The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (168 page)

“I started it.” Color high on her cheekbones, shoulders tight. “She was just defending—”

“No.” Sienna’s tone was steady, resolute, the anger buried under a wall of frigid control. “I’ll take my share of the blame. I could’ve walked away.”

Hawke narrowed his eyes. “Maria, go.”

The novice soldier hesitated for a second, but she was a subordinate wolf, her natural instinct to obey her alpha too powerful to resist—even though it was clear she wanted to remain behind to support Sienna. Hawke noted and approved of the display of loyalty enough that he didn’t rebuke her for the hesitation.

The door closed behind her with a quiet snick that seemed shotgun-loud inside the office’s heavy silence. Hawke waited to see what Sienna would do now that they were alone. To his surprise, she maintained her position.

Reaching forward, he gripped her chin, turning her face to the side so that the light fell on the smooth lines of it. “You’re lucky you don’t have a broken cheekbone.” The flesh around her eye was going to turn all shades of purple as it was. “Where else are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

His fingers tightened on her jaw. “Where
else
are you hurt?”

“You didn’t ask Maria.” Stubborn will in every word.

“Maria is a wolf, able to take five times the damage of a Psy female and keep going.” Which was the reason Sienna had been ordered not to get into physical confrontations with the wolves. That and the fact that she didn’t have her lethal abilities under total control. “Either you answer the question, or I swear to God I really will put you in the pen.” It would be the most humiliating of experiences and she knew it, every muscle in her body taut with viciously withheld anger.

“Bruised ribs,” she gritted out at last, “bruised abdomen, wrenched shoulder. Nothing’s broken. It should all heal within the next week.”

Dropping his grip on her chin, he said, “Hold out your arms.”

A hesitation.

The wolf growled, loud enough that she flinched. “Sienna, I’ve given you a long leash since you came into the pack, but that ends today.” Insubordination from a juvenile could be punished and forgiven. In an adult, in a
soldier
, it was a far more serious matter. Sienna was nineteen going on twenty, a ranked novice—letting her actions slide wasn’t even an option. “Hold out your fucking arms.”

Something in his tone must’ve gotten through to her because she did as ordered. A few small cuts on that creamy skin kissed gold by the sun, but no gouges that would’ve spoken of claws. “So Maria managed to rein in the wolf.” If she hadn’t, he’d have kicked her right back into training. Losing control of your temper was one thing; losing control of your wolf was far more dangerous.

Sienna’s hands fisted as she dropped them to her sides.

Looking up, he met those eyes of absolute, unbroken black. It was clear she was fighting the elemental impulse to go at him, but she continued to hold her position. “How far did you go?” Her control was impressive—and it irritated him in a way it shouldn’t have. But then, nothing about Sienna Lauren had ever been easy.

“I didn’t use my abilities.” The tendons in her neck stood out against the dirt-encrusted hue of her skin. “If I had, she’d be dead.”

“Which is why you’re in far more trouble than Maria.” When he’d given the Lauren family sanctuary after their defection from the cold sterility of the PsyNet, it had been under a number of strict conditions. One of those conditions had been a prohibition against using Psy abilities on packmates.

A significant number of things had changed since that time, and the Laurens were now an integral and accepted part of the pack. Sienna’s uncle, Judd, was one of Hawke’s lieutenants, and often used his telepathic and telekinetic abilities in defense of SnowDancer. Hawke had also never tied the hands of the two youngest Laurens, knowing Marlee and Toby would need their mental claws to defend themselves against their rambunctious wolf playmates.

But that freedom didn’t extend to Sienna, because Hawke knew exactly what she could do. The instant Judd accepted the lieutenant blood bond, keeping secrets from his alpha had become a question of loyalty and trust.

“Why?” Sienna lifted her chin. “I didn’t disobey the rule about using my abilities.”

Naturally, she’d challenge him. “But,” he said, reining in the wolf’s snarling response to her defiance, “you did disobey a direct order in engaging in the fight—you said it yourself, you could’ve walked away.”

White lines bracketed her mouth. “Would you have?”

“This isn’t about me.” He’d been a young hothead once upon a time, and he’d had his ass kicked for it . . . until everything had changed, his childhood wiped out in a surge of blood and pain and piercing sorrow. “We both know your lack of control could’ve led to a far more serious outcome.” The hell of it was, she knew that, too—and still she’d let herself cross the line. That angered Hawke more than anything else.

“I could be confined to DarkRiver land,” Sienna said while he was considering how to deal with her, “if you don’t want me in the den.”

Hawke snorted at her reference to the leopard pack that was SnowDancer’s most trusted ally. “So you can hang out with your boyfriend? Nice try.”

Sienna’s skin flushed a dull red. “Kit isn’t my boyfriend.”

Hawke wasn’t going to get into that conversation. Not now. Not ever. “You don’t get to have a say in your punishment.” He’d spoiled her. It was his own damn fault it was coming back to bite him in the ass. “One week confined to quarters in the soldiers area, one hour out per day.” Psy were much better at handling isolation than changelings, but he knew Sienna had changed since defecting from the PsyNet, become far more intertwined in the bonds of family, of Pack. “Second week spent working with the babies in the nursery, since that’s the age you’ve been acting recently. No duty rotations until you can be trusted to stick to your task.”

“I—” She snapped her mouth shut when he raised an eyebrow.

“Three weeks,” he said softly. “Third week you’ll spend in the kitchens as a dish hand.”

Her cheeks burned a hotter shade, but she didn’t interrupt again.

“Dismissed.”

It was only after she’d gone—the autumn and spice of her scent lingering in the air in a silent rebellion she would’ve undoubtedly enjoyed had she known about it—that he loosened his hold on the wolf who was his more feral half.

It lunged for her scent.

Sucking in a harsh breath, Hawke fought the primal urge to go after her. He’d been battling the instinct for months, ever since the wolf decided that she was now an adult and, therefore, fair prey. The human half of him wasn’t having much success in changing the wolf’s mind, not when he had to fight the hunger to claim the most intimate of skin privileges every time she was in his presence.

“Christ.” Picking up the sleek new sat phone the techs had issued him four weeks ago, he put through a call to DarkRiver’s alpha.

Lucas answered on the second ring. “What is it?”

“Sienna won’t be heading down to spend time with you cats for a while.” Aside from the distance Sienna apparently needed from the den, from
him
, she’d been working with Lucas’s Psy mate, Sascha, to understand and gain control of her abilities. But—“I can’t let it go. Not this time.”

“Understood.” The answer of a fellow alpha.

Hawke sat on the edge of his desk, shoving a hand through his hair. “Can she handle it?” He knew she wouldn’t break—Sienna was too strong for that, a strength that acted like a drug on his wolf—but the power that lived within her was so vast, it had to be treated as the wildest of beasts.

“Last time she was down,” Lucas responded, “Sascha said she displayed an exceptional level of stability, nothing like when they first began to work together. They’re not having regular meetings anymore, so that’s not an issue.”

Mind at rest on that score at least, Hawke said, “I’ll make sure Judd keeps a psychic eye on her just in case.” Sienna wouldn’t appreciate the oversight, but fact was fact—she was dangerous, and he had to consider the safety of the pack as a whole. As for the ferocity of his protective instincts when it came to her, he wasn’t about to lie and pretend they didn’t exist.

“Can I ask what happened?” Lucas’s tone was curious.

Hawke gave the cat a quick rundown. “She’s been worse this past month.” Prior to that, her newfound stability
had
been noticed—and approved of—by all the senior members of the pack. “I’ve got to start coming down hard on her or it’ll cause discontent in the den.” Hierarchy was the glue that held a wolf pack together. As alpha, Hawke was at the top of that hierarchy. He could not, would not, accept rebellion from a subordinate.

“Yeah, I get it,” Lucas replied. “Surprises me though. She’s the perfect soldier down here, doesn’t ever give me lip. Got a mind as sharp as a razor.”

Hawke flexed and unflexed his claws. “Yeah, well, she’s not yours.”

A long, quiet pause. “I heard you were seeing someone.”

“You want to gossip?” Hawke made no attempt to hide his irritation.

“Kit and the other novices saw you with some drop-dead gorgeous blonde a few weeks ago. At a restaurant down by Pier 39.”

He thought back. “She’s a media consultant with CTX.” SnowDancer and DarkRiver held majority shares in the communications company, an investment that was paying off big-time as even Psy began to search for news reports free of the crushing influence of their dictatorial ruling Council. “Wanted to talk to me about doing an interview.”

“When’s it going to be on?”

“Next time you see a pig flying past the window.” Hawke didn’t play for the cameras, and he’d made damn sure Ms. Consultant understood that SnowDancer wasn’t planning to change its mean and carnivorous image to pretty and fluffy anytime soon. She could work with that or find another posi—A sudden thought sliced clean through his remembered annoyance, had his hand tightening on the phone. “Was Sienna with the novices?”

“Yep.”

It was Hawke who paused this time, his wolf taking a watchful stance, caught between two competing needs. “There’s nothing I can do about that, Luc,” he said at last, every muscle in his body taut to the point of pain.

“That was what Nate said.”

The leopard sentinel was now happily mated with two cubs.

“Not the same.” It wasn’t simply a question of age—the brutal fact was that Hawke’s mate was dead. Had died as a child. Sienna didn’t understand what that meant, how little he had to give her, give any woman. If he was selfish enough to succumb to the unnamed but powerful pull between them, he knew full well he’d destroy her.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. Think about it.” Luc hung up.

Indigo’s words two months ago, speaking about Sienna and that cub who was stuck to her like glue whenever Hawke turned around. Aside from the fact the boy was a leopard, there was nothing wrong with Kit. He’d make the perfect ma—

A crunching sound.

His new sat phone bore a jagged crack through the screen.

HER CALM FACADE
shattering like so much glass the instant she was behind closed doors, Sienna kicked the back wall of the quarters she’d been assigned in the area of the den set aside for unmated soldiers. She rarely used this room, preferring to live with her brother, Toby; uncle Walker; and cousin, Marlee. But now she was stuck in this small, sterile space for the next week.

She flinched at the echo of memory. There’d been nothing but the most cutting anger in those eyes of a blue so very pale, they were those of a husky given human form. Paired with that mane of silver-gold and, most of all, that alpha personality, Hawke was a man who invited female attention without effort.

Her hand fisted. Because today, he hadn’t seen a woman in front of him, but an unreliable member of the pack, one who’d put SnowDancer in danger with her actions. No punishment he could’ve given her could compare to her own self-recrimination. The ice-cold knot of shame in her gut was a chill reminder of just how badly she’d messed up. All this time and work, and when it came down to it, she’d allowed her temper to overrule her rational mind.