The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (155 page)

“We’ve got you if you slip.” Indigo’s voice in his ear, calm and steady.

“Thanks.” It took him considerably longer to clear the cliff face than it had to come down. His muscles were screaming by the time he reached the top, but it was a burn he could live with.

Lara was ready to go when he arrived. As the healer took a deep breath and prepared to descend with him all but glued to her, Andrew fought the urge to search for Indigo’s gaze—that particular fight could come later—and stepped back over the edge of the cliff.

 

 

It took an
hour for Lara to heal Silvia enough for the girl to be safely winched up, another quarter of an hour for Lara to ascend, with Andrew climbing behind her. In the chaos of stripping Lara of her harness and coiling the ropes, he didn’t see Indigo leave, though he assumed she was helping carry the injured girl to the infirmary.

Just as well, he thought, teeth gritted. Putting his rope on the ground, he was coiling Lara’s when Hawke returned. “Jesus Christ, Drew,” his alpha muttered, gathering up the other abandoned gear. “I thought you were good with women.”

Andrew dumped the rope and turned on the other wolf. “I was right. She wasn’t using resources properly.”

Hawke didn’t growl back, simply raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what I said.”

Blowing out a breath, Andrew turned to stare out over the jagged mountainous vista. So fucking beautiful—and so incredibly lethal when the mood took it. The description, he thought, fit his lieutenant to a T. “Then what?”

“You’re telling me you’re still pissed at Indigo?”

Swiveling on his heel, he scowled at his alpha. “Of course I am.”

Hawke shook his head, sleek strands of silver-gold whipping across his face in a sudden wind. Pushing them back, he said, “Then maybe you need to go cool off so your brain can function.”

Andrew bent down and restarted coiling the second rope, his arms scratched and dirty. But he had no patience for the task. Throwing the whole lot onto the ground, he stood up again. “She was taking too long to come to a decision.”

“From what I can tell, it took her maybe fifteen seconds, and it’s her job to weigh up the risks and consider all options in any given situation,” Hawke said, continuing to stack the gear. “If she didn’t think with that kind of calm, you wouldn’t have headed out here with every piece of equipment you needed.”

Andrew stared at his alpha’s back, knowing he was missing something. “What aren’t you saying?”

Hawke shrugged. “You could’ve gotten exactly what you wanted with no problems if you’d gone about it the right way.”

“I’m not going to dance with her on things like this.” Everything else, but not this. “I’ve told her she needs to learn to treat me as what I am.”

“Yeah, because you’re doing such a good job of doing the same with her.” The sarcasm was a razor across his face.

“I—” He paused, felt a chill creep up his spine. “Shit, shit,
shit
!”

Hawke didn’t say a word until Andrew had gotten himself back under control.

“I overrode her in front of the others.” The reality of what he’d done slammed into him like a body blow. “I forced you to pull rank on her in front of subordinates.” And her pride, Jesus, her pride.

Hawke nodded, lines carved around his mouth. “You should’ve taken her aside, discussed your climbing skill and medical training. Hell, she acted reasonably even after you let your cock control your brain.”

“But I kept pushing until she almost lost control.” Control was everything to Indigo, an essential part of how she saw herself. “Fuck.” Shoving his hands through his hair, he picked up one of the ropes Hawke had coiled, and put it over his arm as Hawke took the other.

“I’ll send Tai back for the rest of the stuff,” his alpha said as they began to walk. “She’s not going to forgive you easily for this. To be quite blunt, I don’t blame her. Anyone tried that with me, we’d be wiping up blood now.”

Andrew remembered how much it had hurt Indigo to witness her aunt’s poisonous relationship, knew exactly the courage it had taken for her to trust in this relationship with him. And still he’d fucked up. “I blew it.” Maybe she’d been having trouble lowering her final barriers, but she’d taken a thousand small steps toward it. This mess was all on him.

Hawke snorted. “Forget about blowing it. You nuked it.”

 

 

Silvia safely
in Lara’s hands—and thankfully stable—Indigo sat on the edge of her bed. Her hair was damp from her shower, her palms bearing the slightest of rope burns. But she didn’t feel any of that. All she felt was a crushing sense of humiliation . . . and hurt. Drew had pushed her, challenging her in front of less dominant members of the pack, until her wolf lashed out, going against every rule she lived by.

God, Hawke had rebuked her in public.

Red fire flamed across her cheeks, but while the embarrassment burned, it wasn’t as important in the scheme of things. Everyone lost their temper sometimes. Sing-Liu, Tai, Lara, hell, even Hawke, none of them would think less of her.

It was Drew who’d stabbed a knife right into her heart. It was one thing for them to tangle with each other in private, but . . . “Enough.” Picking up a comb, she began to run it through her hair. What was done was done. She’d apologize to Hawke for letting her temper get the better of her, pick up her duties, and carry on.

As for Drew . . . Her heart twisted. Professional, she told herself, she’d be professional. That was the only way to deal with this. Anything else and it would hurt too—

Her head snapped toward her door as she caught the whisper of a very familiar scent. The knock came several seconds later. For a moment, she debated answering it, but then her wolf raised its head in steely pride and nudged her on. Glancing down, she checked that the belt of her knee-length terry-cloth robe was secure and padded to the door.

“Yes?” she said to the man on the other side, having pasted an expression of professional disinterest on her face, though the hand hidden behind the folds of her robe was fisted so tight she was cutting half-moon circles in her palm.

Drew took one look at her and muttered something harsh under his breath. “What do I do?”

He looked so lost, so vulnerable that she blinked, taken aback, but only for an instant. “There’s nothing to do. Hawke sorted us out on-site—and for what it’s worth, I apologize for bringing my temper into the situation.” The words were sincere, though her heart was a cold rock in her chest. “That was neither the time nor the place.”

Drew’s eyes shifted to that brilliant, wild copper. “Don’t do this to us, Indy. Don’t shut me out.”

Her hand clenched on the door, but she kept her composure, aware of packmates walking by in the corridor outside. “Was there anything in particular you wanted?”

“I messed up.” Blunt words, unexpected and raw. “I’m sorry.”

Her resolve wavered, the strength of the bond between them pushing at her to open the door, to invite him in. But—“What you did, it was a dominance challenge.” She held up a hand when he would’ve interrupted. “You can’t help it.” He was a dominant, one hell of a strong one. “It’ll keep happening, and I can’t afford to let it.”

“Indigo, you—”

“No, Drew. For the health of the pack, the hierarchy
must
be explicit.” They were too strong, too wild at heart to accept anything else. “If we continue being lovers . . . you won’t be able to stop yourself from challenging me again.” As a predatory changeling male, Drew could no more have stopped himself from doing what he had than she could’ve stopped her instinctive antagonistic response.

Drew didn’t immediately respond, but there was a set to his jaw that she recognized all too well. Then he said, “So that’s it? You won’t even try?”

Her wolf peeled back its lips, all hope of a rational discussion going down the proverbial drain. “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

Drew pressed his
palms against the edges of the door frame, blocking out the outside world. “But when push comes to shove, you’re choosing the easy out.”

Gritting her teeth, Indigo stared straight into those eyes of wolf copper. “I’m choosing the good of the pack. It’s what a lieutenant does.”

Drew bent until his breath whispered over her lips, a sweet, hot, angry caress. “Yeah? Well, since you know predatory changeling men so well, you know exactly what I’m going to do next.”

She shoved a hand against his chest. “Touch me and I’ll slice you to shreds.”

Instead of continuing on his set path as any other male she knew would’ve done, he gave her a faint smile she didn’t trust an inch . . . and pushed off the door. “Until next we meet, Lieutenant.”

He was gone a second later.

Indigo stood there stupefied until a passing packmate called out a hello. Muttering back a response, she closed her door. Her wolf shook its head, attempting to figure out what had just happened. It had no idea, but it did know Drew was up to something.

She fisted her hands. Whatever it was, she’d handle it. Because no matter how much he pulled at her, no matter how deeply interwoven he was in her heart, she’d taken an oath to protect the pack when she became a lieutenant, and it was time to uphold it. That was what drove her.

Steeling her spine, she tried to ignore that voice, but it wouldn’t shut up. Because it wasn’t only about the pack. It was about her. Her pride . . . and her heart. He’d hurt her. She’d made herself vulnerable, opened up her heart . . . and he’d hurt her.

 

 

Andrew managed to
keep himself under control only by sheer force of will as he walked away.

“Dominance challenge, my ass,” he muttered under his breath as he stalked to his room. He had no desire to fight for a higher rank in the hierarchy. He was
exactly
where he needed to be. So he’d lost his temper—everybody lost their temper now and then. The situation had been highly stressful. Was it any wonder he’d spoken before he’d thought?

He was so involved in his internal monologue that it took a packmate three tries to get his attention. When Andrew finally looked up, the woman said, “Er, Drew? You can’t go to the nursery looking like you want to shred someone with your claws and then eat the bloody, dismembered pieces.”

“Nursery?” Shaking his head, he looked around. “Shit.” He turned on his heel, throwing a “thanks” over his shoulder.

But the interruption had reset his mind. Getting angry, he realized, would achieve nothing. Yes, Indigo was being stubborn in refusing to talk this through with him, but what he’d done . . . yeah, okay, she was right to be pissed.

And hurt, his conscience whispered, remembering the pain he’d glimpsed in the shadowed violet of her gaze. He’d hurt her, and it made him feel like shit. He wanted to stalk to her apartment, bully his way in, and argue with her until the ice cracked enough that he could hold her close and convince her to listen. But of course, he thought with another flare of temper, she wouldn’t fight with him like every other dominant female he knew did with her man when she was mad or hurting. No, Indigo had to go all dignified and silent, her emotions rigidly contained.

“Fine,” he muttered, pushing through his door, “then I’ll just make it so fucking difficult for her to ignore me that she’ll
have
to fight with me.”

 

 

Indigo found the
first rose the next morning—in the locker she used to store her gear when training indoors. It was a deep, deep red. Scarlet, she thought, that was the right word. And it smelled like heaven. But beneath the lush floral bouquet lay the scent of male—wild and playful.

Heat uncurled in her abdomen, but she doused it with cold reason. This wasn’t some lover’s tiff that could be smoothed over with a rose and an apology. This went to the heart of who they were, the choices they had to make.

Dropping the rose back inside the locker, she closed the door and went out to whip her current group of eighteen-year-olds into some kind of fighting shape. “All right, boys and girls, I want two reps of the set we practiced last time. Go!”

By the time the session was over, more than one student was close to crawling, yet Indigo’s own energy level remained high, her senses on alert for any hint of Drew’s presence. But he didn’t come to her. Which, she thought, ignoring the growling of her wolf, was exactly right. Maybe the rose had been nothing but a good-bye.

A chill slithered through her veins, and when she wrenched open her locker again, she was well on the way to hating roses. Stupid, she thought, she was being stupid, acting like one of those ninnies who didn’t know her own mind. The decision was made. End of stor—

Blooms tumbled out all over her. Soft and fragrant and exquisite.

“What the—” Staring, startled, she realized her locker was stuffed to the brim with roses.

Red, red roses.

Behind her, Sing-Liu whistled as she closed up her own locker. “Now that’s what I call an apology. Man’s got style.”

“You can have them.” Indigo scowled, scooping out the roses and putting them on the bench between the lockers. “Here.”

Sing-Liu took one perfect bloom and stuck it behind her ear, the color shockingly bright against the shimmering jet of her hair. “Hey, come on,” the soldier said with a small smile, “I know he was an ass, but he should get some credit for creativity. Most men just snarl and growl and try to sex their lovers into a good mood.” A sensual smile. “Not that I mind being sexed until my toes curl. You should try it.”

Indigo snarled at the soldier. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“I guess I do.” Lips still curved in that provocative smile, the small, lean human woman who was more lethal than a large number of the wolves in the den, disappeared around the corner.

Locker cleared, Indigo shut the door and turned to leave.