She and her Pack could shift at any time, although she alone could shift instantaneously. Even her most dominant centuri needed a minute or more to accomplish the change. Her singular ability to call her wolf at any time, to shift partially or totally at will, was one of her greatest joys and helped balance the price she paid in loneliness for being the Alpha.
“Niki,” she said quietly as she packed her briefcase. The door opened and her second slipped inside. Niki’s forest green eyes took in the unfinished meal she had delivered earlier in the evening and narrowed in displeasure. Sylvan ignored the look. “Have Lara bring the Rover around. Let’s go home.”
“You didn’t eat.”
“Do I look like I need a den mother?”
Niki folded her arms beneath her breasts and spread her legs, an aggressive stance. She met Sylvan’s eyes for a second before looking away. “More like a mate. If you won’t look after yourself—”
“Niki.” Sylvan gave a warning rumble. She knew many Pack members were anxious for her to take a mate, not because of pressure to produce an heir—she had decades for that—but because she would have more protection. The Pack Alpha could accept intimate care and safeguarding from a mate, whereas she couldn’t from anyone else. She had her reasons for ignoring the not-so-subtle hints that Niki and those close to her had been making, especially the last six months. She did not want a mate. She had seen the desolation in her father’s eyes after the death of her mother over a decade before. He had fought his desire—the innate drive—to join his mate in death until Sylvan was old enough to take her mother’s place, but he had been broken, an empty shell of who he had once been. Sylvan had lost her mother, and in many ways, her father, all in a few moments of betrayal and blood. She would not allow herself to be that vulnerable. Ever. “We’ve had this discussion. I don’t want to have it again.”
“You’ve been working twenty hours a day for six months and ignoring your needs. It’s not going to help the Pack if you’re too weak to stand a challenge.” Niki was a dominant Were at the top of the Pack hierarchy, and one of the few who would dare incite Sylvan’s ire in order to protect her.
Sylvan cleared the desk so quickly Niki barely had time to put her back against the door before Sylvan towered over her. Sylvan didn’t touch her. She didn’t have to. Niki dropped her chin and turned her face away. Sylvan brought her lips close to Niki’s ear, and when she spoke, even the Weres outside in the hall, who could hear a mouse in the walls three floors below them, did not hear her. As their Alpha, she could speak to them mind-to-mind as effortlessly as she could with words. Do you question my ability to lead, Imperator?
Niki shivered and tilted her head, further exposing her neck. A Were as powerful as Sylvan could crush the windpipe or tear open the great vessels in seconds. “No, Alpha, I do not doubt you. But I am responsible for keeping the Pack safe, and for that, we need you.” Am I not always here for you?
“Yes, Alpha,” Niki whispered, her eyes nearly closed, her gaze still averted. “But many in the Pack fear what will happen if the humans decide to hunt us. You give them the strength to fight the fear.” Sylvan sighed and pressed her mouth to Niki’s neck, grazing the bounding pulse with her fully erupted canines. Sylvan’s caress was possessive, not sexual. Niki was her wolf, as were all the wolves in the Pack, and Niki needed Sylvan’s touch, her heat, her strength. Isolation was a form of death for a Were. Niki arched subtly against her, taking comfort from Sylvan’s reassurance. Sylvan growled and bit down gently until Niki whined, her shiver of fear turning to pleasure. Gradually, Niki relaxed against Sylvan’s body, at ease and content. Only then did Sylvan release her.
“Do not worry, my wolf,” Sylvan whispered aloud. “The Pack will always come before all else in my life.”
“I know,” Niki murmured, grateful and saddened at the same time.“Come on.” Sylvan squeezed Niki’s shoulder. “Keep me company tonight on a run?”
“With pleasure, Alpha.” Niki reached for the door and then abruptly stepped in front of Sylvan. “Wait.” Sylvan felt it too. Waves of tension streaming toward her from the guards outside the door, but she could sense no immediate threat. No scent of enemies. “Open it.”
Niki did, but continued to shield Sylvan’s body with her own.
“What is it, Max?”
Max, a barrel-chested male easily six inches taller than Sylvan’s own five-ten, filled the doorway, his grizzled face tight with strain. “We have a problem. Several of the young slipped our perimeters and left the Compound. We just found out.”
“Where are they?” Heat flared in Sylvan’s eyes. The northern extent of Pack land bordered the Catamount Clan territory in Vermont.
The cat Weres were mostly feral and as territorial as the wolves. They would not give safe passage within their territory, even to foolish wolf pups.
“Here, in the city,” Max replied.
“Who?”
“Jazz, Alex, and Misha.”
Three teenagers, two brothers and a dominant young female, all in military training at the Compound—Sylvan’s home and Pack headquarters. The adolescents had strict curfews, not only because they were still too immature to control their shifts in the face of rampant hormonal changes, but because like all young wild animals, they craved excitement and had no sense of their own mortality. Sylvan cursed.
“That’s not all,” Max said grimly.
“What else?” Sylvan fixed him with a hard stare and he dropped his gaze to her shoulder.
“Alex was the one who called us. They’re at Albany General Hospital. We don’t know what happened, but Misha’s injured.” Sylvan shouldered him aside and was halfway down the hall before he even finished speaking. Niki, Max, and the third guard, Andrew, ran to keep up. Sylvan didn’t bother with the elevator but loped into the stairwell, grasped the metal railing, and vaulted over the side and onto the landing one floor below. She leapt down, floor by floor, until she reached ground level seconds later. When she went through the door into the dark, she was racing on all fours. The others couldn’t shift while moving, and she didn’t wait for them. She was the Pack Alpha, and one of hers was in danger.
Sylvan ran alone through the night.
“Jesus,” Harvey Jones exclaimed, “what the hell is that racket?” Drake McKennan listened to the steady cacophony of snarls emanating from behind the closed curtain at the far end of the ER.
“Wolf Weres. I paged the Were medic already.”
“What are they doing here? I thought they were indestructible or something.”
“They’re extremely long-lived, I understand,” Drake said, “but not immortal. They can be hurt. Killed.” Her fellow medic didn’t even bother to hide his disgust, and Drake had to work not to make a caustic comment. He wasn’t the only medic who didn’t seem to think the oath they took extended to Praeterns, even though most of them had probably taken care of a witch or a lesser Fae at some point in their careers without knowing it. Probably not a Were, though. Harvey was right, the Weres rarely showed up in the ER. Their Packs or Prides had their own medics. Just the same, if she’d had the slightest idea how to treat the young female Were who’d arrived with a stab wound to the shoulder, she would have. Assuming the adolescent males with the pretty young brunette would let her get close to the girl without a fight, which she doubted. Just the same, she would have tried if she’d thought she could do any good. The six-foot-tall boys had a few inches on her and more muscle, but she was a pretty solid fighter. She’d had to learn quickly how to defend herself in the series of foster homes and state facilities she’d grown up in. The problem was, she didn’t know much about Were physiology—just one of the many secrets the Weres protected.