Sentinels: Alpha Rising

Good God, she wanted him.

Except she didn’t. She didn’t want any part of being here, Lannie Stewart included. So she, too, finally shook her head. “It didn’t bother me,” she said. “It surprised me. It was rude.”

He pondered that, watching her with an awareness she wasn’t sure she liked. “Probably so,” he allowed, and left it at that, switching his attention to the well house now completely within view. “There’s nothing much up here. They didn’t waste much time trying to chase Aldo off.” He shook his head. “Just an old man taking a smoke.”

Holly took a few more steps in that direction, eyeing the faint track of an unofficial lane. The well house itself didn’t do anything to offset her initial impression, and its security consisted of a simple aged hasp and lock. “Why would they even come down this road?”

Lannie walked past her to the lane, scuffing his way across it. At her inquisitive look, he pointed downward. “This ground holds a track a whole lot better than you might think. I’ll know it when someone comes through this way again.”

Tracks. She looked down at that weird mix of silty, gritty soil overlaying hard ground, and discovered herself in the midst of them.

Not all of them human.

She crouched, running a forefinger around the outside of the nearest track. The nearest huge track, doglike in shape if not in size. Lannie’s? Or had it been here all along? “You’re right,” she said. “This ground holds a significant track.” She glanced up at him. “You should have brought a broom.”

“Maybe I will.” He paced down the road, looking along its length as if the guy gang and their truck might come barreling back down it any moment now. Holly pressed her hand over the track, obliterating it, and stood up. A few steps took her to the only snatch of color in the pale ground, and it took her some moments to recognize the splatter of dried blood. Her gaze flickered to the faded bruising on his face, and he shook his head. “Not mine.”

“Nice,” she said. “They probably never knew what hit them.”

Because he was Sentinel. He was stronger. He was supposed to pull his punches.

“There were five of them,” he reminded her.

“Sentinel,” she reminded him, out loud this time.

To her surprise, he lifted the front tail of his shirt. At first she saw nothing but the gleam of skin over surprisingly hard muscle, the light scatter of hair toward the center of a torso leaner than she’d expected. She stuttered on a response—and then realized the steep shadow between two of his lowest ribs wasn’t a shadow, but the angry and slightly gaping lips of a knife wound.

“Sentinel,” he said. “Not Superman. You should know. Your blood is strong enough.”

“I never thought so,” she said, more faintly than pleased her. “I’m not truly different from anyone else. Not like—”

You. With the way the wild strength sometimes gleamed straight from his eyes, or how the very way he stood broadcast the dangerous nature lurking behind a laconic exterior.

“Look in a mirror sometime.” He let the shirttail fall.

“I don’t understand.” She tore her gaze away from his side to search his expression, finding little she could read there at all. “I don’t heal much faster than anyone else.” She made a face, and admitted, “Yes, a little. But I thought Sentinels healed really fast.”

His grin was wry; it changed his face, made her want to reach out to him and take his hand and bump a companionable shoulder. She took a step back instead, startled at herself. He said, “If we’re badly injured, the early healing comes quick. Hurts like hell, too. But it keeps us alive when we might otherwise die.” He shrugged. “After that? You already know. We heal a little more quickly than normal. That’s all.”

“Then that must have been a whole lot worse yesterday.” Realization struck. “Right after I got here.” And then she leaped forward to a whole new understanding, and she speared a glance at him. “You were loading hay with that?”

He frowned down at the injury, resting his hand lightly over top. “There was hay to unload.”

She exhaled a sharp and impatient breath. “For everything you say, I swear there are two things you’re keeping to yourself.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But never things about you, from you. Just ask.”

She made a noncommittal noise in her throat that sounded no more convinced that she felt; he looked sharply at her. “Altitude catching up with you?”

“Maybe.” She looked down the slope—the unfamiliarity of the terrain, the unfamiliarity of the scents and even the sound of the bird flashing bright blue from the brush as it scolded them. The unfamiliarity, yes...and deeper, beneath it all, the sense that something else was missing, was wrong. Something she’d been leaning on so long she hadn’t even known it was there and now couldn’t begin to define.

“Still want to go to Cloudview?”

She jerked her head back to narrow her eyes at him. “Don’t you dare go back on that.”

Was that amusement on his features, lurking at the corners of his eyes, in the slight lift on one side of his mouth? She took a step toward him, a light growl vibrating somewhere in her chest. “Are you laughing at me?”

At the same time, she heard it again—the hint of song, beguiling cello tones weaving beneath faint strains of barely whispered complexity. The intrusion stunned her—the affront of it, the fact that she could hear it at all—but she’d barely drawn breath to protest when he grinned outright. Also unexpected, and also stunning—in its own way, striking deep into the heart of her.

By then he’d taken the few steps between them and wrapped an unexpected arm around her shoulder in a gesture of startling affection.

She wanted to sputter at him. She wanted to say I didn’t invite you to do that and You have no right—but her body was already melting into him. Just long enough to feel the upright strength in him, and to understand how clearly his gentleness was a choice.

Then he stepped back, framing her head between both big hands to look directly into her gaze, piercing eyes gone somehow softer. “It gets easier,” he told her. “Let’s go see your brother.”

And then he took her hand and led her down the hill.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_f0a4223c-eb38-5c2a-adc2-cd1780885cd9)

The familiar terrain gentled as Lannie led the way back to the feed-store cluster, revealing a barely sloping spread that held not just the feed-store grounds but a faint scatter of buildings along the curving country road. Lannie’s two mules engaged in some sort of conversational disagreement, gamboling without grace but with power to spare.

Holly might have hesitated, taking it all in, but Lannie kept them moving. The noon sun had brought out the heat of the day—and as much as Holly seemed to need activity, allowing her to help with the entire load of hay hadn’t been the smartest choice of his day.

Too damned bad he’d been so distracted by watching her.

“We’ll grab something to eat on the way out of town,” he said. “I just need a moment to square away—”

Pain shot through his side; the faint music underlying his soul burst into brief static. He blinked, and found himself looking up into bright blue sky. The uneven ground pressed into his back, sharp with myriad little stones and prickery bunchgrass, and his legs were ungainly, bent and sprawling as if they’d simply forgotten how to be legs. “What,” he said quite clearly, “the hell?”

“You tell me,” Holly said, and couldn’t hide worry with her scowl. She had one hand pressed on his shoulder as if she knew the first thing he’d do was try to get up, and the other at his pulse—pounding hard and fast, but perfectly regular.

“Hey!” Faith shouted from the bottom of the slope, her accusing voice getting closer with each word. “What did you do to him?”

“To him?” Holly said, rising to that bait even as she kept Lannie’s shoulder to the ground. But she only had leverage as long as he didn’t roll aside—and that he did, rising as smoothly as he ever did. Holly made that disgusted little feline noise in her throat and came to her feet beside him.

By then Faith had reached them, heavy work boots amazingly spry along the way. “Yes!” she snapped at Holly. “You! To him!”

“Whoa,” Lannie said as the static struck again, his alarm having less to do with going down and everything to do with the potential collision of Faith and Holly. When he could see clearly again he found himself on hands and knees, blinking at the ground.

“Why did you even get up?” Faith asked in exasperation, though it was Holly’s hand at the back of his neck, quiet and firm.

Because that shouldn’t have happened at all. Never mind a second time. Or, if he counted the odd moments of the previous evening, a third or fourth or a...

“Faith,” he said, with as much authority as any man in his situation could muster, “this is not Holly’s doing.”

“Right,” Holly said. “Blame me. Awesome. I am so glad to be here.”

“You showed up and this happened,” Faith said, bending to peer at Lannie.