by Nalini Singh
Falling against her, he came as her body spasmed around his cock.
* * *
—
ETHAN, flushed and content in a way he couldn’t ever remember being—and full of the taste of his mate even after their hurried cleanup—opened the door to step into the corridor . . . and almost tripped over the dog sleeping in front of it.
The canine bounded up on all four feet, tail wagging.
“You look clean,” Ethan said, though he knew the creature couldn’t understand him. Then because he knew the value of touch now, knew this dog had been as deprived as him, he crouched to rub its bony head. “Will he have been fed?” he asked Selenka, because if he was to be responsible for this small life, he would not permit it to starve.
“Probably twice, but let me check.” Allowing his pet to lean up against her leg, she made a quick call, got confirmation. “All good for now. Pack kitchens stock food suitable for pets, so just go by there when he needs feeding.”
The dog padded alongside them as they walked on—through a place where Ethan was the recipient of smiles, and where people often stopped Selenka to exchange a hug or a piece of conversation. Sorrow continued to linger in the air—so rich and dark that he could almost taste it—but he also saw that sorrow had been consciously tempered so it wasn’t a black cloud crushing the pack.
Eventually, they stepped out into an area different from the Terrace—while that had been enclosed but for the apertures that provided light, this was a part of the mountain that was exposed to the outside. A kind of curving ledge provided protection from the elements on one side but was open to the sky and the bright yellow sunshine on the other.
That sunshine fell on the tables set out under the morning light—at which sat groups of changelings eating breakfast. Small wolves padded here and there, and two made a beeline for Selenka and Ethan. Somehow knowing the pups wanted to be picked up and would be happy for him to be the one to do so, he went down on his haunches.
“Stay,” he said to his excited pet.
Taking the two small pups into his arms, he held them with care as he rose to his full height. One curled up against him, while the other yawned and patted at his uniform jacket with clawed paws.
Selenka tapped those sharp tips with a finger and they retracted at once. “Good girl,” she said, tugging gently at the pup’s ears before taking her into her arms.
“Is that your dog?” a boy of maybe eight asked from a table.
At Ethan’s nod, the boy said, “What’s his name?”
Ethan looked down and thought, The boy is right. Everyone should have a name. “Loyal,” he said without conscious forethought. “His name is Loyal.”
The child scrambled over to pet the ecstatic dog. “Hi, Loyal! I’m a wolf. We like dogs. Wanna play?”
Seeing his pet was happy and in good hands, Ethan continued to cradle the warmth of the pup’s body against his as Selenka led him to a table at the sunny edge. His view of the people seated there was blocked by the large group clustered around it—but that group disbanded with smiles upon seeing Selenka, revealing the man and woman who sat on the left side.
The man rose with a huge grin, his muscles solid and heavy, and his height on the short side for a male—five feet six if Ethan’s estimation was correct. He had a shock of white hair and a white beard, his skin tanned leather, and his eyes a deep brown. And his voice a boom when he opened his arms and said, “Selenushka! Finally you remember your elders!”
Selenka walked into his embrace with a laugh, the pup she held happily enclosed between them. Ethan went to stand back when his gaze was caught by the petite woman who had to be Selenka’s grandmother. Hair a rich dark brown sprinkled with fine threads of gold, and face unlined, she gave him a startled smile before getting up on a rush of swirling skirts to come to him.
“You’re Selenka’s.” Soft fingers rising toward his face but not touching until he lowered his head.
Her touch was as delicate as a butterfly’s wings . . . only to firm into warmth against his cheek.
“Hello, Babushka,” he said.
Her pupils expanded, as did her smile. “You’re the strangest dominant I’ve ever met, but I like you.” Urging him farther down, she pressed warm, dry lips to his stubbled jaw. “You are a little scruffy, boy.” Chiding words, but the pat on his cheek was kind.
“Babulya!” Selenka laughed. “I like his scruff.”
Embracing her granddaughter, her grandmother said, “You would, my wild Selenushka.”
Meanwhile, Ethan found himself the focus of eyes gone wolf amber. “You must be Ethan.”
Shifting the pup to one arm, Ethan held out his hand, while maintaining the eye contact. “Sir.”
Yevgeni Durev might not be alpha anymore, but power prowled in him as it would in Selenka regardless of her age. That primal power shoved at Ethan, wanting him to back down—but Ethan had learned to hold his ground a long time ago, against far more hostile adversaries.
He didn’t blink.
Chapter 27
Dear Aunt Rita,
I mated a wolf. I’m about to meet her parents. All dominants (and, honestly, she’s a bit growly so I’m expecting the same from her folks). Any advice?
~Besotted Human
Dear Besotted Human,
If you can handle your growly mate, you can handle her parents. Stand your ground and you’ll have a long and felicitous association. (Also, bring cake.)
~Aunt Rita
—From the March 2082 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”
EXPLODING INTO A laugh, former alpha Durev ignored Ethan’s outstretched hand to enfold him in a warm embrace. “I should’ve known my Selya would choose a tough-as-nails son of a bitch!”
“Yevgeni.” It was a soft remonstration from Selenka’s grandmother, but her eyes were smiling. “I swear he does have some manners.” She touched her hand to Ethan’s and he could do nothing but stand in place under the wave of maternal warmth. “And who’s that asleep in your arms?”
Ethan glanced down. “I have no idea of his name.”
The pup let out a snore.
Laughing, Selenka rubbed the little one’s sleeping head. “Ethan has a soft spot for pups—I’ll have to teach him to ignore their wiles or he’ll constantly be carrying the babies.”
Ethan had no idea what to say to that, so he said nothing and took a seat at the breakfast table next to Selenka’s grandmother when the older woman invited him with a pat of the bench. “Shush now, you wolf-bear,” she said to her mate when he grumbled about “seat-stealing pups.” “I want to talk to our grandchild’s mate.”
Ethan had the sudden thought that he’d answer any question this woman asked. He’d never been near anyone so soft and warm and kind. Selenka took a seat across from him, beside her grandfather.
Food and drink appeared as if by magic, dropped off by smiling packmates—including a glass of nutrient drink placed directly by Ethan. Selenka’s pack had no other Psy, so this must’ve been purchased specifically for him. And it had been purchased in the short time since he became her mate.
“Wait,” he said to the youth who’d brought the drink. “Please thank whoever thought to supply this.”
A bright-eyed nod. “Sure. Sana got a whole box, different flavors.”
Turning back to the table, Ethan found himself being watched by Lada Durev. Selenka had just turned away with her grandfather to talk to an older woman at the table next to theirs, so he and her grandmother had relative privacy. “You two meet on equal ground,” Babushka Lada murmured. “I can see it.”
Ethan petted the pup’s soft fur, its body hot underneath, when the child grumbled in its sleep. “I am knight to her queen.”
A smile that surrounded him in warmth. Was this what it was like to have a mother who cared? Ethan thought
that might be a wonderful thing.
“I am so happy she has you for a mate.”
Ethan felt a dull pain in the region of his heart. “Yet you don’t believe I’m right for her.” A visceral knowledge.
“Oh, Ethan.” Lada Durev brushed back his hair. “I think you’re rather wonderful.” A smile that softened the pain, made him listen to what she was trying to say. “I just . . . I’m sad she missed what comes before mating . . . Be tender with her, won’t you? Spoil her. Adore her.” A soft plea. “She’s had so little of that in her life.”
Ethan’s answer was instinct. “I have no experience at courting a woman, but I would court her.” Before he left this planet, he’d make sure Selenka knew she was a gift beyond price. “Will you teach me how?”
A dazzling smile before Babushka Lada leaned in to kiss his cheek.
“Hey! Hey!” Yevgeni Durev thudded a fisted hand against the table. “What’s this? A conspiracy?” He pinned Lada with a wolfish gaze. “I thought you were shy with strange dominants.”
“Ethan is different,” the petite woman said equably. “Now, stop being a bear and drink your coffee.”
Across from Ethan, Selenka raised an eyebrow, her eyes sparkling.
The sleeping pup in his arms chose that moment to yawn awake and pop his head up over the top of the table. Seeing Yevgeni Durev, it yipped in excitement, paws scrabbling on the table. Ethan supported the pup gently with one hand, ensuring it wouldn’t slip and fall to the floor.
The older man tapped the small wolf on the nose, but his eyes soon returned to Ethan. “You know what, pup? I like you, even if you are getting too cozy with my mate. Our Selenushka’s found exactly the man she needs.”
Ethan wanted to embrace those words, focus only on the happiness, but he knew the truth: even in the best-case scenario, he would one day abandon Selenka.
Scarab Syndrome had no cure.
The stark truth was still echoing in his head ten minutes later when he received a telepathic missive from Abbot: We took Operative C into custody in the early hours. Cris is about to question him. Do you want to be there? I can do a pickup.
Ethan looked down at the pup who was batting at Ethan’s loosely fisted hand as if it were a ball, his mate’s husky laughter flowing over him, while Yevgeni Durev’s white hair glowed under the sun, and said, No. I’d appreciate a briefing afterward, however. This hour, he’d sit in the sun, in the laughter.
Because soon, he’d be meeting Memory Aven-Rose . . . and he’d find out if he had a future, even a broken one, or if these were his final days on the planet before Scarab ate away his mind, his personality, his heart.
Selenka looked across the table, her gaze acute . . . and her attention on his eyes. He knew from the tightening of her jawline that she’d spotted another pinprick hemorrhage. The clock, it was starting to speed up.
Chapter 28
Scarab invited a monster inside me, and now it devours me.
—From the diary of Subject JX, Operation Scarab (2003)
EZRA CAME TO consciousness disoriented, his elbow throbbing. Looking around, he tried to make sense of his location. He’d gone to sleep in his bed, but he was now in a narrow alleyway strewn with rubbish. A biodegradable food wrapper sat crumpled against his ankle, while his cheek pressed against a gritty and cold surface.
He was on the ground.
He went to push himself up into a sitting position, cried out when his left elbow screamed. His eyes filled with reflexive tears. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he tried again, this time using just his right arm. Only once he was sitting, his back to a wall, did he glance down at his injured arm. At first, he couldn’t understand why he could see it—then realized he was wearing nothing on the top half of his body.
His elbow was grossly swollen and multiple scrapes and abrasions marked that side of his body. His hip hurt, too, his mouth was dry, and his head pounded as if he’d expended a massive amount of psychic power. Had he been in an altercation? Where was he? He had no phone on him, no timepiece, nothing with which to check his location.
The food wrapper made a whispery sound as he moved his leg and his eye fell on the black writing on the pale cream background. Picking it up, he smoothed it out. The language wasn’t one he could read, but he recognized it as hangul, the neat script used for the Korean language.
That didn’t mean anything. His city boasted many international shops and outlets.
After struggling to his feet, he began to look for other pieces of trash on which there might be a date or location. In the end, he found a discarded bottle that hadn’t quite made it into the recycle bin a foot away, the torn printout of what may have been a shipping label, and a lost business card.
Two in hangul, one in the alphabet more familiar to him.
Having reached the end of the alleyway in his search, he looked beyond it into a busy square lit by billboards brilliant against the night . . . and he saw the sign with the name of the square. It was on a billboard advertising a timepiece manufacturer; the same advertisement also showed the time and date.
He was in Seoul, Korea.
In an alley he’d seen on a documentary about this square just before he went to sleep approximately three hours earlier.
In his bed in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Ezra swallowed. He looked behind him to check, and yes, there it was, the “hidden” and highly distinctive artwork that the host of the show had urged his viewers to find and visit. The perfect image for a teleport lock. Which meant that unless a rogue teleporter had attacked him and brought him here for reasons unknown . . . he’d teleported here.
Trembling, he slumped against the alley wall. He was a Gradient 5 telekinetic with highly limited teleport capabilities. He could barely teleport to the other side of the university, much less to a city half a world away.
What was happening to him?
Lights in his face, a shouted question in a language he couldn’t comprehend. Heart punching into his rib cage, he backed away from the Enforcement officer.
But the man kept coming at him, and Ezra just wanted him to stop.
The officer’s body flew back to smash into a billboard, creating cracks through its surface that broke the display model’s face in half.
Ezra stared at his hands, frozen with fear. He just wanted to go home.
Chapter 29
Operative C (Cray Jitan) unable to provide any particulars that could lead to the capture of the Architect, but he does have knowledge of several sources of funding for the Consortium. We can use that to critically wound the group.
He has also confessed to having a second contact in Moscow; that contact killed a BlackEdge lieutenant and is aiming to eliminate the others. We are working through all of Cray’s files in an attempt to identify the threat so the wolves can neutralize it. Please advise Alpha Durev.
—Note from Cristabel Rodriguez to Ethan Night
ETHAN STOPPED A grim-faced Selenka from walking into the pack’s city HQ after they exited their vehicle. His meeting with Memory Aven-Rose had initially been meant to take place in a conference room at the symposium hall, but Selenka had suggested they move it to the city HQ in order to ensure his privacy.
Now he said, “I have something for you.”
As she waited, head at a wolfish tilt, he reached inside his pocket to retrieve a folded piece of paper. She watched curiously as he began to pull out the points so the paper object was no longer flat.
“Oh!” Eyes golden, and cold anger forgotten for a heartbeat, she took the piece from his hand. “It’s a howling wolf!” She turned it this way and that. “How did you make this?”
A warmth inside him that felt like a small sun. “I can teach you.” It was an early trainer who’d taught him the dexterity exercise, and he’d continued it into adulthood. The precision folds and process fostered an intense calm inside
him.
Holding the wolf carefully on the palm of her hand, Selenka leaned in to press her lips to his jaw. “I love it. Spasibo, zaichik.”
Ethan absorbed the words, carefully storing them in the memory box in his mind as Selenka led him into the HQ. It included a large private courtyard around back that his mate had commandeered for this meeting. “You’ll want the sky above you,” she’d said, acute understanding in her tone.
Because Ethan’s mind already felt like a cage.
When Selenka took him back for a quick look, the courtyard proved to be planted with flowers and trees, with benches hidden among the foliage. Reconnaissance complete, the two of them started to walk back to wait out front, halting only so Selenka could place the paper wolf on a shelf.
“Where he’ll be safe.” A glance at Ethan. “Do you have a reason for the gift?”
“I’m trying to court you.”
No laughter, her smile a touch bemused. “We’re already mated.”
“I can court you if I want.” The idea of courting her always was one that pleased him. “You can’t stop me.”
A spear of light through the primal rage incited by Cris’s intel, a kiss on his jaw. “I think, Ethan, you’re learning to play.”
It made him wonder what else he could learn if he just had more time. Inside his mind, the power pulsed and surged again, so hard that Selenka hissed out a breath.
Memory Aven-Rose arrived on the heels of that pulse—in a vehicle driven by a male Ethan knew to be a wolf, though his eyes were human gray right now, his hair gilt even under the cloudy light.
Alexei Vasiliev Harte, lieutenant, SnowDancer wolves.