A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(14)

Jag snorted. “As soon as word gets out that the new Ferals are all dead men, none will come near this place, good or bad.”

“Then word can’t get out,” Lyon said.

Not for the first time, Fox thanked the goddess that he wasn’t one of the seventeen. The return of the lost animal spirits should have been a godsend. Instead, thanks to the Mage, it was turning into a nightmare.

Fox opened his mouth to tell him about his gut instinct, but Lyon began to lay out a plan, and Fox remained silent. What good was West Virginia? The last thing they needed right now was a wild-goose chase courtesy of the newbie. If only his gut would offer him something useful.

“Where’s Lyon?” Grizz demanded as he strode into the foyer, eyeing one of the Ferals’ brides. Tall and attractive with a gun strapped at her waist, her name began with a D. Delaney.

“His office, I think,” she said. “I heard voices in there a moment ago.”

With a brief nod, Grizz headed toward the closed office door. After the run-in with Rikkert, he’d started toward the rocky falls, then forced himself to return to Feral House. The situation was f**king impossible now. He’d lay it all out for Lyon, let the Feral chief decide how he wanted to handle it.

It was too f**king bad that there was no unmarking a Feral Warrior once he was marked because he’d do it in a pig’s breath. He wasn’t a team player and never had been. He didn’t want this f**king job.

As he reached for the knob to Lyon’s closed office door, voices carried to him, low but audible. His hand froze.

“Rikkert will be easy to take down. He hasn’t come into his animal. Grizz is going to be the problem. How in the hell are we supposed to get a monster grizzly into the prison without losing limbs? He’s not about to go willingly.”

What the f**k? Grizz pulled his hand away from the knob, his head beginning to pound. He was not hearing this.

“He won’t go easily, that’s for damn sure. Lepard might. He allowed himself to be captured once. He might again.”

A grunt. “Not if he figures out he won’t come out of the prisons alive.”

Grizz’s blood ran cold.

“He might. They’re all the best or the worst of their lines. If we can just figure out how to identify those who were meant to be marked, we won’t have to kill them. Not the good ones.”

The best or . . . the worst? And what was he? Not the best. Definitely not the best. But the worst? Hells balls.

“You do realize that it could be months before we can round up . . . or at least account for . . . all seventeen.”

“What choice do we have?”

“We’ll have to lure Grizz down there first. He can’t be warned. If he shifts, we’re grizzly food.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

Grizz had heard enough. He turned away from the door and strode down the hall to the foyer, his footfalls silent despite his size, his head pounding. The f**kers were going to kill the new Ferals! Wipe them all out. And dammit to hell, he’d been afraid of this because it was exactly what he’d do in their position. Kill the infected ones and hope the next lot were the ones meant to be marked. Especially now when they’d figured out that some were the worst of their line and might be true evil.

He entered the foyer and headed for the door, veering at the last minute toward the hall table and the wooden bowl where he’d seen some of the Ferals drop their car keys. He’d get nowhere on foot, not with Hawke and Falkyn hunting him from the air.

He grabbed a set of keys with a tag marked FORD ESCAPE and was five strides from the front door when a sound caught his ear and he turned to find Lepard coming out of the basement, his face flushed with sweat, his short, newly white hair plastered to his scalp. Another of the newly marked seventeen, Lepard had been ensnared in the dark magic and had followed the evil Feral, Maxim, to Poland where he’d been forced to help in some kind of ritual to aid Satanan and his Daemon horde’s efforts to rise. But he’d fought the darkness, allowing the good Ferals to capture him. He wasn’t the worst of his line, Grizz would bet money on it. Would he bet his life on it? Yeah, maybe he would.

“Come with me,” he told the snow leopard.

Lepard looked at him with confusion. “Where are you going?”

“I said . . . come.” He’d grab Rikkert, too, if he thought there was any chance the male would come with him willingly without trying to kill him. There wasn’t.

Lepard glanced down at himself. “I’m a little . . .”

Grizz said nothing, just stared at the man, conveying . . . hell, he didn’t know what he was conveying, but Lepard seemed to hear it anyway.

“I guess I could use some air.”

Yeah. Air. And survival. Something the snow leopard might not get if he stayed. Grizz led the way out the front door, spying the Ford in the wide, circular drive amid the impressive collection of other, far more expensive, vehicles.

Where he was going or what he was going to do, he had no idea. Something. Overheard words replayed in his head. If we can just figure out how to identify those who were meant to be marked . . .

That was the key. Even if he knew he wasn’t one of them.

Maybe, just maybe, something good could come out of his f**ked-up life. Even if it turned out to be the last thing he did.

When the meeting ended, as they left Lyon’s office, Fox caught up with Paenther. “May I have a word?”