“Lara, it hurts.” It was an almost apologetic voice.
Wrenching away the suffocating web of want and anger and hurt that had wrapped around her, she went to her knees. “Let me see, sweetheart,” she said, checking first Brace, then Joshua. “Hold still for a second.” Using the pressure injector, she gave them each a shot of painkiller.
She was vividly conscious of Walker hunkering down beside her, his body big, the scent of him as cool and reserved as the man himself. As she worked, he spoke to Joshua and Brace. Whatever they’d done to get into trouble, the boys’ wolves relaxed at once under his attention. Lara only wished her own wolf wasn’t so hypersensitive to his presence, until its fur rubbed up against the inside of her skin—but sensitivity aside, the wolf maintained a wary distance. Both parts of her had learned their lesson when it came to Walker Lauren.
“There,” she said a while later as both boys checked out Brace’s high-tech cast, made of a transparent plascrete. “Any pain or discomfort, you come to me straight away, you understand?”
“Thanks, Lara.” A brilliant smile from Joshua followed by a kiss from each teenager—one on either cheek—before they got up and raced off, as if they hadn’t been fighting tears not long before.
Shaking her head even as her wolf did the same in affectionate amusement, Lara packed up her gear and watched Walker pick up the bag without effort. It took several attempts to get anything out through a throat gone dry as dust, but she was determined not to allow him to unsettle her. “Thanks.”
A silent nod.
As they walked back, Lara’s mind rebelled against her own resolution, drowning her in thoughts of that kiss the night Riaz returned to the den. The senior members of the pack had thrown the lieutenant an impromptu welcome-home party. The bubbles had been flowing, and Lara, who didn’t usually drink, had had a little too much champagne. It had given her the courage not only to argue with the tall Psy male who’d fascinated her since he first entered the den, but to drag him into a dark corner, go on tiptoe, and find his mouth with her own.
He’d kissed her back, slow and deep and with that powerful body held in fierce check, his hands curving around her ribs as he pulled her into the
V of his thighs. The strong muscles in his neck had flexed under her fingers when he angled his head to deepen the kiss, the slight abrasiveness of his unshaven jaw rubbing a rough caress over her skin.
Big as he was, she’d felt surrounded by him, overwhelmed in the most sensual of ways, his shoulders blocking out the world as he backed her to the wall. She might’ve been buzzed, but she’d never forget a single instant of that experience. Woman and wolf, every part of her had been stunned at her success . . . for the five short seconds it lasted.
Then Walker had lifted his head and nudged her back to the party. She’d thought he was acting the gentleman since she was a tad tipsy, but he would surely do what all dominants did when they wanted a woman, seek her out again when she was sober. He hadn’t called her the next morning, which hadn’t left her in the best of moods. But he had called her later that same afternoon.
They’d gone for a walk, her heart in her throat the entire time. She’d thought it was a beginning. Until Walker had stopped on the edge of a cliff that fell into a valley with dramatic suddenness, his dark blond hair pushed back by the breeze, and said, “What happened last night was a mistake, Lara.” His tone had been gentle, and that had made it all the more terrible. “I apologize.”
Ice crawled through her veins, but not wanting to make a mistake, she’d asked, “Because I had too much champagne?”
The answer had been absolute, the rejection crystal clear. “No.”
She thought she might’ve made some smiling remark before excusing herself to walk back to the den alone, but all she could remember was the crushing black of her emotions. God, this man, he’d
hurt
her. However, if it had been a simple case of unrequited attraction, she’d have forgiven him—as she knew too well, you couldn’t control who you fell for.
No, what had hurt and angered her was that it hadn’t all been in her head. She knew when a man wanted her, and Walker had wanted her . . . enough to kiss, apparently, but not to keep. If that was the case, he was plenty big and strong enough to have stopped her kiss before it ever touched his lips. He hadn’t. He’d held her as if she mattered before breaking her heart. And that, she couldn’t, wouldn’t forgive.
“Lara.”
Glancing up at that face drawn in rough masculine lines, she shoved the memories back where they belonged: in the past. “Sorry,” she said with a smile built out of pure pride. “I know the kit’s heavy. I can take it the rest of the way.”
Walker ignored her attempt to keep the conversation casual. “We haven’t spoken for several weeks.”
She knew he was referring to the late-night conversations they’d had before the kiss. Walker was a night owl. Lara often stayed up late with her patients. Somehow, they’d ended up having coffee around eleven most nights—with Walker keeping a telepathic eye on his daughter and nephew when Sienna wasn’t able to stay with them. They hadn’t talked about anything of particular note, but those nights had given her the courage to do something that didn’t come easily to a wolf who wasn’t a dominant.
Healers never were—though they weren’t submissive, either. Normally, her packmates’ dominance simply didn’t affect Lara, though her wolf had the ability to put all of them, young or old, at ease. However, things didn’t work the same with Walker. Still, she’d made the first move, chanced that kiss that had led to her humiliation.
Since his rejection, she’d made sure to be busy or not in the infirmary around that time; the wound was too fresh. But time had passed, things had changed; she wasn’t only surviving, she was holding her own in this encounter. That didn’t mean she was about to allow Walker to make his way back into her life, not when she was ready to move on at last.
“Have you forgotten? We spoke when I patched Marlee up after she skinned her knee,” she said with a laugh that sounded natural. “Actually”—she held out her hand for the kit—“if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to walk the rest of the distance alone. It’ll give me some thinking time.”
Walker stood unmoving, pale green eyes locked on her. “And if I do mind?”
An uncomfortable heaviness gathered in the air.
She didn’t understand why he was pushing this, but what she did know was that she wasn’t going to open the lid on that box. Not today or any other
day. “If you’re okay to carry it back,” she said, misunderstanding on purpose, “then thanks.” With that and a cheery wave, she headed off into the woods in the direction of the waterfall.
There, she thought, it was done, that excruciating chapter of her life closed.
Chapter 3
COUNCILOR HENRY SCOTT
had made the decision to sacrifice San Francisco two months ago, regardless of the economic and financial upheaval such destruction would cause. Now it was simply a case of putting the final pieces in place.
With that in mind, he turned away from the view of the busy streets visible through the window of the office he kept at his London residence, and to the man he’d placed in charge of coordinating his military resources—all of which had now been integrated into the streamlined structure of Pure Psy. The original civilian personnel had been quietly moved out of command positions.
Henry didn’t need a political party. He needed a weapon.
Which was why Vasquez was now in charge of all Pure Psy operations. There was nothing prepossessing about the man—he stood a bare five feet four inches, with a build more akin to that of a gymnast than a soldier, and a face so unremarkable people forgot him within minutes of meeting him.
“How long,” Henry asked, “before we can move on San Francisco and the surrounding changeling-held areas?”
“A month.” Bringing up the files on the main comm screen, Vasquez gave Henry a précis of their current status as regarding men and weapons. “What the wolves call ‘den territory’ will be the most difficult to take, but I’m working on a possible solution.”
Henry nodded, left it at that. Vasquez would be useless to him if he didn’t think for himself—something Henry’s “wife,” Shoshanna, would do well to emulate when it came to her own advisors. She surrounded herself with flunkies, none of them with the intelligence of a gnat. Which was why Henry was running this, while Shoshanna thought she held the reins. “Are there any problems I need to be aware of?”
“No.”
“In that case, we’ll meet again in a week’s time.”
It was only after Vasquez left that Henry brought up another file. It was his investment portfolio, and once again, it was in worse shape than warranted. He didn’t have to be an expert to realize whose hand lay behind the slow, untraceable strangulation of his finances—Nikita Duncan was a master at manipulating money. However, while her actions were certainly problematic, the losses were nowhere near enough to stop him. He’d take San Francisco soon enough, obliterating the base of her empire.
As for the changelings . . . they could not be allowed to live, not after their constant and continuing defiance. They believed themselves immune to the Council’s reach to the extent that they’d encouraged the conception of a hybrid with changeling blood, a fetus that if it came to term, would result in the dilution of the psychic abilities that made the Psy race the most powerful on the planet.
Henry wouldn’t permit it.
It was time the world went back to the way it had been for over a century, the way it
should
be, with the purest of Psy in power, and the other two races allowed to exist only so long as they followed Psy rule. When people thought of SnowDancer and DarkRiver, Henry wanted them to see the blood-soaked cost of noncompliance.
Chapter 4
THREE DAYS AFTER
the situation with Maria and Sienna, Hawke found himself looking down at a small, big-eyed face. Going down on his haunches to meet that wildly curious gaze, he said, “Looking serious, Ben.”
The five-and-half-year-old, who happened to be one of Hawke’s favorite people in the den, nodded. “Didja really put Sinna in jail?”
Hawke bit the inside of his cheek. “Yep.”
Brown eyes the same dark shade as Ben’s mother’s, turned wolf-amber in shock. “How come?”
“She didn’t follow the rules.”
Ben thought about it for a second, lines wrinkling up that baby-smooth forehead. “Is it like time-out for grown-ups?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.” A decisive nod. “I’ll tell Marlee.”
“Is Marlee sad?” The girl was Sienna’s cousin and part of his pack—Hawke wouldn’t allow her to be hurt.
Ben shook his head. “Her dad said that Sinna had been naughty and that’s why she got put in jail, but Marlee said you wouldn’t put Sinna in jail and that Sinna was probably just grumpy and didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
Having—somehow—followed all that, Hawke rose to his feet and tousled
Ben’s dark hair, the little boy’s head warm under his touch. “She’ll be out in a few days.” And working in the nursery. The work itself, he knew, wouldn’t be a chore for her. She was a natural protector, and like any protector, wolf or not, she enjoyed watching over the pups. They, in turn, felt utterly safe with her.
So no, it would be no hardship for her to work in the nursery. It was the fact that she’d been taken off the duties befitting and expected of her rank that was the punishment—a public indication that he didn’t have trust in her ability to do the job. The blow would strike hard at the pride she wore like armor, but his wolf had no doubts about her steel spine, her iron will. Sienna wouldn’t allow anything to crush her,
especially
not Hawke. On principle.
The thought made his wolf bare its canines in a feral grin. “Go on home, Benny.”
The pup fell into step beside him instead, those short legs pumping as he ran to keep up. “Where’re you going?”
“Out.”
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“How come?”
Leaning down, Hawke picked Ben up under one arm like a football. “Because you’re too short.”
Ben giggled and pretended to swim. “I’m taller than I was last week.”
“Who says?”
“Mama.”
Hawke’s lips curved at the sheer love in that single word. “I guess it must be true, then. But you’re still too short.”
A huge sigh. “When am I going to be tall enough?”
“Before you know it.” Placing Ben down in front of the door that led to the White Zone, the safe play area for the kids, Hawke nudged him forward. “Go kick a ball around. It’ll make you grow.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
Ben ran over to a clearing in the left section of the White Zone, to join in a game already in progress, one being watched over by an off-duty dominant
who’d come to hang with the little ones. Half the pups were in human form, the other half wolf. Clearly this was changeling-rules football, which included judicious nipping to make those in human form drop the ball.
Normally, the sight of a wolf streaking away with a football in his mouth as his friends tried to bite down on his tail would’ve made Hawke laugh, join in. Today, his skin was too tight over his body, his own wolf edgy. Turning away, he headed into the hush of the forest, intending to work off the tension with some hard physical exercise. He hadn’t made it more than a hundred meters beyond the White Zone when he froze.
The damn cub had his hands on Sienna
.
His claws were slicing out of his skin before he’d processed the thought.
As he watched, Kit angled his body to tuck Sienna even closer, his hands cupping her face to draw her in for an open-mouthed kiss that lasted long enough to have Hawke considering dismemberment. But the young leopard male broke the kiss before Hawke’s wolf took control, clasping Sienna’s hand to tug her deeper into the dark green firs that covered this area, the spaces between the tall, straight trunks shadowed by late afternoon sunlight.
Hawke didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what the boy planned.
“Hawke!”
Retracting his claws, he attempted to wipe his expression clean as he turned to face a woman who was one of his most trusted friends.