Tangle of Need

Chapter 64

DEEPLY SATISFIED WITH the fact that he’d forced Adria to play with him, even if she might not see things in the same light, Riaz went looking for Dalton the next morning. Hawke’s thought was a good one—the Librarian carried the pack’s history in his mind, might well know of an analogous situation, information that could aid Riaz in his campaign to convince Adria that what they had was right, was true. He’d take all the support he could get if it would help him court his empress back into his arms.

When he arrived at Dalton’s study, it was to find a note on the elder’s door saying he was at his “lake office.” Smiling, Riaz jogged down to the edge of the lake nearest the den, aware Lara’s grandfather liked to sit not on the pebbled shore, but up on the grassy verge, beneath the spreading branches of a thickly leafed oak.

“We’re contemporaries of a sort,” he’d once said to Riaz, patting the trunk of the still-growing tree. “Though I fear she’ll outlast me.”

Now, he raised his fox brown gaze as Riaz appeared out of the trees. “Ah, there you are,” the Librarian said, as if he’d been expecting the visit. “Come and talk to me, Mr. Delgado.”

Riaz’s wolf sat straight up, reminded of a hundred childhood scrapes. “You only ever used our last names when we were in trouble.”

Dalton’s dark skin shimmered with warmth, his eyes dancing. “You have the same look to you today,” he said. “What have you done, pup?”

Taking a seat beside the elder, Riaz told him everything, aware he couldn’t hide the truth if he wanted Dalton to understand a situation that should’ve been an impossibility. After he finished, Dalton sighed, his gaze on the lake. “Look at it, so smooth, with only the faintest of ripples.”

“The wind’s calm this morning.”

Dalton said nothing for a long time, until those who had not grown up with his presence would have believed him asleep. Riaz knew better, understood the white-haired elder saw everything with those bright eyes he’d bequeathed his granddaughter.

“The Territorial Wars were a storm,” Dalton said at last, “creating a thousand ripples. Shattering everything that should be.”

Including, Riaz understood with a painful burst of raw hope, the normal rules when it came to courtship and mating.

“Records from that time are fragmented at best,” Dalton continued. “Many Librarians were killed in the fighting, while others made the choice to begin anew when the postwar packs were founded.”

Riaz thought back to his history lessons as a boy, recalled that decimated by the bloodshed, a number of packs had amalgamated across the country, each group choosing a new name to represent their varied membership. “So a lot of the records made during the wars may have been destroyed?” Regardless of his intense frustration at coming up against the roadblock, he could understand the survivors’ desire to leave the horror of war in the past—especially when some of those who had amalgamated had once been bitter enemies.

“Yes.” Dalton put his hand on Riaz’s shoulder, squeezed. “But some believed as I do, that the past must not be forgotten, no matter if it is the Librarian alone who knows the truth. Those records exist.” Squeezing again, his fingers strong despite their apparently gnarled state, he dropped his hand back into his lap. “Even in war, the rejection of a mate was a rare thing. More often, when it happened to combatants on opposite sides of the line, the choice was made to come together, to attempt to effect peace. Sometimes, it worked. Other times…”

“They failed, were executed,” Riaz guessed.

“No,” Dalton answered, to his surprise. “Mating is so precious a gift that even warring alphas would not execute those of their packs who bonded with the enemy—but such bonded could not be allowed to remain in either pack. The mated can keep no secrets from one another.”

Riaz thought of Mercy and Riley, and the impossibility of the pair remaining part of their respective packs if SnowDancer and DarkRiver went to war. “It would’ve been hell.” To walk away from your pack was no easy thing, not for a wolf.

“Especially for the most dominant, the wolves the packs desperately needed to protect their vulnerable. The one unambiguous case I know of where two changelings who felt the mating urge chose to reject one another, involved enemy lieutenants.”

Riaz’s wolf lowered his head, comprehending the agony that had to have torn those two apart. Mating was a joy every changeling hoped for, but protecting those under their care was as primal a drive. No dominant could walk away from that duty and live with himself—the guilt would poison any relationship. “What happened?” It was a crucial question.

Dalton rubbed a fallen oak leaf between his fingertips. “The records aren’t as clear on that, but there are hints the nascent bond may have broken under the force of the dual repudiation.”

The ember of hope within Riaz flared brighter—Lisette’s continued and deep love for Emil was as much a rejection as Riaz’s conscious one, their situation not so very different from Dalton’s lieutenants. “So they were able to bond with other people?” To have the chance to mate with Adria…

Dalton’s smile was sad. “We’ll never know—they both died in the final battles.” Glancing at Riaz, he shook his head. “Such disappointment. You wanted a road to follow, but all I give you are ghosts and shadows.”

Shoving his hands through his hair, Riaz rose to his feet, paced across the pebbles and to the water’s edge before walking back to crouch beside Dalton. “There is no reason for the female to have a choice if it means nothing,” he said at last, because while Dalton would share information, he had always made his students find the answers to their own questions.

“Yes.” Wrinkles fanned out from the corners of the Librarian’s eyes. “Perhaps you will be the one who solves this riddle, eh, Riaz? It is ever the lone wolf’s task to journey into the unknown alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Riaz said at once, the words requiring no thought. “Adria walks beside me.” Even if the stubborn she-wolf didn’t see it yet.

Dalton smiled. “So.”

And Riaz understood that while a mate bond would be an incredible happiness, the lack of it did nothing to diminish his love for Adria, his wolf’s devotion absolute. “Call me a fool and be done with it then,” he said to the elder who saw the present and past both with crystal clarity.

Reaching out, Dalton instead patted Riaz’s cheek as he’d once patted the tree trunk. “Go court the one you have chosen, pup, and leave an old man to his ruminations.”

IT wasn’t until Adria walked into the garage that night—two days after Riaz began his relentless pursuit—that she realized she’d been outflanked. “I thought I was on watch with Sam.” The tiny carving this stubborn wolf had left sitting in her locker earlier, of a hilariously drunken skunk, burned a hole in her pocket.

“I’ll only give you so much space,” Riaz said, his smile dangerous, “and you’ve used up your quota.”

She didn’t tell him he was an arrogant S.O.B. who had a store of impossible charm, and she didn’t wrap her starved body around him until nothing hurt anymore. Instead, she got into the SUV and said, “I didn’t have a chance to read the entire brief.” Three of her kids had been pulled into the principal’s office—proof that being submissive didn’t mean good behavior. She’d spent the past two hours getting to the bottom of things. “Anything I need to know about this particular anchor or the location?”

“No, it’s standard.” A pause. “Hold on.” The SUV shuddered over a hole in the road.

Ignoring the jolt, Adria pulled out her mini datapad. “I better scan it anyway—I’d tell off my trainees if they skipped homework.” She focused, managed to absorb the material, but when she tried to carry on and catch up on the pack-wide senior soldiers bulletin, it proved a failed effort. She couldn’t turn off her wolf’s awareness of the male in the passenger seat, the one who did not belong to her, regardless of the unexpected, wonderful battle he was waging.

“I saw Lisette yesterday,” he said without warning.

The words in front of her blurred. “How is she?”

“Not in love with me.” The words were hard, making it clear that courtship or not, his anger had in no way dimmed.

It somehow hit her deeper, that even though he was so mad at her, he continued to want her, continued to court her.

“Which is great,” he added, “because I’m not in love with her either.”

“Give it time.” Love and the mating bond were interlocked for every mated couple she’d ever met—she wasn’t going to fool herself by pretending they would be the exception that proved the rule.

“God you’re obstinate.” It was a snarl. “Must make me a masochist that I like that about you.”

Her wolf bared its canines, charmed but trying not to allow it to matter. “I only get worse the more you know me. Consider it a lucky escape.”

The smile Riaz shot her was feral. “I’m not the one thinking of escape—and just in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not about to let you succeed.”

With that warning, he brought the SUV to a stop in the drive of a small home tucked neatly in the Presidio, enough land around it that the place must’ve cost a substantial sum.

Stepping out of the vehicle, she circled around the front. Riaz met her there, curling his fingers around her upper arm when she would’ve moved past. She jerked, the spark of contact explosive. “I’m not going to leave,” he murmured, his breath hot against her lips, “and I’m not going to change my mind, so get used to having to deal with me.”

Hope was a tiny light in her heart she no longer had the willpower to stamp out. “We have a job to do.” Practical words, but her voice held a vulnerability that terrified her—especially when she saw Riaz’s eyes turn night-glow and knew he’d heard it, too.

SIENNA stopped on a promontory, looking out over the land below. It was her second day in a row on the routine task of running perimeter security—though Riley made sure her routes remained erratic—but she didn’t mind. As she’d said to Hawke, this time around, it was how she could help the pack.

“Anchor watch isn’t much more exciting,” Riordan had said to her as he left tonight to act as backup to two senior soldiers, no novices having been posted as main guards. “Mostly they just sit there working or reading, or sleeping.”

“Maria said you had a good story about your first anchor.”

“Oh yeah, that’s the one who kept watching me as if she was waiting for me to grow fangs and try to eat her. I couldn’t help it—I used my claws to scratch my nose. Her eyes almost popped out of their sockets.”

Smiling at the memory, she wondered if those in the PsyNet would have offered another group such help. Once, she would’ve said no. But now … Though Nikita Duncan and Anthony Kyriakus might have helped defend San Francisco out of their own self-interest, stories had come in, in the aftermath of the battle, that told of ordinary Psy helping their fellow man, regardless of race.

A DarkRiver soldier had fallen in combat, been dragged inside by two elderly Psy women while they held back his attackers using their combined telepathic abilities. One of the humans DarkRiver knew well had told of how his son, a curious little boy, had snuck outside and down a block to peek at the jet-choppers dropping Pure Psy operatives from the sky.

Out of his mind with worry, his father had been getting ready to head out into danger to search for the missing child when a Psy neighbor—one of three students sharing an apartment—called to say he was safe. They’d snatched the boy off the street and hidden him in their home, protecting his mind from the psychic strikes the operatives had thrust out as a defensive measure while they landed.

It would’ve been safer for those students, the elderly twosome, to stay inside. After all, neither an injured soldier nor a small child could offer them any tactical advantage. But they hadn’t remained behind closed doors, safe. They’d helped for no reason except that it was the right thing to do.

A brush of fur against her leg, that of the wolf who’d appeared out of the trees.

Hawke didn’t have much time with everything that was going on, but he always found her during her shifts, even if it was only for a few minutes at a time.

Crouching down beside his proud head, she ran her fingers through the silver-gold of his fur. “When I think of the stories that came out of the battle, it makes me proud to be Psy.”

The wolf angled his head, his eyes piercing in the dark. She laughed, able to read the affronted expression on his face as if he’d spoken. “Yes, I’m a SnowDancer,” she said, because this was her family, her pack, her home, “but I’m a Psy SnowDancer.”

The wolf considered this before turning his muzzle and nipping very, very carefully at her jaw, those lethally sharp teeth not even bruising her skin. Laughing again, she rubbed her nose against his. “Thanks so much, Your Wolfiness,” she said, knowing that had been his way of saying her decision to call herself a Psy SnowDancer was acceptable.

A growl rumbled out of his chest, and she immediately recognized that it wasn’t the playful one he used with her when he wasn’t serious. This one was very, very, very serious. Every sense on alert, she rose to her feet, telepathically scanning the area at the same time.

“Intruders,” she said a second later, moving with as much stealth as possible beside her wolf as he padded toward their prey. “Psy mental shields.”

“Wait.” Crouching again, she used another sub-vocal whisper to convey what she’d sensed. “They’re scanning the area. They have to know I’m here.” Not her personally, but a mind with a Psy fingerprint. “I’m not sure if they know about you.” Sienna could sense the subtle but critical differences between the mind of a feral wolf and that of a changeling, but she’d been in SnowDancer for years—most of her race didn’t have that advantage.

The pale eyes of a husky or a bird of prey met hers, the glance both protective and adamant. They’d been mated only a short time, hadn’t yet learned all of each other’s subtleties, but she understood the unspoken message. And she disagreed. “Whoever it is will know I can destroy him in a split second the instant he sees me. I’ll go in prepped.”

Hawke’s lips lifted to display his canines.

“This is my area of expertise,” she said, holding his gaze, because he would stare her down and get his own way if she let him.

This time, the bite on her chin was a fraction harder, a warning not to get herself hurt or she’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Running her hand through his fur once more, she watched him become a shadow indistinguishable from the trees as she made her way to the small clearing where three Psy minds waited. They were shielded, but she knew deep in her gut who it was that had come for her before she ever glimpsed him through the trees.

The birthmark on the left side of his face was a red splotch, a pigmentation error he’d once told her his parents hadn’t had corrected because they’d believed it would make him more resilient if he had to overcome such a thing in a society that prized perfection. Ming could’ve taken care of it once he was no longer a minor, but he hadn’t. A badge of pride, she’d always thought; or perhaps a way to gain a psychological advantage over other Psy, all of whom were taken aback the first time they met him face-to-face.

But Sienna felt no shock. She knew every line and pore of that face, was intimately acquainted with the evil that lived within Ming LeBon.

I’ll burn him up and watch him die…

Her own words, as true today as when she’d spoken them to Hawke. Aware the two men on either side of Ming, their hands touching his shoulders, had to be teleporters, she considered how exactly to kill the man she hated beyond all others without injuring his guards. They had done her no harm, and she would not judge them when she herself had been forced to be Ming’s protégée.

“Sienna,” Ming said into the silence, his voice calm, in control, cold enough to burn. “I know you’re out there.”

No, she thought, he didn’t. He was simply taking a calculated risk that the mind he sensed was hers, having no doubt used satellite surveillance images to narrow down the range she might be present in tonight. From the lines of strain on the faces of his teleporters, this wasn’t the first spot they’d jumped to in their attempt to pinpoint her location.

Keeping her silence, she continued to work out the most efficient way to kill him.

“The world is changing,” he said, his military haircut exposing the narrow bones of his face. “While there was no room for an X of your toxic capacity in the previous one, there is now. The Psy will need a new ruling council after the dust settles, and you’re already considered a hero by many.”

Sienna would have laughed at his arrogance, but she had no laughter in her where Ming was concerned. Eyes narrowed, she lifted her hand and looked sideways to meet the gaze of the wolf who had shifted out of the shadows so she could see him. There was no censure in his gaze, only the approbation of a fellow predator.

Nodding, she turned … and set the cold fire free.

Ming teleported out the instant before the fire would’ve hit him, and it smashed into the tree opposite, turning it into ash between one breath and the next. “Bastard’s men were primed to ’port.” It must’ve been brutal, holding their minds on the brink of a teleport for that long.

Hawke shifted in sparks of light and color, the wolf transforming into a male who took her face in his hands and said, “You’ll get him next time.”

It was exactly what she needed to hear. “Yes, I will.”

Her mate wrapped her in his arms, the soft pelt of silver-gold that covered his chest a sensory pleasure as she held him tight.

“He actually thought I might go with him,” she said, the insult violent.

“If you had, it would’ve ended his problems.” Hawke’s voice was not entirely human. “Now, he has to find a way to kill you.”

Recalling her dark emotional response when she’d seen Hawke in danger on the battlefield, she stroked his back, his skin hot silk. “Ming,” she reminded him, “will have to get through you and the pack to get to me.”

“He’ll never succeed.” It was a growl.

“No, he won’t.” The wolves might not have psychic power, but as Henry Scott had learned, it wasn’t only the mind that mattered when it came to war.

Pushing away from him just a fraction, she stood on tiptoe to reach his mouth. “I didn’t get a kiss tonight.” He needed the contact and so did she—to wash Ming’s poisonous words from her mind, to remember she was so much more than he could ever imagine.

“I don’t know if you deserve a kiss,” her mate said, his chest rumbling under her spread palms. “Seeing as you ignored my order to get the hell away from Ming.”

Sliding her hands up over his shoulders when he bent to make it easier for her, she linked her fingers behind his neck. “Are you going to bite me very hard?” she teased, using words her young cousin, Marlee, had apparently once spoken.

“Smart-ass.” Moving his hands down to that ass, he slid them into the back pockets of her jeans.

Hard and dominant though he might be, she thought, surrendering to the hot, wet caress of a kiss he laid on her, her man had a vein of tenderness she was certain no one else, except perhaps the pups, ever saw.

“We have to continue the watch.” It was a rough murmur.

“I know,” she said, though all she wanted was to have him inside her, branding her, loving her. In the lazy, possessive mood he was in right now, he’d rock in so slow and easy, make her feel every thick inch. “I wish it was a few hours later.”

He reached up to pet and fondle one of her breasts with a proprietary hand, not helping to get her arousal under control. “Patience.” Releasing her aching flesh, he stepped away a couple of inches. “You know you like it slow.”

“No, that would be you.” Already keenly missing the wild heat of him pressed up against her, she watched as he shifted, the beauty of it stunning her anew. “I like it fast.”

The wolf huffed with laughter, and then they were running again, the night wind rippling through his fur and kissing her face. In spite of the enraging confrontation just past, Sienna had never felt so content.