"I'm a leopard," he said. "Our women are everything to us. I would rather die than have you hurt. Don't ever try to protect me again."

"I can't promise that." He was her life. It was that simple.

"You're the female." His teeth grazed her ear. "You have to be submissive."

She was tempted to use her teeth on him in retaliation. "Does that ever work?"

"It worked when you were five."

That made her laugh and though it hurt, it was also good - with her acceptance of the truth, a truth that was a child's, not a woman's, she had unlocked the shackles binding her to the past. But even as she laughed, she wondered and worried about the impact of her words on Clay. He was protective and loyal to a fault. He also had a temper that could simmer for hours, days, sometimes weeks, before snapping. If that temper turned inward...No!

She set her jaw. She would not let that happen to her beautiful, wonderful Clay. Let this damn disease try to kill her. She would not let it win, not until she'd brought the light back into Clay's eyes.

Chapter 17

Safely alone in the car with Clay, it had been easy to make a promise to help him. Now that Talin was in the presence of his packmates, she wondered at her arrogance. He was clearly a much loved and respected member of DarkRiver. What had made her think he had any need of her interference?

Then he glanced at her from where he stood with Nathan and her panic calmed. No matter how much he belonged to these leopards, he belonged to her first.

"I've never seen him look at a woman that way."

Startled, she turned to face the tall brunette who had walked up to stand beside her. Clay had introduced her as Tamsyn, the pack healer. Nathan was her mate. "You don't have to say that," she began, leaning back against the kitchen counter.

"Don't worry." The other woman shook her head. "I might be a healer, but I'm no soft touch. Just ask Kit and Cory." She nodded out the window - at the two teenagers who appeared to be running herd on her twins. "They want chocolate chip cookies, they babysit." She grinned.

Talin found herself smiling in turn. "Excellent trade."

"I thought so." Tamsyn's eyes were warm, an unusual color closer to caramel than true brown. "And what I said earlier, I wasn't doing it to be nice. If you'd been a threat to Clay, I'd have kicked you out of DarkRiver land myself."

"You could've tried." No one was going to separate her from Clay.

"Atta girl." Tamsyn's grin widened. "Sascha said you had spine. She likes you."

Talin didn't drop her guard, though the abandoned child in her melted at the small sign of acceptance from Clay's new family. "Do you? You don't think I'm not good enough for him?"

"Hmm, well, now, maybe you're not."

It wasn't what Talin had wanted to hear, though she knew it to be the truth.

"But," the healer continued, "Sascha wasn't particularly good for Lucas when they started out, either. There were some damn heated discussions about him falling for a Psy."

Talin kept getting thrown by these leopards. "Really?"

A nod. "In the end, it doesn't make a difference what anyone else thinks. DarkRiver men make up their own minds." The healer's expression grew pensive. "But that doesn't mean I won't poke my nose into it. You should know that - we're crazy protective of our own."

The back door swung open with a bang and one of the teenagers stuck his head inside. "Juice?" His tone was plaintive.

Tamsyn waved a finger as she went to the cooler. "Your debts are adding up, Cory."

"You totally fleeced us on the cookies - Julian and Roman are like demons on crack. Do they ever stop?"

Talin was taken aback by the boy's smile - a bright slash of unvarnished affection. The teenagers she knew never smiled with such absolute and utter trust.

Walking over, Tamsyn put a jug of something cold and almost colorless in his hand, reaching out to muss up his hair at the same time. "You were exactly the same."

"Aw, come on, Tammy. Don't tell baby stories about me in front of a pretty girl."

Talin was about to turn around and look for that girl when she realized he was looking at her. The cocky charm on his face made not smiling impossible. Just like with Jon. Her smile dulled.

"She's way too old for you." Clay's voice was relaxed as he came to stand beside her. "Go play with girls your own age."

Cory took the glasses Tamsyn was holding out. "Hah! I told Kit you were hot for her!" A gleeful look on his face, he backed out the door and jogged to the others.

Feeling her face flush at the boy's estimation of Clay's feelings, she didn't know what to say or where to look. As long as he'd thought of her as a...a slut, she forced herself to think, it had been easy to not examine her own reactions too deeply. Why torment herself with things she couldn't have?

But after the devastating honesty of those minutes in the car, she'd started to wonder if maybe there was hope. He'd been direct in expressing his desire to kiss her, but this confusing need aside, what did she want? She felt no fear when she lay with a man. Worse, there was an absence of emotion. But with Clay...so many feelings, chaos inside her mind, her heart.

Would she feel if he touched her? What if she didn't? Her mind chilled. No way in hell she was letting the ugly isolation of sex taint their new relationship. If they slept together and it made her go to the cold place inside herself, she wouldn't be able to bear it. And Clay would know. It would wound him. She couldn't do that to him.

No, Clay had to remain her friend. Nonsexual. Safe. Forever.

"Hey." His hand touched her lower back, making her jump.

Turning quickly, she faced him. "We should show Tamsyn the autopsy reports while the kids are outside and we can talk without interruption."

Those forest-in-shadow eyes sharpened. "That's what I just said."

"Oh."

"What's going on in that head of yours? Your scent's not right."

It disconcerted her to be in the presence of people who could taste her sweat, her fear, her absolute terror at the thought of messing up this relationship. "It's not right anyway, remember?" If nothing else, she thought with bitter humor, the insidious disease eating away at her mind was good as an excuse.

Frown lines marred his forehead. "This is different."

"The reports."

"I already gave them to her." He nodded at the huge kitchen table behind her.

She turned to find Tamsyn leafing through the pages. Nate stood close by, gripping the back of her chair. "Tammy's not seeing anything obvious," he said, looking up, "but it might help if Talin went over the reports with her."

"Sure. At least I'll be able to split the injuries up into new and old." It would rip her to pieces but she needed to do this - for Jon, perhaps for other lost children they didn't yet know about.

"While you do that," Clay told her, eyes disturbingly intent on her expression, "we're going to see if we can pick up Jon's trail. We'll start from where you lost the scent."

Having already given him the location, she nodded. "Thank you." It was all she could trust herself to say without betraying the turbulence threatening to take her under. After a pregnant pause, she walked to the table and sat down facing Tamsyn.

The healer tilted her head to kiss her mate good-bye and Talin looked away, ashamed to be in the presence of something so beautiful. She had once been loved, she knew that. Clay had loved her. And look what she'd done.

Then a big male hand was touching the back of her head and she was looking up, startled. The kiss he brushed over her lips caught her breath, blew her confusion to shreds. His skin was a little rough, his mouth pure demand...and his kiss so right it hurt. He was out the door a second later. She raised trembling fingers to her lips, more than a little afraid of the strength of the feelings he'd aroused.

"You want to talk about it?" Tamsyn's voice was gentle but it broke the spell.

She dropped her hand, wanting to hide away the memory where no one could steal it from her. "Talk about what?"

The healer shook her head. "When you're ready, I'll be here. Now, tell me about this boy."

Talin looked at the file Tamsyn had spread out in the middle of the table. It was Mickey's. Rage hit her in a violent rush and she had to close her eyes for long seconds to compose herself. When she opened them, she found Tamsyn putting a cup of hot chocolate in front of her.

Grateful, she wrapped her hands around the mug as the other woman retook her seat. "Do you always take care of people?"

"It's part of me," was the simple answer. "Would you like more time?"

"No." If the kidnappers stuck true to form, Jon had very little left. "Can you translate the medical jargon?"

"Yes."

For the next five minutes, she listened as Tammy described Mickey's wounds. To her surprise, the beating appeared to have taken place postmortem. "Possibly to hide something else," Tamsyn said. "But if so, they went overboard."

Talin's gut burned at the reminder of the way Mickey's face had been turned to pulp. "Do you think he was killed as a result of the organ removals?"

"Likely." Anger lined the healer's face. "I wish I could tell you he didn't suffer, but what I can tell you is that his death was probably painless. He would've been anesthetized for the procedure, if only to keep him from moving. This beautiful boy went to sleep and never woke up."

Talin didn't cry. She had no right. Not when the monster or monsters who had done this continued to roam free. "The organ removal process?"

"Even the beating couldn't hide the marks of high-level surgery," Tamsyn said immediately. "We could be looking at black market organ sales."

"Max thinks that's a red herring."