“Tiger told me not to let you go,” she whispered.
Jace lifted his head, his green eyes dark. “I have to. If they find me, it will be bad for everyone here, not only me.”
“I know. I know.”
“I can’t let you get hurt because of me.” Jace traced her cheek with a firm thumb. “But I’ll fix this. I’ll find a way to come back as soon as I can.”
Deni nodded, tears filling her eyes. No reason to cry, she told herself. This was smart, and he’d just promised to come back for her.
She heard Tiger’s gruff voice in her head. Don’t let him go.
Everyone knew Tiger was a little nuts, but he’d looked at Deni as though he could see the threads of the mate bond around her heart. He was telling her to latch on to the bond and not let go, damn the consequences. But Deni needed to be sensible. If they did everything by the book, asking for official permission for Jace to move here, or she and her sons to go with him, then the humans couldn’t legally keep them apart. But permission was difficult to obtain—the human government might deny it for any number of reasons, and then it would be more difficult for Jace or Deni to sneak away to be together.
“You could always hide here until they get tired of looking,” Deni said, though without much hope.
Jace shook his head, pressing her closer. “Dylan’s right. The police might start checking the other Shiftertowns. My dad can’t cover for me for long.”
“I know.” His words made sense, but Deni’s heart ached. She tried to smile. “The next time you come, we’ll take my motorcycle out on one of the back roads and see what it can do. We’ll open it up—just us and the wind.”
“Yeah.” Jace cupped her cheek. “That sounds good.”
They kissed again, mouths seeking, needy, each of them holding on tight. Deni memorized Jace’s scent and his goodness, his taste, his hard body against hers. He was large, strong, whole, the answer to her emptiness.
From beyond them, Dylan cleared his throat, the sound rolling from the edge of the grove. Jace broke the kiss, lifting slowly away from Deni. His green eyes held anguish. “I have to go.”
“Wait.” Deni fumbled with the catch of her bracelet, an old-fashioned clasp. The bracelet had been in her family for so long, no one remembered where it had come from. She took off the bracelet and pressed it into Jace’s hand. “Keep this for me. Bring it back to me.”
Jace started to shake his head. “It’s special to you, I can tell.”
“It is. But if I know you have it, that will be special too.”
Jace hesitated another moment, then he closed his fingers around it. “I’ll keep it safe. I promise.”
Deni nodded. She stepped back from him and clasped her hands. “The Goddess go with you.”
“No.” Jace reached for her once more, his arms coming hard around her. “That’s what you say to someone you’ll never see again.”
His kiss was fierce, wild. Deni held on to Jace and kissed him back with as much force, her heart pounding and aching.
At last Jace eased away, and Deni made herself let him go. Jace laid his hand on her chest, between her breasts.
“Be well, my heart,” he said, then he turned and walked away, following Dylan into the Texas dawn.
* * *
There was no question of Deni coming with Jace to the plane. Jace understood—the fewer Shifters who left Shiftertown the better.
Jace hunkered down with a bunch of junk in the bed of Dylan’s small pickup, and Dylan tied a tarp over it all. Then Dylan drove out of Shiftertown without ceremony, heading east along the Bastrop Highway.
After a long time, Dylan took a turn off the main road, pulled over, and lifted the tarp. The road was deserted, and Jace climbed out, stretching his cramped limbs. Dylan would leave Jace here to wait for a human man to come by who would take him the rest of the way to the airstrip—they’d done this on Jace’s previous trips as well. Safer for all concerned if a Shifter wasn’t spotted driving out to an abandoned airfield.
“Be well,” Dylan said, clasping Jace in a brief but tight hug. “I’ll work on things from here.”
Jace nodded his thanks, jogged into the tall grasses, and crouched down, hiding himself, to wait. Dylan got back into his truck and drove smoothly away before any other vehicles came down the road.
Jace didn’t wait long, though it felt like forever as he lay in the dew-laden grass. Another pickup, which was driven by one of the men he’d seen this trip at the landing strip, slowed down and waited for Jace to climb inside the cab.
Fifteen minutes and an unpaved road later, Jace was back at the airstrip, boarding the small, old cargo plane a man named Marlo flew. Marlo had long ago worked for very bad men, transporting things for them from Mexico, but had given it up. Now he smuggled Shifters anywhere in the country they wanted to go.
“Let’s get up in the air,” Marlo said, ushering Jace up the little stair into the body of the plane. “The wind is getting bad. Want to get out of this system.”
To Jace, the sky was clear and beautiful, only a little breeze stirring the grasses around them. But pilots spoke a different language. Jace stowed his backpack, then took the copilot’s seat in the cockpit. He didn’t know how to fly, but Marlo tended to talk a lot on the trips, and Jace always felt better if Marlo faced forward, looking at his instruments, than if he constantly turned around to yell at Jace in the back.
Marlo did his checks, started up, checked some more instruments, waved at the ground crew, and taxied out to the grown-over airstrip. The two men at the tiny shed waved back, then returned to the pickup that had brought Jace and drove away.
Marlo sped the plane down the little runway, bouncing over ruts, then lifted off without much of a bump. The plane flopped around a little as they climbed, buffeted by the winds Marlo had mentioned, but soon they were running in a fairly smooth layer of air. The city of Austin spread out to the north of them, hugging the river and its hills, the river country receding to a streak of vivid green in the otherwise dry Texas brown.
Jace opened his hand and studied the bracelet resting in his palm. Delicate, yet strong, like Deni was. He rubbed his thumb over the smooth gold, determined to see her smile at him when he brought it back to her.
He growled. Jace already missed her like crazy, and the wildcat in him snarled at him for walking away. The torn skin on his neck hurt again, the soreness making his beast that much angrier. Whatever mitigating effects being in Faerie had given him must be wearing off.
Interesting about that. Jace let the bracelet trickle over his hand as he thought. Maybe they should try taking off the Collars inside Faerie. Then again, what if inside Faerie Shifters behaved normally and then went insane when they walked out once more?
Jace let out a sigh. He’d been full of enthusiasm about removing the Collars when he’d come to Austin, but things had changed. He no longer wanted to risk himself for what might be. He had something to lose now. If the Morrisseys wanted to experiment with the Collars so much, they could, as Fionn might say, suck it up, and test it on themselves.
His gaze returned to the bracelet, and he imagined it still warm from Deni’s wrist . . .
The plane bounced once, hard, as though it had hit some kind of airborne speed bump. Marlo shouted, “Whoa!” and grabbed for the stick as dials started spinning.
“Whoa, what?” Jace yelled over the engines that had started to roar. “You can fix that, right?”
“Shit,” Marlo said. He added quickly, “Nothing to worry about—this has happened before. I need to set down. Help me look for a place.”
“Nothing to worry about?” The plane was heading downward, leaving Jace’s stomach behind, everything in back banging and clattering. Another bump shook the plane, which nosed harder downward. The small airplane gave a profound rattle and smoke poured out the left-side engine, flames licking the wing. “The engine’s on fire!” Jace shouted. “You call that nothing to worry about?”
“The wind will put it out. Help me
look!”
“Aw, crap on a crutch,” Jace snarled.
He wrapped his hand around the bracelet and held it hard, as though it were a link to Deni herself. Goddess, Goddess, great and good, Jace began the ritual prayer, then gave up trying to remember the words. Help me. Let me be with Deni again. I feel the mate bond, for crying out loud.
The warmth in his heart he’d told himself he didn’t yet have time to think about, now suffused his body. Saying good-bye to Deni had been one of the hardest things Jace had ever done. Jace had been ripping out his heart and walking away bleeding, but he’d made himself do it, believing leaving was the right thing to do.
The mate bond meant you gave yourself to that other person, body and soul. You protected them; they healed you, and you healed them while they protected you. Jace didn’t know if Deni felt the mate bond for him—sometimes both parties didn’t share it—but he remembered the look in her gray eyes before he’d left her.
She had to feel it. They’d grown from acquaintances to lovers to mates rapidly, but it often happened like that with Shifters. Shifters formed the mate bond, then they got to know each other—throughout their long, happy lives.
And now, with Marlo fighting this tiny bird, fire whipping around the wing, and the flat ground of West Texas coming up fast, Jace might never move beyond knowing the mate bond had settled in his heart.
Tiger told me not to let you go.
Tiger, damn his crazy, striped ass, had been right. He might not have predicted this, specifically, but he’d known Jace should have made sure he stayed next to Deni and figured things out from there.
Something cut his palm. Jace opened his hand and saw he’d clutched the gold bracelet so hard it had pressed into his skin.
Jace clenched the bracelet again and shook his fist at Marlo, the ends of the chains dancing. “Fix this damned thing. I’m taking this back to her.”
“You are fucking crazy, Shifter. I need a landing strip, or I’m not fixing anything ever again.”
“Shit,” Jace said. He’d been scanning the ground, but what did he know about good places to put down a plane? Then he saw it, a flat stretch of land, unbroken, a dirt road without an oil well at the end of it. They were low enough now that he could see the way wasn’t full of rocks or hidden washes. “What about that?”
“Good enough for me.”
The plane was rattling with bone-jarring intensity, something popping in the back like a row of fireworks. Jace prayed it wasn’t really fireworks.
The road came at them, Marlo desperately pulling at the stick to lift the nose enough. The wheels were down, at least, because Marlo had never pulled them up.
“Hang on!” Marlo yelled.
To what? Jace braced himself on the instrument panel, trying not to look at the dials going around and around.
They hit the road with an upward burst of dust, grinding it so thick it coated the windows, blocking their visibility. That was fine, because grass and whatever huge weeds this part of the state grew came up out of the ground and bashed into them, winding around the burning engine and spewing the flame higher.
The plane hit something and skidded sideways, throwing Marlo on top of Jace, and whipping Jace into the window. The window cracked, and flame raced inside.
At the last minute, Jace yanked off his seat belt, hauled himself out of the chair, threw the already unconscious Marlo to the bottom of the plane, and landed on top of him. A roar of explosion met Jace’s ears, and then nothing.
Chapter Eleven
Deni was restless all morning. She tried to work in the yard, neatening her garden, but she found herself stabbing the trowel into the dirt again and again for no reason. Deni threw down the trowel and stripped off her gloves, dropping them as well.
Her arm felt bare and strange without the bracelet she wore all the time. She touched her skin there but smiled. The bracelet was safe with Jace. He’d come back to her.
Still, she was growling by the time she reached the house. Jackson hadn’t been scheduled to work today, but Will now gave Deni a good-bye hug and went off to the warehouse.
“You all right, Mom?” Jackson said, peering at Deni after they waved off Will.
Jackson looked so much like his father, his hair dark instead of light like hers and Ellison’s, his eyes a lighter shade of gray. Deni pulled him into a hug, feeling a flood of love for him. But she remembered when her mate had been dying, how the mate bond had pulled at her and sickened her . . . as it was doing now.
A reaction to Jace leaving so abruptly, she told herself. Nothing is wrong . . .
“I’m fine,” she said.
“It’s just that you look at little bit, you know . . .” Jackson frowned in worry. “Like you do when you start to go feral . . .”
He trailed off, and nausea bit Deni, the world spinning. She gripped Jackson’s shoulder. “No, don’t let me . . .” Forget who everyone is, try to attack my own children. Goddess, please!
She smelled a strong, male smell, one different enough from other Shifters to make her wolf’s hackles rise. Deni growled and spun around, instinctively stepping in front of Jackson, protecting.
Tiger stood at the edge of the yard, having suddenly appeared as he usually did. Deni took a deep breath, willing herself to calm.
“You let him go,” Tiger said.
Deni shook her head, the nausea still churning. “I didn’t have a choice.”
He waited until she came to him, not violating Ellison’s territory. Deni felt herself drawn to him, though, as though she needed to go to him. Unnerving.
Tiger let his hand hover a few inches from her chest, as he’d done last night. “Something is wrong.”
Fear washed cold through her. “How do you know?”
“The mate bond.” Tiger closed his fingers over empty air. “It’s telling you.”
The logical Deni wanted to argue, to deny. The feral beast inside Deni knew. Jace was in danger.
Tiger pinned her with his yellow stare, then turned around and walked away. Deni’s heart beat faster, and she almost snarled when she felt Jackson’s warmth suddenly behind her.
She blinked, Jackson’s worried face coming back into focus. “I’m all right,” she said to him, drawing a deep breath. “I need to make a phone call.” She hurried into the house, found her cell phone, and rushed across the street after Tiger to ask for the phone number of Eric Warden and his son, Jace.
* * *
The snow leopard choked on the black smoke, paws scrabbling at the hole in the fuselage to find air, any air. He burned himself on the hot metal and snarled, but he needed to get his nose out of the plane and breathe.
More scrambling, using Shifter wildcat strength and huge claws to tear into the metal. His cat brain reflected that having someone like Ronan the Kodiak bear around would be very useful right now, then he went back to the task at hand. Human thought fled, and animal ones took over.
Hole wider. Heave from back legs, wriggle spine, pull with shoulders, scramble out. Jace landed on top of the wreckage—on the side of the plane that had tipped over—and tried to take a deep breath. Too much smoke. He had to get away.
The engine was burning merrily, and Jace’s cat nose smelled fuel. He needed to run, now.
A groan made him turn back, his claws raking against metal. A human lay in the wreckage, a lean man with a scraggly beard who was a little bit smelly. Marlo, his brain reminded him.
Jace was Shifter. He didn’t need a human slowing him down and returning him to captivity. Now was his chance to run, to be free, to find a place where humans would never hunt him down. He’d get word to his mate somehow, she’d come to him, and they’d live in blissful solitude forever.
Another groan. Jace’s ears went flat on his head, his cat instincts telling him to run and not stop. But he turned and lowered his body back into the wreck.
He found Marlo trapped under a pile of metal and junk, barely alive. Jace shoved at the debris, trying to reach him. Something in Jace’s bra
in told him to shift back to human so he could lift Marlo, but his body wouldn’t obey. Being animal was the best way to survive, so animal he stayed.
Fire flared high, and the temperature in the wreck doubled. The smoke thickened. Jace couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cough, could no longer see. He put his mouth around the back of Marlo’s neck and heaved.
The trouble with humans was they had no scruff. If Jace bit down too hard, he’d sever the man’s spine and kill him. Not enough, and he wouldn’t be able to carry him.
Jace finally got a decent hold on Marlo’s neck and shirt, and dragged him out from under the debris. With the last breath in his lungs, Jace clawed his way up through the hole again, weighted down by the extra body. He dropped Marlo on top of the plane, seeing that he’d cut gashes into the man’s neck.
Out here Jace could get his breath, but it was still tainted with the heavy smoke. Marlo lay unmoving, and Jace couldn’t tell whether he was breathing.
He got his jaws around the man’s shirt and neck again and scrambled off the wreckage to the ground. Once he felt the dirt under his feet, he ran, loping almost sideways as he dragged Marlo with him. Marlo’s feet bump-bumped over the dry Texas grasses.
When they were about fifty feet from the plane, the fire caught the fuel’s fumes and exploded. Fire washed over Jace, who threw himself on top of Marlo. Jace smelled his fur burning and drew in a lungful of volcanic air. Burning metal rained around them, sparking on the dry grass, which obligingly caught fire.
Jace hauled himself up, knowing he was on fire, and dragged Marlo down into the sparse rocks that lined a shallow wash. The wash was dry, no water under the blank blue sky, but it might protect them from the flames.
Jace dropped Marlo and rolled over the rocks, writhing desperately to grind out the fire in his fur. Marlo lay unmoving, bloody and burned, but he didn’t smell dead.
Now that he wasn’t burning alive and could breathe, Jace noticed all the hurts in his body, cuts from crawling out of the plane, abrasions and rawness from shielding Marlo. His left paw hurt like hell, a stinging pain that meant he’d cut himself deeply.