“You recognize any of them?”
In the dark, it might be considered impossible, but leopards recognized one another and often shifters did as well, just by movement. By body language. They might be a good distance away, but Sevastyan could see these men were professionals. It wouldn’t be long before most of them were dead, but he wanted to know where they came from. Where Rolan was recruiting.
Kyanite nodded slowly. “Worked with two of them when I was down in Panama. They kept to themselves. Good trackers, both of them. The other three are from Borneo. They were from a lair several miles from the one Drake grew up in. Sorry to see them here, but not too surprised.”
Rolan knew about the shifters training in the rain forests. The internet made advertising so easy these days. Shifters wanted work. Action. They were predators and living in cities didn’t appeal to most of them. They were born to hunt so quite a few preferred mercenary work.
Sevastyan turned his attention to the team coming from the main road straight to the front of the house. Team two was coming on foot, spreading out, five men, using the low shrubbery for cover as they approached the house. That looked like the easiest entry point, when it was actually the most dangerous of all.
He’d designed the renovations himself when Mitya had moved in. The roof lines on the house and garages were completely made over, giving him places for his snipers to have higher ground but also cover when they needed it. He’d set his snipers at various locations and they were just waiting for his word to take out the first wave of Rolan’s men.
Team three came in from Sevastyan’s property, using a fast-moving truck without lights and then abandoning that before running to converge with the others, making their way on the ground through the thicker woods Flambé’s father had planted years earlier.
Team four came in from the opposite side, running also to cover the distance. They had the battlegrounds to cover, where Sevastyan trained his men daily in simulated wars, in hand-to-hand combat, in taking apart bombs. He left nothing to chance with Mitya’s security, and that included keeping the leopards in fighting condition. The open fields were there for a reason. There were gently rolling hills, downed trees and shallow caves dug out so his men could train for every possibility. Sevastyan and his men knew every inch of those acres where they trained.
The last team had the responsibility of covering the others, hanging back to be in position to break into the house and kill Sevastyan and Mitya when the others made their entry. Sevastyan shook his head. Rolan had always insisted he could plan his battles. He’d always sucked at it. Even at fourteen and fifteen, Sevastyan had listened and then changed everything the moment he’d left Rolan with the others to actually go into combat. The men had learned to listen to him instead of Rolan. It was what had kept them alive.
“Do you have sights on team five and team one?” Sevastyan asked. He narrowed his gaze, looking closer at the screen, trying to peer behind those members of team five in the trees. Was something moving?
“That’s affirmative,” Logan Shields responded. “Give us the go.”
“It’s a go,” Sevastyan confirmed. He didn’t look to see if his snipers took out their ten intended victims. He looked beyond the five mercenaries dropping like stones in the trees to the shadows suddenly going still behind them. Something was definitely there, but he couldn’t make it out. Suddenly, he was uneasy.
“Christophe, can you bring up the images in the trees team five was in? Right behind them, following them on the branches. Ambroise, you’re very quiet over there. Did you see anything?”
“I don’t see anything,” Christophe said, leaning forward, forcing the screen image larger and larger until it was nothing but gray pixels. He turned in his seat to look at Sevastyan. “All five team members went down hard. Those were kill shots.”
Sevastyan ignored that. He knew his snipers had scored kill shots. That wasn’t the point. The point was, someone besides Rolan had put together this assault on Mitya’s home and team five weren’t the only ones in those trees.
“Bring up team one again now. The earlier screens of them.” He’d been looking at the men. Seeing what they wanted him to see. Seeing what he expected to see. Thinking he was the smartest damn man in the room. Those men were a sacrifice, pawns to test his defenses. He’d known that, but he hadn’t known they would already be utilizing what they learned. They knew the snipers were on the roof of the house, but now they knew they were on the garages.
“Hurry, Christophe. Ambroise, answer me. What the fuck am I missing? What’s out there? What’s behind these men coming at us?”
“Leopards,” Ambroise whispered. “An entire army of leopards and they’re coming right at us fast.”
* * *
* * *
FLAMBÉ paced back and forth, restless, trying desperately to figure out what to do. She had made up her mind to leave the moment Shanty and her three children arrived. She would ensure the woman was in the program and then she’d make use of her own underground for the domestic violence shifter victims. She’d have to shut it down as soon as she entered it. No one else could ever know about it or use it again.
Sevastyan and Shturm were far too dangerous. Far too intelligent. And she was way too susceptible to the man. Flamme had proved herself to be too susceptible to the leopard. If she
actually decided to make a run for it, she couldn’t look back because she’d change her mind.
Every muscle in her body hurt. She knew why. She hadn’t had sex with Sevastyan. She’d ignored him and in doing so, ignored her own needs. The buildup of hormones between Flamme and her was getting scary. Her skin felt hot to the touch. She felt as if she were burning from the inside out.
Suppressing her leopard was getting much more difficult. When she was alone, she allowed her to come close to the surface, but it hurt, and every single time the pain only got worse. Flambé thought that, with time, she’d get used to the feel of her surfacing, but that hadn’t happened. Her nerve endings seemed much more inflamed. The sensations burned through her body like a blowtorch, taking her breath, robbing her of her ability to think. She couldn’t bear the feel of fabric against her skin, so she stripped, tearing at her clothes and flinging them aside, grateful that no one could get into the master bedroom.
Naked, she paced faster, desperate to outrun the horrible way her skin burned and itched. Strands of hair fell, snaking down from the messy knot she’d hastily twisted on top of her head, snaking down across her bare back and sliding across her buttocks. She had to bite back a scream as a thousand tongues licked at her skin, points of white-hot flames flicking at her on the end of each of them. Tears tracked down her face as she caught at the ponytail and desperately tried to re-loop, pulling the thick strands back up off her skin.
This was so much worse than it ever had been. “Flamme, he isn’t here. Shturm isn’t here. You can’t rise when he isn’t here.” She made it a mantra. No leopard could rise without their mate around, right? That had to be right. She was beginning to think she wouldn’t be able to control the situation. She didn’t know. She just didn’t know. She hadn’t asked enough questions.
Her breath came in ragged sobs, her lungs heaving. The burning between her legs grew and grew until it felt like a blowtorch. The terrible knots in her stomach, that pressure inside, coiled tighter and tighter until she thought she might die.
Hands shaking, she looked around the room helplessly, desperate enough to call him. Sevastyan. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be like the others. She wouldn’t put herself in the hands of a man. She’d never seen it work out. Not once. She didn’t know a single decent man. A shifter. They were all horrible. They all cheated. Were abusive. In the end he would hurt her. But this . . .
She forced herself to the window, looking out over the trees and shrubs, the beauty she’d helped to create. He’d acted as if he’d actually been so proud of her. She’d seen it on his face. It was difficult to hide the truth from a leopard. There was so much about Sevastyan she didn’t understand. She wanted him to be real, but if she was wrong, she wouldn’t just pay with her life, she would pay with Flamme’s life as well. She’d sworn to protect her leopard.