Her Fierce Warrior (X-Ops #4)

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  Copyright © 2016 by Paige Tyler

  Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover art by Craig White

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  A Sneak Peek at To Love a Wolf

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband. Without your help and support, I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant any girl could ask for.

  Love you!

  Prologue

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina, May 2000

  Angelo Rios slowed down when he got to the gate, and held out his military dependent ID card for the MP standing guard. The guy barely glanced at it before giving him a “hooah” and waving him through. Angelo had been driving his old beater car through the Fort Bragg gates several times a day ever since he’d gotten his learner’s permit two years ago, when he’d turned sixteen. He knew all the MP and civilian guards by name and they knew him. Fort Bragg might have thirty thousand military personnel and three or four times that many civilians, but in a lot of ways, the base was like one big extended family.

  “Hey, Angelo! When do you report?” one of the younger MPs, Private First Class Spencer, shouted from the traffic lane beside him.

  “About three weeks,” he yelled out the window as he drove his old Monte Carlo through the serpentine pattern of concrete barriers placed there to make sure no one sped through the gate too fast.

  Angelo grinned as he made a right at the next road and headed toward the housing area. On an army base, everybody knew everybody’s business, including the fact that he’d be leaving for Basic Training at Fort Benning soon. He couldn’t wait. He’d wanted to be a soldier like his father ever since he could remember, and now he was finally going to be able to put on a uniform.

  But while his dad was thrilled with his career choice, his mom was a different story. She absolutely hated the army and everything about it, especially life at Fort Bragg. Angelo could understand why. His dad had been deployed almost constantly over the last half-dozen years or so. Not only did that mean his mom had to take care of the family on her own, but also that she had to do it while living in terror that something might happen to his dad.

  After twenty years, she thought he was finally getting out, but now his dad was considering staying in. Angelo didn’t blame him. The way his dad saw it, there weren’t a lot of civilian jobs out there for a man who only knew how to shoot, kill, and blow things up.

  It hadn’t helped that Angelo picked the same weekend to tell her that Dad had signed the delayed-entry paperwork, so Angelo could join early, then ship out as soon as he turned eighteen and graduated high school. But seriously, what did she think he was going to do? He wasn’t going to get a job at the local Walmart or one of the nearby textile mills, and he sure as hell had no shot at college. He was done with sitting in classrooms. He was born to be Army Special Forces, just like his dad.

  Even so, he felt a twinge of guilt as he pulled into the driveway of their ranch-style housing unit. He wished he could make his mom see that she didn’t have to worry about him, that he’d be safe, just like Dad had been all these years. But Angelo knew she’d worry anyway. And cry a lot. She did that every time Dad deployed, then again every time he called from whatever crap hole in West Africa or the Caribbean he was in. Angelo hated to see her cry.

  He climbed out of the car with a sigh. Maybe Dad would change his mind and retire. Then maybe Mom could finally be a married woman who actually saw her husband.

  Angelo unlocked the front door and walked into the house as quietly as he could, not sure if his mom was asleep. She slept like crap these days, and at odd hours. When she wasn’t waiting for a phone call from his dad, she was glued to CNN, praying nothing was going on in whatever part of the world Dad was in. Whenever she did get some rest, it was usually with the help of sleeping pills—but more often with the aid of alcohol.

  He didn’t need to look around to know his two younger sisters, Venus and Lydia, weren’t home. The house was never this quiet when they were around. No doubt they were at a friend’s house. And since the television wasn’t on, that meant his mom was almost certainly sleeping. Just in case she wasn’t, he should let her know he was home.

  He walked past the living room with its Native American meets Mexican decor and down the hallway that led to the back of the house. The door to his parents’ room was ajar, so he stuck his head in. It was just as he thought. His mom was asleep, her back to the door, blanket pulled all the way up over her shoulder.

  He turned, about to head to the kitchen to grab something to eat, when something stopped him. He couldn’t say quite what it was, but something was…off.

  He walked back into the room and slowly circled around to the other side of the bed. That’s when he saw the empty wineglass and the equally empty brown plastic bottle his mom’s prescription sleeping pills came in.

  Angelo’s stomach clenched.

  Please, God, no.

  He might have called out her name, but he wasn’t sure. He shut everything out and focused on his mom’s face. Her hand was tucked under her cheek and her eyes were closed, like she was sleeping. For a fraction of a second, he thought she was. But the blanket wasn’t rising and falling with her breathing like it should have been.

  Angelo yanked off the blanket, so he could roll his mom onto her back. He’d worked a few summers as a lifeguard at the base pool, and he automatically started prepping her for CPR.

  He froze the moment he touched her shoulder. She was as cold as ice and already stiff. He put his shaking fingers along her neck to feel for a pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find one but needing to check anyway.

  His mom was gone.

  Angelo dropped to his knees beside the bed and closed his eyes.

  He didn’t know how long he knelt there. He wanted
to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. So instead, he stared down at the floor and wondered whom he should call first. Dad’s A-team was somewhere in West Africa, but he had the phone number for the first sergeant and sergeant major memorized, and the MP station was the first number on speed dial on every phone in the house.

  He decided to go with the MPs.

  He was reaching for the phone on the bedside table when he saw the piece of folded notebook paper sticking out from under the handheld’s base. Fingers numb, he plucked the paper from under the phone and unfolded it. He wondered briefly if he should touch something that could be evidence. But this wasn’t a crime scene. This was his house.

  His dad’s name was at the top of the page, and in handwriting that got harder to make out as it went down the page, his mom apologized for leaving them and said how much she loved all of them. But she couldn’t live this way anymore, waiting for the call to come saying her husband was dead and knowing she would now have to wait for the same call about her son.

  She asked his dad to keep the girls safe and promise never to let either of them marry a soldier. There was something after that about Angelo and how proud she was of him, even if she wished he hadn’t chosen to join the army, but tears blurred his vision so much he couldn’t read anymore. He wiped them from the letter where they’d fallen, hoping he hadn’t smeared the writing too much. Then he folded it and slipped it back under the phone.

  Angelo wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his T-shirt, then reached for the phone and punched the number one speed-dial button. As it rang, he mentally prepared himself for what he would have to do next, starting with finding his sisters, then getting a message to his dad. It might take a while for his dad to get home, so Angelo and his sisters would be on their own until then. But he would take care of them. It was what his mom would want.

  It was the least he could do for her.

  Chapter 1

  Southern Tajikistan, Present Day

  It was early morning, the sun barely peeking over the mountains. Darkness still clung to the deserted, dilapidated buildings around Minka Pajari as she slunk through the village. She was only one rugged mountain pass away from home. Four or five hours of walking, and she would be back with her family and this terrible nightmare would be over.

  But when she heard the men who had been following her for the last ten minutes break into a run, part of her realized that the nightmare wasn’t over yet. Another part insisted the nightmare would never be over. Not for her. Not after what she had become.

  Minka wanted to run, but the beast inside her demanded that she turn and fight. She was so tired, and really didn’t want to do either of those things. She’d been going for so long without food and barely any water. All she wanted was to be left alone.

  Instinct told her they wouldn’t leave her alone.

  Minka had escaped her captors weeks ago, or at least it felt like it had been weeks. Getting home to her village had been much harder than she’d thought it would be, though. It had taken her many days to even figure out where she was, then many, many more days to slowly traverse the mountainous terrain between where she’d been held and the small farming village near Khorugh where she lived with her parents. This part of the country—the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region—was very rugged and rural. Strangers, especially women traveling without male companions or money, weren’t treated with kindness, and she’d been forced to dig for food scraps in piles of garbage and sleep in caves or abandoned buildings. What she’d endured during her captivity taught her that she no longer had to fear these minor, momentary forms of discomfort, though.

  No, the only thing she truly feared now was the beast the doctors had unleashed inside her. During her slow journey home, she had learned that the creature’s appearance was hard to predict. At the slightest provocation, her claws and teeth would extend and her sight would change, making nighttime seem like daytime and daytime painfully bright.

  If she was frightened, startled, or threatened, the changes went even further. Her muscles would throb with power, and her face would change. She’d seen her reflection once in a stream and been startled to see that she looked almost catlike.

  Sometimes the changes came on for no other reason than because she was sad or lonely or afraid. Those times truly terrified her, for with a curse like this, she couldn’t imagine a time when she wouldn’t feel those things.

  Worse than the physical changes was what she felt happening to her soul. Where once she’d been a calm, compassionate person, now all she ever felt was anger and rage.

  She had taken to traveling only at night, seeking cover in wooded areas, and avoiding villages and people whenever she could. While she feared being attacked or mistreated by people, she feared what the beast inside her would do to those people more.

  Now, Minka wasn’t sure if she’d be able to keep from hurting someone. She’d wanted to go around the village, but it was squarely in the middle of the path that headed toward the mountain pass. Two of the men following her had swept around, to get ahead of her, and she had to turn into the village to avoid them. Minka said a silent prayer, hoping she could pass through without incident, but she feared her prayers weren’t even being heard anymore.

  She was so busy second-guessing herself that she didn’t see the men who’d arrayed themselves in a line along her path until she was almost on top of them. Her heart beat faster at the ugly expressions on their faces.

  She stopped and slowly backed away from them, but it didn’t matter. Two more men closed in from behind.

  Minka didn’t scream as they converged on her, afraid it would only spur the men to do something even more violent than what they already had planned—and afraid it would bring out the monster inside her. So she just stood there.

  Two of the men grabbed her and lifted her off the ground while a third grabbed her ankles. As they carried her toward an abandoned building, she begged them in Tajik and in Russian to leave her alone, but they only laughed and called her horrible names. The man on her left shouted at her for being out alone without a male chaperone.

  Inside the building, she tried to shove them away and get her back to a wall, but they continued to taunt her. When one man tore at her tattered shirt until it completely ripped away, they grew silent, their eyes latching on to her nearly naked body. She moved back against the mud wall behind her, trying to cover her bra with her arms.

  But Minka knew her hands wouldn’t stop these men from getting what they were after. After all the pain and suffering she had already endured, she was going to die just a short distance from her home in total disgrace and humiliation. She was never going to see her family again. That might be for the best, though. She didn’t want her parents to see what she had become, what she was turning into even now.

  The men didn’t notice the change. Not at first, anyway. They were too interested in other things. But they noticed when the first man tried to kiss her and she sent him reeling back, his chest ripped open to the bone.

  Minka thought for sure the rest of the men would run then. But they only cursed and came at her all at once. They threw her to the ground, one of them kicking her while the other two pulled out knives.

  She hadn’t wanted to hurt them, and if they had killed her quickly, she would’ve almost been grateful. But it was clear they wouldn’t get around to killing her for a while. They would toy with her the way the doctors’ guards had toyed with her, making her scream in pain.

  But the beast inside her would never let her be tortured again.

  Minka was off the floor in a flash, slashing and biting, pushing the men back to give her space to move. For a moment, she saw the door, clear of attackers and open to her escape, but she ignored it. The beast wasn’t interested in running now. It was interested only in tearing and ripping and killing.

  The men’s shouts of pain and terror got louder as they ran for the door and scrambled toward the windows. But their cries only made her anger flame hotter, driving her into a fury she’d
never felt before.

  Minka desperately tried to rein in the beast, but it was like she was on the outside of the abandoned house looking in. She knew she was the one tearing the men apart, but she was no longer in control. She wasn’t sure she ever would be again.

  * * *

  Sergeant First Class Angelo Rios glanced at his watch. They needed to get moving, or it’d take all day to get back to camp. He and his Special Forces A-team had been doing a recon sweep back and forth through the rugged terrain of southern Tajikistan when they’d heard about a small town near the mountain pass that had been hit hard by a recent storm. Repairing buildings damaged by high winds and torrential rain wasn’t the kind of work Special Forces usually did, but Angelo and the team’s new lieutenant figured it’d be an easy way to gain a little goodwill with the locals, which definitely was an SF mission.

  Angelo squeezed the last of the cheese onto a cracker from his MRE—meal ready to eat—and shoved it in his mouth. With breakfast done, he stuffed the empty wrapper into his rucksack and swung the pack over his shoulder. The rest of the team got the message and did the same.

  “So, do you think Kendra will ask you to be the godfather?” Staff Sergeant Carlos Diaz, the team’s communications expert, asked Derek, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  Angelo let out a snort. Diaz had been ribbing the team’s medic, Staff Sergeant Derek Mickens, for a month straight about his most recent crush, Kendra Carlsen. The Department of Covert Operation’s admin assistant turned kickass field operative had married Declan MacBride, the DCO’s freaking huge bear shifter, after spending a week alone with him in the jungles of Costa Rica a few months ago. And to top it all off, the couple was now expecting twins.

  Derek gave Diaz a less-than-amused look. “Give it a rest already.”

  Diaz grinned, his teeth a flash of white against his tanned skin. “No way. After all the time you spent trying to convince us that you and Kendra had a connection after dancing with her at the captain’s wedding, I’m going to be reminding you about this when we’re all old and gray.”