Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,51
on our part, cat.”
“Sometimes even sharks have to take a leap of faith.”
Miane’s lips curved at the implied question about her changeling nature, but there was no humor in her eyes. “I’ll kill Tanique Gray if he betrays us.”
Vaughn knew that should Miane attempt to take such an action, he’d have to get in her way. His jaguar, too, would never forgive betrayal, but like him, Faith had already lost one sibling. Vaughn didn’t think she could bear the loss of another. But he also had total conviction in his mate’s abilities—even when she didn’t have a vision, Faith “saw” things.
Like this morning, she’d insisted he wear his leather-synth jacket when he absolutely hadn’t intended to go out on the jetcycle today. If he’d refused to listen, he’d have had to return home to get it barely an hour later, after one of his packmates asked him for a favor that necessitated a trip to the city. And three days earlier, she’d called Tamsyn to tell the healer about a deal she’d seen for good quality chocolate chips.
“I bought them,” Tamsyn had said to Vaughn when they ran into each other yesterday. “Then today, Roman comes home and reminds me I promised to make chocolate chip cookies for his and Jules’s entire class after they finished a big project. I totally forgot, would’ve had to scramble if Faith hadn’t given me that tip.”
Small things, miniscule even, but they added up. “I don’t think you’ll have to kill Tanique,” he told Miane, but held her gaze so she’d know he was as big a predator as her, his dominance such that even Lucas couldn’t make him do anything. Vaughn’s jaguar chose to follow Lucas’s panther because that panther had earned its respect and loyalty. “Understand, he’s family.”
Miane didn’t blink. “I suspect you and Malachai would get on well,” she said before ending the call.
Vaughn received a message five minutes later asking him to share teleport coordinates. “I’ll be back soon,” he told Faith and grabbed his dirty T-shirt, which he’d thrown into the laundry basket.
Running out of his lair, he went full tilt for twenty minutes, until he was surrounded by trees that all looked identical. He hung his tee, with its distinctive Celtic design on the front, from a branch. Then he took a photograph to send to Miane. It didn’t surprise him in the least when the teleporter who appeared with a small storage box was a tall male dressed in Arrow black.
After his recent lifesaving actions in bombings and disasters, Vasic had become famous worldwide. But Vaughn knew him from well before that. He hadn’t been there the day this man with his winter gray eyes brought in the medic who saved Dorian’s life, but he’d heard the details from those who’d witnessed the incident. Without the help provided by the teleporter and that medic who the entire world now knew as a power, Vaughn’s fellow sentinel and friend would be dead.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the box Vasic held out. “What did Miane promise you?” Vasic wasn’t a commercial teleporter, so it wasn’t as if BlackSea could’ve hired him.
The other man’s gaze was pure frost. “What has she promised you?”
Vaughn bared his teeth. “Not a thing.”
He didn’t think the Arrow would respond, but Vasic said, “Life isn’t always a cost-reward ratio. It’s something the Psy long forgot. Some things we do in the name of friendship—or because it’s the right thing to do.”
Vaughn had already liked this Arrow who didn’t back down in the face of a predator’s challenge, but right then, he had the sense he might one day come to call Vasic a friend.
• • •
NINETY minutes later, Faith and Vaughn dropped a sleeping Naya off at Tamsyn’s place, where Sascha was having a meeting with the healer and a number of the pack’s submissives. They then drove toward Tahoe in a high-speed vehicle. And now here Faith sat in a small conference room, her mate at her side, waiting for her father and her brother.
She’d become accustomed to keeping her face impassive when walking into meetings with her father. Anthony had made it clear the charade that theirs was, was nothing but a business relationship that had to continue post-Silence. PsyClan NightStar might be powerful, but it had powerful enemies, too. Anthony was a highly visible target. He refused to make Faith one when she’d successfully settled into a non-public life.
“I’ve lost one child. No more.”
Faith remained at some risk because killing or even badly