8
Whatever you do, don’t tell them anything.
Lobo’s words kept echoing through Tehya’s mind as she was escorted—forcibly—to MoonBound’s headquarters. She supposed she was lucky, though; her wrists were bound, but at least Hunter hadn’t knocked her out for the journey the way he had done to Lobo. No, she just had to walk through the woods wearing nothing but a flannel shirt with three missing buttons.
She glanced over at Lobo, draped over the shoulder of a dark-haired, leather-clad warrior called Baddon, whose gaze turned smoky every time he got a glimpse of her gaping neckline. She’d have been flattered if it weren’t for the fact that he was carrying the man she loved like a slab of meat.
Lobo moaned, and she tensed. Stay still, Lobo. Don’t move. The last time he’d stirred, he’d gotten another blow of silence from the blond asshole she now knew as Aiden.
Tehya had lost her temper in a big way over that, and Aiden wouldn’t soon forget that she could bite. Even now, he rubbed his forearm and slid her silent glares.
The weird thing was that even after she’d attacked him, there had been no retaliation. She’d expected to be beaten, but the dark-skinned female named Katina had merely pulled Tehya off Aiden, and they’d continued on their way.
Unfortunately, her outburst had triggered a volley of questions that had been nonstop for miles.
“Who are you?”
“How do you know Lobo?”
“How did you get into our headquarters?”
“What clan do you belong to?”
“Are you a skinwalker?”
The only thing she’d told them was her name. The one Lobo had given her when he’d found her, starving and weak, in a snowbank.
“Tehya,” Hunter mused from a few feet ahead. “I’ve heard that word before. Is it Sioux? Zuni?” He eyed her over his shoulder, the leather thong around his head holding his hair away from his face. He had a cruel mouth and hard eyes, but his deep voice was deceptively soothing. When she said nothing, he sighed. “We’ll learn the truth about you, you know.”
Anxiety spiked. “With torture?”
Aiden raised his bitten arm. “I vote yes.”
“Jackass,” Katina muttered.
“We’re here,” Hunter announced, and Tehya was actually relieved that they’d arrived at MoonBound—until she realized that he’d never answered the torture question.
As they traversed the maze of hallways, the earthen walls began to close in on her. People stared, maybe because she looked like a half-wild, half-naked waif with leaves and twigs in her hair, or maybe because she was the enemy. Either way, she felt trapped, and a cage was probably in her very near future.
Her heart pounded against her ribs as if typing out a warning. If it could just type out instructions on how to escape, that would be great.
As they entered a four-way intersection, a blond male came from the brightly lit hall to the right, and her stomach bottomed out. It was the guy she’d slammed into in the hall after she’d run out of the lab. She casually inched sideways, hoping to conceal herself behind Baddon.
“Hunt, did you get him—” He broke off, his gaze skipping over Lobo and landing on her. His silver eyes flashed. “You.”
Hunter and Katina moved like vipers, putting themselves between Tehya and the crazy-eyed guy. Still, she bared her teeth and crouched, prepared to defend herself the way she had against countless wolves, cougars, and bobcats over the years. Didn’t matter that her hands were tied—she had strong legs and sharp teeth, and she knew where all the soft spots were.
“Easy, Riker,” Hunter said, slamming his palm into the male’s chest. “She’s not a threat.”
Riker hissed. “Tell that to Nicole.”
Oh, God. Nicole must be the pregnant woman, and Riker must be her mate. Taking a ragged breath, she ratcheted the aggression down a few notches, straightened up, and took a tentative step toward him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “She startled me, and I didn’t know she was pregnant. Is she okay?”
The guy lost the homicidal glint in his eyes, but they narrowed, as if he wasn’t sure her apology or concern was genuine. “She’s fine,” he said curtly, “for now.” He turned to Hunter. “What’s going on?”
Hunter started moving again, and they all fell in behind him, Aiden bringing up the rear directly behind her. But not too close, she noted.
“Call the senior warriors together and meet us in the conference room. Bring Nicole if she’s up to it.”
Oh, shit. Tehya knew very little about vampire customs, but according to all the government propaganda, vampire clans could be primitive and barbaric. Would Nicole be allowed to exact revenge or determine Tehya’s fate? She glanced over at Lobo, who was starting to stir.
Wake up. Please wake up. I can’t do this alone.
Riker said something to Hunter that Tehya didn’t hear, and then he veered down a tunnel while the rest of them entered a cavernous room filled with an odd collection of artwork and a giant table that could easily seat twenty people. She turned to check on Baddon and Lobo, but they were gone.
A chill ran up her spine. What had they done to him?
She must have looked as panicked as she felt, because as Katina cut the ties around Tehya’s wrists and shoved her into a seat at the table, she said, “Don’t worry. Your lover is just getting a wake-up call. He’ll be here in a minute.”
“He’s not—” My lover. But he was, wasn’t he? Before today, they’d been companions. He’d been her pack leader. But now they were . . . what? A mated pair? And was her wolf-brain ever going to convert back to something resembling a human or vampire brain?
“Not your lover?” Katina jammed her fists on her denim-covered hips and gave Tehya a do you think I’m a dumbass? look. “Girl, we heard you taking it like a whore in an alley from two hundred yards away. I’m thinking of giving Lobo another look after hearing what he did to you—”
A deep growl vibrated the room, and only after Katina laughed and held up her hands in defense did Tehya realize it had come from her.
“Yeah, not your lover.” Katina rolled her eyes and took a seat next to Tehya. “My ass.”
Tehya ignored the female and got a quick lay of the land. There were four possible exits, if she went by the currents of free-moving air flowing from beneath the doors, each carrying with it a different scent. Another door must be a closet. There were also several weapons available, from a spear propped in one corner to a selection of ceremonial axes and blades on the walls. Not that she knew how to use any of them.
Over the next few minutes, as she plotted a possible escape plan, a dozen more people filed in. Hunter sat at the head of the table. Then, finally, Lobo stumbled through the doorway, his hair dripping wet and clinging to his bare neck and shoulders. Someone had bandaged his wound, the long, white strips slashing across his hard-cut chest and around his muscular back.
Even though he was clearly in pain, he gave her a reassuring look as Baddon shoved him into a seat across the table from her.
Riker was the last to arrive. He entered with Nicole, who, to Tehya’s surprise, merely glanced at her with curiosity as she waddled in, one arm wrapped in bandages and another bandage taped to her temple. She took a seat kitty-corner from Riker, who sat at the end of the table across from Hunter.
It was like a big, formal dinner, and she and Lobo were the main course.
Once everyone was seated, Hunter folded his hands together on the tabletop and looked at Lobo and Tehya in turn. “Who’s going to start?” When neither Tehya nor Lobo spoke up, Hunter gave a resigned nod. “Okay, let’s try this again. Lobo, you shifted into my form, broke into our headquarters, and tried to seduce my mate. Tell me why you shouldn’t die.”
Lobo did what?
Tehya whipped her head around to stare at Lobo, but if he could feel the burn of her glare, he didn’t react. His eyes were locked with Hunter’s, and she swore the air crackled with electricity. Everyone shifted uncomfortably, and a few of the people sitting around the table actually fingered the daggers at their hips.
A low growl rattled in her chest and her hackles rose as the need to protect Lobo consumed her. As a human, she’d felt like a sheep following the herd; but as a wolf, she’d found her footing and her voice. In her wolf-mind, she and Lobo were a pack, and she’d leap across the table and go for Hunter’s throat to protect it.
Tension practically dripped from the walls as Lobo, his hands still bound, rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “I only took your form to get help for the wolf,” he said, far more calmly than she would have if someone had just asked her to explain why she shouldn’t die. “I had no other choice. Without Nicole’s aid, she would have died. I was trying to leave when Aylin saw me. She kissed me. I didn’t seduce her, and if she told you that, your mate is a liar.”
Baddon whistled under his breath while even more warriors reached for their weapons, but Hunter remained eerily still. The guy’s expression was stony, unreadable, and scarier for it.
“She didn’t tell me that,” Hunter said, “but given your history, it wasn’t a stretch to assume.” He gestured to Tehya. “What about her? Did she enter the compound with you?”
“She has nothing to do with this.” Lobo didn’t glance her way, and for some reason that bothered her. It was almost as if he was avoiding looking at her. “Drop all charges against her, welcome her into your clan, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
She gaped at him in astonishment. He wanted her to live with these people? “Lobo, no—”
“LawKeeper,” Hunter barked, cutting her off. “What is the punishment for impersonating a clan chief?”
A dark-haired male she’d heard someone call Takis tipped his chair back and pulled a leather-bound book off the shelf behind him. He flipped to a flagged page with more flourish than was probably needed for the situation. He seemed to be enjoying this. They all did.
“For followers of the Raven,” he said in a deep, ominous voice, “death is the acceptable penalty. For followers of the Crow, any punishment is allowed, and no punishment is considered too harsh.”
Oh, God. She had no idea what the Raven and Crow stuff was about, but she hoped like hell these people leaned toward the Crow.
Hunter’s cool gaze never left Lobo. “And what is the punishment for assaulting a pregnant female?”
Tehya’s gut did a slow roll as Takis flipped pages. “That’s a little more complicated,” he said. “The laws take into account circumstance and whether the crime was committed by a clan member or an outsider. But basically we’re talking about anything from imprisonment to lashes to staking atop an anthill.”
Tehya felt sick to her stomach. Had Lobo saved her life only for her to be slowly eaten by ants?
Smiling grimly, Hunter gestured to Lobo. “Now, answer my question.”
Lobo clenched his teeth and sat back in his seat, regarding Hunter with eyes that glittered with contempt. “Fuck you.”
Thunderheads formed in Hunter’s eyes, and once again the hairs on the back of Tehya’s neck stood up. He nodded at Aiden. “Take him to the dungeon.”
“No!” Tehya leaped to her feet. “He’s just trying to protect me. All of it—it’s all my fault.”
“Tehya,” Lobo snapped. “Don’t say another word.”
“Why?” she yelled, fed up with all the rules she couldn’t fathom. “I don’t understand. They could kill you.”
Slamming his palms down on the table, he flashed his fangs at her. “I don’t care. I need you to be safe.”
“You don’t care? What about what I care about?” she shot back. “I don’t want you to die. Did you think about that? You’ve kept me safe for the last twelve years, and now it’s my turn, you stubborn idiot.”
“Your turn? You don’t think you’ve kept me safe?” He laughed, but the sound was bitter and hard. “I’m alive because of you, Tehya. After MoonBound kicked me out, I had nothing to live for. I was a zombie looking for a bullet to the brain. You gave me purpose. A reason to live.”
Tears stung her eyes, but before she could say anything—not that she knew what to say—Hunter stood.
“Enough.” He jammed his finger at her. “I know this territory like the back of my hand, and not once in twelve damned years have I, or any of my warriors, laid eyes on you.”
“Yes, you have,” she said quietly, ignoring Lobo’s madly shaking head. “Except I didn’t look like this.”
Hunter’s brows drew down in confusion. In fact, everyone traded bewildered glances, but it was Nicole who turned to Tehya in amazement.
“Oh, my God,” Nicole said, her voice tinged with awe. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re . . . the wolf.”
As the room exploded in conversation and questions, Tehya watched Lobo sag into his seat as if drained by disappointment. She couldn’t stand the way he was looking at her, as if she’d betrayed them both. How, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that Hunter had been determined to punish him for not talking, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.
Hunter held up his hand and called for everyone to shut the fuck up. Once everyone was seated again, he turned to Tehya. “Look, I don’t know much about skinwalkers, but I know they can’t hold any form but their own indefinitely. So unless you spent most of your time hiding, and then only coming out into the open as a wolf, you’re lying.”
It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would think she was lying, but with no way to prove that what she was saying was true aside from shifting into a wolf and possibly never shifting back, she knew she had to be convincing. Lobo’s life might depend on it.
“It’s true, I swear.” She told them what she’d told Lobo, that she’d barely been turned into a vampire when she shifted into a wolf and was never able to shift back.
Skepticism wafted through the air, its scent similar to singed hair, and Tehya wondered if her sense of smell would always be so sensitive. It was useful to gauge emotion—but just once, couldn’t some emotion smell like chocolate? Or bacon?
“You’re saying you were turned into a vampire twelve years ago?” Riker asked, and when she nodded, he added, “How? And why aren’t your eyes silver?”
Even though more than a decade had passed, the wounds still felt raw, and she trembled a little as she spoke. “I can’t explain my eyes. They’ve always been this color. As for the rest, I was working as a dental assistant while going to school to be a dentist. Then my mom got cancer. She died six weeks after the diagnosis.”
Tehya inhaled deeply, willing herself to not break down. She and her mother, Cherie, had been close, each the only person the other had in her life. A secret had bonded them, and once Cherie was gone, Tehya’s life fell apart.
“The pressure and stress got to me, and I made some bad choices.” She’d partied too much and hung out with a wild crowd, and one night she’d found herself at an underground blood club on the outskirts of Seattle. Because, hey, all the cool people were illegally feeding and sleeping with vampires.
“I was drunk and stupid, and I let a vampire bite me.” She grimaced, hating herself for being so reckless when she’d spent twenty-four years being responsible, the kind of person the government didn’t look at too closely. “The really messed-up thing? He didn’t even get any blood, because the place got raided by VAST. They collared or killed all the vampires. The one who bit me is probably someone’s slave now.”
She’d always been disgusted by the vampire slave trade, something humans had legalized long before she was born. Vampires were stronger, faster, and superior in almost every way, but humans overwhelmingly outnumbered them, and free vampires spent their time in hiding, subject to being hunted for bounties or captured for the slave trade.
“Wait.” Nicole scowled. “If Vampire Strike Team forces interrupted, how did you exchange blood with the vampire?”
“I didn’t.”
“You must have,” she insisted. “Worldwide man-datory vaccinations against the saliva-borne vampiric infection have been in effect for decades. The failure rate of the vaccine is practically nil. Humans can only turn if they’re introduced to the blood-borne version of the virus.”
Never let a vampire bite you, sweetheart, and never tell anyone where you’re from or that your vaccination document is forged. Never.
Funny how her mother’s words, drilled into Tehya since she was three years old, were ringing loud and clear in her ears now, but that night when the vampire was plunging his fangs into her throat, her mom had been as silent as she was dead. And the funniest thing was, none of those warnings mattered now.
“I was never vaccinated.” She slid a glance at Lobo, who was watching intently, puzzling her out the way he did a hunter’s cruel snare or leg trap before he disarmed and destroyed it. “My mother paid a lot of money to have my immunization record falsified.”
“Why?” he asked, but she had a feeling he was already close to the answer. It had never taken him long to figure out a trap either.
“Because the vaccine is fatal to my father’s people.”
Every eye in the room fell on Nicole, and it was Riker who posed the next question. “Is that possible, Nicole?”
Nicole nodded, almost numbly. She shifted in her seat, fidgeting like a kid in a dentist’s chair who was about to have a cavity filled.
“Once worldwide vaccination became mandatory,” she said finally, “pockets of anti-vaxxers were rooted out. Most had resisted for ideological reasons, but one group, a native population in Canada, the Kleemut tribe”—she looked over at Tehya almost apologetically—“they resisted out of self-preservation. The vaccine was lethal for them. They would die within twenty-four hours of getting the shot. A lot of the Kleemut went into hiding. They were hunted mercilessly by Canadian and international VAST forces, and those who were caught were never seen again by anyone outside of a Daedalus lab.” She gave Tehya that look again, but this time the apologetic expression was steeped in shame, and that was when it clicked. Nicole must have worked for Daedalus, the company that had revolutionized vampire slavery and created the vaccine against the vampire infection. They were the most loved and hated company on the planet. “Your father was a Kleemut Indian, wasn’t he?”
“I never knew him, but yes.” Tehya fixed her gaze on a bear skull hanging on the wall, its surface painted with scenes of ancient Native American bison hunts. “My mom changed her name and fled to Seattle when she found out she was pregnant. They didn’t want anyone to ever suspect that I’m part Kleemut. She got one letter from my father, and then she never heard from him again. Apparently, he went missing.” She turned to Nicole and was surprised to see that the doctor’s expression was still tight with guilt. Whatever she’d done in her past was a source of pain for her, and right now it didn’t matter that Nicole was supposed to be the enemy. She’d been nothing but kind to Tehya. Offering a tentative smile, Tehya said softly, “Thank you for trying to help me, and I’m sorry I attacked you for it.”
Nicole blinked, obviously expecting neither gratitude nor an apology. Even Riker looked a little startled. “It’s okay,” Nicole said. “You must have been terrified to wake up in a strange place. And with two legs instead of four.”
Lobo tugged at the rope around his wrists with his teeth, and she almost laughed. He did not know that in order to chew through something—like shoelaces or a drawstring on a pair of sweats—you had to use your back teeth. With a curse, he settled his hands on the table again. “Your mother wasn’t a native, was she?”
Not even close. “Except for her name, she was as Scottish as Loch Ness.”
Lobo nodded, more to himself than anyone else. “That explains the skinwalker glitch.”
“I’m not following,” she said, and a murmur of agreement rose up from around the table as everyone turned to Lobo.
He didn’t look at anyone else, kept his gaze focused solely on her. “According to lore, most skinwalkers are born vampires, but all of them come from pure Native American blood. You were born neither a vampire nor a purebred native. You shouldn’t have this ability at all, so it’s not a surprise that you can’t control it.”
“So why did I shift back in the lab, when I hadn’t been able to do it on my own for years?”
Nicole blew out a long breath before speaking up. “I did a little reading up on shape-shifters after Hunter told me about Lobo. If what I read is true, skinwalkers who are injured while in another body will revert to their true form when they die. It’s likely that you were so close to death that your body shifted, and in doing so, you healed.” She gave Tehya a pointed look. “I would recommend that you not shift into a wolf again.”
Good call, Doc. “I don’t even know if I can.”
“How did it happen before?”
God, this was so embarrassing. How could she admit that it had been a total accident? “I’m not sure. I’d turned into a vampire, and I was terrified I’d get caught. I didn’t know what to do, so I drove until my car ran out of gas.” She’d been in the mountains, hungry, alone, with no idea how to survive. And then she’d heard it. A wolf howling in the distance. Then another. And another. They’d seemed to be singing to each other, so in tune that she’d felt the ties that held the pack together. “There was a family of wolves that . . . I don’t know . . . I heard them, and they made me want what they had. I had this urge to join them, and I felt this pull . . . and the next thing I knew, I had four legs and fur. I tried to switch back, but I couldn’t.” She shook her head. “How did I get this ability in the first place, if it’s something so rare, let alone unheard of in someone like me?”
Lobo cut a sharp look at Hunter. “It seems that the impossible has become possible lately.”
Whatever subtext was at play here struck a nerve, and Hunter went taut. “What do you mean?”
Lobo shifted his gaze to peg Riker with a meaningful stare. “I know about your son. I always thought invisibility was a myth.”
Tehya tried not to let her mouth fall open. And failed. So she hadn’t been seeing things that day she and Lobo had been out patrolling the forest and they’d come across a young vampire who had disappeared and reappeared twice before their eyes.
“Bastien is . . . unique,” Riker said, a note of pride in his voice.
Hunter sat back in his chair and surveyed everyone. “I think I’ve heard enough. Lobo, I’ll honor your request to keep Tehya safe. We will welcome her as a MoonBound member. I’m sure we can use someone with dental training around here. Vampires are probably a dentist’s wet dream. Nicole, unless you want to pursue her attack against you—”
“I don’t,” Nicole said quickly. She shot Tehya a friendly smile, and Tehya shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She wanted to hate these people, but she was finding that they weren’t all the monsters she’d expected them to be.
“Then we’ll have quarters prepared for her,” Hunter said. “Katina, will you show her around?”
“Wait.” Tehya might have conflicting emotions about MoonBound, but she did know that she didn’t want to live here. “I don’t want this. I’m going home with Lobo.”
“That’s in violation of vampire law,” Aiden said, a little too gleefully. He was definitely one of the ones she didn’t like. “Skinwalkers aren’t allowed to mate with each other.”
“We aren’t . . . mated.” But, man, her cheeks felt hot, because mating was exactly what they’d done in the trailer. Katina rolled her eyes again. “Not like that.”
Lobo didn’t meet her gaze, and she realized that, while the mating restrictions might be true, that wasn’t what this was about. “You need to go, Tehya.”
“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and dug in. “Not until I know what’s going to happen to you.”
“You’ll see him again,” Hunter assured her. “You have my word.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Since I don’t know you, your word means nothing to me.”
One black eyebrow shot up and his lip quirked in amusement. “I see your point. But given that I’m in charge, you don’t have any choice but to trust me.”
She hated that he was right.
“Please go, Tehya,” Lobo murmured. “Hunter is a dick, but he’s a dick who keeps his word.”
“Thanks for the endorsement,” Hunter said drily.
Reluctantly she rose from her seat and followed Katina out of the room. Only after they were on the other side of the complex did she realize that Hunter had said she’d see Lobo again . . . but he hadn’t said he’d be alive.