Tangle of Need

Chapter 20

SAM SNICKERED … AND sobered when he realized everyone was staring at him, not a giggle to be heard. “Um, sorry.”

Adria was trying so hard not to burst out laughing, she had to fake a coughing fit. Several people seemed to have been struck with the same affliction—though Inés managed to keep it together, slapping Adria helpfully on the back. “Must be the pollen in the air,” she murmured in faux concern.

Adria would’ve kicked the other woman if Sam hadn’t been sitting in front of her.

“As I was saying,” Elias continued, a rare strand of silver glinting in the rich brown of his hair, “it’s time for the ceremony. But since we appear to have an intruder, we’ll have to deal with him first.”

Sam rose to his feet, dusting off his jeans. “Look, hey, I can book if you guys—”

Elias raised a hand for silence, moving to stand in front of Sam.

“Sam Baker,” he said, his face solemn, “according to those witnesses who weren’t unconscious at the time, you ran onto the field of battle time and time again to rescue injured packmates, though you’d been hit with a bullet yourself.”

“It was what any one of us would’ve done.” Sam’s words were quiet, the playful soldier replaced by the courageous man who’d fought with all his heart, even when surrounded by blood and agony and an enemy devoid of mercy.

“Yes,” Elias said, reaching out to pin something on Sam’s stone gray shirt, “and we’re proud to call you one of our own.”

Adria saw the instant it hit Sam. His fingers trembled as he touched the regal form of the small silver wolf on his shirt collar. None of the senior soldiers wore the pins in daily life, but each one did so tonight—her top too light to hold it, Adria had attached hers to a thin silver bracelet on her left wrist. That tiny badge was a source of enormous pride, not being simply an indication of promotion from soldier to senior, but of acceptance within the rank.

Slapping a still-stunned Sam on the back, Elias raised his glass, “To Sam!”

“To Sam!” Adria cried with the rest of the group, and right then, she knew she’d make it. Maybe her unhealthy and untenable attraction to Riaz showed no signs of abating, the clawing need tearing at her gut, but she was more than the primal urges of her body. She was part of this strong, loyal group, a woman who had built a new life, new friendships from the cold ashes of the old.

No man was ever again going to drive her to question her own worth.

Her wolf’s body thrummed with defiant, determined pride. And when the newest senior soldier in the den threw back his head and celebrated with wild abandon, she lent her voice to his song alongside those of her packmates.

THE bristles on Hawke’s jaw caught on Sienna’s hair. She’d watched him shave before the ceremony, but it was now on the edge of dawn and they were finally in bed, his arm holding her to his chest. Enjoying the intimacy of talking with him as much as she’d enjoyed dancing in his arms until the sky shimmered with the first pearly kiss of morning, she glanced up when he shifted to fold one of his arms behind his head.

Eyes of wolf blue met her own. “Your friends snuck off to do some mischief.” An alpha’s amusement. “I expected you to join them since you’re the head troublemaker.”

“I warned them they’d be on their own tonight … last night now.” The friends she’d made were friends she intended to keep for life—but the night had been hers and Hawke’s. “I waited so long for this moment,” she whispered, touching her fingers to his jaw, the stubble rough against her fingertips. “Sometimes, I think I’m dreaming and I’m so scared I’ll wake up.”

Hawke didn’t try to talk away her fears—he understood the life she’d lived, this wolf who had never known the PsyNet, and yet who knew her. He understood that some nightmares couldn’t be overcome by logic or reason. Only time had that power. Her fear of losing him, as she’d lost her kind, gifted mother, as she’d lost her brother and the rest of her family for so long, was a darkling thought that had made her gasp awake more than once, her heart pounding as if she’d been racing desperately toward him.

Then she’d feel her wolf strong and warm beside her, or open her psychic eye to the wild silver-blue and flame-hued passion of their bond, and the terror would abate. One day, she thought, it would no longer return, but until then, her wolf would walk beside her into the darklands. “I wanted my mother at our ceremony,” she confessed, eyes burning.

Indigo and Tarah had done their best, been there for her every step of the way, but it wasn’t the same. “I don’t even have anything of hers to hold on to.” It had all been destroyed after her mother’s suicide, while Sienna had been trapped in a psychic prison with a monster named Ming LeBon.

“This beautiful hair,” Hawke said, his chest rumbling under her palm. “Judd once told me it reminded him of his sister.” He played his fingers along the strands. “You are a piece of her, you and Toby.”

“That’s nice,” she said, hiding the wonderful thought away in the secret place inside her mind where she’d kept everything that mattered to her for so long.

Judd, having learned the skill from Walker, had shown her how to build the impregnable telepathic vault when he’d grown old and experienced enough to teleport to her without alerting Ming. Though she no longer needed the vault, she liked having her most precious memories in one place.

“Toby has her hair, too,” she said. “He doesn’t otherwise look like her”—as he grew, her brother’s features had begun to lean more toward the harder angles of Walker’s face—“but sometimes I see her in his smile.”

“That’s a gift.”

“Yes.” Stroking his chest, she said, “You missed your parents, too, didn’t you?”

“My father would’ve been so proud to see how the pack reacted to us,” he said in answer, a poignant smile on his lips, “and my mother, she’d have been sitting in a corner, sketching as fast as her hand could move.”

Images formed in Sienna’s mind, created from the photos Hawke had shared with her. Of a tall man with golden hair, eyes of blue a shade darker than his son’s, and a white-blonde woman, her bones fine, her skin porcelain. The snapshots of his mother, Aren, were lit with laughter, while her mate, Tristan, had been more guarded, his gaze piercing … except in the few precious photos Hawke had of the two of them together. There, it was clear who held Tristan’s heart, nothing guarded or remote about the intensity of his love.

“Psy don’t give credence to the idea of an afterlife,” she said, trailing her fingers over the hard ridges of his abdomen, “but I’d like to believe that last night, all the people we miss were there dancing alongside us.”

Hawke’s hand stroked under her hair to settle on her nape. “Yes.”

They were quiet for a long time, happy to simply be together. Breathing in the hot, wild scent that was Hawke, she felt a sense of wonder bloom deep within.

“What’s got you smiling?” her mate asked in a slumberous voice, though she lay with her cheek on his chest, her face hidden from view.

“No one who saw us interacting before we mated,” she said, pushing up so she could look down into curious wolf eyes, her hair pooling on his chest, “would ever believe we could be so peaceful together.” She’d been half afraid they would clash the entire time, because that was all they’d done for years. What she hadn’t understood until afterward was that the passionate need she and Hawke had fought for so long would become a molten river. Connecting them. Making them whole.

Even in this peace, the embers glowed. Always would.

Hawke chuckled. “I would’ve recommended a good shrink if someone had suggested it to me six months ago.”

Laughing, she braced herself on one arm and began to play with his hair, petting him until his eyes closed. He was still awake, his fingers brushing lightly against her back, but he was a lazy wolf now, contented and sleepy. Yawning, she snuggled down against his body and let the rhythm of his heartbeat lull her into a sleep devoid of fear … and filled with dreams of an alpha wolf who ran beside her as she explored the mysteries of a night-dark forest.

RIAZ watched the cold dawn from his position seated against a large ponderosa pine on the edge of a mountain lake rippling with gossamer whispers of wind. The mating celebration had finally wound down about forty-five minutes ago, every one of the lieutenants remaining till the very end.

The out-of-towners had slipped away as stealthily as they’d arrived, while those who called den territory home had broken off to head to bed, or to otherwise relax after the night’s festivities. The most interesting departure had been Jem and Kenji’s—they’d left together, and Kenji had a bruise on his cheek he refused to explain.

It had been instinct for Riaz to come up into the mountains. Man and wolf, they were both used to aloneness, often needed solitude, especially after a social event, but over the past minutes, he’d realized this aloneness was of a different kind.

It hurt.

A dull, throbbing ache, the pain was centered in the place where the mating bond should’ve been, as if he had an open wound deep inside him. The joy and warmth of his packmates had muted the ache over the night, but surrounded by nothing but the chill air of the Sierras, the sky a crimson-orange cauldron, he could no longer avoid the truth. He’d come home to heal … but the wound, it bled darkest red.

The echo of a male voice.

Catching the unexpected sound on the wind, he looked across the lake to glimpse a small, sleek wolf padding beside a tall male dressed in black. The wolf’s body brushed the man’s as they walked along the misty earth, the man’s fingers trailing through the animal’s fur when he bent as if to speak to her.

Riaz’s hand fisted, a corrosive bitterness flooding his senses.

The ugliness of it was a cold slap.

Breathless, chest pounding in shock, he looked up in time to see Brenna and Judd disappear into the mist. However, his mind was no longer on the other couple, but on the staggering insight into who he was becoming, who he was allowing himself to become: a bitter, angry man filled with the acid of envy.

That wasn’t who he wanted to be, wasn’t who he’d ever been. Just like he hadn’t ever been a man who liked to hurt women on any level.

An image of Adria’s stunning eyes, the icy whip of her anger, the sway of her hips as she walked away from him.

God, he’d been a shit to her. Shame was leaden in his gut. Nothing excused the way he’d treated her, the way he’d tried to use her. Adria was right. She deserved more than a man who had permitted his anger at fate to eat away at him until he almost didn’t recognize who he was anymore. His wolf, always so proud, lowered its head, its tail limp, but both parts of him knew this silent penance wasn’t enough. The man he wanted to be, the man he’d been before Lisette, blamed no one else for his own faults, and faced up to his mistakes.

The sun touched him with golden fingers but did nothing to ease the ice in his soul.