Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Ivan was well aware of the pro-Silence fanatics. “Can it be retrieved?”
“Unknown. Depends on whether the organizations have uninfected backups. I’ll set up an automatic alert to scan for any patient who fits the description you’ve given me.”
Canto didn’t know the truth of who Lei was to Ivan; he believed Ivan just felt a responsibility for the woman he’d rescued. That wasn’t out of the ordinary for a Mercant. Legend had it they’d once been the loyal knights to a king—Mercants looked after the people under their care.
Canto’s scan, however, never bore any fruit. Canto was used to finding data, and he pushed the limits for Ivan, breaking into multiple secure databases. All for naught. “I’m sorry, Ivan,” he said weeks later. “The malware infection was so bad that many hospitals wiped their entire systems, then put up SnowDancer-DarkRiver-designed firewalls.”
The SnowDancer wolves and the DarkRiver leopards had within their ranks a team that built the best computronic shields on the planet. They were meant to be impregnable. And though Ivan knew his cousin was the best of the best, he still found other hackers to test those firewalls. Each and every one failed to get through.
Ivan had also activated his network of contacts, but they all came up empty. There were too many hospitals, infirmaries, and recovery centers in play. And those had never been his family’s specialty—they just didn’t have enough connections in the medical sphere.
Ivan continued to search—and the claw marks in his brain continued to throb. He needed to see that Lei was safe and well. He knew what it was to awaken among the dead. If he’d believed in hope, he’d have hoped that she had no memories of her time buried beneath those five bodies.
Weeks turned into months into a year, and still, he couldn’t find any trace of her. When he asked the RockStorm wolves if anyone had left a message for him with them, they answered in the negative. Lei could’ve found him if she’d wanted to—because he had to believe that she was alive and healed by now. That she hadn’t tried was a message all its own.
Ivan had to stop searching for her.
If he didn’t, he’d turn her into prey … and become as big a monster as those he hunted. It was time to let her go.
PRESENT DAY:
10 AUGUST 2083
SAN FRANCISCO
Chapter 10
Changeling law is clear. The penalty is death.
—Lucas Hunter, alpha of DarkRiver (June 2082)
SOLEIL TOOK CARE to keep her breathing even and her actions unremarkable as she walked through the colorful bustle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was difficult when the scents of predators far bigger and stronger than her surrounded her on every possible side. She’d known San Francisco was a leopard town, but she hadn’t actually understood until she set foot past its borders.
Beside her, Farah shivered. “My fur’s standing up.”
“Shh.” Soleil shot her best friend a quelling glance, even though, of the two of them, Farah wasn’t the one most likely to get them busted. “There’re sharp ears everywhere. Think human thoughts.”
Farah crossed her eyes at Soleil.
Soleil almost laughed, but her heart was beating too fast, fear a slick coat on her skin. The worst of it was that it wasn’t only the leopards she could scent all around her. Another scent—darker, heavier, with a different bite to it—wove through the air. Even though she’d never before scented its like, she knew it had to belong to the wolves. There were too many threads of it for it to be any other predatory changeling, and the leopards’ powerful alliance with the wolves was well-known in changeling circles.
Any other predatory changeling who dared cross the border into this territory without permission put their life on the line. While the wolves were said to “shoot first and ask questions of the corpses,” the leopards had a softer reputation—which only meant that they might give you time to answer one question before they shredded you with their claws.
The DarkRiver leopard pack took territorial boundaries extremely seriously. Humans and Psy unconnected to a changeling group weren’t subject to the same rules—because to the animal that lived within their changeling hearts, humans and Psy weren’t a threat. Not to territory anyway.
Soleil had the scars to prove that the other races could do brutal damage.
Farah’s understanding gaze, so wise and gentle. “It’s okay, Leilei. We made it this far, didn’t we?”
Throat thick as she looked away, Soleil said, “Yes.”
A powerful scent thread, one so dominant that it raised all the tiny hairs on her body. She covered her stumble by pretending it was a loose shoelace and going down on one knee to do it up. Her fingers trembled.
“Has to be the alpha’s scent,” Farah murmured, though Soleil could no longer see her. “Deadly, aggressive, a warning to outsiders.”
Lucas Hunter.
Soleil would be dead within a split second if she came face-to-face with him. As the few surviving members of her pack were dead, young and old and even the cubs. How did this alpha justify their executions to himself? It wasn’t as if they’d been a threat to him.