Tangle of Need

Chapter 39

IT HAD BEEN after their first run-in with the Alliance that the pack had discovered the group had been experimenting with a chip that, once implanted, acted as a shield against Psy intrusion. Or that had been the official line fed to the Alliance’s soldiers. In truth, the original chips had acted as remote kill switches.

Bo’s smile was grimly satisfied. “Hell, yes.”

Riaz was impressed, but he needed the answer to another question before he could ask Bo for more information on the chip. “Does Ashaya Aleine know?” The scientist was one of the most experienced people in the world when it came to neural implants, and had—when the dust settled after the aborted kidnapping—agreed to help Bo and his people fix the defective chip. If she, and by extension, DarkRiver, had known of the Alliance’s success and not shared the information, the shit was going to hit the fan. Hard enough to cover everyone.

“No.” Bowen sliced his hand through the air, his tone leaving no room for doubt. “Her help was critical, and not one of us will ever be anything but grateful, but she’s not Alliance, wouldn’t keep our secrets.” A blunt answer. “The most recent prototype we sent her was created from one of the earlier designs. We figured we’d share the truth once we were ready for the packs to know.”

“The yacht incident pushed things ahead of schedule,” Riaz guessed, his wolf relaxing now that he didn’t have to inform his alpha that a member of the pack that was their most trusted ally had breached their alliance. Beside him, he sensed the tension drain out of Adria, too.

“We voted to give Ashaya a twenty-five percent stake in the patent,” Bo said after nodding an affirmative to Riaz’s statement. “A patent we’ll be filing for when hell freezes over, so Aleine owns a percentage in a design that’ll never make any profit. The only important thing is getting the chip into as many humans as possible. Being protected from mental violation shouldn’t be a luxury.”

Riaz was unsurprised at the secrecy, but Bo’s confidence in the success of the implant seemed premature.

Adria echoed his thoughts, the delicate wildness of her scent licking over him as she leaned forward on the table. “I don’t see people lining up to be implanted.”

“Lot of trust if they are,” Riaz added, restraining the urge to run his hand slowly down the arch of her back, displayed so beautifully by her current position.

“You’re thinking from a changeling perspective,” Bo said, the passion in his eyes an inferno. “Humans … you have no idea what it’s like to walk around knowing one of the Psy could slip into your mind at any time and take things, or plant things. It’s rape and it’s a violation committed over and over and over again against people who can’t fight back.” Flat, hard words. “A human makes a technological breakthrough, and the next thing you know, the Psy already have a patent on the invention. Just coincidence.” His laugh was bitter. “That’s if they choose to leave the human’s memories intact so he or she even knows what’s been stolen.”

Fisting his hand on the table, he blew out a breath, his next statement not as drenched in anger. “The initial rollout was soft, limited only to Alliance personnel I personally vetted. Reuben wasn’t on the list. If he had been…” He shook his head. “That’s done and gone. Fact is, the Psy are going to find out about it sooner or later, so we’ve begun an Alliance-wide operation. Everyone who wants a chip gets one.”

There was nothing Riaz could say to that, every word Bo had spoken an ugly truth. But SnowDancer understood his sense of violation in a way the other man couldn’t comprehend. Psy had broken so many of their strongest two decades ago, almost destroyed the pack. Riaz had been a juvenile, but he would never forget the blood, the loss … and the lethal determination in the eyes of the boy with hair of silver-gold who had become their alpha while barely more than a child.

Riaz saw the same unyielding determination on Bo’s face. Whatever it took, whatever the personal cost, he knew Bo wouldn’t flinch, not if it meant protecting his people. “Did you go first?”

“No way I was going to ask my men and women to do something I wouldn’t.”

Adria’s husky voice brushed over Riaz’s skin, snagging his attention. “I didn’t see a chip in the back of your neck. Did you change the location?”

“It’s there. Covered by a dermal patch that blends into my skin.” He jerked his head toward Adria, challenge and flirtation both in the faint smile on his lips. “You can feel it if you like.”

Once again, Riaz’s wolf flashed its canines but held its silence, well aware Bo was jerking his chain. Nonetheless, his focus was acute and deadly as he watched the woman who was his lover walk to stand behind Bo’s chair.

“Where?” she demanded.

“Here.” Reaching back, he tapped a spot.

Unable to see any difference in the honey brown of his skin tone, Adria pressed the pad of her finger over the warmth of his nape. The hardness was slight, but when she traced around the area, she realized it formed a small square. Looking at Riaz, she nodded, startled by the way the wolf watched her out of those eyes. Throat suddenly dry, she had to break the eye contact, clear her throat, before she could speak. “Could be a dummy.”

Bo shrugged. “I’m sane and alive after being taken captive by seven Psy. Think about it.”

She had, and in spite of her words, her instinct was to believe him.

Riaz placed his arm on the back of her chair as soon as she retook her seat, his attention on Bo, but his fingers just brushing her hair. Her heart slammed into her ribs, because subtle though it might be, she understood it for a possessive display—it was the first time he’d ever done anything of the sort in public, a warning of the notorious lone-wolf tendency toward possessiveness. The thing was, Adria had never expected him to train that aspect of his personality on her.

She was still trying to work out how to respond to the unexpected act when he spoke, his voice creeping under her skin to touch parts of her it had no business touching.

“If you didn’t ask Ashaya to help you test the implant,” he asked, eyes that had returned to their human shade locked on Bowen, “who did you trust enough to do the testing?”

Bowen took his time answering. “We heard about the Laurens,” he said when he did speak, his expression giving nothing away. “About how they’ve been alive all this time. How’d they do it? A familial net?”

Adria leaned forward in excitement, inadvertently breaking the contact with Riaz. “Another family of defectors?”

However Bowen shook his head. “No.” Another pause. “Let’s just call them a well-organized group.” His expression made it clear he’d share no other details of their identity. “They dropped out of the Net in degrees, changed their appearance, and blended into the population. No one would’ve been the wiser, except that one of them was injured in a freak accident six months ago—hit by bricks falling onto the street from a building undergoing maintenance.”

Adria found herself sliding back into her seat, her skin burning at the renewed contact with Riaz’s fingers.

“I saw him trying to limp away,” Bo continued. “I’m certain he wouldn’t normally have said a word, but he was concussed at the time, and kept repeating ‘no DNA profile’ as I was leading him to the ambulance. I figured he had a criminal warrant out on him, but then he mumbled the word ‘PsyNet.’” A shrug. “I did what any good security chief would do. I brought him here, had him patched up, and interrogated him while he was still dopey.”

A ruthless act—but then, from what Adria knew of him, Bo had never pretended to be anything else when it came to taking care of his people. The wolf in her respected that, even as it understood that the Alliance man would betray even the staunchest ally if it came down to a choice between that ally and those he considered under his protection.

“By the time his friends tracked him down,” he said, “we knew who they were and that blackmailing them would be a very bad idea, so we simply suggested that our interests might mesh and let it go at that.”

An intelligent and calculated decision, from a man Riaz had seen leak charm like a tap in a successful effort to divert people’s attention from his cold-eyed intelligence. “You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.”

Bowen’s grin was a flash of canines. “The reason we know it was Tatiana behind the attack on Reuben,” he said, grin vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, “was that the men who were sent to take me in didn’t bother to hide the comm conversation they had with her once I was onboard, even though the stun had worn off.”

“Careless.” Riaz traced circles on Adria’s nape with the tip of his finger.

“They figured I wouldn’t be in a position to say anything after she got through with me.” Bracing his forearms on the gleaming wood of the table, Bo bit out his next words. “The bitch does her own reprogramming—she made it clear no one else was to touch me.”

Considering the facts, Riaz made the tactical decision to share some knowledge. “Tatiana is thought to have the ability to penetrate almost any shield.”

Bo’s pupils contracted. “Shit.”

“Yes. No way of knowing if the chip would’ve held her off, since it’s technological, not natural,” Riaz said, “but seems she can get into most minds without causing major damage.”

“Less scars to hide,” Adria said, and he heard the empathy in her, the soft heart she hid beneath the tough exterior.

“But,” he added, cupping her nape gently with his hand, “Tatiana’s ability is noteworthy because of how unusual it is, so it doesn’t change the impact of the chip. Still, your people need to make sure they don’t get cocky.”

“Noted.”

“Once you take away their psychic advantage,” Adria said into the silence that had fallen after Bo’s curt nod, “Psy are very vulnerable.”

As, Riaz mused, Bowen had proven with deadly efficiency on the yacht.

“They have a tendency to rely on their abilities,” the human male agreed. “The ones I took down on the yacht were armed, but they paid so little attention to me it was the easiest op I’ve ever completed. A single guard on the door?” He snorted. “Soon as I had his weapon, it was all over. None of the others were on alert because they assumed their telepathic sweeps would warn them of an intruder.”

“Why kill them?” Adria’s question betrayed the inherent compassion of her nature. “Why not simply incapacitate?”

“A message,” Riaz answered, the predator in him recognizing the one who sat three feet away. “He was sending a message. They fuck with the Alliance, you aren’t going to take prisoners.”

A small shrug from Bowen, his jet-black eyes steely with lethal purpose. “Leaving them alive would’ve been a sign of weakness, and Tatiana expects weakness from the ‘emotional’ races. What the bitch doesn’t understand is that rage is an emotion, too.”