Rapture Untamed (Feral Warriors #4)(6)

Skye's head snapped up with surprise.

Olivia ceased feeding abruptly.He'd felt her. No way.Impossible.

Paenther uncrossed his arms, one hand clasping Skye's shoulder protectively as the other hovered over his knife. "Skye is as loyal to the Ferals as anyone here."

Tighe shook his head. "I don't feel anything."

"Me either," Wulfe said.

Lyon's gaze zeroed in on Jag, his expression revealing wariness and concern, but no doubt. "What exactly are you feeling?" Jag might be a jerk, but clearly the Chief of the Ferals knew him well enough to know he wasn't making this up.

"Something..." Jag shook his head. "It's gone."

Olivia flushed hot, then cold. No one hadever sensed her feeding before.

Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed

"It felt like magic?"

"I don't know. Not like Skye's. At least not like what I felt with her before."

Lyon turned to the scarred warrior. "Wulfe, get the Shaman over here. B.P. and Skye, make sure there's no damned Mage in this house." He cringed. "Forgive me, Skye. I meant, nounwanted Mage in this house."

Skye nodded, a small, wry smile on her mouth. Paenther squeezed her shoulder, then held out his hand to her, and the pair followed Wulfe out the door.

Lyon's gaze swung back to Jag. "If you feel it again, I want to know."

Jag gave Lyon a cocky salute. "Aye, aye, Captain."

Olivia swallowed hard, willing her pulse to slow before she gave herself away. Ferals were reputed to be able to hear even a racing heart. Whether their hearing was really that acute, she didn't know, but now wasn't the time to test it.

Dammit, how was she supposed to feed if Jag could feel her doing it? She couldn't. Not with him anywhere close.

Which made her decision about partnering him easy and critical.

She most certainly could not.

She'd long ago learned to control her feeding so that she stole only low levels of energy, not enough to harm anyone. But she wasn't sure she could shut it off completely for any length of time. She'd never had to try. What if she forgot? What if, in her sleep, she started to suck energy? With Jag close enough to feel her, sooner or later he'd figure it out. Sooner or later the game would be up.

Her life would be over - the life her father had sacrificed his own for. Although Therian law no longer demanded death to the draden-kissed, those revealed had a habit of swiftly disappearing. At the very least, she'd be kicked out of the Guard and ostracized by the entire race. The only ones who would let her live among them were the humans, who didn't know what she was in the first place.

No, this was not a risk she could afford to take. Her heart sank as her grand hopes crashed around her feet. There would be no living near Feral House, not for her.

Someone else would have to lead the Feral's Guard auxiliary.

She'd help them find the Daemons because she'd committed to doing so and because it was too late to fly in a replacement. But once this assignment was done, she'd return to Scotland, far, far away from the only man to pose a real threat to her life since she was draden-kissed all those centuries ago.

The first man to get under her skin in too many years to count.

Jag.

Chapter Three

Kougar sliced the knife across his wrist, murmuring the words of the ancient chant as he slowly followed Hawke around the small pond deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The night was clear but for a thin fog that had formed after midnight. The breeze toyed with Kougar's short hair, but it barely registered any more than the sting of the blade or the blood running across his wrist. He'd long ago lost any ability to feel deeply.

His mind was focused on the task at hand, setting the trap to catch one of the three wraith Daemons the Mage had set loose on the world. For once, everything had come together.

This time, it was going to work.

Wraith Daemons required a certain kind of trap - a small body of water. In the old days, when Daemons were everywhere, the Therians had created their own by digging holes and letting the rains fill them before binding them with blood. But such traps were of limited use when hunting a single moving target. So far, ofno use.

While Hawke sprinkled the concoction of binding herbs, Kougar added the key ingredient.

Blood.

"If my calculations are right, we should be directly in his path," Hawke said over his shoulder, his voice even and low. "Finally."

For a week, they'd been tracking one particular Daemon; the three appeared to have taken off in different directions after the destruction of the cave where they'd been freed. This one headed northeast, traveling at a fast clip, though Kougar doubted he had a specific destination. Wraith Daemons had always been nonthinking predators of the worst kind.

Hawke's calculations said the Daemon would pass close to this spot tonight. For once, they'd found a small pond right where they needed it to be.

Tonight, they had to catch him.

When they'd finished the circle, Hawke turned to him, one wing-shaped brow lifting.

"Another round, just to be sure?" In the shadows of night, Hawke reminded him fiercely of the hawk shifter who'd come before him, the one the Ferals had called the Wind. An old, old Feral, and old friend, who had been killed in a Mage ambush a century and a half ago. The Wind had been Hawke's father, and Kougar often saw the father in the son.