.

budging the weight of him. But still…budging.

       Try again.

       And again.

      Gausto wouldn’t get him without a fight. And if it meant fighting those whiskey gold eyes and pure feral grace…

      So be it.

       Try. Again.

       Chapter 3

      Jet washed her face in the tiny bathroom down the hall from her own room. It calmed her. She liked the sensation, and the soap, and the lotions—even the very basic scentless hand lotion provided in this bathroom. She liked shampoo and conditioner and flinging her head back from the faucet to send water droplets flying from her hair.

      It didn’t make sense, that. She was wolf, and wolf needed none of those things. But she liked them nonetheless.

      She had this time because Gausto was fielding a phone call—one he thought she couldn’t overhear. He’d never bothered to test her hearing; Jet thought he had guessed it was more acute than any born human’s but simply didn’t think it mattered to know how much.

      His mistake. For Jet was a made thing, might be a temporarily controlled thing…but she wasn’t truly bound to him, not by blood nor pack nor heart.

      And she knew what it was to be wild. More, she wanted it back.

      Gausto had that tone in his voice, now. The deference. Only one man brought that out in him—his Septs Prince.

      Gausto’s was a pack of many localized packs, Jet had decided. Gausto ruled one of the local packs…but just barely. He’d made too many mistakes, shown too many weaknesses, and now the alpha of all the packs combined was displeased with him.

      And no wonder. Gausto still considered his mistakes to be bold strikes against Core prey, worth the risk and worth the failure. But Jet knew the difference—and she could see it in the eyes of his men. The occasional flares of doubt, the fears that Gausto would lead them to disaster.

      Wolf packs were not so very different. They were simply less forgiving.

      And so she not only heard his phone call, she understood the byplay of it. Leaning over the sink to peer at her face in the small mirror and search for any sign of the wolf, she quite absently absorbed Gausto’s words.

      “He’s as good as contained.” Gausto’s trouser legs brushed against one another with the faintest susurrus of cloth against cloth; his footsteps sounded slightly gritty against the thin floor covering as he paced. “That amulet was developed specifically for him.” A pause. “I still don’t know how he’s evaded so many of our more subtle amulet attacks over the past year. But once I get him here, I’ll find out.”

      The eyes, Jet decided. Still wolf there. But not the face—features too refined, jaw a little too sharp. The nose was good—a strong nose, even a hint of a bump at the bridge. And the mouth…it was not wolf at all, but she liked it. She touched her lower lip with hesitant fingers, prodding the fullness of it, feeling the pliability.

      Unaccountably, thinking of Nick Carter. Of how well she knew him, through those moments with his wolf. Of how the thrill of it still lingered with her…and how the cold hard dread of what she’d done still sank deep.

      “Later this afternoon,” Gausto said, his voice still carrying that oily note, the one that came through when he thought he was smarter than everyone else but didn’t dare say so to the Septs Prince. “No, not at all—we’re completely covered. If anything, given my agent, they’re going to think it was one of their own.”

      Nick Carter, Jet thought, had the wolf in him—right there on the surface, visible for all to see even if they didn’t recognize it. His hair, for one thing. True hoarfrost, dark hair brushed with gray…not just black and white hairs intermingled, as she’d seen in some of the Core guards and the one woman who’d tended her through the early transition.

      And his eyes—not just the pale green color, but the nature of his gaze itself—steady, self-knowing. Alpha eyes. But more than all that, the way he moved, all that strength and smooth power, the impression that he always knew where he was and where everyone else was, always knew just where and how to place himself to keep the advantage. She wondered if she, too, showed the wolf in her movement.

      They had to see it, she decided. The other humanborn. They just didn’t know what it was.

      “Security has scrubbed this place clean,” Gausto was reassuring his prince. “I’ve got a table waiting for Carter. He’s going to talk like he’s never talked before.” Jet looked away from the mirror, startled, toward the sound of Gausto’s voice. Toward the meanness that had come into it. “Before this day is over, he’s going to understand just how much I owe him.”

      Jet froze there, the towel still in her hand, the dread drilling deeper. She didn’t understand all the implications of those words, but she didn’t have to—she understood his intent.

      She understood for the first time that to get what he wanted, Gausto used not only threats and punishment, he used untruths. That Gausto intended not to force postponed negotiations as he’d told Jet, but that he intended to acquire information. That he intended to do it with pain…and that he looked forward to inflicting that pain.

      More than that. He yearned to do it.

      And he was using her to make it happen.

      Marlee pondered her options. Log sheet up on her monitor screen, an Apache phrase book open on her desk—idle background reading—and the phone headset hooked over one ear. “No, seriously,” she told the field Sentinel calling in from the home. “Check to see if it’s plugged in.” And then she waited past the annoyance, the denial, the sudden silence—all the while thinking about delivery options for the virus Gausto had ordered her to insert into Nick Carter’s computer—if only they knew—and just about convinced she’d need a hand delivery. Finally she heard the sheepish acknowledgment that the Sentinel’s monitor plug had indeed wiggled loose.

      “You’re welcome,” she said, keeping her voice to strict customer service cheer. She knew she was better than this. Underutilized, underappreciated. But if she was going to stay here—if she was going to stay above suspicion—then she had to use the team spirit that ran through this office like a braid of loyalty.

      Loyalty to Nick Carter, of course.

      The virus. Yes, it would take a hand delivery. And she’d do it today, while Carter was out at the fairgrounds pretending he was still a field Sentinel after all.

      She pulled off the headset and picked up the thumbnail drive beside her keyboard, turning it thoughtfully in her hand. No big deal to create a work order for a nonexistent problem, head for Carter’s office, and infect his machine while she was “assessing” it.

      “Did you really just ask me if I had the right day?” The voice was pleasant alto and just barely familiar, and at the moment it had a touch of tooth. It also wasn’t far from Marlee’s cube, there in the entry aisle of the IT section.

      Something about the responding voice made Marlee want to lean into the sound of it, soaking up…something. Power. Security. Grounding. She closed her eyes against the impulse and shuddered. Sentinels. They had a sway over people that no one else could imagine. Just like Carter, trying to cover up the truth of what he was with GQ haircuts and GQ suits and still managing to suck the air out of Marlee’s lungs anytime he walked into a room.

      Now this one said, with just the right surprise, “Me, imply that you had our appointment mixed up? I don’t think so. Don’t think I’d do that.”

      “Nick was supposed to be here,” the woman said. “Today. Now. It’s time to get this Vegas thing sorted out. You were set up and it’s time everyone knew it.”

      He snorted. “That’s not what you said not so long ago.”

      She