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)
Oh, how she loved these two, and how she loved the man who’d disappeared into the night-cloaked forest. The mating bond pulsed strong and fierce inside her chest, and she knew he was fine. He was a sentinel. One of the deadliest men in the pack, for all that he now had silver in his hair. There were very few people in this world who could take down Nathan Ryder.
But there were also very few people who could get through DarkRiver’s defenses, and she didn’t think the ocelot healer had done it on her own. Who had she brought with her? If it was an enemy, that would complicate matters considerably. For now, she hugged her boys and said, “Come on, let’s go inside and give our friends some time to be together.”
She’d make food, because food was comfort. And she’d give up on the idea of getting these two tiny felons and their friends back into bed anytime soon. Some nights called for special measures. As for school—well, she knew their teacher, and she’d make sure the children did at-home learning when they woke up the next day.
Tonight was about love, about family, about pack.
Chapter 25
PRIORITY NOTICE
Attention: Ena Mercant
Please be advised that we are currently holding a child who claims to be of the Mercant line. Unless you respond prior, he will be held in our custody for the next thirty-six hours before being sent to child resettlement services.
Child’s DNA scan attached for familial DNA matching purposes.
—Bureau of Death and Family Notification Services (9 May 2059)
IVAN UNDERSTOOD FAMILY. Every Mercant understood family.
Cor meum familia est.
My heart is family.
It was the founding tenet of their clan.
So he understood that Soleil had found hers. The way the children had jumped on her with such unfettered and innocent joy had been confirmation enough—and he’d known he should get out of there.
But should he do that, Soleil would feel the need to hide his identity. She might not remember the Ivan he’d been once, the one with whom she’d played in the forest, but she was a woman of courage and honor. He’d helped her. She wouldn’t give him up—and in so doing would strike a blow against her own deepest need: to be accepted into this pack that held the last remnants of her family.
Family was precious. Especially when you didn’t have any.
So he didn’t run, didn’t slide away into the dark. Even a leopard of Nathan Ryder’s caliber would’ve never found Ivan if he’d used the minute’s head start he could’ve had. He was very good at being a ghost, had been born a ghost.
And though his family would remember him, he would also die a ghost, the man he’d become in the more than two decades since Grandmother first took his hand erased by the spider’s voracious hunger. No hint of the Ivan who talked high fashion with Arwen, or the one who’d gone to a bear party because that mattered to Silver, and not even a glimmer of the Ivan who sometimes walked on the cliffs of the Sea House with Grandmother.
Today, however, he was still himself, could still make choices that were all his own. So, positioning himself in a beam of moonlight, he put up his hands to show that he held no weapons.
Nathan found him unerringly in the dark, his eyes aglow with the leopard’s night vision. A rumble from his chest, the warning of a predator who’d located an intruder close to home—close to his mate and cubs.
Ivan knew that he was in a perilous situation. Nathan was considered one of the calmest heads in DarkRiver, but Ivan was in a place that he should not be; he’d aroused Nathan’s most primal protective instincts. Right now, the leopard was closer to the sentinel’s skin than the human side.
What Ivan said now could be the difference between a bloody fight to the death and the resulting ripple effect it would have on Soleil—or peace. Parting his lips, he said, “I had to help her find her family. Family is everything.”
A frown on the leopard sentinel’s face, the easing of the rumble in his chest.
“Ivan Mercant.” Nathan’s voice wasn’t quite human. “How do you know the ocelot?”
“Soleil,” he said. “Her name is Soleil Bijoux Garcia. I was the one who found her badly injured body after the SkyElm massacre.”
“There were meant to be no other survivors.”
“She was misidentified as human—and by the time she was aware enough to seek out her pack, they were all gone.” He said nothing about her alpha’s rejection, would not make her vulnerable in that way. “She believed them to have been murdered by your alpha.”
Exhaling, Nathan thrust his fingers through his hair, glanced back toward where an older ocelot had joined the other three. “Shit,” he said. “No wonder she refused to tell Tammy and Luc anything.” He nudged his head. “Come on, you’re in this now.”