Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

She heard Ian’s unspoken message—the potential that there were things she might want him to do. His eyes told her as much, seeing her absorb the meaning, confirming it—smiling just there at the corner of his mouth.

Run away. Run fast.

Run to safety, where the flush of her awareness wouldn’t expand into a flush of wanting—of wondering what it would be like to be touched by such strength and consideration. As if this man might just give back as much as he received.

Ana took a sharp breath, using it to slap herself back to reality. There would be no running, no matter how smart it would be.

DORANNA DURGIN spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. She now has over fifteen novels spanning an array of eclectic genres, including paranormal romance, on the shelves. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds web pages, enjoys photography and works with horses and dogs. You can find a complete list of her titles at doranna.net.

Sentinels:

Leopard

Enchanted

Doranna Durgin

The Sentinels

Long ago and far away, in Roman/Gaulish days, one woman had a tumultuous life—she fell in love with a druid, by whom she had a son. The man was killed by Romans. She was subsequently taken into the household of a Roman, who fathered her second son. The druid’s son turned out to be a man of many talents, including the occasional ability to shape-shift into a wild boar, albeit at great cost.

The woman’s younger son, who considered himself superior in all ways, had none of these earthly powers and went hunting to find ways to be impressive and acquire power. He justified his various activities by claiming he needed to protect the area from his brother, who had too much power to go unchecked … but in the end, it was his brother’s family who grew into the Vigilia, now known as the Sentinels, while the younger son founded what turned into the vile Atrum Core …

Contents

Cover

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Legend

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Ana Dikau saw him before anyone else did.

The rest of the Atrum Core team crouched behind a camo blind in the pines uphill of the narrow, rocky trail, watching the camera feeds on a laptop encased in a rugged military shell. The wireless cameras pointed down along the trail, one of the less popular tracts of New Mexico’s high, looming Sangre de Cristo mountains.

But Ana watched the trail itself, and she saw Ian Scott first—a shock of bright silvered hair, long and spiky and pretty much unreal in the perfection of its fall across his forehead. Crazy lean features and cheekbones to match his jaw, a rangy body to match his face, and a way of moving that made her feel quiet and small and very much like prey—a flush of warmth and awareness.

Then again, she had practice at feeling like prey. And she was far too aware of this man’s Sentinel nature. The fact that he was so much more than human.

Snow leopard.

Walking into an Atrum Core trap.

Not to capture him—they knew better than that. There were far too many strictures between the Core septs prince and the Sentinel consul, between their factions as a whole. Direct action meant trouble. Even indirect action such as that they were about to undertake...

It was risky.

So they were hedging their bets. Filming this staged encounter to justify their need for action.

Ana’s new assignment.

She’d long begged for this opportunity, a mission that would prove her worthy of more than her usual personal assistant work for Hollender Lerche, her supervisor since she’d been transferred to active Core duty at the tender age of thirteen.

Ian Scott bounded a few effortless steps uphill to clear a scattering of hard-edged rocks embedded in the trail, and she drew a deep, sharp breath—holding it, all unaware, until her lungs ached. He was beautiful in an uncivilized way, muscle and lean form perfectly evident under a casual shirt and the dark gray cargo pants riding low on his hips, shaping the strong curve of his bottom.

He was the enemy.

The team leader murmured into his field mike, “You’re on.” She didn’t know his name. It didn’t matter; she hadn’t expected the courtesy of an introduction. All that mattered was what came next.

The mountain lion, barely caged just down the trail from their position.

The animal had been caged for days, starved and prodded into a frenzy. The hiker was one of their own, a man familiar to Ana who was working off a disgraceful failure—and he was already scented with blood and mountain lion urine.

Ana wasn’t sure he knew it, though.

The mountain lion knew.

Freed, the beast didn’t hesitate. It charged onto the trail in a snarling blur of tawny motion, claws already reaching to bat the man down.

The big cat screamed and the man screamed with it—a bloodcurdling thing with all the authenticity the team could have wanted. Convincing, because the man hadn’t known these details of his work.

“Here we go,” murmured the team leader. “Watch the bastard.”

Ana watched, all right. Scott didn’t hesitate. He sprinted forward as man, all coiled strength and energy, and then leaped—a dive, as if he intended to take cover in the scrub of the pine-shaded mountainside.

Instead he dove into a blinding roil of lightning and sharded energy, and when he emerged from the thick of it he landed on the two massive front paws of a snow leopard. Lush white fur splashed with black spots, staggering blue eyes, a thick length of tail—Ana held her breath again. He leaped forward almost before he’d fully found his feet in that form—smaller than the mountain lion but never hesitating.

Ana’s handlers had said that the Sentinels looked for any excuse to unleash their violent natures.

He blindsided the mountain lion, latching on with claws and teeth so the two animals rolled off the hiker and right down the steep slope, spitting and snarling and breaking brush along the way. Fierce growls rose from below, and the mountain lion’s angry scream split the air.

Ana strained forward as if she’d be able to see; the team leader’s hand closed around her arm in a harsh and warning grip. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t so stupid as to risk their cover, but she bit her lip and kept her words inside. She couldn’t afford to be blamed for anything that went wrong, even an errant whisper—no matter that this man had already broken their silence.

The hiker rolled to his feet, stunned and unsteady—and marked with fresh blood, but remarkably unharmed in the wake of Scott’s swift reaction. He staggered on up the trail to rendezvous with the other half of the Core team, where they’d dig in out of sight until Ian Scott had moved on, protected with the same silent amulets that hid this camo blind.

The conflict below broke away into a few hissing spits, and then the sound of running retreat—and the quieter sounds of one of the animals returning, his footfalls more deliberate and almost silent. Ana watched the trail, waiting to see which of the big cats would emerge.

Not that there was any doubt. The mountain lion had been weakened, and Ian Scott was more than animal and more than human. Utterly beast, too dangerous to live unfettered.

The leader’s hand closed more tightly around Ana’s arm. “The team will finish recording. He’ll be looking for trouble when he gets back up here.”

She resisted his pull. “This is why I’m here,” she said. “To see this. To see him. So I know what I’m up against.” It was, in fact, the purpose behind this entire operation, although the footage would also be used to study the enemy in a way they’d never accomplished before. “I’m safe, as long as we’re quiet.” None of the Sentinels could detect the perfected silent amulets—not even Ian Scott, the Sentinel bane of many an amulet working.

The man made no effort to soften his derision—at her, at the Sentinel. “You’ve seen enough to know he’s not human—he’s nowhere near human. And we can’t risk you. We don’t have the time to start over with this op.”

Because they didn’t have another woman in place to fill her role. Not because she mattered, personally. It shouldn’t still sting, after all these years.

But it did.

So Ana allowed herself to be led away, doglegging back to pick up the trail in the direction from which the Sentinel had come. Eventually the team leader released her arm, and she forbore to rub away the marks his fingers had made.

She’d wanted to see Ian Scott again. She’d wanted to see more closely the look in his eye when he took himself back to human—to get a glimpse of what lay beneath. Without it, her mind’s eye showed only his instant understanding of the mountain lion’s attack, and his instant response to it. Efficient ferocity. And somehow, she could think only of the warm flush of her reaction, and the fact that if she’d been that hiker, she would have wanted someone coming to her rescue, too.

But then the team took her back to the Santa Fe mansion that served as the local Core installation, and she learned that Ian Scott had returned to the trail and bounded after the Core hiker with only one thing in mind.

To finish what the mountain lion had started.

Chapter 1

“‘Take a vacation,’ he said,” Ian Scott grumbled, lifting free weights as he sat out in the gorgeous landscaping of the gorgeous Santa Fe property under the gorgeous blue skies in the gorgeous fall weather. “‘You’ll like it,’ he said.”

“You could like it.” The woman’s voice from the patio sounded anything but repentant for her eavesdropping.

Ian found her standing on the porch with her arms folded over her motherly shape, her expression a mix of affection and exasperation.

His own face held nothing but exasperation, he was certain of it. “He took away my team. My computer. My tablet. My lab!”

“Pfft.” She made the noise with no sympathy at all. Her name was Fernie, and she ruled this retreat with nothing so overt as an iron fist. An iron spoon, perhaps. With cookie batter on it. “That’s what happens when you work yourself sick.”

Ian’s grumble grew closer to a growl. “Field Sentinels,” he said distinctly, “don’t get sick. And I wasn’t.” He hefted the dumbbell for a quick set of curls, proving the point.

“You,” she said, just as pointedly, “were injured. And Nick Carter knows better than to let his people wear themselves down.”

“Right,” Ian said, switching the weights to his other arm. “Can’t have that. Can’t have people getting tired when there are lives to be saved.”

His angry sarcasm was meant to drive her away. Instead she came down the three porch steps, past the towering, bloom-heavy hollyhocks and into the yard, her body language neither aggressive nor submissive—a woman with an extra touch of empathy who well knew the full-blooded Sentinels with whom she often worked.

Especially the cranky ones.

“Ian,” she said, and the soft lines of her face held understanding, “you can’t do it all. Maybe you can do most of it, but not all.”

Something in his temper snapped; he felt the hard coil of it in his chest. “I don’t have to do it all. I just have to do this one thing! One thing, to keep my friends safe!”

The best amulet tech in Brevis Southwest, and he still hadn’t devised a defense against the Atrum Core’s rarely detectable silent amulets—a failure that had cost them all dearly. Repeatedly. And which had given the Core time to devise other new deadly workings—while also leaving them vulnerable to new third-party interlopers, as of yet undefined in spite of their recent activity in the Southwest.

Fernie stood her ground. “That working is a fearful thing, no doubt. But the man who made it is dead now. You have time. And you’ve only been here a week.”

He glared. “They have stockpiles of silent blanks. Sooner or later, they’ll reproduce his work. And then the rest of us will die.”

“Let it go for this moment,” she said, quite steadily. “Don’t you think that’s why you’re here?”

That hard spring coiled tighter. Ian left the weights on the ground and gave way to his leopard, letting the prowl of it come out in his movement—pacing away to the tall latilla coyote fence and back again, feeling the strength of four legs and solid big cat muscle lurking beneath his skin. Out and back again, thinking that although he could detect any normal amulet within a mile, identify its nature, even trigger it if he wanted, he still didn’t have a thing on the silents.

Until Fernie said, in understanding admonishment, “Ian.”

He snapped a look at her. Her eyes widened; she took a sharp breath. But she held her ground, because that’s what she was here for. “Ian.”

His snarl was as much acquiescence as temper. He paced onward...but tucked the leopard away.

Mostly.

“All right, Fernanda,” he said, pausing by the fence. He found his fingers tapping against the rough, pinto bean bark of the hand-peeled latillas; he stilled them.

Maybe a run. Better than a hike up in the Sangre de Cristo trails, at least until he was certain the previous week’s activity hadn’t roused any interest. Strange that an aggressive mountain lion hadn’t been reported.

The narrow Santa Fe River Park ran east-west before them, a riverbed greenway full of cottonwoods and trails. He drifted to the front of the compact yard, through the groomed pines to the thick old adobe wall—four feet near the open gate, stepped up to five feet and then six to meet the tall latilla poles at the corner; another group of stout blooming hollyhocks festooned the transition from adobe to the old fashioned poles. The rest of the fencing was just as idiosyncratic, done in stages to include a high adobe corner in the back and token rail fencing along the property line. Typical of these old Santa Fe properties, where bits and pieces had been added over time.

A dirt road stretched out before them, defining this barely developed privacy in the middle of Santa Fe. The Sangre de Cristo mountains loomed to the east, marching northward to Taos and Colorado—over fourteen thousand feet high, full of bear and cougar and pristine air, tall pines and craggy outcrops. Perfect for a snow leopard.

That had pretty much been the whole point. Nick Carter, Southwest Brevis Consul and definitely the boss of Ian, could have sent him to any one of the Sentinel retreats, from oceanside to low desert scrub. Instead he’d sent Ian from their Tucson base of operations into the high cool mountains for his snow leopard to love.

Ian had simply been too preoccupied with what he’d left behind to truly walk away from it.

Atrum Core bastards.

Two thousand years earlier, the strictures of their cold war with the Core hadn’t been so important—not when druids held sway and Romans were trying to beat them down. Then, the Sentinels hadn’t tried too terribly hard to hide their developing nature, their mandate to protect the Earth—and the Core hadn’t even considered hiding their intent to gather power, ostensibly to make sure the Sentinels didn’t get out of hand.

Mostly it had been seen as a power struggle between two half brothers—and maybe, mostly at the start it was.

But the Core turned to dark ways and corrupted energies to achieve its goal, and the Sentinels honed their skills—and the world changed around them until both factions were in agreement over the need to remain undetected. Their conflict went underground, a worldwide détente with certain understandings: no direct offensives, no breaking cover. Theirs would be a cold war.

Until the Core’s most recent Southwest drozhar had gone rogue. Thanks to his silent amulets, too many Sentinels had been killed or wounded—especially the full-blooded field Sentinels. Those who took the shape of the other within.

Like Ian.

Atrum Core bastards.

“Go take a run,” Fernie said, startling him. “You think I can’t tell that you’ve gone off inside your head again?”

He growled at her.

She waved it away. “Go,” she said. “Run. Think about something else.” And she left him in the yard, returning to tend the cause of the yeasty sweetness wafting out into the yard.

What good was it to have a great growl when people ignored it? Ian propped his foot against the wall and retied his laces. All right, Fernie. A run.

But if he was distracted, he wasn’t oblivious. He saw well enough that he was no longer quite alone. Never mind the male cyclist at the end of the road...the woman coming his way deserved plenty of attention.

She walked along the edge of the dirt and gravel with a green cloth shopping bag tucked over one shoulder and a small leather shoulder bag over the other, wearing a lightweight blazer over a creamy shirt that shimmered with her movement and set off the olive tones of her skin. Her tidy jeans were more smart than casual, and they highlighted her every move. Even from here, he found his gaze drawn to the delicate set of Eurasian features, from the distinct tilt of her eyes to the defined elegance of her nose.

She hesitated several properties away, eyeing the typical adobe wall, gravel driveway and gate—and then, rejecting it, looked ahead to the next property. And finally to this one, where Ian leaned against the wall, watching her. She picked up her pace, walking with more purpose—no longer looking at house numbers, but at him.

All right, Fernie. First her, then a run.

* * *

Ana knew better than to assume anything about this man. She’d seen what he could do. She’d heard what he’d done.

The Core soldier playing the part of a hapless hiker on the mountain hadn’t deserved to die. She’d known him. He’d been only moderately skilled and not as hard-edged as most, taking his punishments without complaint. He hadn’t been nice to her, but he hadn’t been cruel, either.

She approached Ian Scott with one hand hooked into the grocery bag strap and the other in her purse and on her pepper spray—and even so, she hesitated.

She thought she’d known what to expect. Not just from the week before, but because she’d seen head shots—the faintly lengthened nature of his canines in that often rueful smile, the pale and unruly nature of his hair, silver by nature and smudged with faint streaks of black. She should have been prepared for the impact of those pale gray eyes rimmed with black, and for the striking contrast of dark brows and dark lashes. The snow leopard, coming through. Not all of the Sentinels showed their other so strongly, but this man...

Even standing there, he had a physical grace. Even not as tall as some of the Core posse members, even not as brawny.

She thought she’d known.

But she hadn’t been this close to him on the trail. So she hadn’t really known at all.

It took everything she had to offer him a steady smile. “Hi,” she said, taking advantage of an opportunity she hadn’t expected when she’d set out to survey this Sentinel retreat in person. “I’m so embarrassed, but when I left my rental this morning I didn’t realize how similar these yards are—”

“And they aren’t well numbered,” he finished for her, as polite as any man should be, but his eyes...never to be mistaken for anything but a predator’s eyes. His muscles ran strong and well-defined beneath a bright red sport shirt, his shoulders wide and body lean. Just as it had the week before, her body flushed with the awareness of what he was.

She swallowed her reaction, nodding to the drive beyond this one. “It might be that one. I’d recognize it if I went back for a look. But I don’t want to intrude.”

“I’ll come with you, if you’d like,” he said. “As long as you don’t taze me.” Those eyes flicked to her purse.

She lifted her hand from it. “Pepper spray,” she said without apology.

“Of course, pepper spray.” He said it amiably enough. “I wouldn’t worry too much about intruding. That driveway goes to a cluster of rentals. You won’t be the first person to look around.”

It was, she realized with surprise, his way of politely giving her space to move along on her own. For that instant, it flummoxed her; she was unused to such courtesy. Something fluttered in her chest, and she thought it might have been regret.

But in the next moment she jerked back, stumbling as his expression changed entirely—turning feral and predatory and triggering the fear that not only came of knowing what he was, but of seeing it in him. Oh, God he’s going to—

And he did, planting his hands on the wall to leap over it in one smooth—

The blow came from behind, so suddenly she had no warning—just the impact, the wrenching twist of her shoulder, and her instinctive grab at her purse. She scraped against the adobe, losing the purse after all—and only then seeing the cyclist behind her.

Ian came over the wall feet first. The cyclist went flying, the bike went flying, the purse went flying...

Ian landed on his feet.

The cyclist scrambled up and away and somehow thought he would make it. Even Ana knew better, dazed and clinging to the wall—and stunned all over again by Ian’s speed as he pounced. She winced in anticipation as he landed on the man, poised for a fierce blow—and then slowly relaxed as he drew himself up short, one knee on the man’s chest, his knuckles resting at the man’s throat in an aborted strike that would have been fatal.

“Bad move,” he told the man. If he was breathing hard, Ana couldn’t see it.

But she could see the man’s face. And she knew him.

The shock of it piled on to the shock of the attack and kept her pinned to the wall, struggling to understand.

He was Core, she was sure of it. She couldn’t fathom it. Why would Lerche seek to sabotage the assignment he’d given her?

She came back to her wits as Ian Scott scooped her purse from the ground. Her attacker pedaled wildly away, not quite steady on the bike.

“What—?” she said, far too nonsensically.

“You okay?” Ian said, and held out the purse.

“Yes, I—” She rubbed her arm, taking the purse to fumble for her phone. “I should call the police—” Not because she truly thought it best, but because she thought it was the thing to say.

He sidestepped the matter—no surprise. Sentinels eschewed official notice as much as the Core. “I’d rather offer to see you home again. You have any idea why that guy would be targeting you?”

For the moment, she forgot her script. “What do you mean, targeting me?”

“He’s been lurking at the end of the street, watching you.”

Ah. She understood now. Someone hadn’t trusted her to get this job done on her own...and then hadn’t trusted her enough to let her in on the plan. She groped for words that would ring true. “I can’t imagine it was personal.”