Traitor (Shifters Unlimited: Clan Black Book 3) Page 15

  “Maybe I should go with you.” Aubrey snorted indelicately and followed with another telltale sniff of the air. “You know, to protect you from him.”

  “Trying to muscle in on my last meal?” Rayven said and smiled as Aubrey frowned.

  “You’ve lost your mind.”

  “Not yet. Now get out of here. And don’t forget to ditch the vehicle somewhere soon.”

  “Right. And don’t eat so much you can’t fit through the small cracks underground.” Aubrey shivered and shook her head as if ridding herself of a bad taste.

  “No worries there,” Breslin said as he hoisted the backpack over his shoulder and scanned the hills around them. “Even with all the food I give her, she’s still losing too many inches off those curves.”

  Without another word, he walked toward the trail.

  Did he really say that?

  “Did he really just lust after your curves?” Wide-eyed, Aubrey blinked and then turned back. “What the hell is going on between you two?”

  “Nothing.” Sadly, less than nothing, though she wasn’t sure why it made a difference to her. But she found it sad that the most comfort she’d received in her life came from the person dragging her to her possible execution. “He wants me dead as much as everyone else. He’s just too professional to let me die on his watch.”

  Aubrey stared between her and Breslin, who’d halted a few yards away, holding the huge backpack effortlessly with two fingers. She grabbed her in a hug that brought tears to Rayven’s eyes.

  Damn, that bullet wound hurts.

  “I’ll see you in a few days, boss.”

  Blinking, Rayven watched Aubrey leave before she turned back to Breslin. He’d called someone on his phone and had his head ducked, intent on the conversation.

  “I’ll probably be off the radar for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.” He paused. “No, Brindy. This is faster. Everyone will be watching for us overland, and then we’ll get there too late for her to prepare for the tribunal. Right, let Deacon know.”

  He slid the phone in his pocket and waited as she walked toward him. She hadn’t heard one “honey” or “I love you,” but something unpleasantly like jealousy turned her normally rational thoughts to fury for a split second.

  “We’ll make it in twenty-four hours,” she said. “But were you guessing, or have you been in these caves?”

  “Once. I wasn’t here long. I could be wrong about the time to make it through, but Brindy’s satellite reads are usually accurate.”

  Of course, Brindy’s work is perfection. Rayven struggled to get control back over her absurd thoughts. “No. Assuming that tremors haven’t caused any collapse in the tunnels I’m familiar with, we should make it to your territory with time to spare for my lynching.”

  His mouth twitched. “Need some attitude adjustment there, Sacagawea?”

  “I didn’t blaze a path through the caves.”

  “No. But I’m not aware of anyone else who has either.”

  “Well, you’d be wrong.” She grinned. “Turns out there are funded studies, human explorers who go into some of these caves and map them out.”

  He rocked back on his heels, humor gone from his expression. “We’re going to run into humans down there?”

  Without a word, she passed him and started up the hill. “Not in my caves. They’re mapping some of the other caves running beneath the Rockies in this area.”

  “I’m still awarding you the trailblazer badge,” he said from directly behind her. “Not many women I know spend time scouting around in the dark miles beneath the surface.”

  “I didn’t want to develop this skill. Did you know these caves and tunnels run beyond the edge of Karndottir’s—the clan’s territory? They end within Black’s border.”

  He stared at her with a sudden ferocity, and she realized she was discussing the caves with herself. He’d walked ahead. “I don’t, you know.”

  “You don’t what?” she asked.

  “Want you dead.” But he didn’t offer any more than that. He’d heard what she told Aubrey, and all this time, he was holding on to that sliver of information. Why tell her now? Puzzled, she walked past him and concentrated on the path.

  She stopped a hundred yards up the hill. He paused behind her at the solid rise of rock and looked at her in question. “Here?”

  With a nod, she patted a large flat boulder. “We move this one and head in.”

  Hesitant, he set down the pack, dug out a large bottle of water, and gestured with his chin toward some smaller rocks. When she didn’t immediately move, he shrugged off his jacket and laid it around her shoulders. “Sit over there and finish the whole bottle.”

  “I don’t think it will take you that long to move a rock.”

  “Not only moving it.” He pulled some rope and several other items from the backpack.

  As he spread the items on the ground and gathered some thick branches, she realized his plan. “You’re going to seal us in.”

  He didn’t waste more than a second for a glance before he bent to moving the rock, tying the branches, and wedging them to hold the rock from the black hole it covered—barely. A stiff wind would snap those branches and slap the rock back into place. “It won’t keep seasoned trackers from finding our trail, but I’m not sure your—Gauthier trained his men all that well.”

  No. He was right. None of the enforcers ever came inside these caves. They preferred the sunlight and scared, easy prey.

  “Ready?” He waved her over.

  Not really, though he looked oddly pale, and for some reason, she felt his aversion to the caves might be worse than her own. After they’d made their way into the tunnel’s entry and Breslin shone a light around them, he pulled his ropes.

  A deep, grinding noise hit them before a cloud of dust and dirt covered them. She coughed and waved at the particles floating in front of her. “Now we have no choice but to head on.”

  “Can’t imagine how you did this more than once,” Breslin choked out behind her. “I always thought nothing could induce me to try this again.”

  “Traditionally, women are seen as the weaker sex, but we handle uncertainty better.” She laughed, and then a tiny touch of spite hit her. “Even your Brindy would be reluctant to try this twice.”

  “Hard to say,” he responded, sounding more cheerful. “She’s a fox.”

  “Are all men obsessed with sex and beauty?” She ground out, not pleased having the barbs of her insult rebounded back to her. Probably what she deserved for judging a woman she’d never met. But the thought of him with another woman activated a malicious streak in her. Something she’d never experienced. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. I’m sure your—well, whatever she is—is plenty capable.”

  He grabbed her elbow, pulled her to a stop, and raised his eyebrows. “Black nose. Red fur. Big tail with a black ring and white tip. Fox shifter and fox holes,” he added with a wave of the flashlight around them.

  He stopped and bent down until his lips were touching hers and inhaled as if tasting her. “And she’s not—we’re not.”

  Butterflies spun in her stomach. He moved a fraction back and tilted his head. “She’s our pilot and tech geek. Knows everything. But not my type.”

  That shouldn’t make her heart race, yet it thundered like a marching drum. “You have a type?”

  “It seems I do.” He actually rubbed his nose along the tip of hers until she started to lean into the caress. Then he pulled away and turned, checking out the interior. “How do you know these caves so well?”

  “I spent a lot of time here,” she said, collecting her wits. It would seem her answer wasn’t good enough, since he twisted back and blocked her from progressing in the tunnel.

  “I could show you how well I know them if you don’t believe me,” she added, motioning him to move aside with her forefinger. “Point out the spots of interest.” Like some freaking tour, the horror of her adolescence replayed in annotated Technicolor.

  He
remained silent. “Believing you isn’t the issue. I want to know why the female offspring of an alpha would spend any time here. Much less be familiar enough with them that she can lead me to the other side.”

  She swallowed back a curse. Fine. It wasn’t as if she had any pride left. What little she’d once possessed, the alpha’s team had beaten out of her and torn into little bits as they ignored her existence.

  “Our alpha’s idea of entertainment was to put young half-breeds in these caves and see if they survived. If the rock was rolled away after three days and they were still alive—he let them find their way home.”

  Uncertain of his response, she looked over at him. A pinched white ring circled his tight lips, but at least he didn’t question her story. Yep, life was worse than fiction.

  “You’ve confirmed what I already knew. Your father was a purebred asshole. But why did he send you here? You’re his heir. By all rights, you should be the new alpha.”

  “I don’t want anything that belonged to him. Ever.” On top of that, her time spent here was the last thing she wanted to remember, much less revisit aloud. No, make that the second to the last. But darkness and isolation did funny things to people. It built a strange bubble of dependency and trust. Illusions, certainly, not that knowing reality from the illusion helped.

  “Why were you left here?” he repeated more softly.

  “Because I wasn’t a son.” As simple as that, or as difficult, given how young she was when she’d first survived these dark tunnels. She’d been a child. The few dreams she harbored of paternal love and acceptance died brutally while she fought to survive in the trails beneath the Rocky Mountains.

  They didn’t die slowly. No, her father killed them as swiftly as if he’d taken a gun to her heart. His command she be buried alive in the way of those of the clan he despised the most made certain she understood his disdain for her.

  “At least that was his initial reason,” she said. “Once I realized I could survive here and that the enforcers feared these holes, I’ll admit I pushed Karndottir’s buttons just to see if he’d punish me by putting me back.”

  “Not much of a punishment, since you turned it to your advantage.” He sounded pleased with her success, and she glanced over her shoulder at him. Darn if he wasn’t smiling. A devilish smile. One she took as encouragement.

  She shook off the brief surge of pleasure at his appreciation. Being sentenced to blackout for days wasn’t a point of pride with her. Especially since no one else had been repeatedly punished. But her small rebellions of learning to read, finding half-breed and human friends, and later her stubbornness irritated the alpha. For a man desperately grounded in dominance by the fist and claw, he’d developed sadistic ways of physical and emotional torture. Granted, he’d never raised his hand to her himself. He saved that right for every other male on his team.

  “Did the other purebreds get a pass on the caves?” Breslin asked too quietly.

  She ignored the deepening chill of his anger. “If you call running the gauntlet leading into our sanctuary the day after your first shift a pass, then sure. The alpha’s team monitored the run for two miles. Male shifters only had to survive. That determined their worthiness for a future on the team, or any future. The females—”

  She took a slow breath through the ache in her chest and braced herself with her good hand against the rock to climb over some rubble. She startled as Breslin’s hands slid around her waist. He lifted her past the rocks onto even ground. Instead of releasing her, he pulled her against him and wrapped his arms gently around her.

  “Rest a minute. You’ll get your second wind.” His breath teased against her ear. A delicious shiver ran through her as he pressed his lips there. A second only and they were gone.

  But he still held her, and it was enough. Enough to make her heart skip a beat and her spirits lift. “You mean my third or fourth wind. Not sure that’s going to be enough to make it.”

  He grunted, but she could feel the rumble of his purr against her cheek before he dropped his arms and backed away. “You’ll make it. What about the females?”

  Ah yes, he wanted more of her clan’s history. Maybe the telling would scour the thoughts clean and she could leave the past here in the dark where it belonged. “My mother and I didn’t live with my father after I was about six. But until I got my period at sixteen, she made me memorize one thing. Don’t ever shift if you’re being chased. Since I was considered a woman at that point, I was taken by the enforcers to participate in the run.”

  She heard Breslin stop again and turned around.

  “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t shift,” he said. “All your power comes from your beast.”

  “In my clan, females are claimed in their animal form.” She gripped herself tighter and shook her head. “I don’t know Karndottir’s logic. But I only had to see one girl tackled to the ground and mounted in her wolf form to understand my mother’s warning.”

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “We lived in our own version of the Dark Ages. Still do.” She started back on the path. “What I witnessed convinced me my mother was right. I ran the entire gauntlet in my human form.”

  He was silent after that for so long, she checked over her shoulder to make sure he was still there.

  “Is that how you got the scars on your back?”

  Swallowing hard, she held out a hand for another water bottle. She didn’t think he’d seen those. He dropped into a crouch and waved for her to sit. As if he hadn’t asked the question, he handed her a bottle, set out a small lantern, and started unpacking food.

  “No.” With a shake of her head, she dug into a batch of meatloaf with trimmings piled on top. If he kept feeding her like this, she’d start to consider the tribunal worthwhile. But she knew he hadn’t forgotten his question and was merely biding time to ask again.

  “I have to admit that it’s a little out of my personal comfort zone that you’ve seen the marks on my body.”

  He crawled across the tunnel to her and sat close enough she felt the heat of his thigh through his jeans where it pressed against her leg. He reached over her and confiscated her empty box. After he’d placed it back in the backpack, he remained with his palm on her knee. “You’re a shifter. Nakedness shouldn’t matter. But they were impossible for me to avoid seeing. You were barely breathing when I first drove you from the compound. I searched for injuries. Now explain the scars.”

  A lightness entered his voice, one that didn’t match the intensity in his steel-gray eyes. A trick of the small lantern that he’d attached to the backpack, perhaps, but she doubted it. Her vision was excellent in the dark, as she’d mentioned to him. One of the few remaining animal traits she still controlled.

  “Sharing my past isn’t necessary for us to get out of these caves.”

  A deep rumble echoed, and she winced as his hold on her tightened. He swore quickly, releasing her, but the damage was done. All lightness between them fractured and, like dust, dissipated.

  “A deal, then?” he asked, standing and holding out his hand for hers. “We have hours yet to go. I doubt there’s any way whatever you will say is something that could hurt you now, so there’s little harm in telling me. But—” He raised a hand, anticipating her rejection. “You tell me this and why you don’t shift now, and I’ll answer any question you want.”

  “Anything.” Tempting, for he was a legend. The boogieman come to life in shifter form, with a history so notorious for cold, hard justice that rumor of him bled across all the territories. Yet here he was, seemingly docile, even pleasant. And pledged as the second-in-command to one of the most influential alphas on the worldwide board of fourteen positions.

  What did it take to earn the oath of such a man? She could only dream of such a feat. No doubt Deacon Black must be pretty pleased with reining in such a prize for his personal team. “All right. But I get to ask anything I want.”

  “Deal.”

  “And you have to go first,” she s
aid.

  His brow rose at that, then he shrugged and waved her forward. She held her ground.

  “Fine. Ask. Then you will tell me why you haven’t shifted in order to heal.”

  “Tell me why you became an assassin and then Deacon Black’s second?”

  He didn’t even blink for a second, and a frigid chill emanated from his stillness. She thought for a moment he wouldn’t answer, but he blinked and focused on her. “Technically, that’s two questions.”

  With a need born of recklessness and fine-honed instinct, she persisted. The answers mattered to her and to the beast inside her that whispered for freedom. “Something tells me they’re connected. Besides, you’ve asked two as well.”

  He spun her around and, with a firm, warm hand at her back, urged her forward. Disappointed, she figured he was reneging on the deal. Perhaps after a few more hours, she could renegotiate.

  “At thirteen, I crossed the territory line to kill your father.”

  Breslin almost ran into Rayven when she stopped and spun around. “What had he done?”

  What pleased him most was her total lack of judgment as to whether her father deserved the fate he’d planned. After everything she’d already shared, he suspected Gauthier’s crimes against Breslin’s family barely scratched the surface of what he subjected others to.

  “He knew my mother had given my father five sons and that my family lived outside the sanctuary boundary. He crossed the territory line to abduct her as a breeder.”

  Rayven’s mouth dropped open. She blinked, seemingly frozen as she examined his expression. “Why do I know there’s more?” she whispered.

  “When she fought him, he beat her. But she wouldn’t give in, and he didn’t stop until she lay in a heap on our front porch. My four older brothers tried to help her by jumping on his back and clawing at him. They were all under the age of twelve. The oldest twins did the most damage. But he grabbed them and pummeled them into the side of the house as if they were rugs being cleaned of dust.”

  “Breslin.”

  He didn’t spare Rayven a glance. To be fair, he couldn’t snap the tentacle locking him to the past. It held his heart in a clench so tight, he couldn’t breathe. “He dragged my mother and the oldest into the cabin, tossed the others in afterward. Then he barred the front door of our cabin with firewood my father had chopped the week before, lit a match, and left.”