SLAVE TO SENSATION

“How long?” How long had Lucas been in the hands of those merciless killers?

“Four days.” Tamsyn’s voice was haunted. “When we got to them, Carlo was so badly damaged that no one could save him. I was a trainee, a juvenile myself. Shayla had been our healer and she was gone. I burned myself out but I couldn’t save him. It was as if his soul had flown with Shayla’s.” Tears streaked down her face.

“Tamsyn.” Using the strange, inexplicable, wonderful part of her soul that could heal hearts, she gathered in the other woman’s pain. As it settled in her, heavy and aching, Tamsyn’s voice seemed to lighten.

“The last words Carlo said to us were, ‘We didn’t break.’ That was when we realized Lucas must’ve survived. The ShadowWalkers had tried to hide him so they could retrieve him later—he was tied up in a cave not far from Carlo. Whwhen we found him, he had so many broken bones and bloody claw slashes on him that the only reason we recognized him was because of the Hunter marks.” She touched her face as if stroking Lucas’s mark. “His wrists and ankles were rubbed through to the bone from fighting the restraints.”

Sascha felt a sob catch in her throat. “They tortured him to break Carlo?”

Tamsyn nodded. “They wanted what Carlo knew—the locations of our safe houses, the routes we run, our alpha pair’s lair and defense grid.”

“How did Lucas survive?”

“I don’t know.” Tamsyn sounded utterly bewildered. “They’d held back with his father because he was the important one, but with Lucas . . .” She shook her head. “It was as if he refused to die. Some people said he survived because he’d been born a Hunter and had strengths we didn’t know about. I just think he wanted vengeance.”

“The ShadowWalkers escaped?”

Tamsyn nodded. “We were strong enough to drive them off but not to track and take them down without leaving our young vulnerable. As a result, we lived under a kind of martial law for five years, never leaving the group, never making ourselves targets.”

Her eyes met Sascha’s. “When Lucas was only eighteen and still a juvenile by our standards, he went out one night with a pack of sentinels and some others. The sentinels had given him their loyalty the day they learned that despite the torture, he hadn’t broken.”

Sascha couldn’t begin to imagine the strength of will it must’ve taken for Lucas to honor his loyalty to Pack. But he had.

“They went hunting every single adult male ShadowWalker.” Blood fury threaded Tamsyn’s normally gentle voice. “By the time they finished, the ShadowWalkers had ceased to exist and DarkRiver was a pack no one dared to threaten.”

Sascha wasn’t repulsed by the violence. It was far more palatable to her than the hypocrisy of the Psy, who let killers roam free while championing their peaceful image. At least the changelings were honest. At least they loved enough to hunger for vengeance. All the Psy hungered for was power.

“Five years later,” Tamsyn said, wrenching Sascha out of her bleak thoughts, “Lachlan, our ruling alpha, stepped down in favor of Lucas. The sentinels vowed their blood oath without hesitation.” She shook her head. “He was only twenty-three. Most leopards are barely mature at that age but Lucas was already tougher than any of the other males.”

“He was honed in fire.” Sascha thought of the pain that had created Lucas and mourned for the boy who’d never had a chance to be a youth. What must it have been like to grow up in the shadow of his parents’ blood?

“Do you understand?” Tamsyn looked into Sascha’s eyes.

“Yes.” Tears fell in her most secret heart—she didn’t yet know how to cry in the open.

The healer wasn’t convinced. “The ShadowWalkers kept him tied up. They made him watch his father being tortured before turning on him. The things they did . . . Don’t ask him to be the one who anchors you.”

Don’t ask him to watch you die while he stands helpless. “He’ll volunteer.” Sascha knew what kind of a man Lucas was, what kind of a leader.

“Then stop him. Tell him he won’t do. I’ll take his place.” Raw pain darkened Tamsyn’s eyes.

Sascha nodded but they both knew that turning Lucas from his chosen path was an almost impossible task.





In spite of her mental exhaustion, she was lying awake in bed when she felt his presence nearby. A minute later, he pushed open the bedroom door and closed it behind him, treating her room as his territory.

She knew that to let him have his way would only reinforce his already autocratic tendencies, but she also knew that her chance of surviving her impending mental collapse, trap or no trap, was close to nil. Either she’d flame out or the Council’s mercenaries would hunt her down after her shields failed.