Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,70

snarled as she petted him to calm as he’d earlier done for her.

“Four Psy and three changelings,” Clay replied. “Lion, if you can believe it. Not strong dominants or we’d never have gotten the truth out of them so quickly, but strong enough.”

“Lion?” Lucas shook his head.

Seeing Sascha’s confusion, he said, “Lions are all about family, all about building a pride and sticking with it, more so than any other feline changelings in the world. Mercenary work is for loners.”

“Kicker is that these three are family,” Clay added. “Brother and two sisters.” The sentinel’s voice turned harsh on his next words. “They were hired to kidnap Naya. Sascha was disposable, but Naya was to be taken alive or they wouldn’t get the second half of their fee.”

Fury roared through Sascha, pushing aside any lingering echoes of guilt. She felt the same rage in Lucas. His grip threatened to crack the phone. “Who was the client?”

“All anonymous, with the drop-off to be arranged once they had Naya.” Clay’s eyes glittered, hard and feral. “But the lioness who’s the leader of the mercenaries isn’t stupid. She got her electronics person—her younger brother—to run a trace. Brother managed to link the first half of the money transfer back to a small company held by an ocelot pack out of southern Texas: SkyElm.”

Sascha frowned, unable to imagine why a pack of the smaller feline changelings, whose markings were also black on gold, would want to attack DarkRiver.

Beside her, Lucas’s claws sliced out, but his voice was rational. “We ever have any dealings with them?”

“Mercy was with me the entire time.” Clay tapped his ear to indicate how Mercy had attended the interrogation. “She ran the data as I got it and says we’ve never had any real contact with this pack. From what she was able to dig up, they’re well regarded in their region, though they’re not the strongest by a long shot. And they’re part of Trinity.” Clay’s voice took on the harsh edge of a growl. “It makes no sense unless it’s a setup, or—”

“—or they’re in the Consortium, too,” Sascha completed softly, because changelings weren’t a unanimous group by any measure. Each pack made up its own mind about any political alliances. Given how well the Consortium had almost pulled off its earlier attempts to foment trouble between all three races, as well as their success in snatching BlackSea’s most vulnerable swimmers, they undoubtedly had changeling members: advisers who were betraying their own people for power and profit.

“Rip the evidence apart,” Lucas growled, then proved his mind remained icily clear despite his fury. “There may be a deeper game in play.”

“What?” Clay swore the instant after he spoke. “The Consortium . . . or, hell, Ming LeBon may be trying to enrage us enough to take out SkyElm. Why?”

“To mess up Trinity, to make us the bad guys? Who the fuck knows? Use whoever you need to tear this down to the bones—and tap Nikita’s intel system through Max.” Lucas fisted his hand in Sascha’s hair. “We don’t make any moves until we know for certain. DarkRiver is not about to be played by a bunch of power-hungry bastards.”

PART 2

Chapter 20

SIENNA COULDN’T BELIEVE what Hawke had done. She simply couldn’t believe it! She’d just returned to the SnowDancer den after lunch with Kit and had intended to update Hawke on what the young soldier had told her about the mood of the city in the aftermath of Naya’s attempted kidnapping the previous day.

Kit had also shared some personal news in confidence, but he hadn’t asked her to keep it from Hawke. People didn’t expect mates to keep secrets from each other. And Sienna knew Hawke wouldn’t say a word if she told him it couldn’t go any further. In truth, she’d been planning to unload on him, because while she was happy for Kit, the leopard was one of her closest friends and she felt a selfish desire to tell him to delay things a little longer.

Only her mate wasn’t here for her to talk to. He’d left her a message on their private comm, inside their quarters. A message. “I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, stalking down the den corridor near the infirmary. “I’m going to wring His Alphaness’s neck, then I’m going to kick his—”

She halted before she slammed into her uncle Walker’s chest. “I have to go,” she said, trying to swing around him.

He stopped her by the simple expedient of putting a single hand on