Shards of Hope

Chapter 43

ADEN SLEPT DEEPLY—or as deeply as any Arrow ever slept—and woke to find Zaira still in his arms, her hand over his heart.

She’d thrown her leg over his own sometime in their sleep, and his hand was spread on her lower back, under her T-shirt. Her skin was warm, softer than his own, her body relaxed. Not moving, he just drank her in. He didn’t know why she’d asked him to stay, but he knew he’d have to be careful.

She was like a wild bird who’d finally decided a man could be trusted. One wrong move and she’d be gone, lost in the clouds before he had a chance to coax her back.

She stirred under his hand and he thought she must’ve woken, but then a small sound escaped her throat. It was tiny, as if she was fighting to hold it back, and it was a sound that did not belong in Zaira’s throat. The sound of a trapped creature frantically trying to escape.

“Zaira.”

She woke at once at the command in his voice. Her body stiffened a second later, and the instant after that, she was out of bed and standing beside it. He didn’t take any countermeasures to stop her, simply rose to a seated position on the bed after she was out of it.

“You promised to keep me safe.” A raw accusation that tore him to pieces.

As a child, Aden had once asked Vasic if he could travel through time as well as space. He’d never wanted that to be true as much as he did at this instant. He’d go back, kill her parents before they filled her head with nightmares. “I know,” he said, admitting his culpability. “I’m sorry.”

Her body rigid and her expression stark, she turned to the balcony doors. “Go.”

Rising to his feet, he went to her instead and wrapped his arms around her, holding her unbending form. “I’m sorry,” he said again, his jaw pressed to her temple. “I will fight every nightmare with you. Just let me in.”

She stayed stiff for so long that he thought he’d lost her, but he wasn’t about to surrender to the demons that haunted her, wasn’t about to leave her alone when aloneness was her worst nightmare.

Making a keening noise in her throat, she turned without warning to beat at his shoulders with her fists. “I was fine before! Why did you wake me up?” Gritted-out words. “Why did you show me things I can’t have!”

He bent, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’m yours. No matter what.”

Huge, dark eyes, small, deadly fists on his shoulders . . . and a wild bird on the verge of flying away. “Don’t go,” he whispered, the words holding his heart. “Don’t go. I need you to stay.”

“Aden.” She crumpled into him, her arms locking around his waist.

There were no tears, no screams. Only harsh breaths and whispered horror about a nightmare that had once been real. His own muscles taut, he held her with painful fierceness, his wild bird who had chosen to come to him even in the darkest hour.

ARRIVING at Central Command sixty minutes later, having forced himself to release Zaira so she could return to her duties, Aden showered and changed into black cargo pants and a black T-shirt. He had no outside meetings today, intended to work in the valley, interact with the children.

An alpha was meant to be respected but not feared. Not by the innocent.

He never wanted to feel a child flinch from him as Tavish had done.

About to head out, he was halted by an incoming call from Judd. “Aden,” Judd said before breaking off. “Give me a second.”

In the background, Aden heard a childish voice, followed by Judd’s deeper one. More children’s voices followed before Judd spoke again. When the other man came back on the line, Aden said, “Where are you?”

“Watching over the pups. Their usual caretakers are having a meeting so we’ve been roped in.” A warmth in the other Arrow’s tone that Aden would’ve never predicted when Judd had still officially been part of the squad. “I was mediating a disagreement between three pups who wanted to play with the same ball.”

“How did you mediate it?” It was a question with intent—if Aden’s plans succeeded, Arrow children wouldn’t be so perfectly behaved in the future. He needed to learn how to deal with these kinds of situations.

“I told them they’d have much more fun if they played a game between the three of them. Wolves are social by nature, so I didn’t have to do much convincing.” A short pause, the phone muffled again for a moment. “Okay, we can talk now. Drew’s watching my group.”

“Were you able to make contact with the leader of the water changelings?” The squad had kept a quiet eye on BlackSea the same way they kept an eye on any other group that might one day prove a threat, but they’d never been able to isolate BlackSea’s leadership. What evidence they had pointed to a woman named Miane Levèque, but she was all but impossible to find if you didn’t know where to look.

Vasic had once managed to teleport onto one of BlackSea’s floating cities after using a known water changeling’s face as a lock. He’d ’ported back with a bullet lodged in the armor covering his shoulder and a wound on his temple where another bullet had grazed him. If he wasn’t so fast, he’d have been dead soon after arrival.

Ming, in charge at the time, had decided not to waste any more manpower on a group that kept to itself, and the water-based changelings had ignored them in turn. Until the Venice incident.

Judd, on the other hand, was part of SnowDancer. The wolf pack was not only the biggest and most powerful pack in the country, it held that position even when worldwide packs were factored in. There was no way the wolves weren’t aware of BlackSea on a deeper level, the reason Aden had reached out to SnowDancer via Judd.

Judd’s next words confirmed his call had been the right one. “We’ll be talking to them in a few hours. I can’t tell you how it’ll go—according to Riaz, who deals with BlackSea most often, the water changelings make SnowDancer look friendly.”

Aden didn’t ask if he could join the meeting. The wolves had barely begun to trust the Arrows, had gone that far only because they had Judd and the other Laurens in their midst. A group as reclusive as BlackSea would never agree to a face-to-face with Aden at this point. “I’m sending you everything we have to date,” he said to Judd. “Tell BlackSea we don’t want a war, but we’ll give it to them if that’s what they want.”

Aden would allow no one to hurt his family.

JUDD slid away his phone and walked back into the sunshine of the newly green play area outside the den, the snow having melted away about ten days earlier. Drew was no longer watching over things. The other man had shifted and was currently buried under a pile of pups in wolf and human form, all intent on beating him in battle.

Judd wasn’t the least surprised when a breakaway group came to attack him. He allowed himself to be taken to the earth, squirming bodies all over him until they pinned him down and howled victory.

Holding one of the smaller pups against his chest as he sat up after he was set free, he put the girl gently on the ground. She raced off to play with the ball again, while Drew, still in wolf form, shook himself as if setting his skin in place, then padded over to sit on the ground beside where Judd had taken a seat with his back against a large rock.

It was over fifteen minutes of comfortable silence later that Drew walked off to shift back into human form, returning dressed in his jeans and white T-shirt. While changelings saw nudity as a natural part of life, they weren’t exhibitionists. Certain rules of behavior were scrupulously followed—by everyone but the smallest pups. Seeing a naked pup gleefully running through the den was a familiar and amusing sight.

“Your Arrow friends?” Drew retook his earlier position, his legs stretched out and face tilted up to drink in the sun, lake blue eyes closed. “They figure out who tried to take two of them out?”

Judd shook his head. “It’s the changeling involvement I’m having trouble understanding.” Drew already knew the facts of what had taken place; Judd had been clear with Aden that though he was more than prepared to help the squad, he wouldn’t withhold information from his alpha and other senior packmates.

“Can’t say I blame you.” Drew opened his eyes, focused on the pups again. “Human and Psy was a weird enough combination, but all three?”

“It doesn’t seem to fit the natural order of things.” Except for rare pockets like in SnowDancer, where all three races had connected, their world was not a functioning triumvirate. “BlackSea in particular seems the least likely pack to be involved in a conspiracy.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty standoffish.” Drew’s laid-back voice was suddenly granite hard as he said, “We know every group has its bad apples, so it’s probably not BlackSea as a whole.”

Judd knew the other man was recalling the SnowDancer traitor who’d wanted to brutalize the woman who was now Judd’s mate. “Brenna handled him,” he reminded Drew. Both Drew and Riley were protective of their sister, sometimes forgot that she could take care of herself. “Where’s Riley?”

A snort. “Mercy is, like, seventeen months pregnant. Where do you think?”

Mercy was more like six months along, but Judd got the point. “She’s displaying more patience with his overprotectiveness than I would’ve expected.” The DarkRiver sentinel had no tolerance for anyone “mollycoddling” her, as she’d put it. She was still on active duty, though on the advice of the pack healers—both SnowDancer and DarkRiver—she’d scaled back her physical exertion.

Judd might have been surprised at what she continued to do if he hadn’t seen other soldiers do exactly the same. Changelings were physical beings and bed rest was only ever advised if there were medical complications. The majority of pregnant changeling women remained highly active almost to their due date.

“Love, Judd.” A grin on Drew’s face. “She’s kinda crazy for my brother. Crazy enough not to throttle him when he invites himself along on her shifts.”

Judd understood in a way he wouldn’t have before he mated with Brenna. It was a knowledge he wanted for all his Arrow brethren, but it wasn’t something he could teach—his squadmates had to experience the dawning wonder and beautiful agony of it themselves. They had to choose to step outside the Arrow black walls of their existence . . . or be lucky enough to find a man or a woman who cared enough to batter down those walls.

“I haven’t actually seen Mercy recently,” he said, his mind on the woman who’d smashed through his own defenses and claimed him. “Brenna was asking how she was.”

“Aside from the belly, she looks and acts exactly like the same old Mercy.” Drew’s grin grew wider. “Riley swears she popped out overnight—word from the healers is that she might not go all the way to nine months.”

Judd came to attention. “You’re not concerned?” Premature births could be very dangerous even with all the medical technology at the world’s disposal.

“We get more multiple births than the other races,” Drew reminded him, “so a lot more babies end up preterm. The healers are used to handling it, and the babies are usually much healthier than Psy or human babies born prematurely.”

“Psy preterm babies are the most at risk.”

A slap on the back. “Good thing any pups you and Bren have will have changeling blood.”

Judd tried imagining Brenna with child . . . and succeeded. There was no block now, no fear of what kind of a father he might be. One day, when they were both ready, he would hold his and Brenna’s child. For now, he’d help watch over both SnowDancer’s and the squad’s young. “I’m nearly afraid to ask how you know so much about gestation and birth,” he said to Drew.

“Because I have a brother who’s been barred from the infirmary in both packs unless he’s bleeding or Mercy’s giving birth.” Drew’s shoulders shook, the wolf in his eyes. “He’s chewed the ear off both Lara and Tamsyn.”

“I understand his worry.” As far as anyone knew, this was the first time a leopard changeling and a wolf changeling had conceived together.

Drew’s expression turned solemn. “Yeah. I think everyone does—which is also why Mercy is being so weirdly nice.” A suspicious edge to his tone, as if he expected his brother’s mate to turn into a hissing, bad-tempered cat at any instant. “She says she can feel the pupcubs and they’re as happy as pie, but since Riley can’t feel what she does . . .”

A ball came rolling their way on the heels of Drew’s words and Judd used his telekinesis to throw it back. Where that would’ve once made the kids look on in awe, now they just raced after the ball. He’d become normal to them, part of the landscape of adults they trusted without thought. Aden, he thought, was attempting to create the same for children who’d never known kindness at adult hands.

Judd had been one of those children until Walker hauled him back into the family. Now he was a man who’d fight for the innocent and the vulnerable at Aden’s side. Because no child should ever grow up surrounded by coldness and fear.