Page 37 of Storm Echo

Soleil had never blamed the ones whose care was given only in secret. Their pack had been broken long before the day their blood stained the snow. But they’d still been her pack, still been her family—and she would not rest until she knew what had happened to them.

She hadn’t heard the click of a lock when Tamsyn left the room, but she knew there had to be a guard out there. As the healer had pointed out, Soleil was a dangerous unknown. Which left the window to the right. Before she explored that option, however, she got out of bed and checked out the other door in the room. As she’d expected, it went to the bathroom: the sink was to her left, the shower just beyond it, and the toilet in a private cubicle to the right.

A fluffy blue bathmat lay in front of the sparkling glass of the shower partition.

Someone had put a fresh set of clothing on the small vanity that held the sink. Fingering the material, she saw that it was stiff, new. She’d expected—and would’ve been happy—for it to have been used, from the stores the pack kept for members who found themselves coming out of a shift naked. Every pack kept such a stash of clothing in various places where packmates might gather.

Perhaps they hadn’t wanted to risk her cat acting out. There was no way to completely wash out the scent threads of a pack from clothing that was worn by packmates on a regular basis. Those threads were often a thing of comfort. But Soleil wasn’t pack. She was an intruder.

On top of the jeans, T-shirt, and sweatshirt were sealed packs of underwear.

There was no reason for her not to take a shower. Any escape attempt would have to be under the cover of darkness.

That in mind, she stripped and stepped under spray as hard as she could make it, so that it pummeled her skin. When she closed her eyes, she expected to see the dead, or the chaos from yesterday. What she saw were stars against velvet black. An endless sprawl, lovely and haunting and overlaid by a silvery web that emanated from a single dark star.

Wonder whispering through her veins, she found herself drawn to the dark star devoid of light. She should’ve been afraid. After all, what sat at the center of a web but a spider? Yet this dark star, it wasn’t using the web to entrap people. It was doing something else to the stars hooked into the web. It was—

The water cut off.

Blinking it out of her eyes, she looked at the control panel and saw that it was set to eco-mode. She could’ve restarted it, but she was changeling, understood what it was to care for the land on which she stood. So she got out, clinging to the beautiful image that had bloomed in those moments where she’d expected only pain, only horror.

Suspicion had her scowling. It was Ivan. Of course it was. He was looking after her exactly as he’d threatened.

Cat and woman, both of them snorted … but she wasn’t mad. Not when the result had been that haunting scene that had made her forget the blood and the grief for a pulse of time. She did wonder how he was doing it. Then again, the man had literally brought her back from the dead. What connection did that create? What bond did that build?

Her cat prowled inside her, missing him.

Mine, it thought again, and the human side of her unbent enough to admit that he was both wildly pretty and stubbornly courageous. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d ever be comfortable with the label, but he’d been a hero on that street, holding the line under incredible pressure. And the intensity in those pale eyes …

A little shiver rippling over her skin, her body having woken from a long, numb sleep. It wasn’t that she hadn’t met other men over the past months. She had. Some of them had even hit on her. She’d had zero reaction to them; no desire and no anger. Just a physical and emotional blankness.

Neither had ever been an option with Ivan.

But she couldn’t think about her fascination with the deadly Psy who’d found her broken body in the snow, didn’t have time to figure out if her cat’s reaction was some kind of strange imprinting.

The ocelot within snarled, insulted beyond measure.

The human half of her scowled, but both parts of her were in agreement on one point: she had to figure out how to get out of this place without being caught. According to Tamsyn, she was still in Chinatown, so DarkRiver hadn’t taken her to the forested core of their territory.

Good.

The pack was incredibly security conscious when it came to the heart of their lands. The Chinatown HQ, by comparison, was relatively open. It had all the necessary security protocols, but as it was also set up to allow meetings with outside parties, it couldn’t, by definition, be airtight.

She began to get dressed. Whoever had chosen the clothing had done a good job. Too good. The jeans fit snugly against her legs, and the T-shirt skimmed the lines of her body. While the sweatshirt—a dark gray—was loose, it was only fashionably so; Soleil felt exposed, all her weaknesses out in the open.

“Clothing is the least of my problems,” she muttered, bringing herself back to harsh reality.

After finger-combing her hair, she walked out into the room—just as someone knocked on the door. Having caught Tamsyn’s scent, she didn’t hesitate to say, “Come in.”

The healer poked her head just inside. “I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be here for a while, so just holler if you’d like to talk.” A hesitation. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me why you’re in the city?”

Tamsyn’s gaze was patient, warm as she added, “Are you in trouble? Or scared of someone? We can help you if you are.” The healer sighed when Soleil stayed silent. “I don’t like leaving you closed up in this room, but we need to protect our vulnerable. Just … think about it, okay?”

A shift in the air currents as Tamsyn moved slightly and Soleil’s entire world shifted on its axis, her heart kicking so hard it bruised. Either she was going truly insane, or she’d just caught a painfully familiar scent coming off Tamsyn. It belonged to a packmate. A SkyElm ocelotcub.

She tried to inhale deeper, confirm. But the scent vanished as quickly as it had appeared, a faint thread gone too soon. “I’m sorry,” she said to the healer, her cat too confused to think straight. “I’m not ready to speak.”

Eyes dark with worry, Tamsyn inclined her head. “I’ll be here until about half past seven. My mate’s taken our cubs and two of their friends to dinner at their favorite Chinatown restaurant—spic and span and in their best clothes.” So much love in her voice. “I’m on tenterhooks to see the state of their clothing when they return.”

---