by Nalini Singh
“Perhaps it’s not,” Judd said, meeting Andrew’s angry eyes without flinching. The SnowDancer soldier blamed all Psy for his sister’s pain and Judd could guess at the line of emotion-driven logic that had led him to that conclusion. But those same emotions also blinded him. “She can’t spend the rest of her life in chains.”
“What the fuck would you know about anything?” Andrew snarled. “You don’t even care about your own!”
“He knows a hell of a lot more than you!”
“Bren.” Andrew’s voice was a warning.
“Shut up, Drew. I’m not a baby anymore.” Her voice held echoes of darker things, of evil witnessed and innocence lost. “Did you ever stop to wonder what Judd did for me during the healing? Did you ever bother to find out what it cost him? No, of course not, because you know everything.”
She took a jerky breath. “Well, guess what, you know nothing! You haven’t been where I’ve been. You haven’t even been close. Let. Me. Go.” The words were no longer enraged but calm. Normal for a Psy. Not for a wolf changeling. Especially not for Brenna. Judd’s senses went on high alert.
Andrew shook his head. “I don’t care what the hell you say, little sister, you don’t need to see that.”
“Then I’m sorry, Drew.” Brenna slashed her claws across his arms a split second later, shocking her brother into letting her go. She was moving almost before her feet hit the ground.
“Jesus,” Andrew whispered, staring after her. “I can’t believe…” He looked down at his bloody forearms. “Brenna never hurts anyone.”
“She’s not the Brenna you knew anymore,” Judd told the other male. “What Enrique did to her altered her on a fundamental level, in ways she herself doesn’t understand.” He took off after Brenna before Andrew could reply—he had to be beside her to deflect the fallout from this death. What he couldn’t understand was why she was so determined to see it.
He caught up with her as she raced past a startled guard and into the small room off tunnel number six. She came to such a sudden halt that he almost slammed into her. Following her gaze, he saw the sprawled body of an unknown SnowDancer male on the floor. The victim’s face and naked body bore considerable bruising, the skin splotched different colors by the damage. But Judd knew that that wasn’t what held Brenna frozen.
It was the cuts.
The changeling had been sliced very carefully with a knife, none of the cuts fatal but the last. That one had severed the carotid artery. Which meant there was something wrong with this scene. “Where’s the blood?” he asked Indigo, who was crouching on the other side of the body, a couple of her soldiers beside her.
The lieutenant scowled at seeing Brenna in the room but answered, “It’s not a fresh kill. He was dumped here.”
“Out-of-the-way room.” One of the soldiers, a lanky male named Dieter, spoke up. “Easy to get to without being spotted if you know what you’re doing—whoever did this was smart, probably chose the location beforehand.”
Brenna sucked in a breath but didn’t speak.
Indigo’s scowl grew. “Get her the hell out of here.”
Judd didn’t follow orders well, but he agreed with this one. “Let’s go,” he said to the woman standing with her back to him.
“I saw this.” A faint whisper.
Indigo stood, an odd look on her face. “What?”
Brenna began to tremble. “I saw this.” The same reedy whisper. “I saw this.” Louder. “I saw this!” A scream.
Judd had spent enough time with her to know that she would hate having lost control in front of everyone. She was a very proud wolf. So he did the only thing he could to slice through her hysteria. He moved to block her view of the body and then he used her emotions against her. It was a weapon the Psy had honed to perfection. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
The icy cold words hit Brenna like a slap. “Excuse me?” She dropped the hand she’d raised to push him aside.
“Look behind you.”
She remained stubbornly still. Hell would freeze over before she obeyed an order from him.
“Half the den is sniffing around,” he told her. Pitiless. Psy. “Listening to you break down.”
“I am not breaking down.” She flushed at the realization of so many eyes on her. “Get out of my way.” She didn’t want to look at the body anymore—a body that had been mutilated with the same eerie precision Enrique had used on his victims—but pride wouldn’t let her back down.
“You’re being irrational.” Judd didn’t move. “This place is obviously having a negative impact on your emotional stability. Step back out.” It was a definite command, his tone so close to alpha it set her teeth on edge.
“And if I don’t?” She gladly embraced the anger he’d awakened—it gave her a new focus, a way to escape the nightmare memories triggered by this room.
Cool Psy eyes met hers, the male arrogance in them breathtaking. “Then I’ll pick you up and move you myself.”
At the response, exhilaration burst to life in her bloodstream, chasing away the last acrid tang of fear. Months of frustration—of watching her independence being buried under a wall of protection, of being told what was best for her, of having her rationality questioned at every turn, all that and more snowballed into this single instant. “Try it.” A dare.
He stepped forward and her fingertips tingled, claws threatening to release. Oh yeah, she was definitely ready to tangle with Judd Lauren, Man of Ice, and the most beautiful male creature she had ever seen.
CHAPTER 2
“Brenna, what are you doing here?” The sharp question was bitten out in a familiar voice. Lara didn’t wait for an answer. “Move aside, you’re blocking the doorway.”
Startled, Brenna did as ordered. The SnowDancer healer and one of her assistants slid past, portable medical kits in hand.
Judd moved when she did, continuing to obstruct her view of the body. “This room is getting crowded. Lara needs space to work.”
“He’s dead.” Brenna knew she was being unreasonable, but she was sick of being pushed around. “She can hardly help him now.”
“And what do you intend to achieve by remaining here?” A simple question that highlighted her ridiculous behavior with cool Psy precision.
Hands curling against the urge to strike out at this male who always seemed to catch her at her weakest, she turned and walked out. Packmates glanced at her curiously as she passed. More than one wore a look of judgment—poor Brenna had finally snapped. It was tempting to walk past without meeting their gazes, but she forced herself to do the opposite. She’d had her self-respect stolen from her once. She would not relinquish it ever again.
Several pairs of eyes shifted away at being caught staring, while others continued to watch her, unblinking. Had the circumstances been different, she would’ve taken their intransigence as a challenge, but today, she just wanted to get away from the overwhelming dead scent of the body. However, that urgency didn’t blind her to the fact that even the boldest of them dropped their stares after looking past her shoulder.
“I don’t need you to fight my battles,” she said, after they cleared the crowd.
Judd moved to walk beside her, no longer a shadow at her back. “I wasn’t aware I was doing so.”
She had to concede he was probably telling the truth—most people in the den were simply too scared of Judd Lauren to want to draw his attention under any circumstances. “You saw the cuts.” She could still smell the odor of death mingled with the metallic edge of blood. “They were just like his.” The sharp gleam of a scalpel flickered in her mind. An image of spurting blood. Screams ringing against the walls of a cage.
“They weren’t identical.”
His cool response pulled her out of the nightmare chaos of memory. “Why do you sound so certain?”
“I’m Psy. I understand patterns.”
Dressed in black and with those emotionless eyes, there was no doubt he was Psy. As for the rest…“Don’t try to convinc
e me that all Psy would’ve been able to process the details so quickly. You’re different.”
He didn’t bother to confirm or deny. “That doesn’t change the facts. The cuts on this victim—”
“Timothy,” she interrupted, a rock in her throat. “His name was Timothy.” She had known the fallen SnowDancer only in passing, but couldn’t bear to have him being reduced to nothing more than a nameless victim. He’d had a life. A name.
Judd glanced at her, then gave a small nod. “Timothy was killed using the same type of method, but the details are different. The biggest being that he was male.”
And Santano Enrique, the bastard who’d tortured Brenna and killed so many others, had taken exclusively women. Because he’d liked to do certain things, things that required a woman’s—Brenna shoved the memories back into the locker inside her mind where she kept the darkest, filthiest pieces of what he had done to her. “You think someone’s copying him?” The idea made her gorge rise. Even dead, the butcher’s evil continued.
“Likely.” Judd halted at a fork in the tunnels. “This isn’t your fight. Leave the investigation to those who have experience in that area.”
“Because I only have experience at being a victim?”
The metallic scent of blood rose from his shredded flesh as he folded his arms. “You’re too blinded by your own emotions to do Timothy justice. This isn’t about you.”
She opened her mouth to tell him how wrong he was but shut it as quickly. Admitting the truth wasn’t an option—it would sound insane, the ravings of a broken mind. “Go get your wounds tended,” she said instead. “The smell of Psy blood isn’t particularly appetizing.” She was worried about how deep Tai had gouged him, but damn if she was going to admit that.
Judd didn’t even blink at her insulting tone. “I’ll escort you to your room.”
“Try it and I’ll claw out your eyes.” Turning, she strode off, able to feel his gaze on her every step of the way until she turned the corner. It was tempting to collapse then, to release the mask of anger she wore like a shield, but she waited until she was safely back in her room before giving in. “I did see it,” she told the walls, terrified.
The flesh parting under the blade, the blood pouring, the pallor of death, she’d seen it all. It had left her a trembling, shaken mess, but she’d found comfort in the fact that it had been nothing more than a nightmare.
Except now her nightmare had taken the ugliest of forms.
Judd ensured Brenna was in her quarters before he returned to the crime scene and spoke at length with Indigo. Then he made his way to his own room. Once there, he stripped and showered to remove the dried blood on his arms. Brenna was right—the scent would only draw attention to him, given the changelings’ acute sense of smell, and tonight, he needed to be invisible.
When he stepped out, he didn’t bother to look in a mirror, simply thrust a hand through his hair and left it at that. A part of his mind noted that his hair was past regulation length. Another part dismissed the issue as irrelevant—he was no longer a member of the Psy race’s most elite army. The Psy Council had sentenced his entire family—his brother, Walker; Walker’s daughter, Marlee; and Sienna and Toby, the children of his dead sister, Kristine—to the living death of rehabilitation.
If they hadn’t defected, they would have had their minds wiped clean, their brains destroyed until they weren’t much more than walking vegetables. It had been a calculated gamble to come to the wolves. He and Walker had expected to die, but they had hoped for mercy for Toby and Marlee. Sienna, too old to be a child, too young to be an adult, had decided to take her chances with the wolves rather than face rehabilitation.
But the SnowDancers hadn’t killed the adults on sight. As a result, he now lived in a world where his old life meant nothing. Getting dressed, he pulled on his pants, socks, and boots first. A man could defeat an opponent bare-chested; having bare feet was a far greater disadvantage. It was as he was pulling on a shirt that the expected message came through on his small silver phone. Leaving the shirt buttons undone, he read the encrypted words, translating them in his mind.
Target confirmed. Window: One week.
He deleted the message the second after reading it. His next act was to push up the long sleeves of his black shirt and wrap plain cotton bandages around his forearms—they would help mask the smell of rapidly regenerating skin. Brenna would have been very surprised to see how fast he healed.
His mind went over the murder scene one more time. He was certain they were dealing with a copycat. The cuts had been superficially similar to those made by Santano Enrique but nothing more. Where Enrique had taken pride in the precision with which he mutilated his victims’ bodies, this killer had hacked rather than sliced. Indigo had also confirmed that no Psy scent had been found at the scene. The final deciding factor was that Santano Enrique was most definitely dead—Judd had witnessed the other Psy being torn to pieces by wolf and leopard claws.
There was no need for Brenna to worry that her tormentor had come back from the grave. Of course that was Psy logic at work and she was indisputably a changeling. More to the point, she didn’t know that Judd been present at Enrique’s execution and, by extension, her rescue. He had no intention of changing that. Because, while he might not be much good at predicting emotional reactions, he had learned enough about Brenna during the healing sessions—where he’d “lent” his psychic strength to Sascha as she worked to repair the fractures in Brenna’s mind—to know she’d react negatively to the knowledge of his involvement.
I’m not a baby anymore.
No, she wasn’t. And he wasn’t her protector. He couldn’t be—the closer he got to her, the more he could hurt her. Silence had been invented for those like him—the brutal killers and the viciously insane, those who had turned the world of the Psy into a blood-soaked hell so bad, Silence had become the better choice.
The second he broke conditioning, he became a loaded gun with no safety switch. That was why he was never going to do what Sascha had done and end the Silence in his mind. It was the only thing keeping the world safe from what he was…the only thing keeping Brenna safe.
Pulling on a black jacket identical to the one Tai had slashed, he slid the phone into his pocket. It was time to leave the den.
He had a bomb to build.
CHAPTER 3
Kaleb Krychek, cardinal Tk and the newest member of the Psy Council, terminated the call and leaned back in his chair, hands steepled in front of him. “Silver,” he said, activating the intercom with a negligible use of his telekinetic abilities, “find all my files on the Liu family group.”
“Yes, sir.”
Knowing the task would take her several minutes, he mentally reviewed the call. Jen Liu, matriarch of the Liu Group, had made her thoughts clear.
“We have a mutually beneficial relationship,” she’d said, green eyes unblinking. “I’m certain you would do nothing to jeopardize that. However, I’m not so certain of your colleagues on the Council. We’re still paying for their last decision—Faith NightStar’s prices have almost doubled as her family seeks to regain what it lost.”
The NightStar Affair, as that particular political debacle was now called, had come about immediately prior to Kaleb’s ascension to the Council. Faith NightStar, a powerful foreseer, had chosen to drop from the PsyNet and into the arms of one of the DarkRiver cats. Two Councilors had made the hasty decision to try and recapture her, putting her life at risk and alienating not only her family, the powerful NightStar Group, but also all the businesses who relied on Faith’s predictions. Businesses such as the Liu Group.
Now, Kaleb stared thoughtfully at the transparent screen that had moments before held Jen Liu’s face. The matriarch had been correct in her estimation of his loyalties. He valued the alliances he’d built up on his way to gaining a Council seat. Those alliances had been nurtured with cold-blooded precision—he had known that a Councilor who had the support of certain sectors of society would wield
far more than his share of power. And Kaleb appreciated power. It was why he’d made Councilor at a bare twenty-seven years of age.
He tapped at the screen, switching it from communications to data mode, then pulled up files on the rest of the Council. Putting the bio files on one side, he accessed the ones on the NightStar Affair. Beside that, he left an empty space for the information Silver was collating.
Finally, he brought up a highly confidential file titled “Protocol I.” Right now, all he had on that matter were suspicions, but that would change. The Liu issue would do for a first strike. He saw no need to draw blood…yet.
Kaleb was nothing if not patient. The same way a cobra is patient.
CHAPTER 4
One day after the murder, and countless hours of arguments with herself later, Brenna knew Judd was the only person she could ask, the only one who might possibly understand. And yet, he was also the worst, so cold that he sometimes appeared less human than a statue carved out of ice. Before being kidnapped, she’d gone to great lengths to avoid him, intrinsically disturbed by the inhuman chill of his personality.
Well aware her brothers would turn feral at the mere thought of her alone with Judd, she took every care to remain invisible as she tiptoed out of their family quarters after dinner and toward the section occupied by unmated soldiers. Judd lived alone, his brother, Walker, and the three minors having been relocated to the family section. The move had taken place four months after the Laurens first sought sanctuary with SnowDancer.
Surprisingly, it had been the pack’s maternal females who had ordered Hawke to think about what it was doing to the Psy children to be isolated in the soldiers’ area. Given how sensitive the females were to anything that might pose a danger to the cubs, Brenna would’ve expected them to demand distance—Marlee and Toby might be kids but they were very powerful kids.
Conversely, SnowDancer pups tended to play rough and could maul the Psy children without meaning to. But the maternal females had extended the invitation and Walker Lauren had accepted on behalf of his daughter, Marlee, and nephew, Toby. At seventeen, Toby’s sister, Sienna, could no longer be classified as a child, but neither was she an adult. In this case, the headstrong teenager had chosen to stay with the children.
