Shield of Winter

by Nalini Singh

  As for their baby girl, she was being looked after by Kit and his best friend, Cory. The soldiers also had charge of Tamsyn's "twin terrors," the healer having gone to take care of an injured elder. Sascha would've been leery of leaving the two young males with a baby if she hadn't known all the juveniles in the pack grew up pulling babysitting duty--and as evidenced by Kit and Cory, most didn't mind pitching in even when older.

  Her phone beeped right then, the screen filling with Kit's handsome face, a happy Naya cradled nonchalantly in one muscular arm. "Sascha, Naya wants the Toy That Shall Not Be Named. Did you forget to pack it?"

  Sascha's lips twitched, the shadows lifting at the sight of the two of them. "In the side pocket of the bag. I put it in at the last minute."

  Kit disappeared, then appeared with the fluffy little wolf in his free hand. Naya gurgled and reached for it with a squeal of delight before her attention was caught by seeing Sascha's face on the comm. Making "Mommy" noises at her baby, Sascha waited until Kit had distracted Naya with the plush toy before hanging up. "You're still growling," she pointed out to her green-eyed panther.

  "Why?" Lucas snarled. "Of all the things in the world she could've become attached to, why did my otherwise brilliant daughter pick that damn wolf's stupid gift?"

  "Careful," she said, voice husky with the knowledge of how lucky she was to have this life, this freedom, "or you'll start to need that knit cap Hawke gave you." According to the wolf alpha, it was for when Naya caused Lucas to pull out his hair.

  "Grr." Managing the all-wheel-drive vehicle with ease, he reached out to grab her hand and bring it to his mouth for a playful bite. "You okay?"

  "I just hate the unfairness of it all." She dropped her head back against the seat, choked by the unvarnished fury of her emotions. "All this death when, for the first time in a hundred years, life in the PsyNet might be something more, something better than cold Silence."

  "Give yourself and the other Es time to figure things out," Lucas said, placing her hand on his thigh after a kiss to her knuckles. "I know exactly how tough empaths can be."

  She curved her fingers over the firm muscle of him. Lucas purred. "Harder."

  Digging her nails into him in a kneading motion, Sascha leaned across and grazed her teeth over the muted-gold skin of his throat. The purr intensified. "I'll pet you later," he promised, running his knuckles over her cheek.

  Feeling petted and spoiled already, Sascha settled back into her seat but kept her hand on his thigh. The contact, Lucas's voice as they discussed pack matters, they centered her; she felt far more able to face the stark facts of the crisis in the Net when they walked into the SnowDancer den. Splitting at the entrance to the light-filled network of underground tunnels, they agreed to meet in two hours for the drive back.

  When little Ben overheard Sascha asking the SnowDancer healer about Alice's whereabouts, the human scientist not in the quarters she'd been assigned after being released from the infirmary, he tugged on her hand. "I'll show you, Sascha darling. She's outside."

  Bubbles of laughter in her blood, Sascha attempted to frown at the pup, his eyes a gorgeous rich brown and his fine silky hair so deep a mahogany it appeared black in this light, but it was a losing battle. "Where did you hear that?" she asked, knowing the culprits full well.

  Ben gave her a cheeky smile as she scooped him up into her arms for a cuddle. "I guess I have a guide," she said to the SnowDancer healer, after hitching Ben on one hip. "Will he be warm enough dressed as he is?" It snowed heavily at this elevation.

  The other woman ruffled Ben's hair. "He's a wolf," she said with a kiss to his cheek.

  "Yeah." Ben lifted a hand, claws out, and made a fierce face. "I'm a wolf! Grr."

  Pretend growling at him in turn, to his delighted laughter, Sascha carried him outside, one of his arms slung companionably around her neck. At least ten other pups near to Ben's age were already playing in the fine white powder that coated the area. When she glimpsed Judd's niece, Marlee, in the distance with a group of older children, she whispered, "Are you and Marlee still fighting?" The cause of the fight was a mystery to all as far as Sascha knew.

  Ben smiled and waved at Marlee, but didn't wriggle down to run over and join his friend. "No," he said as Marlee waved back. "I 'pologized for messing up her girl party, and she said sorry for her friends calling me a dumb baby."

  Sascha's curiosity won out. "How did you mess up her girl party?"

  Sighing, Ben lay his head against her shoulder. "I shifted and jumped on their picnic blanket from a tree after Julian and Roman showed me how to climb, and I squished their cake and spilled stuff on their clothes."

  Sascha had a hard time not bursting into laughter, the image of a cake-and-cream-covered little wolf pup bringing tears to her eyes. "Was the cake nice?"

  Ben grinned, glee in his expression. "Yes. I ate it all since everyone except Marlee ran away."

  Pressing a laughing kiss to his temple, she said, "I'm glad you two are friends again."

  "Me, too." He pointed to the right. "Ally is over there. She likes to sit by the small waterfall pond. Sometimes I sit with her."

  Putting him on the ground, she said, "Thank you for showing me."

  A sweet smile. "I'm gonna go eat a cookie now. Mama said I could have one 'cause she's baking. Bye!"

  Watching after him until he was safely back inside, she walked out to the "waterfall pond." It proved an apt description. Unlike the large waterfall a longer distance out from the den, this one was tiny, would barely create a splash as it poured into the pond in summer. Right now, it was a stunning piece of natural sculpture, the water frozen as it fell, the pond a mirror.

  Alice sat on a sun-drenched boulder beside the sheet of ice, her eyes closed and face lifted up to the late-afternoon rays. That fine-boned face was no longer sallow, her brown skin holding a golden glow. Her hair, too, Sascha saw, had begun to grow, though it was only a delicate feathering on her scalp right now, the glorious curls that Sascha had seen in an old photograph not yet in evidence.

  "Sascha." A quiet smile, a faded shadow of the huge grin Sascha had seen in that same photo. "Have you come to see if my cracked egg of a brain has any more information?"

  Sascha made a rueful face. "Does it feel like that's the only reason I come to see you?" The truth was, she wanted desperately to help the other woman heal, but Alice wasn't ready yet.

  First, I have to mourn, she'd said on Sascha's last visit. I lost everyone I loved when I was put into that cryonic chamber. I don't know if my heart is strong enough to recover.

  Sascha believed differently. Alice had already shown her strength in waking from a sleep that should've consumed her; it might take time, but the scientist would put the pieces of her self back together. When she did, she would be extraordinary, of that Sascha had not a single doubt.

  "No," Alice said in reply to her question. "It's me." Closing her eyes, she tilted her face up to the sun again. "I wish I could give you the answers you need." She exhaled, lashes lifting as her gaze turned to the frozen water. "I heard about what happened, the madness and the violence."

  Taking a seat on a nearby boulder, Sascha told Alice what she knew. As a result of the relationships Sascha had formed with the Es in the compound, she'd heard from every one of them since their placements--it made her the one person who could see patterns within the individual experiences, mine answers that could help them all. The trouble was, the pattern was bleak.

  "At least," she said, clinging to the single point of light in the darkness, "we now understand one of the unofficial subdesignations." Jaya did instinctively what it had taken Sascha considerable time and intense focus to accomplish. "An elderly Forgotten empath once told me only cardinals could stop riots," she said, thinking aloud. "Something to do with a terminal field. But Ivy can clearly tap into a similar ability--though neither one of us can maintain it for long."

  Angling her face out of the sun, Alice frowned. "The Forgotten empath conflated two different elements
, unsurprising given that the two are often used in concert. Only a cardinal can create a terminal field, but other high-level empaths can control crowds."

  Sascha stared at Alice . . . who blinked and stared back. "Did that just come out of my mouth?" the other woman whispered, her eyes huge and luminescent in the indirect sunlight.

  "You sounded like a professor." Sascha's heart thudded against her ribs. "As if I was a student who'd made a basic error."

  Alice rubbed at her face with gloved hands. "It's gone now, but for that instant, it was as if I was the Alice of before, my mind tumbling with ideas and concepts and a thousand thoughts instead of this dullness I can't penetrate."

  Sascha touched the other woman's shoulder, hope a golden surge in her blood. "It's okay, Alice. I think . . . I think you're coming back." Bringing with her the knowledge that might save an entire race.

  Chapter 40

  Aden--the surgical simulations you asked me to run all end in Vasic's death. Given the seriousness of the matter, I went outside my official authorization and liaised with other surgeons after telling them the problem was a hypothetical model. None were able to offer any suggestions I haven't already considered and ruled out.

  Message from Dr. Edgard Bashir

  IVY STOOD AT the window that night, looking out at the high-powered lights that illuminated the street below. The bodies were gone, but the authorities were still collecting evidence. She knew in her gut that if the outbreaks continued, such careful work would soon be considered a luxury.

  Hearing a noise from Vasic's bedroom, she stepped through the open doorway to find him shrugging off his leather jacket, his boots already discarded. The last time she'd seen him, it had been for a fleeting instant when he dropped Rabbit back at the apartment. He'd been on watch outside for hours, not to mention the work he'd done to help clear away the bodies. She'd missed him with every breath . . . but the man who'd come back to her wasn't the same one who'd surprised her with a pastry that morning, before the world fractured in a hail of terror and madness.

  "Getting ready to shower?" she asked, stomach tightening at the ice of him, his emotions walled up so effectively that the emptiness made her chest clench in pain.

  A curt nod. "Excuse me." And he was no longer in the room.

  Ivy stared at the space where he'd been as the shower came on after a minute in the attached bathroom, the words Aden had spoken to her at the hospital vivid in her mind. As the other Arrow had pointed out, Vasic's wounds ran bone deep. Those wounds had been drenched in death and violence anew over the past fourteen hours, were rubbed raw and bloody.

  Understanding why he'd gone distant and cold didn't mean she was about to permit him to brood alone. That bad habit was one she intended to break, and break quickly. You know, she said telepathically, it's extremely frustrating to try to have a conversation with a man who can simply teleport away.

  Hands on her hips when he didn't respond, she strode over to the open bathroom door--clearly her Arrow didn't appreciate her determination where he was concerned. Leaning against the doorjamb, she felt her breath leave her lungs in a pleasured rush at the blurry outline of his nude body behind the steamy glass of the shower enclosure.

  It took serious effort to find words since her brain seemed to have forgotten the concept of language. "So"--she saw him freeze beyond the glass, his hands in his hair--"did the medics discover anything new about the infection?"

  Lowering his hands, he said, "Ivy."

  "Yes?" She didn't budge. "You were about to answer my question."

  "I was about to ask you to leave."

  "Sorry, I didn't hear you." Wickedness woke in her. "Where are you going to teleport naked?"

  "I could go to my quarters in Arrow Central Command."

  She stuck out her tongue at him. "That's cheating!"

  Turning off the shower, Vasic slid open the shower door. Ivy was determined to stay . . . but lost her nerve at the last second. "Damn it." Twisting out of the door, she stood with her back against the wall beside it, her skin hot and breath short.

  When he stepped out, a towel wrapped around his hips, she bit down on her lower lip. He was beautiful. All sleek muscle and strength, a finely honed blade of a man. Trickles of water from his hair trailed down his back, and she had to fight so hard not to reach out and touch. She wasn't sure he'd accept it. Not tonight. "You didn't dry your hair properly." It came out a husky whisper.

  Turning toward her, he braced himself with his palms on either side of her head, his bare skin inches from her, the heat of him smashing against her hungry skin. And his fury . . . that was a stunning thing, the storm in his eyes molten silver.

  "I can't give you what you want." It came out ice-cold, but those eyes, those eyes . . . "I thought--" He shook his head. "You can't change the core of a man, Ivy. You can't take a man christened in blood and make him into something better."

  Ivy narrowed her eyes, furious at the way he continued to see himself. "I don't want you to change. Haven't I made that clear?" Rising on tiptoe, she fisted her hands in his hair. "I want you. All of you. Even the part that infuriates me."

  Vasic could feel the numbness that had crawled over him in a defensive reaction to the carnage he'd seen, the bodies he'd handled, begin to crack. Jagged and sharp, each crack echoed through his mind, ice splintering across a frozen lake. "I handled the dead with my hands and my mind today," he said, and it was a brutal, inescapable truth. "Do you really want those hands on you?"

  She released his hair . . . and something broke in him, only to heal even stronger when she tugged one of his hands off the wall and intertwined her fingers with it. "I've told you--I want your hands on every inch of me." Passion glittered in her eyes, was hot on her cheeks, and a large part of it, he realized too late, was anger. "You used these same hands, that same mind, to save lives today. Why don't you ever focus on that?"

  Vasic set his jaw.

  Gripping it in her slender fingers, Ivy forced him to meet her gaze. "No more, Vasic. You don't get to live in purgatory, and you certainly don't get to punish yourself by shutting out everyone who cares for you. If you want to brood, you do it with me so I can knock some sense into you."

  Vasic couldn't take his eyes off the vibrant life of her, the numbness in a thousand pieces by now, no match for the force of Ivy's fury. "You," he whispered, "are the most beautiful thing I've ever had in my life."

  Eyes afire, she shook her head. "No, you are not getting out of this fight that easily." A glare. "I want a promise."

  His skin hurt with need for her, but he didn't close the distance between them, uncertain of Ivy's temper. "What do you want me to promise?"

  Fingers still on his jaw, she pressed down. "That you will never again attempt to drive me away because you think I'd be better off without you." A hard, fast kiss that was a punch right to the gut. "That will never be true. I wake up excited to see you, Vasic. I dream of you. Your voice, your mind, your hands. I love every part of you. I imagine a future with you!" Face flushed and body tensed, she sounded angrier and angrier with each word. "Don't you dare try to tell me you're not worth it! Don't you dare!"

  Vasic didn't have the will to repudiate her. He'd used it all up. If she didn't want to heed his warning, then he was going to be selfish and make his claim, accept hers. "I promise." It was a vow.

  Chest heaving, Ivy stared at him, the suspicion on her face making something twist deep inside him, the strange emotion at once gentle and fierce. "Wait for me in your bedroom," he said, taking what he needed because Ivy had said he could have it. Have her.

  Ivy had fought for his right to have her.

  She never denied him, never punished him by withholding the touch he craved--her touch--and he planned to take terrible advantage. Now and always. "I need to make sure everything is secure before I join you." The mattress on his bed was hard, would discomfort her. "I want you under me, naked and aroused and mine."

  Ivy's cheeks went a hot peach. Running a hand down his chest, she sc
owled. "I'm still mad at you . . . but don't take long."

  Vasic didn't, but he was thorough nonetheless as he completed a security sweep of the floor after pulling on a pair of jeans and boots. Then, apartment door bolted behind him, he walked into Ivy's room. Kicking off his boots by the side of her bed, he just looked at her for a minute. She'd changed out of her earlier clothes into the flannel pants she liked and that lacy, strappy top that didn't cover much at all. The upper curves of her breasts were visible to his gaze, her nipples peaking below the fabric he could tear with a single tug, it was so ridiculously flimsy.

  Ivy rubbed her feet on the sheet. "Why are you looking at me that way?"

  "I'm thinking how easy it would be to tear off your clothes." It would leave her bared to the skin, the cream and gold of her open to his touch.

  She shivered, and he'd had enough of looking. Getting into bed, he came over her and placed his gauntleted arm above her head, then gripped her jaw as she'd done his. "Open your mouth," he said. "I want to taste you."

  Ivy's fingers clenched on his nape. "Vasic." Her lips parted.

  Not hesitating, he placed his own over hers and indulged as he'd never indulged before Ivy. Her body was soft and silky underneath the hard weight of his, her taste lush, her welcome unhidden. He wanted more, took more, controlling the kiss with his grip on her jaw. Ivy didn't seem to mind, her free hand rising to wrap over his shoulder from behind as she held him to her.

  The voluntary dissonance trip wire in his mind sparked a warning, but it was only a yellow alert, a reminder of the power he had to control. Ignoring it, he continued to keep Ivy trapped below his body as he smashed the rules of Silence to rubble and kissed her in unrestrained demand. Ivy wasn't very good at being angry with him--she gave him the wetness, the raw intimacy that he craved with a wild generosity that only made him hungrier.

  Humans and changelings had hobbies, he thought in one corner of his mind. This would be his.

  "Sex can't be a hobby," Ivy gasped, tiny nails digging into his flesh in a bite that made him want to demand more, and he realized he'd telepathed the words to her.