Free Wild Invitation by Nalini Singh Page B

midstep. Healers, even enemy healers, had automatic protection. Only blood-hungry packs like the ShadowWalkers broke that rule. “We already have a healer.” Claws raked his gut, twisted through his body like hard fire.
    “She asked me to fly in and take over for a while.” Finn coughed a few times. “Said it might be permanent. Our pack’s got a senior healer and another apprentice, so they were happy to let me go.”
    “I
said
we already have a healer.” Nate glared.
    Finn didn’t back down. “Not anymore you don’t. She left.”
    The beast wanted to lash out, to tear and scar. “Where did she go?”
    The healer held up his hands a second time and Nate wondered what the other man had seen in his eyes. “I swear I don’t know. I figured she’d talked it over with your alpha—maybe a sabbatical or some extra training. She introduced me to him.”
    Nate left on a mission to find Lachlan, but it was Lucas he ran into first. He would have pushed past except that Lucas stepped into his path and said, “Looking for Tammy?”
    Nate stilled. “You knew she left?” At that moment, the first rays of the rising sun hit the tree line, throwing light across Lucas’s savage facial markings.
    “Didn’t you?”
    “Damn it, Luc. Answer the damn question.”
    “Sure.” The juvenile folded his arms. “I heard her ask Nita to drive her out of the territory.”
    The urge to grab Lucas and shake Tammy’s location out of him was so strong, Nate looked away and took a deep breath before saying, “And neither of you tried to stop her from leaving?”
    “Why would we?” Lucas’s tone was hard. “You made her cry, Nathan. You made your mate cry and then you didn’t hold her.”
    The blow hit him with bruising force. “Where is she, Lucas?”
    “I don’t know—you could ask Nita, but I don’t think she’s around.” He glanced at the sun-touched trees. “I have to get to the Circle for training.”
    Nate didn’t try to stop him from leaving, and was still standing there when Cian appeared out of the shadows. “Nate? You after Lachlan? I just left him—he’s free for the next half hour or so.”
    “I’m trying to find Tammy.”
    Cian’s face showed instant comprehension and not a little anger. “What the hell are you doing to that girl, Nate?”
    “What’s right for her.” Cian didn’t understand what it was to watch a woman fall out of love with her man, turn bitter and self-destructive…and finally, suicidal. He’d held his mother’s dead body. He refused to hold Tamsyn’s. “She’s too young.”
    “She was too young when Shayla died. But did you hear her complain?” The sentinel’s voice was a whip. “Seventeen years old and she took on a position most people don’t touch until they’ve reached their third decade.”
    “Exactly!” He blew out a frustrated breath. “All that responsibility and then a mate, too? I’d demand things she has no conception of—”
    Cian swore, low and pithy. “Isn’t that your job as her mate? To demand but to let her demand as much in turn? You’re supposed to fucking share the burden, not add to it like you’ve been doing with your self-pitying bullshit.”
    “You might be my senior,” Nate said, the leopard in his voice, “but you are not my father.” His father was long dead,having literally driven himself to an early grave after his wife’s death—he’d wrapped his car around a tree. “You want to take me on, go ahead.”
    “Screw that.” Cian shrugged. “If I damaged you, Tammy would have my head.”
    With that simple comment, the other man defused every bit of Nate’s anger. “Tell me where she is. I have to make sure she’s safe.” The leopard’s desperation grew by the minute.
    “I don’t know.” Cian shoved up his sleeves. “To be honest, I don’t think you deserve to know, either. And don’t bother asking Nita—she has no idea where Tammy went after getting out of the car.”
    “What, none of you bothered to ask