BRANDED BY FIRE

Joaquin didn’t move from the doorway. “Won’t you invite me in?”


“You just want to come in so your scent will be inside.” And if Riley walked in and smelled it, she wouldn’t be able to stop the resulting bloodshed. Part of her was irritated that she was allowing a male’s possessiveness to dictate her actions, but the other part of her was thinking like a sentinel. And buried below that was a raw protectiveness that broadsided her with its strength. “I’m not having you create an interpack incident. We’ll go to a pancake place.”

To her surprise, Joaquin turned out to be an interesting breakfast companion. He also clearly adored her grandmother. “Isabella is an alpha we’d follow to our graves, no questions asked.”

“Isn’t that the definition of a sentinel?” she said, taking a bite of her maple-syrup lashed stack. “I’d do the same for Lucas.”

“We’re both lucky. I’ve heard of packs with a weak alpha, one who doesn’t command such respect. It ends up killing the whole pack.”

Mercy nodded. “So is that why you’re here? She asked?”

“It would’ve been a good enough reason, but she showed us videos of you.” A smile in his eyes. “I was away when you visited us. If I hadn’t been … well, perhaps you’d be roaming the Amazon now.”

“In your dreams.” Laughing, she finished off her coffee and stood. “I have to get to work, but Joaquin, you have to know—the field is not open. Go home.”

Implacable dark eyes. “You still don’t wear his scent.”

Rolling her eyes, she left him to the temporary duties Cian had assigned as part of the agreement to allow two out-Pack sentinels into their territory. But the way he’d said those last words, the confidence in them, niggled at her. Scent layers only became ingrained in long-term lovers or mates.

She’d only been intimate with Riley a handful of times, but they spent a lot of time together. And still no scent? It was her, she thought, taking an unflinching look at the almost mutinously in de pen dent nature of her leopard. That leopard was suspicious of even the ties between lovers. What if the suspicion never ended?

That thought worried away at the edges of her mind even as she got to work in a CTX station in Oakland. It was a relief to get a call from Ria, Lucas’s administrative assistant—she was sick of going round and round in circles inside her own head.

“Sentinel meeting tonight,” Ria told her. “At Lucas’s place.”

“Time?” She circled a possible security hole in the blueprint in front of her, her mind flicking to the last time she’d been in an underground garage. Damn but she missed the wolf already. And, scent layer or not, that spelled trouble.

“Seven. Sascha’s doing dinner.”

“God save us all.” Sascha had decided she liked cooking. Unfortunately, cooking didn’t like her back.

Ria chuckled. “She’s improving. She made me a cake the other day, and it was only a little salty.”

“That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“Don’t worry—tonight it’s tacos. She told me there’s not much she can do to destroy that particular meal.”

“We’ll see,” Mercy joked. “Any other news?”

“Zara’s designing for us again as of today.”

Mercy liked the changeling wildcat who’d been on contract to DarkRiver’s construction arm before heading back to her own pack. “Say hi to her for me. Tell her Sage still has a crush on her.”

“Aw, cute. How come your brothers are single?”

“They say I scare the women off.”

“More likely they’re spoiled—they’re not going to settle for any woman who doesn’t match the standard you’ve set.”

Buoyed by the compliment, Mercy shook off her odd mood and focused on the work. The rest of her day, including a security shift in the city, passed with surprisingly little drama—the Alliance had gone cold again, and Bowen and his crew were still behaving. Even Eduardo and Joaquin were nowhere to be seen, for which boon, she could only thank the heavens.

And if she continued to find herself thinking about a certain wolf much too often, she was sentinel enough to keep her emotions from interfering with the job. But those feelings were fresh in her mind when she got a call as she was about to leave to change for the meeting.

“Come up and meet me tonight.” That deep, now familiar voice soaked through her skin, rich, dark, and tempting.

Her hand clenched on the receiver. “Can’t. Got something else.”

“When’s it finish? I’ll meet you.”

“No.”

“That’s it—no?” The edge of a growl in his voice. “I thought we’d settled this.”

The sheer arrogance of his commands—not requests, commands—made the cat snarl. “Doesn’t mean you have an entry into my pants anytime you please.”

“Jesus, Mercy, I just wanted to talk to you.”

She felt a little twinge. Of guilt. Of hunger. “Talk now.”

“Fine.” He told her about the conversation he’d witnessed between Hawke and Sienna.