Bound Guardian Angel (46 page)

She let out an exasperated sigh. “You know
I’ll just dip into your thoughts and see what you’re hiding if you
don’t tell me. How about you save us both the trouble and just tell
me what’s on your mind.”

“I said it’s nothing.”

Clearly, he still didn’t trust her. But if
what he refused to tell her could help their cause, she wanted to
know what it was. Maybe by extending an olive branch, she could
earn enough of his trust to open up.

“Whatever it is, I won’t tell Bain, if
that’s what you’re worried about. And I won’t tell anyone else,
either. You have my word.”

“No offense, but your word is for shit with
me right now.”

The two of them had gone around and around
since they’d met. She’d dropped the ball on him when she was
supposed to be at the pickup facility at the time of Trace’s
release, and she’d gone at him and Trace as hard as they’d gone at
her. This was the most civil conversation she’d ever had with
Micah, so of course he would be wary.

“I know,” she said, holding up her free
hand, palm facing out as if she were trying to calm a snarling dog.
“I know, Micah, but I’m trying to work with you here. We need to
work together. At least for now. If you have knowledge that could
help, I’d like to know what it is.”

He leaned forward and scrubbed his palms up
and down his face as he expelled a troubled breath. When he dropped
his hands to his lap, his resigned gaze lifted warily to hers.
“Fine, I’ll tell you, although I don’t think it has anything to do
with the ankh or Skeletor. But . . .
Jesus . . .” He wiped his palm over his face again
then raked his fingers through his hair. “Who knows at this
point.”

It took all of Cordray’s patience not to
sneak into his thoughts and see what all the fuss was about, but
she didn’t want to do anything to violate the fledgling trust Micah
seemed on the verge of bestowing upon her.

“There’s a patient at AKM. A young male.
He’s”—Micah locked eyes with her—“half lycan.”

Cordray’s mental brakes engaged.
“Wait . . . what?”

“You heard me. He’s half vampire, half
lycan. His name is Savill, and he was rescued from Bishop’s lab.
He’d been cut open as if they’d been about to dissect him. We
didn’t think he’d make it, but we’ve finally stabilized him, and it
looks like he might actually pull through.”

“Who are his parents?” She was sure that
other half-vampire-half-lycan mixed-bloods had existed at some
point in history, but this was the first she’d personally heard of
one. An anomaly, to be sure.

Micah shrugged. “We don’t know who his real
parents are, but he somehow made it into the human adoption system
when he was a baby, and he was adopted by a set of human parents.
You run a shelter. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

She shook her head. “I’ve come across a lot
of mixed-bloods who got lost in the human system, but never any
with lycan blood in them.”

Micah sighed and bowed his head. “I knew it
was a long shot.”

His body language was uncharacteristically
compassionate. She’d previously seen inside Micah’s thoughts that
he wanted children of his own. That he longed for a family and had
an enormous amount of love to give, and that as badly as he treated
her, he was a kind, caring person. Almost overly caring. He’d
stepped in to save the lives of his comrades on numerous occasions,
both now and back when he’d been a member of her father’s guard.
Micah was a hero’s hero. The kind of person who selflessly gave of
himself so that others could be given a fighting chance.

No doubt Savill’s predicament deeply
troubled him. He knew just as she did that Memnon and Rameses, who
were purists, wouldn’t want anything to do with a damaged
mixed-breed who carried vampire genes. Savill would never have a
place within lycan society with those two at the helm. Not that Mem
and Ram were bad guys. They weren’t. They were just very strict
about living by the lycan code. Cordray wouldn’t be surprised if
they’d banished the lycan responsible for conceiving Savill in the
first place, because while mating with humans was acceptable under
lycan law, mating with vampires was not. In fact, at one time
mating with vampires was strictly forbidden and punishable by
death. It might still be. Cordray didn’t know. She didn’t keep up
with lycan law.

Cordray spoke quietly, treading softly on
what she could tell was a sensitive subject. “Have his human
parents been—”

“They’ve been handled.”

Handled
. Cordray was knowledgeable
enough to know what that meant. “Good.” She nodded. “That’s
good.”

“It’s not good, Cordray,” Micah snapped. He
stood and began pacing. “It’s sad. It’s tragic. The only parents
he’s ever known think he’s dead. He’ll never see them again.” He
stopped and flung his arm out to the side as if he were pointing in
the direction of Savill’s hospital bed. “And when he wakes up,
he’ll have no one. Absolutely fucking no one. He’ll be caught up in
a world he didn’t know existed, with a body that will begin to
transition into an adult any day now if it hasn’t already.” He
grimaced. “A body with a big fucking scar from his neck to his
groin.

“Can you imagine the fear he went through?
The terror he must have endured inside Bishop’s lab?” Micah paced
back to his chair and dropped into it with the heaviness of a
five-ton boulder. “He’s going to need intense therapy. Constant
supervision and reassurance. And even then it might not be enough
to keep him from killing himself. There’s no way to tell if his
vampire side or his lycan side will dominate, or if he’ll be an
equal blend of both. So, yeah . . . fuck good. This
is a fucking nightmare.” He shoved his hand through his hair again
then pushed forward, elbows on knees, head bowed so that his black
mane fell forward, covering his face.

Cordray exchanged worried glances with Sam,
who wore a mask of concern. Apparently, this was the first she’d
heard of Savill, too.

“I just meant,” Cordray said gently, “that
it’s good his human parents have been taken care of before the
situation can become even worse.”

Cordray dared to take a quick peek inside
Micah’s mind to see if there was anything else bothering him. What
she found surprised her. Tonight, Micah had learned that Malek and
Gina were expecting. By itself, Savill’s situation was upsetting
enough, but to find out that yet another of his teammates was
expecting a baby when his own calling hadn’t produced a child
compounded his feelings of anger, heartbreak, and frustration that
much more.

She quickly pulled out of his head before he
could detect her and set her coffee cup on the table. “Maybe I
should be going.”

“No.” Micah’s head shot up. “We still have
to talk about Skeletor.”

“We don’t have to do this now,” she
said.

Micah huffed and shook his head. “Don’t you
start acting nice, C. You’ve been a bitch up to this point. You
don’t get to act like you care about my feelings now, especially
since you hacked into my system last night, which pisses me off and
is grounds for royal punishment.” He snapped his fingers as if
commanding a dog to heel. “Start talking or I’ll report your
illegal activity to King Bain and see how
you
like being
locked in his dungeon for a couple of weeks. What happened between
you and Skeletor?”

She recognized Micah’s abrupt aggression for
what it was. A deflection. By attacking her, he could channel his
stew of negative, resentful emotions on something tangible, thus
finding an outlet to blow the steam out of his chimney.

Did that mean she liked being his punching
bag? No. Did she understand where he was coming from? Absolutely.
Could she take one for the team to keep the peace while they
infiltrated Grudge Match? Yeah, sure. Just this once.

She told him about the exchange of messages
between her and their mutual enemy, including Skeletor’s last
message, where he flew off the deep end. She was careful not to
disclose the tidbit about how she and Bain were related. Maybe
Skeletor knew that shit, and while she couldn’t stop him from
announcing the truth to the world, she certainly wouldn’t help him
by revealing it to Micah or anyone else.

“He talked about being forced to keep
secrets and being shunned by those who worship your own flesh and
blood but don’t acknowledge your existence.” She paused as an
epiphany bloomed inside her mind. “He sounded resentful, Micah. I
think this is personal for him. Very personal. Do you have any
living relatives?”

Micah shook his head. “No. My parents both
died. I stopped hearing from my uncle about the same time my
parents died, so I assume he’s dead, too. And since I was an only
child and Uncle Rory wasn’t mated, there’s no one else. I’m the
last of my line.”

“Nobody? You can’t think of anyone
else?”

He shook his head. “Not a one.”

She scowled and nibbled her bottom lip,
trying to figure out what Skeletor’s angle was. It just didn’t make
sense that he would throw the sibling card at her the way he did
without a reason. “Maybe he’s the brother of someone you killed or
someone who died, and now Skeletor blames you for the death. Maybe
he’s seeking vengeance.”

“Then why would he steal my ankh rather than
try and kill me?”

“Hey,” Sam said from the kitchen, waving a
knife back and forth, “no talking about anyone trying to kill you,
baby. If that’s what he wants to do, he’ll have to go through me,
and rest assured, he won’t be getting through me to you.”

“That’s why I love you, baby,” Micah said,
flashing his first grin in over ten minutes. “You think you’re a
badass.”

“I
am
a badass, thank you very
much.”

“Yes, you are, but I don’t want you putting
yourself in harm’s way for me. That’s my job.” He faced Cordray
again. “But if he was out for blood vengeance, don’t you think he’d
want to do a lot more to hurt me than steal an ancient key?”

Sam returned to preparing the oddest
breakfast Cordray had ever seen. There was now a jar of green
olives sitting open on the counter that Sam was eating directly out
of.

Cordray peeled her gaze away from Sam’s
funky breakfast and shrugged at Micah’s question. Perhaps she was
overthinking Skeletor’s intentions. “Maybe it’s as simple as he
wants to open a portal and knew you had a key?” Her intuition
instantly refuted the possibility, and she shook her head as she
furrowed her brow. “No, that’s too random. Whatever is up
Skeletor’s ass is too personal for it to be just about the ankh.
Maybe he wants to open a portal, but that’s secondary to causing
you pain. Hurting you is his primary objective. That’s my gut
feeling.”

“I think you’re right.” He told her about
the malicious poems Skeletor had written to him.

“Man, this guy really hates you.” She rubbed
her hand over her forehead. All this thinking wasn’t good for her
hangover. “Are you sure you can’t think of anyone who wants to make
you suffer?”

“Cordray, if I named everyone who fit that
description, the list would be longer than my dick.”

Her gaze dropped to his crotch before she
blinked her gaze back up to his. “So you’re saying the list would
be a short one.”

His eyes narrowed as his mouth pressed into
a thin line. “It was a metaphor.”

“A bad one.” She held his stare. “Would you
like to rephrase it?”

His jaw ticked as if he were clenching his
teeth. “No, I’m good. I think my dick is sufficiently big enough to
handle such a list.”

Cordray let out an irritated sigh. “Males
and their dicks.” She shook her head. “I’ll never understand the
fascination.”

Micah sprawled and slung his arm over the
back of the chair. “That’s because you don’t have one.”

“Thank God. It would suck never being able
to use my brain.”

He smirked, which was probably as close to
laughing at one of her jokes as he would ever get. “Dick jokes
aside,” he said, “Is that it? Is there anything else you found out
that I need to know?”

“No.”

He stood again and headed toward the
kitchen. “I assume you know our theory about the pedway since you
were inside our system last night?”

“Yes. I wanted to go by the Heritage and see
if I can find anything useful.”

“Don’t bother. Sev already looked, and
Stryker’s team is making a second go-round.”

“But—” She preferred to do her own
recon.

“You already have enough going on.” Micah
spoke with the confident, no-nonsense tone of a natural-born
leader.

Too bad, because she didn’t do
subordination. She was her own boss and wasn’t into taking someone
else’s orders.

“You’re not my boss, Micah. If I want to
investigate the pedway, I’ll investigate the pedway.”

He shrugged, turned, and snagged a piece of
salmon from the platter Sam had set in the middle of the counter.
“Suit yourself.” He rounded the counter and kissed Sam’s cheek
before popping the salmon in his mouth. “I’m going to take a
shower, and then I’ve got an application to fill out.”

“Oh, about that . . .”

Micah held up and faced her. “Yeah?”

“Grudge Match is a secret. I could get
kicked out just for talking to you about it.”

One corner of Micah’s mouth kicked upward.
“In other words, if you piss me off, I can just tell this Digon guy
that you told me all about the secret handshake and he’d boot
you?”

“Something like that.”

“Nice to know.”

“Just wait until after we’ve finished our
investigation to get pissed off at me. This is too important to
blow. It could be our best chance of finding out who’s kidnapping
our people, as well as to take down Royce.”

Micah lifted his hand as if telling her to
hush. “Don’t worry, C. I know how important this is. I’m not going
to fuck it up.”

“That sounds good, but let’s face it, Micah.
You’re not known to be the most subtle or level-headed of Bain’s
enforcers. You could blow this whole operation just for sport.”