by Nalini Singh
Instead of replying and though he’d knocked all the air out of her, she went to slam her head back into his face. He jerked out of the way with another brutal word, setting her free. Pressing up to take a seated position on the mat, she raised an eyebrow at Riordan when he gave her a distinctly wary look from where he sat on the other side. “Oh, sorry,” she said with sweetness that would’ve done a candy bar proud, “were we only pretending to train?”
Another growl, this one harsh and from the chest. “You’re my alpha’s mate,” he snapped out with a raw anger she’d never before witnessed in him. “My wolf can’t hurt you.”
It knocked the air out of her all over again. She’d been so focused on how packmates would feel about her now that they knew of the cold fire, she hadn’t really considered the more direct effect of her relationship with Hawke—especially since her closest friend, Evie, had been so easy about it. But the fact was, she wasn’t just Sienna Lauren, novice soldier and Riordan’s friend anymore. She was Sienna Lauren Snow, mate to the SnowDancer alpha.
Stunned by the far-reaching implications of Riordan’s statement, it took her several long seconds to formulate her reply. “An alpha can be challenged,” she said slowly, “so lower-ranked soldiers can get aggressive toward him, and by extension, his mate.”
Sighing, Riordan fell backward, until he lay flat on his back. “Do you know what Hawke would do to me if I hurt you?”
“Not if the injury happened in this context.” No matter his protectiveness, Hawke would never get in the way of her development and growth as a soldier. He’d taken her to the mat more than once when he thought she was getting lazy with her physical training—not to mention, he was the one who’d thrown her into that physical training in the first place.
“If you can’t or aren’t able to grasp that,” she said, “I’ll ask Indigo to make sure we’re not partnered up again.” It wasn’t a threat, but the offer of a friend who understood his wolf’s nature. “No harm, no foul.”
Riordan snapped up into a sitting position. “You’re flicking me off because I don’t want to hit you hard enough to bruise?” Simmering fury.
“I’m saying I can’t get better if my partner treats me like fine china.” Her enemies certainly wouldn’t worry about hurting her when they came after her, and not all of them would use solely psychic methods. “I need to be lethal in every way if I’m going to survive Ming and the rest of the Council.”
Riordan blew out a harsh breath. “It makes me so angry that you have to think about shit like that.”
She was the one who shrugged this time. “It’s part of life.” The good things more than made up for the bad.
Getting to his feet, Riordan held out his hand, tugging her up when she accepted the offer. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll stop holding back. But Sin … I’m a wolf. It might get sketchy at times.” A mock punch to her jaw. “Just thump me around the head to set me straight.”
Her smile was in her heart. “Deal.”
Later that night, when Hawke got into bed after a long comm meeting, she snuggled into the wild heat of him and told him of her confrontation with Riordan. “He was much better after, even pulled me up on a couple of mistakes.”
Hawke folded one arm under his head, the other around her, his fingers tracing curving patterns on her lower back. “I was expecting some of that—you’re the only one who can deal with it.”
Because the instant he stepped in, he negated her power. “Thank you,” she said, running her foot over his shin, “for loving me enough to let me fight my own battles.”
He fisted his hand in her hair. “No—some I’m claiming as my right.”
“Okay. As long as you don’t get greedy and try to handle them all.” Sensing his surprise, she braced herself on one elbow and looked down into the incredible beauty of his night-glow eyes, the translucent blue lit with white fire. “Gorgeous wolf.”
“I like the way you pet me.”
“Before,” she said, stroking her fingers down his chest in a caress that pleasured them both, “I used to fight you all the time because it felt as if you didn’t trust me to do anything, as if I had to force you to see me.” She pressed her fingers to his lips when he scowled, went to speak. “Doesn’t matter if it was true or not—that’s how I felt.
“Now I know different … so I can give in sometimes.” Such conscious surrender wouldn’t change his wolf’s respect for her, wouldn’t make him think her any less. It would simply let that wolf know she trusted him with her vulnerability—and that was as important as her own pride.
Hawke moved with quicksilver grace to press her to her back, his muscled thigh pushing between her own, his hand still clenched in her hair. His kiss, when it came, was a hotly tender thing. “So strong, my Sienna, so beautiful.” His mouth, wet and possessive down the line of her throat, making her body arch toward him. “Thank you,” he said in a rumbling echo of her own words, “for loving me enough to understand my need to take care of you.”
“Hawke.”
“Shh … Lie back and think of England.”
Laughter reawakened inside of her, bubbling its way past the raw burn of emotion. “I’d rather think of you.”
She felt his smile against the curve of her abdomen, his jaw rough with stubble that made her shiver as he kissed his way oh-so-slowly down her body.
Chapter 14
THE DAY OF Hawke and Sienna’s mating ceremony dawned bright and clear. Though Adria had done an evening shift, she was up and awake by ten, ready to pitch in with the final preparations. Nell, the maternal female in charge, assigned her to grunt work in the kitchens. Adria was perfectly happy with that—she liked working with her hands, even if it was only to peel two thousand potatoes.
“Hey.” A broad-shouldered man with dark hair and tanned skin pulled up a stool across from her, his smile wide, the dimple in his left cheek giving him a roguish air. “I’ve been sent to join the foot soldiers.” He held up a peeler. “Name’s Sam. You’re Adria, right?”
It was impossible not to smile back. “Yes.”
“I didn’t know Indigo had another sister.”
The mistake was an easy one to make if you didn’t know the family well. “Tarah’s my sister,” she said. “So I’m technically Indigo’s aunt.”
“Bullshit.” Lines between his eyebrows.
Her wolf was at once amused and delighted. “Scout’s honor.” Her parents had been—according to her mother—“deliriously ecstatic” at their surprise pregnancy soon after they’d celebrated the mating of their eldest child.
Indigo had been born a mere four years later.
“Huh.” A long pause as they peeled. “So, you have a date for the mating ceremony?”
It felt good to be flirted with, to exercise her own rusty flirtation skills. “Are you telling me you’re not taken?”
A shrug. “I didn’t want to make anyone jealous, so I was going to go stag, but now…” A look so charming it could’ve come from a feline. Impressive, given that Sam was human.
She almost said yes—he was adorable and sexy and frank about his attraction to her. But … he was so innocent. In his late twenties and clearly both tough and courageous from what she’d seen of his actions on the battlefield, but not even a little hard. Though the actual age gap between them was likely to be five or six years, she felt ancient in comparison. “I’m not good for you, Sam.”
His smile faded at her quiet words, his brown eyes velvet soft and intent. “Maybe I’m good for you, hmm?” He peeled another potato, as if waiting for her to say something else. When she didn’t, he issued a dramatic sigh. “Fine, I’ll accept defeat—on one condition.”
God, but she liked him. “Doesn’t sound much like accepting defeat.”
“I’m a SnowDancer.” A sinful grin. “Promise you’ll dance as many dances with me as I want.”
“Just dancing,” she said, pinning him with a grim stare. It wouldn’t be fair to Sam to permit him to think it might progress an
y further—not when her wolf remained fixated on another man. The painful, unwanted desire was something she’d conquer, but she would not hurt anyone else along the way.
“Okay.” Sam’s suspiciously meek agreement was followed by a smug smile.
Adorable, she thought again, knowing he’d definitely try to sneak a kiss if nothing else. “Sam.” Laughter cancelled out her attempt to be stern. All at once, she felt light and young and carefree, something she’d never again expected to feel.
Dimple appearing to dangerous effect, he touched her boot with his, playful as a pup. “We’ll have fun.”
“Yes,” she said, her wolf padding happily inside her skin, “I think we will.”
RESTED and calmed by the time he’d spent in San Diego before returning to the den on an early morning flight, with his parents and their charges to follow that afternoon, Riaz helped set up the sound system for the ceremony—well, mostly he hefted things while the techs told him what to do. “I think they’re enjoying this a little too much,” he said to Elias when he and the senior soldier paused for a water break.
“How often do they get to give orders to a lieutenant?” Elias grinned … and almost tumbled forward when a small whirlwind attacked him from behind, wrapping her arms around his legs.
“Daddy!”
Throwing his bottle of water toward Riaz, Elias reached back to grab Sakura, hauling her up into his arms. “You almost made me do a face-plant, baby girl.”
Sakura giggled, her fine features painted with the well-known markings of a fictional warrior princess. “Neal was chasing me.” She peered over his shoulder. “There he comes!” Wriggling out of her father’s hold, she took off around the corner, arms and legs pumping with a strength that belied her thin frame.
A boy her age streaked by a moment later, a fluorescent green water bomb held in hand.
Wolf stretching in amusement, Riaz returned Elias’s water bottle. “Looks like the kids have started the party early.”
Instead of replying in kind, the senior soldier stared after where the children had disappeared, his expression pensive.
“Don’t worry,” Riaz said, thinking Eli was worried the boy would hurt Sakura. “Drew checked the water bombs. They don’t hit with any kind of impact—it’s just about getting the other person wet.”
“What? Oh.” Elias shook his head, shoving a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “No, it’s not that.” A pause as he drank. “Thing is … I haven’t seen that smile on her face since before the burns.”
Hit by laser fire in an unprovoked Pure Psy attack, Elias had suffered injuries so severe, he’d been in shock by the time they got him to the infirmary. Little Sakura had been disconsolate—she was the apple of her daddy’s eye, her sadness all the more poignant for being so silent. She’d been this big-eyed, shocked waif it had broken the pack’s heart to see.
Riaz knew both Eli and his mate, Yuki, continued to worry about the long-term impact of the trauma on their child. “It’ll take time,” he said, his mind on another child, another father, “but she’ll get over it. Kids are tougher than adults think.”
Elias met his gaze. “You sound certain.”
“My dad was badly hurt in the fighting when Garrick died.” His teacher father had known he had no chance against the dominants who had turned, but he’d stood firm in defense of the innocent. “It really shook me.” He didn’t like thinking about it, even now. “Because dads aren’t supposed to get hurt, you know? Best thing my parents did was to not baby or coddle me or my brother afterward—the normalcy helped us settle down.” And even as a boy, he’d known that he was lucky, so lucky.
Riley had lost his parents.
Hawke had lost his father … and not long afterward, his mother.
So many other friends had been made orphans or been left with only one parent.
“Just love her,” he said. “That’s all she needs.”
“I’ll never forget what the den was like back then, after everything was over.” Chill shadows whispered into the warmth of Eli’s eyes. “How eerie, how quiet. So many of the strong were dead. I was a novice at the time, and terrified the pack was going to shatter around us.”
But SnowDancer hadn’t broken. It had grown stronger. Until tonight they celebrated the mating of the boy who had given up his childhood to lead the pack out of the darkness. Nothing and no one, Riaz thought, his own wolf fierce in its loyalty, would ever sway the pack’s devotion to Hawke. “Come on,” he said to Eli, “the megalomaniacs called the techs are gesturing for us to hurry up.”
It was two hours later that the other man said, “Done! Don’t know about you, but I could do with a beer.”
Picking up the T-shirt he’d stripped off earlier, Riaz used it to wipe his face as he nodded. He draped the T-shirt around his neck as they left the Pack Circle, and wasn’t really paying attention when a group of female packmates walked past, carrying small boxes loaded up with decorations.
Until a wolf whistle pierced the quiet.
Glancing back, he found himself being observed by a sexy dark-eyed beauty with curly blonde hair to the middle of her back. She cocked the box on her hip, her full breasts pushing against the cotton of her navy blue tee, her smile an invitation. Most hot-blooded males would’ve closed the distance between them to accept it, but Riaz shook his head with a gentle smile to soften the rejection, and continued on his way.
Elias didn’t say anything until they’d passed out of the heavily forested area immediately around the Pack Circle, and to an otherwise empty section of track. “You already have a date?”
“Not interested.” His wolf peeled back its lips in a snarl that exposed razor-sharp canines—because the words were a lie. There was one woman who interested him a whole damn lot.
A short pause. “Do you … er … swing the other way?”
Riaz halted, stared. “What the hell, Eli?”
Elias shrugged, unabashed. “Word is, the women are starting to wonder why you keep turning them down when it’s obvious you need to share skin privileges. And don’t shoot me, but Lara’s apparently been asked a few pointed questions, too.”
“Great.” Riaz gripped the ends of his T-shirt, twisted. “My cock is fixated on a woman who makes my blood boil”—a fixation that kept shoving Lisette into the background—“and the pack thinks I’m either gay or incapable.” He didn’t know whether to roar his aggravation or break something.
“The one you want”—unhidden curiosity—“she in the den?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He wouldn’t allow it to, regardless of the fact that he’d woken up with a hard-on as rigid as stone this morning, his mind filled with the husky voice and erotic taste of the woman he’d almost fucked against the cold metal of a car door.
“Fair enough.” Elias’s genial words broke into the teeth-clenched intensity of his thoughts. “Though you should know—I have a feeling a number of the single women are planning to ambush you tonight and get an answer once and for all.”
“I should’ve seen that coming.” He was a strong, eligible male without a partner. It would’ve been more surprising if he hadn’t been playfully stalked. He was also dominant enough to scare them all away, but just because he was in a shit of a mood didn’t mean he wanted to ruin the night for women who were only behaving as their natures dictated. “Why the hell did I come back to the den?” It was a snarl.
Elias slapped him on the back. “You know you love us.”
Yeah, he did. So he’d swallow his irritation and frustration, and dance every dance if it came down to it—each with a different partner, so no one would get ideas about staking a claim.
The one woman he would not be dancing with was Adria.
It shamed him to the core, destroying everything he thought he knew about himself, but he wasn’t sure he could touch her without shoving her to the earth and ripping off her panties to thrust himself into the scalding tightness of her body.
Chapter 15
HAWKE CAUGHT AN unexpected
scent on the breeze when he stepped outside with Judd, wanting to get some fresh air after the comm-conference they’d just had with Lucas, Sascha, Nikita, Max, and Anthony. It was the second time in a week they’d all connected, unusual for their strange alliance, but necessary given the growing volatility of the PsyNet.
It had become dangerous enough that both Nikita and Anthony had made contingency plans in case of their own assassinations. For the first time, he’d found himself feeling a reluctant respect for the former Councilors—the two had considered the impact of their deaths not only on their business empires but also on the people who counted on them for stability. He wasn’t ever going to trust or like either, not when he knew how much blood they had on their hands, but he’d accepted the need to work with this particular enemy to protect SnowDancer and the region.
Not a scenario he’d have anticipated even a year ago, but he wasn’t going to think further on it today. This night, it was about his mate and his pack. About wolves and play. Laughter and affection.
That scent again.
“Is Alexei here?” His youngest lieutenant had wanted to attend the ceremony, but Hawke had nixed the request. While none of the sectors outside den territory had as yet been targeted, SnowDancer couldn’t risk reducing security in those regions—and it wasn’t only the Psy they had to worry about. Alexei’s sector was on the very edge, near the border with Oregon, close to the lands of a much smaller but aggressive wolf pack.
Judd gave him an inscrutable look. “He’s not scheduled to arrive for at least another month. We discussed it at the last lieutenant meeting.”
“I know, but I could swear…” Shaking his head, he shoved a hand through his hair. “Where’d Riley say he’d meet us?”
Judd nodded at the water glinting through the trees, the sun fracturing it in bright splashes of silver and cobalt. “In the clearing on the other side of the lake. Said he wanted some time out from the insanity inside.”
