BRANDED BY FIRE

“You know that wasn’t what I was doing.”


He showed her his teeth. “Coward.”

“See if I pet you next time you go all crazy.”

Good going, Riley. “I didn’t like seeing you hurt.”

“We’ve been over this—I’m not your concern. The only reason I’m not spitting at you is because I know you literally can’t help it.” Then she was gone.

Riley shrugged into his T-shirt, his stomach taut with a knowledge he didn’t want to consider. She was right—predatory changeling men were protective as a rule. But Riley was his alpha’s second. His control over his reactions was legendary. He protected, but he didn’t go feral. Not like this.

Today, he’d become a wolf in human form, a wolf fixated on Mercy alone.

Wanting to prowl after her but knowing that would be the absolute wrong move with this cat, he was about to leave when he caught two distinct and unfamiliar male scents on the air currents.

The wolf exploded to the forefront of his mind.

He was at the cabin before he knew it—to find Mercy standing at the foot of the steps that led up to her porch, facing off against two strangers he immediately categorized as threats. The growl that started at the back of his throat turned into cold focus between one instant and the next. His claws sliced out.





CHAPTER 13





At the same instant, Councilors Henry Scott and Anthony Kyriakus walked into the observation chamber opposite the would-be shooter’s room.

“Has he said anything?” Henry asked.

“He’s been mumbling that he has to do something,” the head M-Psy said, “but we don’t know what.”

Henry stared through the glass. “The mind scan should give us the answer.”

Anthony knew Henry was the Councilor most involved with Pure Psy, the group that had vowed to maintain Silence at all costs. He wondered what their reaction would be to these acts of violence, acts that showed the clear disintegration of the Protocol. “Let’s go,” he said quietly.

As they went to move into the room, they glimpsed an orderly undoing the straps on the patient’s arm. Anthony blasted out with a telepathic order to stop … but it was too late. The patient wrenched out his hand, pulled a pen from the orderly’s front pocket, and stabbed himself through the ear in the space of a single fractured second.

Anthony sensed the M-Psy running toward the bed, but he focused on the man’s dying mind, reading what he could before the shock of death petrified everything to stone. He caught the edge of compulsion, knew someone had been pulling this man’s strings. He’d been nothing more than a puppet.

Easily used. Easily discarded.

It was clear the puppet master had implanted a suggestion that his pawn suicide after the completion of his mission, or if he was caught. Only the fact that the shooter had been stunned at the scene, and then under mental guard, had stopped him from using his telepathy to accomplish the task.

Even as the thought passed through Anthony’s head, he saw the orderly crumple to the floor, and belatedly realized the man had been laboring under the same compulsion. Who had the access and ability to control this many people? The answer was—a significant number of people in the Council superstructure.

The real question was why.





CHAPTER 14





Mercy spun around to find Riley amber eyed and cold in a way that told her he wasn’t thinking about anything but blood. “Riley.”

He didn’t look at her. “Who are they?”

The two men opposite her had gone hunting-quiet at his approach, and now she felt the promise of violence lick the air. “Why is this wolf near your home?” Eduardo asked, his leopard crawling in the menace of his voice.

“Quiet,” she ordered, turning to the newcomers with furious eyes. “He has a right to be here. You’re the interlopers so shut it.”

Eduardo blinked as if he’d never had someone speak to him in that tone. Beside him, Joaquin retracted his claws, but she wasn’t fooled. These men were sentinels. They could go attack-ready in a split second. But then, so could she. “Stay here.” Stepping away from the porch, she headed toward Riley.

He still didn’t take his eyes off the men. Snarling, she pushed him in the chest. His head snapped toward her. “Who are they?” he asked again in that cold wolf voice.

“Sentinels from my grandmother’s pack,” she said, livid at all three men, but mostly at Riley. She wasn’t a bone to be fought over. He had no right to act territorial—she hadn’t given him that right. “And I thought I told you to head back.”

“I’m not leaving you alone with strangers.” Quiet. Implacable.

Her temper rose. “We just had this conversation, Riley.”

He didn’t answer, his amber gaze shifting over her shoulder. “Why are they here?”