Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Ignoring the flirts with a natural and warm charm, he slid in at a table that held several soldiers around his own age, and was soon chatting away with the group. That he’d integrated so quickly with his own age group despite his overwhelming dominance was the mark of a damn good leopard.
Rina went off to catch up with a few people she was training.
“Hmm.” Lark narrowed her eyes. “He’s a dominant. A really fucking strong dominant.” Glancing at Remi, she raised an eyebrow. “Are we planning to try to keep him?”
“Let’s make an effort not to pick a fight with the most powerful leopard pack in the country, hmm, Lark? Especially since they like us right now.” But he’d have been lying if he’d said the thought hadn’t crossed his own mind.
He even had the perfect argument for it: he had not a single doubt in his mind that Kit would one day be an alpha. How better to train for that than to help Remi and his people build their own pack? Then, even if he walked into a position as the alpha of an already existing pack, he’d understand what it was to grow a pack from the foundations, know all the basics.
The young leopard looked over at him just then, raising a mug of beer in his direction in a silent thank-you for the welcome into RainFire. Remi, who’d been passed a beer of his own at some point, raised one back. Whatever happened, RainFire would always be tied to Kit through Rina, which was another small bond in the network the pack was building around itself.
Now, it looked like they might even build a business connection with the Psy.
Translucent blue eyes in his mind. A woman of quicksilver and ice and mystery.
His skin tightened, his pulse rapid—and his leopard ready to play a game for which the rules might be murky, but which Remi’s instincts said was dangerously real.
Chapter 16
Abort! Abort! Abort!
—Medical alert during the second attempt at creating a PsyNet island (19 October 2083)
FIVE DAYS LATER, and Remi’s leopard woke up grumpy after another sleepless night dreaming of a woman who thought she could catch his tail that he most definitely could not trust. He was guzzling a giant mug of coffee when Lark—still chipper after her night shift—wandered over. “Wow, did you fall out of your aerie or something?”
“Didn’t sleep much,” he grumbled as he waited for the coffee to take effect. “That was a big rainstorm.”
Chewing the bite of her breakfast bagel, Lark nodded sagely. “Uh-huh,” she said after she’d swallowed the bite. “Not like you enjoy the rain or anything.”
“Go away.”
She smirked. “Worried about our resident-with-cub neighbor?”
He froze. “She’s there?”
“Uh-huh. Arrived last night. Piloted in right before the storm broke. Smooth as silk.” Lark grabbed coffee, then bumped her shoulder against his arm. “She’s fine. Still way too pregnant to be up there on her own, but otherwise okay.”
“Why the fuck is she so alone at this time?” Leopards could be loners, but pregnant packmates always had a support structure. Even if it was just friends who dropped off food while ducking the soon-to-be-mama’s wrath.
“I dunno.” Lark swallowed another bite. “I remember my cousin, Petunia, one time she said she wanted to claw off everyone’s faces because they were all up in hers, so she banned visitors from her aerie for ten days. Only exception was her mate. Petunia threatened to shoot anyone else who came near her door. Maybe our neighbor visits the cabin when she’s in one of those moods.”
Somehow, Remi didn’t think so. Auden Scott wore an air of aloneness that he found difficult to put into words. It wasn’t the kind of contained isolation that he’d sensed in fellow loners when he’d walked that road himself; this was an aloneness so profound it made his soul ache.
Which was why, even though he barely knew her, he put together a package of food that wasn’t as much about nutrition as it was comfort, then drove up as far as he could. It made sense with the food, and because he had multiple comm meetings today for which he couldn’t afford to be late.
That included his monthly check-in with the alphas in this region, where they passed on relevant intel and shared news. None of the others were feline, and he actively disliked the pompous eagle wingleader, but changelings had learned how important it was to communicate after the Psy tried to play them against each other a while back.
So they gritted their teeth and kept any growls to a minimum. At least the closest wolf alpha wasn’t an ass, and Remi genuinely appreciated the brash black bear alpha who’d once muttered that certain eagles should get their feathers plucked—this had been while only she and Remi had been on the call.