Shield of Winter

Chapter 54

“IF ANYONE IN the squad intends to have a life beyond Silence, we need to rehabilitate”—Aden paused, conscious of the incongruity of using that word—“the perception seeded into the minds of the population that we’re murderers and assassins. That might be true, but it isn’t going to be useful going forward.”

Ivy’s eyebrows drew together. “Don’t call the squad that,” she said, her voice fierce. “Don’t say it about yourself, either.”

Aden held Ivy’s gaze. “We’re killers, Ivy. That can’t be altered.”

Aden. Vasic shook his head very slightly. Don’t remind her of something she appears to have forgotten.

But it was too late, Ivy stepping forward to face Aden. “You were assassins, black ops, whatever you want to call it. You took orders. And yes, you should take responsibility for your actions, but you were also drafted as children and programmed to take those orders, do those acts.” Voice low and intense, she continued before he could interrupt. “That gives you the right to cut yourselves some slack. You’re trying to change things now—you’ve put your lives on the line again and again and again to help the defenseless.”

“At what point,” Aden said, “is that enough to erase the past?”

“Never,” Ivy said softly. “We all have to live with our past, but it doesn’t have to define us.” She shoved a hand through her hair, her loose ponytail unraveling to leave her face haloed in curls. “What you’re doing now that you’ve broken the chains? Those are the real choices, the ones that will define you.”

Vasic looked from one to the other. Ivy, who reached parts of him he hadn’t known had survived until her. Aden, who’d refused to consign him to the abyss. They were the two most important parts of his life, and now they stood with him, Ivy’s fierce refusal to let him fall—let any of them fall—coming up against Aden’s iron will.

“Why fight for us?” Aden asked, his tone quiet. “Vasic, I understand. He’s yours. Why do the rest of us matter?”

“Because you’re his family, and because whatever you may have done, you paid the price for it in the kind of pain no child should have to bear, in not being allowed to even exist.” She touched her fingers to Aden’s shoulder. “Enough, Aden.” It was a gentle plea. “This isn’t only about rehabilitating the public’s image of the squad, but your own image of yourself and your Arrows.”

“Would you welcome other Arrows to your home, Ivy?” Aden asked. “Would you truly treat them as family?”

“Of course,” she said as if the answer was self-evident, as if every woman so blithely welcomed a squad of trained killers into her home.

Rabbit got up and ambled ahead at that instant, and the three of them followed.

“That’s another reason why Vasic must be our public face,” Aden said a minute later. “You humanize him.”

Vasic waited for Ivy’s response, wasn’t expecting it to be laughter. “Did you throw me and Vasic together to get this outcome?” Her fingers petted his back under the jacket, and he knew she wasn’t offended at the idea.

“No. But now that it’s happened, I’ll use it.”

Vasic didn’t interrupt his partner; he and Aden had too much trust in each other for Aden to place Ivy in any kind of danger.

“The human and changeling media,” his fellow Arrow continued, “is very good at picking up the nuances of interpersonal relationships.” Taking the datapad, he brought up an article linked from the first. It wasn’t as long, but had a number of pictures.

The first was of Ivy on her knees in a street overrun with the infected, bleeding from her ears.

“That’s from right back at the start,” Ivy murmured.

The other images had a far different tone. Vasic’s hand on Ivy’s lower back as they took Rabbit for a walk. Ivy’s face quiet with a trust that pierced him to the core as he lifted her in his arms when her strength ran out. Ivy laughing with her whole body on the doorstep to their apartment building, her hand curled around his upper arm.

“The public,” Aden said, “is fascinated by you and your relationship. We can use that.”

Ivy made a face. “I want to help the squad, but I don’t want to live our relationship out on the world stage.”

“That’ll never happen.” Vasic had no intention of allowing any intrusion.

“I don’t expect you to,” Aden replied. “To do so would look false, and the reason you’ve caught their attention is that you don’t look false together.”

“Then why,” Ivy said, “are you telling us?”

“So you know you’re being watched.” Aden looked down at Rabbit as the dog dug up a fresh stick with unerring canine instinct and came to drop it at his feet. “Why does your pet think I’m his personal stick thrower? I’d expect that task to fall to Vasic.”

Lips twitching, Ivy bent to rub Rabbit’s head. “He’s testing you out. He already knows how Vasic throws—Rabbit likes variety.”

Aden threw the stick. Multiple times.

Passing through a patch of sunshine ten minutes later, after Rabbit had decided to give Aden a break, they shifted to the right to allow a jogger to pass. The blonde shot Ivy and Vasic a dazzling smile, calling out, “You’re both amazing for what you’re doing!” as she passed.

Ivy sighed afterward. “I guess we can’t just ignore the media.”

“No,” Aden confirmed.

“It’s not just about the squad’s image, is it?” Vasic said as Ivy walked on ahead to make sure Rabbit didn’t venture into the more heavily trafficked areas. “It’s about the squad.” He’d known his partner too long not to pick up the unspoken subtext.

Aden paused beside a statue half-buried in snow. “Seeing Krychek connect with Sahara Kyriakus was a positive sign, but he wasn’t trained with us, didn’t grow up with us.”

“Judd is one of us.”

“He also had a family to anchor him.”

While the majority of the squad, Vasic completed silently, had been cut loose from those ties. His relationship with Zie Zen didn’t alter that; it had begun after his childhood ended, and his great-grandfather had never been able to treat him as a child who was part of the family unit, only as a foot soldier in the war.

“Judd gave the others hope,” Aden said quietly. “You make them believe in that hope.”

It was the last position in which Vasic had ever expected to find himself. “I’ll speak to Ivy about how open she wishes to be about our relationship when it comes to the squad.” He didn’t think his sweet, generous empath would mind the attention of men and women who sought to understand love, but the choice would be hers.

Nodding, Aden glanced at the sleek timepiece on his wrist. “I’d better head to my meeting with Santos.”

“About their handling of the outbreaks?” The Forgotten teams had done a stellar job, as had the other groups in the city.

Aden shook his head, angled his body to face Vasic. “Zaid set up the Arrow squad to protect Silence, but he also set it up because Psy with certain abilities fit nowhere else.”

Too dangerous, Vasic thought, too unpredictable. Now, he saw where Aden was going. “The Forgotten are having the same problems,” he guessed. “How did you get Santos to trust you?”

“I think it was a combination of necessity and the fact he’s seen the work we’re doing to protect the Es.” Aden pushed a hand through his hair. “Whether they can adapt our training protocols for their own abilities is an open question, but it’s a starting point. And they may develop techniques we can use in turn.”

It also gave the squad another ally in the world, the reason why Aden had made time in his brutal schedule for this meeting. “Do you need a teleport?”

Aden shook his head. “I’ll walk.”

Rabbit stared mournfully after the other Arrow before dropping his new stick at Vasic’s feet. Picking it up, he threw it far enough that Rabbit had to race, but the dog caught it, came back with his tail wagging. They played a little more before Rabbit abandoned the game in favor of jumping in the snow again.

“Aden believes our relationship gives hope to other Arrows,” he told Ivy. “If he’s right, and Aden is always right about the squad, it’ll mean the others may be inquisitive about us.”

Ivy halted on the edge of the frozen expanse of the Reservoir as Rabbit explored the roots of a nearby tree. “I don’t mind—family members are often nosy.” Her smile in her eyes, she searched his face. “Does it bother you? I know how private you are.”

He put his arm around her, buried his hand in the warm silk of her hair. “I would bleed for the squad, lay down my life . . . but now he asks me to share the one thing that is mine.”

“You’ll do it though, won’t you?”

“Yes.” Because he understood what it was to be in the gray, in the nothingness. “You’re my hope, Ivy, my beacon home on the darkest night.”

“Vasic.” Eyes shining wet, she cradled his face in her gloved hands, her kiss heartbreakingly tender.

Vasic didn’t know if he’d ever become used to the way Ivy touched him—as if he wasn’t stained with blood, as if he had the right to her affection, her care. But one thing he did know was that he didn’t want to be out here any longer. He wanted to be alone with her, to strip himself to the skin and press himself to the giving softness of her.

Grueling as the past week had been, they’d found the energy to make love in stolen moments between outbreaks. His favorite part was Ivy’s laugh when they got something wrong, like when they’d clumsily bumped noses yesterday afternoon in the heat of passion. According to her, they were on training wheels.

He’d never had so much fun making mistakes.

“I read a manual when I couldn’t sleep last night,” she whispered now, not startled by the sudden ’port back to the apartment. “Are you too tired to let me experiment on you?”

“I told you not to read any manuals yet,” he chastised, but didn’t stop her when she pushed off his jacket and tugged up his T-shirt. Peeling it off to drop it to the floor as Rabbit gave a long-suffering huff and wandered out to the living area, he stood in place and let her explore.

It was deeply pleasurable torture.

“You are so beautiful.” Rubbing her cheek against his pectorals, she leaned back to run both hands down his chest, a sigh leaving her lungs. “I could do this for hours.” A glance up through her lashes. “Women called you a ‘hunk’ in the comments to the Signal article.”

Vasic might not have had much experience in certain areas of life, but instinct whispered this was treacherous ground. “You don’t like the description?”

“I don’t like other women salivating over you.” A light scratch over his nipples.

Sensation arced through his nerve endings.

“You like that,” she murmured and did it again.

Hauling her to him, he kissed her until she was liquid in his arms. “I don’t care what any other woman thinks of me.” The only time he even noticed another woman was when she was near Ivy—and that was in the context of evaluating a threat. “Call me beautiful again.” No one else ever had, ever looked at him the way Ivy did. And she saw inside him, his empath, so if she said he was beautiful, he might even believe it a little.

“My beautiful man.” She shaped his torso, kissed the dip of his collarbone, drew in a breath that made her moan. “You smell so good.”

Nuzzling at her, he pushed off her coat, but when he went to unbutton the thick orange cardigan she wore underneath, she gripped his wrists. “No.”

Once he might have halted, uncertain. Now he could gauge her desire in the kick of the pulse at her throat, the flush of her skin. “Why?”

“Because you take over.” A scowl. “And I let you because when you touch me, my bones melt and my blood turns to honey.”

She may as well have stroked him all over. “I like melting your bones.” Breaking her hold without hurting her, he backed her to the nearest wall. “I read about a position I want to try.”

Eyebrows drawing together, she glared at him. “Vasic—”

He kissed her complaint into his mouth, her lips lush and sensual, her taste distinctly tart today. Vasic might not care about food, but he could explore the flavors of Ivy forever. “Undo the buttons,” he said against her lips, stroking one hand down to lie over her buttocks, the other braced palm-down beside her head.

Chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm, she lifted her hands between them. “Next time,” she muttered, even as she slipped button after button free, “I’m ambushing you while you’re asleep and tying you up.”

Vasic felt the languorous, sexual part of his nature smile, stretch lazily. “I’ll buy you the rope.” He kissed and nipped at her throat. “Are you wet for me, Ivy? My penis is so hard it feels like a rod of iron.”

Groaning, she finished unbuttoning the cardigan and shrugged it to the floor. “A gag,” she gasped. “I need to gag you, too.”

You’re welcome to. He shaped his hand over the fragile lace of her camisole, bracketing her breast between thumb and forefinger. She wore a bra under the camisole, but it was of lace, too, and he could almost imagine he saw the dusky pink of her nipples beneath the rich white. Now, undo your jeans so I can tease you with my fingers.

Shivering at the telepathic order, she rose up on tiptoe and bit down on his lower lip. He took the sensual punishment with a smile. It wasn’t a smile as other people might think of it, his lips barely altering shape, but Ivy knew, her eyes glowing from within as she flicked open the button of her jeans.

“Shall I take off my camisole?” She whispered the question against his ear, soft, hot breath and erotic temptation. “I want to feel your mouth on my breasts, want you to suck hard and leave a mark.” Her own mouth grazing his jaw. “And your hands.” A throaty moan. “You have such big, strong hands, the way you rub around my—”

He growled at her, the sound coming from deep within his chest.

Laughing in the intimate space between them, she rose up against him, kissed him in sweet little sips, her hands on either side of his face. Every muscle in his body tense, Vasic surrendered to the kiss, to the possession that may as well have been steel chains around his body. When her lips moved down his neck, he shuddered . . . and realized they were about one and a half seconds from being swallowed up by a raging sandstorm.