Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder

30

Consciousness didn’t return to Meghna slowly. No, it slammed into her in a burst of sight and sound and physical sensation. Everything was too bright and too loud and too painful…and then it suddenly snapped into focus. The sun was dropping low in the sky. The evening was quiet. The ground beneath her was cool with frosted-over grass. She wasn’t hurt. And she wasn’t alone. But it wasn’t Elijah who stood over her as she scrambled to sit up and instinctively patted herself down for her blades. It was a woman dressed in all black, save for the pale fur lining on the hood of her slim-cut ski jacket. Her oval-shaped face was a careful mask of indifference, her dark eyes remote. She was beautiful the way a statue was beautiful…and Purva Saxena would take that as a compliment. Meghna hadn’t seen the General in almost a year and, like every time she did, it was like looking at a familiar stranger.

“Where am I?” she demanded, scanning their surroundings. A wooded area. It could’ve been miles or just yards from the lodge. “Where’s Elijah?” The last thing she remembered was the building blowing up, debris starting to fall. What if he’d been injured? Had Purva helped that along? Ice clinked around in the bowl of Meghna’s stomach. “What did you do to him?”

“I gave him a stronger dose of the same sedative I gave you.” The General shrugged, as if injecting someone with drugs was a normal thing people did. “It was the most efficient way of separating you. By the time your lover wakes up, you’ll be back at the loading dock. This shouldn’t take long.”

“How do you know he’s my lover?” It wasn’t the first question Meghna had meant to ask, but it slipped out anyway. And try as she might, she couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her tone. It was like being fifteen again. Off-balance and out of her depth. Unsure of how to handle this person who’d never been a part of her life but whose shadow had never quite left it.

The slight but somehow enormously smug smile that curved Purva’s lips telegraphed that she knew exactly what impact she was having. She tucked a strand of her straight black hair behind her ear, watching Meghna stand without offering a hand to help. “I know you,” she said crisply, her posh British-Indian accent sharp enough to cut glass. “Better than you know yourself.”

“Bullshit,” Meghna spat, checking her weapons again. All present and accounted for. The stiletto she’d killed Mirko with was a comforting weight against her palm, and she curled her fingers around it. “You have no idea who I am.” No idea what I’m capable of.

“Don’t I?” Purva’s coal-black eyes glittered like diamonds. “You think I don’t know how you hate me for leaving you and divorcing your father? How you’ve called me ‘the General’ all these years because you don’t want to call me ‘Ma’? Do you think I haven’t watched you push people away because it’s easier than letting them close? You may think I’m heartless, but one thing I’m definitely not is stupid.”

Meghna had never thought the General was stupid. Cold, calculating. Ruthless and practical. But never stupid. And hearing her private thoughts dissected like this stung like wasps. “Is that why you wanted to meet? So we could have a warm and fuzzy heart-to-heart about our dysfunctional relationship?” A thermos of chai would’ve been more appropriate for that than a syringe full of sedatives. “Did you think I needed some very belated motherly advice about boys? No, thank you.”

“No, I think you need a warning about who you’re working with,” Purva said. “Any advice I have is just a bonus.”

“I know who I’m working with,” she assured. She’d learned every inch of Elijah over the past few days. Memorized all of his tics and tells. Wrapped herself in how he tasted and smelled. And, strangest of all, she knew his heart. His big, brave, generous heart that even had room for a soulless cynic like her.

The General—my mother, she mentally corrected as if that would somehow prove the woman wrong—arched an imperious eyebrow. Her full lips curled. It was an expression that telegraphed I know something you don’t know. And it raised Meghna’s hackles.

“Did you bring down the lodge?” she wondered, though she already suspected the answer was in the affirmative. Tavi Estrada was too self-motivated, too cagey, to do something so showy. No, blowing up a building was more her mother’s style. She loved setting worlds on fire and then going back to her mountain and letting everyone else deal with the fallout.

“It had to be done,” her mother replied, without even the barest nod toward regret or concern. “The Committee burned this location as well as the clinic near Farmington where you had that unfortunate encounter with Dr. Gary Schoenlein. The situation needed to be contained.”

“What?” The ice clinking in her stomach had spread to her veins. Her throat. And it froze her feet to the ground. “What committee? How do you know about Schoenlein?” The puzzle pieces weren’t fitting together. Not in any way that made sense. And then one incongruent, ugly piece hovered in the forefront of Meghna’s mind. “D-did you send that hit squad to the safe house? Did you try to kill me, Ma?”

“No! Never!” For the first time in twenty years, Purva Saxena’s mirror-smooth facade cracked, the fractures spider-webbing out until even her eyes held damp emotion. “Everything I have done, I have done to save you, Meghna. To build you up and make you strong and prepare you to fight. And when I learned that Hollister was using the Committee to work at cross-purposes…to further his own agenda…I knew you had to be told.”

Hollister. The Committee. Meghna spoke eight languages and she had no idea what those words meant. “What the hell are you talking about?” Surely Elijah had awakened by now. He’d realize she was gone. She didn’t have time to play guessing games.

“Third Shift,” Purva said. “They’re one of many black-ops mercenary groups who take their cues from a committee inside the American government. But it’s not just a national committee. It’s a global group cooperating on a shared purpose. I represent the Vidrohi’s interests. Roman Hollister represents…” Her mother broke off, mouth twisting in a grimace. “He represents himself. That much has become clear.”

It clicked then. Roman Hollister was a billionaire industrialist and financier. Like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk’s older, wealthier template. His social tier was much higher than hers. He had a private island where he reportedly threw lavish parties and private orgies. He hobnobbed with presidents, kings, and dictators alike. Meghna suddenly remembered Mirko bragging at last week’s party about a Moscow brothel and the prime minister…oh. There was where the puzzle piece fit in. “And you think Third Shift is doing Hollister’s bidding? No. It’s not possible. They wanted to take Mirko down.”

“Maybe he did, too. Have you considered that?” Purva challenged, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you know where that scientist’s coveted serum is going, Meghna? Who it was marked for all along? Roman Hollister has been using his influence for decades to make this happen. Right under all of our noses. On that fantasy island of his. Only the rich and famous come back. None of the working women and party girls ever do.”

Meghna hated every bit of this. The eleventh-hour exposition was like something out of a bad spy movie. One of Chase’s early box-office bombs. And she’d never expected the woman who gave birth to her to be the one delivering the cheesy dialogue. “So what? If Hollister’s some sort of evil billionaire supervillain who wants to breed his own shape-shifters…what does have to do with Elijah and 3S?”

“Ask them. Find out.” The General was back. The vulnerability she’d displayed earlier was all but gone. Her gaze hardened. “Do what you’ve been taught to do. What you’ve taught yourself to do.”

A frustrated scream tore from Meghna’s throat and her fingers clenched around her stiletto hard enough for the blade to cut into her skin. It began healing almost immediately, but that was little comfort. “Why don’t you take down Hollister yourself?” she demanded. “If you’re in this Committee together. Why don’t you blow it up from the inside just like you blew up that resort over there?”

“Because the balance at the top is too delicate,” Purva said with another careless shrug. Maybe she had a whole collection of shrugs. One for every fuck she didn’t give. “It’s far better to let you destroy the foundation so it crumbles. I just thought you would like to know what you were truly up against.”

“So that’s it? That’s what you had to say to me that was so important?” she asked. This was the epitome of a meeting that could have easily been an email. “Are you going to walk away now that you’ve delivered your little message?” Like you always do?

“No, Meghna.” Purva shook her head as she pulled a pair of black gloves from her pockets and slipped them on one by one. “You’re going to walk away. You’re going to walk back to Elijah Richter. And I truly hope he’s as trustworthy as you think he is. There’s one lesson I did not bother to teach you, and I should have. Apsaras don’t have to leave,” she said in a gentle tone reserved for lullabies, for lories. For songs Meghna had never heard her sing. “You can choose to stay.”

What bubbled up in Meghna’s throat then wasn’t a scream so much as a sob. For the little girl who’d never been told such a simple thing. For the young woman who’d never believed it. For the adult who’d insisted she didn’t need it. “Then why didn’t you?”

The General, Purva, Ma just shook her head, something almost like sadness playing across her face before it went impassive once more. And then she gestured for Meghna to go. “You’re running out of time.”

No.Meghna dashed hot tears away with the backs of her bloodstained hands before she clenched them into fists and pivoted toward the opening in the trees. She had all the time in the world. And she was going to use it to do what mattered. To change what she could. The future. Not the past.

* * *

The force of the blast must’ve knocked him out for a good fifteen to twenty minutes. Maybe even longer, Elijah reckoned, when he came ’round to Meghna crouched over him with concern written all over her gorgeous face. And a Black Hawk helicopter hovering in the sky about half a klick away, a ladder hanging out of its open belly. He sat up with a groan, cataloging the bumps and bruises from tangling with Mirko’s guards. Funny thing was, his head didn’t hurt like he’d cracked it. But shifter biology was strange that way. Every day a new surprise.

“About time you woke up, Sleeping Beauty,” Meghna said, offering him a hand.

“Don’t let the team hear that nickname,” he warned as he accepted her help and levered up from his ungainly sprawl on the ground. “I’ll never hear the end of it.” He made quick work of brushing concrete chips from his arms and shoulders. Great slabs of stone and brick had rained down all around them, and the building was still coming down.

Meghna watched him get sorted with such intensity that it was almost unnerving. And when he caught her at it, met those big dark-brown eyes, she looked away. “We should go,” she said, all business and no nonsense. The teasing tone she’d adopted when he woke was safely tucked away. “The helicopter’s only been here for a few minutes, but I can’t imagine they want to linger much longer.”

She was right. Estrada was long gone with the briefcase and its sought-after contents by now. There was no use in standing here and faffing about. So they scarpered, closing the distance to the Black Hawk and clambering up the ladder. Meghna swung inside like she’d been born to it and he followed with much less grace. Which was all right, because the actual Grace was waiting for them in the hold. Along with Finn and Chase Saunders, who was settled in on a gurney with a saline drip. Thank Christ. Elijah had never doubted they’d complete their mission and get out safely, but visual confirmation sent palpable relief coursing through his veins.

“Cheers, mate,” he said to Finn with an appreciative nod while Grace helped JP check over Meghna, every inch the doctor even if she wasn’t planning to do it professionally anymore.

“I’m fine, I promise,” Meghna was protesting as he turned toward the open door to pull in the ladder and close everything up.

“You’re definitely ‘fine,’ ma’am, but let’s make sure you’re okay” was apparently JP’s version of bedside manner…or maybe that was for Elijah’s benefit, because the wolf shifter laughed when he growled his displeasure.

Elijah focused his attention below so he wouldn’t toss JP out on his arse on principle. The hunting lodge looked like it had been nuked from space. Fire and ruin. A mushroom cloud billowing up and out across the surrounding land. He waited until they’d cleared the smoke, pulled up into the clouds beyond it, before he got up and walked to the front of the helo, where Jack was on the controls. He was a fair pilot, but he didn’t take the seat often. He must’ve been beyond worried to fly the rescue himself. The modified Black Hawk was a stealth, quieter than a baby’s nursery, but Elijah still raised his volume when he spoke, like he had to be heard over the engines. Some habits never died. “What’s the early assessment?” he asked. “Was that a total fuckup or what?”

“You tell me,” Jackson said, keeping his gaze trained out on the clouds. “It sounded like a shit show, and I’m beginning to think they’re all going to be shit shows from here on out.”

“Shit shows and clusterfucks all the way down,” Elijah agreed, taking the empty copilot’s seat—which JP must’ve filled on the way in. The uptight boss and the mouthy new recruit flying the friendly skies together…that would’ve been one awkward ride. Elijah didn’t envy that. “Estrada nicked the serum. So that’s bad news and it’s good news. We didn’t secure the package, but we do know where it’s going, yeah?”

“Yeah. He took the getaway plane meant for Mirko. It took off just before the lodge lit up, and Joaquin’s already tracking the flight,” Jack confirmed. “We’ll be able to plot our follow-up without too much difficulty. And you’ll get to sit it out. You’ve had entirely too much face time lately, my friend, and discretion is the better part of valor.”

So that was one bit of a bright spot amid the literal fire and brimstone. Elijah glanced back at the helo’s belly, where JP was patching up Meghna’s scrapes despite her protests that she would heal. He was more hands-on than Gracie, that one. As if every patient he helped could make up for a life he’d taken. Would Meg follow in his footsteps? Doing penance for what she thought were her sins? Elijah didn’t know and couldn’t say. But he knew she wouldn’t rest until they closed the book on this entire operation. It wasn’t done just because Elijah was being benched. It wasn’t done just because Mirko Aston was dead. It was just getting started.

“We did learn one other valuable thing before all hell broke loose,” he told Jack. “We were right about how high up this goes. It’s got tentacles all over. Hollywood. High society. Government. But Mirko answered to someone even higher. Someone who wanted him to take out his competition. Means we can’t trust anyone but ourselves.”

“Maybe we can’t even trust ourselves,” Meghna’s voice came from behind them. She’d shaken off JP and his pervy mother-hen impression. Her face was smudged with soot but already devoid of bruises. Her gorgeous eyes were hard. Focused not on Elijah but on Jack. “Maybe there’s a perfectly logical explanation for why all your missions seem to go wrong, and maybe it’s currently piloting this helicopter.”

The hell?Elijah’s fur bristled and he growled, immediately defensive. “What? What in the bloody blazes are you talking about, Meg? How is Jack the problem here?”

She shook her head. Still staring at his friend, his partner. “Ask him about Roman Hollister,” she demanded. “About Hollister’s private island. Paradise for his rich friends but hell for all the women he’s trafficked there. There’s no way Jackson doesn’t have some idea that he’s been involved all along.”

“Roman Hollister?” Jackson wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, as if the name tasted foul. Sparks shot from his fingertips like the world’s most inappropriately timed Fourth of July sparklers. His face bleached of what little color it had. “You’re sure? That’s who’s orchestrating all of this?”

Dread crawled up Elijah’s spine as he forced down his shift. “You know him?”

“Yeah.” Jack’s gaze was bleak. His smile macabre and mirthless. “He’s my biological father—and one of our bosses.”

Lije didn’t know which bizarre piece of information to process first. “What?” was all he could manage, and fortunately, it covered all the bases. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“The committee I report to,” Jackson explained. “It started as purely U.S. government, but in the last few years, it’s been a cooperative effort between global powers. Made up of military and civilians. Roman Hollister is one of the members. He brought me, and by extension Third Shift, in.”

“He’s been playing you, using you for his own purposes. And it’s highly likely he sent the phantom hit squad,” Meghna added darkly. “Probably to clear the chessboard for him and whatever his endgame is. Congratulations.” She made a sound that was a cross between a groan and a curse, dropping her head into her hands and scrubbing at her hair. If Elijah hadn’t shaved off his locs, he’d have done the same. This was worse than a shit show and a clusterfuck. Infinitely worse.

“And he’s your dad?” he prompted Jack incredulously. “You never breathed one word of that to me and I’ve been your best mate for near a decade.” He’d never, ever considered that the person at 3S keeping the most secrets had been by his side from the jump.

“Sperm donor,” Jack corrected, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Jonathan Tate is and always will be my dad. We come from an old family of sorcerers, but Dad had prostate cancer in his thirties. It rendered him infertile. No magic exists that can beat what cancer does to you. When he realized he and Mom couldn’t have their own children…he turned to Hollister. His old friend. His old sorcerer friend. To ensure that I would still be born with powers. Hollister’s job began and ended there as far as my parents were concerned. But he’s always…taken an interest in me.”

He said those last words with a fair amount of distaste, but Elijah couldn’t offer any comfort. Not when Meghna was looking at them both like they were the enemy. “That interest of his has us compromised and we didn’t even know it. Fuck.” Hollister had been one step ahead of them—maybe three steps ahead—this entire time…just to lead Third Shift in circles.

Jack’s fists clenched around the Black Hawk’s controls. “But why would he try to kill you? It doesn’t make any sense,” he huffed. “He had to know Safe House 13 was mine. The riding academy is attached to an LLC under my name.”

Meghna made that harsh noise again and sharply shook her head. But when she spoke, it was oddly soft. Pitying. Disappointed. “Why do men do anything?” she asked rhetorically, walling herself up behind her crossed arms. “Power.”

It was too much all at once. The fighting. The explosion. Getting knocked out. Jackson’s revelations. And now this. Her pulling inward and pulling away. Elijah couldn’t have it. He wouldn’t. “That’s not the only reason men do things, Meg,” he said, rising from the copilot’s chair. Going to her in just two long strides. Stopping just a hairsbreadth away. “Sometimes they do them for love.”

She tilted her head, looking up at him. He’d never before thought of her as small, as fragile. She was just as fearsome in flats as she was in heels. But there was something breakable about her now. Something JP and Gracie hadn’t been able to patch. And he was suddenly aware of just how much taller, bigger than her he was.

Until she cut him down with one quiet sentence and walked back into the hold. “Sometimes love just isn’t enough.”

He went after her. Of course he went after her. There was hardly any other place to go on the helo besides that. “How would you know, Meg?” he said to her back—as stiff as a board and impenetrable as a brick wall. “You ever been loved like that? Ever let anyone that close? I don’t think so.”

Not until him. And it wasn’t ego to think that. He’d seen it firsthand. How she’d opened up to him, opened up for him. Not just physically, in bed, but emotionally and intellectually. She’d shown him corners of herself he damn well knew Chase Saunders had never seen.

“I failed my mission,” she said, turning slowly to face him. Her voice was heavy with anger and self-judgment. With JP and Finn and their supernatural ears onboard, there was no point in whispering. In trying not to be heard. And she pitched her words accordingly. Like an accomplished public speaker. “I let myself believe we had a common purpose, that we could both succeed. But I gave up our objective in pursuit of yours. And then we both failed, didn’t we? Estrada took off with the serum. I didn’t find who I was looking for. That’s what matters more than love in our line of work.”

There were so many things to tackle, both personal and professional, and Elijah didn’t know which to pluck out first. “Our objective?” he repeated. “The apsaras?” He mangled the vowels, but Meghna didn’t flinch or correct his pronunciation. She just shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Though apsaras are a part of the Vidrohi, they’re not the sum total.”

He saw Finn shift in his periphery. Like he recognized the word. Elijah couldn’t say the same. Vidrohi. It didn’t ring any black-ops bells. Not military either. Meghna saw the questions in his expression. He didn’t even have to prod her to go on.

“Vidrohi means ‘rebel’ or ‘revolutionary.’ There’s a famous Bengali poem with that title. And thousands of years ago, we took it as ours. Third Shift…you still operate inside the lines,” she said, moving across the Black Hawk to the unoccupied section by the door they’d climbed through. “Keyed into the government. The military. The Vidrohi know no lines, have no official rosters, no creed except justice. We were antifa before antifa,” she murmured, twisting to look at him again. “My mother brought the organization—if you can even call it that—into the new century. And then the Darkest Day happened. And it all got worse. Here. Europe. Asia. My mother actually reached out to other factions to form an oversight committee. United in purpose to combat evil around the world. That’s Jackson’s Committee.”

He didn’t care about that. Sod that connection. It was the least important part of what she’d said. “Your mum got you into this?” Elijah felt the growl rumble through him and vibrate within the words. “She…she put you out to work on your back for the greater good?” Christ. What kind of parent did that to their child?

“No. That was my choice,” Meghna assured instantly and vehemently. “I saw it as a natural progression of what my powers can do. It was efficient. A tactical advantage. Just like the military utilizing shifters in war…except on my orders only.”

He flinched as her barb about his time in the service struck sharp like one of her blades. JP’s grunt from where he was monitoring Chase’s saline drip told him he’d felt the hit, too. They were both veterans of their respective countries’ military as well as of the Apex Initiative. They’d lost friends in Afghanistan, in Iraq. Sacrificed relationships. Put their lives on the line.

“Here now, that’s not fair…” Elijah began, only to stop and shake his head. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. Because she was. They’d lost friends…but they’d taken friends, too, hadn’t they? Someone’s brother, someone’s father, someone’s son or daughter. People, both human and supernatural, who were fighting for their leaders’ ideas of what was right. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of,” he admitted. “We all did. Out there in the desert. In the name of queen and country. For progress and patriotism and all that shite. And it was all ‘on orders.’ Just doing what we were told. Like automatons. As if we couldn’t choose different.”

He could’ve listened to Mum and refused to fight in a white man’s war. But he’d gone ahead and done it. Again and again. And maybe Meghna saw some of that recognition in his eyes, because she sighed wearily and gestured him close. He crossed to her in two long strides, taking the hand she reached out to him.

“What would you have done if you did choose differently, Elijah?” she asked softly. Just for him now. No matter who was pretending not to listen.

“3S,” he said without hesitation. “I’m doing it now.” Putting together this team with Jackson was the best thing he’d ever done.

Meghna nodded, her eyes bright with understanding. “That’s what embracing my heritage, what joining the Vidrohi, was for me,” she said. “Choosing something besides mindless conformity and swallowing the party lines we’ve been spoon-fed our whole lives. Peace doesn’t have to come at the expense of brown lives across the ocean, Elijah. It can come because we fight white supremacy right here at home. You know that and 3S proves that. That’s all I’ve been trying to do.”

“Alone,” he pointed out, bringing their joined hands to his chest. “And you don’t have to do that anymore. You can try doing it with me, with us. We can fight all of this, untangle all of it, together.”

“Even if you don’t like what we find out?” she wondered, one eyebrow arching with challenge.

“Even then. Having people is what makes all the difference, Meg.” Stay, he wanted to tell her. Stay with me. Join me. Join us. But he half suspected she’d grab a parachute and jump out over the Hudson River if he pushed it any more right now. She was still skittish. With good reason. Too much had happened too quickly. And if what she and Jack were saying about Roman Hollister was true, Third Shift only had more difficult work ahead. “Just think about it,” he urged instead.

“I will,” Meghna assured before releasing his hand and stepping back. “I promise I will.”

And he knew her well enough by now to believe her.