Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (20 page)

“Thank God for Moira.”

Adrian’s attention swiveled to the bear, who was gaping at him. “Did you say you were at the perimeter and you
heard
her? I didn’t hear her until I was twenty feet away.”

“Hawk hearing,” he said, brushing her awe aside. “Thank you for being here when I couldn’t.”

Moira didn’t look like she bought that explanation for his presence, but she accepted his thanks graciously. “We all look out for one another here.” She glowered at the unconscious prisoner. “What do we do with that?”

“I’ll ask Xander. He’s in charge of the prisoners.” He nodded toward the unconscious boy. “He’ll probably have something to say about that as well.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Rachel protested—though, come to think of it, the boy had been standing stupidly close to the prisoner and allowed himself to be tranqed with his own gun. A reprimand might be the least he deserved.

Adrian turned his raptor focus back to her, his yellow eyes searching her face as if he could X-ray her for internal damage. “Are you sure you’re all right? I thought my heart would stop when I couldn’t get to you fast enough.”

The man did say the sweetest things when he wasn’t even aware of it. “I did awesome, but I think we probably need to practice self-defense some more. Especially if I get rewarded afterward like I did last time.”

His lips quirked, that half-hearted almost smile she loved. “If you’re flirting with me, you must be all right.”

“I’m not flirting. I’m seducing. Is it working?”

“Every time you look at me.”

“Aw,” Moira sighed dramatically. “You guys are adorable. Now who wants to help me move the bodies?”

Adrian stalked toward the cabin where the remaining twelve prisoners were being kept with Xander on his heels, the lion lieutenant for once not making smartass remarks along the way.

Dale was handcuffed to a bed back at the infirmary. Adrian would have thrown him back in the cabin, broken arm and cracked—courtesy of Moira—ribs and all, but Rachel had insisted on treating him. He’d come to and refused to give them any information on why he’d done it. Just kept crying that he’d failed Leslie.

Rachel had explained that Leslie was the daughter the Organization used as leverage to force Dale to do things. Which explained
why
the mild-mannered older man had tried his hand at homicide, but that wasn’t the whole story. Someone had broken his arm to get him in range of Rachel and given him the order. So one of the prisoners was more than they seemed.

He knew he was barely keeping it together—but he figured in situations like these, barely counted. Someone had attacked Rachel. That was
unacceptable
on such a fundamental level his entire being raged. The idea that he hadn’t been there to rip the man’s head from his shoulders was similarly unacceptable. But he could do this, now.

Xander waved to the two guards positioned on either side of the cabin. They were young, almost as young as the one who’d nearly gotten Rachel killed, and the sight brought home the reality that while Lone Pine may be filled with predators, they were dangerously understaffed when it came to skilled soldiers. They couldn’t fight the Organization with these inexperienced children.

But that was a worry for another day. Today he was focused. Merciless.

Xander unlocked the door and Adrian felt his talons flash out in a partial shift as he walked over the threshold. The cabin was a single decent-sized room, not unlike his own. The prisoners huddled against the walls, most of them cowering, though a couple stared back at him defiantly. Adrian stood in the center of the room, his sharp gaze missing nothing as he flexed talon-tipped fingers.

“Who broke Dale Schmetterling’s arm?”

Silence greeted him, but it was a tense silence. The silence of secrets rather than the silence of ignorance.

“Obviously one of you did it. I can review the tapes and see for myself, but then I’ll be back and I’ll be twice as pissed off as if you just tell me right now. Who. Broke. Dale’s. Arm?”

A sound, no louder than a mouse stirring, drew his attention to a lonely corner of the room where the young woman with the brown hair hiding her face cowered. In a move almost too subtle to follow, she straightened a single finger without lifting her hand from where it rested against her leg, pointing unerringly across the room, to where one of the men they’d identified as an Organization guard sat.

Adrian moved so fast one of the women gave a startled scream, swallowing the sound almost immediately. He was on the guard, with his talons gently pressing into the soft skin of the man’s throat, before he had time to blink.

“Did you arrange the attack on Dr. Russell?”

The man’s eyes flicked over to the corner where the brunette huddled.

“Don’t look at her. Look at me. And answer the question.”

The guard looked up, struggling to swallow with Adrian’s hand on his throat. He nodded jerkily.

“Why?”

The man’s eyes flared with panic—as if he’d been asked a test question he didn’t know the answer to—then hardened into resolve. “She’s a traitor and she deserves what she gets.”

Adrian nodded. “Wrong answer.”

Two quick moves and the bones in the man’s forearm snapped. The man shrieked. Adrian straightened, glowering down at him from his full height. “That’s a clean break. As I see it, you have two choices. Find something to splint it yourself and hope it sets properly, or ask the pride for medical care. Your call. Ever had a bone set by an angry lion?”

Adrian didn’t wait to hear his answer. He stalked out of the cabin. Xander caught up with him on the path back to the main compound.

“I thought you weren’t going to hurt them,” Xander asked, zero condemnation in his tone.

“He went after Rachel.”

“Fair enough. But give me some warning next time. I’ll sell tickets.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Rachel lay in Adrian’s arms that night, holding on to him a little tighter than usual, as he held her just as fiercely. He’d come when she’d called, even though Moira was convinced there was no way even a hawk could have heard her from that distance. He’d known that she needed him. Just like he always seemed to know.

She’d always felt there was something remarkable about their connection, the power of it, but now she had to wonder if it was more than just her emotions running away with her.

“Do you believe in soul mates?” she whispered against his shoulder.

His muscles jumped, going rigid and she instantly regretted the question. Just when things had finally seemed to be good between them too.

“Not that I think we—just, you know—” She started to pull away but his arms didn’t loosen in the slightest. The awkwardness was going to swallow her whole.

“Rachel.”

She spoke quickly.
Nothing to see here, folks.
“The Organization separates mated pairs because they’re harder to control when they’re fighting for their loved ones. Isolate them, take away their mates, and most of them become despondent. And there seems to be something to the idea that shifters are specially connected to their significant others. Or are there just as many shifter divorces as any other species and I just haven’t had reason to hear about them?”

Divorce seemed like a safer topic than soul mates.

He grunted something affirmative. “Shifter couples split up, but the ones who’ve gone through the mating ceremony tend to stick together. Just a different attitude toward what that kind of commitment means, I think.”

She made herself relax against him. “My parents were like that,” she murmured. “It meant something real to them. Not every day was easy, but they made the choice to always put the two of them ahead of everything else, the choice to love one another most.” She felt some almost unnoticeable movement in him and clarified, “Not that they didn’t love me. They made sure I knew I was loved from the day they got me. But it was like they couldn’t have loved me that much if they hadn’t loved one another more, you know?”

She’d never loved anyone like that. Until Adrian. But if she told him that, she was afraid it would shatter this moment…and she needed to stay in his arms.

“My mom said my dad would have been so proud of me,” she whispered, feeling the guilt of those words anew. “Proud of the work I was doing, helping women who had difficulty conceiving. They’d never been able to have kids, but they showed me what love was.” She traced a pattern on his skin. “I think they were soul mates. My mom just sort of faded away without him. She kept up with the church, but she was a shadow of herself and followed him less than a year later.”

She lay there, listening to his breathing. Maybe he was asleep. Maybe all of this was just her talking into his dreams. But then he spoke.

“My parents died together.” His voice was low, barely audible. “Car accident. But my father used to make my mother promise that she would go on living a fabulous life if anything ever happened to him.
Entertain me in heaven.
”

She smiled against his shoulder, wishing she could have met his parents, seen how he was with them.

“They believed in soul mates,” he went on. “Not as some magical, metaphysical bond, but that there was someone out there you were meant to love.” He shrugged, the movement shifting the shoulder where she rested her head. “And maybe when you believe that, there is.”

She wanted him to believe in soul mates. To believe in her. For a while, he’d seemed to. She just wished she knew how to get back there. Beyond this guarded truce.

“Did you have any aunts or uncles?” she asked, not wanting to miss this rare confessional mood of his. “Cousins or siblings?”

“No, it was just us.” He stretched his arm, resettling her against him. “My parents were lucky to find one another. They believed we might be the last of our kind, that bird shifters are headed for extinction.” He shrugged, but her chest ached and she knew how raw that thought must make him. “A lot of breeds that don’t have the protection of the prides and packs have been dying out. We wouldn’t be the first. There’ve been rumors for years now that bird shifters have stopped breeding true. That even mated pairs have children who can’t shift anymore. Or maybe it’s all of us,” he said dryly. “Some bird shifter disease that explains why I can’t shift anymore either.”

Rachel stirred restlessly against his side, unsure if this was the right moment to air her theory. “I don’t think it’s physical.”

“What?”

She felt the tension tighten his body and propped herself up to meet his eyes. “Your inability to shift, I don’t think it’s physical. The involuntary shifting of your hands and eyes would seem to indicate that you
can
shift, but there is a mental or emotional block preventing you.”

“So you’re a shrink now?” His tone was edged with that angry defensiveness, but at least he didn’t push her away.

“No, but in my work, I’ve dealt with men feeling the pressure to perform, feeling responsible for their wives’ lack of conception and—”

“It isn’t the same. I’m not impotent. My hawk is gone.” He closed his eyes, his expression pained. “Go to sleep, Rachel.”

“I just think—”

“Go to sleep.”

“You can’t just tell me to go to sleep whenever I say something you don’t want to hear.”

Adrian made a low, frustrated noise and rolled over, pinning her beneath him as he claimed her mouth. She made a muffled sound of protest and shoved at his shoulder, but he kept kissing her until she went soft and malleable beneath him. The kiss stretched on and on, until her blood was molten. He only released her lips as he slipped on a condom and fitted himself to her.

“Don’t think you can just kiss me into submission whenever you want,” she grumbled petulantly, but she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down to her with a broken sigh as he slid home.

She clenched tight around him, gasping and rising up to meet each deep, deliberate thrust. And when she came apart in his arms, she didn’t worry about holding on to her soul, because she knew he would catch it for her. He always had. Her hawk.

Adrian watched Rachel slip inside the infirmary the next day and had to force himself not to charge in after her. Brandt was there. Moira was there. Rachel had the tranq gun he’d insisted on strapped to her hip. And still he was barely fighting down the panic.

He’d almost lost her.

And a sleepless night obsessing over it hadn’t brought him any closer to calm.

When she’d asked him if he believed in soul mates, it was all he could do not to tell her that of course he did, because she was his.

He’d almost lost her.

And if he didn’t learn to let go of the lingering anger toward her he was hanging on to, he would lose her. And that was unacceptable. Intrinsically unacceptable. She was
his
.

But he didn’t know how to get over it. How did he forget when the nightmares still woke him up some nights? Could he forgive when he couldn’t forget?

For Rachel, he had to.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The boy was bawling when his mother carried him in. There was a lot of blood—a scalp wound, from the look of it, and those could be deceptively bloody. Moira and Rachel both dropped what they were doing and rushed forward to meet the pair. The little guy had an impressive set of lungs, but at first glance the wound looked shallow—a glancing claw swipe during playtime that got a little too rough, most likely.

Moira spoke soothingly to the mother as they led the pair to the nearest cot. Rachel reached to brush the boy’s baby-soft hair away from the wound.

The woman’s nostrils flared and her eyes rounded with horror. Suddenly her claws flashed out and she lunged over the bed. “Get away from my child.”

Rachel stumbled back, barely missing the wicked claws.

Moira frowned and murmured, her voice low and soothing, “This is Dr. Russell—”

“I know who she is. She reeks human,” the woman snarled. “Not her. Not an Organization doctor.”

The boy’s sobbing had cut off and now he watched them all with wide, terrified eyes—startled out of his hurt by his mother’s reaction.

“
Susan,
” Moira scolded.

“No, it’s all right. I understand.” Rachel retreated quickly to one of the patient rooms, taking herself out of sight so the frantic mother would stop upsetting her child.

She closed the door and leaned her head back against it, suddenly fighting tears.

She didn’t know why she was so rattled. It had been bound to happen eventually. And she
did
understand. But that didn’t make the distrust hurt any less.

Any more than understanding why Adrian still held that piece of himself away from her made it hurt any less.

And suddenly she was bawling as badly as that cub out there.

It had been two weeks since Dale’s attack. Two weeks of
almost
perfect.

Grace was still off on her secret mission, and Rachel had taken to wearing a tranquilizer gun on her hip when she wasn’t at the infirmary or with Adrian. As much as she wanted to be independent, Rachel hadn’t been sure it was smart, PR-wise, to arm a former Organization doctor with a tranq gun, but no one had asked her about it yet. It was almost like she was a real member of the pride.

But she wasn’t. Today had proved that.

It was a good life, a life she found tempting in the extreme, but it wasn’t hers.

Perhaps Adrian had been right to keep a part of himself separate from her. No matter how she might want to, she couldn’t stay with him. Her presence here was tolerated and she might even have the illusion of acceptance, but she was still human. Without latent shifter DNA, she would never be able to give him children who could shift and just hearing her hawk talk about being the last of his kind made her desperate to find a female hawk for him—even if it would mean losing him.

Perhaps that was what love meant. Being willing to sacrifice your own happiness so the one you love could be happy.

If only it wouldn’t make her miserable in the process.

“Rachel?”

“Just a moment.” She sniffled and swiped at her face, before turning and opening the door for Moira. She must have been back here longer than she thought if the boy and his mother had already been taken care of.

She opened the door to find Moira frowning at her with concern.

“Oh honey, tell me you weren’t crying,” Moira said, though obviously she had been. “Susan is a right bitch. Don’t fuss about her.”

“No, I—it doesn’t—it wouldn’t hurt if I didn’t understand exactly why she did it.”

“She should know better. They should all know you were the one who helped more of us than any of
them
ever have.”

“I can’t blame her.”

“You should. You are not responsible for every human. You aren’t the Organization, honey. You are your own actions. And no one else’s.”

Rachel wanted to believe that. But she couldn’t seem to stop paying for where her actions had taken her.

Adrian sensed something different about Rachel the second he arrived at the infirmary to escort her home. There was a distance in her eyes, a reserve in her demeanor that had him instantly on edge. Her monosyllabic replies that she was fine and her day had been good did nothing to ease his mind.

She may have heard about the latest Organization raid. The incursion team had arrived too late, finding only slaughtered remains in the cells of the D Block building. A bloody message that the Organization was cutting its losses. The security team had tried to keep the information quiet—not wanting to incite another riot, but talk around the pride was leaning more and more in favor of outright war against the Organization.

He didn’t know how much longer Rachel would be safe here. Neither of them would ever be truly part of the pride, no matter how the lions played at accepting them.

Adrian unlocked the padlock securing the cabin and slipped inside to check for threats. Rachel waited silently until he gave her the all clear, then moved past him to the bathroom without a word. He’d gotten used to their evening routine, he realized. Talking about their days while they set out the food he’d brought. Eating together. Brushing their teeth and him watching her go through her evening ritual of lotions and cleansers before they retired together to the lumpy futon where she would roll into his arms.

He had the food laid out by the time she exited the bathroom in her fuzzy flannel pajamas. She glanced at the food and said, “I ate at the clinic. I’m going to turn in early.”

She beelined for the bed and climbed into it, winding herself into a knot of blankets and burrowing in, facing the wall.

Adrian frowned at the lump of her shoulder, hoping for some clue what the hell he’d done. He’d be tempted to blame her behavior on PMS, but she’d had him pick up
those
supplies for her ten days ago and he knew she was no longer binging on Midol and chocolate. But something had changed.

He ate his own dinner, stored the leftovers and went through his own evening routine, preoccupied by the lump of Rachel breathing softly beneath the covers—but not with the even rhythm of sleep. He could hear that she was still awake when he turned off the light and climbed in beside her, but when he brushed her shoulder, she feigned a snuffling sigh and shrugged him off.

“Rachel,” he whispered.

No response. What the fuck?

Adrian flopped onto his back, his body awkward and strangely hollow without her tucked against his side, cuddled close.

It was so unlike her to pull away. Rachel, who had always come into his arms eagerly from the very first, as if she was afraid he would be torn from her at any second. It was she who had never let him put any distance between them—except that one night.

The only other time she’d pushed him away.

The hotel room had been fancier than their usual meeting places. He’d tired of meeting her at seedy roadside hotels with shoddy surveillance systems. The glitzy honeymoon suite had a balcony he could fly to, so no one would be able to see him coming or going. He’d had a bag with clothes for him to change into after the shift delivered to the room—along with roses and champagne.

He’d planned to propose in the proper human fashion and convince Rachel to leave the Organization, to come away with him—to Lone Pine of all places—so they could work together to free shifters from the outside, but she would no longer be in daily danger of discovery. They’d only been seeing one another—always in secret—for a few months, but he’d known beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was
his
.

But when she’d arrived that night, she’d been jumpy, nervous. She’d pulled away when he’d tried to kiss her, moving around the room, fidgeting, agitated. He’d asked her if she thought she’d been followed and instead of answering she’d told him he should fly, get away from her—but he hadn’t been able to leave her behind. Not even when he’d heard the telltale sounds of a strike team creeping down the hallway.

He’d armed himself from the bag he’d had delivered, prepared to defend Rachel with his life—right up to the moment when he’d felt the needle sink deep into the flesh of his shoulder muscle and heard her softly spoken apology as the door broke open.

He hadn’t dreamt of the Organization for almost two weeks, but given the drift of his thoughts it was no surprise when the familiar shape of the dream took form in his mind as it hovered on the edge of sleep.

“Just shift, lover. Just shift for me and all the pain will stop.” Her voice. Her beloved, familiar voice now made bile rise in his throat—or perhaps that was the pain. They’d blindfolded him again. Other voices faded in and out of the black, “—sure, doctor? Don’t want to risk damaging—”, “—delicate bone structure—”, but hers was always close and clear, “He can take more. Can’t you, baby? Hit him again.” Pain swamped him, dragging him into the dark. They must have expected him to stay unconscious longer than he had, because when he cracked open his eyelids, the blindfold was gone. Her hands were above him, adjusting the rigging that kept him immobile but suspended midair for their manipulations. Long, graceful fingers. Perfectly manicured nails. The edge of a tattoo peeking out beneath one sleeve. “Awake already, darlin’? My, but you shifters do heal quickly, don’t you?” He tried to say her name, tried to plead, but there was nothing but pain again. The endless cycle of pain.

Rachel knew the second Adrian slid into the nightmare. His body went rigid, jerking the bed, and his breathing grew choppy and short.

She shoved at the covers that tangled around her, fighting free of the blankets until she could reach for Adrian, gently gripping his shoulders—and watching carefully for flailing hands and elbows that might give her another black eye. “Adrian.”

Cold sweat glistened on his brow, clammy and horrible to see. She hated hearing the nightmares, hated the idea of him reliving those months when he had been helpless, and she had been helpless to save him. “Adrian, wake up.”

She was braced for him to lash out, but he woke with sudden stillness, his eyes flying open. “
You
.”

In that instant, she knew the bright, fierce terror that he might actually hurt her. He may not have woken up at all, eyes open but still seeing the nightmare. “Adrian?”

He launched out of the bed, his lean, rangy body halfway across the room before she had any awareness that he’d moved, shifter-fast. He was back—just as fast—and pushing at her sleeves, turning her wrists this way and that, then dropping them, and across the room again, at the window, the door, the stove, moving so fast she could hardly track him—like a bird trapped in a house.

“Adrian? Can I do anything—?”

“You don’t have any tattoos.”

Rachel frowned, not following, but willing to talk about whatever he needed to. “No. My mother thought they were vulgar. I never really saw the appeal of getting one and it certainly wasn’t worth courting her disapproval.”

He nodded, more to himself than to her. “They weren’t your hands.”

“Whoever’s hands they were, it was just a dream—”

“No.” He pivoted, then spun again, and suddenly he was in front of her, crouched beside the futon. His yellow gaze was fierce, burning with a desperate intensity. “I need you to answer a question and I need the absolute truth.”

“Of course.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear.”

“On your father’s soul.”

“On everything I love,” she swore. “Adrian, what’s this about?”

“Did you take part in my torture when I was in captivity? Did you direct it?”

Her breath whooshed out. “Of course not. God, no. I would never.”

“It was your voice.” He straightened, shaking his head as if to shake the puzzle pieces into something that made sense. “I heard your voice. It haunted me. How did they—recordings?”

Realization shuddered through Rachel with painful force. She should have known, should have suspected, but she’d thought Adrian was just confused by the drugs he’d been given, mixing dreams and realities. She hadn’t suspected they would use
her
to hurt him. Her voice…

“Madison,” she said. “There’s a woman who works for the Organization. She believes in their cause whole heartedly and wouldn’t flinch at hurting you—and she has an amazing ability to mimic voices. I’ve heard her do it. But her name was never attached to your file— Oh God. Of course they gave me a dummy file.”

Adrian stood stock still in the middle of the room, his hands loose at his sides, eyes wide and breath quick. “It wasn’t you they were calling by another name. You weren’t there. You really weren’t there.”

“I tried to protect you,” she vowed. “I’m so sorry, Adrian. I know I didn’t—”

His lips cut off the rest of what she would have said. His long fingers framed her face, holding her steady as he kissed her, long and sweet and aching with all the pain they’d put one another through.

“You’re
mine
,” he whispered when he finally lifted his head and let her come up for air.

“
Yes
,” she breathed.

Clothing fell away as if it had never existed. There could be no obstacles between them tonight. No more misconceptions, no more apologies. Tonight there was only need, pure and untainted by everything that had come before. He fitted himself to her and she sobbed at the sweet perfection of it, gazing up into eyes that no longer held anything human until pleasure blinded her to everything else. Adrian shouted, for once not silent, talons scraping the futon frame before he collapsed over her, his breath puffing against the sensitive side of her neck and sending delicious aftershocks shuddering down her spine.

“We need a bigger bed,” she whispered, and felt him smile against her skin.

“Agreed,” he mumbled, and she felt something unlock, something that had been afraid to hope this might mean forever. Furniture was permanent. It meant something. She threaded her fingers through his at her shoulder, careful of his talons. “Your eyes shifted again,” she murmured.

He hummed something vaguely affirmative, then his body jerked, going stiff. She tightened her arms around his shoulders, fear spiking at the thought that he was pulling away again, but when he lifted his head, there was awe-struck wonder in his hawk-gold gaze. And tears. “
Rachel
,” he whispered.