“You’ve suddenly decided to go into the automotive industry?” was her opening salvo.
This was why he liked dealing with Selenka: her directness cut through all the fat. “No,” he said, just as directly. “Except for my shares in Centurion, of which I’m sure you’ve always been aware.”
Waving that away, Selenka passed him a sheaf of papers right as the dull gray sky began to spit with rain. He created a telekinetic shield around them without thought, keeping off the rain so he could read the printed material.
“Handy.”
Kaleb ignored the pithy comment, his attention on the documents that purported to show him mounting a ruthless assault against the pack’s largest business enterprise. “A complex bit of illusion.” He shot telepathic orders to Silver to get to the bottom of these corporate filings.
Hands on her hips, Selenka raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying this isn’t you?”
Kaleb responded with a bluntness he knew she’d appreciate. “I have more important things on my plate right now than starting a fight with a wolf pack known for its aggression.”
A slight smile curved her full lips, her eyes suddenly wolf-gold. “If it’s not you, then things become far more interesting,” she said, the predator inside her adding a gritty roughness to the words.
“It appears someone is attempting to disrupt the peace between us.” He was well aware that should he have truly attempted to go head-to-head with BlackEdge, Selenka’s pack was more than capable of causing hell in his region.
“Say I believe you.” The wolf inside Selenka continued to watch him, its gaze unblinking. “What does anyone get out of pitting us against one another?”
“If the strongest Psy in the region and the strongest pack in the same region suddenly become enemies, the ripple effect would be significant.” Impacting every aspect of life. “Psy afraid to go near changeling territory, changelings worried about fatal psychic rapes, humans feeling pressured into choosing sides. A steady build until things explode into violence.”
Selenka gave a slow nod. “You’d also lose the goodwill of other non-Psy groups.”
“Yes.”
“Someone was counting on us not talking to each other.”
Kaleb didn’t reply in the affirmative because there was no need. “My aide is currently canceling any offers I’ve purportedly made. You have a clear run.” As for the person stupid enough to try to use his name to foster dissent in his region, Kaleb would make certain that individual regretted the mistake.
No one played games with Kaleb.
Chapter 11
ADEN WOKE TO darkness for the second time. Keeping his eyes closed, he listened. Movement around him, the sound of male voices in conversation.
“. . . stable, but I won’t know for sure until she wakes up.” A blown-out breath. “She’s tough as a leopard—just refused to die. As for him, I have no fucking idea how he was still walking.”
His memories cleared enough that he remembered the yellow-green eyes of the leopard who’d slammed him to the ground. Those same eyes had glowed in the face of the man who’d hauled them to his vehicle. A leopard changeling. Having put the pieces together, Aden lifted his lashes.
A tall man with a heavily muscular build, his shaggy hair multiple shades of brown and roughly tumbled, his jaw shadowed with stubble that was dark against golden skin, was talking to another male. That one had a leaner build, but it was paired with a layer of muscle that made it clear he wasn’t used to sitting behind a desk.
The bigger man was dressed in black cargo pants and a dark gray T-shirt, the other in a checked blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, worn untucked over jeans. Neither appeared to be armed.
“The bullet exited all right,” said the one in the checked shirt, “but it ricocheted off her ribs and nicked several of her organs on the way out.” The man, who had to be a medic, touched points on his own chest, as if indicating the impact sites. “Someone patched her up just enough to save her life—left alone, she’d have been dead long before you found her.” He rubbed his face, the honed line of his features placing his age in the late thirties or early forties.
The bigger man, by contrast, had to be around twenty-eight or twenty-nine.
“You get the bullet from his leg?” he asked.
A nod. “It’s so distorted it’s pretty much useless.”
Aden didn’t have to listen any further to know the muscular man was in charge—predatory changeling alphas had a certain unmistakable bearing. Young or old, they carried responsibility as well as power.
The alpha turned to him right then, his eyes a striking, clear topaz striated with light. Eyes that looked feline, though the alpha was in his human form. Despite the change in eyes from leopard to human, Aden immediately recognized him as the man he’d met on the mountain.
“You’re awake,” the alpha said, walking over. “I’m Remi. This is Finn.”
Not about to have this meeting lying on his back, Aden sat up, quickly getting a visual of Zaira on the infirmary bed next to his as he did so. His skull throbbed violently but he wasn’t as weak as he might’ve expected. It appeared he’d been given something to maintain his strength, his fluids replenished. “How long have I been out?” he asked, noting that he was wearing only loose black drawstring pants.
Remi threw him a white T-shirt from a shelf to one side of the room. “Eighteen hours.”
An eternity for an Arrow in hands that were not those he trusted, but these hands had saved his life. Pulling on the tee, he reached back and gingerly touched the spot where Zaira had dug out the chip right as Aden had sensed it build up to explosion point, lightning bolts of electricity crawling through his neurons on a direct path to his cerebral cortex.