The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (198 page)

Walker had already confirmed a lack of telepathic communication. “They’re alive,” he’d said ten minutes ago, fine lines flaring at the corners of his eyes. “I can sense them on the LaurenNet.”

“Can you chance contacting them through your network?” He didn’t want either Judd or Sienna distracted, but he needed to know if something had gone wrong so the pack could mount a rescue.

Walker had shaken his head. “The LaurenNet has limitations because of its size. It can compensate for one of the adults being in a distant location, but with two of them gone, the network is stretched. It’ll hold, but I can’t risk a loss of focus.”

A breach, Hawke knew, would have catastrophic consequences. “Take care of Toby and Marlee.” That had to be the priority. Neither Sienna nor Judd would want it any different.

“I’ll let you know the instant I hear anything. And Hawke?” Pale green eyes holding his. “We need to talk after they return.”

Now, in the communications hub of the den, Brenna shook her head in response to his words. “I gave them both untraceable cells, but they might’ve decided not to chance a call anyway.”

Hawke clenched his hand on the back of her chair. “Can you track them on the airjet?” The two were meant to board a flight home in a few hours.

“No.” Brenna pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “We infected the airport computers with a subtle virus. It erased them from the systems, so it’ll be no use hacking into the visual imaging files.” Releasing a steady breath, she reached back to put her hand over his. “They’ll be fine.”

Startled by the confidence in her voice, he looked down into her face as she tipped it up. “So sure?”

“I’m worried. Of course I’m worried,” she admitted, the darkness in her eyes a silent echo of her words. “But Judd’s sending me ‘I’m safe’ vibes through the mating bond.”

Hawke’s wolf scowled, because it couldn’t keep tabs on Sienna that way.

“Plus,” Brenna continued, “my mate is a complete badass. Seriously, your girl couldn’t be in better hands.”

In spite of the wolf pacing within his mind, he felt his lips tug up at the corners. “I’ll have you know, Sienna is a trainee badass.” Accepting that the only thing to do was wait, though such inaction grated, he said, “I’m heading down to talk to the cats about another issue—the instant you hear anything, you call me. Understood?”

“Absolutely.” Rising to her feet, she said, “I could do with a hug.”

He enfolded her in his arms without a word. She was Pack. It soothed something in him to hold her, too. But he knew the wolf would continue to prowl half-mad inside his mind until Sienna was back safe in his territory. “Better?”

“Yes.”

He left with a caress to her cheek. Picking up Riley from the cabin the lieutenant shared with Mercy, he drove them both down to the meeting spot, which happened to be the home of the DarkRiver healer.

“It’s a huge indication of trust, isn’t it?” Riley said as they came to a stop in front of the graceful split-level home. “To allow us so close to their healer. We’ve come a long way.”

Hawke had to agree. “Honestly? I never expected an alliance of any kind with the cats when they first began to make their presence felt.” He’d wanted only that they stay out of his way while he rebuilt his shattered pack.

“No.”

Neither of them made a move to exit the vehicle.

“Hawke,” Riley said into the tense silence, “I can handle this. You don’t want to be here.”

“I need to be doing something. Might as well be this.” He got out, slamming the door.

Riley glanced at him when they met at the front of the vehicle. “Word of advice. Strong women don’t take well to being snarled at.”

“Tough.” She’d be lucky if all he did was snarl at her he thought as he headed into the meeting, his mind on the phone in his pocket.

When a message did come in, it only said, “Still no contact.”

ADEN LOOKED OVER
at the Arrow who stood beside him on the sandy beach along the Amalfi Coast. Abbot was a telekinetic, 9.1 on the Gradient, incredibly powerful, incredibly skilled, incredibly cursed. It had come as no surprise to discover that the twenty-six-year-old was drawn to the idea of Purity.

“Have you come to stop me, Aden?” the other Arrow asked. “Ask me not to join Pure Psy?”

Aden shook his head. “I’m not Ming, to force you to follow my own political agenda. But you must know—you cannot be both an Arrow and a member of Pure Psy.”

“So you would exile me.”

“No, Abbot. That isn’t who we are.” The water held an edge of luminescence in the dark of the night that had fallen on this side of the world, and he made a note to do some research, find out what sea organism caused the effect. “But the squad works on unconditional trust.” On the knowledge that the Arrow at his back would never use the position to knife him. “Once you give your allegiance to Pure Psy, you must follow their goals.”

Abbot took his time replying, his ink black hair blowing back in the salt laced wind coming off the Gulf of Salerno. “You’re not a Tk.”

“No.”

“What does Vasic say?”

Aden thought of the Tk-V who could lift blood out of walls and bodies from within graves. “You should ask him.”

“No games, Aden. You know his mind—he speaks to you.”

Aden looked down at the glowing foam before the sea sucked it back in. “Vasic believes it doesn’t matter the Councilor at the helm, or whether the machinery is called Council or Purity—in the end, we’re nothing but warm bodies to bleed for them.” So many Arrows had died to protect Silence. Their only reward had been more death.

“Yet we give our allegiance to Kaleb Krychek.”

“There are reasons.”

Abbot looked out toward the lingering golden light in the windows of some of the homes that hugged the cliffs, and Aden saw bleak longing in those eyes as blue as the deepest part of the Aegean. A breach of Silence, but an Arrow never betrayed one of his own.

“We are Arrows for a reason,” the other man said at last. “We cannot survive without Silence.”

“Perhaps.” Aden thought of Vasic again, of the price the Tk-V had paid to retain his sanity. “But perhaps the price of survival has become too high.”

TEN HOURS AFTER
the meeting on DarkRiver land, Hawke had to fight the urge to simultaneously pull Sienna to his chest and strangle Judd. The two of them walked into the den after having finally checked in by phone when they landed in San Francisco—six hours behind schedule. He did neither.

“Why the hell,” he said the instant the office door was shut, “did you not tag Walker with a telepathic report?”

“We had a situation,” Judd said, making Hawke’s blood run cold. “I had to do a fast teleport to get Sienna out of a tight spot. Combined with the teleport in and out of the village for both of us, as well as what was necessary to complete the op, it brought me close to flaming out.”

Eyes on Sienna, Hawke said, “Explain.”

She drew up her spine. “Since Judd was effectively drained, we made the decision to conserve my psychic energy. A long-distance telepathic report would’ve only utilized a small amount of power, but that may have counted in a confrontation.”

Heart an ice-cold block in his chest as he read between the lines, Hawke nodded at Judd to continue.

“We missed our scheduled flight because I needed time to recover enough that there was no chance of a collapse.” Judd carried on when Hawke didn’t interrupt. “The charges have been placed. Brenna can activate any or all of them from here.”

“Have her build two remotes as well—I’ll carry one, you take the spare,” Hawke ordered. “We need to be prepared in case we have to abandon the den.”

Judd’s eyebrows rose. “Has that ever happened?”

Hawke gave a curt nod. “Once. The location had been leaked.” As a lieutenant, Hawke’s father had known too much when he’d been compromised.

The only reason SnowDancer had managed to reclaim the den was that the men and women who’d been left after the blood and death had gone out and quietly executed the small group behind the psychic rapes. No one had ever connected the deaths to SnowDancer, a deliberate choice on the pack’s part. They’d been too weak to chance a Psy reprisal. But they were no longer weak, no longer broken. “Tell Brenna the remotes are a priority.”

Judd nodded. “We also captured detailed images of the camp with the cameras hooked into our collars.”

“Mariska can clean up and summarize the footage.” The twenty-eighty-ear-old senior tech was so shy she appeared standoffish, but had a mind like a scalpel.

“I’ll drop it off to her. If you haven’t got any more questions, we should get changed and try to rest.”

“From the way Brenna kissed you at the entrance, I don’t think you’ll be doing much resting,” Hawke said, and saw Sienna’s lips tug upward a tiny fraction.

Judd, on the other hand, showed no physical reaction. “Goodnight, Hawke.” Cool, very Psy, very Judd. “Sienna, you should get to bed, too.”

Sienna glanced up, expecting Hawke to stop her, but he’d already turned away to look at something else on his desk. Deflated, she exited with Judd.

“Sienna,” he said, halting her when they would’ve split two corridors later, “you did very well.”

Her shoulders went tight at the memory of that instant before the guard had been distracted by a call. It had given Judd the time to answer her telepathic hail and ’port her out. “I could’ve gotten us both caught.”

“Things happen in the field—the mark of a good operative is how you respond to the challenge. You stayed composed and silent, the right course of action given the circumstances.”

It felt good to hear that. “Thanks.”

“How’s your rib?”

“Fine.” Judd hadn’t mentioned it to Hawke, but the work he’d done to knit the bone was the real reason he’d been so wiped out. She’d been hurt worse than she’d thought. “Doesn’t even feel bruised.”

“Good.” Leaning over, he pressed his lips to her temple. “Go shower. I’m sure you’ll be having a visitor in another ten minutes, at the absolute maximum.” His tone was so even, it took an instant for the words to penetrate.

“I’ll attempt,” he added, “not to ’port in and break his legs for having the gall to be in your room.”

She stared, stunned, after he stalked off.

Jolted to action by the mental echo, she ran to her room, dodging any attempts by packmates to stop her. The instant she closed the door behind herself, she stripped and jumped into the shower.

She was rubbing the towel over her wet body when there was a hard knock on the door.

Definitely not ten minutes.

More like four and a half.

“Just a second!” Grabbing her dirty clothes—scattered all over the floor—she threw them into the bathroom, then raced to pull on underwear.

The knock came again, more impatient.

“I’m coming!”

Her jeans hooked on her ankles. Cursing, she managed to get them on and struggled into a forest green T-shirt, pulling her damp hair out from under the back as, breathless, she opened the door partway through the third knock. “Wha—”

The door was closed, and she was pressed up against the solid mass of it before she knew what was happening. “Hawke, I—”

His hands cupped her face, the wolf looking out of his eyes. Her words faded away, her heartbeat accelerated, and still he continued to watch her with that complete and unwavering focus. When his thumb moved over her cheekbone, she jumped.

“I,” he said in a quiet, quiet tone, “will not send you into a hot zone again.”

So easy, it would be so easy to let the overwhelming power of him take her over. “You must.” Her voice came out husky. “I was born for war.”

One hand stroked down, over her jaw, to collar her throat. “No.” A single word spoken in a warm rush of air against her skin, his body aligned to hers.

“I am what I am.” It was hard to continue speaking when he was so very hot and beautiful against her, the maleness of him a living caress. “Fire contained in a small box die—”

Hawke’s mouth stole her words, the taste of him a blast to the senses. This kiss was unlike any of the others. Moving the hand on her throat to cup her jaw, he angled her head just the way he liked, pressed his free hand to the door beside her head, kicked her legs farther apart . . . and then he took her.

Hot and wet and open-mouthed, it was a devouring kind of kiss, the kind of kiss that made it plain he considered her
his
.

Sienna shuddered. He was so big, so gorgeous, so
close
that her hands didn’t know where to land. Gripping at the back of his black shirt, she tried to make herself taller, to offer up more of her mouth, taste more of his.

A growl rumbled out of his chest as she moved her body, and she realized that somehow, she was riding his thigh. Another time, it might have embarrassed or shocked her, but tonight . . .

More
, she thought,
give me everything.
She might never hold all of him, but this she would claim. His lost mate had never touched this wild, hungry part of him, never caressed the powerful body that pinned her against the door, never tasted the dark heat of that demanding mouth. This fire between them, it was for her and her alone.

“Why aren’t you wearing a bra?”

Shocked by the rough question against her lips, she sucked in a gasping breath. “You didn’t give me time.”

A wolfish smile. Kisses over her jaw, along her neck. She braced herself for a bite, but it didn’t come. Instead, he slid his hand down to her lower back and nudged her more firmly onto his thigh. She couldn’t help the whimper that escaped her throat.

Yes, she knew about sex—quite aside from her clinical lessons in health studies, the women’s magazines in the novices’ common room had proven
extremely
instructive. But no amount of research could’ve prepared her for this. Never had she understood what it would be to be so very, very close to him, the muscled strength of him rubbing against her most intimate place.