Tangle of Need

Chapter 54

HAVING BEEN ASSIGNED to a shift at the infirmary at the last minute, Adria lifted a questioning eyebrow at Elias when he joined her. “Last I checked,” she said, “we didn’t have any dangerous criminals in here.”

“They’re hoping to wake Alice Eldridge.” Elias kept his voice low. “Hawke wants extra security until Lara can get a read on her while she’s conscious—there’s no way to know what she was programmed to do before being put to sleep.”

Shifting slightly, Adria glanced into the patient room. While access to Alice was strictly controlled, Adria had seen the comatose woman in the aftermath of the battle, when she’d helped move Alice’s bed to the side to make room for injured SnowDancers. Alice lay as she had done then, ashen and motionless. Around her stood three women, each with a frown of concentration on her face, their voices overlapping as they talked over last-minute adjustments.

Lara, Adria knew and respected. Ashaya Aleine, too, was familiar after that dinner at Mercy and Riley’s, her tight curls pulled severely off her face into a neat bun, her blue-gray eyes startling against the rich brown of her skin. The third woman, with her soft curves, honey-toned skin, and cardinal eyes, was no one Adria had ever spoken to, but recognized nonetheless.

Sascha Duncan, mate to the DarkRiver alpha, an E-Psy.

Adria’s wolf wasn’t quite comfortable being around a woman who could sense its emotions—especially when those emotions were so painfully deep and complex. Living with Riaz, it was nothing like living with Martin. The man was dominant and pushy and arrogant enough to want his own way, but he was also perverse enough to be delighted with her when she snarled at him.

The thought made her lips twitch for a fleeting second, before darker emotions rose to the fore. In spite of the realization she’d had on the wildflower-strewn meadow in the mountains, a desperate kernel of self-preservation kept warning her to keep a piece of herself separate, apart. Not to hurt him … but because she wasn’t Riaz’s mate, never would be, their relationship unbalanced on the most fundamental level.

PERIPHERALLY aware of Eli and Adria in the doorway, Lara glanced at Ashaya. “Yes?”

The scientist nodded. “We’ve done as much as possible without injecting her.”

Conscious the M-Psy was profoundly concerned about the damage they might cause, Lara said, “If we do nothing, she’ll die. Her body is failing.”

Ashaya’s head snapped up from the panel at the end of the bed. “I told you to warn us if she went downhill. We could’ve moved faster.”

“I spoke to Amara,” Lara said, thinking of the woman who was physically identical to Ashaya, but so very alien in her thinking. “She told me that if we injected Alice with the uncalibrated serum, the risk of failure rose by seventy percent. I made the decision to wait.”

Ashaya gripped the top of the panel, her bones pushing white against her skin. “My twin has a way of being right while hiding things, Lara. You know that. You should’ve double-checked with me.”

“I didn’t want to distract you at such a critical stage.” Ashaya herself had told Lara the final calibration would take precision work—so much so that the scientist had spent two days away from her mate and son, in the dedicated lab DarkRiver had built for her.

“No harm done—the serum wasn’t ready.” Ashaya went as if to shove a hand through her curls, realized they were bound, and dropped it back on the bed. “For future reference, though, my twin is very, very smart, but she has no moral compass.”

Sascha made a small sound in the back of her throat. “I didn’t like Amara when I met her,” she said, clearly still troubled by what she’d described to Lara as an overwhelmingly hostile response. “Even now, she sends a chill through my bones because of the lack in her, but that lack isn’t as total as it once was. I don’t think she’ll ever be capable of the normal range of emotions, but she may be showing a stunted kind of awareness of the emotions of others.”

Ashaya’s face held painful hope. “You’re not certain, though?”

“No, I’m sorry.” Sascha touched the other woman on the arm. “I have such a strong reaction to her that I find it difficult to get a clear read, and as you said, her intelligence is unquestioned. She’s fully capable of manipulating her responses.”

Smart enough, Lara thought, to fake empathy.

“But,” Sascha added, “there has been a change in her, that much I can verify. It might simply be the effect of being in a clean psychic network—there’s no DarkMind in the Web of Stars, no hidden miasma that’s seeping into her brain.”

“I’ll take that.” Swallowing, Ashaya returned her attention to the computronic readout on the panel in front of her. “Unless either of you disagrees, I think it’s time we spoke to Alice.”

Lara and Sascha both nodded at her to go ahead.

Pressure injector in hand, the scientist looked to where Sascha’s fingers now intertwined with Alice’s. “Are you sensing anything?”

“Frustration again,” Sascha said, three deep vertical lines between her eyebrows. “But there’s something else.” Lashes lowering, she squeezed the bridge of her nose between the thumb and forefinger of her free hand. “Determination.” Her eyes flicked open. “I’d bet my life she’s trying her hardest to wake up.”

“That’s enough for me.” With no more hesitation, Ashaya pressed the pressure injector to Alice’s neck, punching the serum into her bloodstream. “The effect should be apparent within two or three minutes if it works as it’s supposed to.”

No one said a word, the silence so pristine Lara could hear the hushed breaths of everyone in the immediate area, including Eli and Adria. If the room had boasted an old-fashioned ticking clock, she thought, every tick would’ve sounded like a bomb.

One minute.

Checking the data coming in through Alice’s computronic skullcap, Lara shook her head at the others.

Two minutes.

It was Ashaya who checked this time, her fingers flying over the panel. “No change.”

Three minutes.

Four.

Five.

Disappointment a heavy rock on her chest, Lara squeezed Ashaya’s arm in silent sympathy, and they walked to stand across from Sascha. However, the cardinal empath paid them no attention, her eyes gone a midnight that denoted either strong emotion—or a powerful use of her abilities.

Exchanging a taut, hopeful glance with Ashaya, Lara maintained her silence.

“Ashaya,” Sascha said almost half a minute later, her voice muted, as if her attention was elsewhere, “do you have more of the serum?”

“Yes, but a second shot could kill her.” Ashaya fiddled with the settings on the injector, paused for a second. “Amara’s confident we can safely give her another eighth of a dose.”

Recalling the other woman’s earlier warnings, Lara turned to her. “You trust her on that?”

“This is a challenge.” Ashaya’s answer held a clarity that said she saw her twin’s faults and flaws as well as her gifts. “Amara doesn’t like failing, and Alice’s death would constitute failure.”

“I can feel her struggling,” Sascha said, her fingers now locked so tightly with Alice’s that the warm honey of her skin was bloodless. “She knows she’s trapped—there’s panic, fear. God, it’s like she’s suffocating from the terror of being entombed inside her own body.”

Clearly shaken by the report, Ashaya put the injector to Alice’s neck. “Are you sure, Sascha?”

“Yes. Quickly.”

A press of Ashaya’s thumb and a one-eighth part of the serum blasted through the permeable barrier of Alice’s skin.

Alarms blared a second later, Alice’s body arching so severely off the bed that she almost bent herself in half before falling back onto the sheets in a jagged spasm. Scanning the alarms, Lara grabbed the oxygen mask and placed it over Alice’s mouth and nose. “Ashaya, stats!”

“Rapid spike in her mental activity. Irregular heartbeat, insufficient oxygen being absorbed.”

Slapping Sascha’s hand over the oxygen mask to keep it in place, Lara reached for another injector and pressed it to Alice’s upper arm. “Now?”

“Heartbeat is stabilizing.” Ashaya tapped the screen. “Oxygen levels reaching optimum. Brain activity continues to be erratic.”

“Alice,” Sascha’s gentle voice turned somehow ruthless, it was so intent. “Alice, you’re safe. Focus.”

That was when Lara looked down and realized that Alice Eldridge’s eyes, so rich a brown that pupil and iris were near impossible to differentiate, were wide open.

HAVING returned from the meeting with BlackSea to be told the news about Alice Eldridge, Riaz spent several minutes talking with Ashaya and Hawke. It wasn’t simply about the human woman that they spoke.

“I’ve been focused on Alice,” Ashaya said, “but what I’ve studied so far of the Alliance chip hasn’t raised any red flags. However, that’s not saying much—I’ll begin intensive work on it as soon as Alice is stable.”

Waiting until after the scientist had returned to the infirmary, Hawke said, “When’s Bo getting back to you about his liaison?”

“Next few days.” Riaz folded his arms. “What do you think about the BlackSea situation?” The secretive changeling group had finally shared why it was they needed SnowDancer as an ally.

Hawke’s expression was grim. “They’re a valuable group to have as friends. We help them as much as we can—Miane knows I won’t do anything that’d leave SnowDancer vulnerable.”

Riaz had had the same thoughts. “Do you want me to set up another meeting to finalize the alliance?”

Hawke took a second to think about it, shook his head. “I’ll talk directly to Miane, make sure there are no misunderstandings. Can you take some of Riley’s load? I figure he’s earned a rest … and some spare time to stalk Mercy.”

Riaz’s lips twitched. “Not a problem.” As a result of arranging things with Riley, as well as staying late to take several calls from the men and women in SnowDancer’s international network, Riaz didn’t get a chance to speak to Adria until after nightfall. Unable to find her in the den, he shifted and began to check out her favorite spots in the forests one by one.

He found her at the third location, the full moon a spotlight across the large clearing dotted with young saplings that had come up after a storm felled many of the mature trees a couple of years back. Silhouetted against the midnight blue of the night sky, their slender profiles added a haunting beauty to the scene.

And there was his empress walking through the saplings, her head lowered in thought.

He watched for a long, motionless moment, his hunger satisfied now that he’d found her. She was magnificent. Strong and lithe and lovely. And his. Even if she wasn’t quite certain she wanted to be—Adria thought he didn’t know about the apprehension that haunted her, but of course he knew. He noticed everything about her.

He’d been patient, but it was time she accepted he wasn’t ever letting her go.

ADRIA caught the woodsmoke and citrus of Riaz’s scent on the breeze, but it took her several seconds to locate him—in the end, it was those golden eyes that gave him away. If he closed them, he’d be a black shadow in the dark. When he brushed himself against her legs, she ran her fingers through his fur. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t shift into human form, just pressed more heavily against her in silent demand. Comprehending, she continued to stroke him, his wolf more than big enough to reach halfway up her thigh. When he looked up, caught her gaze with the night-glow brightness of his own, she felt her heart stutter, kick-start in a faster rhythm.

That look, it was of the hunter.

And she knew this silent dance between them would be decided tonight, one way or the other. Either she tore down every one of her defenses and accepted his claim to the soul, or she walked away. Except she didn’t think the latter was an option.

Nerves and anger collided.

He was pushing her, but of course he would. That was who he was. Like she was a dominant who knew her own strength. Breaking contact, she shifted, not bothering to strip. Her clothes disintegrated off her as the agony and ecstasy of the change took over, sparks of light blazing in the lush mystery that was the night.

A heartbeat later, she stood on four feet, her head angled toward the black wolf who was so much bigger and stronger, but who she knew would never cause her physical harm. That knowledge, it was enough for the wolf, but the woman needed more, needed the devotion she knew he would offer only one woman his entire lifetime.

He nuzzled at her, but she danced away, racing through the willowy shadows of the trees and across the silent music of a moon-silvered stream. He was fast, so fast, but she was clever, and she tangled and twisted around trees young and old, over jagged rocks and across sleepy flowers to cross another stream, splashing downstream to conceal her scent before coming up on the other shore.

The black wolf was nowhere to be seen.

She wasn’t fooled, knew he was stalking her. Padding quietly along the verge, she kept her eyes on the other side of the stream … and caught a glimpse of feral gold. He lunged across the water, but she was already racing to put distance between them, squeezing through gaps he wouldn’t fit, skating under fallen trees that wouldn’t accommodate his size.

The next time she halted, her heart thumped a pounding beat, the wolf’s exhilaration mixing with the woman’s. The air was a treasure trove of scents, the night full of song. It intoxicated. Knowing she needed to think with a clearer head, she shifted back into human form, her hair tumbling around her as she crouched on the forest floor, her head angled to the wind.

Dark, of the forest, kissed with woodsmoke and a wild bite of citrus.

All around her. In her skin. Against her tongue.

His lips smoothed over her neck, his hand gentle on her hip, but she knew she was caught. Turning, she watched him with the wolf’s eyes. His own hair fell over his face, his gaze luminous. This time, those eyes said, he wouldn’t let her run. But she wasn’t a wolf because she gave up. She twisted to the left without warning.

He was there almost before she moved, taking her body to the earth. She shivered at the cool kiss of the dew-laden grass, but he didn’t let her up. “I have you.” His voice was gravelly, dark with the determination of the predator inside him. “And I’m keeping you.”

She lifted a hand to his cheek, the tenderness within her an endless river. How could she have ever thought to keep any part of her heart safe from him? It was an impossibility. She was caught, well and truly. Tears burned her eyes, trickled down the sides of her face and into her hair.

“Shh.” He kissed the salt-laced sadness away, rolling onto his back and taking her with him, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other stroking down the curve of her spine. “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”

His gentleness twined another tendril around her heart, until she was so entangled in him, she knew she’d never break free. For the first time in her life, her wolf had chosen. And it had chosen this lone wolf. “You have me,” she whispered. All of me.