Bonds of Justice

CHAPTER 18

Lucas ran a soothing hand along Sascha’s spine. “Shh, kitten. Don’t let it stress you out.”

“I’m okay—it was just the shock of it.” Taking several deep breaths, she looked straight at them. “How much do you know about my abilities?”

Max glanced at Sophia, and she took that as a cue to answer. “They say you can sense emotion, heal wounds of the heart. There are rumors you’re an E, a designation that doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, it exists,” Sascha said with a firmness at odds with the incredible warmth of her presence. “I’m an empath, not a particularly useful thing in the Net under Silence. But that doesn’t matter—only two things matter. One—I couldn’t murder anyone, not without it rebounding back on me. I’d feel the impact of the victim’s death, and I’m fairly certain it would kill me. Nikita can verify that for you.”

Sophia found herself believing Sascha. There was just something about the other woman that made her want to believe. If all Es motivated the same response, then it might go toward explaining why their designation had been buried—they were a threat, because they inspired loyalty without the fear that was the Council’s favorite weapon. “You said two reasons,” she prompted in a tone that held genuine respect. “What’s the second?”

“I think I felt him die.” It was a whisper. “It was just before I left Marsha’s room. I felt a wave of nausea, then everything went black—I thought I was going to faint. But it passed within seconds, so I put it down to getting up too quickly from the sofa.” She leaned into her mate’s embrace—Lucas’s face was set in lines of savage protectiveness, but he held her with open tenderness. “Poor Edward. He always worked so hard.”

“Sascha.” Max’s tone was oddly careful as he said, “Did you see or hear anything that might help? I’ve got a gap of ninety critical minutes in the security footage.”

“No.” Frown lines marred her brow. “The rooms are all soundproofed, and I was intent on my conversation with Marsha. We were together the whole time except when I got up to go to the bathroom.” Those extraordinary eyes met Max’s. “I’m the last person who’d hurt anyone.”

Max thrust a hand through his hair. “Look,” he said in the tone of a man who’d made a decision. “I think it’s about time you know what’s going on.” A searing glance out of those near-black eyes. “Sophie, it might be better for you to leave the room.”

She remained in her seat. Max tapped her foot with his in playful approval—making her heart slam against her ribs, her fingers curl—before turning his attention back to the other couple. “Someone’s attempting to derail Nikita’s organization by taking out her people because he or she can’t get to Nikita herself. It’s looking like the bombers four months ago only got to the elevator shaft because someone on the inside made sure they did.”

Sascha’s hand clenched into a fist on the table. “You don’t think they’ll facilitate another attempt on her life?”

“Your mother,” Max said, “is forearmed and very security conscious. That’s why the killer has become frustrated, started to target those around her.” He blew out a breath. “Sascha, if you’re still in contact with her, you’re a prime target.”

Lucas Hunter tangled his fingers with his mate’s, his lethal anger turning into an intense, protective focus. “Sascha isn’t Nikita’s heir.”

“She’s Nikita’s daughter.” Max shook his head, his jaw a stubborn line. “I don’t care what anyone says about the Psy ability to cut off people without a thought—if a Councilor’s daughter is taken out, it will have an impact.”

“You may not be Councilor Duncan’s financial heir,” Sophia said into the silence, “but you remain her genetic heir, the only one she has.” And genetics were very, very important in the Net. Those of her race had no love, no hate, to tie them together, but they had blood. “As far as I know, she hasn’t arranged for a second child or a surrogate.”

“No,” Sascha whispered. “I’ve never understood why.”

“My pack will protect my mate,” Lucas said to Max. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

Max gave a wry smile. “Thanks for not ripping my face off before I could get a word out.”

“It’s such a pretty face,” the leopard alpha responded, a feline smile warming those feral green eyes, “the women in the office would probably string me up if I messed it up.”

Sophia felt the tension level in the room drop even before Max’s expression shifted to pure male amusement. “I thought Dorian was considered the fairest of them all.”

It was Sascha who replied. “I don’t know, Max”—a tight smile, as the empath fought her worry for her mother—“you’re giving him serious competition. I’m certain I heard Zara say something about wanting to lick you up like strawberry ice cream.”

Sophia decided this Zara person couldn’t be allowed anywhere near Max. Who tilted back his chair in that way he had and laughed. “Since I’ve already broken the rules, if either of you have any idea of who might want to go after Nikita, I’d be happy to hear it.”

“Let us discuss it and get back to you.” Squeezing his mate’s shoulder, Lucas rose to his feet.

“Fair enough.” Max stood as well. “Clay knows where I’m staying, and he’s got my cell code.” As the men shook hands, Sophia got up, taking one last look at the extraordinary daughter Councilor Nikita Duncan had borne. Sascha’s head was bent, her smile having faded away to reveal a haunting worry.

“Sophie.”

She turned to see Max holding the door. Walking out beside him, she considered whether she’d mourn her own parents when they died. No, she thought. They’d erased her from their lives so cleanly that she’d had to erase them from hers in order to survive. It had been hard, so hard to do that. She’d written letters at first. She’d begged.

Finally, a response had come . . . one that had made her parents’ position clear with brutal precision—she was no longer, it had stated, an “acceptable genetic heir.”

A wolf whistle pierced the air, slicing neatly through the pained numbness of her memories of the day she’d realized her parents were never returning for her. The whistle originated from the mouth of a small woman with coffee-colored skin. “I hear you’re single, Cop.” A blinding smile.

Max’s responding smile revealed the lean dimple in his left cheek that Sophia wanted to kiss each time she saw it. “Your intel is out of date.”

“I knew it—I’m going to die an old maid.” Her face drooped. “I shall now go drown myself in fantasies where three—no four—hot men await my every whim.”

Sophia didn’t say a word until they were back in the car. “I’m . . . glad that you no longer consider yourself single.” It took considerable willpower to say that, to admit how much his commitment meant to her. No one had ever before chosen her. No one.

Reaching out with a deliberate slowness, Max brushed his knuckles over her cheek. The sensation was a hot whip over her skin. “The things I plan to do to you, Sophie,” he whispered in a deep voice that made her toes curl. “Zara’s fantasies have nothing on mine.”

Lucas waited until after Max and Sophia Russo had left to turn to his mate. Fighting the urge to just cuddle the worry out of her, he leaned back against the wall by the door and folded his arms. “Now, kitten, how about telling me exactly what you were doing in the Duncan building?” His heart had almost stopped beating when she’d confessed her little field trip.

“Lucas,” Sascha said in a voice that would’ve normally made him calm down.

“That isn’t going to work.” He dropped his hands, moved to brace them on the tabletop. “I thought we agreed you’d stay out of the limelight while you’re so vulnerable. And God, you went—” He grit his teeth, unable to get the words out.

“No one realized I was pregnant,” Sascha said, rising to move around the table, “not even Marsha. She thought I’d put on weight because of my unregimented existence.” Her hand curved over his cheek. “I needed to talk to her.”

“Why?” He thought he knew, but he wanted to be certain after she’d sucker punched him with this stunt. “And sit.” Pulling out a chair for her, he took one to her right.

Placing one hand on his thigh in that way she had, his mate took another deep breath. “I wanted . . .” Her voice shook, and he could no more stop from reaching out to kiss her, pet her, than he could stop breathing.

“Kitten, you know you can tell me anything, anything.” Why had she felt the need to hide this? That was what had him so lost.

“I planned to tell you as soon as I got back,” she said at once, her fingers tightening on his thigh, “but you were so busy I thought I’d wait till tonight.”

“You’re supposed to tell me things like this before.” The panther snarled in agreement.

“I knew you wouldn’t let me see Marsha on my own,” she said, a stubborn angle to her jaw. “And I didn’t want you to worry—you do so much of it already.”

“Of course I do. You’re pregnant with our child—I have the right to go nuts looking after you.”

“And I love you for it.” An affectionate wave of emotion down the mating bond tied them together on the level of the soul. “But this, I needed to do alone.”

His panther caught the vulnerability beneath the steely will. Reaching out, he curved one hand behind her nape in a hold as protective as it was proprietary. “I still haven’t heard what you went to do.”

“Marsha’s been my mother’s advisor since before Nikita became a Councilor, since before she had me.”

The tenderness he felt for her made his soul hurt. “You went to ask her what Nikita was like during her pregnancy and when you were born.” His mate was so scared she wouldn’t be a good mother—when everyone around her knew she’d be an amazing one.

“Yes.” Her eyes were almost starless when she looked up. “But I couldn’t make myself ask any of those questions. I guess part of me was afraid of what she would say—that Nikita never loved me, not even when I was in her womb.”

It tore him apart to see her hurting. “Kitten.”

A reassuring squeeze of his thigh. “It hurts, but it won’t ever break me again like it almost did once. Not when I can feel you loving me every moment of every day.” Eyes shiny with emotion, she reached up to stroke her fingers through his hair. “Mostly, I think I need to hear the answers from Nikita herself.”

Lucas shifted closer, so she could more easily pet him with those hands he adored. “I’ll call her, organize a meeting.” He’d dance with the devil himself if that was what it took to ensure his mate’s happiness.

“Marsha missed my pregnancy because she’s so focused on work she’s oblivious to anything else,” she said, playing her fingers over his jaw and along his neck. “Nikita won’t.”

Lucas laid his hand over the curved mound of her stomach, knowing that if he pressed his ear to that same spot, he’d be able to sense the heartbeat of their unborn child. “We’ve managed to keep it quiet this far, but I think unless you plan to stay in seclusion, the jig is up. Max knew you were pregnant the instant he looked at you.” At five months along, she was gorgeously, radiantly beautiful—any man with a working heart would realize she carried a life in her womb.

“Are you calling me fat?”

He caught the gleam of laughter in those stunning cardinal eyes and knew his Sascha was more than tough enough to handle the woman who’d given birth to her. “According to Dev should mind his own business Santos, I should be feeding you more.” She’d gained little extra weight through the pregnancy. “Are you sure you’re eating enough?”

“Lucas, did you or did you not go out at three a.m. to get me a pizza with all the fixings?”

“Did you say thank you for that yet?” He leaned forward to speak with his lips against her ear.

Making a small, pleased sound, she nuzzled into his neck. “I seem to remember you purring.”

“Even though all I got was a single measly slice.”

“I rest my case.” A kiss pressed to the beat of his pulse.

“I eat like the proverbial horse.” Sascha patted her hand over the one Lucas had placed on her abdomen. “We’re both doing more than fine according to the doctor and Tamsyn.” The DarkRiver healer had examined her only yesterday.

A shift inside her, a strange, beautiful thing, then a tiny foot slamming into her with a strength that surely came from the baby’s father. “Oof.”

Lucas beamed with pride. “That’s my girl.”

Sascha made a face. “Why are you so convinced it’s a girl?” They’d made the decision not to ask the doctor or healer to confirm gender, though Sascha couldn’t help but know—her baby’s mind was developing day by day, becoming a stronger and stronger psychic warmth inside of her. Still, she liked to play with Lucas. He’d ordered her not to tell him.

“I just know.” Bending his head, he pressed a kiss to the top of her abdomen, much as he had a habit of doing late at night, saying good night to their babe.

She ran her fingers through his hair. “I love you so much, Lucas.” Her eyes teared, her voice got thick.

“Hey now.” Raising his head, he touched his forehead to hers. “Pregnancy hormones strike again?”

A jerky nod as she melted into his embrace. “I should’ve told you about visiting Marsha, but I swear I wasn’t in any danger.”

Lucas went predator-still. “Who went with you?”

“I’m not telling you if you’re going to go snarl at them.”

“I’m their alpha—they should’ve told me.”

She thumped a fist against his chest. “I’m their alpha’s mate.”

And, Lucas thought, she’d earned her packmates’ loyalty in her own right. “Dorian,” he said, knowing the sentinel had a mile-wide soft spot for Sascha. “Why wasn’t he on Max’s surveillance?”

“He was less than thirty seconds away, in the emergency stairwell, monitoring the corridor with his superduper high-tech gee-whizz surveillance equipment, while I had the meeting. He even had me wired in case Martha suddenly went insane and tried to kill me by throwing her organizer at my head.” A theatrical gasp.

Lucas nipped her lower lip in punishment for the smartaleck response—and because he was proud of his mate’s strength, no matter that he hadn’t gotten his own way. “Come on then, let’s go see what Blondie has to say.”

“Lucas, did you notice?”

“What?”

“Max and his J.”

Lucas leaned one arm against the table, scowling. “No, I didn’t notice.”

“Sophia Russo’s almost impossibly good at hiding her disintegration,” Sascha said. “I only picked it up because of my empathy. So much pain, so much.” She closed her hand into a fist, rubbed it over her heart. “I wanted to reach across and tell her it was alright, that she was safe, that we’d help her.”

Lucas was used to his mate’s empathic nature. But he was also an alpha, pledged to protect his people. “She’s in the Net, Sascha. No way to know if she can be trusted.”

“I know.” A stubborn look. “And if she decides to call me one day, I won’t say no to any request she makes.”

“Were you this hardheaded when I mated with you?” A growl formed low in his throat.

“No. I think I’m maturing with age.”

“Well, stop it.” In spite of his teasing words, her responses, he caught the edge of fear in her eyes. “Don’t worry, kitten. The cop knows what he’s doing.” Max Shannon, Lucas thought, might appear nonthreatening with that easy smile of his, but it was deceptive—the cat had sensed the truth, sensed the hunter that lurked beneath the human skin. “He won’t stop until he brings down his prey.”