Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (19 page)

It was a magnanimous concession—and she wanted to punch him for it.

As if she needed his gratitude. As if she should be thanking him for realizing she wasn’t the devil incarnate. Rachel pulled away from the warmth at her back, stalking to the bed without hesitation now. “You’re quite welcome,” she said with all the sugary sweetness of her southern upbringing.

She caught his expression—sharp, unfiltered confusion—from the corner of her eye as she dug into her small stack of clothing, pulling out the bulkiest, ugliest flannel pajamas he’d brought for her.

“I’m trying to apologize,” he said irritably.

“Oh, were you?” she asked sweetly. “I must have missed that part.”

“Rachel—”

But she was already safely closed inside the bathroom, pressing her palms against cheeks warmed by anger. The pleaser instinct that had always ruled her life urged her to open the door, accept his apology—even if he hadn’t actually
said
he was sorry—and throw herself into his arms. But she didn’t want to be that woman anymore.

Another defining moment. Rachel Russell wasn’t the doormat anymore. Turns out she wanted amends.

He’d been treating her like a criminal for weeks and she deserved a proper apology, not just thanks-for-not-being-a-slimy-Organization-lowlife-after-all.

She took her time with her shower and her evening toilette, giving him plenty of opportunity to storm off in a huff while she armored herself in layers of flannel. But when she emerged from the bathroom, he was waiting for her, leaning against the table in only a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, arms roped with wiry muscle crossed over his bare chest. Her heart lifted at the sight. He hadn’t run.

“I’m sorry,” he said as soon as the door opened. “I was wrong. Whatever happened between you and me, you’ve always helped shifters. I shouldn’t have doubted that.”

Oh my.
Those words might as well have been aphrodisiacs. Her knees turned to mush, her heart thudded eagerly, and her feminine parts clenched and heated in anticipation. “Well, all right then.”

His lips didn’t so much as twitch, but she saw amusement sparkle in his eyes at her sulky response. “You wanna come over here and let me make it up to you?”

“It might take a while to convince me you’re really sorry.” She had no idea where that flirty tone came from—a lady was never so forward—but her hawk didn’t seem shocked or appalled, if his slow, wicked smile was any indication.

He straightened from the table, unfolding his arms as he crossed the few feet between them. He reached out and hooked a finger between the top two buttons of her top, using it to tug her toward him. He lowered his head until their lips were a whisper apart.

“I think you’ll be impressed by how dedicated I am to earning your forgiveness,” he murmured.

Then his lips played over hers and for the next two hours Rachel found herself very,
very
impressed.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Will you teach me kung fu?”

“It’s after midnight,” Adrian muttered sleepily. He’d done his level best to exhaust her and they’d both dozed for a while after the last bout, but a few minutes ago he’d heard the shift in her breathing and her fingers had begun walking over his chest as she lay curled against his side.

“Are there designated kung fu learning hours?”

He groaned and squeezed her waist without opening his eyes. He’d put on the flannel pajama pants and she wore the matching top to stave off the cold, but they were mostly keeping one another warm, pressed together tightly as they had to be in the small bed. “There are designated sleeping hours, and this is one of them.”

She squirmed against him and he knew without looking that she was propping herself up to frown down at him. “What if I’m attacked by a horde of angry ninjas tomorrow?”

“Run. Never try to fight angry ninjas.”

“Adrian.” She shoved him in the ribs.

He forced himself to wake up enough to consider her request. There was no way he’d be able to train her enough to take on a shifter in one night, but he could at least give her a few pointers that might buy her a little time. He should have already.

She must have sensed his capitulation because she gave a triumphant little squeak and climbed out of the bad, dragging him with her. He reached for the sidearm he’d left beside the bed and caught her hand, tugging her toward him and pressing the grip into her palm.

“Lesson one. You will never be as fast as a shifter. Tranq first, ask questions later.”

He pulled her into the lee of his body and showed her how to aim. She cuddled back against him. “This is a very distracting instructional position.”

He swatted her behind. “Concentrate.”

She gave a breathy little laugh, but obediently sighted down the barrel.

He frowned, taking in her stance. “You’ve done this before.”

“Skeet shooting. My mama had a thing for guns.” She smiled sweetly.

“Okay then. Just remember that a dart won’t have the range of a bullet.”

“Do I get my kung fu now?”

He snorted, taking the tranq gun from her hand and setting it aside. “Lesson two. You will never be as strong as a shifter, so avoid a fight at all costs. Scream as loud as you can and then run like hell.”

“I thought that would incite them to chase me.”

“In some breeds it might trigger an instinctive reaction to hunt you, but playing dead doesn’t work when the wild animal in question has a human brain.”

“Lesson one, tranq. Lesson two, run.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “I am not very badass.”

He brushed a thumb down her cheek. “You’re human. And most of these animals have been brawling with one another in one form or another since birth. So make fighting your absolute last resort. But if you do get cornered, there are a few tricks I can teach you.”

For the next hour he ran her through the basics, teaching her vulnerable places to strike and how to identify weak points in holds and use surprise and her weight to twist out of them. She caught on quickly, but it would still be a while before the movements became automatic.

When her attempt to get out of a hold landed them both flat on their backs on the floor, Adrian caught her before she could scramble to her feet for another try. “Enough. It’s late. You win.”

She sat up, throwing a leg over him to straddle his stomach. She ran her hands slowly over his bare chest. “So I do. What’s my prize?”

My heart.
He looked up at her, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in real life, and felt that tug at the base of his soul.

She bent down, kissing him long and slow and deep, and then lifted her head just enough to murmur, “I’ll take you.”

He barely stopped himself from saying he was already hers.

The arrival of the Three Rocks lions was like the spark to a fuse Rachel hadn’t known was there. Within twenty-four hours, Grace left on some super secret mission to another shifter pack, taking Dominec and the representatives from Three Rocks with her. Kye’s team postponed their latest mission and began working with Mateo and the rest of the lieutenants on something big, though Rachel knew better than to ask for details.

Save the absence of Grace, her life at the infirmary was remarkably unaffected.

Kathy was responding well to the hormone treatment and was convinced she was already pregnant, though that was merely optimism, as it was much too soon to tell.

The other Organization prisoners had been moved away from the main compound, though Adrian had mentioned they were still on pride lands. She wondered about them sometimes. How they were faring. What would become of them. But they didn’t feel like her people anymore. If they ever had.

She’d asked Mateo about helping her track down the others who had helped her smuggle shifters out, her little rebel team, to make sure they were all safe, but it looked like it might be a while before he had a chance to breathe, let alone help her.

In the mean time, she worked at the infirmary and gave her heart ever more inextricably to Adrian. They’d fallen into a new sort of routine. Another careful truce.

He walked down to the infirmary with her each morning, leaving her to work with Moira or Dr. Brandt. While she helped there, he worked with the security forces during the day—either on the perimeter wall or helping establish contact with the various shifter prides and packs he’d visited over the years as he’d helped shifters escape. He returned for her each evening to walk her back to the cabin where they would eat together whatever food he’d brought from the dining hall and talk in front of the fire before inevitably falling into bed together.

Their strangely normal routine.

They were both well accustomed to being alone, having spent most of their lives that way, but it felt remarkably natural to be together.

But no matter how comfortable she was, there was always some small, subtle reminder that he was keeping distance between them. No matter how they went through the motions of togetherness, he still kept a wall around himself that she could not seem to scale.

Last night as she’d been drifting off to sleep, she’d found herself thinking about improvements to the cabin—a bigger bed, a dresser for their clothes—but when she’d mentioned it, Adrian had climbed out of bed on the excuse of tending to the fire, changing the subject.

Escaping.

She sometimes wondered if he’d always been that way, long before they met and been marked by the Organization. If they’d met under different circumstances, as friends rather than co-conspirators, maybe their path to love would have been smooth and uneventful. But if neither of them had gotten into the shifter extraction business to begin with, maybe she would have looked right past him without even noticing. Maybe her heart wouldn’t have stuttered a step the first time she looked into his eerily yellow eyes.

But maybe she wouldn’t have to fear the return of that look of disgusted betrayal in them either.

Things in the infirmary were quiet, most days. Grace hadn’t been exaggerating about shifters avoiding medical care at all costs.

This afternoon it was a ghost town. Brandt had taken the day off and Moira had slipped out to grab them something from the dining hall for lunch, so Rachel was alone, babysitting the machines that concocted Kathy’s treatment when the main door burst open.

A shifter guard came in, supporting one of the prisoners. The guard was extremely young and dark, the prisoner older and pale, with the beginnings of a white beard starting to form on his chin, though his hair was still more gray than white.

“Dale.”

She’d seen him in the pictures, she’d known he was here, among the prisoners, but it was different seeing him like this, face to face. They’d only met a handful of times, but he’d seemed a nice guy, much too soft-hearted to thrive in the Organization. He was a neurological researcher with the kind of compassionate spirit that would have tempted her to recruit him for her operations, if not for the fact that he also had an air of weakness—and a daughter in Cleveland the Organization threatened to keep him in line.

And right now he had a bone sticking out of his arm.

“What happened?” She rose quickly, moving to his side, focused on the injury, though she flicked a glance to the young, dark-haired guard, trying to see if the patient—as Dale had become as soon as he walked through the infirmary door—was afraid of him.

“It wasn’t me!” the younger man yelped, all but shoving Dale into her arms. “One of the other prisoners did it to him.”

Rachel took him by the shoulders, careful of the forearm, and guided him to the nearest cot. “Hi, Dale.”

“You know him?” the guard asked.

“I’m sorry,” Dale mumbled, letting himself be coaxed onto the cot. It was his left arm and it only took a glance to determine that both of the bones in his forearm had to be broken for one of them to have pierced the skin the way it had. Luckily, from the dearth of blood, none of the bone fragments appeared to have sliced through his major veins or arteries.

“I’ll give you something for the pain, Dale, and then we’re going to need to X-ray this to see if the bones are broken in more than one place before I set them, okay?” She hadn’t set bones since her ER rotation in med school, but hopefully it was like riding a bike. Or perhaps she could just make him comfortable and wait for Moira.

“I’m sorry, Rachel.”

“Hush, Dale, you don’t need to apologize.” By the looks of it, someone had taken a blunt object to his forearm. Like a baseball bat. Rachel would have to have words with the guards about how exactly another of the prisoners could have done this to him.

“It’s Leslie,” Dale said urgently, blue eyes pleading. “You remember.”

“Your daughter. Yes, I remember Leslie. We’ll get you back to her. But right now I need you to tell me if anything else hurts.” He may have taken a blow to the head or the ribs. Internal bleeding…

“I never had a choice.”

“I know, Dale. I understand. Does anything other than your arm hurt? Do you feel dizzy at all? Nauseous?”

“He’s not gonna die, is he?” the guard asked, hovering on the other side of the bed. “Xander will kill me if I let one of the prisoners die on my first shift.”

Dear God, the kid was as green as he was young. Hopefully there was someone more qualified watching the rest of the prisoners while he was here with her. “He’s going to be fine.”

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Dale said again.

She had his left arm cradled between her hands, focused on the injury, so she didn’t notice right away when his right arm moved. Neither she nor the young guard were expecting the old man to move so fast. His hand was around the guard’s tranq gun before she’d even registered the motion.

Three darts quickly appeared in the boy’s stomach and he went down like a tree, nearly braining himself on the next cot.

“Dale!”

He swung the tranq gun toward her and she reacted, striking his wrist as Adrian had shown her to weaken his grip so she could knock it out of his hands. The gun hit the linoleum and skittered away beneath another cot, but Dale didn’t give up so easily. His right fist swung toward her and in the process of dodging it, she stumbled, catching herself on the edge of the bed. While she was righting herself, he was diving for the instrument cart next to the cot. She had only a second to be grateful that the blades were kept locked up before he was lunging at her with a hypodermic.

“Dale! What are you doing?” She scrambled back.

“I have to, Rachel,” he grunted, going for her face with the needle. “For Leslie.”

Holy God, he really was trying to hurt her. Maybe even to kill her. Part of her mind frantically began to pray, even as another piece tried to remember what Adrian had taught her.

Lesson One: Tranq first.

But Dale was between her and the gun.

Lesson Two: Scream and run.

Check.

Rachel opened her mouth and let loose like a banshee—the sound taking the shape of Adrian’s name.

She pivoted and bolted for the door, but Dale leapt after her in a flying tackle, his weight hitting the back of her legs and slamming them both to the ground—a move that must have been excruciating with his arm, but he didn’t so much as whimper.
His arm.

She almost hadn’t thought of it. The instinct to
do no harm
made it almost impossible to even consider, but she twisted, grabbed his injured left arm, and squeezed.

He shrieked, but didn’t move his weight off her. Didn’t he have any self-preservation instincts?

The door burst open. Rachel twisted her head toward the sound, relief already slamming into her.
Adrian.

But the figure that charged through the door was decidedly feminine.

Petite little Moira hit Dale like a freight train, lifting his weight off her and flinging him halfway across the room. He slumped to the floor in a heap and didn’t move.

Moira moved quickly to where he lay, a menacing growl rumbling in her chest. She tested his vitals with much less care than she showed her usual patients, muttering “Unconscious,” with what sounded like disappointment. Then she turned back to Rachel, wicked black claws retracting as her hands went fully human again.

“You all right, honey? I heard a ruckus.”

Rachel sat up, taking stock of her shaking limbs. “I’m fine, I think.” Though from the feel of it, there was a hypodermic needle sticking out of her left shoulder blade.
Dale Schmetterling just tried to kill me.
Her brain couldn’t make sense of it. “Check the kid.”

Moira moved to see if the young guard was all right as Rachel used a bed to help her stand. She’d found her feet and twisted to yank out the needle when another form flew through the door.

“
Adrian
.” The needle fell from her fingers, clattering to the metal tray.

“Are you all right?” He was breathing hard and made a beeline for her, his hands lifting to gently cup her face.

“I’m fine.” She curled her arms around his waist. “You look like you’ve run a marathon.”

“I was at the perimeter when I heard you. I tried to fly, but—” He shook his head. “Thank God you’re all right.”