Page 55 of Storm Echo

“Luc.” Tamsyn Ryder kissed Lucas on the cheek as she passed him with all four children. “Quick, my cublets. It’s cartoon time.” Her twins scampered on ahead with whoops of joy, one ocelot cub right on their heels, while she carried the smaller cub in her arms. Taking the children out of what might become a danger zone.

An older woman followed Lucas into the room. Her skin was the dark of night and her body small with fine bones, her face a symphony of lines that told the story of a life lived.

A deep tug inside Ivan, a wild sense of knowing. Family, she was family, though he’d never before met her in all his life. She turned at the same moment, saw him, and a look, bright and dazzling, lit up her eyes, her hand rising to her mouth.

Fighting his protective compulsion toward her because it was clear she was safe here, he turned his attention to the biggest predator in the room.

Lucas, however, had another target. Moving to Soleil, he gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger, the contact gentle but firm. “So,” the alpha said, “you came looking for your own.”

“Actually,” Soleil said with a wild courage that made Ivan ready himself to defend her. “I came to kill you. Vengeance for having destroyed the innocent survivors of my pack.” She made a face. “Quite ignoring the fact that I’m a healer and don’t kill people. Idiot.”

Lucas’s grin was unexpected, his cat prowling in his eyes. “You’ll be a welcome part of my pack.”

Soleil’s cat bared its teeth in suspicion. “Just like that?”

“Oh, we’ll run background on you, make sure you’re not some kind of shadow operative, but I gave my word to the survivors of SkyElm that they were welcome in DarkRiver—and I don’t go back on my word.” When his fingers tightened slightly on her jaw, she had to fight from shooting a glare at Ivan.

She could all but feel the tension in his skin, his need to protect her. But breaking eye contact with Lucas Hunter at this moment would be a very,verybad idea. The predator looking out of his eyes would view it as a weakness, or an indication that she was lying.

“The choice is yours,” Lucas said, a growl in his voice that wasn’t a warning but a simple sign of his nature. “But if you stay, you do so under my authority, as a member of my pack. You want to take another path, you need to do it away from this territory—I’ll give you safe passage out of it, and if you want to come back to visit, you’ll have to follow the same rules as any other predatory changeling.”

He was being kind. It might not seem that way to a person who wasn’t changeling, but Soleil was and she understood. Lucas didn’t have to give her a choice at all—with how she’d sneaked into his territory, he would’ve been well within his rights to simply kick her out and tell her to stay out.

But to sign her life away under the control of another alpha? It made her freeze, shudder. She knew alphas weren’t all cut from the same cloth, but the only alphas she’d ever known had rejected her at every turn. Even to the extent of leaving her in a hospital not knowing herself, her body and mind in pieces.

When it came down to it, however, there was no choice here. The way the cubs had run to her, the way they’drememberedher … Someone did want her here, did need her here. And though she was sure now that the leopards would do everything in their power to give these babies a good home, they’d need to learn things that only another ocelot could teach them. And there were so few ocelots in the country, even fewer whom the cubs knew and trusted.

“I’ll stay,” she murmured, somehow managing to hold Lucas’s gaze through teeth-gritted will; she wasn’t the senior healer, wasn’t yet even part of the pack. “I acknowledge you as alpha.”

A sudden sense of peace within her. Because her cat was a creature of pack. It could be afraid and want this at the same time. The same way it had hated but needed Monroe.

“You’re a healer,” Lucas said. “I’ll have to blood-bond you into the pack.”

She knew that, had expected it, but appreciated the warning. A second later, she realized the explanation hadn’t been for her—Lucas was very aware of Ivan standing ice quiet and predator-still, ready to intervene.

Scowling, she shot him a glance that told him to stay put—the last thing she needed was for her Psy to end up shredded to pieces by Lucas’s claws. His expression didn’t change, those eyes of his still and pristine and as apparently uninvolved. But in her mind shimmered his web, silvery and with an edge of orange and red.

Giving up on nonverbal communication, she scowled. “There’s gonna be blood. Don’t freak out.”

Ivan stared at her. She had the feeling that no one had ever told him not to freak out before. But his body eased a fraction and he leaned back against the wall, arms folded. She didn’t take that as a sign that he was calm. His web continued to hover, cold as a burn.

When she glanced back at Lucas, she wasalmostcertain he was fighting a laugh. But, not making a comment on the interaction, he slashed a line on his palm using a claw, then slashed a fine line down her cheek.

Having expected the cut to be on her throat or perhaps on her arm, she flinched. The web went hard inside her, lines of razored steel. This time, the look she shot Ivan was very muchIwillhandle this.

He narrowed his eyes but stayed in position.

Lucas placed his hand against her cheek at the same time. A jolt ran through her entire body as his blood mingled with her own, the impact sucking all the air out of her lungs. She inhaled jaggedly in the aftermath, staring at the leopard who was now her alpha.

“Hold on,” he murmured, the power of him a thing of teeth and claws—a power that was a shield under which she now stood. “It’s not done yet.”

A thunder of sound through her entire body, a wild pulse made up of hundreds of hearts, a roar for a single breathtaking beat of time followed by pure silence … but she knew all those hearts still sang for her. The pack welcoming a new member, welcomingher.

For this was a bond of pack, not a bond between two people as such.

Tears burned her eyes.

She hadn’t known, hadn’t understood that the alpha-healer connection was a true bond, a primal thing that now lived beneath her skin, connecting her cat to Lucas’s leopard. It was this bond that would allow him to feed her energy should she need it—and it was this bond that would allow her to heal members of the pack, whether ocelot or leopard.

---