Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 24

Riley’s face went hunting-still as he saw Judd’s hand around her wrist. “I swear to God, if you don’t stop touching her, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Brenna demanded, pulling away her hand but only so she could face Riley. “Finish off the job you started last night?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Andrew reached out as if to grab her and drag her to his side.

Judd was suddenly in front of her, having moved so fast she was left gasping. “I can’t let you touch her in your current mood.”

Looking around Judd, Brenna saw Drew’s fingers curl into a fist. “She’s my sister. It’s one of you bastards that hurt her.”

“Be that as it may, I’m not letting you near her until you get yourself under control.” Judd’s voice was cold, implacable, dangerous.

Growls sounded.

“Shut up!” Brenna yelled. “All of you!”

Her brothers looked at her, startled. The cats stayed on the edges of the room, probably not looking to interfere unless blood threatened to be spilled.

Judd glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t.” Pure male command.

“Don’t you give her orders, Psy!” Drew again.

She’d had it. Pushing past Judd to stand in front of her middle sibling, she thumped a fist into his chest. “Do you know what he’s warning me not to do? Accuse you or Riley of attacking him.”

Her brother froze. “What?”

“Judd came in wolf-mauled,” Nate drawled. “His chest’s a mess and believe me, you don’t want to see his arm.”

“You think we did that?” The hurt on Riley’s face was so raw it rocked her.

But she wasn’t backing off. “You’ve threatened him over and over. And I smelled the scent of family.”

Judd put a hand on her shoulder. “Enough, Brenna.”

This time, she listened, unable to look at the pain on her brothers’ faces. Turning, she buried her head against Judd’s chest, forgetting about his injuries until the scent of torn flesh hit her. “I’m so—”

“Shh.” Judd put his uninjured arm around her. The gesture had come about without conscious thought and now he found he couldn’t let go, dissonance or not.

Meeting her brothers’ gazes, he began to speak. “I initially had the same suspicions as Brenna, but I was wrong.” He’d figured that out sometime in the early hours—it was what he’d wanted to discuss with her. “If you two were going to challenge me, you’d do it in broad daylight, not set up a sneak ambush.”

Brenna went very quiet against him, one hand curled up gently against his chest.

Pain, such sweet pain to have her so close. Would she stay once she discovered the whole truth about him? The dark heart of him asked a harsher question—would he let her go? “Brenna knows that, too,” he said, focusing on the here and now. “She’s confused only because she smelled your scent at the scene. It shocked her. Which is probably what was intended.”

Andrew shoved a hand through his hair. “Damn it, Bren. I didn’t touch him. I can’t believe you suspected me for a second.”

Brenna turned her head but remained tucked under Judd’s arm. “You haven’t been acting like yourselves lately, either of you.”

Riley swore, low and hard. “We almost lost you to a Psy murderer! I think the fact that we don’t want you to shack up with one of that psychopathic race is understandable.”

“Careful.” A soft but lethal order from Lucas.

“Sascha is different,” Riley said without turning. “He’s not.”

“I never thought you were a bigot.” Brenna’s words fell into a pool of heavy silence.

Judd found himself holding her tighter. He didn’t need or want anyone to fight for him. That Brenna did, caused sensations inside of him he couldn’t afford to embrace—especially given his injuries and the energy it took to fight the dissonance. But he had stopped doing what he should a long time ago.

Andrew met his eyes. “I didn’t attack you. You’d be dead if I’d come after you.”

Judd had had enough. “The sole reason I’m injured is because I was trying not to kill my attacker. If I hadn’t held back, he’d have been dead before he touched me.” He let them see the claws he’d kept hidden in an effort to assist his family’s integration into SnowDancer.

But some wolves, he realized, would respect only unadorned strength. So long as Andrew and Riley thought him easy prey, they’d never allow him near their sister. He understood why—Brenna’s man had to be able to protect her. It had nothing to do with Brenna’s own abilities and everything to do with their need to keep her safe.

“Psy can’t get into our minds,” Andrew spit out.

Judd looked at the SnowDancer. “It’s true that we can’t manipulate you without major effort, but a blast of pure power at close range would destroy all of your higher brain functions, if it didn’t turn your brains to liquid outright.” He knew that from the darkest of personal experiences, one of the many nightmare images that haunted his sleep.

Of course, a Tk-Cell had other, quicker ways of killing. But he hadn’t known that as a child and the changelings didn’t need to know it now to grasp his point. “So if you ever do come after me, I suggest you follow your own rules of Psy/changeling combat and shoot me in the back.” A split second’s warning was all he needed to kill.

“Hell,” Andrew said, his voice holding a new note of awareness. “We all get taught that during training, but when you just fought physically with the men who challenged you instead of doing something psychic, I figured it was Psy propaganda.” He shrugged. “Does Hawke understand what you can do?”

“What?” Brenna demanded. “You’re going to ask him to kick Judd out now?”

“That’s not what I meant,” her brother growled. “Stop being a brat.”

“Don’t talk to her that way.” Judd had made his choice, found his loyalty.

Riley folded his arms. “There’s one thing I don’t get.” His calm tone was so at odds with the tension-heavy air that everyone went quiet. The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “But before we get to that, Bren, sweetie—you do realize Judd and Drew are exactly alike?”

Andrew stared at his brother. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Judd was thinking the same thing. But Brenna laughed. Breaking his hold, she ran to hug Riley. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t have anything to do with the attack.”

“What about me?” Andrew stroked a hand over her hair.

Brenna raised her head. “I’m undecided where you’re concerned.”

“You’re getting mean in your old age.” But he hugged her when she turned to him.

Watching them, Judd felt a heavy, dull pain in the region of his chest. The wounds, he concluded, that was all. Then Brenna pulled away from Drew to return to Judd’s side and the pain intensified. “What don’t you get?” he asked Riley.

“How Bren mistook our scent.”

Judd nodded. “I agree. It has to be someone you trust enough to allow access to your belongings.”

“Where he could’ve picked up things that carry enough of our scent to use as a mask.” Andrew’s claws sliced out. “The bastard has to be a soldier. We sweat buckets during training.”

Lucas came to stand beside Riley. “Say the attacker had succeeded in killing you,” he said to Judd, “what would that have done?”

“Caused a small amount of confusion.” Judd had no illusions about his importance to the pack. “No large impact overall. We’re the enemy—allowed there on sufferance.”

Lucas looked thoughtful, his savagely marked face set in lines of concentration. “What if he’d targeted one of the Lauren children?”

Judd felt the black edge of his power gathering and had to force it back. “He’d be dead by now.” It wasn’t a threat, just fact.

“Damn straight.” Andrew’s voice was pure wolf. “Pups are pups, period. You go after one, you pin a big fat target on yourself. It would’ve set all the hunters on his trail.”

“So,” Riley picked up, “it looks like this probably wasn’t about causing trouble in the pack or attacking the Laurens as a family. It was about Judd.”

“That leaves a wide pool,” Judd pointed out.

“Hell yeah, since you seem to go out of your way to piss off everyone you meet.” Andrew was scowling. “But the hotheads would’ve gone for you up front. Sneak attack’s not what’s going to get them points in the den.”

Judd agreed. “And there would be no reason for the planted scent if—” Something clicked in his Psy brain, the jigsaw pieces falling together in the lines of a perfect trap. “He wanted to isolate Brenna. Remove me, cut her off from you, and she becomes vulnerable.”

Andrew’s color faded. “Easier to take out.”

Judd wrapped his arm around Brenna’s shoulders again. She acquiesced without hesitation. It was an indication of deep-rooted trust. But the darkness in him no longer found that surprising, accepting it as his right. An irrevocable line had been crossed between yesterday and today. Brenna was his.

She blew out a breath, making her bangs dance. “Seriously, can you guys think past the overprotectiveness?” A very unfeminine snort. “Why would anyone have it in for me?”

Judd knew the answer, but it wasn’t for public consumption.

“With the rain,” Riley said when nobody else spoke, “there’s no way to track him.”

Brenna made a small movement. “I can think of one.”

All five males looked at her.

“Okay, let’s pretend I buy into your ‘Brenna is the center of the universe’ conspiracy theory”—she rolled her eyes—“there’s one way to find out for sure.” She shifted in Judd’s embrace until his arm was around the front of her neck, while her back faced him, though she was very careful not to press against his injuries. “Act as though it worked—at least enough to separate me from you two.”

Distracted by the soft curves of her body, he almost missed the import of her words. His blood heated, his heartbeat raced…and a wave of excruciating pain crawled over his mind in a malignant flood. He could handle the physical effects but couldn’t control his Psy brain’s need to shut down sections to save itself. The countdown had begun.

“Leave me,” Brenna continued, “and go back to the den furious. Judd and I can camp out at the cabin—it’s still livable.”

“No.” Andrew folded his arms.

“No more cages, Drew,” she said quietly. “I love you, but no more. Until Enrique took me, you’d never have dreamed of trying to lock me up.”

Shoving back the tide of dissonance, Judd looked up. “I’m more than capable of keeping her out of harm’s way.” None of the critical components of his mind had yet been compromised.

Brenna glanced over her shoulder and her expression wasn’t happy. “I can keep myself safe. Just because a bastard got his hands on me once doesn’t mean I’m helpless.”

“The point is moot,” Riley said. “Everyone knows we’d never leave Bren alone in the cabin with you, even if that meant we had to drag her back screaming bloody murder.”

Judd nodded. “We can run the same op from the den. It’ll mean you three will have to act as if you’ve fallen out.”

“I’m already alone in the family quarters,” Brenna murmured, evidently seeing the truth in Riley’s assertion “Fine. But I swear”—she scowled at Andrew—“you try to poke your nose into my life one more time and I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Her brother grinned. “I knew you loved me.”

Tamsyn wasn’t happy about Judd taking off, but he wanted to return to his territory, land he knew with Arrow thoroughness after months of isolated exploring. Brenna wasn’t convinced either, but she muttered something about stubborn, pigheaded males and pushed him into the passenger seat when he made a move to drive. Andrew and Riley had left several minutes earlier to lend weight to the idea that they had had a disagreement with their sister.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at your HQ?” Brenna called out to Tamsyn from beside the car.

“I won’t be there.” Tamsyn made a face. “Computerspeak might as well be gibberish to me.”

“I’ll be dropping in,” Nate added from the doorway, his eyes never leaving Judd. “See you there.”

Judd gave a small nod, wondering if the cats would ever accept his presence as anything other than a threat. Likely not. That showed their intelligence—because he was a threat, a big one.

They’d begun to back down the long drive when he saw two little boys run out from behind Nate and Tamsyn. The DarkRiver male picked up the children and said something that made both his mate and the boys laugh. Judd looked away. That wasn’t his life and it never would be. Yet even knowing that, Brenna had made her choice very clear.

And if she decided later that she wanted out?

The darkness, the badness in him, bared its teeth. Tonight—maybe tonight—he could set her free. After that, she’d have to kill him to get away.

“Judd? Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

Forcing his mind back into rational patterns, he turned to her. “There’s no doubt of it being a wolf now.”

“What?” she asked, as she pulled out of the driveway and set the car on automatic hover-navigation, possible because the roads in this area were embedded with guidance chips. Hands freed, she slid the steering wheel away into its compartment and faced him. “Who are you talking about?”

“Timothy’s murderer.”

“What’s that got to do with the attack on you?” She shook her head. “Anyway, both you and Indigo could be wrong. The Psy could have got in somehow.”

He knew she needed a place of safety, needed to trust implicitly in her people. But she couldn’t, not if she was to be on her guard. “You’re reaching, Brenna. The body was found in the den, in an out-of-the-way location no Psy could know about.”

“You guys can teleport over long distances,” she insisted.

“Yes, but we have to have a solid mental image of our destination.” He tapped a finger on the edge of his seat, a gesture that he caught almost as soon as it happened, but which he shouldn’t have made in the first place. Psy did not fidget. “Even if one of my race had obtained that data, teleportation tends to leave us drained—the energy used is directly related to distance traveled. No evidence of a Psy presence was found within miles of the den.”

“And”—a soft acceptance—“what was done to Tim had to involve a lot of power and strength. He didn’t lie down and take it—there were bruises.”

“I’d suggest it was a very physical struggle. Most Psy would have used mental means against a stronger changeling opponent.” He made himself say the next words, though he knew it would only forge another point of similarity between him and Enrique. “Of course, using Tk to throw someone against a wall would also cause bruises.”

Brenna’s hand lifted to her neck and then dropped away, her eyes losing focus. “He didn’t do that by Tk,” she whispered. “He used his hands to strangle me while he kept me immobile with his powers.”

Another piece of the nightmare. “Brenna.” It was a single word wrenched out of the most primitive part of him. The part that wanted to bathe in the dead Councilor’s blood, unconcerned about the cost of such an extreme emotional reaction.

Brenna’s eyes widened. Raising a hand, she brushed his hair gently off his forehead. “Why do I keep telling you things I swore I’d take to my grave?”

The contact shot electricity through his nerves. “Because you know I’ll always be your shield against the nightmares.”

Her face brightened. “Yes. You’re tough enough to handle my demons.” She took a shuddering breath and trailed her fingers down his cheek and along his jaw, but he felt the touch in far hungrier places. “So why are we talking about Tim instead of your attacker?”

Leashing his need was becoming harder and harder. “I think,” he said even as his body urged him to do something other than talk, “Tim’s death is why someone is trying to isolate you—statistically, it’s the strongest reason for why you would become the target of another wolf. And I’m certain you were the target.”

Her stroking fingers went motionless. “What possible reason could—The dreams.” It was a gasp. “But how could he know I’d seen the kill in a dream?”