Branded by Fire

by Singh, Nalini

  “For being a brat,” Lia Smith said without stopping in her task. “Sometimes, I think you’re all still in short pants.”

  “Only when we come here,” Bas drawled from the back doorway. “It’s like I enter this house, and boom, I lose twenty years.”

  Mercy, adrenaline lowering now that Sage had gotten his comeuppance, found that she’d somehow ended up leaning against Riley as he stood with his back to a wall, his hand a rough warmth along her arm. He was petting her, calming her. Doing what a mate did.

  Awash in bittersweet joy, she looked at Bas. “Where’s Grey?”

  “Right here.” Her youngest brother came in through the kitchen doorway with her father. “Hi, Riley.”

  “Hi.”

  Her eyes narrowed when no one bothered to introduce themselves. Even her father just gave a curt nod and kissed Mercy on the cheek before going to his mate. She looked at Bas. “Did you four gang up on Riley?”

  Absolute silence in the kitchen except for her mother’s exasperated breath. “Michael T. Smith, I told you to leave the boy alone.”

  The “boy” held her tighter against him, obviously not the least bit worried. “I’m fine, Mrs. Smith. And I have a sister, too.”

  Lia turned her gaze on Riley. “Good God, Mercy. You brought another one into the family?”

  And Mercy knew it would be a good night, no matter the worry that continued to pierce her heart.

  Sascha stared at Tamsyn in the rosy evening glow. “You’re sure?”

  “Sascha, darling,” Tamsyn said with teasing patience, “it’s a pregnancy test, not rocket science. Even if it wasn’t positive, the fact that Lucas says you are is gold—you’re probably around two weeks along. That’s when males tend to pick it up.”

  “He told me my scent’s changed, that my body’s already shaping itself to accommodate the new life in my womb.” His eyes had glittered with protective emotion, his soul there for her to see.

  “A mate always knows,” Tammy said with a gentle smile. “The rest of the pack will begin to pick it up now that he has.”

  “How?”

  “Something happens when the male member of a pair knows—it’s like his protectiveness coats you, and your own scent changes with it, to something unique, something that speaks of life newly begun.”

  Life. Sascha laid a fluttering hand over her abdomen. “I still can’t quite believe it.” A soft warmth lay curled in her belly, a presence that she sensed with every empathic sense in her. It was a spark now. No, a tiny fraction of a spark. So tiny that she had to focus all of her power to feel it. “I never expected to be a mother.” Perhaps that’s why she hadn’t understood what her body had been trying to tell her.

  Tamsyn looked surprised. “Really? But you love children.”

  “Yes.” She reached out for Tammy’s hand, wanting to share the depth of her joy. “But when I was in the Net, when I thought I was flawed, I swore I’d never submit a child of mine to that kind of an existence.”

  Tammy leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the cheek. A gift. A comfort. “You’re not in the Net any longer.”

  “And,” a deep male voice said from the doorway, “you were never flawed.”

  She raised her head to look into the face of the panther who was her heartbeat, and now, the father of their unborn child. “You were supposed to stay downstairs.”

  “Yeah,” Tammy said, even as she released Sascha’s hands and walked to the doorway, “this was a girls-only session.”

  A slow smile crossed Lucas’s face. “I wonder if it’ll be a girl.”

  Tammy passed him, brushing her fingers over his arm in an affectionate gesture. “Way too early to tell.”

  Lucas stayed in position after Tammy left, his green eyes stroking a caress over her. “Scared?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t know how to be a mother. “Nikita was hardly a good role model.”

  “I’m scared, too.”

  “You’re the alpha of the pack,” she said, finding they’d somehow moved toward each other without realizing it. “You’re only saying that to make me feel better.”

  He took her hand, placed it over his heart. “Listen.”

  It was jagged, touched with a tinge of sheer terror. “Why?” she whispered.

  “My parents were wonderful,” he told her, continuing to hold her hand. “But they couldn’t protect me. It terrifies me that I won’t be able to protect our child.”

  She shook her head, pressed her hand more firmly against him. “They died fighting for you. If that’s the legacy we leave our child, that child will grow up knowing he or she was loved, loved so completely.”

  “Such faith in me, kitten.” He cupped her cheek with his free hand, his touch warm, wonderfully familiar. “Have the same in yourself.”

  Leaning into him, she drank in the beat of his heart. “Give me a few months. I have to study the mother thing.”

  “Ah, Sascha.” He laughed, and the sound of it wrapped around her like a sensual blanket. “I’m sure you’ll have a graduate degree in it by the time the kid decides to pop out.”

  She fisted her hand and thumped him on the chest, fighting the smile that threatened to edge her lips. “Don’t tease.”

  He kissed her, a quick, wild burst of easy male affection that echoed down the mating bond. “I’ll take you to the bookstore.”

  “Will you read the books?”

  “I won’t have to—you’ll read them to me.” He smiled and it was a slow, feline curve of his lips. “I do love the things you say in bed.”

  She burst out laughing, the emotional chaos of the day buried under the incandescence of their mingled joy.

  Everyone was early to the Council meeting. “Are we all secure?” Nikita asked.

  There was a round of confirmations.

  Kaleb asked the next question. “We need to have an idea of what they’re capable of. I’m willing to share what I found—I’m assuming I was the hardest to get to?”

  “Correct,” Ming responded. “Your teleportation abilities made you the most difficult target. However, Tatiana is also close to impossible to get to without warning.”

  Kaleb had heard rumors the other Psy could strip shields, enter any mind she chose. She hadn’t yet broken his shields, and he made sure never to be anything but absolutely guarded against her. “Tatiana?”

  “I see no harm in sharing the information,” the other Councilor said. “Downloading the details now.”

  Streams of silvery data began to flow against the pure blackness that was the psychic vault of the Council chambers. Kaleb caught the vital facts on the first pass. “They planned to poison you.”

  “It appears that way,” Tatiana said. “It’s difficult to fully guard against insects in my part of Australia. The perpetrators released a number of toxic funnel-web spiders around my property.”

  “That strategy has a high chance of failure,” Shoshanna pointed out.

  “Yes,” Tatiana agreed. “From what I discovered afterward, I think it was an opportunistic ploy after their first one failed. I was meant to be on a private jet to Papua New Guinea today—that jet, I’m now told, developed mysterious engine failure and crashed into the ocean, killing all on board.”

  “How did they get to the jet?” Kaleb asked. “I assume it was yours?”

  “That’s a critical security breach—I know it wasn’t any of my people.” Her tone of voice made it clear how she knew. “We’re still working on it.”

  Kaleb decided to speak next. “They attempted to blow up my house from a distance.” He gave them the necessary facts without betraying his own security protocols.

  One by one, the others laid out their data. Surprisingly, it was Ming who’d come the closest to being killed. The assassins had made no attempts at stealth for the most militarily inclined Councilor. Instead, they’d fired at his armored vehicle using high-explosive antitank rounds. The car was so much twisted metal. The sole reason Ming was alive was because one of his Arrows, a true teleporter,
had been with him at the time. Vasic had blinked everyone out of the vehicle in the minuscule fragment of time after the rounds hit.

  “We have a leak,” Kaleb said after scanning the data. “Someone in the upper tiers.”

  “The body of a man who was known to sell sensitive information washed up yesterday,” Nikita told them. “I had it sent to the lab for processing.”

  “I agree with Kaleb,” Ming said. “Even a top-level information thief couldn’t have discovered all our locations on a particular day and time without massive effort—even if he was the conduit, he needed to have sources.”

  “The other option,” Nikita pointed out, “is that this was a long-term plan. They watched and waited for the perfect opportunity.”

  “Possible,” Henry agreed, speaking for the first time. “With the recent defections, they consider us weak.”

  “That’s their mistake.” Kaleb would allow no one to shatter that which he considered his. And for now, the PsyNet needed his fellow Councilors. When it no longer did . . .

  “Perhaps, instead of speculating, we should reconvene once we have further details of the attacks.” Shoshanna.

  “We do have another issue to discuss,” Kaleb pointed out. “The programmed violence. It’s stopped.”

  A pause of several seconds as the other Councilors brought up their files. Tatiana was the first to speak. “Councilor Krychek is correct. All the most recent interpersonal violence has been one on one, or in families. No cases with the potential for mass fatalities.”

  “The timing is certainly fortuitous.” Nikita.

  Kaleb waited for Henry to speak. He did. And confirmed all of Kaleb’s suspicions about the identity of the shadowy puppet master.

  “It may be,” the other Councilor said, “that the aim of the events has been realized. We are now, after all, offering voluntary reconditioning. It’s a step in the right direction—toward perfect Silence.”

  The dinner passed without bloodshed. Mercy wasn’t quite sure how, but she had a feeling her mother had a great deal to do with it. Which was why she left Lia to ride herd on Riley, Bas, Grey, and Sage while she went into the kitchen to help her father put on the tea and coffee.

  “Sit,” she was told the instant she entered.

  Having guessed this was coming, she pulled herself up onto the counter and watched him move about. Michael Smith was a big, strong man. A man a woman could rely on.

  “So,” he said, “that’s the best you could do for a mate?”

  Mercy snarled before she could stop herself. And an instant later, knew she’d been had. “Dad!”

  “Aw, don’t be like that, baby girl.” Ruffling her hair, he tapped her cheek, a smile curving over his lips. “I suppose I should’ve known you’d never do anything the easy way.”

  She made a face at him and opened the cookie jar to take out one of the biscotti her mom always kept in there. Bas loved the things. The rest of them had picked up his addiction. Nibbling on the treat, she said, “So?”

  “So what?” He raised one dark red eyebrow.

  “Do you like him?” It mattered, his opinion, her mother’s. Not that it would make her give up Riley, but she was a pack animal, and inside the walls of this house, within this family, Michael and Lia were the alpha couple. They always would be, even if Lucas and Sascha came over for dinner.

  Michael glanced at her with quiet eyes. “He looks at you right.”

  “Right?”

  “Hmm.” A teasing smile. It was obvious where Grey had inherited his wicked sense of humor. “Eat your biscotti.”

  Knowing she’d get nothing more out of him, but her heart lighter at the confirmation that Riley would be welcomed into the family, she did as ordered.

  Riley stared across at Mercy’s brothers, very aware that only the small-boned woman on his left was keeping them from trying to play tic-tac-toe with his bloody bones.

  “Grey,” Lia said, putting more dessert onto Riley’s plate, “why don’t you play the sax for us?”

  Grey looked like he’d been asked to strip naked and do a lap dance. “Only if you make Riley sing.”

  A snicker went around the table. Lia scowled and it immediately quieted. All at once, Riley could see Mercy doing the same at their own dinner table. Their children would likely be hellions, but his mate would keep them in line, no question about it. His mate. His heart clenched.

  I won’t be the same. I’ll be less.

  How could he do that to her? And yet, how could he possibly let her go?

  “Riley.” Fingertips on his arm. “I suppose you can’t sing a note?”

  He smiled. “Actually, I can.”

  Grey looked crushed. But it was Bastien who spoke next. “But can you take care of my sister?”

  “Your sister can take care of herself.” No matter how much he wanted to do the job for her. The wolf was alternately proud of her strength and frustrated by it. Perhaps it would be that way their entire life. Or, perhaps, they’d find a middle ground. “But I’d walk through fire for her.”

  Lia squeezed his forearm, and when he looked down, he saw a blazing inner strength that told him where Mercy had gotten her grit. Reaching up, she pecked him on the cheek. “You’ll do, Riley.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Things were in an uproar in Venice. The chairman made sure to tell the other members of the board to get the hell out of Dodge and keep their heads down. He liked control, but he was no traitor. As he made his own escape, ready to go under the knife and assume an identity he’d set up years ago, he considered the events of the past twenty-four hours.

  Some would consider the entire thing a failure. He considered it a first strike. The Psy would never again underestimate the Human Alliance. As a bonus, if the Council stuck to its normal mode of operations, Alliance people would soon begin to die. And the chairman’s point would be made without him having to say a word—in the end, the Psy were killers, monsters, and they would crush anyone who dared rise against them.

  As for the changelings, the chairman truly had no disagreement with them, but they couldn’t be allowed to keep getting in the Alliance’s way. Tonight they’d pay the price for their interference—let’s see how they liked being helpless for a change.

  Raising his hand almost compulsively, he touched the chip at the top of his spine, currently covered by the stiff collar of his suit jacket. It was a modified version of the chips worn by the soldiers. Too bad Bowen and his team had had the beta versions—unlike the men who’d gone after Councilor Krychek. The chairman felt sadness, but he was resolved. This was a war. And those men had died in battle. They were heroes.

  CHAPTER 48

  Riley knew Mercy was up to something, but couldn’t figure out what. As he drove her home, he tried to think like a cat. His cat. It was close to impossible. She never did anything predictable.

  “Do you have to return to the den tonight?”

  He shook his head, his blood heating. “No. I planned to talk my way into your bed.”

  “Talk?”

  “Maybe push.”

  Laughing, she fell silent again. He decided to let her be, and by the time he brought the car to a stop near her place, he thought she might be close to asleep. “Kitty cat?” He brushed his fingers down her cheek, needing to touch her, to reassure the wolf she was still there, that she hadn’t chosen the ties of Pack over those of mating.

  “Come on, wolf,” she said, sounding not the least bit drowsy, “I’ve got something to show you.”

  Curious, he got out of the car and walked alongside her as she took him deep into the night-dark of the forest she called home. It was peaceful, and perhaps, if his senses had been human, quiet. But he could hear the scurrying of forest creatures as they went about their business, the whistle of the wind through the treetops, the sound of his mate’s unbound hair sliding against her back.

  Reaching out, he ran a hand over that shimmering fire, enthralled all over again. “Where are you taking me?” Not that it mattered. His need t
o simply be with her was so strong, he’d walk through the forest forever if that was what she wanted.

  “You’ll see.” Smiling, she picked up the pace.

  Fifteen minutes later, they emerged into a glade screened by the mist of a waterfall he knew would shimmer with rainbows in sunlight. But the moon ruled the night, and its rays reflected off the water to cast a silvery glow over the lush vegetation. Things glittered to his night vision, fascinating and wild, even as ultrafine droplets whispered over his skin.

  Mercy walked behind him as he stood soaking in the beauty. Not saying a word, she wrapped her arms around his waist, her cheek pressed to him. He realized then that she’d shown him a secret place, given him a present wrapped in the intrinsically generous nature of her spirit. His heart tightened to the point of pain, and then the pain spread out in a wave of indescribable warmth.

  Closing his hand over hers, he said, “Thank you.”

  She nipped at him, but it was playful. Her purr was something else altogether. Fingers dancing up his shirt, she tugged at the buttons. “Off.”

  He was more than happy to oblige. She peeled it off from behind and dropped it to the ground, then said, “Everything else.”

  Smiling at the command, he decided he had nothing to lose by obeying. And everything to gain. She didn’t change position even when he was naked, his skin gleaming in the moonlight.

  Fingers running down his spine, skating lower, then back up. This time, she spread her hands and stroked, petted, caressed until he felt a light sweat break out over his body. As he waited, held in place by her pleasure, she pressed a kiss to the part of his back closest to her. “I like the way you’re built, Riley. All hard and solid and bitable.”

  Every dominant instinct he had urged him to take control. But something else, another set of instincts, pulled him back. If his mate wanted to tease him to insanity, that was her right. And, difficult as it was to restrain his wolf, he liked this, liked knowing his mate found him attractive.

  Teeth grazing over his back. “Beautiful.”