The wolves shifted as his brother got off the snowmobile and walked across. “Are you all right?”
Judd nodded. “Yes.”
But another conversation was taking place on the LaurenNet.
You’ve disabled the Silence Protocol.
There was no judgment in his brother’s tone.
It’s already influencing the familial Net.
Judd realized Walker was right.
We’ve been living with emotion since the children started adapting. It won’t harm them.
No.
Walker’s psychic presence was a star that had an odd twisting motion at the center. He wasn’t a martial Psy, and no one had ever been able to figure out what that twisting motion meant.
There’s a new mind in the Net.
Judd blinked and looked again. There she was, linked to the Net through him and protected by his powerful mind. None of the others could touch her, though her strong, affectionate nature was already influencing the flows of the tiny LaurenNet.
Brenna
. She couldn’t see this, couldn’t see her wild silver star with ricocheting shards of vibrant blue, but it was something that calmed his psychic mind. He could protect her now, no matter where she was. He’d know if she shed a single tear.
She’s making the Net stronger.
Of course she was.
She’s a wolf.
You’re sure?
Judd knew they were no longer talking about Brenna.
I’m safe.
Reaching back, he took his mate’s hand in his.
Have you seen the other changes in the Net?
Faint sparks of color where there had once only been black and white.
I think it represents a formerly suppressed aspect of Toby’s abilities. It doesn’t fit the parameters of any known designation, but I have my suspicions.
So did Judd.
We’ll talk later.
Hawke narrowed his eyes as Walker stepped back. “I leave you going blue and thinking I’m going to have to dig a grave, and return to find you . . . well
exercised
.” A pause that took in the rucked-up snow. Behind Hawke, Lara did a bad job of hiding a grin. “You want to explain that?”
“No.” Judd felt Brenna’s blush in his mind and knew she’d realized her packmates could smell the scent of their recent explosive union. He liked the idea of her being covered in his scent. “There’s nothing to explain.”
Hawke grunted, amusement in his eyes. “Right. Let’s head back.”
“Give me a minute.” It was Riley.
Judd met the other man’s eyes as everyone else dispersed. Beside him, Brenna went very quiet. Her brother came forward. “You ever make her cry, I’ll break every bone in your body, tear you to pieces, and hold a barbeque for the wild wolves.”
“Riley!” Brenna sounded shocked.
Judd wasn’t—despite Riley’s calm exterior, the male was as ferally protective as Andrew. “I think Brenna is more than capable of doing that herself.”
“Judd!”
Riley’s face broke out in an uncharacteristic grin. “Yeah, she is.” Reaching out, he kissed his gaping sister’s cheek before pulling back and shifting. Then he was gone.
“I can’t believe you said that.” Brenna was scowling when he turned to her. “I would never hurt you.”
He wanted to laugh at her outrage. “I adore you.” And now he could truly protect her—what he hadn’t told her was that Enrique’s alterations had put undue pressure on her brain. Because her brain was changeling, not Psy, it hadn’t had any way to vent that pressure. Sooner or later, things would’ve gone to a critical state.
The reason for her present health was that, even dormant, the bond had somehow leached off enough of the overload—dispersing it through his psychic channels—that she didn’t collapse. But now he could consciously regulate the pressure, reducing it and shielding her, until she learned to do it herself. It would be hard but not impossible, not with Brenna’s strength of will. “You are the most stubborn, most beautiful woman I know.”
“Oh . . . how am I supposed to stay mad when you say something like that?” She stamped her foot but her lips were curving up into a smile. “You’re pretty, too.” She grinned at his scowl. “But you’re the most infuriating man I’ve ever met.”
“Too bad. You’re stuck with me.”
Standing on tiptoe, she spoke against his lips. “I like being stuck to you.”
He was about to kiss her when she wrenched away. “You want a kiss? Come and get it.” A taunt, an invitation, a lovers’ game.
Judd had never played much. He had a feeling that was about to change. “You should know never to dare an Arrow.”
“You’re all talk, Judd Lauren.” A blur of movement and she was gone.
Feeling his heartbeat speed up, he pushed off after her. He’d get his kiss. And more. Using the bond, he sent her explicit images detailing the prize he intended to claim.
Not fair,
came the breathy response.
Now I’m all hot and wet.
He tripped.
You did that on purpose.
Nuh-uh. If I’d wanted to mess with you, I’d have told you about this fantasy I have of having you at my mercy.
That intrigued him.
What would you do?
This.
Images cascaded into his mind, affectionate, lush, and so incredibly erotic that he found himself fighting his body’s desire to descend into pure sensation.
Let me?
He was used to protecting his back, to never giving anyone control over his body or his mind.
I’m yours.
It was the final surrender.
Sascha couldn’t believe
the difference in Brenna when she saw her the next day, having come up to the den to talk to Lara about a different situation. “She’s happy, healed,” she said to Lucas on the trip home, her ears still full of the sound of the SnowDancer’s laughter. “And Judd—I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t felt it with my empathy. He might look unchanged on the surface, but he
loves
her.” So deep and true it almost hurt. Sascha knew—she loved Lucas like that.
“Then why do you sound so sad, kitten?” He threw her a concerned look before returning his attention to the rough mountain road.
“She was betrayed by one of her own,” Sascha whispered, shaken. “I thought Pack was safe, was family. If you can’t trust Pack, who can you trust?”
Lucas brought the car to a halt in the middle of nowhere and reached over to pull her into his lap. “Pack is safe. Pack is the cornerstone of who we are.”
“Then why? How?” She nestled her head under his chin. “Dieter was a SnowDancer soldier, but he’s so twisted.” Even walking past his cell had made her sick to her stomach. Waves of something rotten, putrid, had emanated from his soul.
Lucas stroked his hand down her back. “Having the animal inside protects us against many sins, but even changelings sometimes spawn evil.”
She thought about that for long minutes. “For there to be light, there must be darkness.” It was what Faith had said after her escape from the Net. But only now did Sascha truly understand. “If you try for perfection, you become exactly like the Psy.” A cold, robotic race without the ability to laugh, love, or cherish.
“No race is perfect.” He nuzzled at her. “And I kind of like you, flaws and all.”
She found her smile again. “Yes. Perfection is vastly overrated—if they measured the Psy race’s contentedness index, the results would undoubtedly be in the negatives.”
“God, you’re sexy when you talk Psy.”
CHAPTER 48
“You’re walking funny,”
Lucy said, a shit-eating grin on her face.
Five days of out of this world sex with a starving man could do that to a girl. “You’re just jealous.” Brenna pushed through the door into DarkRiver’s business HQ.
Lucy made a mournful face. “Yes, I am. Goddamn but your man is hot. And he
smiles
at you! I’ve seen him do it, even if no one believes me.”
“I know.” She smiled herself and it was so wide, her face felt as if it would crack. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I have to talk to Mercy about a joint holovision project. CTX thing.” Lucy looked over her shoulder after naming the leopard-wolf communications company. “Here comes your beautiful man. Talk to you later.”
Judd put a hand on her lower back as they walked down to the basement. He did that a lot—touch her. Her smile stretched impossibly wider. “I think we should play ‘who’s more patient’ again tonight.”
“Fine.” He sounded oh so Psy but his hand had slipped down to caress her hip. “You do remember that you always lose?”
Losing had never been so much fun. “We’ll see.” She walked through the basement door to find Dorian already at the console. “Where are Lucas and Hawke?” The alpha had preceded them here.
“At the building site,” Dorian replied, referring to the joint Psy-changeling development being designed and built by DarkRiver for Nikita Duncan.
“I thought the wolves were silent partners in the project,” Judd commented as she took her seat beside Dorian and began to check the lines of programming for the last time. “They just supplied the land, correct?”
Dorian nodded. “Lucas and Hawke were talking and decided to give themselves an airtight ‘alibi.’” He smirked. “Hard to accuse them of masterminding this when they were in a meeting with Nikita at the time.”
Of course, Judd thought, the Council would know exactly who to blame for the technological strike, but that was the point. The alphas were sending a message: You attack us and we’ll bite back, and we’ll do it where it hurts. The six Psy assassins who had butchered the DawnSky deer had already been dispatched—that op had taken place the same day Judd obtained the names. Now it was time for the second strike.
He glanced at his watch. “The stock exchange opens in ten seconds.”
“Give it a few minutes—let them think everything’s okay.” Dorian leaned back in his chair as they waited. “Okay. Time’s up. You want to do the honors, kid?”
“Oh yes.” Rubbing her hands, Brenna held her finger over a key. “They should have never come into our territory and taken the lives of those under our care.” She pressed down. “We look after our own.”
The Psy Council
convened an emergency session within minutes of the exchange failure. They had barely gotten a handle on that situation when other systems began to fail in a relentless cascade. Major Psy banks and large Psy businesses were the worst hit.
There was no signature, no way to identify the perpetrators of the rapid-fire assault. But Nikita Duncan had looked into two pairs of alpha-changeling eyes today. She got the message. And she made sure the rest of the Council appreciated it.
For the first time, no one argued with her. The damage was too widespread, the intelligence behind the stealthy attack too finely honed. There was no doubt the animals had won this skirmish.
EPILOGUE
It happened
in the middle of a wild outdoor lovemaking session that had gotten more than a little vigorous. Winter had left with languid softness and now spring was a cool breeze on her skin. Judd picked Brenna up and put her flat on the ground. Her breath rushed out—not because he’d used excessive pressure—on the contrary, her landing had been angel soft. No, it was because he hadn’t used his hands.
Attuned as he was to the bond, he froze in the act of ripping off his shirt, leaving his ridged abdomen bare. “Brenna.”
“I’m okay. It was a surprise, that’s all.” She meant that. Her mate was a powerful telekinetic and she trusted him never to use that Tk to hurt her.
His eyes darkened, then he smiled. “Do you like surprises?”
That still-rare smile had the ability to send warmth rushing to the juncture of her thighs. Squeezing them together, she nodded. That was when her pants unzipped of their own accord and began being pulled down her body along with her panties.
She couldn’t help it. She cried out, especially when he lifted her bottom to help drag the clothing off. They flew to land on the branches of a nearby tree. “Some surprise.” Her heart raced. “What’s next?”
Not answering, he walked around to stand at her feet, looking down at her body with blatant possessiveness. Her shirt was open and parted to reveal her breasts, her lower body naked, her knees raised. She had never felt more deliciously exposed.
“Spread your thighs.” A low, rough order.
She blushed at what he was asking her to do but even as she hesitated, phantom hands began to spread her. Shocked, she didn’t fight because those hands
felt
just like those of the man who watched her—watched her as if she were a feast he was waiting to gorge on. Then those invisible hands slid down to her curls and paused.
Dangerous Psy eyes clashed into hers. “I want to open you.”
Brenna had known she was getting a dominant male when she chose Judd. His intensity didn’t scare her. Rather, it sent erotic need rushing over her body, further tightening the already taut peaks of her breasts and dampening the woman core of her. But what seduced her to complete submission was that, even violently aroused, he had stopped to check how she was handling this escalation of their sexual life, the working of his Tk fully into who they were together.
“Do it,” she whispered, the words so thick she had to force them out.
Those phantom fingers spread apart her intimate lips, baring her to the air . . . to his gaze. Blood flooded her cheeks and she could feel herself flushing in other, normally hidden places. An invisible finger dipped into her, pushing in an inch before spreading her cream over the hard bud he’d exposed to the air.
“Judd!” When she could breathe again, she looked up to find he’d undone his pants at last, releasing his erection.
“I want.” A bold sexual statement she could only make because this was her mate.
He fisted himself. “This?”
She couldn’t believe it. “You’re going to tease?” Two could play at that game, even if Judd was undeniably the more skilled at it. Sliding one hand down her own body, she dipped her fingers into her heat, pleasuring herself with lazy strokes, while she used the fingers of her other hand to caress her breasts, pluck at her nipples.