver's giving it to you for a number of reasons, but we won't do it blindly - protecting our young comes first. Choose." He held back the other truth - that she was going nowhere without him. The leopard wanted to keep her. And that, Dorian knew, spelled a very special kind of trouble.
"What about Keenan?" she asked, eyes locked with his. "If I don't tell you what you want to know, will you withdraw protection from him, too?"
He heard the smooth engine of an arriving van. "I think the real question is - will you keep hiding what we need to protect him effectively?"