Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(107)

Rage tore through him . . . and came up hard against the echo of a late-night conversation in a dingy no-name bar. It had to do with Tamsyn and Nathan, and the story Nathan had told him about how he’d blocked the mating bond.

Alexei had gone out of state, found a dive of a bar where no one would try to stop him from getting blind drunk. He didn’t need the comfort of pack. He needed to get so drunk that he forgot Brodie was dead, Etta was dead.

His plan might’ve worked in a pack with a less intelligent alpha. Hawke had sicced the cats on him, and Nathan had been in the area at the time. He’d slipped onto the bar stool next to Alexei’s, and they’d sat in silence for over an hour, while Nathan nursed a single beer and Alexei downed three before admitting to himself that he hated being drunk, hated being out of control, and wasn’t going to get shitfaced that day.

The most senior of DarkRiver’s sentinels, Nathan had a powerful presence. He also had that vibe some men got when they became fathers—calm, nonjudgmental, used to misbehavior. And Alexei needed to talk.

He’d unloaded on the sentinel.

“I never want to mate,” he’d said at some point. “The idea of murdering my mate when I go rogue is a fucking nightmare.” He’d shaken his head, his hand tight around the bottle of beer he’d stopped drinking. “Grandfather, father, brother, it’s a fucking unbroken chain of death.”

Nathan, midnight-blue eyes calm, had asked Alexei if he was sure. When Alexei reiterated his vow, Nathan had told him the story of his own mating. “Tammy left me, and no one would tell me where she’d gone,” he’d said toward the end. “I’d blocked the mating bond too long and it hurt her so much that she left.” A roughness in Nathan’s voice that said everything about his panic.

“I did the only thing I could to track her. I dropped every shield I had, and the mating bond snapped into place like a thunderclap booming in my soul. Her heart had always been open to me. I was just too much of an overprotective idiot to see it.”

The leopard sentinel’s words ran through Alexei’s mind in the space of three heartbeats. He knew what he had to do. Memory’s life over his need to stay sane? No contest. As for afterward, he’d deal with it. Even if it meant asking his alpha to execute him at the first sign of madness.

No one, and especially not Alexei, was going to hurt Memory ever again.

His wolf snarled in agreement.

He opened his heart wide, no fear, no hesitation. The shields he’d put in place after Brodie’s death, they fell with a crash at his feet. The mating bond shoved its way through time and space—and there was his Memory. Her heart as open to his as Tamsyn’s had been to Nathan. The visceral punch of the bond snapping into place sent Alexei to his knees, his breathing harsh gasps.

Inside him burst a kaleidoscope of emotion and color and piercing love and he knew that was her: Memory. God, she was even softer inside than he’d realized. The world would crush her if he wasn’t around to teach her a little cynicism, a few growls.

Rising to his feet as his heart thundered, he called his alpha and told him what had happened. “Blast Memory’s and Renault’s faces across our network and those of our allies,” he said afterward. “Make it impossible for the bastard to hide.” Changelings across the world, millions of humans linked to the Human Alliance, Psy who had signed the Trinity Accord, each and every one would get the blast.

“We’ll blanket the planet,” Hawke promised, but Alexei didn’t think Memory was in another country or even another state. Renault had been bony and hollow-eyed when he appeared, far from his full power, and the mating bond felt strong inside Alexei, not stretched thin by huge distances.

Hanging up, he began to run.

At full speed, he was faster in this terrain than a vehicle, since a vehicle could only go along certain routes. Branches whipped past his face, small creatures scurried in panic at the approach of a predator, and the wind turned into his ally, pushing rather than obstructing.

His target was the beacon of Memory’s presence.

Nathan had told him the mating bond wasn’t like a homing signal—it’d get him to the general area, but then he’d have to hunt by more conventional methods, using the senses of his wolf.

Erupting out of the trees halfway through DarkRiver territory at a specific spot often used by both packs to park a car or two, he found a familiar dusty Jeep, the keys in the ignition. Hawke. The forest tracks were smoother from this point, the vehicle an asset.

Shooting out onto the main highway not long afterward, he turned the Jeep in the direction of San Francisco and floored the accelerator.

It still wasn’t fast enough.

The only thing that kept him sane was that Memory’s light burned strong and unflinching inside him; she wasn’t badly wounded or dead. He’d know. As her mate, he’d know. “I’m coming, lioness. You fucking kick that bastard’s ass in the meantime.”





Chapter 51


Alert. Alert. Alert. Subject lost from view.

—Alarm sounded by psychic sentries around Memory Aven-Rose’s mind


WRISTS TIED TO the arms of a heavy old chair, Memory watched her captor pace back and forth in front of her. Her heart pounded from the wild storm of emotion that had burst inside her soon after Renault teleported them into what appeared to be a warehouse.