by Nalini Singh
No one had to ask what scent had been embedded in that clothing.
“Cats have to be rabid—got to be some hotheads who aren’t thinking straight,” Riley said. “We going on alert?”
Hawke gave a negative shake of his head. “Lucas says he has the situation under control. He’s contained the spread of information, and the juveniles who know have been told it looks like a Psy setup. He has them trying to track the attacker, which should keep them out of trouble.”
“Not a bad result,” Judd remarked. “Even a year ago, you would’ve shed some blood over this.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Hawke’s ice-blue eyes were almost silver in the bright daylight, beautiful in a way Brenna had never before noticed. He wasn’t the kind of man who invited that sort of appreciation—he was too male, too hard. Exactly like Judd.
Soldier. Assassin. Tk.
“There’s one more thing we have to consider.” Judd glanced at the cabin and then back, something in his expression striking her as strange. “It might not have been the Psy. Others could have gained access to those weapons, humans and changelings included.”
Andrew growled. “Trying to save your race, Psy? Who else would dare intrude on SnowDancer and DarkRiver territory?”
“What happens if you set up the dominant changelings in a region against the Psy?”
Riley understood first. “We wipe each other out, leaving the region open to takeover by a new dominant pack.”
“Or a human conglomerate.” As his expression had, Judd’s voice sounded slightly off to her senses, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. “The Psy Council ignores humans. Changelings don’t, but you still see them as weaker. They’re not. The Human Alliance has access to a massive amount of firepower and funds.”
Hawke rubbed at his jaw. “If we track the hyenas, we’ll have a starting point. You get anything else?”
“They knew where they were going—they’d done their reconnaissance and done it well enough to know the cabin was supposed to be empty.”
“It doesn’t add up.” Riley’s pragmatic nature asserted itself. “If their point was to start a turf war, why take out an isolated cabin?”
“First step.” Judd’s voice was different. Something was minutely off-kilter and it was rubbing her fur the wrong way. “A carefully planned and controlled escalation,” he continued when no one interrupted. “Sooner or later, no matter what you or Lucas do, the packs are going to start sniping at each other.”
“He’s making sense.” Andrew’s acceptance was grudging, to say the least. “Stagger a series of small episodes and the bad blood builds up until, by the time the big one hits, we’re not thinking enough to talk it down.”
“I want those hyenas.” Hawke turned to Riley. “The search here is yours. Drew, you and Indigo escort Brenna back to the den. I have to speak to Judd.”
“I don’t need babysitters,” Brenna said through clenched teeth, able to feel the roughness of the wolf in her throat. “I’ll can get back on my own.”
“No.” Hawke’s tone was unbending, that of an alpha who expected instant obedience. “If they touch you, war will happen. You’re a tactical weakness.”
A mixture of fury and impotent rage coated her tongue. “That’s a load of crock! Any one of the females or pups gets taken, it’ll have the exact same impact.”
“I’m not going to argue with you about this.” Hawke jerked his head. “Move.”
Brenna looked instinctively at Judd, knowing he was strong enough to take on Hawke. He returned her stare, impassive. “Hawke is right. Because of the abduction and rescue, you occupy a different status in the pack. You should return—the pack’s coherence is necessary to support my family.”
The betrayal crushed her but coming on top of what he’d said earlier, it also stoked her anger. “What else did I expect from one of the Psy?” It was a bitchy thing to say but she couldn’t believe he’d turned on her like that—males were supposed to stick by their females, no matter what. It finally pounded home the truth she’d gone to such great lengths to ignore. Judd was incapable of any loyalty but the one he’d already given his family.
She turned to Indigo. “Let’s go.”
“Shift. It’ll be faster.”
Vicious anger raked its claws over her heart. “No.” Let them think she was being a brat. “I’m running human.” Suiting action to words, she took off, leaving behind both her packmates and the cold Psy male who had given her up without pause.
Judd watched Brenna until she was swallowed up by the winter-blue trees. Then he turned to the SnowDancer alpha. Hawke was watching him in turn, an inscrutable expression on his face. For a race notorious for their emotionality, the wolf was very good at keeping his feelings under wraps.
“There’s not much more I can tell you aside from the exact make and models of the weapons I saw.” He rattled off the numbers, but his attention was focused on the steady countdown of the timer in his mind. Five, four, three, two…flameout.
He was psychically blind.
It felt like losing a limb, losing all sense of identity. He was a psychic being, meant to occupy two planes. Now only one was open to him.
“Might help narrow things down,” Hawke said and his voice sounded flat to Judd’s altered senses. “Like you said, these weapons aren’t exactly available at the corner store.”
It was a struggle to focus when it felt like he was breathing through mud. “Even if you locate the supplier, be careful. If it was the Psy, they had to have known the hyenas were too inexperienced to pull this off smoothly. The operation might be a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface.”
“I never take anything on face value.” Hawke’s eyes looked metallic to Judd’s compromised senses, as if seeing things in technicolor depended on his psychic eye. “I need to talk to you about something else. What do you know about a Ghost in the Net?”
It was a question so unexpected, Judd went silent.
Hawke scowled. “Nothing?”
“He’s a rogue.” It had to be one of the women, he thought as he answered. Either Sascha or Faith still had contacts in the Net. “Not much is known about him, but he’s anti-Council, from what I saw before I defected.”
“Do you have any way to get more background on him?”
“No. He’s in the PsyNet and I’m not,” he lied without compunction. Hawke might’ve taken them in but loyalty was another matter. The Ghost, on the other hand, had earned Judd’s silence.
Wolf eyes looked at him with a predator’s watchful attention. “You’re not Psy any longer, Judd. Choose.”
“I chose a long time ago.” He held the alpha’s gaze. “If I learn anything else, I’ll let you know.”
“While you’re doing that, why don’t you consider the decisions you need to make about where your loyalties lie.”
Judd could no longer distinguish the color of Hawke’s hair—the world had turned monochrome. But he held his ground. “Have you ever considered what I’d be if I wasn’t Psy? There is no other available designation.”
“You could be a SnowDancer.”
CHAPTER 17
“That’s not an available option for an adult Psy male. Your pack doesn’t accept outsiders.”
“Bullshit.” Hawke snorted. “We accept human and outside-pack changeling mates all the time. It’d be a small pool if we didn’t.”
“There’s a difference with Psy.”
“Only if you create it. Marlee and Toby are already SnowDancer.”
Hawke’s words caused Judd to go motionless. “Don’t make that statement unless you’re willing to stand by it.” To fight for the kids if Judd, Walker, and Sienna were somehow killed. “Everyone knows you despise the Psy.”
“I’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean.” But he didn’t deny Judd’s accusation. “What happened between you and Bren?”
“None of your business.” The answer came out so fast, he had no chance to censor it. Instinct. Something that could�
��ve gotten him rehabilitated in the PsyNet. Because what was instinct if not the harbinger of emotion?
“I’m her alpha.” A command, an order.
Judd had never been very good at taking them. “As Brenna would say—you’re not her keeper.”
Hawke grunted. “You do realize Riley and Andrew will gut you where you stand if you so much as touch her.”
“Also none of your business.” Her brothers considered him an easy target. That was their mistake. “But I will ask you to keep her safe over the next day.” Until he could take over the task himself.
“Going somewhere?”
Judd’s vision was fraying at the edges, details lost to the encroaching darkness. “I’ll be back in twenty-four hours.”
Hawke didn’t push for more, surprising given the tight rein he liked to keep on the Lauren family. “What do you think Bren would say if I told her you’d asked me to look out for her?”
“Most likely she’d show you her claws and say that she can take care of herself.”
“She can. But I don’t care what she thinks, she’s not back to full strength yet.” Hawke raised an eyebrow. “Want a piece of advice, one male to another?”
Judd waited.
“Wolf females get really, really, really pissed off when their males don’t support them against others in public.” A flashing smile. “You’re going to have to grovel to get back in her good graces.”
“Loyalty. I understand that.” And he did.
Hawke angled his head. “One of the scouts is returning.”
Judd didn’t bother to waste words. He just walked around the cabin and jogged into the trees. He had three hours at most before the physical crash. Wanting to race through the forest, he nonetheless set a slow enough speed that he could keep an eye on his surroundings. Without his Psy senses, he wasn’t human but less.
Psy were meant to be psychic. Removing that aspect of their makeup affected everything about them. His hearing was already compromised, sounds coming through as if blocked by a wall of water, while his sight was no longer as acute as it should have been. But it was enough to drive.
Reaching the vehicle Brenna had forgotten in her anger, he punched in the code, slid back the door, and entered. Given his destabilized state, he would have normally set it on automatic, but that was impossible in this territory. The roads were less than tracks in most areas, with none of the embedded computronic tags needed by the vehicle’s navigation processor.
Falling back once more on the lessons he’d learned in the bleak emptiness of Old Sapporo, he arrowed his concentration to a fine point. He’d barely reached his destination when the physical crash hit full on. His mind blinked out—to all intents and purposes, he was now in an unbreakable coma.
Brenna pushed herself to the limit on the run back to the den and was exhausted by the time she returned. Peeling off from the other two, she headed toward her room. Unfortunately, since Andrew lived in the same family quarters, she couldn’t get rid of him.
“That was some pace, Bren. Where did that come from?”
She spun around. “I don’t know. I don’t know where anything in my head or body comes from anymore. Even if you ask me a thousand times, I still won’t know!”
“What’s got your tail in a twist?” He scowled. “Your new boyfriend didn’t kiss you right? Oh, I forgot. He’s a fucking robot who doesn’t know how to kiss.”
Drew had always had the ability to push her buttons, but she was not in the mood for games today. She was mad, so damn mad. At Judd, at her brothers, at Hawke, at the whole bloody universe. “Maybe I’m not the one with the problem,” she said, something mean and nasty inside of her taking over. “Why don’t you find Madeline and get laid?” The pack’s young females were all highly sexual, but Madeline was getting perilously close to crossing the line into slutty. “Maybe a good rut will get you off my back.”
Drew’s expression was pure thunder. “You’re not too old for me to wash out your mouth with soap.” Quiet, lethal, a reminder that her usually easygoing middle sibling was also a high-ranking soldier.
“Try it.” It was almost a hiss.
Her brother blinked, visibly taken aback by the venom in her voice. She had always been the sweetest of the three of them, the one who could talk both Drew and Riley into almost anything. They’d babied her, protected her, loved her. But that didn’t give them the right to stick their noses into her business. “You seem to have forgotten that I’m an adult female, not a juvenile,” she said when he remained silent. “Touch me and I’ll shred your face.” Her voice was cold, cutting…mean.
“Jesus, Bren. Where the hell is that poison coming from?”
The taste of bile bloomed on her tongue as her mind recognized the horror. This spiteful, violent woman isn’t me. Even when he pissed her off, even when he acted suffocatingly arrogant, she adored Drew. But if it wasn’t her, then who else could it be? This wasn’t a dream—she was fully conscious and spewing hatred.
It made her want to be sick.
Covering her mouth with her hand, she ran the rest of the way to her room and slammed the door shut. When Drew pounded for entrance, she told him to leave her alone.
“Damn it, Bren. You’re in no shape to be alone. Come out, baby sister.”
Tears filled her eyes at his unflinching affection. “Please, Drew. I need to think. Just let me think.”
A small silence. “I’ll always be here if you need me, you know that, right?”
“Yes. I know.” But he couldn’t help with what was happening to her mind. No one but a Psy could—except the Psy she’d given her trust to had turned on her.
She heard Drew’s footsteps as he padded to his own room. The shower started a few minutes later. Suddenly feeling sweaty and dirty, she stripped off her own clothes with such haste she tore holes in them. It didn’t matter. She had to wash off the filth, scrub away the stench of evil and that of her own ugliness.
The water smelled like rain, fresh and pure. After use, it would flow back out, purified by an amalgam of old-tech methods using natural cleansers and high-tech filters regulated by precision computronic processors. A perfect, peaceful cycle that stole nothing from the Earth and put no pollutants into it. So brilliant that even the Psy used it. Not because they cared about the Earth, but because this method was so cheap as to be laughable.
Scrubbing at her skin till it reddened, she tried to keep her mind full of such technical matters. As long as her brain was busy, she’d be safe from the putrid evil he’d planted inside of her, the rot eating away at her insides.
No, don’t think of that. Think of the tech. So beautiful, so complex.
Before Enrique had kidnapped her, she’d been close to completing her certification as a Level 1 computronic technician. It was the highest of the ten available grades, requiring skill, intelligence, and something extra—the ability to innovate new systems, create new designs. It was unheard of for a twenty-year-old to tackle the certification, but she’d finished school at fifteen, the exams a cakewalk. Over the next five years, she’d steadily increased her tech rating from an initial 6, to 5, all the way down to 2. She would’ve been a Level 1 by now if he hadn’t taken her.
Blood scented the air. Acrid. Iron-rich.
Blinking awake out of her semishocked state, she saw that she’d scrubbed so hard, she’d taken skin off her forearm. And still she felt dirty—she wanted to keep scrubbing, keep removing layers. The things the monster had done, the things he had forced her to witness, to remember, they dirtied her from the inside out, transforming her mind into a cesspool of malice, hatred, and the sickest of desire.
“No!” Turning off the water, she got out and dried herself. She would defeat the butcher. And she’d do it without the help of a Psy who’d not only lied to her, but had abandoned her when he should’ve stood by her.
Why? her brain asked. Why did you expect him to stand by you?
It infuriated her that she had no real answer to that question. Nothing but a bur
ning anger that sprang from something in her that was miraculously untouched by evil.
You survived and you kept him from your mind. You didn’t break.
Sascha had said those words to her the day she’d discovered Brenna in the grip of the killer’s madness. Somehow, despite the agony of a hurt that had been everywhere inside of her, Brenna had managed to keep part of herself, a strong precious part, safe. And now that part knew Judd should’ve stood by her, though it couldn’t explain why.
But if she had no answer to that question, she did have one to the issue of what she was going to do about her career. Dressing quickly, she went to the communication panel and put through a call to her old course supervisor.
He seemed delighted to see her. “Bren! You back up and about?”
“Yes, Dr. Shah. I wanted to talk to you about my Level 1 certification.” Already her mood was lifting, her sense of self returning. “I’d like to continue the course.”
His eyes widened owlishly behind the old-tech spectacles he insisted on wearing. “But didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“You’re already a Level 1.”
She felt the anger return in a scalding wave. “I don’t need or want special favors. I’ll earn my certification.” Pity would destroy her dream, completing what Enrique had begun.
Dr. Shah laughed. “The same stubborn Brenna I remember. My dear, you should know I’d never disrespect your abilities in such a way. Shame on you for thinking I would.”
She frowned, anger replaced by bewilderment. “Then how can I possibly be certified? I never completed the final tests.”
“Your long-term project—FAST.” He said the acronym as one word. “I know you did further work on it after you gave me the draft, but I was impressed enough by that draft to submit it for review by the Computronic and Tech Professional Association.”
Brenna’s heart stuttered. Review by the association was the single sanctioned way to shortcut the requirements of the training program. But the association was tough with a capital T. In her five years of study, she had heard of only one other trainee who had successfully passed review. “Why didn’t you tell me about the submission?”