Part 4 (1/2)

”He?” Dr. Carrington asked in surprise, but she hurried from his office without answering further, bustling past a tall man with black eyes, who, for a moment, gave her a kind of pause. When she turned back, no one stood in the hallway at all. With a s.h.i.+ver, she walked onward down the polished floors, the echo of her footsteps the only sound behind her.

”She's been taking rock and soil samples,” Scott said, watching Jared across the meeting table where the mitres drawings were spread. ”Turned them in to one of her professors.”

Jared lifted his eyes, and Scott answered his unspoken question. ”She's a geology student.”

Jared nodded, turning his attention back to the schematics. They'd paid for these blueprints with blood many times over, smuggling them out of the Antousian-controlled borderlands. All in hopes of gaining access to hidden Refarian technology-technology that could turn the tide in the war that waged on their own planet, and had spilled over onto Earth in the past six years. Technology left here two hundred years ago, at a time when many of the Antousians had still been their allies.

Jared studied the various chambers, the mapped catacombs, but his mind strayed again. Back to the human. All his life he'd been set apart; few spoke to him without filtering every word, which meant that few truly touched his soul. Yet she'd opened to him-and easily. Oh, far too innocent for this conflict, he chided himself, thinking of what a gift such innocence would be. And far too alien.

Should he ever form a match, there would be expectations. And, by the G.o.ds, he knew what they were, as surely as he saw Thea eyeing him from across the meeting room. Giving her blond curls a flirtatious toss, she smiled. He frowned back at his cousin, and repressed the urge to growl his dismay aloud. Equal match or not, he could never feel anything for his fellow soldier. Beautiful to a fault, she left his hot Refarian blood ice-cold, no matter how many times his council urged their mating.

”Jared,” Scott snapped, glaring at his leader. ”Are you listening?” No other person in their midst would dare speak to him so audaciously. But Scott was practically his brother, and knew the boundaries he could push.

”You're still angry,” Jared observed.

Scott snorted, leaning over the plans. ”Stop watching Thea and pay attention to what I'm saying.”

This time he did growl. ”Thea doesn't interest me.”

”So you've said, sir.” Scott inclined his head respectfully.

”What's that supposed to mean?”

Scott leaned back in his seat, staring out at the woods beyond the full windows. ”There's fear for your life.”

Jared folded his arms over his chest defiantly. ”Always has been.”

”No, Jared.” Scott leaned close until his piercing eyes blazed like lasers. ”These chances you've taken lately have left fears within the people.”

”The people,” Jared repeated dully, sensing the direction this conversation was headed.

”The council.”

Jared blew out a furious sigh. ”I have little patience for the council.”

”If you do not marry-do not have children-the line ends with you.”

”The people don't need a figurehead,” he argued softly, glancing again toward Thea. ”They need a leader. And a leader doesn't need a lifemate.” He believed strongly that he should remain unattached and focused strictly on military leaders.h.i.+p. In fact, the thought of marrying anyone always felt wrong, on the most fundamental level. ”I remain purposeful in my intentions.”

”Then why do you keep dwelling on the human?”

Jared shuddered, staring back at his best friend, who fixed a wry smile on him. Blast Scott and his soul gazing, Jared mentally cursed.

Scott wasn't going to back away from the topic, however. ”Well, sir?” he pressed, tapping his finger on the meeting table for emphasis.

”I will not marry,” Jared snapped, ”and if you hear rumors from the council again, tell them as much.” He rose to leave, feeling his hands tremble and his heart race beneath his ribs.

”They don't know about the human,” Scott answered in a low voice. ”I'm asking as your friend.”

Jared paced the length of the pine-paneled meeting room, raking his open palm over his short hair. It bristled beneath his fingertips, still an unfamiliar sensation. Until recently, he'd worn it long, but had wearied of the constant feel of it around his face, and so had shaved his head. It had grown out some, but not completely. He stopped before the large fireplace and studied the licking flames and the smoldering embers beneath. The banked fire steered his thoughts again in the direction of the human. Kelsey Wells. He spun the name in his mind, liking the sound of it. He'd encountered many of her kind in his tenure on Earth, many young women with nubile, arousing bodies. Many Refarian women, as well, who would have taken to his bed without argument, but there was something familiar about her that transcended the bond they'd formed on the sh.o.r.e, something that had been perplexing him ever since.

His gaze traveled upward to the fireplace mantel, where someone had placed fresh winter flowers. Narcissus, they were called. Life, even in this cold, forbidding landscape. That was it, he realized, his ordinarily serious face breaking into a full smile. Kelsey had aroused something he thought dead in his heart. He spun to face Scott, who sat at the polished meeting table, waiting.

”This Kelsey Wells...” Jared paused, trying to find the words, and thought of how she'd opened to him. How trusting she'd been-how unafraid, even in the face of obvious danger. Her brave innocence had thawed something cold in him, something he thought the Antousians had killed long ago. ”She made me feel alive,” he said, planting one worn boot on the brick hearth. ”Very alive, I'm afraid.”

Scott's dark eyebrows shot upward in amus.e.m.e.nt. ”While you were nearly dying?”

”Strange, I know.”

Scott leaned back in his chair, studying Jared. ”Maybe it was all a hallucination.”

Jared shook his head. ”She opened to me.”

”She did not.”

”Scott,” Jared insisted, voice rising as he crossed the room and took his seat at the table again. ”I bonded with her.”

”So you told me,” Scott said with a roll of his brown eyes. ”All for a data transfer.”

”It was something more,” Jared explained hoa.r.s.ely. He dropped his voice much lower, so none of the others would dare hear-especially not Thea. ”It wasn't just me, Scott,” he explained. ”I think, well, that... we bonded together.”

”Commander,” Scott whispered, leaning close across the table. ”Were you insane?” Both men knew the significance of a two-way bond with a stranger-an interspecies bond at that.

”I had to protect the mitres,” Jared offered lamely again.

”But you didn't need her bonded to you,” Scott said in a gruff whisper, shoving back from the table with an angry gesture. ”And for that, my friend, you cannot offer any excuse.”

”Excuse for what?” Thea asked, pulling a seat up to the table. She might have been his supposed destiny, but as she stared at him with those ethereal blue eyes, always expecting something that he was unable to give, he squirmed as usual. ”Excuse for what?” she repeated, frustrated at the veiled looks Scott exchanged with Jared. ”Listen, you two can't expect me to be effective if you're forever shutting me out,” she complained.

”Commander Dillon is unsettled by my seeming recklessness,” Jared answered carefully, staring at the plans to avoid his cousin's blue gaze.

She lifted a hand to his shoulder, which was still bandaged even though it was mostly healed. ”How does this feel?” she asked, turning her touch into something of a caress.

”I am well,” he rumbled, ignoring her hand. Finally, she dropped it away.

”Good,” she said, ”Because we have a situation this morning.” Thea and several highly intuitive soldiers at the main base were able to communicate telepathically, which kept their risk of detection to a minimum. It was not uncommon to see Thea in a reflective position by the fire for hours, or outside on the deck, utilizing her vastly developed skills of perception. Listening, receiving, or just waiting- all through the unaided use of her mind.

”Anika and Anna are on their way now,” she said.

Jared opened his mouth to question her further, but at that precise moment a pair of female soldiers entered the meeting room. All of his troops looked a bit alike, thanks to their uniforms and their military bearing, but these two were identical twins, and they shared a grim expression. Jared sensed fear- smelled it on them even before his energy made contact with theirs.

”Sir,” Anika announced, out of breath. ”We've been patrolling Mirror Lake.”

”We were hawking it,” her sister explained, black eyes fixed on him. Changelings, the twins were capable of a.s.suming simpler forms: in this case, gliding over the lake as hawks, surveying the scene.

”Go on,” Jared urged with a nod.