dark that if he didn’t already know Sheena, he would be afraid of what it hid.
This was what it meant to be a hellhound. Until she learned to control the maelstrom inside her, even humans would feel on edge around her. Shifters would run screaming. Who wouldn’t, faced with something like that?
Fear streaked like lightning through the clouds surrounding Sheena’s mind. Fleance’s heart beat faster as they touched against him. It was pure adrenal reaction, on her part as much as his. The same burst of panic that had escaped him when he first set eyes on her.
And she hadn’t run.
He’d never had a chance to save any of the others. But this was his chance to save her.
*Time’s a wasting, kiddo.* Parker’s spine clacked as he stretched. He wasn’t even putting on an act of staying alert now; it was obvious that Fleance wasn’t a threat. *Do we have a deal?*
He wasn’t. Exhausted and bleeding, heartsick and desperate, Fleance knew it was true.
A shiver shuddered through him. No way out. Just like before. All those long years of trying to hold onto some core sense of self as Parker’s control eroded everything else about him.
And Manu. And Rhys.
He raised his head.
*Deal.*
10
Sheena
Sheena’s ears roared as Fleance agreed to Parker’s deal. He was going to do it. Give up the freedom he’d only just begun to believe could be his… for her.
She’d tried to tell him it wasn’t worth it. From what he’d told her, he’d been through hell as part of Parker’s pack. Wasn’t that what had brought him here: his hellhound’s need to replenish his soul by righting what Parker had put wrong?
And now he was going to be back where he started. Because of her. Because she’d been too daft to get out of the way of Parker’s hellhound when even an actual sheep would have known he was bad news. Because her sheep—her throat constricted with grief—her sheep had always believed everything would turn out all right. Well, it bloody well hadn’t this time, had it? The one silver lining was that she was evidently as shit a hellhound as she was a sheep. If Fleance had just not been the total goddamn good guy that he was and agreed to take the fall for her, she probably would have brought Parker down from the inside through sheer incompetence. But he hadn’t, because he was good, and brave, and Parker had slammed the gate on her telepathic abilities before she could convince him to save himself.
*Move.*
She barely registered Parker’s voice before her legs responded to his order. She skittered sideways, legs moving out of tandem with one another, and almost fell over. Parker ignored her as he stalked over to Fleance, who was trembling with barely controlled despair.
She tried to reach out to speak to him again. Reassure him. Anything. It was no use. Parker wouldn’t let her anywhere except inside her own head. A head that hardly felt like hers, anymore. The crystalline terror she’d felt when she first sensed Parker’s presence had clouded over, full of smoke and hot ash. It was almost as though the smoke was trying to hide her thoughts from Parker.
Well, good luck with that. From what Fleance had said it was a pointless endeavor.
She drew a ragged breath that almost choked her. Everything had gone wrong and Fleance was going to pay the price.
What a load of bullshit. The words thundered through her head. Not Parker’s, not Fleance’s—not from outside of herself. Whatever her self was now.
As usual her first thought was that they were Aroha’s words, Aroha’s voice, but they weren’t. And they couldn’t be her hellhound’s. It wasn’t a creature that had words, yet.
Hope sparked inside her. Could it be her sheep? It had been so silent she’d thought it was gone forever, but maybe—no. Her sheep was many things but she wasn’t sure it even knew what swearing was.
That only left one option.
The voice… was hers.
She wasn’t used to her voice thundering. Not in her head, not anywhere. Or sounding so confident.
But it—she—was right, wasn’t she? This whole thing was bullshit. Parker, packs, alphas being supposedly so much more important than everyone else—it was all a bloody con.
Something rose up inside her like a pot boiling over. It was the smell of smoke in the dark night, harsh and bitter on the back of her tongue, but it was more than that. Lanolin. Sweet clover. The restlessness of dry grass tickling the backs of her knees, combined