by Nalini Singh
Unlocking from around her, he took a step backward, palms held up.
As if that meant anything. You could break every bone in a Psy body and they could still take you out with their mental abilities.
Especially when that Psy was an Arrow.
The hairs on her nape prickling, she continued to monitor him with her peripheral vision as she scanned as much of the hall as she could. Bozhe moi! Everyone was down. Everyone. She couldn’t see Valentin or Silver, so they must’ve left the hall before whatever it was that had happened, but two of her lieutenants as well as two of Valentin’s were on the floor, along with every single Arrow in her line of sight.
“It was the fastest way to neutralize the threat.”
She snapped her gaze back to the very dangerous man who spoke without inflection or emotion—and had a voice that continued to purr against her ears. “What threat?” It came out harsh, but her wolf wasn’t ready to go for blood, its instincts tempered by an unknown something nagging at her.
“The E in the green velvet jacket.” He nodded toward the center of the room.
Selenka could see nothing unusual about the woman from this distance. “Stay ahead of me,” she said. “No sudden movements.”
Making no effort to use his telekinetic powers against Selenka, he walked with deadly grace to where the small brunette lay on her front. Hunkering down beside her after a glance at Selenka, he motioned that he’d like to turn the brunette woman over.
Selenka flexed her hands, claws still out. “Slow and easy.”
The Arrow performed the action with an ease that spoke of honed strength, a stealthy hunter who didn’t need to flash his power.
The empath’s jacket was unbuttoned. It fell open to reveal a device Selenka recognized at once as a gas bomb. That Selenka was still standing meant the Arrow had taken down the woman before she could activate the bomb. “She’s breathing.” A soft rise and fall of her chest.
“She—and the others—are just unconscious,” the Arrow said. “A few sore heads and the odd broken bone if they fell wrong, but it’s better than death.” Not an explanation but a statement.
Selenka had to agree. Chance the gas was harmless was around the same as a bear being on good behavior for more than ten minutes: a big fat zero. “Good call.” Slicing her claws back into her body, she held out a hand before recalling that, Es aside, many of the psychic race tended to eschew contact.
A warm, rough hand slid against hers.
The contact shocked, an electric jolt straight to her core.
There you are, whispered a primal part of her psyche.
She was trying to breathe past the rush of noise in her brain when she caught motion in her peripheral vision. It could’ve been an innocent walking back into the hall, but her wolf smelled the faintest hint of old sweat—acrid and bitter, afraid. She reacted without thought, slamming her body into the Arrow’s and taking him to the ground.
The projectile bullet that would’ve slammed into him scraped across her upper back. Hissing out a breath as the bullet penetrated the soft blue leather of her favorite jacket as well as the fine cotton of her T-shirt to dig a furrow in her skin, before smashing into the wall to their left, she went to twist to go for the shooter.
But the Arrow held out a hand and said, “Eyes,” in that cold and uninflected tone.
She shut them this time.
She still “saw” the flash, a dazzling glow beneath her eyelids, a luminous beauty.
When she lifted her lashes, it was to tiny lights dancing in front of her. The assailant was down. Selenka recognized the brown-skinned woman from earlier that morning. Another E.
They were in trouble.
Chapter 2
Dominant predatory changeling females are a dangerous breed. They’ll rip your face off if you annoy them and they’re in a bad mood. On the flip side, if they claim you, you’ll be loved with a possessive fury that allows no room for doubt. Of course, you have to survive the courtship. We salute you for your courage.
—Excerpt from the editorial in the October 2078 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”
ETHAN LOOKED UP at the fine jawline of the woman who had her body on his, her pink-and-purple-streaked black braid hanging over one shoulder, and thought, This wasn’t in the plan. He’d been meant to save everyone from the attack, gain her trust, and then . . .
And then . . .
Despite the beliefs of his “handler,” Ethan hadn’t decided on his next action. He’d agreed to the plan not because of any political leanings, but because he’d wanted to see if the idea of being a traitor would ignite anything in him. It hadn’t. The world had remained a distant blur, his body and mind disconnected from every other living being around him.
Another dead end . . . until his target had put her body in the line of fire to protect him. Too well trained not to react with instinctive speed, he’d locked his arms around her as they fell, and the smell of burned flesh was yet in his nose when she twisted out of his hold with changeling strength and bounded toward the empath who’d aimed at Ethan.
That was when he saw the seared red of Selenka’s back, the flesh raw and bleeding.
No more gray, the world hemorrhaging with color and noise, his pulse in his throat.
Rising on that violent rush, he ran after her. He couldn’t catch her. She was a wolf alpha and not even an Arrow could match a powerful wolf at full lope. But she wasn’t going far and he reached the second assailant only a moment or two behind her.
This second attack wasn’t meant to take place. Either someone had screwed up, or his handler didn’t trust Ethan and had decided on a backup option that involved removing him from the chessboard. He was right not to trust Ethan, but that the gambit had harmed the wolf who’d saved Ethan’s life? Unacceptable.
Selenka disarmed the assailant. “How long does the unconsciousness last?”
“I used less power this time, so unless she hit her head, she’ll come around with everyone else—about three more minutes.” It was a guess; while everyone went down when he used his ability, recovery time fluctuated. A few would be groggy ten minutes in, while others would be up within the next two.
“Can’t see an obvious head wound,” Selenka said after a careful look. “Good, that—”
A sound at the doors before the big bear alpha ran in. Valentin Nikolaev’s dark eyes went directly to Ethan, the only unknown in this situation. But Selenka immediately stood, putting herself in front of Ethan. “He’s not the threat.”
Ethan didn’t hear the deep murmur of the other alpha’s response. He was staring at the back of Selenka’s head, and lower, to her wound. He’d been hurt far worse by his Arrow trainers and by Ming LeBon himself. But Selenka was bleeding because she’d put herself in the line of fire for him.
Breath tight in his lungs and skin hot, he broke away to head for the nearest first-aid kit. There were multiple in the hall because a number of the newly trained Es had a tendency to overload and collapse. It took him only a short time to grab it, but several more people had entered the hall by the time he got back to Selenka.
“Your back,” he said, the red of her blood pulsing in his vision.
She shot him an irritated look but shrugged off her ruined jacket, then stripped off her T-shirt. The purple-edged black sports bra she wore underneath was damaged as a result of the strike but had enough structural integrity left to hold against the cool white of her skin. Opening the first-aid kit while she continued to talk to Valentin Nikolaev and Silver Mercant, he took out the disinfectant spray. “This will sting.”
A curt nod was her only response.
Acknowledgment or not, she hissed out a breath while shooting him a golden-eyed look when he began to spray on the disinfectant. Those eyes had been dark brown when they’d first spoken.
He held the
wolf’s snarling gaze, caught by the primal brilliance—he’d never been near anyone this vividly alive. However, he wasn’t about to back down. She was his priority. “I did warn you.”
Another instant of contact that shimmered with untamed power before she returned to her discussion with the others. He ignored that discussion, focused on the damage done to her. A heavy, dark sensation gripped his lungs with stone hands. An emotional reaction? Ethan didn’t know; he had no barometer against which to judge his response.
Silence may have fallen, his race free to feel, but none of it’d had any impact on the cold gray place in which he lived. Until today.
Ethan did not find Selenka’s wound in any way permissible.
She was bleeding because she’d put her body between Ethan and danger.
His brain kept repeating that in a dazed loop, while his blood pounded in his ears. Even when his trainers had beaten him as a child, he hadn’t felt this thundering avalanche inside his head. He’d already been living in the cold place by then, the place from which he saw the world without being a part of it.
He used to analyze the strength of their blows, calculate how far they’d go, then strategize his response. Every so often, he’d managed to hurt them back enough that they’d become even more vicious. Yet he hadn’t stopped, the distant rationality in him warning that to surrender was to die in a way that went beyond the body.
His cool calculation should’ve equaled perfect scores on the Silence tests, but his results had always come back with the words PATHOLOGICALLY DETACHED stamped on them. He’d noted the paradoxical nature of such a conclusion in a race determined to condition emotion out of themselves, then continued on existing in the icy grayness that permitted him to be a functional individual—and a lethal Arrow.
Ming LeBon certainly hadn’t cared about the results of the psych evaluations.
The former Psy Councilor then in charge of the squad had cared only that Ethan do as he was told, kill when he was told to kill, wound when he was told to wound. Ethan had never verbally refused to follow orders—he’d stopped talking to his trainers and Ming the first time Ming ordered him to commit murder.
Eight-year-old Ethan had simply stopped cooperating. In anything.
His recalcitrance had resulted in physical and psychic punishments so severe that long parts of his childhood were blank, his mind erasing that which would break him. Those punishments had stopped when Ming worked out that such things had zero effect on a child who lived in the cold gray place.
But the cold was gone now, the gray obliterated. Ethan’s veins pumped fire as he stared at Selenka’s wound. Changelings healed fast, but a wound this deep would take time even for an alpha wolf, and it had to hurt. “Is your healer nearby?” he asked, interrupting the conversation with no care whatsoever.
“No.” A scowl aimed at him, her eyes that luminous gold, fascinating and dangerous. “I’ll have him look at it later. Just slather that goop in there on it.”
He knew she was referring to a numbing gel that would also protect the injured area. Gloving up before he retrieved the tube, he took care to be gentle as he spread the gel over the wound.
The heat of her body pulsed against him, almost as if the predator that lived under her skin was testing his mettle. The BlackEdge wolves weren’t exactly known for being sweet or compliant. He’d looked them up in the squad’s files and found the notation: Dangerous if provoked. Do not underestimate.
Despite the odd itch in his palm from when she’d offered him her hand, he kept his touch businesslike. It took effort. That initial contact had shoved sensation through him in a savage punch his brain hadn’t been able to process. Perhaps because that had been the closest he’d been to another person for a long, long time.
After realizing physical torture had no effect on Ethan, Ming had relied on vicious mental chains and on the pitch black of a room without light. Ethan had lived alone in the dark for a long time, so long that he’d forgotten the sun. It had seared his eyes when he’d seen it again after an eternity.
He’d also forgotten what it was to have skin-to-skin contact with another living being, forgotten that people burned hot . . . and he had never known that a woman’s skin could be so soft. Even when the woman was more dangerous than an Arrow. Selenka’s claws weren’t for show. She could’ve gutted him before he could react.
Ending his contact with her caused a physical reaction, his power crackling in his veins and his muscles tensing, but her wound was now coated with the gel. It looked no less red, but the pain should’ve already begun to dull. The thought did nothing for the strain knotting his body—because she was still hurt. And he had helped cause that hurt.
Ethan’s jaw clenched as he forced himself to move away from her.
Changeling soldiers had taken both assailants from the hall while he’d been doing first aid, and medics called in from a nearby hospital were checking on the collapsed. Aden had also appeared in the hall, no doubt alerted by one of the Arrows who’d been outside during Ethan’s blast.
Ethan? The mental signature of the current leader of the squad was cool and controlled.
It was also a voice to which Ethan would respond; he’d made that decision when he first saw Aden and realized the other man was close to him in age. Logic alone told him there was no way Aden Kai could’ve ever been one of Ming’s pet torturers.
Aden had told Ethan other relevant facts about the changes in the squad, but Ethan had wanted only one thing: the names of the men and women who’d come inside that pitch-dark room and tried to break a boy who wouldn’t speak. Even in the gray, that knowledge had had meaning to him.
As did the fact that Aden had kept his promise and found Ethan the data.
From the list of seven names, only Ming LeBon remained alive. As squad intel had confirmed the former Councilor was being stealthily hunted by an American pack of wolves who appeared to want to crush his empire before they tore him to pieces, Ethan had laid down his blades for the time being.
That Ming LeBon, a man used to power, would lose it all before he died, that had struck him as ice-cold justice. Should the wolves fail in their quest, however, Ethan would be waiting in the shadows with a blade of light that would cut the former Councilor to tiny pieces that Ethan would then feed to feral hogs.
The ferocity and specificity of the thought caught him unawares but only for an instant. He embraced the black fire of it, deciding vengeance was better with emotion as he replied to Aden, I saw the threat. I neutralized it. Going down on one knee, he put his used glove in a biohazard destruction bag, then riffled through the rest of the first-aid kit. No fatal harm.
Report understood. Aden’s voice held a depth Ethan had never before felt but that suddenly made him certain he was missing the full meaning of that outwardly straightforward statement. What is your status?
Abilities at fifty percent charge.
No, Ethan. Aden waited until Ethan glanced up; the squad leader’s dark eyes met his across the room. Are you injured?
Ethan realized that was tactical information, too. No. Ming’s silent weapon remained as functional as it had ever been—not whole, Ethan hadn’t been that since he was six years old, but functional. Do you need me to neutralize another threat?
No. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t been hurt. More foreign depth in Aden’s words, tones Ethan couldn’t comprehend. We’re family, Ethan. And family looks after one another.
Ethan didn’t reply.
Rising with an antiseptic seal in hand, he opened it out with care; the seal would protect Selenka’s wound from infection until she could get to her healer. Well aware by now that she was conscious of every action in her vicinity, he offered no verbal warning.
She didn’t stiffen when he began to press the transparent seal into place around the wound, so the numbing gel had to be working. Once the wound was sealed, he picked up her torn T-shirt b
ut realized at once that she couldn’t put it back on without stretching and possibly exacerbating her wound. Picking up the jacket instead, he held it out. She slipped one arm, then the other into it without looking back.
The sound of her doing up the zipper was fast and crisp.
“The numbing effect will fade within the hour,” he said. “You should get to your healer by then.”
Both Selenka and the bear alpha stared at him.
Selenka raised an eyebrow. “You always interrupt big, scary changelings who could eat you in one bite, zaichik?”
Ethan was fluent in Russian, but he still wasn’t sure if he was translating the last word correctly. Because he thought it meant “little rabbit.” Possibly, it was a predator-to-assumed-to-be-prey interaction.
Shrugging that aside, he said, “If necessary.” Ethan knew fear was an emotion, but it wasn’t one with which he had any familiarity. “I believe, given my muscle mass, I’d be fairly unappetizing in any case.”
The bear laughed, big and loud and with a warmth that crashed against Ethan like a wave in a near-physical way, but Selenka narrowed her eyes.
“You should watch this one, Selenka,” the bear said, before he turned to go to where his lieutenants were stirring awake.
“Should I watch you?” Selenka’s question held a wolf’s growl . . . alongside a glint in the eye that didn’t appear to be aggressive at all. “Are you a threat?”
“Yes.” Lying to the only person in his entire life who had saved him was out of the question. “We should talk after this.”
Selenka closed her fingers around his chin, the contact light even as she sliced out her claws. The glint was gone, to be replaced by a deadly ruthlessness. “If you are a true threat to me or mine, I will tear out your throat and walk away with your blood on my claws—and in my mouth.” She brushed one claw over his lips. “But if you’re not . . . well, zaichik, then we’ll play.”
Inside him, the dark heat coalesced into an ignition point that flared to searing brightness, its tendrils spreading in a wave of color and heat and pain. The door to the cold place didn’t slam shut. No, it was obliterated from within by the tendrils that wove out around the frame, as liquid gold as Selenka’s eyes. He watched her with unyielding focus even as shards of white-hot agony thrust into his brain.