Branded by Fire

He had seen Mercy's brothers around but now wondered what they were like. Redheaded hellions probably. "Makes sense. He steps out, escapes the gassing, comes back in because he hears something, and that's when they attempt to grab him, not realizing there's another kid out in the woods."



Nodding, Mercy touched the floor and came away with a thin layer of dust. "He shifted. This is from his clothes disintegrating."



Riley sniffed at the finger she held up. "I can scent denim."



"You can?" She raised it to her own nose. "I can't."



He couldn't help it - she brought out the wolf's most wicked edge. "That's because I'm older and stronger."



She shot him an evil look. "As I was saying, Nash shifted. Most likely after he ripped that chip off."



"Could've done it in animal form, too. Lynx are small and agile, especially when they're pissed." He barely resisted the urge to stroke his hand down the sweep of her back and over her bottom. Mercy was beautifully built, all smooth curves and muscled grace. What would it be like, he wondered, to have the right to caress her as he pleased? The wolf was oddly intrigued by the idea.



"Hmm." She sat back up on her haunches. "But they still got him. Had to be more than one - the Alliance's modus ope randi seems to be to overprepare rather than under."



"We've got enough flesh to get DNA if the attacker's in any database." There was no question of going to Enforcement. This was changeling territory, changeling victims, therefore changeling law applied.



Not only that, but Enforcement had so many Psy stooges, nothing ever stayed secret. Until they knew what was happening, they couldn't afford to tip off the Council. Having lost two highly trained scientific minds when Ashaya and her twin, Amara, defected, chances were the Councilors would try to commandeer the Alliance chip and Nash both.



As for the assailants . . . too fucking bad. "Don't move the chip. There might be trace around it."



"Really?" Doing an atrocious vocal impersonation of a Southern belle, Mercy fluttered her eyelashes. "Why, I'm so glad you're here to tell me, Mr. Kincaid - I might not have figured that out all by my lonesome."



He felt his lips twitch. "I think you have something in your eye."



He was certain he saw a flash of amusement but then she shook her head and her voice shifted to work mode, any hint of play buried deep. "The techs should do the whole house in case they left any other calling cards. Might as well call Ashaya, too, have her come out with her team."



As Mercy spoke to the M-Psy who'd mated with Dorian, Riley shifted closer - smiling inwardly at her slight responsive jerk - and bent to look at the chip. It wasn't tiny. Maybe one square centimeter. But even without a microscope, he could see that it was a complex piece of work. Some kind of neuroinhibitor, was the current theory.



But what exactly did it inhibit?



"She's on her way," Mercy said, folding up the phone and - surprisingly - not pulling away. Instead she pressed closer, their heads side by side. "It's a hell of a piece of work."



Her hair brushed his arm, and he remembered how the strands had felt sliding over his skin as she kissed her way down his body that last time. "Yeah." His voice was half growl, the wolf's frustration rising to the surface. "Let's leave this for Ashaya and do a sweep around the house - they might've left a trail at their entry point."



"Nate had the men take turns doing that already - nothing."



"None of them is a lieutenant or a sentinel."



A slanted glance. "Is that a compliment?"



"No, it's a fact." He watched her rise to her feet in a fluid move that was intrinsically feline. "I'm going to give Judd a call - he's got contacts in the Net, can get a feel for whether this was a Psy thing."



Mercy nodded. "I'll utilize our own contacts, too. But my gut says the Psy aren't involved, at least not directly." Her eyes met his, the leopard apparent in the sheen of gold that overlaid her gaze for a fleeting instant. "Time to move, wolf."



Adrenaline speared through his veins as he realized she was beginning to lose the battle to rein in her own hunger. "Lead the way, cat."



Chapter 9



Mercy finished the first pass around the Baker home and shook her head. Nothing. Nada. Zip. The scent trail had had hours to dissipate. Riley silently indicated the next pass and off they went, having decided to do this in animal form. As she left, Mercy wondered what anyone would think if they saw a leopard standing face-to-face with a heavily muscled wolf.



Changeling animals were usually bigger than wild animals, but the shift did strange things to body mass and size. It was never a zero-sum equation. Though she was on the tall side of average in human form, she was smack in the middle in leopard form. Riley, however, was big - and unlike most of his brethren, he wasn't built graceful. No, he was built for stubborn endurance - apparently, his nickname was the Wall.



No one, she thought, would ever mistake him for anything but a changeling.



Something crunched under her paw. Backing up, she brushed aside the leaves with gentle care. It was nothing. An old toy. Probably Willow's, from the proximity to the house. They didn't find anything in the third or fourth pass. The fifth had to be the final - they were going into more heavily populated areas.



It was on that last pass, as they were heading toward each other, that Mercy saw it. A glint of silver in the grass beside a curb on a dead-end street - one that backed onto the woods that separated the Baker home from this neat subdivision. Slowing her pace, she came to a standstill by it. With other houses so close, it could've been any of a thousand things. But she looked closer.



A chain. No, an identity bracelet, the silver bar marked with the name Bowen. She couldn't pick it up with her teeth. She tried a claw very, very carefully. It came. Riley bent his dark gray head and took it in his teeth, holding it as they walked around the area where they'd found it. Nothing else jumped out.



Nodding at each other, they ran back and shifted in the patch of woods where they'd left their clothes. Mercy took the bracelet the instant she was human, and turned it over. Happy Birthday, Bo. From Lily.



Disappointment sat like lead in her stomach. "Could belong to anyone."



"We might as well do a door-to-door - that street's the closest logical place for a vehicle to have waited."



"Yeah, the woods would've provided coverage." Gut clenching with a furious mix of worry and anger, she put the bracelet to the side and grabbed her clothing. "Wonder if we can get satellite images."



Riley pulled on his jeans and she almost moaned. Focus, Mercy.



"I'll check," he said, zipping up those damn jeans as she slid on her own. "But we might get lucky with an insomniac." When he turned, she saw the marks on his back were almost healed.



Fast, even for a changeling. Which meant Riley was more powerful than she'd guessed, more than he let on. There was nothing flashy about him. Just - "What the - " His hands were on her waist and his mouth on hers before she could do more than gasp.



Lightning. Bright. Sizzling. Perfect.



This time she did moan, wrapping her arms around him and luxuriating in his strength, in the sheer speed with which he'd come at her. With both of them only wearing jeans, her breasts were pressed against the exquisite roughness of the hairs on his chest. She rubbed against him, giving in to the leopard's innate sensuality.



He tore away his lips but they remained less than a millimeter apart. "This is your fault."



"Hell, no." She sucked on his neck, biting him a little too hard for emphasis. "You jumped my bones."



Tugging back her head with a hand fisted in her hair, he glared down at her. "You were all but licking me the way you were looking."



"Looking's not the same as touching." Her mouth watered at the idea of licking him. They'd been in too much of a rush last night. Even the second and third time. As if they'd both been hungry so long, they'd needed to gorge. But - "We don't have time for this."



He held her for another couple of seconds, pure male muscle and heated skin. "We need to make time."



It was an order.



The cat hissed. The woman narrowed her eyes. "What you need to do is let go of me before I give you some scars that won't heal over as quick."



One big hand skated down her back to tease the top edge of her jeans. "I bet if I touched you now, I'd find you silky and hot and damp."



Her stomach grew taut as his fingers slid in past the denim, a little rough, all determined. Pushing. He was pushing her. But she was no tabby cat. She was a leopard. Biting those sensuous wolf lips just hard enough to sting, she shoved away using a move that snaked her out of his hold. "I meant what I said, Riley. Once was enough." Liar, liar.



He didn't attempt to grab her again, watching her dress with eyes gone amber as he finished pulling on his own clothes. "That's not what your body says."



"Yeah, well, it's not the best judge of character." Ignoring the weight of his gaze, she scraped her hair into a tight ponytail, having finally remembered stuffing a thick rubber band into her jeans as she left work a couple of days earlier. "I've got no room in my life for a male who's going to tell me what to do."



"This is just sex."



He was trying to make her mad. As if she'd fall for that. "Oh, puhleeze." Snorting, she went to grab her boots. "Nothing's just sex with men like you - the instant you take a lover, you become all 'I man, you woman. You do as I say.' " And no matter how much she wanted a mate, Mercy couldn't submit. Not that way. Not to a man who wanted her to be something different. It would break her. "Then you beat your chests and howl at the moon."



Riley wasn't amused. "You don't think you can handle me?"



Okay, so maybe he was really good at pushing her buttons. "I said I don't have the time." Hopping on one foot, she put on her boot.