Honor Bound (7 page)

And maybe Amaia was a
fool, as well. The man they hunted could give her her life back. He
could offer her a place among her own people—a better place
than she'd enjoyed before, if her life had been as hard as she'd
hinted. He could give her the luxuries of civilization and the
comfort of being part of the elite, ruling class.

All Orion had was a
tiny cabin in the woods and a pack split by corruption and fear. A
life with him would be a life surrounded by the people she'd been
raised to hate. Raised to
hunt
,
like beasts in the wild. She could never be happy.

He could never be
enough.

Pain shot through him,
but he forced it back. Amaia would be a fool not to take her
captain's offer, and Orion would be a fool not to be ready for it.
Maybe she would try to have him spared, but he couldn't count on her
influence. He couldn't count on anything but himself.

Just like always.
He closed his eyes and counted to ten, then rose to his feet and
indicated the trail. "Twenty minutes, at the most. The scent is
still strong."

"We're too far
from where we fought the others." Amaia stared at the trail. "He
knows we're tracking him, and he'd have circled around."

Orion closed his eyes
and tilted his face to the wind before nodding. "Not straight
back, though. South and east. That's the way the wind's blowing."

He heard a strange
whistling, and a dart flew through the air and lodged in the bark of
a tree between them. "That," said a low, cultured voice,
"was a warning. Hello, Amaia."

She turned toward the
sound of the voice, her hand dropping to her knife. "Itzal."

The commander stepped
out of a copse of trees and smiled at Orion, though he still
addressed Amaia. "I knew you'd found help. Who is he?"

Orion's hand twitched
toward the pistol strapped to his thigh, but he forced himself to
stay still. The angle was awkward enough that he couldn't be sure
he'd get it out before Itzal shot him.
Or
Amaia.

"Mmm." Itzal
stepped closer to her, his smile broad. "Give me your forfeit.
We could make it back before dark."

"No."

His dark eyes flashed
with anger. "You know the alternative is—" He bit off
his words and snapped his gaze to Orion. "Don't tell me, Amaia,
that you've gotten caught up in your own game."

For one terrifying
second Orion considered the possibility that it
had
all been a game. He had to fight the urge to turn his gaze to her
face, to try to read the truth there.
If
she fooled you, it's too late now. Stay alive, just stay alive.

She spoke softly. "Go
home, Itzal, and don't come back. Leave the wolves alone." Her
voice grew stronger, and she drew her knife. "Leave
me
alone."

Itzal hissed a curse
and dropped his dart gun to pull two knives from his own belt. "Then
you both die."

Orion had his pistol
out before the dart gun hit the forest floor, even knowing Itzal
wouldn't have survived this long by being stupid. He swung his arm up
and aimed at the demon's throat before squeezing the trigger.

Itzal spun and brought
up a knife. The bullet glanced off of it even as his spin brought him
blade-to-blade with Amaia. Their weapons clashed, and Itzal smiled.
"No. You watch him die." He bent his arms, catching hers in
an awkward lock for only a second before his forehead crashed into
hers. She landed in a heap at the man's feet, and he kicked her knife
away.

Panic gripped Orion,
but there wasn't
time
.
His second bullet sank into a tree as Itzal moved again. When he
tried to fire a third time, magic lashed through the air and the gun
jammed.

The gun hit the ground
as he drew a long knife with his left hand, getting it up just in
time to block a brutal swing. Metal clashed, but Orion gritted his
teeth and caught the sweeping blow of Itzal's second blade on the
studded leather bracer he'd retrieved from the cave that morning.

Polished metal flashed
and rang. Itzal kept up with Orion's advances, looking almost amused.
"Did she promise you her heart?" he asked viciously. "The
moon? Tell me. I'm curious."

Craftier men than Itzal
had tried to goad him with words. Cavil had been doing it for fifteen
years. It shouldn't have bothered him.

But it did. Rage heated
his blood as he got his fingers around his second knife and twisted
fast enough to catch fabric before Itzal wrenched his body out of the
way. "She gave me something you could never comprehend."

Orion knew he'd drawn
blood, but the man didn't show pain. "I suppose she told you
she'd never felt this way before." He feinted left and lashed
out, leaving a bright red line of blood across Orion's chest. "That's
the simplest way to make a man stupid."

He twisted back and
struck again, this time catching Itzal more firmly across the thigh.
"Is sex all your men can think about?"

Itzal nearly stumbled,
and he grunted in pain. "Who said anything about sex?" He
knocked Orion's arm aside and stabbed him in the shoulder, a quick
stroke of agony. "Idiot. The deadliest weapon at her disposal,
and you probably begged for it."

The pain should have
slowed him, but it burned away everything else but his enemy. Orion
twisted again, cutting across the first wound on Itzal's thigh with a
deeper slash. "Spoken like a man who's begged her for sex a time
or two himself."

Itzal had gone pale,
but his laughter rang out as he swung at Orion and missed. "I
didn't have to beg."

Orion ignored the jibe
and swung at Itzal's arm, catching him just below his armor. "Must
not have been very good, because the lady seems uninterested in
another round."

Blood spurted from the
fresh wound, and Itzal dove for Orion, knocking him off his feet.
Itzal's knife slashed his side, and he roared his pain as he hit the
ground, the other man's body a hard weight he couldn't escape.

The world faded around
the edges as the silver knife dug against his side again, pain so
intense he couldn't feel anything else. Not the weight of Itzal's
body over his, not the hard ground under his back, not even the knife
itself. Silver poisoning crept through him, and he knew he wouldn't
last long.

But he didn't have to.
Hundreds—
thousands
—of
hours of practice made some things instinct. The knife still rested
in his numb fingers, and he used everything left to lift it up and
plunge it into Itzal's back, just at the base of his neck.

Itzal didn't make a
sound. The life in his eyes faded, and Orion dropped his hand back to
the forest floor. Amaia's distant scream drifted over him, and his
last thought before darkness took him was relief she still lived.

Amaia's head spun, and
her legs wouldn't hold her. Black spots still swam before her as she
crawled toward the two men lying several yards away.

She didn't have to
check Itzal, not with the hilt of Orion's knife sticking out of the
back of his head. But he was massive, and it took her several moments
of frantic pushing to roll his body away.

She dropped to the dirt
next to Orion, panic rising in her like floodwaters. He was barely
breathing, ashen and bloody. His skin was cold under her hands. "No,"
she whispered. "Damn it, no."

Losing him, and like
this, would kill her. He'd fought so hard for her, to see her free
and safe. "Open your eyes, Orion. Please." He didn't move,
and she caught sight of the inflamed wound on his side.
Silver
.

Hope flared in her. If
she could fix it, neutralize the poison coursing through his
system...

Amaia laid one hand
over his side and cupped the other on his cheek. "Please,"
she repeated, and drew on the magic inside her.

She hadn't exerted much
energy during the fight, but Itzal's blow to the head had left her
shaky. It took her several interminable moments to spark the link
between them. When it snapped into place, she pushed every single bit
of the power inside her over to him, heedless of the danger to
herself.
Please
work.

He coughed and jerked
under her hands with a moan that could have meant anything. A second
later one of his hands lifted and his fingers wrapped around her
wrist, tugging her away. "Too...much."

"No. Let me."
Hysterical with relief, she grasped his hand and kept the energy
flowing.

His body arched as he
let out a startled growl, and the bleeding wound in his side
finally
started to knit. His back hit the ground again and he panted and tore
his hands away from hers. "
Christ
,
if you kill yourself healing me, I will be so fucking pissed."

"I'm fine."
Her voice sounded thin and reedy, but she didn't care. He was going
to live, and that was all that mattered. Her head and heart felt
light. "I'm in love with you."

Orion coughed again and
dragged her down until her face hovered over his. When his eyes
drifted open they were dazed and pain-filled, but the warmth was
back. And more than the warmth, something deeper. Something she
wanted more than anything.

He smiled, and his
fingers tightened on her waist. "Then help me get back to my
cabin so we can take a bath and have sex on every surface until it's
our
cabin."

Amaia felt a flicker of
doubt, and she laid her hand on his face. "It won't be easy.
Your pack—"

"Will cope."
One large hand slid up to cup the back of her head. "The ones
who disapprove of me will grumble, but you've done more to help us in
a day than most of them do in a decade."

She snorted. "What
about your sister?"

"You saved her.
And now you saved me." His fingers curled in her hair and urged
her closer, until his lips brushed against hers with every word. "And
something tells me it won't be the last time."

It wouldn't be. "They
won't come after me, but they'll still come after your pack."
Amaia smiled and kissed the corner of his mouth. "But maybe we
can convince them it's too much trouble."

"Maybe we can,"
he murmured, his voice low and raspy. "Together."

She rose and helped him
up. They were both still in bad shape, and it would take them the
better part of the afternoon to get back, but Amaia smiled.
"Together."

The End

About the Author

How do you make a Moira
Rogers? Take a former forensic science and nursing student obsessed
with paranormal romance and add a computer programmer with a passion
for gritty urban fantasy. Toss in a dash of whimsy and a lot of
caffeine, and enjoy with a side of chocolate by the light of the full
moon.

By
day, Bree and Donna are mild-mannered ladies who reside in the Deep
South. At night, when their husbands and children are asleep, they
combine forces to unleash the product of their fevered imaginations
upon the page. To learn more about this romance writing, crime
fighting duo, visit their webpage at
http://www.moirarogers.com
.
(Disclaimer: crime fighting abilities may appear only in the
aforementioned fevered imaginations.)