The Psy-Changeling Collection (377 page)

Until he brought the truck to a halt deep in an unfamiliar part of den territory. The night was pitch-black, starless, and moonless, the trees murky shadows that seemed to form an impenetrable wall around them. “Why are we stopping?”

“You wanted to talk. We’ll talk.”

Her palms went damp at that smooth, silky tone.

“I’m putting aside my ‘alpha status.’”

Oh, he was furious.

“So let’s see if you can win this argument.” Turning in his seat, he leaned his arm along the back of hers. “Now explain to me how you would’ve stopped a massive fistfight in the bar tonight.”

“That’s not on me,” she said, trying to breathe past the sheer
power
of him. “The women were an excuse—the males were itching to go at each other since the minute we walked in. They’re always playing dominance games.”

“So you knew that, and still you amped up the sexual energy in the room?”

The truck was suddenly too small, too confined, Hawke’s hotly masculine scent seeping into her very pores, touching parts of her no man had ever stroked. “It wasn’t my responsibility.”

“Oh?”

“No.” A sudden crash of anger. “I’m not accountable for everyone! Maybe I wanted to have fun for a change. Maybe I wanted to not be in control for a few short minutes! Maybe I just wanted to dance.”

Hawke’s lashes came down. When they lifted back up, his gaze was night-glow, a brilliant ice blue shot with light. She sucked in a breath, realizing she was talking to the wolf now.

“You want to dance?” Husky words that stroked along her skin like the softest fur.

She nodded.

“Then we dance.” Reaching out, he switched on the vehicle’s sound system and input a selection before stepping out.

Her door opened as a slow, smoky ballad began to play. “Come.” An invitation—but mostly a demand.

“My shoes,” she blurted out, anger buried under a wave of nervous anticipation.

“The ground’s dry. They won’t sink in.”

Not sure this wasn’t all a dream, she placed her hand in his and, fighting the wild rush of sensation engendered by his touch and his scent, allowed him to tug her around to the front of the vehicle. Breaking the hold, he put his hands on her hips and pulled her forward, his breath a heated caress across her cheek as he bent to speak against her ear. “Arms around my neck.”

The command released her voice. “I thought you weren’t being alpha here.”

“I’m not.”

Oh
.

As she raised her arms, she realized her boots gave her enough height to cup his nape with one hand, while she placed the other on the muscled warmth of his shoulder. When he shifted position so that his jaw rubbed against her temple, her heart began to thud fast as a jackhammer.

This close, he was all hot, hard heat. Pure muscle and strength . . . and temptation. Always, he’d been her temptation. He was the reason her Silence had shattered into innumerable shards the instant she’d walked into SnowDancer territory. She should’ve kept her distance, but she couldn’t. Just once—just for a little while—she wanted him to be hers.

Teeth nipped at her ear.

She jumped.

“Pay attention.” A rumbling growl.

Her nipples tightened to stiff points she hoped he couldn’t feel. It was beyond tempting to spread the hand on his nape upward, into the thick, silver-gold silk of his hair, but she didn’t dare break the moment. He had such beautiful hair, the same color as his pelt in wolf form. That told her more about how close his wolf was to the surface than anything else.

“Sienna.” A deep murmur against her skin, his lips brushing her temple. “This can’t be. You know that.”

Her blood was thunder in her ears, her skin stretching taut over a body hypersensitized by a raw, near-painful craving. “Is it because I’m Psy?” she forced herself to ask. Hawke hated the Psy—that much she knew, though she didn’t know the reason behind the depth of his animosity. The fact that he’d accepted the Lauren family as deeply into the pack as he had was nothing short of miraculous.

A low growl that had her going motionless. “It’s because you’re barely grown.” He stroked his hand down her back, as if in reassurance.

But she wasn’t ready to be soothed. “I haven’t been a child since the day they came for me when I was five.” A cardinal X could not be allowed to live outside of Council control. “Ming LeBon sure didn’t sing me any lullabies.”

Hawke’s hand pressed against her lower back, big and warm and shockingly intimate through the thin fabric of her shirt. “Five?” The wolf was so apparent in his voice, she had to focus to understand him. “You were a baby.”

She laughed and knew it held no humor. “Cardinals are trained from before we gain the ability to speak.” The years she’d spent with her mother, the commands had been gentle, given by a woman who had wanted her child to learn to protect herself on the psychic plane. Aware she’d have drowned under the deluge of voices otherwise, Sienna had never resented the instruction; she missed her mother’s touch to this day. “The first conscious thought I remember having was about the need to shield.”

But when they’d discovered she was an X, the shields they’d put around her had been brutal prison walls, unlike anything she’d known. She’d been so small, so scared. Even her brave, strong mother, with her gentle telepathic touch, was gone, unable to reach Sienna through the hard carapace of Ming’s creation. It had probably been for the best—Kristine had stood no chance against a daughter who’d put her in intensive care with a simple childish display of temper.

“Did you ever play?” Hawke’s voice so rough, his body so muscular and overwhelming.

She had never felt more feminine, never felt more like a sexual creature. “No.”

A pause. “Sienna—”

“No,” she said. “No more questions. Not tonight.” She wanted to dance with him, be a woman in the arms of a man who made every part of her awaken in a hunger she’d never expected to feel and who, for this magical moment, was hers.

His jaw, heavy with stubble, rubbed against her temple again as he shifted his hold to press her closer. Then, as the music played, as the night grew softer and quieter, they danced.

RECOVERED FROM COMPUTER 2(A)

TAGS: PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE, FATHER, ACTION NOT REQUIRED

FROM
:
Alice <
[email protected]
>
TO
:
Dad <
[email protected]
>
DATE
:
November 5th, 1971 at 11:14pm
SUBJECT
:
re: re: JA Article

I protest! I did very much enjoy your paper in the
Journal of Archaeology
, and it has nothing to do with being your daughter—I totally agree with you about your interpretation of the newly discovered glyphs. Cho is wrong. I know it and you know it.

Dad, I wanted to talk to you about something else, too, something that’s troubling me. I now have four Xs enrolled in my study (Gradients 3 through to 4.2), and from everything the Psy academics tell me, it means I’ve done astonishingly well. The designation is so rare that if there were ten living X-Psy at any given time, it would be considered a miracle.

That isn’t what worries me. Of the four I’ve located, none are over the age of sixteen. There was a fifth known X, one of the boys tells me, a girl he met on the PsyNet. I got the impression he had a crush on her. The heartbreaking thing is, she died just short of her nineteenth birthday when her power consumed her.

I don’t want to see my Xs die.

Alice

Chapter 10

HAWKE’S WOLF WASN’T
riding him as hard as it had been doing for the past week when he drove down to DarkRiver territory the next morning—to talk to Lucas about the weapons coming into the area, to see if DarkRiver had any news on possible Pure Psy operatives in the city. It didn’t take much thought to figure out that the wildness in him had been temporarily sated by the contact he’d allowed himself with Sienna.

He’d been so angry at her—always pushing his buttons, that girl. But then he’d taken her into his arms, and all that anger had blazed into a darker, hotly possessive need that had urged him to bend his head, bite down on the throbbing pulse in her neck, leave a mark.

God, that shirt. One tug and those snaps would’ve come apart, revealing the gold-kissed cream of her skin. He’d wanted to taste her, stroke her, pet her. Simply holding her, simply dancing with her, had driven his wolf half to madness . . . but he would have shredded anyone who’d dared interrupt that slow dance stolen in the silken shadows of night.

“Your pelt,” a lazy voice drawled as he walked into the clearing around Lucas’s home, “would make a nice coat for my mate.”

Giving Vaughn a desultory finger where the amber-haired sentinel stood in the shade of a large juniper tree, its trunk a rich reddish brown, Hawke
said, “I can scent Luc—he inside?” He nodded at the cabin below another large tree, an unoccupied aerie perched in its branches.

“Yep. Don’t even think about going in.”

“Do I look like I’ve had a lobotomy?” Lucas’s mate, Sascha, was heavily pregnant. As a result, the leopard alpha’s protective tendencies had moved into the lethal range. “I’ll wait here. He’ll scent me soon enough.”

Lucas exited the cabin on the heels of that statement. “Sascha’s sleeping,” he said, angling his head toward the forest. “Vaughn.”

“I won’t take my eye off the place.”

“How is she?” Hawke asked as they stepped deeper into the dappled sunshine filtering through the canopy.

“Ready to give birth.” A chuckle. “Unfortunately, the baby is comfortable right where he or she is.”

“You still don’t know the gender?” Hawke wouldn’t have had the self-control to hold out—and yeah, it hurt like a bitch to know he’d never have the chance to test that theory, but that didn’t dim his joy for the leopard alpha. “If I ask Sascha, will she tell me?”

“Try it.” A feral grin that was all teeth. “So, fill me in on these weapons shipments your people have detected.”

Hawke gave him a quick rundown. “My gut says the Scotts—everything points to them—are going to mount an assault this time. Full-out, open.”

“Not surprising, given that they and the others have tried covert ops a number of times and failed.” Lucas halted on the moss-covered verge beside a small, clear stream. “Sascha spoke to her mother—there’s definite Pure Psy activity in the city, but they’re being very careful. They’re well aware that not only are they not welcome, but that the last operative ended up with his brains leaking out his ears after Nikita found him out.”

Hawke didn’t like Nikita Duncan, but he could appreciate the woman’s efficiency in taking care of a threat. “That’ll make them harder to pinpoint.”

“Rats are spread out across the city. Smallest sign of a Pure Psy base and we’ll know.” The leopard alpha glanced at Hawke. “Are you planning on moving your vulnerable out?”

“Not at this stage.” Hawke had already discussed it with his lieutenants. “There’s no overt threat yet, and we’re wolves, Luc.” Evacuating their
home on such flimsy grounds would demoralize any predatory changeling, dominant or not. “If and when there is a credible threat, that’s when we’ll evacuate the noncombatants.” The escape plans had been drafted long ago, could be put into motion within an hour, and the entire den cleared of their vulnerable within four. It would take far longer than that for any invader to break through SnowDancer’s first line of defense.

Lucas’s eyes gleamed cat-green in the muted light of the forest. “We made the same decision. I want Mercy to liaise with Riley to coordinate our evacuation plans. Work for you?”

“Do it. I think we should give WindHaven a heads-up, too.” The falcons could provide air support if necessary. “I’ll have Drew talk to them,” he said when Luc nodded.

“I hear your boy’s been out to the Canyon.”

“Falcons love Drew—I think he even had an indecent proposal or three.”

Lucas’s head turned toward the cabin. “Indigo know?”

“I didn’t want bloodshed.” Hawke fell in step with the other alpha as he began to head back. “Sascha awake?”

“Yeah.”

A pang of envy uncurled in Hawke’s gut. He wondered what it would be like to be connected to a person with such intimacy. Yes, he was alpha, linked to his lieutenants and, to a lesser extent, to the rest of his pack. But it wasn’t the same. None of them were
his
.

A rush of memory, a sleek feminine body pressed against his own, the scent of wild spice in his every breath as the rapid tattoo of her pulse sang a siren-song to his dominant nature. The wolf whispered that she could be his, only his, until possessive hunger pulsed through him, turning his muscles rigid.

He parted with Lucas at the clearing, digging his claws into his palms to cut through the compulsion. The scent of blood licked into the air, and he let it overwhelm the burn of sexual need for the moment. It wouldn’t last, he was fully aware of that. If he knew what was good for him, for his pack, he’d finish what he’d started a couple of days ago and take a lover. A lover who knew the score, who wouldn’t look at him in the morning with eyes bruised with the knowledge that he’d given her all he could.

There was nothing else left in him.

. . .

HAVING
done a half-day shift on perimeter security, Sienna was home in plenty of time to work on an academic project and have dinner with Marlee and Toby. “They’re both in bed,” she told Walker when her uncle walked in the door after a later shift.

Walker shrugged off his jacket to reveal solid shoulders covered in a rough denim shirt. “I’ve got it now.”

Instead of leaving, she heated up a meal, put it on the table. Walker, having ducked into his bedroom to kick off his shoes and wash up, came in as she was placing a glass of water beside his plate. Putting his hand on the back of her head, he leaned down to press his lips to her forehead, much as she’d done with Toby and Marlee. “You’re troubled.”