The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (186 page)

She pushed a flyaway tendril out of her eyes. “I was worried.” A statement without sophistication, stark in its honesty. “I wanted to telepath Judd, but I knew he wouldn’t tell me anything without authorization.”

Protecting his own was instinct, but this was her life—a life she’d fought for from the start. He wasn’t about to handicap her by leaving her blind to a possible threat.

She sucked in a breath as he started giving her the rundown, her face going pale under those intriguing freckles she’d gained during the summer months. “Me,” she whispered. “I’ve given us away.”

He was already rising to cup her jaw, run his finger over the softness of her skin. “No one would have recognized you,” he said, thinking she was worried about her visits to Wild, the city. “Hell, I hardly recognized you.”

“No.” A violent shake of her head, her eyes gone midnight. “When I ‘earth’ the X-fire, it causes a psychic shockwave. They’d have to be close to feel it—”

“But,” he said, seeing the lethal point she was trying to make, “Henry Scott’s men have been lurking on the fringes and maybe even in interior sections of den territory for months.”

She gave a jagged nod. “I’m sorry. I should’ve realized—”

He stopped her with a finger on her lips. “Even if they did catch something, it must’ve only been the barest hint, or they’d have been a lot more certain tonight.”

“They’ll come back.” She spoke against his touch, and it was instinct to trace those full lips, to indulge himself that much though he knew he couldn’t allow himself to go any further. Not tonight. Not when she was so shocked and vulnerable.

“Then,” he said, drawing in her scent, “we’ll take care of them.” He rubbed the rough pad of his thumb over her lower lip, deeply satisfied to hear her breath catch. “Can you mute the release of your power in any way?”

“Yes.” Hot breath against his skin, the thudding beat of her pulse a caress that had his body going rigid in want. “I’ll go deep into SnowDancer territory, places I know are under heavy guard and highly unlikely to be compromised.”

“Good.” It was beyond tempting to bite the flushed curves of her mouth, but he resisted and said, “What were you reading when I came in earlier? I saw the reader on the bed.”

Sienna had been sick to her stomach when she’d realized her actions might’ve brought danger to her whole family, but now, a wholly different sensation skittered within her abdomen. “Shouldn’t we,” she said against that thumb that continued to tease her until it felt as if her lips were connected in a direct line to the damp heat between her legs, “discuss the security issue?”

“Nothing more to discuss yet.” Wolf eyes looking out of a human face, his body so close her own brushed against the implacable strength of him with every breath.

When he moved that tormenting touch away from her lips to close his hand over the sensitive column of her throat, she shuddered. “A physics text.” Part of her said she was letting him have too much control of the situation, but the rest of her waited in strained anticipation to see what he would do next.

“Hmm.” Reaching back, he undid her braid, sliding the dark mass over one shoulder so it tumbled over her breast. “You’re getting straight A’s.”

Surprise cut through the desire so heavy in her limbs, in her blood. “How did you know?”

A slow smile. “Because I know your brain never stops working.”

She didn’t know how to take that. “Are you making fun of me?”

Sliding both hands down to her waist, he said, “No,” and stroked his hands up, back down again. “I like how smart you are.”

It was an unexpected compliment, one that meant far more to her than the most flowery of words. “I like your mind, too,” she whispered as her arms rose of their own volition to wrap around his neck. He was too tall for that, so she curved her hand around the side of his neck, the shift of muscle and tendon a stark intimacy under her palm. “Your thought processes fascinate me.” He could be so icily rational, and yet the wolf was always there, primal and untamed.

“Then we’re equal.” Cupping her nape with one hand, he moved the other to her lower back. And somehow, they were dancing, though the only music was the thudding pulse of her heart, the rough caress of his breath.

 

 

JUDD
managed to get in touch with the Ghost around three that morning, the other man agreeing to meet him an hour later in the murky confines of an abandoned building project. Black plastic fluttered in the night winds, the solid skeleton of the house providing an illusion of permanence. “You’ve been hard to track down of late,” Judd said to the rebel who was so close to the Net, Judd worried its madness was starting to seep into the Ghost’s brain.

Face hidden in the gloom, the Ghost leaned back against one of the supporting beams. “You asked me once what my reason was for doing this.”

“This” being their combined efforts to topple the Council . . . though no longer Silence. The question had become more complex than that. As evidenced by the second level of dissonance in Sienna’s brain, some Psy
needed
Silence, or some aspect of it, on a basic level. “Are you ready to share?”

The only thing the Ghost had admitted to date was that there was at least one individual in the Net who had some value to him, one person he did not want dead. That was the solitary thing that kept him from annihilating the entire Council, an act that would cause a psychic shockwave and destabilize the Net, killing millions.

“No,” the rebel said in response to his question. “But I have one, that much you should know.”

Judd understood without further explanation that that unnamed reason lay behind the Ghost’s recent lack of availability. “I need to know if my cover is blown.”

“No. Your entire family is presumed dead.”

“Any rumors?”

“There is a myth of a cardinal X, but you and I both know that to be impossible.”

Judd wondered just how much the Ghost knew and how far the rebel’s allegiance went. But he also knew that while Sienna had gained control of her ability with the sheer, stubborn refusal to surrender, there would come a time when the X-marker would demand more from her than she could give. He had to take a chance on the Ghost’s loyalty, to roll the dice. Because if he didn’t and Sienna’s power did spiral out of control . . . “Have you heard of Alice Eldridge’s second manuscript?”

“The dissertation on designation X?” The Ghost straightened. “Yes. It’s one of the most hidden, yet persistent rumors in the Net.”

“Any indication the rumor might hold a grain of truth?”

A long, quiet pause. “I’ll do a search.”

“I’ll owe you one.”

“No, Judd. Don’t ever say that to me—I may very well collect.” There was a chill darkness to that statement, as if Judd would not like the payment demanded.

“Then I withdraw it.” Hair blowing back in a sudden gust that sent the black plastic flapping, he glanced at the man of whose identity he was ninety-nine point nine percent certain. “Have you ever considered taking the rebellion into the open?”

“It would never succeed. First the foundations must be set. Only then can the wave crest.”

Judd thought of everything they’d done together, everything they’d accomplished, considered the cost. “How is your mental status?” It was a question he’d never asked with such bluntness, but times had changed.

“Sane.” A short answer. “Though sanity is a question of interpretation.”

ALTERNATING BETWEEN CONTENTMENT
and frustration at the remembered feel of Sienna in his arms, Hawke was drinking his first cup of coffee the next morning when he got a call from Kenji, the SnowDancer lieutenant based near the San Gabriel Mountains. With his high cheekbones, startling green eyes, and violent magenta hair, he looked like an escapee from a desert rave—or maybe some avant garde catwalk show.

“What the fuck did you do to your hair?” Hawke asked, almost choking on his coffee. Because while he might be channeling a Japanese rock star, the fact was, Kenji was about as avant garde as your average elementary school teacher.

“It annoys Garnet. Reason enough.” He tapped a rolled-up chart on the comm screen. “I’ve had an interesting contact from the BlackSea Coalition.”

Hawke put down his coffee. BlackSea was a changeling pack—in a sense. It was a coalition of all the water-based changelings. As single entities, their population numbers were miniscule, with only one or two recorded instances of some changeling types. However, rather than being powerless, they’d grouped together to form a close-knit network that gave them considerable negotiating and territorial power.

“Business?”

Kenji shook his head. “They want in on an alliance.”

“Send me the data.” It would go to the top of his list, because unlike any other pack on the face of the planet, BlackSea had members worldwide. “Copy Riley on everything.”

“Will do.” Kenji signed off.

Seeing a scrawled message on his desk, Hawke headed out to speak to Indigo about some of the younger pack members she’d had under supervision.

“You’re more balanced,” she said after they’d finished the discussion, long legs crossed on top of her desk while he stood with his back against the closed door of her office.

“Yep.” The contact he’d allowed himself with Sienna had satisfied both parts of him to the extent that his need was no longer bleeding out to everyone around him. More to the point, the wolf was willing to be patient now that he’d decided to go after her—it understood the hunt, understood that sometimes you had to stalk your prey. “I hear Tai’s dating Evie,” he said in an effort to distract Indigo because he wasn’t ready to discuss his decision.

Indigo’s expression said she was onto him, but she let it slide. “I’ve promised to break both his arms if he makes her unhappy in any way, shape, or form.” A pause. “I should promise to do the same to you.”

Hawke narrowed his eyes. “Don’t go there.”

“Of course I’ll go there—that’s why I’m a lieutenant.” Swinging her legs off her desk, she picked up a small datapad. “But not today. I’m late for a session with the novices.” Rising, she waited for him to open the door. “On second thought . . .” She pushed her free hand into his hair and pulled down his head.

“I almost let the best thing that ever happened to me slip away because I was hung up on ideas of what I ‘should’ want. Sometimes there is no ‘should,’ there’s only a single chance to grab on to happiness.” Pressing her lips to his in a fast, affectionate kiss, she let go and strode off.

Her parting statement, however, didn’t disappear as easily.

 

 

SOMEHOW
fighting the distraction of last night’s memories, Sienna had just sent in a completed physics project using the computronic resources in the den library when she ran into an elderly changeling. “I’ve got it,” she said, catching the book she’d knocked from his grasp. “I’m so sorry, sir.”

Dalton chuckled as he accepted the book, his white eyebrows bushy over dark, dark brown skin marked with a thousand laugh lines. “Makes me sound about a hundred years old.”

Sienna wasn’t sure Dalton wasn’t exactly that age. The man the kids in the den affectionately called a whitebeard wasn’t a librarian, he was
the
Librarian, the repository of Pack knowledge. “Were you undertaking research?”

“It’s all up here.” He tapped his temple, his sparkling eyes the same warm tawny brown as his granddaughter’s. “I came to get some light reading.” Holding up the heavy tome she’d caught, he beamed. “In the original French!”

Sienna nodded as if she knew what he was talking about. “I hope you enjoy it.”

“I’m sure I will.” Tucking the book under his arm, he touched her on the shoulder as he passed.

Sienna blurted out, “Wait,” before her courage deserted her.

“Yes, dear?”

“The Pack archives—are they accessible to anyone?”

Dalton’s eyes were piercing when he looked at her, leaving no doubt that whitebeard or not, his brain was as acute as it had always been. “Yes. But certain truths, while written, are kept out of reach—because there are some wounds that don’t need to be reopened.”

Sienna felt her fingers curl into fists. “I understand.”

“Do you, young one?” Dalton shook his head. “The histories I write give the facts, but for the heart of it, you must ask those who were there.”

Sienna didn’t move for several minutes after Dalton left, remembering the way Hawke had shut her down the one time she’d brought up the past. He’d held her last night, danced with her until the entire den seemed to go quiet, as if they were the only two awake in the hushed time between midnight and dawn. She’d never felt more alive, more a woman. However, Dalton’s words made her confront a stark truth: that despite the escalating physical contact, Hawke hadn’t yet—might never—trust her with his secrets.

Sienna.
Judd’s telepathic voice, slicing through the bleakness of her thoughts.
Hawke’s office. We need to discuss what you told him about the cold fire.

The reminder of the danger stalking them was an icy trickle down her spine.
I’m on my way.

 

 

HAWKE
noted Sienna’s expressionless face, the flat ebony of her gaze, and scowled. “You release the X-fire to keep from reaching synergy, correct?” he asked, figuring he’d get to the bottom of the emotional change in her as soon as he had her alone.

A crisp nod, her stance that of a SnowDancer soldier in front of her alpha. “Earthing helps me maintain a stable psychic balance.”

“How often do you earth?” Judd had told him to ask the question, though the Psy male had refused, “until he had more answers,” to say why. It was a measure of Hawke’s trust in the lieutenant that he’d left it at that—for now.

“Several times over the past few months,” Sienna admitted. “Before that, I was only doing it once or twice every half year. My theory is that the change is linked to my increasing control—I’m no longer releasing power inadvertently, so it builds up faster.”