by Nalini Singh
“I’ll take you,” Riaz said, because damn it, he was a lieutenant, even when it came to a prickly piece of cactus like Adria. “Indigo made sure I was familiar with the details after I came back from my posting in Europe.” He’d been away long enough for many of the subtle security precautions to have been altered. “It’ll be good for me to review the knowledge.”
Adria blinked, fingertips tightening on the sides of the plas map. “I appreciate it.” It was the only thing she could say without giving everything away.
Riaz snorted, his hands strong and competent on the manual steering wheel as he navigated a particularly steep embankment, his bronzed arms dusted with a sprinkling of fine black hair. “About as much as you appreciate a root canal,” he said, thrusting the vehicle into hover drive, “but whatever your problem with me, we have to work together.”
Setting her jaw, she focused on the view beyond the window—of the most magnificent scenery on this earth. Summer had faded, fall a crisp promise in the air, but here the land was swathed in dark green, the peaks in the distance touched with white. She’d grown up on this land, and even now, after she’d been away for so long, it sang to her wolf, as it did to every SnowDancer. Den territory had a way of being home to all of them, no matter if they’d given the name to another place.
I can heal here.
It was a thought deep in her heart, one that almost managed to unknot the tension wi—“Who’s that?” She jerked forward as a big tan-colored wolf raced across a verdant meadow to their left, chasing a sleek silver wolf she immediately recognized. “He’s being rough with Evie.” Fury boiled in her blood. “Stop the car.”
Riaz’s chuckle held pure male amusement, fuel to her temper. “That’s Tai, and Evie won’t appreciate the interruption, Aunt Adria.”
Biting back her harsh response, Adria glanced at the two wolves again, saw what she’d missed at first glance. They were playing, all teeth and claws, but with no real aggression to it. Just as Riaz turned a corner, cutting off the view, the two wolves nuzzled one another and Adria realized Tai and Evie weren’t playing, they were courting.
“She’s too young.” While Indigo was very close to Adria in age, Tarah had borne Evie later in life. The little girl had toddled around after her older sister and Adria when they’d been in their teens, sweet natured and stubborn and beloved. Adria couldn’t imagine her submissive niece was in any way ready to handle a dominant—and having met Tai, she knew he was a hell of a lot stronger and more dangerous than Evie.
“She’s still a wolf,” Riaz said, his deep voice a rumble that vibrated uncomfortably against her achingly tight nipples, “an adult female wolf. You might have forgotten, Ms. Frost, but touch is necessary for most of our kind.”
Her hand fisted, that nerve far too close to the surface.
A year.
It had been a year since she’d shared intimate skin privileges, a rawly painful kind of isolation for a predatory changeling in the prime of her life. Even before then, things had been fragmenting for a long time, her wolf starved of affection. But she’d been handling it, handling the broken pieces inside of her, until Riaz and the raging storm of a sudden, visceral sexual attraction that gripped her in its claws and shook, until she could barely think.
“If we’re throwing stones,” she said, protecting herself by going on the offensive, “I’m not the only one who prefers a cold bed.” Riaz was a highly eligible male—the fact he’d taken no lovers was a point of irritation with the SnowDancer women who wanted nothing better than to tussle with him. “Maybe that’s why you’re such a prick.”
Riaz’s snarl was low, rolling over her skin with the power of his dominance. Wrenching the wheel, he brought the SUV to a stop on the side of the road. “I’ve had it.” He pinned her with his gaze. “What the hell is your problem with me?”
Chapter 2
“DRIVE,” SHE SAID, almost ready to crawl out of her skin with the need to rip off his T-shirt and use her teeth on all that hot, firm muscle. “Mack is waiting for us.”
“He can wait a few more minutes.” Eyes that were no longer in any way human slammed into hers. “You’ve had a hard-on for me since you transferred to the den. I want to know why.”
Gut twisting, she snapped off her safety belt and pushed open her door to step out into the cold mountain air, summer a distant memory this far up. The chill did nothing to cool the fever in her blood, the need ravaging her body, a need that threatened to make her a slave when she’d finally found freedom.
Desperate, she focused on the majesty of her surroundings in an effort to fight the tumult within, her wolf clawing at the inside of her skin in violent repudiation of her choice to back off. In front of her lay tumbled glacial rocks, huge and imposing, beyond them the rich, deep green of the firs that dominated this area. Above it all was a sky so blue it hurt.
Home.
The slam of a door, followed by the thud of boots on the earth shattered her fragile attempt at control, and then Riaz was standing in front of her. Suddenly her view was hard muscle and implacable strength, the wild, dark scent of him in her every inhalation.
“We are not leaving,” he said, his skin caressed by the sunlight that gilded his hair a gleaming blue-black, “until we work this out.”
Feeling trapped, suffocated, she shoved at his chest and slipped out to stand beside the car rather than with her back to it. “Don’t you put all the blame on me.” Fighting back was instinct, her internal composure shattered. “You’ve been picking at me since the day I was pulled into the den.”
He growled, and the rough sound rasped over her skin, wrapped around her throat. “Self-fucking-defense. You took one look at me and decided you hated my guts. I want to know why.”
Jesus, Adria thought, how had she gotten herself into this? She wasn’t this woman who couldn’t control her words, her thoughts. She was calm, stable, sensible, had been the levelheaded pivot for her friends when they’d all been hormone-fueled teenagers. She was the one who’d talked them down from the adrenaline-induced ledge she was now riding.
“Look,” she said, making the conscious decision to wrench herself back before her frustrated wolf took control and she found herself feasting on male lips currently thin with anger, “it’s nothing personal. I’m generally a bitch.” According to Martin, she was one with a stone heart.
Riaz snorted. “Nice try, but I’ve seen you with others in the pack.” He took another step toward her, invading her space and her senses, the scent of the forest serrated with a sharper edge that was pure furious wolf. “I’ve even seen you smile. How about you crack open one for me?” Eyes of dark gold drilled into hers.
Hell if she was going to allow him to walk all over her. “Get out of my face.”
“You sure you want me to?” he asked, a dangerous angle to his jaw. “Maybe the reason you react like a hissing cat around me is because you want me even closer.”
She sucked in a breath.
Riaz’s eyes widened.
“Damn.” It was a wondering statement.
A fraction of an instant later, strong, rough-skinned hands cupped her face, a voracious mouth slamming down on her own, the potent scent of aroused male and the exotic, luscious taste of citrus and bitter chocolate flooding her senses.
Adria froze for a second before her touch-starved body took over, her wolf clawing to the surface. Grabbing at his shoulders, she devoured that sensual, demanding mouth, tangling her tongue with his, licking and sucking. When he hitched her up with a single powerful move, she wrapped her legs around his waist and let him slam her against the door of the rugged all-terrain vehicle. He tasted as sexy and dangerous and infuriating as he looked, one big hand thrusting into her hair, the other gripping her hip.
Parts of her body that had been in cold storage for a lot longer than a year sparked to wakefulness, hungry and wild and more than a little feral. Riaz growled when she drew blood with her claws on his nape, only to deepen the kiss, shoving the hand on her hip under h
er shirt to close over her breast and squeeze.
The shock of the proprietary hold almost snapped her out of the madness, but then he pushed up her bra and the rough warmth of his palm on her bare flesh was a jolt to the system that splintered rational thought. Unable to get enough of his mouth, she sucked on his tongue, his lips, before kissing her way down the stubble of his jaw to grip at the tendons of his neck with her teeth.
Growling deep in his chest, he pulled her head back to take her mouth again. He wasn’t the least bit gentle, but she didn’t want gentle, her claws digging into his shoulders as her body moved with raw impatience against him. Taking his hand off her breast, he tore the button off her jeans, tugged down the zipper. It was as she broke the kiss to gasp in a breath that he shoved his hand into her panties and through the damp curls between her thighs—to spear two blunt-tipped fingers into her in a hard thrust that made her scream and break apart in a powerful clenching of muscles.
The orgasm was a naked blade, one that cut her in half with the primal viciousness of it and left her bereft at the same time. Opening her eyes when he withdrew his fingers, she saw a glittering expression she understood all too well. Fury. At her. At himself. “Put me down,” she said, shaken to the core by the violent depth of her response.
Never, never had she orgasmed that hard … and felt so lost, a block of ice in her gut.
Not saying a word, he did so, putting his hands on her waist to help stabilize her when her legs wobbled. “Get your hands off me.” She’d be damned if he’d touch her with that look in his eyes, his anger a brutal heat that slapped her with every breath.
LETTING go of the stiff woman in his arms, Riaz turned on his heel. “Fuck.” What the hell had just happened? He didn’t even like Adria, and yet he’d betrayed his mate with her, would’ve had his cock balls-deep in her by now if she hadn’t stopped things. That cock pulsed, so rigid it was painful. No.
“Here.”
He turned in time to catch a bottle of water.
“Wash your fingers,” she said, red streaking the defined arch of her cheekbones. He knew the color had nothing to do with embarrassment, even before she bit out, “I don’t particularly want to advertise my lapse in judgment,” through gritted teeth.
A second later, she was inside the car, a sculpture in ice, no hint remaining of the demanding female wolf who’d been wet and hot and tight around his fingers not two minutes ago.
Chapter 3
COUNCILOR KALEB KRYCHEK examined the consciousness of the individual he’d first been alerted to by the NetMind, the neosentience that was the librarian and guardian of the Net. The consciousness in front of him was moderately powerful—that of a Gradient 5.7 telepath employed by a major corporation. The male’s Silence was flawed, minor fractures visible to the careful eye. But that was an ordinary enough situation, and not what interested Kaleb.
This male had the bad luck to be uniquely susceptible to the unnamed and largely unnoticed disease that was carving silent, deadly runnels through the PsyNet. Others had been infected earlier, and were all now dead or insane. The mass outbreak at Sunshine Station had claimed one hundred and forty-one victims, eleven of whom had originally been put into involuntary comas in the belief they could be saved.
They couldn’t.
Subject 8-91, however, continued to function in spite of his advanced infection, leaving Kaleb to conclude that something had altered in the sickness within the Net, making it able to survive longer within its host. Contracted via direct contact with one of the “diseased” sections of the Net—though Kaleb was apparently immune to the effect, likely as a result of his connection to the twisted twin of the NetMind—the infection didn’t yet spread from person to person, but there was a high chance it would mutate further, becoming even more noxious.
Subject 8-91 was the first host the NetMind had found of the new variant, and as such, he’d become Kaleb’s barometer, his “canary in a coal mine.” The old saying was apropos. If 8-91 continued to react as he’d done to date, he would show the catastrophic effects of the quietly spreading rot before anyone else in the Net.
No, Kaleb corrected himself, 8-91 is already showing the effects. The male had had a violent outburst in his sleep two days ago, so violent that he’d broken several bones in his hand when he punched it into a wall. What made the violence interesting was that it had no connection to the male’s Silence—though he didn’t know that. It had been initiated by the changes the infection had caused in his brain.
Subject 8-91 had been smart enough to create a cover story before he went to see one of the M-Psy about his hand, but the NetMind watched him constantly, knew his every move. And since the NetMind and its twin, the DarkMind, both spoke to Kaleb, he was never unaware of the status of the subject.
Continue to watch, he told the NetMind, his order given less in words than via an intuitive psychic connection he could explain to no one, not even another Psy. Protect him from exposure. Kaleb needed 8-91 to remain an active part of the Net. Any interference would shadow the picture, dull the clear view of the progress of the male’s impairment and Kaleb’s understanding of it.
A stream of consciousness from the NetMind, a question.
No, Kaleb said in response. You can’t save him. He’s too damaged. The rot had invaded 8-91’s physical brain, was eating away at parts of his frontal lobe—a change so subtle the M-Psy would likely have missed it, even if he had been a neural specialist as opposed to orthopedic. As the infected from Sunshine Station had proved, there was no cure, and this new variant was more complex than the one that had resulted in the outbreak. Even if there had been a cure, Kaleb would’ve given the same answer—8-91’s death was inevitable.
Someone had to be the canary.
Dismissing the man from his thoughts after taking note of the development of the infection, he returned to his physical body, stopping only long enough to ask the NetMind and DarkMind both a question. Do you know the location of this individual? He sent through an image, along with a psychic profile built from his memories and the data files he’d hacked over the years.
???
The puzzlement was the same response he’d received each and every time he’d asked after his personal quarry ever since he’d first made contact with the twin neosentience. It was as if his target no longer existed in the Net, but Kaleb knew differently. And nothing, not even the inexplicable failure of the NetMind and DarkMind to sense the truth, would stop him from hunting down that target.
Chapter 4
HAWKE SNAGGED SIENNA’S hand as they passed in the corridor, dragging her into a corner hidden from the eyes of curious packmates. “Where are you going in such a rush?” His wolf was delighted to see her, rolling around in the autumn and spice of her scent like a pup. It made him remember how he’d awakened her this morning, how he’d licked up that delectable scent in a much more intimate fashion.
Sienna’s voice was low and caressing when she replied, the fingers of her free hand spread over his heart. “I’m meeting some of the leopards for lunch.”
“Kit?” A feral growl.
“Yes.” Her scowl matched the straight line of her mouth. “He’s my friend.”
The boy had also kissed her, dared to put his hands and his scent on her. “No.” It was an order from the wolf, a wolf used to obedience.
But Sienna Lauren Snow had never once bowed down to him. Tugging her hand from his hold, she rose on tiptoe to thrust both into his hair. “Yes.”
His stare was met by her own, his dominance countered by the steely will of a cardinal X. “I think it’s time I bit you again,” he muttered, rubbing his finger over the curve where her neck met her shoulder, his favorite spot to mark her.
The threat made Sienna pull playfully at his hair. “You did that this morning. It’s my turn.” A quick nip of his lower lip. “Do you want to join us?”
Hell, yes—because while he might not be able to intimidate his smart, sexy, dangerous mate, he damn well could and would warn off t
he baby cat alpha she called friend. But—“I have to meet with the maternal females.” Wincing at the reminder, he bent his head so she could pet him more effectively. “They’re on the warpath about some of the juveniles.”
Laughing, Sienna ran her nails over his scalp, the caress making his wolf arch its neck in wild pleasure. “You sound scared.”
“Any man not scared of a bunch of maternals ganging up on him needs his head examined.” Hackles still raised by the thought of her lunch date, he straightened to his full height, his mate’s hands sliding to his shoulders. “If that cub puts his hands anywhere near you, I don’t care if he is your friend, I’ll rip his arms off.” He wasn’t joking—this soon after mating, the wolf was possessive beyond belief, the mating bond raw.
Sienna’s smile faded. “You know I would never—”
“Of course I know that,” he snapped, annoyed that she’d even contemplate he didn’t trust her. “That’s not the point.”
A raised eyebrow, tiny nails digging into his shoulders. “What is the point then, Your Alphaness?”
He snapped his teeth at her for that smart-ass remark. “The point is you’re mine. End of story. No touching by any other male.” He paused, considered. “Special family-affection dispensation for those related to you.”
When she didn’t respond, he leaned in close and whispered, “I did warn you,” his lips brushing her ear. He’d told her exactly what it would mean to be his, how hard he’d be to handle, how totally he’d claim her. And still she’d come to him, but he wondered if she was only now understanding the true depth of what he’d demand from her. The thought that he might be distressing his mate by being who he was made both parts of him go motionless, watchful.
Shivering in response to his touch, she pushed him back until she could meet his gaze. Her glare was dark … but then she laughed, the sound of it wild lightning along his fur. “I guess,” she said, the stars vibrant in her eyes, “that serves me right for mating with an alpha.”
