by Nalini Singh
Kiss of Snow
( Psy-Changelings - 10 )
Nalini Singh
Since the moment of her defection from the PsyNet and into the SnowDancer wolf pack, Sienna Lauren has had one weakness. Hawke. Alpha and dangerous, he compels her to madness.
Hawke is used to walking alone, having lost the woman who would've been his mate long ago. But Sienna fascinates the primal heart of him, even as he tells himself she is far too young to handle the wild fury of the wolf.
Then Sienna changes the rules—and suddenly, there is no more distance, only the most intimate of battles between two people who were never meant to meet. Yet as they strip away each other's secrets in a storm of raw emotion, they must also ready themselves for a far more vicious fight...
A deadly enemy is out to destroy SnowDancer, striking at everything they hold dear, but it is Sienna's darkest secret that may yet savage the pack that is her home—and the alpha who is its heartbeat.
Kiss of Snow
(The tenth book in the Psy-Changelings series)
A novel by Nalini Singh
For you, my readers
CAST OF CHARACTERS
In alphabetical order by first name
Key: SD = SnowDancer wolves DR = DarkRiver leopards
Aden Arrow, Telepath (Tp)
Alexei SD Lieutenant
Amara Aleine Psy member of DR, former Council scientist, twin of Ashaya, mentally unstable
Andrew (Drew) Kincaid SD Soldier, mated to Indigo, brother of Riley and Brenna
Anthony Kyriakus Psy Councilor, father of Faith
Ashaya Aleine Psy member of DR, former Council scientist, mated to Dorian, twin of Amara
Ava SD, mother of Ben, friend of Lara
Barker DR Soldier
Ben SD pup, son of Ava
Brenna Kincaid SD, tech, mated to Judd, sister of Andrew and Riley
Clay Bennett DR Sentinel, mated to Talin
Cooper SD Lieutenant
Council (or Psy Council) The ruling Council of the Psy race
Elias SD Senior Soldier, mated to Yuki, father of Sakura
Evangeline (Evie) Riviere SD, sister of Indigo
Faith NightStar Psy member of DR, cardinal foreseer (F-Psy), mated to Vaughn, daughter of Anthony
Ghost Psy rebel
Hawke SD Alpha
Henry Scott Psy Councilor, husband of Shoshanna
Indigo Riviere SD Lieutenant, mated to Andrew, daughter of Abel and Tarah, sister of Evangeline
Jem (real name: Garnet) SD Lieutenant
Judd Lauren Psy member of SD, Lieutenant, mated to Brenna, uncle of Sienna, Toby, and Marlee
Kaleb Krychek Psy Councilor
Kenji SD Lieutenant
Kieran Human member of SD, Soldier
Kit DR Novice Soldier, brother of Rina
Lara SD Healer
Lucas Hunter DR Alpha, mated to Sascha
Lucy SD, nurse, assistant to Lara
Maria SD Novice Soldier
Marlee Lauren Psy member of SD, daughter of Walker, cousin of Sienna and Toby
Matthias SD Lieutenant
Max Shannon Human, Nikita’s security chief, married to Sophia
Mercy Smith DR Sentinel, mated to Riley
Ming LeBon Psy Councilor
Nathan (Nate) Ryder DR Senior Sentinel, mated to Tamsyn, father of Roman and Julian
Nikita Duncan Psy Councilor, mother of Sascha
Riaz SD Lieutenant
Riley Kincaid SD Lieutenant, mated to Mercy, brother of Andrew and Brenna
Rina DR Soldier, sister of Kit
Riordan SD Novice Soldier
Sascha Duncan Psy member of DR, cardinal empath (E-Psy), mated to Lucas, daughter of Nikita
Shoshanna Scott Psy Councilor, wife of Henry
Sienna Lauren Psy member of SD, Novice Soldier, sister of Toby, niece of Judd and Walker
Sophia Russo Former Justice Psy (J), works for Nikita, married to Max
Tai SD Novice Soldier
Tamsyn (Tammy) Ryder DR Healer, mated to Nathan, mother of Roman and Julian
Tarah Riviere SD, mother of Indigo and Evangeline
Tatiana Rika-Smythe Psy Councilor
Teijan Rat Alpha
Toby Lauren Psy member of SD, brother of Sienna, nephew of Judd and Walker
Tomás SD Lieutenant
Vasic Arrow, Teleporter (Tk-V)
Vaughn D’Angelo DR Sentinel, mated to Faith, jaguar changeling
Walker Lauren Psy member of SD, father of Marlee, uncle of Sienna and Toby
Xavier Perez Human priest
Yuki SD, lawyer, mated to Elias, mother of Sakura
X
1979.
The year the Psy race became Silent.
Became cold, without emotion, without mercy.
Hearts were broken, families torn apart.
But far more were saved.
From insanity.
From murder.
From viciousness such as unseen in the world today.
For the X-Psy, Silence was a gift beyond price, a gift that allowed at least some of their number to survive childhood, have a life. Yet over a hundred years after the icy wave of the Silence Protocol washed away violence and despair, madness and love, X-Psy are, and remain, living weapons. Silence is their safety switch. Without it . . .
There are some nightmares the world will never be ready to face.
Chapter 1
HAWKE FOLDED HIS arms and leaned back against the solid bulk of his desk, eyes on the two young females in front of him. Hands clasped behind themselves and legs slightly spread in the “resting” stance, Sienna and Maria looked like the SnowDancer soldiers they were—except for the fact that their hair straggled in a wild mess around their faces, matted with mud, crushed leaves, and other forest debris. Then there was the torn clothing and the sharp, acrid scent of blood.
His wolf bared its teeth.
“Let me get this straight,” he said in a calm tone that had Maria turning pale under skin that was a warm, smooth brown where it wasn’t bruised and bloody. “Instead of staying on watch and protecting the pack’s defensive border, you two decided to have your own personal dominance battle.”
Sienna, of course, met his gaze—something no wolf would’ve done in the circumstances. “It w—”
“Be quiet,” he snapped. “If you open your mouth again without permission, I’m putting both of you in the pen with the two-year-olds.”
Those amazing cardinal eyes—white stars on a background of vivid black—went a pure ebony, which he knew full well indicated fury, but she clenched her jaw. Maria, on the other hand, had gone even paler. Good.
“Maria,” he said, focusing on the petite changeling whose size belied her skill and strength in both human and wolf form. “How old are you?”
Maria swallowed. “Twenty.”
“Not a juvenile.”
Maria’s thick black curls, heavy with mud, bounced dully as she shook her head.
“Then explain this to me.”
“I can’t, sir.”
“Right answer.” No reason they could offer up would be a good enough excuse for the bullshit fight. “Who threw the first punch?”
Silence.
His wolf approved. It mattered little who’d incited the exchange when neither had walked away from it, and the fact of the matter was, they’d been meant to work as a team, so they’d take their punishment as a team—with one caveat.
“Seven days,” he said to Maria. “Confined to quarters except for one hour each day. No contact with anyone while you’re inside.” It was a harsh punishment—wolves were creatures of Pack, of family, and Maria was one of the most bubbly, social wolves in the den. To force her to spend all that time alone was an indication of just
how badly she’d blundered. “The next time you decide to step off watch, I won’t be so lenient.”
Maria chanced meeting his gaze for a fleeting second before those rich brown eyes skated away, her dominance no match for his. “May I attend Lake’s twenty-first?”
“If that’s the use you want to make of your hour on the day.” Yeah, it made him a bastard to force her to miss most of her boyfriend’s big party, especially when the two were taking the first, careful steps into a relationship, but she’d known exactly what she was doing when she decided to engage in a pissing contest with a fellow soldier.
SnowDancer was strong as a pack because they watched each other’s backs. Hawke would not allow stupidity or arrogance to eat away at a foundation he’d rebuilt from the ground up after the bloody events that had stolen both his parents and savaged the pack so badly it had taken more than a decade of tight isolation for them to recover.
Holding on to his temper by a very thin thread, he turned his attention to Sienna. “You were,” he said, the wolf very much in his voice, “specifically ordered not to get into any physical altercations.”
Sienna said nothing in response. It didn’t matter—her rage was a hot pulse against his skin, as raw and stormy as Sienna herself. When she was like this, the wildness of her barely contained, it was hard to believe she’d come into his pack Silent, her emotions blockaded behind so much ice, it had infuriated his wolf.
Maria shifted on her feet when he didn’t immediately continue.
“You have something to say?” he asked the woman, who was one of the best novice soldiers in the pack when she didn’t let her temper get in the way.
“I started it.” Color high on her cheekbones, shoulders tight. “She was just defending—”
“No.” Sienna’s tone was steady, resolute, the anger buried under a wall of frigid control. “I’ll take my share of the blame. I could’ve walked away.”
Hawke narrowed his eyes. “Maria, go.”
The novice soldier hesitated for a second, but she was a subordinate wolf, her natural instinct to obey her alpha too powerful to resist—even though it was clear she wanted to remain behind to support Sienna. Hawke noted and approved of the display of loyalty enough that he didn’t rebuke her for the hesitation.
The door closed behind her with a quiet snick that seemed shotgun-loud inside the office’s heavy silence. Hawke waited to see what Sienna would do now that they were alone. To his surprise, she maintained her position.
Reaching forward, he gripped her chin, turning her face to the side so that the light fell on the smooth lines of it. “You’re lucky you don’t have a broken cheekbone.” The flesh around her eye was going to turn all shades of purple as it was. “Where else are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
His fingers tightened on her jaw. “Where else are you hurt?”
“You didn’t ask Maria.” Stubborn will in every word.
“Maria is a wolf, able to take five times the damage of a Psy female and keep going.” Which was the reason Sienna had been ordered not to get into physical confrontations with the wolves. That and the fact that she didn’t have her lethal abilities under total control. “Either you answer the question, or I swear to God I really will put you in the pen.” It would be the most humiliating of experiences and she knew it, every muscle in her body taut with viciously withheld anger.
“Bruised ribs,” she gritted out at last, “bruised abdomen, wrenched shoulder. Nothing’s broken. It should all heal within the next week.”
Dropping his grip on her chin, he said, “Hold out your arms.”
A hesitation.
The wolf growled, loud enough that she flinched. “Sienna, I’ve given you a long leash since you came into the pack, but that ends today.” Insubordination from a juvenile could be punished and forgiven. In an adult, in a soldier , it was a far more serious matter. Sienna was nineteen going on twenty, a ranked novice—letting her actions slide wasn’t even an option. “Hold out your fucking arms.”
Something in his tone must’ve gotten through to her because she did as ordered. A few small cuts on that creamy skin kissed gold by the sun, but no gouges that would’ve spoken of claws. “So Maria managed to rein in the wolf.” If she hadn’t, he’d have kicked her right back into training. Losing control of your temper was one thing; losing control of your wolf was far more dangerous.
Sienna’s hands fisted as she dropped them to her sides.
Looking up, he met those eyes of absolute, unbroken black. It was clear she was fighting the elemental impulse to go at him, but she continued to hold her position. “How far did you go?” Her control was impressive—and it irritated him in a way it shouldn’t have. But then, nothing about Sienna Lauren had ever been easy.
“I didn’t use my abilities.” The tendons in her neck stood out against the dirt-encrusted hue of her skin. “If I had, she’d be dead.”
“Which is why you’re in far more trouble than Maria.” When he’d given the Lauren family sanctuary after their defection from the cold sterility of the PsyNet, it had been under a number of strict conditions. One of those conditions had been a prohibition against using Psy abilities on packmates.
A significant number of things had changed since that time, and the Laurens were now an integral and accepted part of the pack. Sienna’s uncle, Judd, was one of Hawke’s lieutenants, and often used his telepathic and telekinetic abilities in defense of SnowDancer. Hawke had also never tied the hands of the two youngest Laurens, knowing Marlee and Toby would need their mental claws to defend themselves against their rambunctious wolf playmates.
But that freedom didn’t extend to Sienna, because Hawke knew exactly what she could do. The instant Judd accepted the lieutenant blood bond, keeping secrets from his alpha had become a question of loyalty and trust.
“Why?” Sienna lifted her chin. “I didn’t disobey the rule about using my abilities.”
Naturally, she’d challenge him. “But,” he said, reining in the wolf’s snarling response to her defiance, “you did disobey a direct order in engaging in the fight—you said it yourself, you could’ve walked away.”
White lines bracketed her mouth. “Would you have?”
“This isn’t about me.” He’d been a young hothead once upon a time, and he’d had his ass kicked for it . . . until everything had changed, his childhood wiped out in a surge of blood and pain and piercing sorrow. “We both know your lack of control could’ve led to a far more serious outcome.” The hell of it was, she knew that, too—and still she’d let herself cross the line. That angered Hawke more than anything else.
“I could be confined to DarkRiver land,” Sienna said while he was considering how to deal with her, “if you don’t want me in the den.”
Hawke snorted at her reference to the leopard pack that was SnowDancer’s most trusted ally. “So you can hang out with your boyfriend? Nice try.”
Sienna’s skin flushed a dull red. “Kit isn’t my boyfriend.”
Hawke wasn’t going to get into that conversation. Not now. Not ever. “You don’t get to have a say in your punishment.” He’d spoiled her. It was his own damn fault it was coming back to bite him in the ass. “One week confined to quarters in the soldiers area, one hour out per day.” Psy were much better at handling isolation than changelings, but he knew Sienna had changed since defecting from the PsyNet, become far more intertwined in the bonds of family, of Pack. “Second week spent working with the babies in the nursery, since that’s the age you’ve been acting recently. No duty rotations until you can be trusted to stick to your task.”
“I—” She snapped her mouth shut when he raised an eyebrow.
“Three weeks,” he said softly. “Third week you’ll spend in the kitchens as a dish hand.”
Her cheeks burned a hotter shade, but she didn’t interrupt again.
“Dismissed.”
It was only after she’d gone—the autumn and spice of her scent lingering in the air in a silent rebe
llion she would’ve undoubtedly enjoyed had she known about it—that he loosened his hold on the wolf who was his more feral half.
It lunged for her scent.
Sucking in a harsh breath, Hawke fought the primal urge to go after her. He’d been battling the instinct for months, ever since the wolf decided that she was now an adult and, therefore, fair prey. The human half of him wasn’t having much success in changing the wolf’s mind, not when he had to fight the hunger to claim the most intimate of skin privileges every time she was in his presence.
“Christ.” Picking up the sleek new sat phone the techs had issued him four weeks ago, he put through a call to DarkRiver’s alpha.
Lucas answered on the second ring. “What is it?”
“Sienna won’t be heading down to spend time with you cats for a while.” Aside from the distance Sienna apparently needed from the den, from him, she’d been working with Lucas’s Psy mate, Sascha, to understand and gain control of her abilities. But—“I can’t let it go. Not this time.”
“Understood.” The answer of a fellow alpha.
Hawke sat on the edge of his desk, shoving a hand through his hair. “Can she handle it?” He knew she wouldn’t break—Sienna was too strong for that, a strength that acted like a drug on his wolf—but the power that lived within her was so vast, it had to be treated as the wildest of beasts.
“Last time she was down,” Lucas responded, “Sascha said she displayed an exceptional level of stability, nothing like when they first began to work together. They’re not having regular meetings anymore, so that’s not an issue.”
Mind at rest on that score at least, Hawke said, “I’ll make sure Judd keeps a psychic eye on her just in case.” Sienna wouldn’t appreciate the oversight, but fact was fact—she was dangerous, and he had to consider the safety of the pack as a whole. As for the ferocity of his protective instincts when it came to her, he wasn’t about to lie and pretend they didn’t exist.
“Can I ask what happened?” Lucas’s tone was curious.
