Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

“Damn.” RainFire was now effectively isolated from the rest of the world. The pack’s territory was in a dead zone as far as current satellites were concerned, which meant that if RainFire wanted satellite comms, they’d have to pay for a satellite of their own. The pack was too young to have that kind of money.

“How long can we run the generators?” Changelings were more resistant to cold than humans or Psy, but RainFire had cubs who wouldn’t last long if the heating went out. Should that be a risk, Remi would find a way to get them to civilization.

“Days,” Theo said, his tanned skin belying the current weather. “That’s why Lark and I blew the budget. We got the green version that we can run with fucking vegetable scraps if that’s all we have.”

“Sometimes,” Remi said, “I remember why I asked you degenerates to join the pack.”

The cousins bumped fists. They’d been roaming alone when Remi first met them, having been on their own since they were teenagers after their tiny pack imploded as a result of a frankly selfish power struggle that had savaged pack bonds, but he’d never met any two who were less suited to being loners.

Big, quiet Theo had a marshmallow heart when it came to the cubs, while competent and outwardly hard-assed Lark was never as happy as when she was poking her nose into packmates’ lives and doing everything she could to smooth over any flare-ups or personality clashes.

Beside them, Angel, much more self-contained and solitary by nature, folded his arms. His “straight-from-a-marble-statue” bone structure, as described by Lark, combined with eyes of deep ultramarine and flawless brown skin, made him a magnet for both men and women—only Angel seemed to prefer to walk alone in every way.

Of all the people who had agreed to help Remi set up RainFire, it was Angel’s agreement that had most surprised him.

“We’ve got plenty of supplies,” the other man said. “We can wait this out, though it might take a few days. Last comm transmission I caught before lines went down said the meteorologists were calling this a once-in-two-hundred-years storm.”

“Yeah.” Lark’s elfin face twisted into a scowl. “Damn mountains seem to have forgotten it’s spring.”

Weather was always changeable in the Smokies during this part of the year, but the sentinels were right: it was never usually this bad. While RainFire had only been in the area approximately two and a half years, Remi had kept a sharp eye on the region over the past five years, ever since he’d targeted the land for the pack he wanted to build, and not once had the mountains turned this dark and wet and cold in spring.

“Our position on a rise should protect us from any mudslides,” he said. “Theo, I want you to take a team and make sure there’s nothing to worry about around us regardless—be careful, but check to see if the ground shows signs of becoming unstable.”

“Will do.” Theo rubbed at his jaw, as if his stubble itched. “I think we should be good. These trees have roots so deep nothing but the earth cracking open’s going to shake them.”

That was why Remi had chosen this place for the pack’s heart. These “aerie trees” had been planted over three hundred years before by a small pack named RainStone. Then had come the Territorial Wars; RainStone had been decimated in the ensuing fighting, their land passing into the trust created after the wars to hold pack lands that no longer had a living pulse.

Remi and the other founding members of RainFire had flat-out bought a great big chunk of land around this section for their new pack and they had certain changeling rights to areas in public ownership, but the heart piece, they’d had to request from the trust. The trust’s founding document decreed that the entrusted pack lands could never be sold, only be given—to new or old changeling packs that needed it.

As a result, the testing process for those who applied for a land grant was stringent. For an inexperienced alpha who wanted to set up a brand-new pack, it was brutal. That process was overseen by the ten most powerful alphas in the country at any given time. Remi had had to show those tough men and women not only that he had enough committed people and resources to set up a pack and hold the land against outside threats, but also that he had the strength to keep his new pack safe.

Not every changeling with the dominance to be alpha has the heart for it.

It was Lucas Hunter, alpha of DarkRiver, who’d said that to Remi at the start of the three-month period in which he’d acted as Remi’s mentor—a condition of the land grant. His task had been to give Remi a crash course in what it meant to be alpha of a vibrant, growing pack, and assess if Remi had the goods to be entrusted with the task.

Lucas had gone on to add, “You have to create bonds so strong that your packmates know you’ll always have their backs.”

“That’s not even a question.” Remi would fight to the death for his people. “It might’ve taken time for my alpha nature to assert itself, but it’s fucking wide awake now. All I want is my own pack, my own sprawling family to protect.”

Lucas’s green eyes had glinted in approval. “Never forget that—your pack is the heart. The alphas who fuck up are the ones who start to think they’re the most important element of a pack.” A shake of his head, his hair gleaming blue-black in the sunlight, the savage clawlike lines that marked one side of his face clearly delineated. “We’re just the lucky bastards who have the honor of protecting the heart.”

Remi would allow nothing to harm that heart. He intended for RainFire to put down roots as deep and as strong and as unshakable as those of the trees in which they’d made their homes. “Cubs?” he asked, his mind on the most vulnerable of their packmates.