Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,89

to face.

“There’s a duffel back there with some weapons.” Max jerked his thumb to the back of the plane. “I packed them just in case, but I guess you can’t carry anything?”

“No, not without losing my speed and camouflage.” He’d run with a small pack as a panther before, but it changed the sleek lines of his body, made him stand out. “I don’t think this will be that kind of a confrontation.” Because if the ocelots had actually had anything to do with the attack on Naya and weren’t just being set up, they could have no reason to believe they’d been discovered.

Dorian had undertaken his data mining with extreme care, while the people he’d spoken to in the region were all allied with DarkRiver. Two had been born as part of Lucas’s pack, moved out when they mated, still had plenty of family in DarkRiver. The other was a SnowDancer wolf temporarily based in the region while he completed advanced technical training in an unusual specialty.

No, the ocelots had no reason to watch for a panther coming for them.

• • •

IT took Lucas two hours to run to SkyElm’s home base after Max landed the plane at a private airstrip that belonged to Nikita. It was hidden in the center of a sprawling spread, the landing strip concealed from casual view by the lay of the land, and even had anyone been curious, the strip was officially used for ranching operations and for the transport needs of the people who ran it.

There were no buildings anywhere within a visual line of sight.

Max had initiated the landing-strip lights by remote control, once he got close enough. The instant he had the plane on the ground and parked, he switched those lights off, plunging the area back into pitch darkness, the moon hidden behind clouds.

The quietness of that strip, however, was nothing compared to the screaming silence that surrounded the ocelot aeries. Though he’d shifted by that point, grabbing a pair of jeans off a line a mile back, Lucas’s steps remained panther quiet, causing not so much as a whisper to fracture the disturbing quiet.

Perhaps the crushing power of it was because he knew that a community meant to house near to a hundred people now held only seven. While, like leopards, ocelots were solitary by nature, this pack had a long history of living in close proximity to one another, probably because of the small size of their pack.

The survivors had to be shell-shocked.

Pushing aside the surge of pity that came from both parts of his nature, he reminded himself that SkyElm could have Consortium help. Even if not, wild ocelots were nocturnal for the most part and that tendency showed up in changelings as well, though to a lesser extent. He couldn’t count on the pack being asleep, even this deep into the night.

Guard up, he took to the trees and stayed high while he made his way toward the only two aeries where he could detect fresh scents rather than the dusty loneliness of homes left uninhabited for months. The first one he reached proved to house the children. He could just see their small bodies through the locked window: both were in ocelot form and curled up tightly together, while an adult male lay on a bed right in front of the aerie door.

Blocking it. Keeping the children safe.

The submissive.

Lucas would readily accept such courage into his own pack.

Aware he was missing the healer, the alpha, and the two soldiers, he took extreme care as he moved on. He had no doubts that he could take on all three of the dominants, but he didn’t want to turn this into a bloodbath when this devastated pack might’ve had nothing to do with the attack on Naya.

Instead of moving on to the other aerie, within which he could now see a soft glow of light, he went dead still and listened. His patience was rewarded ten minutes later. The soldiers were below, running a tight perimeter as they sought to protect the remnants of their broken pack. Those two had to be hurting bad—dominants weren’t supposed to outlive their vulnerable. They were built to fight to the death.

If the ocelot alpha wasn’t careful, he could lose both to their own demons.

Having gained a fix on them, Lucas padded silently along the tree road until he came to a halt directly outside the large open window of the aerie where two people were talking. The window itself