Guardian (2 page)

The crashing peak came for us at the same time, rushed over and through our bodies in mind-numbing waves that left us spent in each other’s arms. Liam slumped against me, but didn’t lay on me. Instead, he rolled to his side, bodies still joined, his arms tight around me.

“I never thought I could feel like this about anyone,” he said, running his fingers across my cheeks, then down to my lips, and finally stopped as he buried them in my hair.

I smiled up at him and cupped his face, words spilling from me, words I’d never heard before yet true nonetheless. “Blessed are those who find love, for it shall lead them home.”

He went still. “Where did you read that?”

I shrugged, for the first time feeling a bit embarrassed. “I didn’t read it. It just kind of came to me.”

A smile tipped his lips up. “Truth comes in funny ways.”

“Like right after an epic fuck in the snow?” I lifted an eyebrow.

He tipped his head back and roared with laughter. I joined him, wanting nothing more than to stay in that moment, to know nothing but this joy of his arms around me, of our love insulating us from the world.

Of course, that was not how things worked in my world.

So when I heard the sobbing of someone’s heart breaking and the stumble of footsteps, I wasn’t surprised in the least.

Chapter Two

Liam rolled to
a crouch in a single motion that bared his delectable ass to me. I couldn’t resist giving it a slap before I grabbed my clothes and scrambled into them.

“Woman.” He let out a growl but not of anger. No, my guy liked his nookie on the rough side. I slapped him again for good measure, his ass tightening and his head whipping around to stare at me. His eyes glittered with a heated desire that sparked my libido and, for a moment, I forgot we were about to be seen buck naked and frolicking in the snow. Or at least, Liam was going to be seen buck naked. That made me smile.

“Later, wolf.” I had my clothes on and wished for my weapons. S
omeone
had talked me out of bringing them, arguing that I wouldn’t need them. This was a vacation. And I’d have a werewolf/guardian and a dragon to watch over me.

Shit, I couldn’t believe I’d let him convince me not to bring anything, even my swords. See what love can do? Make you downright silly. I grinned, though I made sure I kept it from Liam. Silly, I kinda liked it.

Across the clearing, a figure stumbled into the open. Her cries were loud against the wind, the pain in her words undeniable even though I didn’t speak a lick of Russian.

“She’s lost her child,” I said as Liam shrugged into his coat. Damn, he could dress fast when he wanted to.

“How do you know?”

I pursed my lips and started toward her. “Years of finding mothers slumped over crinkled pictures, of watching their hope fade and their hearts break. Doesn’t matter what language they speak, those words are always the same and always the loudest.”

Liam paced alongside me, silent.

The woman wore layers of clothes frosted with ice. Her boots were ankle high, barely peeking above the snow, and her gloves were thin, the shape of her hands clear through them. These were not the clothes to keep someone warm in the dead of winter. Her whole attire was reminiscent of a bag lady, though I doubted she was anything of the sort. Here and there I saw thick fur adding a small measure of protection, probably rabbit by the texture and color. In my head, I could hear Alex clearly whisper, ‘fucking rabbits.’

“Hello.” I called out to her when we were about ten feet away, raising my hand in what I hoped was a non-threatening gesture.

She tipped her head toward us and I went very still. Her tears had frozen against her cheeks and sealed her eyes shut. She lifted her hands toward us, stumbled, and I ran forward without thinking. Liam cursed, but I ignored him. This woman was no danger to us, but she was going to get herself killed if we didn’t warm her up fast. Without another thought I slid my opal off and pressed it against her bare skin. A shiver slid through her, and then a heavy sigh as the ice on her face melted. The scars from frost burn wouldn’t heal, but she could at least open her eyes and see us.

“American?” she whispered through cracked, bleeding lips.

“Yes.” I held her, fought not to shiver against the wind I felt again. How the fuck had she lasted this long out here?

“Child, baby missing. Please help.”

“Oh, shit,” Liam said, crouching beside us. “Everywhere you go, Rylee.”

I ignored him and focused on the woman. “Baby, girl or boy?”

She fumbled inside her thick layers of clothes, her hands as damaged by the cold as her face, finally pulling out a crumpled black and white photo. She held it out to me and I took it carefully. The child couldn’t have been more than a year or two old, but it was hard to tell; the picture was faded and wrinkled; handled and loved in the absence of the child.

Then again, I’d been fooled before. Was this for real? Damn, it was hard to know. Still, I had to ask.

“Name?” I asked softly, feeling a deep ache of sympathy for this woman. She didn’t look that old, so maybe the picture was just from a very old camera. That was possible out here in the middle of nowhere Russia.

“Catya.”

Good enough. I sent out a thread, Tracking the little girl. Nothing. Shit. Liam touched my shoulder. “What is it?”

“The picture isn’t recent enough, I can’t get a bead on the kid. Or it might not be the kid she’s missing. Something doesn’t match up.”

“Or maybe there isn’t a child at all. That picture is old.”

I nodded. “Could be an old camera.”

“You can’t save them all, Rylee.” He wasn’t being a jerk. His hand squeezed my shoulder softly. “Perhaps this is one of those you can’t bring home.”

My heart twisted and I felt sick. Carefully, I took the picture from her. “I find her, you go home.”

Her face lit up, scoring me like a hot brand with her hope. “Save Catya?”

“Yes.” I struggled to give her a smile. “I will bring her home. I find Catya.”

Liam said nothing as we helped the woman to her feet. At first she seemed uncertain, then slowly nodded as she stared at Liam. I realized she didn’t look away from his eyes. She pointed to herself. “Fedya go home. Wait for Catya. You and”—her eyes brightened as she took in Liam, a smile filtering across her face—“wolf bring Catya home.” She slid the opal off and handed it back to me, shivering as she did.

Well shit, that was a surprise. She knew what Liam was, or at least that a wolf resided within him. I scrubbed the shock off my face with one hand, then nodded as I took the opal. Gently, I pushed her back the way she’d come.

“Yes. Wolf and I will find Catya.”

Satisfied, she smiled at us, and I could see the beauty in her, beauty that had been stripped down from the harshness of life. I narrowed my eyes, looking at her with my second sight. Crappy as it was, it showed the flicker of magic residing within her. I couldn’t place what kind of supernatural she was, but the connection was there.

The opal hung from my fingers as I watched her go, her pace brisk through the woods now that her sorrow didn’t drag her and the hold of the ice on her had been broken, at least temporarily.

“How do you think she knew what you were?”

Liam stared after her, his face thoughtful. “Peter’s pack is close by. No reason not to think some people around here might have dealings with them.”

Something about it didn’t quite mesh; most supernaturals didn’t let on what they were to humans. Not unless there was some family bond or true friendship. Made me wonder what else Fedya knew about our world.

“You think you can find the girl anyway, don’t you?” Liam looked over my shoulder at the picture of the supposed Catya.

I stared at the kid, still trying to Track her and coming up with nothing. “You know me too well.”

He took the opal from me and slid it around my neck, and the cold retreated from my body. “I’d better know you. I’ve followed you around for enough years.”

We both laughed at that, though it was an effort, an attempt to cover up the pain of seeing a mother crying for a daughter who would never come home. I tucked the picture inside my coat anyway.

“Let’s find Peter.”

I sent out a thread, Tracking the old wolf. He wasn’t far at all. “He’s been watching us with her.”

“I hope he didn’t show up too early,” Liam grumbled. I blushed. Shit, had Peter seen us in the snow? Though nudity itself didn’t really bother me, the idea of someone watching me and Liam make love was something else entirely.

Not that I was embarrassed, but I really wasn’t the voyeuristic type on either end of the spectrum. I didn’t want to watch or be watched whilst getting my ass spanked, thank you very much.

We made our way past our little love nest and were about fifty feet into the sparse forest before Liam put his hand up to stop me.

Peter stepped from woods in wolf form. Silver and grey, he was an older guy, though still hale. His golden eyes didn’t watch us, but stared behind us where Fedya had disappeared. His hackles stood on end and his stance told me all I needed to know. The wolf was agitated. That surprised me. What would have set him off like that? Surely it wasn’t us; he’d been expecting us.

I glanced over my shoulder to where Peter stared, wondering if he could scent Fedya. Maybe she really had interactions with the pack. By Peter’s stance and eyes, I was guessing it wasn’t all that good.

Liam took the lead as we approached Peter, seemingly confident. But I knew him as well as he knew me and he was nervous. The slight twitch of his jaw, the way his right hand fingers flexed, as if wishing he had a gun in them. Not that he would have wanted to shoot Peter, no, it was the comfort of having a weapon when you were feeling insecure. Something I knew all too well. My own hands itched to hold the handle of one of my swords.

Just in case.

Approaching the older wolf felt strange and was reminiscent of walking on thin ice. The last time he’d spoken with him, Liam had been stuck in wolf form, unable to do anything about it. But even so, he felt compelled to come here, to learn from him. To let the older wolf show him the ropes.

“I’ve come as you asked me to,” Liam said, stopping when he was fifteen feet or so away from the old wolf.

There was a shimmer over Peter’s animal body, like a rippling wave, and for the first time, Liam got to see what a shifting werewolf looked like. The two forms blurred, but there was no cracking of bones, no twisting of forms. Just a pure blend of human and wolf meshing and melding. In the middle of the shift, he saw the distinct form that looked a hell of a lot like Alex.

“This isn’t what you look like when shifting,” Rylee said, putting a hand to his back. “If I blink when you shift, I miss it.”

Peter shifted quickly, to Liam’s eyes anyway, but better than that, he wasn’t naked once he’d shifted. Somehow he’d retained his clothing.

“How did you do that?” Rylee blurted out. “He keeps ripping his fucking clothes to shreds.”

Peter laughed, his layers of fur and cloth making him look like the matched pair to Fedya. “It is something I can teach him, so he no longer needs to worry about what he is wearing.” He held up a hand. “One word of caution, weapons cannot be translated like clothes.”

With that, Peter turned from them and started through the forest. “Come, the pack wishes to meet you both. It has been a long time since a guardian wolf walked this world, and longer yet since he had a true mate.”

Rylee remained remarkably silent, though Liam thought it was more to do with the child she wasn’t searching for but wanted to be.

“Guardian wolf—so I am not some freak of nature?” He stepped over a log and held a hand back to Rylee to help her over. She didn’t need his help, but she took his hand anyway, her tri-colored eyes distant. She was most definitely trying to figure out a way to Track Catya.

He let her be and focused on Peter.

The older man slowed a step so they could walk side by side. “No, you are not a freak of nature. The Guardian Wolf comes to the aid of the heroes of the world when the balance of our existence is in jeopardy.”

A soft breath escaped him. “That’s not heavy at all.”

Peter smiled, but it was sad, and weighted with knowledge Liam thought had been gained through experience. And not the good kind. “Yes, I suppose it is rather heavy, as you say. But it is why you were chosen. The spirit of the wolf looks to the world and, unlike other guardians who reside here and are called forth by the shamans, the wolf wanders. Searching for his mate, searching for heroes to assist. And in her”—he glanced at Rylee with her head down, auburn hair blowing around her face—“you have found both.”

Liam couldn’t argue with that. She would face Orion at some point, but not before Liam had to give up his life for her. The thought twisted in his guts, made him want to grab her and run even farther into the wilds, leave the world to its own messed up trajectory. Let the humans fight for themselves.

“You know the pale horse comes for you?” Peter asked, his voice pitched low enough that Liam knew Rylee wouldn’t hear, even though she was only a few paces behind them. The pale horse—death was what Peter referred to.

“Yes, I know.”

“And yet you are here to learn? Even knowing what a short time you have left?”

There was no easy way to answer what Peter was saying, so he went with the most honest. “I would keep her safe, and the only way to do that is to make sure I am at my best. That I know what I am capable of.”