Captive Mate - Eliot Grayson Page 0,49

in the Kimball territory in human form completely naked. I shifted, melting into my lynx form, contorted myself into a variety of stupid-looking poses to get the backpack situated on my back, and set out into the night.

A small creek divided the old campground from the Kimball territory, and I picked my way across it after a twenty-minute trot. I opened up all of my senses, magical and cat, collecting as much information as I could.

They had boundary wards, and at first glance they looked much fancier than the ones Nate had constructed for the Armitages. Impressive, even, with a lot of the magical equivalent of flashing neon lights and whizzing alarms. Like some cheap, desperate, off-brand Las Vegas casino — and I seriously was not going to miss being able to visit Nevada.

I wrinkled my nose and huffed. Ugh. The wards were so like Adam — all form over function.

The wards also weren’t hard to bypass; all I had to do was strengthen the spells that kept me looking like a normal old wildcat.

Wearing a backpack, but hey. That didn’t matter to the wards. I made a mental note to suggest to Nate that he modify the Armitage wards to pick up on spell components that weren’t commonly used in other contexts, in order to set off alarms for shamans who might make it through otherwise.

And I stopped dead, one paw suspended in the air.

I wasn’t going to see Nate again, not even to kill him with a water bottle. I wasn’t going to see — any of the Armitages. I shivered. What the fuck was wrong with me?

I went on, forcing myself to put one paw in front of the other and focus. Parker. Kill Parker. Leave. Never see Matthew again.

My chest ached. I must have gotten a stitch in my side from running.

One paw in front of the other.

The Kimballs had a larger central compound than the Armitages did, too. The Armitage pack house was basically it, plus a large garage and a couple of outbuildings holding tools and gardening stuff. The pack, such as they were, lived either in the main house or in a bunch of dilapidated cottages out back.

But the Kimball pack house was more of a mansion, much added-to over the years, three-storied and sprawling. They had more outbuildings, several garages, and then a few three- and four-bedroom houses not too far away, each holding large families. There were a lot of buildings to avoid as I approached.

But I made it all the way there without being seen and without, as far as I could tell, drawing any other kind of attention, magical or otherwise. Where the fuck was everyone?

I got my answer once I made it a little closer to the center of the territory. I started to hear shouts and movement, like a lot of people were very busy. It got louder, and then I smelled what seemed like half the Kimball pack, all assembled. From the shelter of a large pine’s drooping branches, I finally got a good view of the wide expanse of gravel in front of the pack house.

The house itself was lit up in every window, and the floodlights on the outside of the building illuminated a few dozen weres at least, all loading things into vehicles parked all around the driveway, and talking in small clumps. There was a boisterous energy to the crowd, the kind of bouncing, boasting arrogance men got before they went to war.

They were going to war. Tonight.

I needed to know what the plan was. I needed to warn Matthew…but why would I? If I’d been in human form I’d have slumped to the ground and covered my face with my hands, but in this one all I could do was pant for breath.

Either way, I had to know more.

I gave the milling crowd a wide berth, padding silently a few feet inside the trees, which grew in scraggly clumps all around the main compound.

My destination was one of the smaller buildings out back, basically just a lounge with a small bathroom and kitchenette, that Sam Kimball had always used as his private office and a place for his closest cronies to drink and smoke and carry on. I was betting that his brother Bill, now almost certainly the pack leader, would’ve taken it over for the same purposes. I hadn’t seen or smelled him out front, so that was likely where he’d be, along with everyone else in charge of this