Deceiving the Protector (6 page)

His first glimpse of true surprise on her face almost made him grin at her. She blinked, her eyes huge in her face as he pulled out the large-handled one from the placket at his back. He spun it across his fingertips, watching to see if any other revealing expressions surfaced. She frowned, small furrows forming between her brows. Distaste. Maybe unease. Definitely wouldn’t have to worry about her stabbing him in his sleep. He flipped it, blade into his hand, handle extended out to her.

She eyed it as if it were some kind of snake.

“Don’t worry, it’s not difficult. You keep the pointy side down and your fingers clear, it shouldn’t hurt you at all.”

The derisive glimmer returned to her eyes. Strange, he liked her better when he could tell she was mentally calling him an asshole. Showed spirit.

It was his turn to frown when her left hand lifted to curl around the knife handle. She took it from him stiffly, fitting her slim fingers over the warm grip carefully, making his teeth grit at the thought of how that hand might fit around something similarly sized. He shook the thought off, watching her try to fit her fingers to the grooves made by his much larger ones.

He waited until she seemed secure to bring up the oddity of her movement. “I thought you were right-handed.”

And he’d thought her back ramrod straight before. He looked down to where her right hand lay on her thigh, curled protectively against her body. He hadn’t given it any mind because she was at rest. Should have known better than to think she was capable of relaxing. He knelt, reaching for the hand. She lurched back, but by then he already had her by the wrist.

She hissed as if in pain and for a split second, he knew she was considering the big-ass blade he’d just given her.

He stared at her, just barely keeping the snarl inside when—God help him—terror glittered back from her eyes. Damn skittish woman. “I have to check if the healing damaged any of your veins or nerves.” He made the effort to soften his tone, but he wouldn’t accept her denial this time. “We’ve been here too long as it is. I need to know if you can take the travel or if I need to get more help.”

“No one else,” she whispered, her voice only slightly less guttural than before.

“No promises.”

She tugged harder. “No hand.”

He didn’t allow her to budge it, careful to keep her from hurting herself in her efforts to get away. All the same, her eyes watered, that emotive color shining as her distress flooded his senses. Her gaze darted from his face to the trees before returning. He was prepared for her to lash out again. For withdrawal or rejection. But the pleading twist to her lips disarmed his anger better than a bucket of icy water to the face. “No one else…
please.
”

Fuck. He hated giving in when he knew he was right. “What if you need a doctor?”

She swallowed thickly. Resignedly. “I won’t.”

“How do you know?”

She shook her head and, to his shock, the resistance disappeared. Her arm relaxed in his hold, extending gingerly. “I know.”

Her lips tightened until the corners turned white and he knew she wouldn’t say more.

“No one else,” he agreed, grinding his teeth as he looked down at her hand and wrist. He expected discoloration, swelling, maybe. At times, he’d seen veins gone black from cell death, the limb incapable of regenerating. Sometimes they even needed removal. All he found here was smooth skin, gold from the sun, pale on the underside and palm. Her fingers curled inward, as if burned. Gingerly, he straightened them, hearing her hissed indrawn breath and forcing himself to keep going. No broken bones, nothing to indicate any kind of wound or blockage. “Flex it.”

She shook her head.

“I need to see if you can move it.”

“It’ll be fine in a few hours.” She tugged and he let her go.

“Why do I have the feeling this has nothing to do with what happened to your neck?”

“It doesn’t matter what you feel.” The peek into her trust slammed shut with an almost audible clang, but at least she was more like the cantankerous woman he’d grown accustomed to. “You can see it’s fine. Leave me alone.”

“Not until you show me your neck.”

“Why?”

“So I can tell if your body is healing normally yet.”

“Do I sound
normal
to you?”

“You sound like broken concrete in a grinder, now pull down the goddamn scarf.”

Still holding the blade, she hooked the burgundy scarf with her pinky and dragged it down to expose her throat. The angry bruises hadn’t faded, but the streaks of burst blood vessels had disappeared. The healing had normalized, but she’d still need the protein to keep it steady. And so would he.

He grunted his acceptance and she let go of the scarf edge. “You able to skin those rabbits with your left?”

She nodded, her eyes flitting over the perimeter again. Not the ground. The trees.

“What are you looking for, Lia?”

“Nothing.” She lowered her gaze for a long second before sending him a sidelong glance. “Everything. You never know what’s out there.”

But
she
did. He could see it. She knew what hunted her, but she wasn’t sharing the knowledge. Why? It was a question he longed to ask but he knew there wouldn’t be any answers. Not a real one, anyway.

He swallowed back the irritation that she wouldn’t trust him. He had no right to it. Yet. “Hurry with the meat, I’m hungry.”

He left her to her task, eying the trees as he went about unpacking what they’d need for cooking. Nothing rustled or moved, not when he handed her the supplies or when he gathered wood for the small cooking fire. But something was out there. It watched them—he felt it with every instinct he had. He just had to figure out why.

Lia felt pleasantly heavy as she walked, chewing absently on her toothbrush. Her right hand tingled still, the warmth of his touch having cut through the icy pain that had gone down to the bone. A swell of bitter resentment rose in her, a flavor she knew so well she was tired of it. Because the pain was all in her head. All of it. No matter how she tried, it never went away.

Psychological containment.
That was what the scientists called it.
Associate enough pain with shifting and the subject will soon bind itself to a human state, so afraid of the agony that it will cripple itself to remain whole.

She never forgot those words. She’d listened while a crowd of scientists studied her, as if she were some kind of bug under glass. That was all she’d been to them. Nothing more than an insect they studied in order to better eradicate others just like her.

Grimacing at the rancid burn between her fingers, she stretched them out, trying to loosen the joints. One clench…two…the third flex made the tears in her eyes flood over.

“If it hurts that much, why are you doing it?” Tate asked, his smoky voice sounding genuinely curious.

She looked over at him, once again wishing she could understand the first thing about him. He wasn’t a nice man, but he could be gentle. She’d almost forgotten what gentle felt like. The unavoidable times she’d traveled into more heavily populated places, people looked at her like she was too far beneath them to speak to, no matter how clean she made herself before going. They figured her for a homeless person and treated her accordingly.

Tate probably treated everyone the same—high society, homeless, anywhere in the middle. They likely all got the same steely look and cool suspicion from him.

Or did he hide it, as he’d done with her in the beginning?

Tate put on masks so smoothly, so completely, that she almost couldn’t see the man behind them. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure when she
was
seeing him, except for those few moments when their eyes met and she couldn’t look away to save her own life. She could see the protector in him then, sense the hunter. Raw strength emanated from him in those moments, his intensity surrounding her, suffusing her. She could almost feel his arms around her, trying to pull her under his protection. She’d be safe with him. Not cosseted, maybe, but…she’d be able to breathe. To know the next breath was coming, sure as the sunrise.

In those brief seconds of silence, she always wanted to go to him, even felt herself leaning into it, but then the hooks in her mind would catch, yanking her back to the lies she couldn’t erase. The loneliness that sometimes threatened to swallow her whole. The overwhelming burden of restraining a monster…and why she’d do it all over again if she had to.

Psychological containment.

Then she’d hate everyone who did this to her—including herself—a little bit more.

Ironically, Tate usually pulled away from her at about the same time, taking what he didn’t seem to realize he’d been offering, going cold in a millisecond. Every time, it felt as if he took all the warmth in the world with him.

Maybe it was stupid of her to occupy her silence wondering about it, but she couldn’t help guessing at what had made
him
so defensive. Somehow she doubted it was anything scientific. The stories about the Alpha’s family didn’t have much detail, but she knew they’d come from an orphanage, not a facility like the one she’d been in after her parents died. Tate probably had no idea who his parents were, but that wasn’t so uncommon among wolves. Not like her. She remembered her parents as well now as she did before the squads came. Before the facility, with its stone walls and terrifying lessons. Before Asher…

“Can’t give into the pain forever,” she said, reminding herself as much as answering him. She wiped away the useless tear drops that had slipped down her cheeks with the swipe of her sleeve. Her voice felt smoother, finally, the muscles in her throat no longer twisting against each other like fraying rope. The rabbit meat had gone a long way toward restoring her. Another few hours and she’d almost be normal.

Just in time to see Asher again.

She ground her teeth together and concentrated again on moving her hand.

“So what’s your story, Sunshine?” he asked suddenly. “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours trying to figure you out and so far I’ve got nothing.”

“I have a
name,
” she replied, since he’d clearly forgotten. Irritation was hard to dredge up though.

“So?”

She rolled her eyes. “So most people prefer to be called by it.”

He didn’t even register the argument. “You’re not answering the question.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Why not?”

For some reason, her lips felt like curling upward. “Because I wasn’t.”

“Here’s a tip for you.” He shifted his pack as he turned to face her. The grin on his face gave her the strangest wiggle in her belly. “You ever hear that expression about a dog with a bone? Well, Wolves are worse.”

The smile got away from her, just for a second, but she knew he saw it because his grew, wide and wolfish. Warmth rose to her face, stinging her cheeks until she wanted to rub at them with her palms. Instead she scoffed, “You’re an idiot.”

“Which somehow doesn’t blind me to the fact that you’re still not answering the question.”

Her cheeks cooled, her smile fading with it. He wasn’t kidding. She could already tell he’d keep picking and prodding, just like the day before with the endless whistling. The teasing was just another mask to get past her reserves. The steel-eyed hunter behind it was still watching, trying to lure out his prey. Did he know she was starting to see through him faster?

“There’s nothing much to tell.” She shrugged. “I had a family once. The squads came one night…now I don’t.”
Except Laurel.

Her hands clenched the scarf again, as they always did when she thought of the little girl she’d had to leave behind. The one she’d been so desperate to save. The one she’d failed the most.

Part of her was smart enough to know that the odds of Laurel being alive were pathetically low, but she couldn’t allow herself to listen to it. Asher had brought her proof of Laurel’s capture, and however she might hate him, she couldn’t truthfully claim he’d ever lied to her. Hurt her, yes. But lied…no. As long as she had a thread of hope, she wouldn’t let it go. Couldn’t.

“So you just wander around out here?” Tate asked, oblivious to her mental meanderings. “No real goal in sight?”

“I’m on the Underground, aren’t I?” Everyone knew the goal of the Underground was to get to Resurrection, wherever in California it might be.

He shrugged, the motion hitching up the tightly stuffed pack on his back. “That’s no indication. You might just be in it for the food.”

The choked sound that escaped her took a full second for Lia to recognize as her own laughter. “Get a lot of scavengers on the trail, do you?”

“We get a lot of everything. Scavengers, users, true believers, even a few feral strays from time to time.” He tipped his head her way at that. “Trust is a rare commodity for a shifter. If all we can do for them is give them a meal, then we’ll do it. Our job is offering them the chance to survive. Their job is to take it…or not.”

“You think I’m one of those? A feral stray?” Someone who’d gone more beast than human, surviving on Instinct alone.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Though I thought feral was a given.”

She shot him a frown, but he just continued, unperturbed.

“Then again, I’ve yet to see you attack anything but me.”

“Nothing else nearby seemed to need it.” At least her grumble earned a displeased sideways glance from him.

“You don’t hunt, not as a Wolf or a human, or you’d have more meat on your bones and you’d have the first clue how to clean your kills.”

“Maybe I just don’t like killing.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, though the tone was dubious. “But we Wolves need more than an apple a day, if you know what I mean. Our bodies were made for heavy meat intake, require it. So if you’re not hunting for yourself and you have obvious biological needs, why are you dragging your heels between safe houses?’

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are.” His tone had a hard edge that clapped her mouth shut. “You’ve practically starved yourself to death and you won’t accept help of any kind.”

For a damn good reason.
“I’ve been letting you help me.”

“You don’t have a choice about that.”

Stopping, Lia leveled him with a glare she hoped sizzled his astronomical arrogance at least a little. “There’re a lot of things I don’t have choices about, but
you
don’t get to decide what any of them are.”

Tate turned back her way, moving into her space as if he had every right. He looked down on her, those eyes mesmerizing, boring into her until she knew the true meaning of singed. But she refused to look away. His large hand grabbed hers, gripping at the wrist and lifting it between them. “The last thing I saw you do with this hand was try to claw my face off.”

“So?” She threw the word back at him, not caring if it was reckless. “You had it coming.”

“So, I don’t think this injury has anything to do with your healing.”

“I never said it did.”

“You don’t say anything, Lia,” he growled, leaning closer toward her face. “And what you do say always sounds like a lie.”

Usually when her heart sped like this, it was because of fear. Standing toe to toe with him, though, there was no fear at all. Just a frisson of exhilaration she couldn’t explain. “Then why do you bother asking me questions?”

His gaze traced her face, stealing her breath as it coursed over her lips. When he met her gaze again, his strangely beautiful face looked carved from stone. “Because something about you makes me think your lies are the only way to the truth.”

Her lips tingled, the feeling growing stronger as she realized he was leaning down. Coming closer. Her heartbeat advanced to the uneven thrum of wild horses. She should stop him. Should shove him away. Should run…but she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t move, because she wanted that touch. Wanted to know the texture of those firm lips. Wanted the heat and the flavor of him in her mouth. In her memory. She breathed him in, that cool, woodsy scent of snow and soap and man.

You’re going to bleed for this…
The sudden thought did nothing to halt the recklessness roaring through her in a way it hadn’t since she’d first escaped the research facility. She didn’t care.

Just as her eyelids fell closed, his mouth millimeters from hers…he pulled away.

Blinking, she stared up at him, startled by the black expression that drew his brows together in what could only be called suspicion.

“Do you smell that?” he asked, his hand circling her upper arm as he turned, searching the old road and the trees lining it.

“Smell what?” Fear broke through, finally. Had he somehow scented Asher? How? It wasn’t possible. The suit, the drugs…even when Asher had been throttling her bare-handed, she’d been unable to scent him. How could Tate?

But he still turned, his arm scooping her close to his back. Protectively.

No, don’t protect me.
She tried to slip out of his hold, but he only pulled her against him tighter.

“Stop fighting me.” He stiffened, having taken another deep inhalation of the late afternoon breeze. “There’s something out there.”

He knows. He knows!

Whole body tensed for danger, his threatening rumble vibrated through her chest and echoed across the empty road. “I smell Death.”

Blood, too much of it to be anything but dead, assaulted his senses as the faint breeze blew past them. Fairly fresh, stained with acids and the other odors that resulted from muscles releasing involuntarily. Given the speed of the wind, a lazy drift that dissipated almost as quickly as it came, it had to be at least another fifty yards ahead.

His eyes scanned the road stretching southeast. Not a soul in sight, especially with the day more than half gone. The mostly flat terrain had trees and foliage to either side, but that would soon thin out as raw countryside gave way to the outskirts of a small town. Some kind of suburb, most likely. Close enough to run to. But they’d have to pass whatever it was he was smelling.

Worse, for all that the stench assaulted his nose, was the scent of Lia’s terror that flooded his senses. At his back, her hands fisted in his shirt, sharp knuckles digging into his skin.

“We have to turn back.” Her thready whisper could have been nails on a chalkboard, the way it made his ears twitch.

“We can’t. The safe house is on the other side of that town.”

“We can’t go this way,” she whispered, her breath almost louder than her voice. “Please.”

That damn note of absolute fear enraged a part of him so deep and primal, it took everything in him to keep from shifting to better defend her. She should
never
sound like that. The woman was infuriating and strong.

She. Did. Not. Whimper.

The tingling sensation at the back of his neck melted into the feeling of his fur rippling through the surface of his skin. The change was starting.

Logic. Logic would quell the Wolf, would clarify the ringing questions being drowned out in his mind by the need to protect. They’d lose too much time if they backtracked. Would have to head to an alternate safe house. Not acceptable. Whatever was ahead would give him clues about what he was facing, clues he needed. Calling it in would take too much time—this kill was fresh and vital details could get lost. Betha was good, but she didn’t have the strength of his senses. And she didn’t often track murderers.

He’d seen far too many.

The Wolf stilled, locked on its course. The more he knew, the better he could protect. “Stay behind me. If anything happens, run. Lose yourself in the town.”

“Tate, no.”

“Tate, yes,” he corrected, but as he did, the questions in his mind snapped into place. Her fear was too stark, too absolute, to be something she didn’t know. “What are we walking into, Lia?”