“My mother went to scream but he was too fast and he had his hand over her mouth before she could make a sound.” Leaning back against the closed substation door, Memory took a deep breath, released it with slow deliberation. “He does this thing with his mind—he stalks his victims on the PsyNet and learns their mental habits, so when he attacks them, he can trap their minds at the same time.”
So no one would hear a psychic cry for help. “Did he do that to you, too?”
Alexei’s claws scraped the inside of his skin when Memory nodded.
“He knew she always picked me up at that time, that I’d be with her. He told me if I screamed or made any kind of a disruption that attracted attention, he’d cut my mother into tiny little pieces, but that if I was quiet, he’d let her live.” The flatness broke, but not into tears. Into a red-hot anger. “That psychopath is not my father. He stole my life. He will not steal my identity. My name is Memory Aven-Rose. My mother’s name was Diana Aven-Rose. She named me Memory because I was her most important one. The only memory that mattered.”
According to the records SnowDancer had unearthed, Memory had been adopted at eight years of age, in the aftermath of her mother’s death. Those records had said nothing about the circumstances of her mother’s death, which wasn’t surprising—Diana Aven-Rose had been murdered while the Psy Council was in power, and it wasn’t to the Council’s advantage to have their people aware of the psychopaths who walked among them.
Silence, after all, was meant to have fixed the insanity and violence that stalked the Psy race.
“I believe you.” No one could fake such anguish, such gut-deep anger.
Memory’s gaze searched his face, her body yet rigid. “Will your pack?”
Alexei considered how to answer that. “Psy,” he said at last, “have harmed SnowDancer multiple times over the years.” It had never sat right with the Council that the wolves were so independent and had so much power. “We have Psy packmates and allies now, and no longer see your race as a single entity, but trust with unknown Psy is still a tough road. You’ll have to earn it.”
Memory looked away and out into the misty gray dawn, tiny droplets of water beaded on her eyelashes. “I’m going to hurt Renault, stop him before he takes another child. He taunted me that he would, that he’d find a replacement. I won’t let him do that to anyone else ever again.”
A slam of ferocious anger.
Alexei clenched his jaw. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought it an attack. “Memory.”
His growl had her snapping, “What?”
“Before you turn rampaging Valkyrie,” he said with a slow smile designed to infuriate her, “you’ll have to learn to shield your emotions.”
She blinked before he caught a sudden glow in her cheeks that he was sure was a blush, hidden though it was under the rich hue of her skin. Ducking her head, she closed her eyes and fisted her hands. The anger retreated, but it wasn’t gone; he could sense it lapping at the edges of his consciousness. “Thanks,” he said, and took a sip of the coffee. “I like your claws, lioness.”
Memory flexed her fingers and stared at them. Alexei could almost hear her thought processes—she wanted claws like a wolf’s. So she could shred her captor into tiny, bloody pieces.
Alexei’s wolf watched her in primal approval, intrigued by this little E with bloodthirsty vengeance on her mind. He didn’t, however, have much longer alone with her. A minute earlier, he’d caught a distant howl on the wind that would’ve been inaudible to Memory’s ears: his alpha was on the way.
Chapter 13
Until the next life, my love.
—Tristan Snow’s final words, spoken to his mate, Aren
HAWKE HAD RUN up to the substation, his skin itching with energy. Sienna was with Lucy, the two of them driving up in an all-wheel-drive vehicle that held a medical kit. Sienna was fast, but she couldn’t keep up with Hawke when he ran at full alpha speed. He stayed in human form today, but he was as much wolf as man as he flowed through the forest on predator-silent feet.
The moisture-laden mist felt good on his heated skin when he stepped out of the trees.
He spotted Alexei at once. The lieutenant was seated on a large mossy rock next to the substation door, his legs sprawled out in front of him, and his back leaning up against the wall of the substation. His hair glinted gold even in the dull light, and from his pose, you’d have thought he was asleep.
A small woman who burned with anger paced back and forth not far from Alexei. Her movements were like a clockwork toy’s at times, jagged and uncoordinated, while at others, they smoothed out. As if her brain was short-circuiting between one step and the next, then starting again.
A sudden jerking halt, her head whipping toward him.
Hawke lifted a couple of fingers to his temple in a casual salute. Interesting that she’d picked him up from so far away. He knew one empath very well, and Sascha Duncan made a point of staying out of people’s emotions except when they were too close for her to ignore—as a wolf picked up scents, an E picked up emotions.
This E had to be wide open if she’d sensed Hawke from all the way across the clearing. Either she was scanning the area on purpose, or her shields were paper-thin. The latter would make it difficult for her to survive around a large group of people, while the former would be another strike against her status as an innocent victim.
Then there was Alexei’s report about her ability to impact changelings with potent emotional broadcasts. A weapon? It was a possibility Hawke couldn’t discount, not when pockets of the Psy race remained violently opposed to the Ruling Coalition’s progressive decisions—including the decision to sign the Trinity Accord. To those Psy, changelings remained an inferior race that had to be brought to heel.
He braced for a barrage as he walked across the snow-laden field, but the E wasn’t broadcasting. He’d made the call to go in first, with the others waiting in the trees. No point in startling or scaring the empath if she was an innocent, and if the time came that Hawke couldn’t take on a small E who stared at him in mutinous fury, then he needed to give up being alpha.
Inside him, his wolf was too astonished by her temerity to be annoyed.
He focused on her strange courage as he walked forward, and not on the ghosts awakened by Alexei’s discovery of the bunker. Not on the husky voice of a woman with sea green eyes and an artist’s hands who’d tumbled a small boy to the floor with enthusiastic kisses that made him laugh . . . and who hadn’t been able to survive her mate’s passing. And never on the last words spoken by a strong, tormented man who lay dying on the snow, his blood scarlet against the white while the same boy, a little older by then, clutched at his hand.
Hawke’s parents were long dead, could feel no more pain. His pack, however, was vibrant and alive, and it was his task as alpha to protect each and every member. Even if that meant eliminating a threat in the form of a small empath with the grit—many would say foolhardy grit—to meet an alpha wolf’s gaze.
Alexei’s eyes opened. They held no surprise at seeing Hawke coming toward him. Rising to his feet, he said, “Hawke.” A glance at the E. “Memory, this is my alpha, Hawke.”
The empath’s shoulders were already stiff. Now her hands fisted at her sides, and she shot Hawke a look full of such anger that it battered his skull. Catching Alexei’s glance, he saw the other man give a small shake of his head. So, the little E with the big eyes wasn’t doing it on purpose—and she was a power.
“Renault isn’t my father!” The words were thrown down like a gauntlet. “If you try to give me back to him, I’ll stab him in the heart right in front of you, then smash his head open and stomp on his psychopathic brain.” Her chest heaved, her words resonant in the mountain air.
Hawke’s wolf decided it liked this small, angry, bloodthirsty creature. “Never heard an E speak so violently before,” he commented, crossing his arms
over his chest.
“Renault is a special case.” A deadly growl in Alexei’s voice that had nothing to do with the habitual grumpiness designed to keep others at bay—not that it worked. Pack never let anyone drown; in this particular situation, it was the submissives who’d taken the lead—they had the advantage over their dominant packmates. Where Alexei might snarl and pick a fight with a dominant, he’d never shove away a submissive who needed affection.
Hawke wondered when Alexei would click to the fact that their plant expert Felix didn’t actually need a hug every afternoon and that sweet Evie wasn’t morose without her morning cuddle from him. Hawke was fucking proud of the subtle sneak attack mounted by the gentlest wolves in his pack. “Oh?” he said to Alexei, since the E appeared too apoplectic to form words.
“Memory and I had a ‘talk’ after you sent through the information about her adoption.” Alexei’s slow smile caught Hawke’s attention—he hadn’t seen that particular designed-to-provoke smile for over a year. “It involved her yelling at me for being an imbecile.”
“He didn’t adopt me!” The empath uttered a short scream. “He stole me after murdering my mother!”
The fury coming off her was a deluge of red that threatened to incite Hawke’s wolf to violence regardless of that wolf’s liking for her. As alpha, he was far calmer than most of the dominants under his command, but even he was hitting a teeth-clenching edge.
He was considering how to deal with the E’s violent broadcast when Alexei said, “Memory,” in a tone that was an order.
The E glared at him.
“Want to stomp on my brain, too?” The lieutenant’s lips kicked up in a genuine grin that had been missing for far too fucking long. “I’ve been told my head’s as hard as rock. But you’re doing a good job smashing at it with your mind.”
The E froze at his final words. Ducking her head the next second, her shoulders rigid and her fingers flexed out hard and stiff, she inhaled once, exhaled with slow care . . . and the wave of emotion retreated. Hawke’s wolf shook its fur into place while considering the empath with new eyes. This one had claws.
When she lifted her head back up, her eyes were obsidian. And they were focused on Alexei. “I wouldn’t stomp on your brain,” she said in a firm, sure voice. “I would tie you naked to a chair and put a small biting insect on you. It wouldn’t hurt you, just bite you in places you couldn’t reach to scratch. Over and over.”
Hawke’s shoulders threatened to shake. Alexei had clearly been irritating his mouse with a lion’s mental roar for her to have come up with that particular punishment. Right now, the younger male was scowling at her. “I rescued you, in case you’ve forgotten,” he snarled. “And all I get is attitude.”
The E’s eyes narrowed.
Curious what would happen next—he might be alpha, but he had his share of wolf nosiness—but aware he was delaying the inevitable, Hawke broke into the silent staring contest. “Lexie.” He jerked his head to the left.
Prowling over with Hawke to the middle of the field, far out of the E’s hearing range, Alexei pushed back his damp hair while the misty rain settled on their skin. “You found something else.” Not a question, acute intelligence in the gray of his eyes.
Hawke knew Alexei was in no frame of mind to consider it right now, but Hawke and his senior lieutenant, Riley, were of the opinion that it was Alexei who should be trained as Riley’s backup—the senior lieutenant needed extra time off while his and Mercy’s triplets were so young. At the moment, that coverage was spread across Hawke and all the lieutenants, but it’d cause less disruption if one lieutenant could, when needed, take on the full breadth of Riley’s duties.
The person who did so had to be calm, organized, and able to juggle multiple tasks at will. Alexei, despite his growling bad temper of late, was also the most controlled wolf Hawke had ever met. Which was why it was so interesting that the E had managed to niggle at him with her biting-insect threat.
The Hawke who loved Alexei wanted to abandon the lieutenant with the E and see what other reactions she could provoke in him. But the Hawke who was alpha needed to deal with a possible security threat to his pack. “We found something else,” he confirmed, before taking out his phone. “Have a look at the photographs the techs were able to dig up once we had Memory and Renault’s names.”
* * *
• • •
ALEXEI went motionless.
On the screen was an image of a petite woman with brown skin devoid of the kiss of the sun and brown eyes, her body clad in a dark blue skirt-suit, and her hair meticulously straightened and corralled in a twist at the back of her head. Her gaze was . . . not flat, that wasn’t the right description. The look in her eyes was just subtly wrong.
Alexei looked from the image to the Memory who stood glaring a hole in his skull from near the substation door. “It’s as if she’s two different women.” One a wild creature, the other a being of precision and ice.
Bringing up the next picture, he felt his gut churn. She was dressed the same, but wasn’t alone this time—she walked next to a tall and classically handsome man with smooth brown skin and hazel-brown eyes, his head shaven clean. He could’ve passed for thirty-five, though Alexei knew from Memory’s “adoption” papers that he was in his mid-forties. “Renault?”
Hawke nodded, the silver-gold of his hair shimmering with the misty rain that hadn’t stopped falling all morning. “The images were shot a year earlier by a news crew reporting on a merger—she’s listed as his assistant.”
Alexei forced himself to continue through the photos. His wolf was stiff and unmoving inside his skin, both parts of him struggling against the realization that he’d been taken for a fool. Memory certainly didn’t look under duress in any of these images.
“Renault’s business HQ is in San Francisco,” Hawke added, folding his arms. “He’s a businessman, has fingers in various pies. We haven’t dealt with him, but it was worth our while keeping an eye on him.”
Alexei stared at the last item on Hawke’s phone: a short recording. It had been taken outside a conference center. E. David Renault was talking to the business reporter, while Memory stood only inches away—but around her moved multiple others. Including changelings and humans who would’ve come to her aid if she’d cried out for help.
Blood hot and his hitherto silent wolf opening its mouth in a snarl, he stalked back to her through the snow that had accumulated overnight. Thrusting the phone under her nose, he said, “You want to convince me again how he’s kept you prisoner since childhood?” Not only had she fooled him, but she’d made him like her with her stubborn will and her ferocious anger.
Memory stared at the moving images, then glanced up at him. He expected to see fear, panic, desperation. Instead, she snatched the phone from his hand and threw it as far as she could, then—her obsidian eyes shining wet—she shoved at his chest.
He was so startled that he moved back a step.
She kept shoving at him in a wordless rage that was astonishing in a person so small. He felt slapped by the roar of that rage, but beneath the roar was something darker and heavier.
Despair.
It cut through the red of his fury, smashing to pieces everything he thought he knew. She was an E, he reminded himself, could be using her abilities to manipulate him. But his mind flashed with images of her building the cairn for her beloved pet, the silent tears that had run down her face, the ragged determination of her putting one step after the other as he brought her to safety, the way she’d screamed and refused to surrender to Renault.
His E with a lion’s heart was tough down to the bone. To see her brought so low that she’d lost her voice, it shook him. He put his arms around her. She continued to shove at his chest, a furious wild creature who wasn’t ready to listen, who might not even hear him. Still, he spoke. “You’re out of the cage.” Harsh, rough words shaped by his anger at
himself for doing this to her. “The battles to come are nothing to what you’ve already survived.”
Twisting out of his hold, she put several feet of distance between them. A single moment of piercing eye contact. Her gaze was brown again and it shimmered, rain on a stormy horizon. The sight was a punch to the gut. Then she swallowed hard, fisted her hands, and turned her back to him, her spine stiff as a rod though her chest heaved.
Alexei went to step toward her when Hawke put a hand on his shoulder. “Give her time to calm down,” his alpha murmured, the pale ice-blue of his gaze on Alexei’s E. “When Sienna gets that mad, I risk having my head torn off if I push.”
Alexei forced himself to angle his body toward Hawke. “If she’s lying,” he gritted out, “I’ll cut off my own arm.” There had been nothing controlled or manipulative in Memory’s reaction. It had been the primal lashing out of a living being pushed to the end of its endurance.
“Tough little thing, isn’t she?” Hawke’s voice held a faint edge of respect—and coming from an alpha wolf so deadly even the most powerful Psy in the world didn’t encroach on his territory, that was a big fucking deal.
“You have to trust my gut on this, Hawke.” Shoving a hand through his hair, Alexei willed his claws back in before he scalped himself.
“You’re my lieutenant,” Hawke said, as if that was an answer.
It was.
Alexei exhaled, his shoulders relaxing. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know Memory was in that hole.” His eyes shifted to the wolf’s vision, his blood like fire. “I found clothes that she’d grown out of—and her cat was ancient. There were signs it had been there for a long time.” One sofa arm all but bare of fabric where a feline had used it as a scratching post, the cracked and faded nature of the food and water bowls, the scratches on the kitchen counter that had been weathered and worn down with time.
Alexei didn’t think it had been a different cat, not with how broken his E had been by its loss. “Memory had stopped eating when I found her. I just got her started again and now I’ve fucked it all up.” His gut churned. He was a protector; to know he’d caused her such distress? Fuck.
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