The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(16)

It was a good life. A great life, by all accounts.

And as the male of the family stepped out of the front door and took a deep breath of the rain-saturated air, he lied to the one he held closest in his heart as he propped the heavy weight open with his running shoe.

“Nah, not long,” the Jackal said. “Just maybe ten miles out and back. It’ll take me about two hours?”

Down by the kitchen, his shellan, Nyx, leaned around the doorjamb. “Sounds great. Just watch that ankle of yours.”

For a split second, his mate was all he could see, from her long, black hair to her familiar face, her flashing hazel eyes to her beautiful smile. In the space of no time at all, Nyx had become his world . . . Nyx and his son, Peter, and her sister and her grandfather.

They were his tethers. To the present, to the good parts of himself . . . to the decency he’d once had, and only recently rediscovered.

“I’ll do that,” he whispered, even though he couldn’t remember exactly what she’d told him to watch out for. “I love you.”

Nyx’s head tilted. And then she came down to him, all loose blue jeans and baggy shirt and devastatingly sexy. She had a damp dish towel in her hand because the farmhouse didn’t have a dishwasher. And actually, one of his favorite things to do was stand with her over the sink, working the sponge, and handing off to her everything he had cleaned. Or sometimes, she washed and he dried.

It was just simple stuff. But it was also the kind of thing that when he’d been in the prison camp, he’d given up on ever having.

As his female halted in front of him, something about the way she stared up into his eyes made him feel like she could read his mind. And he didn’t want her to see inside of him. Not tonight. Not right now.

“I’m glad you like to run,” she said. “And you can run as much as you want. I’m never going to stop you.”

With a subtle lift, she rose up onto her tiptoes. As their lips met, he shook his head.

“I’m just running,” he told her. “Really.”

Because he wished it were true. He wanted it to be true. And yet he knew he was lying to her.

But was he? If she knew anyway?

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“You have nothing to apologize for. Now go. Do what you have to. I’ll be here.”

The Jackal kissed his shellan again, and then he turned away and closed the door. The floorboards of the porch creaked as he went to the steps, and as soon as he was down on the ground, he fell into a jog. Then a quick running pace.

He didn’t track traveling across the dying grass or the moment when lawn got traded for pavement. But he knew how far away he was from his home as the first mile was passed.

Without consciously deciding to stop, he went statue in the middle of the county road. On either side, there was a whole lot of nothing-much up close, just brush that was now brown. Farther away, though, there were mountains rising from the valley floor like they were the lip edge of the bowl that kept the earth from spilling out into space.

He pictured the way the landscape looked during the warmer months.

From time to time, just because he could, he would come out of the farmhouse when it was safe to, after the sun had not just set but pulled its golden swath away with it, and he would enjoy the smell of the fresh air.

He supposed it would take until next year to find out whether that was the normal course of things. He hoped it was.

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes.

A good minute and a half later, he was finally able to dematerialize.

When he re-formed, it was a couple of miles farther down the road, and into the landscape a good distance. As he focused on the scruffy ground, he couldn’t immediately find what he was looking for. He had to walk around in ever-widening circles until—

Yes, there it was.

If you hadn’t been searching for it, the hatch would have remained as camouflaged as it was, nothing but a sunken square in the earth marked by a bald spot in the otherwise unremarkable, spotty weeds.

But he was looking for it, and so here he was.

As the Jackal knelt down, both his knees cracked—evidence that he was sometimes truly running when he left the farmhouse. Most times.

Not all the time, though.

Whisking some of the sandy dirt away with his hand, he notched his fingers through an eye ring—and pulled the weighted panel open.

The dense stench that bloomed in his face took him back into Dhunhd: Dirt, mold, stale air . . . and the remnants of body odors that lingered even after the males and females were long gone. There was a ladder descending into darkness—and he turned around and lowered himself down a couple of steps, the toes of his running shoes penetrating out the back of the steps. Steadying himself, he reached up out of the hole and pulled the hatch back into place. As the darkness swallowed him whole, he had to open his mouth to breathe. There was just too much in his nose, down the back of his throat, deep in his mind—and a vicious anger blew him apart even as he stayed whole.

At least he thought he stayed whole.

Grabbing at the small of his back, he took his cell phone out of his waist pack and threw the flashlight on. The beam of icy light was nearly consumed by the void, a reminder that there was nothing so dark as the subterranean.

As soon as the Jackal hit the floor, he started walking through a tunnel that had been carved out of the dirt and reinforced by old, hand-cut beams. He had a thought that he should have brought a weapon—not that he thought there was anyone down there. The scents that weaved together were all old, nothing new.