Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) (18 page)

To my surprise, the Alpha comes unusually close and adds his lower notes to my mournful tune. His howl has a gnawing, hungry edge. Maybe we are mates after all.

The humans spill out of the woods, eager to catch us. They have their guns, but we are too far out on the river. They clamber cautiously down the snow banks, cursing as they realized we’re still too far, and then slowly, ever so slowly, they take their first steps out onto the ice.

They present a danger now, but the Alpha has gone completely still. I unhappily follow his lead. His glowing orange eyes remain riveted on the wood’s edge, searching for something else, even as the women raise their rifles.

The Dead One. It bursts out of the trees with sudden ferocity, scampering onto the ice like a long-legged spider. The Alpha does nothing. Only steps on a cube of ice. I hear a snap, watch something thin and black like a branch whip away into the night. And then the entire east bank of the river collapses.

How did he do such a thing? The male watches the entire party get sucked under the ice, but I watch him wonderingly. When he turns, I shuffle down onto my front paws, whimpering softly. Then I expose my belly to him.

The male cocks his head. Confused. Again. I feel that same overpowering sensation of
him
trying to enter my mind, and I shy away, scared. With a frightened bark, I take off across the ice.

That bodiless presence
chases
me. I look behind. All he does is train his eyes on my fleeing shape, and I can feel the presence and smell of bright sunlight and strange trees swiftly overtaking me no matter how fast I run, feel it take shape in my mind. I shake my head vigorously. Swat at my face. That strong masculine presence persists. I can’t let it in. It isn’t
me
it wants to talk to.

“CITLALLI!”

It is the last thing I hear, his guttural cry suddenly taking on a bizarre pitch and form, before I crash through the ice.

Chapter 21: Kiss

WHAT DID YOU DO?!

I bubbled up from the dark recesses of the river and slammed into a solid three inches of ice. My paws clawed helplessly at the blue glass for a moment before the river ripped me away, hurtling me down an infinite black tunnel.

The cold! The cold has found us!
Wolf ran past me to cower in the corner of our mind.

I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. Gushing shards of water filled my lungs. The last image I saw was my pale, fleshy fingers scraping half-heartily at the ceiling of our frozen tomb.

Then strong hands broke through and pulled us out.

At first I wasn’t aware of anything but shaking arms and shaking legs and the way the cold flayed me raw no matter which way I turned. Icy pain collected behind my eyes and burned like brain freeze until I saw stars. All I could do was hug that warm chest, my thick black curls dripping like a mop.

“Is it you? Is it you?”

Maybe an odd question to ask, but with growing certainty, I realized that Rafael had known full well that I hadn’t been in control of my Were. He was wondering…who was?

“Planning a trap on a partially frozen river?” I grimaced. It hurt to stretch my facial muscles. “You just keep trying to kill me, don’t you?”

His brown eyes glowed with such warmth that I felt unusually self-conscious under their scrutiny. “It is you.”

I was about to respond with something deflecting, maybe a “Yeah? Who’d you think you were going ice fishing for?” when his mouth caught mine.

His mouth was hot, so hot, that it brought color back to my lips. He wrapped one hand around my neck, burying it in the hair at the nape, and held me still so he could kiss me again. His lips pressed gently at first, and then harder; so he could taste every inch of me. I felt golden warmth spreading inside as I drank in his essence: a fresh breeze carrying hibiscus and coconut, but underlying it, the dark allure of magma.

I felt his hands steal down to cup my ass, scooping me closer still, and I became very aware that we were two naked people—the two warmest things around—standing in the middle of a snow-frosted forest on a frigid winter’s night. The oh-so lovely benefit of shifting: no clothes. I’ll admit: I’d had thousands of fantasies like this before. In them, I’d always been the initiator, the one seducing Rafael with my feminine wiles. I’d always known exactly what I was doing in
my
fantasies, where things would lead. But now that it was actually happening, I felt…shy. Dear Jesus, I really liked this man! I couldn’t mess this up!

But then Rafael pulled back and murmured: “If I ever put you in a dangerous situation, it’s only because I knew you were strong enough to withstand it.”

I radiated with so much pride I about regained feeling in my fingers. The same couldn’t be said for my toes, which had iced together like webbed feet.

Rafael’s gaze swooped down. “But you will have a case against me if I keep you out here any longer. Come on!” He swung me into his arms before I could protest, and I admired the knotted cords of muscles standing taut and firm to attention in his biceps. He was glancing a lot at me, too, but when I folded my arms over my chest, he at least had the decency to look away, albeit, a bit too innocently.

“Where are we going?”

“A warming hut. Those bitches took you deep into Seorak San, but their stench left an easy trail to follow.” He saw my eyes light up with pleasure at the park’s name, and he nudged me fondly. “Yah. Before you go running off to a no doubt equally as cold vampyre palace, you’re coming to the warming hut with me.”

“Is that where you were hanging out while the widows whipped the shit out of me?”

Rafael’s fingers lingered against the dried blood on my tattered back, and his jaw hardened. “No. I was finishing the river trap. I had to make sure they suffered for what they did to you. A quick death would have been too easy. As for the vampyre…” He smiled coldly. “She’ll be stuck down there for a good long time, flung around at the mercy of the currents.”

I smiled as well, before conscience came swinging her hammer at me:

They weren’t the true enemy!
she insisted.
Those poor folks were brainwashed by Maya and enslaved to Duck Young! Just like Marisol!

Wolf and I both flicked her aside.
I’ll feel sorry for them once my mother stops feeling like she killed me, and my brother stops blaming himself for not having stopped it.

***

The oval-domed warming hut soon filled with the scent of burning pine. I languished near the fire, daring the flames to come as close to my eyelashes as possible. Rafael fastened the door securely behind us and then stopped short at the sight of me, spread out nude near the fire.

“Damn.” He rubbed one hand against the stubble on his jaw, while his dark eyes burned with the unbridled ferocity I’d seen when hungering after prey, or breaking out into the lead on a hunt. I’d never had the full force of that ferocity focused on
me
.

So for once, I was thankful for the thick curtain of curls hiding my face. I looked everywhere except at him. But Rafael wouldn’t let me pretend I hadn’t seen him this time.

“You know what they say is the quickest way to warm someone up?” He crossed the distance between us in swift steps, and then stretched out beside me.

“This sounds like the beginning of a bad pick-up line.”

He laughed softly and stuck a finger in my face. “Of course not, Citlalli. This is a fact. The quickest way to warm someone up is to shed all clothes and press your bodies tightly together, for an hour— Hey, wow—”

I don’t know why I did it. Maybe the heady pine aroma was getting to me, or maybe just seeing any proffered part of him made me want to touch it—but I wrapped my mouth around his finger and sucked, lightly. He immediately stopped talking.

“Only an hour, hmmm?” I managed, heart thudding. I hadn’t even trusted my eyes to walk down further, over the ink hardened lines of the tattoo compass on his left rib, down the definition of those bronzed abs, to his— Okay,
damn
. Sweet Mary Mother of Christ, he was hard and ready. And—I snuck another peek—
damn
. My cheeks glowed sunset red.

“Minimum.” He flashed that mischievous grin, my favorite one. It made you feel like you were laughing together about a private secret no one else was a part of. He crawled over my body, already more at ease with it than I was, and pinned me down beneath him. His brown eyes darkened to chocolate wells as he leaned down, and I—flinched away.

He pulled back, startled. “What’s wrong? You…you do like me, right?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. This seemed like something we should have gotten out of the way a long time before the clothes came off. But this part was somehow harder.

“I—I like you, Rafael Dominguez.” I forced myself to look at him, to stare directly into his eyes. “Sometimes I think…I like you too much. I’m thinking of you when I should be thinking of how to rescue my sister. I’m…I’m planning dates to Dongdaemun Market when I should be preserving the pack’s harmony. I’m constantly worrying about how to protect you from death when once upon a time, I said I would kill you. I care for you so much that for this, these…” My fingers rose, trembling, to the three scars on my neck, discernibly white against my caramel skin. “I forgive you.”

Rafael went completely still. I had many scars—fresh ones gouging my back, vice-like white grips around my wrists, black-and-blue hips—but only three of those marks came from a friend. Anger, guilt, grief—three clouds passed over his face before he made any move to touch me, his hand covering mine.

“That night in the subway,” he whispered, touching each scar carefully, “you woke me up. Here was this girl who had risked her own life for a complete stranger… It made me remember the old world I came from. When there were right things to do, and wrong things… Citlalli Alvarez, you are selfless. You run around at a million miles an hour to make sure your mother’s okay, your brother, your sister, the pack… You are so intent on everyone else’s happiness, of being their sun. It’s how you fight. When you face the vampyres, you fight with passion, because you can see a new sunrise beyond their darkness. A life beyond their misery. And you’re going to make sure everyone else wakes up with you to see it.”

I was touched. I’d never had anyone say such beautiful things about me, never had anyone scrutinize me as closely as he had, as if these thoughts had been tumbling around in his head for a while now. “You’re going to make me blush.”

“That’s not hard.”

“I didn’t think—” I had to choose my next words carefully. “In the war room, when Yu Li asked you point-blank if you cared for me, you said I was only eighteen—”

He gave a rueful laugh, longish hair sliding around his ears. “Yeah, I didn’t want to come off as a creeper or anything. Admitting I felt for you…more…only to watch you flee from the room screaming.”

“We’re only five years apart,” I said defiantly. “If you look at some of those dysfunctional vampyre relationships, we’re near normal.”

“Yeah, but ’Lalli, the truth is…you are eighteen, young, and hopeful. That shit about you being able to see a new sunrise beyond all the horrors we’re facing…I don’t see it, Citlalli.” His voice took on a desperate edge. “It’s why I never approached you before. Citlalli, that part of me died a long time ago with my mother and sister. It died again when I lost pack brothers and sisters…Chung Lee, Razor, Little Min…and then again, when I spent months undercover trying to kill Little Min’s murderer, the vampyre prince Takakazu. Takakazu loved hunting, and set up elaborate game courses for his prisoners to run on false promises of freedom. But those poor people believed him, did horrible things to each other all on the threadbare promise of escape… He would release them. In the DMZ. It’s amazing how many times hope can die, but you always tell yourself it’ll come back. Until one day you wake up and it’s not there anymore.

“I exist for revenge, Citlalli. To kill Khyber. How can you be with someone like that?”

Might not be a good idea to bring up that I kinda need Khyber alive right now.
“But you can choose what to live for, Rafael! It doesn’t have to be about killing Khyber!”

Rafael stared hard into the fire. “Now you sound like Yu Li.”

Yes, how many of these conversations had she had with him, all of which ended up in the same way? And what did that say about us if I…agreed with her?

“I’m just saying the bad guys win if you end up as dead inside as them.” I reached for him pleadingly. “Listen, you know what I told you from my dreams. Khyber wants to die. After he kills his brothers.”

Rafael snorted. “So he says. You can’t trust him, Citlalli. That monster has been around for centuries, and no offense, but your sister’s lived what, a tenth of that? It’d be easy for him to fool her. Don’t trust him. Didn’t my story teach you anything?
Khyber knows how to get what he wants
.”

My insides squirmed. I couldn’t let him see what a blow that was to my entire plan, but he was right. “Well, then. We’ll just have to figure out what that is so we can get what we want from him first.”

Rafael laughed delightedly. “Listen to you! Miss Little Manipulator, ready to spin webs around the vampyre. I would be an idiot to give up a shot with you, wouldn’t I?” His hands were back on my shoulders now, and I snuggled closer, pleased I’d won him back.

“This can work,” he said.

“Even with the pack?”

“Sure. What are they going to do? Gossip?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t underestimate gossip’s infernal power.”

“Okay, yeah, it’ll suck for a while. But I won’t even notice. I’ll be listening and hanging around someone else.”

His warm brown eyes caught mine. My throat caught. We both looked away at the same time.

“So,” Rafael said, clearing his throat, “Dongdaemun Market, hmmm?”

“Yes. You’ll haggle down the price on a Gurka Kukri for me.”

His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “A
what
? How the hell am I supposed to find a knife like that in a
public
marketplace?”