forbidden book of the dead. An instruction manual for corrupt, death-based, power-wielding techniques, long-buried and long-forbidden. Great. And that’s what Dolan was looking for now? That’s what he thought her mother had handled?
His tail flicked again. A dream, maybe…or maybe a memory. His broad brow furrowed. “I’m sorry,” she said, drawn back into their moments of sharing that which she’d learned of him. Of his brother. “I didn’t know. But I still don’t want anything to do with this.” She hadn’t grown up with it, not the way he had—and until now she’d had no idea of the deeply instilled obligations the shifters felt. Even Dolan, who blamed the brevis regional consul for his brother’s death, still found a way to serve their cause. To remain Sentinel.
Well, Meghan had never been Sentinel. And her mother, tied to the Sentinels only by the virtue of her shape-shifter nature, had never been meant for field duty.
Jaguar fur lay warm beneath Meghan’s hand, and she felt the massive weight of him as though somehow he lay on her hand and not the other way around. Glossy fur slid between her fingers—and then suddenly the lax muscle stiffened. Meghan felt rather than saw an impending flicker of blue light, and then it was too late to snatch her hand away, to leap away—
He changed, fur to smooth skin to leather-clad human, and there lay her hand through it all, flickering in the light and for the briefest instant literally a part of Dolan Treviño.
And, oh, God, she hurt and she couldn’t see and she had two hearts, beating hard and fast, and four lungs, gasping for air, and nerves that sizzled and popped and ached to be every bit as connected as that one hand on that one shoulder—
She cried out, in fear and astonishment and denial, and the sound came from his mouth. And then the blue light slammed them apart with chastising whips of energy and Meghan quite suddenly lay at the hearth, sobbing for breath and barely able to lift her head to find Dolan coming up to his hands and knees, to his feet, and then down again, full length on the floor.
He looked just as she felt…stripped away, seared by another’s soul. When he lifted his head he cried, “What did you do?” in a voice ragged and barely audible.
She heard him anyway. She heard him clearly.
She heard him within.
“What did you do?” He demanded it again, his voice hardly any steadier. Off to the side, a horse snorted in alarm and annoyance. Meghan looked as wild as Dolan felt, sprawled in front of the hearth with the look of someone who might just bolt.
No, not her. Not the woman who’d stuck with him through this past night. Even now, her expression quickly sharpened. She looked at him; she looked at her hand. It gave him time to think, to realize how every bone and muscle burned and ached, to understand that the memories sitting so freshly in his mind weren’t all his. Weren’t all—
She’d been just a kid. She’d never known that his brother had died for the cause, trying to reach her mother. Her guardian, her father’s sister, hadn’t been a shifter, hadn’t been Sentinel at all…and the Sentinels—as ultrasecretive, ultracautious as any clandestine organization over two thousand years old—hadn’t told her a thing. They’d cut Meghan loose, knowing she wasn’t a shifter and sacrificing what skills she did have—what she might have been nurtured into. More fools, they. She’d saved his life. What she might have done if fully trained…
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice felt rough-edged in his throat. “If I’d realized they cut you off…I’d have told you what happened myself.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She tucked back a loose strand of hair, tightening an espresso ponytail gone loose and sloppy, her expression turning her sharp features yet sharper. “The Sentinels let them both die. And you’re still with them?”
Dolan managed to push himself upright, leaning back against the wall with one leg propped up before him. “You don’t leave the Sentinels. Not if you’re a shifter.”
“Nice,” she said, prompt and sharp. “They take lessons from the mob?”
Dolan laughed. Not loudly, not long, but as amused as he could be with his body still tasting an Atrum Core death. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything about us?”
Meghan stiffened. “She taught me what she felt was important.” She absently rubbed her arm, but stopped with a wince, pulling her hand away. At his frown, she held out her arm, displaying the ripped sleeves. “You weren’t a grateful patient. At least not at the start.”
“I—” Vaguely, he remembered it. Damn. “You’d best get it cleaned. Is it—” But he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask herself if he’d hurt her badly.
“It’s fine.” She’d gone brusque on him, more like the woman he’d met several days earlier—if not altogether convincing, there at the corners of her eyes. There, he saw lingering grief, lingering puzzlement. She stood, slapping off dusty jeans more vigorously with one hand than the other. “I’ll take care of it. First I’ve got to see to Luka. Since you’re all right for a few moments?”
Luka. “Your horse,” he realized. “He’s done well with me.”
“Luka has a noble soul,” she said, simply enough so it almost hid her great affection. “But he needs water. Rest, and I’ll be back in a moment—and then you can tell me just what happened here. Before I got here.”
He’d damn well warned her away, that’s what. Warned her about the Core. Not called her here. A sudden spike of annoyance made it through his pain. “And you can tell me why you ignored my warning—”
She laughed—short, no humor to it at all. And then she walked over to the horse—a luminous gray with great dark eyes and the baroque head from every old European statue Dolan had ever seen. He greeted Meghan with a gentle bump of his nose, and the halter lead rope between them was merely a token as she led him out of the house.
He was still absorbing the fact that she hadn’t answered him when he fell asleep.
When he opened his eyes, it was to find her saddling the horse outside the house while the animal nibbled at last year’s dry grasses and stripped the new leaves from a nearby ash. Sunlight played along her bare arms as she gave the horse a last stroke beneath his heavy mane, highlighting toned, lightly tanned muscle. She wore a T-shirt; the jackets were tied around her waist, an absurd tangle of sleeves obscuring her lower body. Her arm glistened with salve, and as she returned to the house, he winced at the bruising around the puncture wounds. Widely spaced, made by a huge feline paw. His.
“You shouldn’t have been here,” he said. “I warned you—”
She laughed again. “Right. And what was I supposed to do about that? If the Core wants me, it probably gets me. But you know…they could have had me any time in the past fifteen years. It’s not like anyone was watching out for me.”
“They were here,” Dolan said, and his emotional hackles rose just thinking of it. “Last night. You would have played straight into their hands.”
She shrugged. “You were the one who called me.”
“I did no such—” But he stopped, and thought twice. He’d warned her. He’d meant to warn her…hadn’t he? Surely he hadn’t transmitted any of his…
Right. His dying man’s desire to see the face that had haunted him for days.
There wasn’t any way to finish what he’d started to say, so he left it at that. He said, “So you came out to help the Sentinel?”
Her lingering humor dropped away; her chin lifted slightly. Sharp features; sharp-eyed glance. “I came out to help you.” She sat quite suddenly on the hearth, a rise so short that she had to cant her knees together. Her voice was quiet with both wonderment and horror as she asked again, “How did they do that to you?”
Dolan looked