by Nalini Singh
“Hell it isn’t.” Riaz’s claws sliced out of his skin. “The female might accept the bond, but I damn well bet you the male’s got to be willing. This one isn’t.” Once, he would’ve sold his soul to be Lisette’s, but something fundamental had changed in him, his soul reborn from a crucible of shattering pain. He’d survived, come out of it scarred, altered, stronger, a man who loved a soldier and had no desire to turn back the clock.
“It’s Adria’s face I see when I think of home.” Adria’s eyes of blue-violet that looked back at him from the faces of the children he’d started to imagine since that night in the moonlit meadow where she had become his. “Adria who holds my secrets.”
“You’d walk away from the woman meant to be your mate?”
“Yes.” Maybe it wasn’t a choice any other wolf would ever make—hell, the idea might even horrify—but no other wolf had lived the life that had led up to this moment. “I’ve found the woman who’s meant to be mine.” The woman who had his wolf’s wild devotion.
“Are you sure?” his alpha asked, though he’d just given his answer.
Riaz met the other man’s gaze, his anger so deep he knew his eyes were those of the predator that lived within him.
But Hawke didn’t back down. “You’re talking about Adria’s life,” he said. “You have to be certain you’re never going to turn around and see a lack in her.”
Riaz wasn’t even aware of reacting. He just knew he had his clawed hand around Hawke’s throat, his alpha’s hand gripping his wrist in a punishing hold.
Pale blue eyes met his own, Hawke’s own wolf calm.
Growling low in his throat, he withdrew his hand, his claws slicing back into his skin. “I died, Hawke.” Brutal words. “When I first saw Lisette and realized she’d never be mine, I broke into so many pieces I was the walking dead when I returned to the den.”
It was Adria who’d forced him back to life, who’d challenged, fought, and played with him until he wasn’t only alive but wildly, gloriously so. “I trust Adria on a level I don’t even trust you.” As was right. A wolf should trust his mate more than any other … yet Adria wasn’t his mate, except in his heart. “My wolf trusts her.” He let that wolf rise to the surface, let it color his eyes and his voice.
Hawke blew out a breath. “As your mate, Lisette has the potential to earn an even deeper trust.”
Riaz snorted, conscious the alpha was playing devil’s advocate. “And you have the potential to take up knitting.” The wolf thought in far more concrete terms, and it had given its loyalty and its heart to Adria. That someone else might be a better fit, even when that someone else promised to be its mate? It was a pointless consideration.
A quiet nod, an acceptance. “What’re you going to do?”
“Convince Adria I mean what I say.” He’d accept no other outcome.
ADRIA made certain she swapped tasks and shifts to ensure there was no chance of running into Riaz. Her skin hurt, her bed a cold place she hated, her entire body aching with a loss that made her feel as if she’d been beaten. She wasn’t sure she could stop herself from reaching for him if she saw him.
So when she walked into her room the day after their last painful encounter and found a powder pink box bearing his scent on the bedside table, she thought the rawness of her need had made her hallucinate. Touching the box with wondering fingers, she jerked when it didn’t disappear. Neither did the cupcakes within.
“Strawberry cream, red velvet, banana berry, and apple spice.” A knot in her throat, she picked up the apple spice one and licked up a fingerful of the frosting. The sweet delicacy melted on her tongue … the taste merging with the salt of the tear that kissed her mouth.
She didn’t remember telling him her favorites, but she must have.
Collapsing on the bed, she put the cupcake back in the box, her shoulders shaking with the force of her emotions. Good-bye, she thought, he was saying good-bye with the sweetest tenderness. It would’ve been easier if he’d been angry, or if he’d simply ignored her—God, that would’ve hurt—but he’d sent her cupcakes and made her fall in love with him all over again.
“I hate you,” she whispered, dashing away her tears, and it was the biggest lie she had ever told. The lie she told later that day, as she gave three of the cupcakes to Shawnie, Becca, and Ivy, was only a tiny one by comparison. “I tried, but I couldn’t eat them all.” The truth was, she still had the one she’d tasted, couldn’t bear to finish it. It would feel like she was accepting his good-bye, and she wasn’t ready.
Three hours later, she glared at the polished little wooden box sitting in the middle of her desk. “Look!”
Indigo stared dutifully. “It’s lovely. Plain, but I hear lone wolves are sometimes a bit odd with their idea of gifts.”
“Plain?” Incensed—with who, she didn’t know—Adria began to take the box apart.
Indigo leaned in close to watch the demolition, her eyes wide. “It’s a puzzle!” Delight had her reaching for a piece.
Adria slapped away her hand. “You have to do it in the exact order or … you won’t see this.” A miniature representation of the Colosseum hidden in the center, complete with carved archways and the suggestion of tiered internal architecture.
Indigo rubbed her finger carefully down the glossy wood. “This is … wow. I’ve never seen a wooden puzzle this complicated.”
He’d created it for her, Adria thought, because he knew she liked puzzles, had to have been working on it for a while.
“Why Rome?”
Empress. “Never mind that,” Adria said, reassembling the box under Indigo’s fascinated gaze. “He’s not listening to me.” The stubborn wolf wasn’t saying good-bye with dignity and grace, he was courting her. Outrageously.
“Adria, darling,” Indigo said slowly. “You do realize you’re talking about a dominant male? Since when do they listen to anyone once they’ve made up their minds?”
“You’re not helping.”
“You know”—a look of glee—“now I understand why everyone had so much fun watching Drew drive me insane.”
Grabbing the cupcake she’d brought to the office, Adria took a big bite. If Riaz thought she was going to soften and melt under his charm offensive and forget the painfully real chasm that divided them, he didn’t know her … but he did apparently know of her love of Italian opera, a vaguely guilty secret she’d shared with no one, and the very unsensible reason why she’d learned the language.
Two tickets to La Bohème greeted her that night, tucked into the corner of her vanity mirror. Her heart leapt, but determined to make him see reason, she took the tickets and pinned them to the board in the senior soldiers’ break room. No one made any effort to claim them, in spite of the fact they were for highly coveted seats.
“None of us are insane enough to piss off a lone wolf,” Simran said when she found Adria glaring at the tickets the next day. “Especially when said lone wolf made it a point to say he’d hunt down and bury the person who dared take any gifts meant for you.”
Ignoring the fact the other woman’s eyes were bright with humor, Adria ripped off the tickets and stalked to Riaz’s office. He wasn’t there—she wasn’t sure if she was relieved at not having to test her strength of will where he was concerned, or cheated at being robbed of the knock-down, drag-out fight she’d been anticipating.
Borrowing a hammer from Walker Lauren, she pounded the tickets into the office door with a nail. Hawke, passing by, helpfully held the tickets in place while she hammered the nail. He didn’t say a word, his expression so bland it was clear he was highly amused.
Riaz didn’t say anything either.
He just snuck back into her room and tucked the abused tickets back in place. On top of the vanity, he left a gaily wrapped box. Unable to resist unwrapping it, she found a shiny new tool kit, complete with a personalized purple hammer. Her wolf was so charmed, it took her a second to focus and see what he’d done.
The hammer was personalized all right
—with the name “Adria Delgado.”
“Oh Riaz,” she whispered, “what’re you doing to me?”
Chapter 63
KALEB KNEW THE Arrows had a discreet watch on him, but he had long ago perfected the ability to move through the Net undetected, and he used that ability now. He was too close to locating his target to allow any obstruction or delay.
Anyone who tried to stop him would soon discover that unlike the others who had once been Council, he didn’t mind getting blood on his hands.
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.”
