Sentinels: Alpha Rising. Doranna Durgin

looked the old man straight in the eye—only the faintest hint of threat in his eye, at the edge of his lip. Gone alpha, because with Aldo there was no giving ground. Not when questioned about pack matters.

      Aldo offered instant sulk, which was also as it should be. “Just asking, just asking.”

      Lannie waited another moment and said, “Good tea, Aldo. Thanks.”

      Aldo straightened some. “Sure,” he said. And then, very carefully, “It’s just that if...well, if you weren’t...I mean, I would want to know. Just in case.”

      Lannie didn’t even know what to do with that, so he did nothing—his thoughts already tugging back to Holly, and the very thin file at his disposal—the first pages of which had been all about her brother Kai and his extreme sensitivity to the land, and to all traces of Core magic. Unlike any other known Sentinel, Kai could instantly, reliably, perceive the presence of the new silent Atrum Core workings.

      Lannie wasn’t certain that Lily and Aeron Faulkes had chosen the best course by bringing their small family to this area. The Core princes and posses preferred their comforts and amenities; they preferred hiding within clusters of humanity. And unlike Sentinels, so many of whom gravitated toward the land, those in the Atrum Core were related by blood line and activity but not by nature. They had no others; they had no sense of the Earth and no ability to navigate its unseen ways.

      They never heard Lannie’s song.

      He looked up, realized Aldo was still waiting, and said, “Something else?”

      Aldo fished in one baggy jeans pocket and pulled out Lannie’s phone—last seen in Holly’s possession as she headed out for her errands. “This was ringing in the truck.”

      Lannie scowled at it. This was not a place he brought the phone. “And it couldn’t have waited?”

      Aldo shrugged, radiating inoffensiveness—which only meant that he’d done something he likely shouldn’t have. “She called Regan Adler. Regan Adler called back.”

      “Give me that,” Lannie growled, holding out his hand. “Go help Faith prep the store for closing, and I’ll put you on the clock for a couple hours.”

      Aldo brightened, handing the phone over with a new energy. Brevis covered Aldo’s basic needs, but picking up sporadic hours at the feed store added a tiny bit of luxury to his spare life. Sporadic because that was all Aldo had ever been, and because in these past weeks he’d only become more so. “Appreciate that, Lannie.”

      “So will I, if you keep Faith’s mind on her work. Brevis spooks her, you know that.” Not so much as it used to, but Aldo would take it to heart. “Git, then.”

      Aldo hustled back to the barn, though not without turning back to offer, “Want me to put hay by the door for those mules?”

      Lannie lifted his head in thanks, already absorbed again by the contents of the folder, by the phone in his hand...by the deep tug from his wolf. Find her. He pushed against the bridge of his nose, hunting focus, and reached for the folder. But the next page turned out to be a scant recitation of Holly’s circumstances—her tidy little cottage house in Upper Michigan, the sketchy notes of an upbringing that emphasized her independent nature, her steadfastly non-Sentinel lifestyle

      He thought of Jody. He couldn’t help but think of Jody. The woman had been raised Sentinel, but without humility. She’d never been exposed to the consequences of her reckless ways, but had been protected from them. Her full-blooded nature and brilliance with stealth had put her in the field; her inability to mesh with her team had put the team in his hands...with only a few short days to integrate them before they’d gone south to deal with an exotics smuggling ring.

      He’d done his best. He’d connected instantly with her—he’d felt her brilliance, her bright spark of life. And maybe she’d understood at that...

      But she hadn’t had time to live it. To practice it. And she’d gone out in the field and gotten them all killed.

      He’d felt that, too.

      And now here was Holly. Yanked from her home, from her life, from her very way of being. There was no telling how enmeshed she’d been in her surrounding territory, if she was anything like her brother—whether she knew it or not.

      Her occasionally palpable resentment...

      He deserved it. They all did. And if she had any idea she was working with an alpha still reeling from failure and its resulting disaster...

      He picked up the phone.

      * * *

      Holly found herself back up at the well house for the second time that day, only this time she turned around to glare down at the amazing vista and think at it with loud, angry clarity. I am not yours!

      That wasn’t quite enough, so she did it out loud, too. “I am not yours!”

      Her words rang loudly in the evergreen-studded landscape, and she should have felt just a little bit silly.

      She didn’t. And she hoped someone was listening.

      Even if no one answered.

      “Bother,” she grumbled, and sat on the crest of that final hill to look down on it all. A massive canine paw print was pressed into the dirt at her side, and she stared at it for a good long while.

      Wolf? Boy, wouldn’t that explain a lot.

      If her family had stayed within a brevis, would she know what her other was? Would she have tried to take it? Would she be initiated, and secure in her Sentinel abilities?

      “The big question is, do I care?” She slapped her hand over the paw print, obliterating it, and propped her chin in her hand, looking out over Lannie Stewart’s land. Maybe it wasn’t the thick green woods in which she felt so at home...but if she quit trying to see it through Michigan-colored glasses, the undulating land did have its own beauty. This morning the sky had been crystal clear, bluer than blue and bigger than big. This early evening it was still big enough, but giant, towering clouds shifted across the sky, brilliant white above and glowering bruised blues below and scudding distinct shadows across the ground.

      Holly lifted her face not to the sun, but to those clouds—drawn to the majestic purity of them. Without thinking, she stood again—stretching herself tall, arms reaching high and fingers spread wide, every bit of her body yearning to touch those stormy clouds.

      She didn’t. She couldn’t. She came off her toes in a huff of disgust, not even sure what she’d been thinking.

      Nothing. She hadn’t been thinking anything. She’d just been doing, one woman alone on the hillside and completely out of her own place in the world.

      She sat again, this time more slowly. Rather than reach for the sky, she pressed her hands flat to the ground and closed her eyes—looking for something, anything, that might be familiar. She pushed her own awareness, seeking...

       Home.

      Or some sense of it.

      Instead she felt an ugly, distinct sense of rejection. The barrier wasn’t a slap so much as an inexorable refusal to allow her to become part of where she was. It left her sitting perched on the earth, her eyes closed and her teeth biting her lip on the sudden certainty that she might just come flying free of the ground altogether.

      She withdrew back inside herself, wrapping her arms around her torso and suddenly shivered—glancing up to find herself in the deep shadow of one of those clouds.

      Her breathing slowed; her pounding heart eased. She sat, one woman alone on the hillside, yearning for something she couldn’t define, and listening, listening for even the faintest hint of inexplicable song.

      * * *

      “Lannie who?”

      The woman’s voice at Lannie’s ear sounded puzzled, and he didn’t blame her.