there, Lucas realized, it could’ve been funneled to the mercenaries. “I need to talk to the SkyElm alpha face-to-face.” No matter his disdain for the other man’s decisions, Lucas wouldn’t judge him guilty of Naya’s attempted kidnapping without firm evidence. The Consortium was too good at setting friend against friend, at creating fractures where none had previously existed.
“You planning to leave DarkRiver territory?” Dorian straightened, his leopard a wild green presence in his eyes. “Luc, you know that’s not a good idea.”
“I can’t ask him to come here, not when he must be all but broken.” The other alpha had lost his pack, his mate, and his child in a single horrifying day. Lucas wouldn’t wish such hell on anyone. “I have to go to him.”
Letters to Nina
From the private diaries of Father Xavier Perez
April 30, 2074
Nina,
The villagers are safe.
The Psy assassins have given up and gone away, and the people we saved know to stay in their hidden new home until things change on a far wider scale.
Today, for the first time since I lost you, since our people were butchered, I felt God in my heart again. And in the ray of dawn sunlight as it touched a child’s peacefully sleeping face, I saw hope.
The Psy soldier with whom I work in the darkness to thwart his fellow assassins shows no one his face, but these villagers know mine, trust mine. I am one of them after all, my skin the same dark shade, my features familiar, my language theirs, my race human.
Now, however, it seems I’m also a rebel in a sense I could’ve never predicted only months earlier. I fight alongside a man I would’ve once murdered for the simple fact he is Psy and it was Psy who so viciously stole everything from me. That shames me and yet I write it here because I want you to know who I’ve become since I lost you. The good and the bad.
Nina . . . I miss you.
Xavier
Chapter 25
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AFTER Dorian told Lucas about SkyElm, Lucas’s sentinels and mate worked together to cover his absence while he moved alone out of the territory. It was the fact that he was on his own that had most worried his people, but a single panther moving alone in the night was a shadow. If he could’ve made the trip overland, there would’ve been zero risk of detection, even from other predatory changelings, but that would’ve taken too long, so Lucas had called on a party he’d never expected to need: Nikita Duncan.
Sascha’s mother owned more than one airline as well as a fleet of private craft. She’d got him on an unlogged flight on a small plane piloted by a man she assured Lucas wouldn’t betray him, even under threat of torture. Sounded good, but Lucas wasn’t about to trust anyone in her employ. Had Dorian not been out of commission, the sentinel would’ve been his pilot of choice. Still, since Nikita considered Lucas integral to Sascha’s continued security, he was probably safe.
Getting into the already-warmed-up and ready-to-go plane on an isolated runway outside the city, he chucked his small pack inside, hauled himself in . . . and recognized the scent of the pilot. “When the fuck did you get a pilot’s license?”
Max Shannon put his arm on the back of his chair and grinned over his white-shirted shoulder, his features a handsome mix of Caucasian and Asian and his black hair neatly cut. The dimple in his left cheek had fascinated Naya the last time Max and Sophie visited DarkRiver territory. Lucas’s cub had kept touching it, as if trying to figure out how it was made.
“Seemed a good skill for a security chief to have,” Max said in answer to Lucas’s question. “Especially when the woman I’m meant to protect is constantly on planes.” He lightly tapped the control panel in front of him. “Preflight check’s done.” The other man began to get up. “I just need to close and lock the door.”
“I’ll do it.” Thanks to Dorian, Lucas was experienced at the process, but he made sure Max had a clear line of sight to his actions. “Pass the pilot test?”
Giving him a thumbs-up, Max angled his head forward. “You want to sit in the copilot chair?”
“Nowhere else,” Lucas said before sliding into the seat. He’d forgotten there were two people in Nikita’s organization he did trust: Max Shannon and his wife Sophia Russo.
Max had helped DarkRiver more than once, plus, since Sascha