by Nalini Singh
Ethan deliberately broke eye contact with her for the first time that she could remember.
Her wolf came to attention. “We need to talk about something, don’t we?”
“Yes. I have secrets you need to know.” Full eye contact again, his beautiful voice solemn in the silence of the night. “I thought I could simply not tell you, but I can’t lie to you, Selenka. Not even by omission.”
Every time she thought about putting up a wall between them, he smashed it down with brutal openness. “Is it about the nosebleed?”
“Yes—and more.”
Tension knotted her spine, a sense of dread in her gut. “After,” she said, making a decision on the spot. “When we’re alone.” Whatever Ethan had to tell her, she already knew she’d be in no state to look after her pack if they got into it now.
“After.” His kiss held an edge of desperation, his breathing ragged when they broke apart and his hair tumbled on his forehead.
Her own pulse wasn’t any steadier, and her breasts ached. It would be so easy to surrender to this, to sink into intimate skin privileges, but she could no more ignore the grieving howls of her wolves than she could walk away from the mating bond. So she held out her hand.
Ethan slid his into it, and they covered the remaining distance side by side.
Once in the den, she took him to a space to the left of the entrance. The pack had been lucky with the large area they called the Terrace—though it was an internal space, it received direct sunlight courtesy of a number of natural holes in the stone of the mountain under which the den was located.
Over the years, over the generations, the Terrace had been turned into a wild garden. It even boasted a few small trees. There were tons of flowering bushes and vines that crawled up the walls, along with masses of soft grasses kept relatively short so even the smallest babies could play happily among it.
“This is the safe play area for our pups,” she told Ethan. “They can roam and get the feel of being outdoors even when they’re too small to cope with the rougher terrain outside.”
Ethan took in the area with quiet intensity before touching his fingers to a slender tree. “We have an underground forest in Arrow HQ. The darkness, the psychologists said, cannot be endless or the people within will go insane.”
What, she thought, had the darkness in which Ethan had been imprisoned done to him? But one thing she knew: “Whatever your scars,” she told her mate, “your jagged and broken pieces, at your core is a place of light and cold reason. You’re not damaged in the way you think.”
Pale eyes searching hers. “Does the cold unsettle you?”
“No. I burn too hot at times, Ethan; my temper is my Achilles’ heel.” She’d been conscious of that since she was a teenager. “Your calm’s helped me stay rational throughout this ugly day.”
His hair fell across his forehead as he moved to touch another tree, and suddenly he looked so young that her heart threatened to break. She would show him a world beyond pain and murder and hurt, she vowed it.
There was a sound near the entrance to the Terrace at that moment, and when she looked that way, it was to meet the gaze of a stocky man with skin as pale as moonlight and eyes of deepest brown. Selenka just opened her arms.
* * *
—
SHELVING his words about how the scalding fire of her warmed him even as it burned, Ethan faded into the background. It was a skill he’d learned long ago . . . but it turned out fading was difficult among wolves.
A steady stream of Selenka’s pack came into the Terrace in the hours that followed, and while most went directly to their alpha, a few came to Ethan. Some just stood shoulder to shoulder with him in silence. Others asked him questions about psychic power or the PsyNet. He had the sense they didn’t actually care about his answers; the wolves simply wanted to hear his voice.
“It’s so beautiful,” a teenager told him at one point. “It makes my wolf less sad just to listen to the tones of it.”
So Ethan spoke more than was his natural tendency.
He was, he realized an hour into it, the waiting room to Selenka. He found no insult in that. She might see being queen to his knight as referencing a power differential, but Ethan saw it another way. A knight belonged to his queen, as Ethan belonged to Selenka. Sword or shield or babysitting pups in the nursery, whatever Selenka needed, Ethan would provide.
The shadow of night was fading into the dusty gray of very early morning by the time the Terrace emptied of wolves who needed their alpha. Taking his hand with a possessiveness that filed off the rough edges of the shards inside him, she led him through the empty corridors of the den.
When she did stop at a door and push it open, it proved to lead into a large bedroom.
Snick.
She locked the door behind them even as he was trying to absorb every nuance of this space that was Selenka’s private haven. Strong, feminine arms wrapped around his waist from behind a moment later, Selenka pressing her cheek against his back.
Protective instincts kicking into high gear, he closed his hands over her own. “You’re tired. Get in bed.” He needed to take care of her, the drive even more visceral than the physical craving that smoldered in his veins.
“I need to take a shower first. I just . . . the sadness clings.” She stepped back. “Shower with me.”
Ethan’s brain threatened to short-circuit.
She’d stripped down to her skin before he’d removed his boots, a tall and sleek woman whose hips flared out gently and whose breasts were small and taut and made his palms itch to touch them. But his eyes focused on her back first, the wound there, and he was pleased to see that the fresh seal Oleg had placed over the area was clean and unbroken. “Are you in pain?”
“No. Oleg worked on it right before I went to the funeral.” After running her hands though her hair once, she arched her body, but there was a tiredness to her as she walked to the door at the far end of her private space.
Stopping at the entrance, she looked back at him with eyes aglow with the wolf. “Don’t be long, zaichik.”
Chapter 21
Only pack, mates, and lovers have skin privileges.
—Lucas Hunter, Alpha, DarkRiver Leopards (2079)
ETHAN TORE OFF his clothes with Arrow speed, was with her only moments later. The entire bathing area was rock, with the showerhead set in the center of the ceiling, so the droplets fell like rain onto Selenka’s head as she stepped underneath. As he watched, locked in place by the knowledge that this woman of strength and power was his, she lifted her face to the water, her hair a slick waterfall on her back.
Ethan wasn’t aware of moving, but he found himself reaching into a niche in the wall to grab a bottle of shampoo. His mate’s heart was aching and she needed tenderness beyond anything else. It was a knowing that went so deep it was beyond bone, beyond muscle.
After pouring a generous amount into his cupped palm, he set the bottle aside and stepped into the water with her. She sighed and leaned back into him as he worked the cleanser into the long strands of her hair from scalp to tip. Foamy suds dripped over both their bodies as the water washed the soft-smelling liquid from her hair.
Afterward, he worked her scalp with his fingers, content despite the need that clawed constantly at him. Being with Selenka, it filled an emptiness so deep inside him that it had no name. This was where he was meant to be. And she was the woman with whom he was meant to be.
Turning, Selenka dropped her forehead against his chest, her arms linked around his waist. Her tears were raw and unvarnished, broken pieces of her heart in every sound. Fueled by primal emotion, the rogue Scarab power shoved against his shields on a deep, rumbling roar. Because Silence had worked for some, for the broken who would otherwise be mad creatures without thought or reason.
Ethan punched back the power to wrap his arms around his mate and ju
st held her as she cried not only for a packmate lost, but for a friend. Later, her sobs having turned her voice gritty, she told him about Emanuel. How he’d been a holdover lieutenant from her grandfather’s days as alpha, the youngest of Yevgeni Durev’s lieutenants by a large margin and the only one who hadn’t chosen to voluntarily retire in the years after Yevgeni Durev stepped down in favor of his granddaughter.
“The others were older, ready to retire, and only stayed in their positions to ensure a smooth transition,” Selenka said, her voice raw. “I knew I’d have them for five years at the most. But Emanuel was only in his thirties at the time and one of the strongest dominants in the pack—he had to be one of my lieutenants. Leaving him outside the power structure would’ve not only been a waste, it would’ve confused every wolf in the den.”
A shuddering sigh. “I wasn’t sure how we’d deal together—he was over a decade my senior and used to working with a much older alpha. But Emanuel was born of kindness and compassion and he was so confident in his own skin that he felt no envy or jealousy of the young wolf who’d risen past him in dominance.”
Ethan promised himself that before his brain imploded, he’d ask her about her rise to alpha, about when she’d first known this responsibility would be hers to carry. He wanted to know everything about her, the need a hunger that could never be assuaged. “Emanuel sounds like a good man.” A man who’d had Selenka’s back; for that alone, Ethan would honor his memory.
“Yes, he was. Such a good man. I’ll miss him.” Quiet, potent words. “I’ll miss his advice and his ability to make us all laugh, and most of all, I’ll miss his smile.” Inhaling deeply, she pushed her wet hair back from her face, then pressed a kiss to Ethan’s chest. “Thank you.”
He didn’t know how to answer that, didn’t understand how she could thank him when she’d hauled him out of the icy gray numbness and into the searing warmth of her, so he just reached out and switched off the water. She allowed him to wrap her in a towel and stood as he took another towel to her hair.
He didn’t care that his own body was dripping wet. Selenka came first. He needed to take care of her, and even though no one had ever taken care of him, it wasn’t a difficult matter to work out his mate’s needs. Not when she made it so easy.
After he finished with her hair, she pointed to a jar on the countertop built into the stone wall closest to the bedroom. “It’s conditioner that I leave in my hair.”
Ethan worked it into the strands, and as he did so, he caught a hint of the rich green scent he associated with her. Below that, however, was the deeper, more integral scent of her. He might not be changeling, might not have a wolf’s nose, but he would always know Selenka.
“Tell me,” she said, and it was an order—but not from an alpha to a packmate. This was very private, very intimate, from mate to mate. “About the blood and about why you stiffen up every time I mention the future.”
Ethan focused on her hair, on the scents in the air, on the lingering steam from the shower, but he couldn’t hold back the cold, dark truth. “Have you heard of Scarab Syndrome? It only affects Psy, so you may not—”
“No.” A frown he caught from his position slightly to her left. “I remember seeing those words on a medical alert I forwarded to Oleg. It has to do with rogue Psy abilities?”
“In a nutshell, Silence worked for a tiny minority of my race—it contained the most dangerous aspects of our abilities.” Kept them from becoming monstrous and murderous. “The fall of Silence has led to the disintegration of those psychic chains. An unknown force is stretching inside me, a seductive vastness of power that can be only Scarab.”
Grabbing another towel, Selenka turned and began to dry his hair. “What does that mean for you?”
Ethan stood unmoving under her careful motions—she was trying not to pull at his hair, he realized slowly, trying not to hurt him even that infinitesimal amount. The tenderness broke him. No one had ever seen Ethan Night as worthy of care. He wanted to just stand there in that impossible moment, but he had promised his mate the truth.
“There’s no way to turn back the clock once the new powers become active—and these powers lead to insanity, violence, a lack of control.” He could feel the madness whispering things to him, telling him he was capable of far more than he knew.
“There is one possible source of hope,” he added when Selenka’s eyes went gold. “An empath with the proven ability to leach off some of the Scarab power. I’m to meet her tomorrow . . . today.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Ethan didn’t say anything—because having her with him was never not acceptable. “The Consortium operative tried to make contact with me earlier tonight.”
“What will you do?” she asked, no suspicion in her.
It broke bad things inside him, re-formed them into something better. “I’ve informed Aden of the contact, and offered to act as bait if necessary”—even though he didn’t want to waste what time he had on that ugliness—“but he says the squad is on the verge of tracking the operative down using the dossier I provided yesterday.”
“Good.” Selenka turned to put away the towel she’d been using on his hair.
He wrapped his arms around her from behind, careful not to press against her wound, but needing her in a way he’d never needed anyone. Until her, need for a person hadn’t even been a concept in his life. Light, air, those had been his deepest needs. Now she was his air and his light.
No one had ever just accepted him, and even though she was angry at him for hiding his physical and psychic status from her, her acceptance of him, of Ethan jagged and damaged, remained steadfast. “This is the closest I’ve ever been to another living being.”
Turning in his embrace, Selenka ran her hands up his back as she pressed her lips to his right pectoral muscle. The contact made his body lock, the sensations that tore through him visceral.
“Does it hurt?” Wolf-gold eyes holding his in challenge. “Have you been in pain each time we kissed?”
He fought to find his feet so he could explain, fought to find his breath. “The majority of the squad underwent psychic training that included the embedding of a feedback loop that punished any deviation from Silence with increasing amounts of physical pain.”
Selenka pricked his back with her claws. “Do you have that? Don’t lie to me, mate of mine.”
Drinking her in, drunk on her, he said, “My trainers had problems getting that part of the mental leash to stick. No one ever worked out why.” Ethan exhaled, inhaled again because he could never get enough of her scent. “Ming told them to forget it—he already had me on a private leash.”
Raising one hand, claws retracted but eyes yet wolf, Selenka ran her fingertips over the side of his bristled jaw. “Then why are your muscles like concrete, your breathing out of kilter?”
“Because I want to devour you.” Like a ravaging beast. “Control is difficult.”
A nip of his throat. “You sure you’re not in pain?”
“No.” Shuddering, he angled his neck for more. “But the sensory overload is significant, and I’m inexperienced. I don’t know the next step.”
Selenka’s smile was different this time, a sensual and intimate thing that asked him to smile with her. “Figuring it out is part of the fun, zaichik.”
He stiffened, jaw clenching. “I am not a rabbit. I am not prey.” Ethan might not fully understand changeling ways, but he knew no alpha wolf would ever treat a prey creature as an equal intimate partner.
Selenka’s laugh was wild and beautiful and it caused the hot tendrils inside him to strengthen and grow and grow. “That’s why I call you zaichik,” she growled with another nip of his throat. “Because you’re the last thing from a fluffy little rabbit that I can imagine. I think it’s funny, but I’ll stop if you don’t like it.”
Ethan dared bite her shoulder, got a growl and a stroke thr
ough his hair in response. Happy—truly happy—he said, “You can use it.” Now that he understood the why behind it, the term was a secret joke between them. Others would hear her use it and be confused—because no one ever saw an Arrow as prey. But Ethan would know his wolf mate was playing with him and it would mean everything.
While on watch prior to the arrival of the intruders, he’d looked up the material to which Margo had directed him. While he hadn’t been in a space conducive to consuming Hourglass Lives and Ridge remained a mystery to him, Wild Woman magazine had proved an excellent source of information. Several articles had reiterated that while wolves were serious with the world, they were playful, nosy, and deeply loyal with those they claimed.
Unable to resist tasting her smile, he took a kiss, deep and unskilled and voracious. Moaning and wrapping her arms around his neck, his mate flicked out her tongue to wet his lips and his brain blanked, the Scarab power pounding against his shields. Shoving it back with a violent push, Ethan sank into her, sank into sensation.
Selenka didn’t deny him anything. Her lips were plush against his, her tongue wet, and body sleek and cool from the shower. Sliding his hands down her back, to just above the swell of her buttocks, he held her close as he indulged his senses as he’d never before done.
As she indulged him.
He felt spoiled by her, and he reveled in it, in being simply given what he wanted instead of having his need used to torture him.
When he broke the kiss to taste her throat, she arched her neck for him. And when he returned for another ravenous kiss, she gave it to him without hesitation. Inside, the shattered pieces of him continued to re-form into a whole, held by the glowing molten heat of her.
“What do you want?” Warm breath against his throat, Selenka’s teeth closing over sensitive skin.
Ethan’s engorged penis throbbed. “I’ve always understood the mechanics of sexual arousal.” Had been taught those mechanics so he could then be taught how to crush it. “But I didn’t know.” That it’d be near pain, the wanting inside him, that he’d be breathless, his brain not fully functional.
