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Lannie gave him a hard glance. The man was twice Holly’s age, his admiration frank but at a distance. Lannie’s initial irrational irritation faded; he glanced up to where she worked the truck—strong and confident and more graceful than thou while she was at it, braced in perfect balance over the hay bales. She’d already figured out the rhythm of the work, the perfect combination of leverage and muscle to make the bales sail down in quiet arcs to a thumping impact. Her face had flushed pleasantly with the exertion, and from the looks of it, she was only just getting warmed up.
In the end, Lannie said only, “She’d eat you alive.”
“You, too, buddy,” the man said, affably enough. “Best watch yourself, if it’s like that.”
It wasn’t like that. She was his job, and his response to her was no more real than ever in the opening stages of creating pack. But that wouldn’t keep him from responding, and it wouldn’t keep him from watching her. Appreciating her.
Beautiful, he thought—and then drew a hard breath when she jerked to a stop, turning to stare down at him.
Best watch yourself, Lannie Stewart.
He handed over the paperwork and put himself back to work. The familiar rhythm of it warmed stiff muscles and tugged as much against the duct tape as it did against his healing side. For long moments, he let go of his thoughts, giving over to the muted conversation of familiar teamwork, the occasional grunt of effort, Faith’s giggles in the background when she lost her grip on a bale and it went pinwheeling off into the yard. When the truck sat empty and swept, the driver pulled away to leave them to the stacking...and eventually that was done, too, and Holly stood beside Lannie looking flushed but relaxed, mismatched gloves tucked away in a back pocket.
Her song trickled through to him, complex and self-confident and, at the moment, devoid of the resentful edge.
“Three hours,” Faith said. “Not our best time, but decent.”
“Thanks to Holly,” said Javi, his eye already gone worshipful when it turned to Holly.
“Yeah,” Faith said, older and wiser by not very many years, her back propped against the towering stack of hay and out of the sun. “You don’t wanna go there. Just say thanks again.”
“Right,” Javi said, blushing beneath the olive tones of his skin. “Thanks, Miss Holly.”
Holly seemed bemused to find herself back in a conversation—and a normal one, at that. “I was glad for it,” she said. “I needed to get the travel kinks out.” She brushed hay from her shirt and reaching for the neckerchief Javi had given her shortly after his arrival—a hesitant offering, gratefully received, and now full of enough hay to have proven its worth.
“Oh, no,” Javi said, backing away a step just in case. “You keep it. You’ll need one of those around here.”
Holly’s smile made Lannie straighten. Once again he found himself pushing back the wolf, the little growl in his mind that said mine.
Maybe so. But too strong or too fast with this one, and he’d lose her altogether. If it had been easier than this, Brevis wouldn’t have brought her so precipitously to his doorstep.
“Drink something,” he told Faith and Javi—and Holly, for that matter. “Bottled water in the fridge.”
“Cool,” said Faith. “Hey, Javi, I got some power powder to try in it. It’ll turn your mouth blue.”
“No, no,” Javi said, following her anyway. “Mi madre would whip my behind if I come home with a blue mouth.”
“She would not.” Faith’s words floated back over her shoulder as she rounded the corner of the barn overflow, and Lannie knew that Javi’s mouth didn’t stand a chance. So did Holly, to judge by the amusement lighting her expression—though that faded when she looked his way.
“You, too,” he said. “Especially you.”
She dusted at the hay on her legs. “And then?” When he only looked at her, she said, “Then what? We’re going to Cloudview, I know. But I’m here for a reason. Do we have team-building games to play, or do I have homework, or are you going to put me on a shelf while you do other things?” Before he’d had time to truly consider that, she added, “One thing they should have warned you—I like to keep busy.”
“I can arrange for another load of hay,” Lannie said, deceptively mild.
“Sure,” she said, just as evenly.
“What’s next specifically,” he told her, “is that we dust the hay out of our hair and get something to drink. Then I’d like to take a few moments to sniff around the well house—you can come or not, as you please.”
He wasn’t sure if sniffing around qualified as busy or boring, and in truth he wasn’t sure he wanted her along. He’d just as soon take the wolf for this particular task, and he didn’t think she was ready for that yet. When it came to that, he didn’t think he was ready for it. Not to ride the edge of the most primal part of himself while she was nearby.
“And then Cloudview,” she said. “I know. But after that. I don’t get the sense that you have any sort of plan when it comes to me.”
Lannie stood taller in a stretch, rotating one shoulder slightly. “I tend to play it by ear.”
“Awesome,” Holly said flatly. She pushed away from the hay bales. “Since we have such a good plan, we might as well get to it.” She headed for the front of the overflow area—a tall, three-sided pole structure—and turned in the direction of the store, striding across the ground like she owned it.
Lannie watched the languid roll of her hips and wanted to follow. The wolf watched the casual strength in her and growled, chafing, wanting to follow.
Lannie made them both wait, and settle, and swallow back the wanting. Only then did he allow his feet to move, strangely distant from the earth and from the new pack song he already ached to call his own.
* * *
Holly avoided a flat, shrunken prickly pear, her thighs aching from the distinctly uphill hike. Lannie Stewart moved with assurance, familiar with the terrain and taking his own strength for granted. When he stopped and checked back for her, she knew for certain it was only for her sake, and not because he found himself winded.
But Holly was glad to suck in air. She was fit—she was damned fit—but she’d already helped unload twenty tons of hay and she was fit at sea level.
He nodded up ahead, and she belatedly saw the upper half and roof of a wood structure that looked more like a community pit toilet than any official well house, clearly placed just beyond the crest of this slope. “I’d like to take a look around before we add more footprints to the area.”
“You want me to stay here.” She realized it with surprise. Some part of her had enjoyed these silent moments of climbing the hillside together, no matter the effort, or the fact that she hadn’t wanted to be here in the first place. Still didn’t want to be here.
But that didn’t mean her best option wasn’t to wait this situation out, going through Sentinel hoops until she could walk away.
Lannie eyed her as if he was trying to read her thoughts from her face, and nodded. “Only a few moments. Catch your breath, look around. There’s more going on in this forest than you think.”
She wouldn’t have called it a forest at all. But she only nodded, plucking a final stray piece of hay from her shirt, and he hiked on without her.
She watched until he moved out of sight, hidden by a trick of terrain and brush, and then sat herself down to look around. Low, flat cactus here...bushy treelike things dotted along the hill and set on gravelly, sandy soil. Sparse clumps of bunchgrass offered barely a hint of green, and the occasional long-needled pine towered over all.
“Forest,” she snorted. But she wrapped her arms around her knees and tipped her face to the sun, realizing for the first time the true impact of its heat. A quick relocation to the shade of a spicy cedar brought out goose bumps, and she finally put herself half in, half out, and rested her forehead on her knees.
Maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe she should have kept moving. The quiet gave her space to recognize a strange, small edge of unease running through the center of her—a ripple of vertigo, and an escalation of what she’d experienced on arrival. She put her hand to the ground, eyes still closed, absorbing the textured feel of the cedar sheddings—tiny dry twigs, gritty soil, the angular hump of an exposed root. The connection steadied her in some way, but her sense of unease failed to fade.
Lannie had been right. She needed more water. Something to trail her fingers in, something to fiddle with.
Then again, it was nothing that going home wouldn’t fix. A reasonable altitude, a reasonable humidity and a sun that didn’t feel so close. Anyone would feel disoriented.
Song intruded, humming into her thoughts with such an insidious ease that she startled when she finally recognized it there, jerking her head up to scan the hill where Lannie had disappeared. She caught the glimpse of flickering light, a coruscation of energy; the song swelled and then faded. What the—?
Holly clambered to her feet to squint up the hill, swiping her hands off against the tough material of her work pants, hesitating on the verge of hiking on up. Lannie had had plenty of time to look around, and what if he—
He came into sight at the crest of the hill, appearing from between two junipers to wave her onward, and she suddenly understood. Lannie had gone uphill to take his other—whatever his other was. The light, the energy, even the humming song—those had all been the edges of his return to human. And now he stood there waiting for her, all matter-of-fact confidence and underlying strength.
She hiked the last hundred feet more quickly than she’d thought she had left in her, and greeted him with demand. “Was that you?”
She didn’t truly expect his frown. “Maybe,” he said, and thought about it until he shook his head. “Did it bother you?”
“Bother?” She found her hand was still gritty, the thin soil pressed into the lines of her palm, where she’d grabbed at the ground in her reaction to that song. She realized, too, what she really, really didn’t want to admit—that her body had responded, humming along in its own way, and that now it had warmed to him in a clear defiance of how she felt about Sentinels, being here and being anywhere near him in the first place.
Good God, she wanted him.
Except she didn’t. She didn’t want any part of being here, Lannie Stewart included. So she, too, finally shook her head. “It didn’t bother me,” she said. “It surprised me. It was rude.”
He pondered that, watching her with an awareness she wasn’t sure she liked. “Probably so,” he allowed, and left it at that, switching his attention to the well house now completely within view. “There’s nothing much up here. They didn’t waste much time trying to chase Aldo off.” He shook his head. “Just an old man taking a smoke.”
Holly took a few more steps in that direction, eyeing the faint track of an unofficial lane. The well house itself didn’t do anything to offset her initial impression, and its security consisted of a simple aged hasp and lock. “Why would they even come down this road?”
Lannie walked past her to the lane, scuffing his way across it. At her inquisitive look, he pointed downward. “This ground holds a track a whole lot better than you might think. I’ll know it when someone comes through this way again.”
Tracks. She looked down at that weird mix of silty, gritty soil overlaying hard ground, and discovered herself in the midst of them.
Not all of them human.
She crouched, running a forefinger around the outside of the nearest track. The nearest huge track, doglike in shape if not in size. Lannie’s? Or had it been here all along? “You’re right,” she said. “This ground holds a significant track.” She glanced up at him. “You should have brought a broom.”
“Maybe I will.” He paced down the road, looking along its length as if the guy gang and their truck might come barreling back down it any moment now. Holly pressed her hand over the track, obliterating it, and stood up. A few steps took her to the only snatch of color in the pale ground, and it took her some moments to recognize the splatter of dried blood. Her gaze flickered to the faded bruising on his face, and he shook his head. “Not mine.”
“Nice,” she said. “They probably never knew what hit them.”
Because he was Sentinel. He was stronger. He was supposed to pull his punches.
“There were five of them,” he reminded her.
“Sentinel,” she reminded him, out loud this time.
To her surprise, he lifted the front tail of his shirt. At first she saw nothing but the gleam of skin over surprisingly hard muscle, the light scatter of hair toward the center of a torso leaner than she’d expected. She stuttered on a response—and then realized the steep shadow between two of his lowest ribs wasn’t a shadow, but the angry and slightly gaping lips of a knife wound.
“Sentinel,” he said. “Not Superman. You should know. Your blood is strong enough.”
“I never thought so,” she said, more faintly than pleased her. “I’m not truly different from anyone else. Not like—”
You. With the way the wild strength sometimes gleamed straight from his eyes, or how the very way he stood broadcast the dangerous nature lurking behind a laconic exterior.
“Look in a mirror sometime.” He let the shirttail fall.
“I don’t understand.” She tore her gaze away from his side to search his expression, finding little she could read there at all. “I don’t heal much faster than anyone else.” She made a face, and admitted, “Yes, a little. But I thought Sentinels healed really fast.”
His grin was wry; it changed his face, made her want to reach out to him and take his hand and bump a companionable shoulder. She took a step back instead, startled at herself. He said, “If we’re badly injured, the early healing comes quick. Hurts like hell, too. But it keeps us alive when we might otherwise die.” He shrugged. “After that? You already know. We heal a little more quickly than normal. That’s all.”
“Then that must have been a whole lot worse yesterday.” Realization struck. “Right after I got here.” And then she leaped forward to a whole new understanding, and she speared a glance at him. “You were loading hay with that?”
He frowned down at the injury, resting his hand lightly over top. “There was hay to unload.”
She exhaled a sharp and impatient breath. “For everything you say, I swear there are two things you’re keeping to yourself.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But never things about you, from you. Just ask.”
She made a noncommittal noise in her throat that sounded no more convinced that she felt; he looked sharply at her. “Altitude catching up with you?”
“Maybe.” She looked down the slope—the unfamiliarity of the terrain, the unfamiliarity of the scents and even the sound of the bird flashing bright blue from the brush as it scolded them. The unfamiliarity, yes...and deeper, beneath it all, the sense that something else was missing, was wrong. Something she’d been leaning on so long she hadn’t even known it was there and now couldn’t begin to define.
“Still want to go to Cloudview?”
She jerked her head back to narrow her eyes at him. “Don’t you dare go back on that.”
Was that amusement on his features, lurking at the corners of his eyes, in the slight lift on one side of his mouth? She took a step toward him, a light growl vibrating somewhere in her chest. “Are you laughing at me?”
At the same time, she heard it again—the hint of song, beguiling cello tones weaving beneath faint strains of barely whispered complexity. The intrusion stunned her—the affront of it, the fact that she could hear it at all—but she’d barely drawn breath to protest when he grinned outright. Also unexpected, and also stunning—in its own way, striking deep into the heart of her.
By then he’d taken the few steps between them and wrapped an unexpected arm around her shoulder in a gesture of startling affection.
She wanted to sputter at him. She wanted to say I didn’t invite you to do that and You have no right—but her body was already melting into him. Just long enough to feel the upright strength in him, and to understand how clearly his gentleness was a choice.
Then he stepped back, framing her head between both big hands to look directly into her gaze, piercing eyes gone somehow softer. “It gets easier,” he told her. “Let’s go see your brother.”
And then he took her hand and led her down the hill.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_f0a4223c-eb38-5c2a-adc2-cd1780885cd9)
The familiar terrain gentled as Lannie led the way back to the feed-store cluster, revealing a barely sloping spread that held not just the feed-store grounds but a faint scatter of buildings along the curving country road. Lannie’s two mules engaged in some sort of conversational disagreement, gamboling without grace but with power to spare.
Holly might have hesitated, taking it all in, but Lannie kept them moving. The noon sun had brought out the heat of the day—and as much as Holly seemed to need activity, allowing her to help with the entire load of hay hadn’t been the smartest choice of his day.
Too damned bad he’d been so distracted by watching her.
“We’ll grab something to eat on the way out of town,” he said. “I just need a moment to square away—”
Pain shot through his side; the faint music underlying his soul burst into brief static. He blinked, and found himself looking up into bright blue sky. The uneven ground pressed into his back, sharp with myriad little stones and prickery bunchgrass, and his legs were ungainly, bent and sprawling as if they’d simply forgotten how to be legs. “What,” he said quite clearly, “the hell?”
“You tell me,” Holly said, and couldn’t hide worry with her scowl. She had one hand pressed on his shoulder as if she knew the first thing he’d do was try to get up, and the other at his pulse—pounding hard and fast, but perfectly regular.
“Hey!” Faith shouted from the bottom of the slope, her accusing voice getting closer with each word. “What did you do to him?”
“To him?” Holly said, rising to that bait even as she kept Lannie’s shoulder to the ground. But she only had leverage as long as he didn’t roll aside—and that he did, rising as smoothly as he ever did. Holly made that disgusted little feline noise in her throat and came to her feet beside him.
By then Faith had reached them, heavy work boots amazingly spry along the way. “Yes!” she snapped at Holly. “You! To him!”
“Whoa,” Lannie said as the static struck again, his alarm having less to do with going down and everything to do with the potential collision of Faith and Holly. When he could see clearly again he found himself on hands and knees, blinking at the ground.
“Why did you even get up?” Faith asked in exasperation, though it was Holly’s hand at the back of his neck, quiet and firm.
Because that shouldn’t have happened at all. Never mind a second time. Or, if he counted the odd moments of the previous evening, a third or fourth or a...
“Faith,” he said, with as much authority as any man in his situation could muster, “this is not Holly’s doing.”
“Right,” Holly said. “Blame me. Awesome. I am so glad to be here.”
“You showed up and this happened,” Faith said, bending to peer at Lannie.
