Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity)

by Nalini Singh

  “Yes, that’s not critical,” Sahara reassured her. “It’s more a curiosity.”

  Overcome by the scope of what she’d learned about herself today, Memory stayed quiet for the rest of the conversation. After the others left—Krychek and Sahara teleporting out, Vasic and Ivy going to speak to the other Es—Memory turned into Alexei’s chest and burrowed in.

  He slid one hand to her nape, his other arm like steel around her. “If I hear you question your abilities ever again, I’ll bite you twice.”

  She laughed, the sound a little wet. “You already bit me twice today.” It had been in bed, her wolf in a wickedly playful mood this morning. He’d done it lightly, left no marks, but she could still feel the brush of teeth on the underside of her breast, and at her throat. “But . . . can we go do that again?”

  Alexei brushed back her curls. “You’re exhausted.”

  “Psychically, not physically.” She kissed her wolf’s throat, the intimate area he’d allow no one else to touch. “Today was a good discovery . . . but I feel unsteady, off-center. I never feel that way when we’re naked together.”

  Chuckling, he grinned. “Come on then, lioness. Let’s go play.”

  Chapter 57

  Skin privileges are a core necessity to any changeling. Without tactile contact, the dominants become edgy, irritable, bad-tempered, while others get depressed. But you know who’re the worst? The predatory dominants. Good grief. Talk about snarly.

  So if you’re with a wolf, or a leopard, or a bear, or any of their dangerous brethren, we highly recommend a daily dose of skin privileges—intimate and not. We know, we know, it’s going to be a great sacrifice on your part, but think of the good of the pack or clan and you can get through it.

  —From the February 2083 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”

  THE TWO OF them snuck into the den like naughty children, on a mission to avoid being stopped. Of course that proved impossible. Memory tried to keep a straight face when a packmate flagged them down to ask Alexei about a border incursion issue. She just barely managed to hold it together until the packmate had moved on and they were around a corner.

  Giggles erupted inside her.

  Leaning into Alexei, her hand linked to his, she tried to stop it, but the delight filled her bloodstream. That was when they ran into Mercy, who was on the hunt for Alexei to talk about something else. She took one look at them and shook her head, her lips tugging up at the corners. “I have no knowledge of your whereabouts for the next hour and I feel the strange compulsion to cover your shift for the same period.” She glanced pointedly at her watch. “Time’s ticking.”

  “I owe you one!” Alexei called back with a grin as he and Memory took off.

  “You can babysit the triplets in return!”

  “Mercy has triplets?” Memory’s eyes widened.

  “We call them pupcubs.” Alexei ducked into a corridor to avoid a group of passing packmates, then tugged her back out after the risk passed. “Alphas say her two boys will shift into wolves, her baby girl into a leopard.”

  He winked. “Babysitting’s actually a hotly contested item among the two packs. Last week, Mercy’s brothers absconded with all three of them, so this week, Riley’s sister’s staked a claim. And we’re here.”

  Hauling her inside their quarters, he shut the door behind her and pressed her up against that door. One hand at her throat, he kissed her with the slow deliberation of a connoisseur. Shivering, Memory slid her hands under his T-shirt and kissed him back the same, tasting her golden wolf lick by lick, touch by touch.

  He shifted back at one point to tug off his T-shirt, then her top, then lifted her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist, her back to the door. Arms around his neck, she drew him back into their languid playtime of a kiss, her breasts crushed against his chest. Big hands curved around her rib cage, moved down to the dip of her waist.

  She was beginning to fill out under the care and attention of not just her wolf but her pack. Food appeared in front of her anytime she was seated somewhere for five seconds. The other day, little Ben had broken his muffin in half and given it to her. Well aware by now what food meant to a wolf, Memory had sat down next to him and shared the gift in the spirit it was given.

  As for Alexei, he tempted her with treats every single day. “I love you.” She spoke against his lips, her smile bone-deep. “My gorgeous, growly, wolf.”

  “Grr.”

  Grinning, she arched her throat so he could kiss it, and he took full, voracious advantage. She petted the muscled silk of his shoulders, moaned out his name, tugged up his head for more kisses. Slow and languorous, they took their time, the slide of skin on skin a pleasure to be savored. Alexei traced the scalloped edge of her striped sea-green bra at one point and smiled. “I have something for you.”

  Memory ran her nails through the fine hair on his chest. “I know. I can’t wait to have it inside me,” she said, feeling young and naughty and confident.

  Dipping his head, he sucked her nipple into his mouth without warning. Her back arched, her fingers clenching in his hair. A scrape of teeth through the satin of her bra before he released her. “You’ll get that, too,” he promised with a slow grin that melted her bones, then carried her to the bed and dropped her onto the mattress.

  Turning over onto her stomach, she watched him open the built-in closet and pull out a small delivery bag. “You’re not the only one who knows how to use the Order button,” he said with a smug smile as he walked back.

  Memory wanted to pounce on him, but he was so proud of whatever he’d bought her that she sat up on her knees and accepted the bag. He watched her with wolf eyes as she tore it open to retrieve a box marked with the emblem of a lingerie brand. Teeth sinking into her lower lip, she opened the box . . . and grinned so hard her face ached.

  “Told you I’d replace it,” said her wolf.

  Memory picked up the pink lace bra, identical to the one he’d torn off her their first time together. He’d even gotten the size right. Just like he had with her sparkly sneakers. Because her wolf noticed her and what mattered to her. Not only had he found the right bra, he’d gone one step further and ordered the matching panties, which she hadn’t originally bought because the bra on its own was splurge enough.

  The froth of pink held in one hand, she looked up and crooked a finger. When he bent over, she nipped at his lower lip. “Want me to model it?”

  His eyes gleamed. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  And that was how Memory found herself exiting the bathroom a few minutes later dressed in a new pink bra and matching panties, and nothing else. Unless you counted her hair, which was doing its usual crazy thing.

  Alexei wolf-whistled as she strode across the length of their bedroom as if on a catwalk, one hand on her hip and breasts high. “Twirl,” he called out.

  Giggling, she turned, gave him a sassy look over one shoulder, then swiveled back to blow him a kiss . . . before running to the bed to pounce on him. Never, never had she thought she would ever feel this young and carefree. The idea that she’d one day be tussling in bed with a golden wolf who thought she was beautiful and sexy and told her so hadn’t even been a dream.

  They laughed and played and she kissed him all over and told him he was wonderful.

  “I know,” he said solemnly.

  Grinning, she bit his throat. One hand in her hair, he held her close, arching his throat so she could do what she wanted. And what she wanted was to adore her wolf. This time, she got him naked first, then ran her hands over every hard ridge and hollow, pressed her mouth to delectable inch by delectable inch.

  He groaned when she closed her hands around the thick hardness of his cock. “Take the bra off or I’ll be putting in a repeat order.”

  Reaching back, Memory unhooked the bra, then tugged it off her arms and put it
carefully at the end of the bed. Alexei’s hands were on her waist before she finished turning, and she was flat on her back seconds later. He hooked his fingers into her panties, pulled them down the heated skin of her legs.

  Lifting her arms above her head, she stretched her body as she spread her thighs, enticing her mate.

  He slid one hand under the curve of her thigh, squeezed. “Pretty lioness.” Kisses across her navel, lower.

  Memory gasped and clutched at his hair. “Alexei.” It came out a touch shocked.

  A rumble in his chest, he kissed her inner thigh. “Yes?”

  It took her no time to make her decision. “Yes.” She had no secrets from Alexei, no part of herself she wouldn’t share.

  Claws slicing out, he pushed her legs open wider, then he devoured her like the wolf he was. Memory lost count of her orgasms at some point after three. By the time her very satisfied wolf mate finally pushed his cock inside her, she was pure boneless female. Eyes heavy-lidded, she watched him move above her, this wolf with the face of a young god and a heart so big it loved too hard and hurt too much.

  Today, however, his emotions were as young and as playful as her own. When he kissed her it was with a smile. Wrapping her lazy limbs around him, Memory held on to her mate as he took her with an erotic slowness that had her gasping his name again at the end.

  Chapter 58

  While twins are not to be separated at birth, so-called Harmonies are to be curtailed. Though most prevalent in twins, this rare phenomenon has, through Psy history, occasionally been found in unrelated individuals who share an unusually close bond.

  Regardless, Harmonies go against every tenet of Silence by forging a deeper emotional tie between the pair with each use. Twins who display this propensity—or twins born into a family with a history of it—should be separated and alienated from one another as soon as they turn seven years of age, and are no longer at risk of psychic collapse.

  —Classified rider to Coda 27 of the Silence Protocol (to be disclosed only to trusted individuals in affected families)

  HE COULDN’T GET to the comatose Arrow. The squad’s minds were all but invisible in the PsyNet and they’d no doubt surrounded their injured squadmate when the male’s own shields failed. Even if he had been able to find the dying Arrow, he couldn’t do this alone. He needed the cooperation of the one person who had no loyalty to him.

  His twin opened the door with an expressionless face. “Pax,” Theodora said. “What have I done to merit your presence? Come to hand me another headache?”

  He looked into that blonde and blue-eyed face that so strongly echoed his, except that her bones were finer, her lips softer, her hair longer, and he knew he would fail. But he had to try to fix this. “I need your help.”

  A raised eyebrow. “What can I, a lowly 2.7 Tk, do for my Gradient 9 brother?”

  That had always been the problem. He was stronger by magnitudes and thus groomed for leadership, while his twin was relegated to working as a tech who moved tiny comm components using her mind. He’d been educated at Eton and then Cambridge in the UK, while she’d been comp-schooled on her own at home, then sent to a community college. He lived in a penthouse suite, Theo in a small one-bedroom apartment in the same building.

  In a final insult, the family had spent a large amount of cash to obscure her birth and place her at a different point in the Marshall family tree. As far as the world was concerned, Pax had been a single birth, his sister born a year later. “Better for you if the PsyNet doesn’t see you linked with such a weak mind,” their grandfather had said to Pax while Theo was standing right next to him. “Perception shapes power.”

  It had been their seventh birthday. He and Theo hadn’t lived in the same home since.

  Pax kept an eye on her, made sure she was never out of funds and that no one was abusing her because of her low status in the family, but the two of them weren’t siblings, not really. “I need you to Harmonize.” It had taken him years to find the official word for what they did; it had been buried in moldy historical documents in the family archives.

  Turned out twins in the Marshall line had a history of the phenomenon.

  Her eyebrows came together, the nascent frown another sign of her “weakness”—per their parents’ relentless pronouncements when they’d been children. Pax had tried to defend her, but that only led to more punishment for her, so he’d stopped. Instead, the second he could hide it from their parents, he’d begun to boost her shields so no one would see that her Silence was fragmented. It was a fact the two of them never discussed.

  Now Silence had fallen and his twin no longer needed the one connection between them.

  “Harmonize? What are—” Eyes widening, she stepped inside, holding the door so he could follow. “What is your problem?” she said in a hard tone after they were behind the privacy of the closed door. “You broke Silence, learned what it means to be amused, and decided to come play with poor, pathetic Theo?”

  “I need help because I’m going mad.” She deserved the truth.

  Theo stared at him. “Pax, you have a mind like a razor. Remember?”

  Another wall between them, their Psy Councilor grandfather castigating her while praising him. “Look. See.” It was the first time since early childhood that either one of them had invited the other in.

  Theo balked. “I don’t know what game you’re playing—”

  “Look, Theo. Please.”

  He actually saw a tremor run through her at the last word. “Fine.” Teeth gritted, she made mental contact, slipping through his shields because he let her.

  He showed her all of it.

  Her face was bloodless when she emerged. “The Arrows can’t help you,” she whispered. “That’s not what they do.”

  “I know.” Pax found the words to explain. “I think a certain E might be able to help, but she needs to know I’m not a monster.”

  Theo’s lips twisted. “Always the manipulator.”

  Pax didn’t correct her. He did always think five steps ahead . . . except in madness. “There’s also a chance no one can help me.” If so, he’d no longer be around to protect Theo. “I’ve set up an account for you. I’m telepathing you the details. I’ll warn you before I terminate myself so you can get out.” Their vicious family would massacre her otherwise, simply for being born into the direct line of power, even if she didn’t want that power.

  Theo ignored everything he’d said. “How do we know if the—what did you call it?—Harmonizing, still works? We only did it a couple of times as children.”

  The first had been when they’d discovered a dying bird on the lawn, the second after they’d escaped their parents while in a care facility; their mother and father had gone there to check on the status of a badly injured relative. Pax and Theo had ended up in the room of a coma patient.

  They’d been separated for a month after each incident—because Theo’s psychic abilities had flatlined dramatically, and so had Pax’s. Their parents didn’t know what they’d done, but they knew the twins needed to be together for it. After that, Pax and Theo were monitored constantly on the PsyNet to ensure no connections ever took place.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I have no other option. Will you help?”

  Theo stared at him for a long time before nodding. Because when their conscience had been divided in the womb, she’d gotten the lion’s share.

  * * *

  • • •

  ADEN’S direct call code was one he shared rarely with those outside the squad. However, since signing the Trinity Accord, the squad had provided a way for others to contact them. Trinity was about building a stable world that was a true triumvirate, Psy, humans, and changelings working as a unit. That couldn’t happen without open lines of communication.

  Pax Marshall had never taken advantage of that contact option until now. Neither had he ever asked t
o meet with the squad. But Aden knew who he was—the head of the Marshall empire. A powerful business unit, but one with no obvious military ties since the assassination of their last patriarch. Below the surface, however, Pax had access to a very well-trained black ops team.

  “Pax,” Aden said when he met the Gradient 9 telepath on an isolated outcrop above the crashing ocean. “This is unexpected.”

  The arctic blue of Pax Marshall’s eyes held his. “I may be able to assist the brain-damaged Arrow in a coma.”

  Aden went motionless. Marshall had no reason to know of Yuri’s injuries and the heartbreaking decision Aden planned to carry out tomorrow. “Were you behind the attack?”

  “Yes.”

  Aden was leader of the squad partially because he was so calm, but at that moment, he came within a split second of executing Pax Marshall where he stood. “Why are you here?” Because no one ever admitted to harming the squad; it was a death sentence.

  “My mind is failing.” Pax’s voice, with its crisp English accent, was steady, his eyes on the distant horizon. “When I attacked the compound, I did so without conscious volition—I am too intelligent to make an enemy of the squad. Right now, however, I’m sane and may be able to offer recompense.”

  Aden had no way to know if Marshall was lying, but he couldn’t discount the offer on the minute chance the telepath could make good on it. “What’s in this for you?” Pax was too ruthless a negotiator for it to be otherwise.

  “I need help from the dark E.”

  “That’s not my call to make.” Memory Aven-Rose was very much her own person.

  “I know. I’ll help Yuri first. Then . . . we’ll see if she decides to assist me.”

  “Come to these coordinates in one hour,” Aden said, his murderous urge toward Pax under brittle control at best. “Yuri will be there.” He strode toward Abbot; the teleport-capable Tk was on light duty and had brought Aden to this meeting. The teleport distance to their next destination was also well within the capacity of his healing body. “Take me to Yuri.”