No whiplash of emotion against his senses, but he was sure he spotted a spark of fire in her eyes before he stepped into the substation. He’d let that anger simmer, heat her up. His aunt Clementine was a talker, unlike the E, but when she got really mad, she’d go quiet and fume.
Like that time Alexei and Brodie had decided to skip school for no reason except that they were pissed at the world. That, Aunt Min would’ve forgiven, but that they’d been asshole boys who’d taken off without a word and stayed “lost” for two days? Yeah, she’d stripped their hides for that.
Alexei had been only twelve, but he’d figured he deserved it.
He’d also learned that, sometimes, when a woman got quiet, her anger was all the darker and deeper for it. It could fill her up, make her bigger, stronger. Though if his E didn’t come in soon, he’d have to force the issue. The thought made his muscles knot—he didn’t want to force her inside, have her see this safe place as another cage, but she’d die of cold if she stayed out much longer.
He made himself walk into the substation; he’d give her as much time as he could.
Unlocking the door had turned on the lights, and he had to blink a couple of times to adjust to the sudden change in brightness, his pupils yet dilated from the storm-gray dullness outside. After checking that the entrance area was devoid of any equipment, he shook himself off. It felt much better when he did it as a wolf, but it wasn’t yet time to be a wolf. The care he took to balance out the two sides of his nature was about survival and about the choices a man had to make to retain his sanity.
Inside him, his usually irritable wolf stood motionless in solemn agreement.
The two parts of Alexei’s nature were never at odds on this one thing.
A stirring near the door as he thrust both hands through his hair to push it back from his face. The strands were getting a bit too long for his liking. Once, when things had been different, when Brodie had still been alive and Alexei had been a younger brother to someone, he’d worn his hair long enough to tie back.
He hadn’t felt young since he put his big brother in the ground.
The E stepped inside.
Wolf acting nonchalant inside him, Alexei made a show of removing his sodden boots and socks and placing them to one side of the entrance. Only after he was done did he glance back. The E was staring at the door, which was beginning to close.
“Automatic timer,” he told her. “To stop the rain, wind, wild animals from coming in and damaging the equipment on the off-chance one of us forgets to close it.”
The door shut.
Her shoulders stiffened, her hands fisting bloodlessly tight by her sides. Panic beat against his skull, the weight of the spiny and discordant emotion a hammer. And how was she doing that in the first place? He knew Sascha Duncan had learned to unleash her empathic abilities against people of all races, used it as a defensive measure when under attack, but it had taken her time and effort to work out the technique.
No other E could assault changelings in such a way.
Most empaths could take away pain and soften the edges of emotional trauma in Psy, humans, and changelings, but drenching others in powerful negative emotion? That was a whole other story.
Yet this skin-and-bones E was blasting at him, no holds barred.
Shaking his head in an attempt to dispel the barrage, he growled loud enough to fill the space. The emotional storm screeched to a halt; the E froze, then sent him a wary glance . . . with an edge of that delightful fury he intended to stoke into a fire.
He pointed to the panel on the inside wall. “You have the key,” he reminded her. “Stop punching me with emotion or I might decide to eat you.”
From the way she stared at him, it looked as if she was trying to decide whether to take him seriously or not. Good enough for now. At least it had stopped the howl of panic and fear that’d caused his wolf to bare its fangs. “I’m going to see if I can find us dry clothes.”
He walked off—but his hearing was plenty sharp enough that he caught the click of the door opening only seconds later, followed by the rustle of the E slipping out. Cold and wet swept inside. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and told himself to count to ten. “Calm,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “Be calm.”
Regardless of his yearlong black mood—a mood that had led his denmates to get him a mug emblazoned with the image of a singularly unimpressed feline—he remained one of the most patient wolves in SnowDancer. However, even he had a limit—if the E went mad and decided to run off into the snow and rain, he’d drag her back in.
The idea of it made him want to kick the walls.
Caging a wild bird never had a good outcome. Either the bird would break all the tiny bones in its body crashing into walls as it attempted to get out, or it would stop flying and starve to death. A wounded wild creature had to decide to trust, decide to stay.
“You’re a goddamn wolf,” he grumbled to himself after the ten-second count was over, not that he was any less frustrated. “Most sensible people are scared of wolves. Let her be.”
Except that he’d rescued her, muttered the mutinous wolf inside him. Surely that should’ve shown the E that he wasn’t actually going to eat her. The wolf that was his other half growled at him for making that stupid threat and Alexei accepted he’d been an idiot. No more threatening the tiny E with his razor-sharp teeth.
He kept his ears open as he sent a quick message to Hawke to confirm they’d arrived safely; that done, he prowled around the substation. It had been a while since he’d been up here, but he remembered it well enough from when he’d helped with the initial setup. All of SnowDancer’s soldiers had a qualification aside from their physical dexterity, tactical ability, and strength training. Alexei was a sniper and trained others for the pack, but his civilian training was in computronic engineering with a focus on the tangible rather than the programming end of things.
These days, his duties as one of Hawke’s ten lieutenants—spread out across the pack’s massive California territory—kept him too busy to do much in that area, but he’d always liked putting puzzle pieces together to create something useful. When at his own satellite den, near the border with Oregon, he joined in with projects where he could. The den’s official computronic engineers were good sports about him nosing into their projects to put in the odd hour here and there.
It kept his skills sharp, and they never complained about his work, so he couldn’t be too bad. It had been some time since he’d done anything as complex as this substation, however. To his left was a bedroom with a couple of bunk beds for any technicians who had to stay the night. On the other side of the small hallway were the shower and toilet.
The kitchenette was at the opposite end from the entry. A locked door stood on the right side of the kitchenette area. All of the tech that ran the substation was in a climate-controlled room downstairs. The access he’d given the empath wouldn’t permit her to go into that section.
The wind cut off.
She’d finally shut the door again—and she was standing on this side of it. The look she shot him was defiant even though her bones rattled from her shivers. Alexei was fascinated by this small, angry woman who dared meet his gaze as if she were a lioness under the skin—female lion changelings had a reputation for being ornery and stubborn. Alexei had met three over his lifetime and all had proven that reputation to be well deserved.
Submissive wolves never met a dominant’s gaze in so challenging a fashion.
His wolf didn’t snarl at her. It was too astonished by this small creature who thought she could defy him. It was like being told off by a gnat. His currently habitually grumpy wolf nudged at Alexei to walk over there and investigate further, maybe use his teeth to grip the side of her neck to see what she’d do.
It wouldn’t be about hurting her, more about learning her dominance.
Alexei shrugged
off the aggressive impulse. The E, he sternly reminded both parts of his nature, wasn’t changeling. Different rules applied. She had no idea that such direct and sustained eye contact with a dominant of Alexei’s power and rank in the pack was a challenge. In all likelihood, she was probably just watching him because she thought she was in danger of being eaten.
Chest rumbling at the idea of being seen as a threat by a defenseless E—next he’d hear he kicked kittens for a hobby—he stalked into the bedroom and opened the cupboard. Thick towels in different colors sat stacked in neat rolls on the top shelf.
One of the maternals must come up here every so often and tidy things up. It wasn’t that the rest of them were slobs, but no substation engineer or maintenance person would’ve rolled up the towels like colorful sushi, or left something inside the cupboard that made everything smell crisp and clean. That was a maternal wolf thing, those small touches that turned any place into a home.
His mother had been like that. Calissa Harte would cut his lunch sandwiches in the shape of a star because he’d liked astronomy. Once, he’d come home from school to find she’d used stencils to paint small dragons all over Brodie’s bedroom. Alexei and his big brother had been speechless with joy, especially when their mom gave them both paintbrushes so they could add individual touches to the dragons.
He drew in a deep breath, and it fucking hurt, broken shards stabbing into him.
His sweet, soft, gentle mother was gone.
His adrenaline-junkie and blood-loyal big brother was gone.
His sardonic prankster of a father had been lost long before he died.
Of their small, tight pack-within-a-pack, only Alexei remained. Even Aunt Min couldn’t change that, no matter how hard she tried. What drew a subtle line between Alexei’s lost family and that of his devoted, loving aunt’s was the curse that ran in his paternal line. Aunt Min’s blood was thankfully untouched by the darkness responsible for the loss of her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.
Maybe he should’ve mentioned to the E that he had a sweetheart of a twelve-year-old cousin who he babysat twice a month so Aunt Min and her mate could have the night out. His wolf snorted. Alexei had to agree with its skepticism: he’d blown his shot at a cuddly and nonintimidating image the second he ripped her bunker door off its hinges.
Then he’d threatened to turn her into dinner.
Great. Just great.
Guess the charm’s working overtime today, huh, little bro?
Gut tightening at the phantom echo of Brodie’s laughing voice, the teasing words exactly the ones Brodie would’ve spoken had his big brother been standing here, Alexei took a couple of towels out into the hallway. He threw a thick green one toward the empath. Her movements might be jerky, but there was nothing wrong with her reflexes. She caught the towel, but didn’t start to dry herself.
Instead, he felt a brush of emotion that was . . . delicate.
Like someone patting gently at his fur.
He blinked. “Are you trying to pet me?”
The sensation disappeared, frown lines forming on her brow before she turned her back to him and began to dry herself.
Not quite sure what had happened but certain it hadn’t been a threat—nothing that gentle and hesitant could be a threat—he opened out the dark blue towel in his hand. Maybe the E hadn’t been petting him at all; maybe she’d been poking at him to see if he’d react with bared teeth and rage.
His wolf’s fur brushed against the inside of his skin, the crabby creature reminding the human half once again that it was his fault the E thought she might get chomped on at any moment. Probably with hot sauce for extra flavor.
Alexei scowled under the towel.
After wiping off his face and his hair enough that it was no longer dripping, he went back into the bedroom and rummaged around in the large trunk he’d spotted in one corner. As he’d expected, it was full of T-shirts, sweatpants, and sweatshirts of various sizes. About half were well washed and soft with wear, others newer, but everything was clean.
“Maternal,” he muttered when a dried rose petal fell out of a T-shirt he’d picked up.
He curled his lip at the idea of smelling like roses. Hell, he was already “pretty”—his wolf shuddered at the reminder of the horrible description people kept using for his human face. All he needed now was to smell like a freaking rose petal.
A whisper of a different scent reached him. When he looked up, it was to find that the E had crept into the doorway, was watching him. Her scent was unlike any other in his mental database. There was an edge there, along with an unexpected touch of an intense darkness that he couldn’t name.
What he did know was that after their recent close proximity, he could now track her.
“Dry clothes.” He indicated the trunk. “The pack keeps this kind of stuff around for when we come in as wolves.” Alexei wouldn’t be the first SnowDancer to take shelter here, and loose-fitting stuff like sweats could be utilized by nearly everyone. The items might swamp a percentage of his packmates, and be a little short or tight for others, but in general, you could make do.
Having dug down to the very bottom, he pulled out the smallest sizes he could find. “Not too bad.” The supply crew must’ve stocked the trunk for when the juveniles came up on training runs. Not that he didn’t have petite adult packmates, but the E was on the tiny end of even that sizing. Still, he’d found her a pair of sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was definitely too large, but that wouldn’t matter if the pants fit well enough.
He passed her the items, then pointed to the other side of the hallway. “Bathroom’s in there if you want a hot shower.”
She held the clothing carefully away from her wet body. Water still dripped from her hair despite the fact that it was frizzy in places from her attempts to rub it dry.
“Wait.” Grabbing a thinner towel from the sushi roll shelf, he handed that to her, too. “For your hair. Be easier to wrap around your head than that green one.” Despite his recent state of mind, he wasn’t feral; women generally liked him and he’d been around enough of them, both as a lover and as a friend, to pick up certain things.
The empath stared at him, those fathomless eyes searching his face for some indefinable thing. Man and wolf watched her as intently in turn, attempting to figure out this lost E who had claws hidden under her skin. The wolf was of the opinion that it might like a skinny would-be lion with psychic claws who dared meet its gaze.
Then she shivered.
Pointing to the shower, Alexei growled. “Warm up. Now.”
A slight—very slight—narrowing of her eyes that made him want to snap his teeth at her. But she shivered again at that instant and it seemed to decide her. Turning on her heel, she walked through into the shower.
It shut; he heard the lock click, then the shower come on.
Alexei released a harsh breath.
He had not been looking forward to picking her up and dumping her under the hot spray—that would’ve well and truly eliminated any wary trust she had in him. Though . . . being an obstinate and testy lioness-type under her chilled skin, she might well have kicked him in the family jewels while blasting his mind with fury.
Alexei grinned, cheered by the thought.
Deciding he could warm up without the shower, he stripped, then picked up his suspiciously sweet-smelling towel and sniffed at it. Fuck it, he was going to smell like roses. Wolf and man resigned to the ignominy, he rubbed vigorously, until his skin was pleasantly warm from the friction and his hair damp but not wet.
At least none of his pack were here to rag him about his floral bouquet. Brodie would’ve—
His stomach tightened, his heart a stone in his chest.
Hauling the door to the substation open after unlocking it, he stepped outside, shut the door behind him, then threw back his head and howled up at the thunderous black
sky. The sound was whipped away by the wind and the rain, his throat raw in the aftermath. But the pain and anger, it was bearable again.
He could think of his big brother again without wanting to break the world. “Fuck you, Brodie.” His chest hurt, his claws stabbing at his skin. “Fuck you.”
This time, he heard no echo of yesterday, no laughter from a ghost. Just the rain and the thunder as lightning cracked the sky.
Chapter 4
Abstract: A study of changeling rogues. Prevalent only in the predatory changeling population. Not subject to any academic study or paper since Dr. Menet’s Rogue Genetics (1989). Shame, fear, grief, are all part of the reason for changeling reticence on this subject.
—Changeling Rogues: Broken Minds & Broken Families by Keelie Schaeffer, PhD (Work in Progress)
BACK INSIDE THE substation, Alexei dried off a second time, then pulled on a pair of black sweatpants and a gray T-shirt that hugged his pecs and biceps. He wasn’t the biggest male in SnowDancer, but he was muscled enough through the shoulders and chest that this had been the best option in the trunk. He’d have to let the supply team know clothes were running low for the larger sizes—should Matthias come up here while he was visiting the main den, he’d be shit out of luck.
Alexei’s friend and fellow lieutenant was built like a tank.
The ordinary thoughts, the ordinary business of being part of a thriving pack, it steadied him. He could never forget that Brodie was dead, had been executed, but he could function again as a SnowDancer lieutenant, as Alexei. Not the Alexei he’d once been, but the man he’d salvaged out of the ashes of his brother’s betrayal.
He didn’t feel the need for a sweatshirt. The substation was kept at a comfortable temperature for his changeling body. Picking up his wet gear and the towel, he placed them in a neat pile outside the bathroom. There had to be a container inside in which he could carry dirty laundry down to the den.
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