to breathe. The world dimmed even further, and still he recoiled inwardly in the alarm of no longer being alone. His lips drew back in a snarl and his whiskers quivered, and even blinded by pain and his body’s jerking dance, his slapping paw found its target, claws clogged with dirt and blood but still able to pierce skin.
He hadn’t expected to feel the pain of it, sharp and wounding; he froze. Only for an instant, and then the poisons took him away, the world fading away to thin nothingness. He barely felt the light touch on his head, around his muzzle—confident fingers lifting that frozen snarl and smearing his gums with a paste imbued with the feather-touch of incantations.
As fast as that, the rigor eased, his long and powerful body sagging back to dirt and hearthstone. And when the world darkened, it was as if he fell into himself, deeply into himself…back into the life of his beating heart and panting lungs and even that deep growl of feeble protest stuck in his throat.
And then, somewhere along the way, he fell into her. Meghan. Slip-sliding from one thought to another, from his to hers and back again. Through it all echoed his anguished backdrop of warning—Atrum Core…Atrum Core…’ ware. Meghan, Atrum Core…
They’d come back if they knew she was here. They’d come back if they thought she’d become involved…if they thought she’d shed her noncombatant’s role to join the Sentinels outright.
If they thought, as he’d thought, that she could help to find the Liber Nex.
’Ware, Meghan…
And then he lost himself to darkness, to sweet scents and blessed lassitude and the enfolding blanket of determination that he would not, after all, lose himself to the Core.
And Meghan followed him down to the darkness.
You shouldn’t go…don’t go—! Sweet little girl voice, gone reedy and thin with desperation, the recognition of futility.
The world skipped around memory turned into reality. Long coltish legs crossed on the bed, covers over her head…herbs pungent in their pinched little piles, arrayed directly on the sheets around her bare legs. Breathe deep. Take them in, like Mama says. Transform them. Empower them. They didn’t quite have meaning, those words, but by God she tried. She built wards and she built warnings and she built safety.
Or she thought she did.
But she felt it happen. She felt the death…the loss. Mama! Don’t go, Mama! Don’t—
A whisper of goodbye, a scant caress of love—
You said there’d be help! You said there’d be a jaguar! You said—
Gone.
Scattered herbs, sheets damp from sobbing, heart broken forever. Little girl betrayed. By the—
Jaguar.
Older brother. Strong, golden, black rosettes rippling with the movement of bone and muscle beneath. Jared, who could do anything. Jared, confident in running point for the Sentinels, in assessing a situation, in doing what had to be done until the entire team arrived. Jared, steeped deep in Sentinel lore, Sentinel responsibility…utter faith in teammates.
Jared. Brother, father and mother in one package, enough years between them to make it work. Enough years before them to anticipate working together. Sentinels.
“Sure, it’s dangerous—it’s the damned Liber Nex, Dolan. But I won’t be alone. Working point, yeah, but the team will be there. Making sure we’re clear without drawing attention our way.”
Jared.
Not coming back.
What do you mean, he didn’t make it? What do you mean, you weren’t there in time? What do you mean, he’s—
Dead.
No jaguar. No Sentinels. Just Margery Lawrence, left on her own and now—
Dead.
Echoing wails, bitter, bitter grief, wrenching loneliness…resentment.
And childhood resolve, not quite as young and untouched as it had been only days earlier. I’ll rebuild my own family. My chosen family.
And the Sentinels will have nothing of me. Not—
—ever.
They’d let him die. The Sentinels had tangled themselves in some dumb-ass protocol and they’d delayed and they’d left him out there to die.
Jared. His last thoughts had been for that woman, a single mother, a joyful coyote with no real place in fieldwork, no training, just heart. His last thoughts—
Bitter, bitter grief. Choking fury…
A young man’s resolve. I will never trust them. I will be one of them, but not theirs. Not truly. Not ever.
For Jared, he would save the ones he could. Hard and independent and…
Rogue.
Chapter 4
Meghan sat back against the long-dead fireplace in dazed exhaustion, beyond thought. Beyond decisionmaking or reaction or feeling.
She stared through dawn light at the huge black cat sprawled on dirt and rock before her, instantly reconnected to the memories they’d shared. His memories, her memories…all the same now. She pressed a hand to the base of her throat where that hard ball of grief welled up so suddenly, so deeply.
Perhaps not beyond feeling after all.
Her arm protested the movement; she stretched it out, shoving back torn sleeves for a good look. Punctured, smeared with dried blood, swelling. She’d cleaned the wounds and covered them with an herbal paste—preserved with warding, enhanced with personal power—that would have them pink and closed by the time she made it home. After last night, Margery Lawrence felt…closer, somehow.
And meanwhile…she didn’t understand it, but that blood…his blood…his saliva…they’d all mixed, somewhere along the way.
Made a difference. A connection.
Luka whickered. Hungry, no doubt, and thirsty…he’d waited, accepting the other side of the crumbling old house as his stall. She’d removed his tack and trickled water into the collapsible water bucket, but he needed more.
She wasn’t ready to leave the jaguar. Not yet.
Dolan. She knew his name now. She wasn’t ready to leave Dolan Treviño.
The darkness lifted, steadily brightening into a typical morning here on the Santa Rita sky islands. Crisp and bitter cold at night, the clear sky quickly turned from star-spattered ink to coral-rimmed cerulean and then to a blue so sharp it almost hurt to look at it. Even here, tucked away in the trees and shadows, the day warmed fast enough for Meghan to ease off her quilted, oversized vest.
Meghan regarded the jaguar for a long moment from her slumped seat at the hearth. His ribs rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and the growing light picked out the faintest dapples of the rosette patterns within black fur.
His tail twitched; a paw flipped and went still. Meghan crawled back over to him to rest her hand on his side, his shoulder—feeling for the spasms from the night before. She still had no idea what had happened—what had poisoned him so badly, or how it had gotten into his system. She’d only treated the symptoms—red clover, valerian, magnesium powder, all tied to infusions of power for efficacy—and she’d been lucky when it worked.
He’d been lucky.
Dolan Treviño, and not his brother Jared after all. Jared, golden and vibrant and dedicated…and every bit as dead as Meghan’s mother. Killed on his way to her.
Meghan