Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(105)

Never would he hurt her as Brodie had hurt Etta.





Chapter 49


$60

—Price paid by E. David Renault for a street drug


RENAULT PACED IN jagged steps. It was getting harder and harder to think, his brain erratic despite the medicine he’d sourced and taken. It was Memory’s fault; if she’d only stayed in place, none of this would have happened.

Shoving his hands through his hair, he stared again at the blank data feed from the drone. Fucking leopards. They must’ve stolen it and given it a lobotomy. It was none of their business; Memory was his.

Maybe he should go to the bunker and make sure she hadn’t left behind anything that he could use to track her. Too bad she hadn’t left that stupid cat.

He frowned, a sudden clarity in his thoughts: Was going to the bunker a good idea in any way? For all he knew, it was full of wolves.

The haze descended again, and with it went the clarity.

Yes, he should go back to the bunker. The wolves might’ve booby-trapped it, but he was a teleport-capable Tk—he’d be gone before anyone responded. He had to take action, end this now.

Memory needed to learn her lesson.





Chapter 50


Not every wolf is lucky enough to find a mate. It is a gift to be treasured and held close.

—Dalton, Librarian of the SnowDancer Pack


MEMORY ASKED ALEXEI to take her first to the resting place of her treasured Jitterbug. Tears fell from her eyes when she saw that mountain wildflowers had begun to bloom around the small, undisturbed cairn. Patting the cairn gently, she sat for a long time before rising to her feet and sliding her hand into his.

“I met Jitterbug in an alley during a time when Renault had me in the world.” Always with her mind chained, her self bruised from smashing against his shields. “I was still young, and he couldn’t have me with him in meetings without it appearing strange.”

Alexei’s voice was dark when he spoke. “He parked you nearby so he had quick access to you?”

Memory nodded. “I guess when I was younger, the ‘hit’ didn’t last as long. He’d come out to ‘make a call’ or ‘use the facilities,’ and in reality, he’d duck in to initiate a transfer.” She and Alexei walked up the rise down which they’d come what felt like a lifetime ago.

There was no rain today, the mountain sun a searing near-white brightness.

“Later on, he liked to take me as his aide so he could make the transfer right before a critical negotiation—he said the effect was strongest in the first hour.” Memory shrugged. “Personally, I think he enjoyed parading me in the world knowing I couldn’t cry out for help.”

She leaned into her wolf when he growled. “I’m free now and I’m going to stomp on his brains, remember?”

“That’s my E.” Releasing her hand to put his arm around her shoulders, Alexei nuzzled her curls with his chin.

The smug pride in him made her lips curve. “The day I met Jitterbug, Renault’d taken me to a small hotel. He’d ordered me to wait in a back room while he spoke with investors out front.” She drew in the primal scent of her wolf. “Normally, I had no choice but to obey, but that day, I heard this pitiful meowing outside the window and it got through the fog in my brain.”

“Your empathic instincts fighting to help a hurt creature.”

Memory didn’t refute his conclusion. She’d made the decision to claim her future—and in that future, she wasn’t a monster. She was just an E with very disturbing patients. “It was the first time I’d been able to resist him when he had his spider legs wrapped around my mind.”

Renault had utilized mind control each time he took her from the bunker, using the pathways he’d laid in her brain to suffocate her freedom. “I don’t know how long it took—maybe ten, fifteen minutes, but I was able to force my body to crawl to the door, open it.”

“Bastard didn’t secure the door because he thought he had your mind locked down.”

“Yes.” A “privilege” she’d lost that day, but it hadn’t mattered, not when she had Jitterbug. “The back door into the alley wasn’t far from the hallway outside the back room, and I literally crawled on my hands and knees to get to it.” Her palms tingled at the sensory memory of the cracked linoleum, her chest tight at the echo of how the walls in the narrow hallway had loomed.

“I fell out into the alley and into the rain. I could see Jitterbug shivering against this pipe. He was so skinny and small with raggedy fur, and I wanted to help him, but I’d reached my limit and just lay there, blood dripping from my nose to be washed away by the rain.” A smile found its way from her grieving heart. “We stared at each other and it was as if he knew I couldn’t go to him. So he came to me.”

A tiny, bedraggled fluffball, Jitterbug had nudged at her chin as if trying to rouse her, get her to stand up. But all she’d been able to do was lift a hand and put it over the kitten’s back. Jitterbug hadn’t bolted. “He curled up against me and that’s how Renault found us.”

“Why did the asshole let you keep him?” Alexei asked as they reached the rock through which lay the trapdoor entrance.

“Renault saw Jitterbug as a way to control me.”