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“I’ll attempt to cloud the mind of the leader. ” Lyon’s gaze swung to his three warriors even as he began plucking knives from his boots and shoving them in the drawer of the hall table. If they frisked him, he clearly didn’t want them finding his weapons. “If they get inside, knock them out and cloud their minds. No deaths. ”
The last thing they needed was to become a target for the humans. Kara might not be a warrior, but she could certainly understand the ramifications of the humans’ believing that the Ferals posed a danger. They’d have to leave Feral House, perhaps battle their way out, likely revealing their immortality. A disaster in every possible way.
Delaney came running down the stairs, a gun strapped to her still slender waist. Less than two months pregnant, she had yet to start showing.
“I’ll get Xavier and Pink,” Delaney said.
Skye hurried after her, then glanced back at Kara.
Kara nodded. “I’ll join you in a minute. ” Her heart was pounding at the thought of Lyon’s walking outside where all those humans would be training guns on him. While the immortals didn’t age and healed most wounds almost instantly, none of them were truly immortal. They could die. And the thought of losing Lyon terrified her.
She glanced at Jag, saw the hard granite of his jaw, and knew he was just as worried about Olivia. But he was a warrior first, and what was more, so was Olivia, and he knew it. Olivia was the best woman for this job, and Jag would keep his mouth shut even if it killed him. By the clench of his fists, Kara suspected it just might.
“Police! Come out with your hands up!”
Lyon eyed Olivia and took a deep breath. “Are you ready, wife?” he said, reminding her of her role.
The redhead gave him a decisive nod. “Ready, husband. ”
“Lynks, cover the back of the house,” Tighe called. “Everyone else, out of the foyer. ” If the cops saw several more large males, it would make it impossible for Lyon to convince them Feral House was merely an innocuous, if huge, family home.
Kara slipped into the hallway that led to both the back of the house and the basement, Lynks following. As he brushed past her, she paused. She knew she should go downstairs. That’s what Lyon wanted her to do. But she couldn’t make her feet move. Not when Lyon could die out there. Through the now-open front door, she heard him.
“What’s the problem, Officer?” Lyon asked.
“Get on the ground. Facedown!”
“There’s no need for that,” Lyon replied calmly.
Kara wished she could see what was happening. Was he clouding their minds, pushing suggestions into them? He was trying, she knew that much.
“We have a report of gunshots and screaming coming from this house,” another cop said.
Kara clenched her teeth against the lie. The house was fully warded against sound. Not even standing on the front doorstep would anyone hear the roar of the animals inside. The “report” was bogus and had probably come from the Mage just to cause them trouble.
“Kara. ”
Lynks startled her, squeezing her shoulder. “They’re going to overrun this place. You’ve got to hide. ”
She looked at the new shifter, meeting his nervous gaze. She agreed with Lyon’s assessment, that Lynks was not the one meant to be marked. He had the mien of a teacher or an accountant, not a warrior. If the humans got inside, it would be up to Jag and Tighe to contain them. She seriously doubted Lynks would be of much help.
“Okay. ” Pressing her fist against her tense stomach, she turned and strode to the basement door, slipping inside, surprised when Lynks followed her down instead of closing it behind her.
“I’m just going to check on the others,” he said.
Which would leave the back door unprotected. Coward or not, was the man stupid? “Lynks . . . ”
But as she turned to urge him to cover his post, he gripped her shoulder, too tight. A hard look leaped into his eyes, alarming her.
“I’m sorry, Kara. ”
Before she could open her mouth to call for help, he jammed his thumb beneath her ear.
Her world went dark.
Lyon kept his arms in the air, his gaze locked with the human’s in front of him. “There’s nothing wrong here, Officer. We had the television on, and the windows open. ”
“I told you it was too loud,” Olivia added tartly. She turned to the officer. “He insists on being able to hear the TV anywhere in the house. ”
Lyon’s gaze moved to another of the officers, then another still, catching their gazes, trying to calm them, to steal their wariness. If he could touch them, it would be far easier. But that wasn’t a possibility at the moment. He had to get them out of here without incident. Because there were too damn many cop cars. In the distance, gathering along the street, he could see neighbors watching the goings-on with avid eyes. If Feral House were overrun, the cops disappearing inside, he feared there would be no end to this. There were only so many defensive positions the Ferals could take before they were forced to reveal themselves. And that was the one thing they could never do. Once the humans realized shape-shifters and magic-wielders lived among them, the immortals would be forever on the run, hunted to extinction.
“This is all a misunderstanding,” Lyon said quietly to the man in front of him, his gaze once more locked on his. “There’s nothing the matter here. ”
“What’s he saying?” one of the others asked a companion on the other side of the driveway. They might be speaking far too quietly for a human to overhear at this distance, but not a Feral. “Why the hell doesn’t Jim have him on the ground?”
“Beats me. He’s one big motherfucker, isn’t he?” The cop yawned. “Damn I’m tired. And I finally got a good night’s sleep last night. ”
The man in front of him yawned as well. Lyon refrained from glancing at Olivia, but he was certain now that she’d begun draining them.
Finally, the tension broke. The officer lowered his gun with a nod. “This was clearly a misunderstanding. I apologize. ”
Lyon lowered his hands slowly in as nonthreatening a manner as possible. “Apology accepted, Officer. ”
Lyon held out his hand to Olivia and together they turned and made their way back to the house. He wouldn’t breathe easily until the humans piled into their cars and left. The Ferals would have to watch that they didn’t return.
“It had to have been the Mage,” Olivia said quietly beside him, as they climbed the brick steps to the front door. “But why?”
“That’s what we have to find out. ”
Closing the front door behind them, Lyon met Tighe’s and Jag’s gazes, then the three took up posts at the various windows, watching until the cops retreated.
“Where’s Lynks?” Lyon asked.
“Keeping an eye out back. ”
“Good. ”
Finally, the cops were gone. Tighe pushed away from the window. “I’ll get Delaney and the others. ” Three minutes later, he returned. “Roar, where’s Kara?”
Lyon turned from the window with a jerk, a vise clamping around his heart even as he turned inward and found her. He always knew where she was. “She’s on the basement stairs,” he replied even as he started for the basement himself because, good goddess, Tighe had just come that way. And if he hadn’t seen her . . .
Lyon broke into a run, nearly tearing the basement door off his hinges in his need to find his mate.
Ice formed at the edges of his thoughts, sweat broke out on the back of his neck. There was a logical explanation. There had to be. But his warrior’s instinct said otherwise.
He followed his Finder’s sense straight to the closed cellar door in front of which sat Kara’s bright green flip-flops.
No. Goddess, no! He picked up the shoes, his breath leaving his body as if he’d been slammed in the gut with a battering ram. “No!” he roared, and tore open the cellar doors, racing up into the sunshine, Ka
ra’s flip-flops clenched in his hands.
“Kara!”
He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t sense her except in the flip-flops now held within his claws. He began to run, listening, searching, his heart battering the walls of his chest.
“Roar. ” Tighe grabbed his arm. “Get back in your skin. You’ve gone feral. The cops could still be watching. ”
Lyon struggled against the raging need to rip apart everything and anything in his path. The ice spreading across his thoughts made it nearly impossible to think. “They’ve taken her,” he growled. “They’ve taken my mate! My life. ”
Tighe growled low in agreement. “The cops were the distraction. ”
Kara.
His head pounded, his mind screamed. His heart broke.
Kara!
He would stop at nothing . . . nothing . . . until she was once more safely in his arms.
Chapter Three
Today
Fox followed Kougar into the huge, formally decorated dining room of Feral House through the back door, his T-shirt plastered with sweat, his sense of frustration and helplessness mounting by the hour until he felt as if he were going to leap out of his skin. For twenty-four hours, they’d searched every square inch of the surrounding area and found no sign of Kara and no clue who’d taken her and Lynks. Unless Lynks was the one at fault, which made no sense. He’d been cleared of the darkness. But they just didn’t know.
The trail ended a quarter of a mile from the house, where Kara had undoubtedly been shoved into a vehicle. There were no clues beyond that. None.
In all likelihood, the Mage leader, Inir, had ordered her snatched for his evil Ferals, who would need her radiance every bit as much as the nine.
Fox strode to the dining-room table where it sat in front of the wide bank of windows overlooking the sunlit, wooded backyard. It was laden with pitchers of water and lemonade and heaping platters of food—everything from sandwiches and cookies to thick slabs of ham and roast beef. Meals had become a thing of the past as they searched for Kara. They ate when they could, now.
Jag and Lyon were already there, Jag downing a large glass of water, Lyon trying to stab a slice of ham with his fork, but the fork buckled under the clench of his fist, and he tossed it aside onto a growing pile of crumpled silverware, and tried again.
The Chief of the Ferals was holding on to control, barely, and it was costing him. His mouth was bracketed by lines of strain, his jaw tight enough that Fox wasn’t sure he’d be able to chew the meat if he ever got it to his mouth. Fox ached for the male. They all did.
Lyon barely looked up as they entered, his eyes without a glimmer of hope that they’d found any sign of Kara. If anyone had, they’d all know. Their best hope was Hawke and Falkyn, who’d returned from Poland about two hours after the rest of them. They’d taken to the skies and had yet to return. The worst of it was, after twenty-four hours, the nearby searching was useless, and they all knew it. Kara was far from Feral House by now and had been from the moment they’d realized she was missing. The kidnappers had used a vehicle, and the Ferals not only had no idea what it looked like, but no clue where it was going. Searches on foot and by air weren’t going to help, but they had to do something other than sit on their asses.
Rage burned through Fox’s blood. Frustration tried to claw its way out of his flesh.
Instead, they were forced to await word from their allies, Mage and Therian alike, for a list of Mage strongholds and any sign of recent activity at any of them. But so far, no one had come up with a single fecking clue.
Fox grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and downed it in one chug.
The Ferals should have been able to sense which direction Kara had gone through their natural ability to follow radiance. In the old days, it was the only way a newly marked Feral ever found his way to Feral House, which moved often. But that sense, too, had been blocked. If not for Lyon’s mating bond, which remained strong and unbroken, they might fear Kara dead.
She still lived, thank the goddess, but she was too far away to strengthen them. And in time, that would become a problem. After a couple of months without proximity to radiance, the Ferals would begin to lose their ability to shift. After two years, they’d all be dead.
If only his own useless fecking intuition would jump in and help for once. But his useless fecking gut had been useless fecking silent.
Lyon tossed yet another twisted fork onto the table.
Fox refilled his glass with water, but as he lifted it to his mouth, his hand clenched too tight, shattering the glass, spraying him with water. The frustration boiling inside of him erupted, breaking the surface with his fangs and claws.
Growling, he swung toward the others, none of whom were paying him much attention. Goddess, he’d never felt so out of control.
“Where the feck is she?”
Without warning, Jag leaped at him, ripping the flesh off his shoulder with his own suddenly sprouted claws, knocking him to the ground. “You want a fight, pretty boy?” he growled around his fangs as they began beating the crap out of one another. “Me, too. ”
A moment later, Lyon joined the fray. Claws ripped flesh, fangs dripped with blood.
Adrenaline roared through Fox’s body, the pain drowned out by the excitement. He growled and fought and nearly laughed out loud at the sheer pleasure of releasing the pent-up frustration that had been tearing him apart.
He caught the same excited gleam in Jag’s eyes. But not Lyon’s. The Chief of the Ferals’ anguish ran far too deep.
Lyon swung away first, turning his back on them, his shoulders hunched, his hands fisted, his claws slicing up his palms until blood ran in a steady trickle onto the floor. Without another word, he stalked out of the dining room. The rest of them watched him go.