She shook her head at the savage image. “That can’t be true.”
“We’re not human,” he said slowly. “We play by different rules and we’re never going to act civilized when in the grip of passion, good or bad. That’s when the animal is at its strongest, most powerful.”
Faith wondered if she was imagining the underlying warning . . . the underlying invitation. “But I’m not changeling. I don’t hit people.”
“Human women have been slapping men for being bastards for centuries. You were doing what comes naturally.”
“Not for a Psy.”
“Faith, Silence isn’t normal. It’s an imposition. What you are without it is normal.” His head snapped up. “Someone’s heading this way.”
She felt the brush of a guard’s mind hit her peripheral shields. “Go,” she whispered. “Go!” Her fear for him was greater than any other emotion.
“Tell me something first—are you going to accept the offer?”
She knew what he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t lie to him. “I don’t know.”
“Decide. You can’t live in both worlds.”
Then he was gone, a blur within the treetops. Rising, she headed toward the house and away from the approaching guard. She was afraid of what her eyes might reveal. Because for the first time in her life, the night sky within was starting to show something other than the endless Silence of a perfect cardinal; it was starting to show vulnerability.
She could still pass for normal, could still live in her world, but she was changing. That change had to be either embraced without reservation or irrevocably erased from her psyche. There was no middle ground. If she became Council, she couldn’t expect the changelings to remain her friends, couldn’t expect Vaughn to visit her, hold her, awaken her.
She had to choose.
Vaughn completedhis watch rotation without speaking to a single packmate, then took off into the purple glow of day turning to night. He ran for hours, heading deeper and deeper into the Sierra Nevada, territory that had once belonged solely to the wolves. The chill mountain air ruffled his fur in a way that usually gave him the greatest of pleasure. But not tonight.
Tonight, the human half was very much in charge and it was beyond furious. He’d mated to a woman who might rejecthim and walk away. Forever. It made him want to shake her until she came to her senses and accepted the bond between them. How could she not see it? Yet she didn’t.
Powered by a chaotic mix of anger and pain, he ran so far that he left everything known behind. Only then did he take to the trees and find a perch from which to watch the night moods of the forest and think. But thinking wasn’t what he ended up doing, his emotions too violent for anything that rational. So he tried to wrap himself in the aloneness of the night, tried to teach himself the sound of silence, the sound he’d be living with if Faith renounced their bond.
It took him bare seconds to realize he’d been mistaken. He wasn’t alone, the scent of Pack was strong in the panther who’d tracked him. Lucas didn’t make a sound as he padded to a spot on another branch of the same tree as Vaughn. Neither did he make any move to instigate a conversation, and when Vaughn took off again, he ran beside him.
It was hours later by the time Vaughn led them back to his home and they shifted. Uncaring of their nakedness, they sat atop the small hill that the cave was buried under and watched the edge of a brilliant dawn lighten the sky.
“Where’s Sascha?” Vaughn asked.
“She and Tammy stayed over at the SnowDancer den after working with Brenna.”
At the mention of the SnowDancer female who’d been violated by Enrique, Vaughn’s simmering anger exploded into full-blown fury. “You trusted her to the wolves?”
“Yeah. Hawke never breaks his word.” Lucas grinned. “And the damn wolf knows Clay and Nate will tear him to shreds if he so much as lays a finger on either of our women. They’re up there, too.”
“So much for trust.”
“Trust takes time.”
And while the economic partnership between DarkRiver and the SnowDancers had held for almost a decade, theblood alliance between the two packs was only months old. “Why did you track me?”
“Thought you might want to talk.”
“Why?” Vaughn disappeared on long runs nearly every week, the jaguar seeking solitude.
“Sascha. She said something before heading up to the SnowDancers.”
“What?”
“Her powers are developing in an unexpected way. Either that or it’s the influence of the Web.” The leopard male crossed his arms over his knees and clasped the wrist of one hand with the other. “She didn’t feel anything from you the whole day and she got worried.”