Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,116
directly to a number of for-hire black ops and mercenary units. The best of the best across racial lines. Whoever it is means serious business.”
Folding his arms, Lucas said, “It also means we can’t play the client by creating a fake team to take up the offer.”
Dev nodded. “We tried talking around our contact into playing the client, asked him to send in fake images of Jon bound and gagged.” A shake of his head. “He’s too terrified of the retaliation from his own team if they find out he’s been feeding us intel. They don’t know he’s Forgotten.”
“Shit.” Lucas unfolded his arms before he clawed himself. “Contact details on the offer?”
“Throwaway e-mail address. No way to trace it—and we’ve tried.”
“So what’s the good news?” This time, he had enough of a snarl in his tone that Naya’s ears pricked up, but she was soon distracted by Noor calling for her.
“No one is eager to take up the offer.”
Lucas glanced at the leader of the Forgotten, his panther looking out of his eyes in disbelief. “Five million and no one’s eager?”
“Our contact says his own group was considering it, and we have indications that two others were as well, but all of them pulled out last night.” Dev’s eyes glinted. “It was a stroke of genius to follow up your statement by leaking images of that bloody room where you executed the alpha who came after your cub.”
It wasn’t Lucas who’d leaked those photos. He hadn’t even been aware they’d been taken. It had been one of the ocelot soldiers—the female. She hadn’t done it in defiance or rebellion. No, she’d done it to make it clear to other changelings that the surviving ocelot dominants had witnessed the execution and that it had been a righteous one. Her act had been one of solidarity with her new alpha.
Despite her unauthorized actions, Lucas had to admit he liked the young ocelot. Especially when she accepted her punishment for those actions without complaining. He hadn’t hurt her, but he had put her on the worst duty shifts for six months.
“Worth it, sir,” she’d said when he’d shaken his head at her afterward. “I didn’t want any rumors out there, just the cold, hard facts. You don’t deserve to have anyone questioning your actions.”
Hugging her against his chest, one hand cradling her head, Lucas had pressed a kiss to her hair. “You’re going to be trouble, but it turns out this pack likes trouble.”
She’d left with a dimpled smile, Rina by her side. The twenty-four-year-old DarkRiver soldier was helping the younger girl settle into the pack, and it wasn’t a chance partnership. Rina had made more trouble than most of her yearmates combined before Lucas put Dorian in charge of her training and development. Faced with a trainer who accepted zero bullshit, she’d exceeded all expectations without losing the edginess that made her Rina.
Lucas knew she’d be good for the high-spirited ocelot soldier.
“A bloody room,” he said to Dev now, “wouldn’t normally put off the kind of mercenaries who kidnap children.”
“Maybe not, but the idea of having their entrails clawed out and tied into knots in front of them, or having their dicks cut off while they scream, or their eyes plucked out before they’re released, just so you can hunt them and tear them apart with your teeth, isn’t sitting well with most. Especially when the failed attempt to snatch Naya has skewed the risk of capture into the ‘ninety-nine-percent certainty’ category.”
Lucas stared at the other man. “Knotted entrails and dicks being cut off? Blinding people so I can hunt them?”
Cheeks creasing, Dev angled his head. “Yeah, I didn’t think that was your style. Looks like someone’s been embellishing on your behalf and doing a damn good job of it. You’ve now got a reputation as a scary motherfucker with no limits when it comes to your kid and your pack.”
The Forgotten leader leaned back against a tree. “Oh, and the rumors make it clear you’re also brutally intelligent and your pack has the smarts to dig out financial connections, no matter how deep a mercenary team might bury those connections in an effort to avoid retaliation.”
Dev smiled at Naya when she padded over to growl playfully at them before making her way back to her playmates. “It’s also gotten out that you confiscated the captured assault team’s money—mercenaries hate working for free even more than they do being subjected to torture.”
Lucas had put that money into a trust for the ocelot