by Nalini Singh
Ah, my Selenushka, so strong and wild. Her grandmother’s soft voice, even softer hands on her face. You carry a storm inside. Be careful that it does not savage you with its fury.
It had certainly not been anything Kiev Durev could handle.
“If you don’t release it now, this rage I feel inside you,” Ethan said, “it’ll explode out of you without warning.”
“How do you know?” He was right, but damn if she didn’t want him to be wrong.
“Your wolf howls inside me.”
Selenka dug her nails into his back, struck by the visceral power of his words.
No Arrow should be so good at describing emotion. But then, most Arrows weren’t hauled into a mating bond without warning. And as Ethan had told her more than once, he wasn’t a usual type of Arrow. Her mate had turbulent depths beneath the light-cracked ice of his surface, a massive surge she could just sense.
“Emanuel was special,” she admitted, her voice husky with the scream he could hear and she couldn’t bring herself to voice. “He could make even Gregori laugh—I used to joke he should have his own comedy show. I’ll miss him.” The words weren’t anywhere near adequate for the depth of loss tearing her to pieces, but they were all she had.
Ethan bent his head so his chin rested on her hair, his arms steel around her. “I think, to be missed is a gift. To be remembered an even bigger one.”
“I’ll remember him. We’ll all remember him.” After allowing herself one more moment in the strange comfort of his arms, she broke the embrace and looked Ethan in the eye. “No more hugs, no more affection, no more comfort. Not until after I’ve done what I can for my pack. From now on, I’m Alpha Durev and though I’ll never be that to you, I need you to help me maintain that part of me.” Because he was inside her now, an icy night, calm as a frozen lake.
The calm might only be on the surface, but it was enough to chill the fire of her rage, give her the ability to think with reason.
“Use me in any way you wish,” said the Arrow who was hers.
Selenka sucked in her stomach at the potent power of his words. Even if Fate, that bitch, was laughing at her by tying her to a mate who was a stranger, she’d also sent him to her at the hardest time in her life.
Her wolves did a double then triple take when she appeared with Ethan by her side, but no one challenged him—he was with their alpha. That was good enough for everyone in her pack except her father. Those who picked up the scent bond that shouted their status as mates shot her confused and stunned looks, but even they were too grief stricken to comment on how she’d appeared with a mate after leaving the den that morning without even a lover.
Their den had multiple levels and was built under a hill, with extensions into the surrounding land. It had been constructed year after year from the dawn of their time as a pack and had the look of a home put together in pieces, but the pieces flowed, corridors going this way and that, up and down.
Some wit long ago had compared it to a rabbit warren and so now the deadliest pack of wolves in Russia lived in a place called the Warren. Its walls and floors were relatively simple, carved out of smooth gray stone, with floors that glittered with minerals. But plants thrived everywhere, wild splashes of green and red and yellow.
The lighting inside the Warren had cost them a bundle, but it was worth it.
Hawke, the alpha of the pack that had invented the artificial sunlight and moonlight technology, was a tough bastard, but he hadn’t tried to gouge her. And now BlackEdge’s den shone bright with sunlight even as the wolves within grieved.
She hugged those she saw, but most got out of her way, aware others had a deeper claim on her. She went straight to Emanuel’s parents’ quarters. Ethan took a watch position by the door without her having to say a word, his dog at his feet.
Heart tight, she stepped in to find not just the two older wolves within but also Emanuel’s brother Vadem, and Dia, the sweet young submissive Emanuel had been courting. While Vadem, an aggressive dominant, paced, his rage straining his skin, Dia sat between Emanuel’s mother and father, their arms around her.
That was the well of love and kindness from which their son had come. Vadem was the same when he wasn’t so angry.
All four looked to her with huge eyes devastated by pain.
Closing the door behind her, she went first to Vadem, took his hand. “This won’t destroy who you are. I won’t permit it and neither would Emanuel.”
Swallowing hard, he nodded; then, together, they went to his parents and Dia . . . and just held them. Held a family as they grieved, their hearts forever broken.
* * *
—
ETHAN kept watch outside the room into which Selenka had disappeared, the dog sitting silently by his side. Inside his mind, the tendrils of fire continued to stretch out, and with each increment of gain, he felt himself open up, his insides raw. Like sandpaper rubbing against his brain, against his senses.
Wanting to forestall the inevitable, he began to patch up the increasingly thin sections in his internal shields, the ones holding back the wave of Scarab power. It was a losing battle, but it was a battle he’d fight to the end. If he permitted his mind to expand as it was attempting to do, if he allowed the massive wave of power to explode out of his shields, it was all over. Scarab Syndrome had no cure, though Aden had told him one particular E might be able to help him manage it when the time came.
Memory Aven-Rose.
The leader of the squad had shared that data with him after Ethan was forced to ask for a medical checkup as the pressure in his brain grew and grew. Even deep in the gray fog, he’d known his already unusual brain was starting to show signs of severe abnormalities.
The diagnosis had been: “Strong indication of Scarab Syndrome.” But the squad hadn’t turned him in to Dr. Maia Ndiaye’s team. “I won’t take this choice from you.” Aden’s face had been set in unyielding lines as he spoke, his eyes brilliant with what Ethan now recognized as angry sadness. “You’ve had enough choices stolen from you. But I need a promise: you’ll come to me when things are critical.”
Because Ethan would then be in danger of spilling innocent blood. As Yuri’s blood had been spilled—because it was Patient Zero who’d caused the senior Arrow’s critical injuries. Since even in the fog, Ethan had no desire to be a mindless beast with no control over his actions, he’d made the promise.
Command over his mind and his body was everything to him.
Aden had also briefed him extensively on Patient Zero. Zero, according to Aden, had been in a far worse state than Ethan was now, but Memory Aven-Rose had stabilized him. It’d be a thing of luminous hope if not for the twist in the story: Patient Zero had a twin who was sane.
Ethan had no twin. No one to leach off part of the pressure building in his brain.
It was time to ask Aden for the favor he’d promised.
He stepped out into the sprawling psychic space of the PsyNet. Faint lightning strikes lingered and flickered against the night sky of the Net, each mind a bright star. A number of the strikes were strong, most weak, others all but faded. He’d seen such lightning strikes all his life—mostly during the times when he was permitted a strictly controlled look into the PsyNet.
Ming had allowed him those “furloughs” because the psychologists had made the recommendation. Ethan had read the psych report after Aden took over, seen the relevant paragraphs: The boy’s mental state is precarious. Total isolation from the PsyNet may pitch him over into a condition where he will be of no use as a weapon.
We recommend supervised visits. The vastness of the Net will help temper his psychological distress at being kept underground and alone the great majority of the time, and he is not a flight risk. He cannot escape the walls you’ve constructed around his mind.
The glimpses hadn’t had the intended effect. Instead of soothing the maddened beast, they had on
ly enraged him in the deep, cold place where he’d existed. The only things he’d enjoyed during his visits had been the mind-stars that went on forever in a glittering carpet—and the flashes of lightning. But it was only recently that those strikes had become more than faint echoes.
It was even more recently that he’d realized others didn’t see them. Something had always been very wrong with his brain. No one had noticed because he was so isolated, and trapped in Ming’s shields. The secret would die with him, but until then, he’d stand in a starry night riven with silver strikes.
Aden didn’t respond to his attempt to make contact. From the faint ripples Ethan could see in the PsyNet, the other man had to be busy sealing another rupture in its failing psychic fabric. Aden and Kaleb Krychek took it in turns, so that one of them was always at full strength in case of a major rupture.
Dropping out of the Net, he used the comm function of the gauntlet on his left forearm to send a message: I would like to meet Memory Aven-Rose.—Ethan
In the time since he’d first taken up position by this room, multiple wolves had passed through the corridor. All made eye contact and all had slumped shoulders or wet faces, but only one approached him: a tall woman older than Ethan with an angular face and a sense of tranquility to her.
“I’m Ivina, one of the healers,” she said, purple shadows under her eyes. “Your dog needs a bath and inoculations.” She bent to pet the dog and when the animal didn’t shy, Ethan nodded. “I appreciate the assistance.”
Smile sad, Ivina patted her thigh, but the dog didn’t follow her until Ethan said, “Go.”
Then he stood alone . . . until a small girl walked over to stare at him. She was perhaps four, though he had no confidence in his assessment. He wasn’t much good at gauging age in non-adults.
Her silky black hair was cut in blunt bangs above her uptilted dark brown eyes, her brown-skinned face round with the impression of cheekbones that might or might not sharpen as she aged. She wore a blue dress with a scalloped edge that came to her knees, along with shining shoes of black buckled over white socks with ruffled edges. In her arms, she clutched an item he recognized as a doll. That doll looked like the child, and it wore an identical dress in miniature.
“Hello,” he said, when no adult appeared with her. “Are you lost?”
She shook her head.
Figuring another wolf would come by for her soon enough, he returned to his vigil. But it proved startlingly difficult to ignore a child staring at him with big brown eyes. Her stare scrubbed the sandpaper over his brain even harder.
Chapter 15
I can’t give you a definitive diagnosis. We have no real diagnostic tools yet, but from all that you’ve disclosed, especially the sense of their powers expanding, I am ninety percent certain that this individual is showing the first indications of Scarab Syndrome. That sense of power, of expansion, appears to be a uniting factor across the confirmed cases.
As it seems the individual on whose behalf you’re inquiring is currently rational and able to think logically about what’s happening in their brain, I would urge they get in direct contact with me. Their assistance could be invaluable in helping us understand the Syndrome, and such clarity of thought does not last long once the Syndrome takes full effect—this individual may, at best, have only a week or two of clear thought.
It’s possible a specialist empath could help the affected individual maintain rational thought for longer, but that is not guaranteed—it appears dependent on the individual. At present, there is no cure. I am sorry.
—Dr. Maia Ndiaye’s reply to an anonymous and untrackable communication sent directly to her private inbox
“DO YOU NEED something?” Ethan asked in desperation, as that was why people mostly requested his presence.
A jagged nod, silky black hair gleaming in the light.
“What?”
In answer, the child closed the distance between them, so close that he had to bend his head to see her. She stood right by his leg, staring up at him, as if expecting him to know what to do. As he didn’t, he told her so.
A wrinkling in her brow, before her lips parted at last. “You smell Lenka,” she said, and the way she formed the words told him he’d overestimated her age.
“I am bonded to your alpha. I may carry her scent.” The idea made the madness in him rise and rise, a smashing anvil against his shields.
Gritting his teeth, he held back the attack as the child gestured for him to bend down. As he saw no threats that required him to stay upright, he obeyed, crouching down so they were eye-to-eye.
“I sad,” she said. “Pack sad.”
“Yes.” The numbness shredded, he could feel their sorrow as black rain against his senses.
His priority right now, however, was the little wolf child. He’d undergone “child management lessons” alongside all other adult Arrows—the new squad would care for their children as no one had cared for them.
At the time, he’d sat through the classes robotically. Today, he realized that he’d been wrong to believe such lessons had no value to him, that he didn’t care. He would care if something or someone hurt the Arrow children—because as with this child, they were innocents who’d done nothing to deserve pain or scorn.
No child had ever caused him harm.
No child had ever looked at him and seen a monster to be put to the leash.
No child had ever called him broken or aberrant.
Dredging up the lessons he hadn’t thought about since he attended them, he said, “Do you know why everyone is sad?”
“Yes,” the child said, her lower lip quivering. “Ema gone.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “No come back.”
Ethan looked around for help but the corridor was empty of all other life. Remembering what Zaira often said about defaulting to kindness if lost in how to deal with a child, and since this child was changeling, he awkwardly opened one arm. It was as if she’d been waiting for that the entire time. Burying her face into his shoulder, she didn’t argue when he wrapped both arms around her. He rose to his feet with her held close, a ferocious kind of protectiveness stealing his breath.
He would kill to protect her and all children. His desire not to be a murderer wasn’t as strong as his need to protect. That need had him raising one hand to stroke the child’s hair, the silk of it cool water.
She sniffled against his shoulder, the doll pressed between their bodies.
An adult wolf entered the corridor at last. Seeing Ethan with the girl, he said, “Our little Zhanusya. She’s very attached to Selya—she probably escaped her parents and followed Selya’s scent trail to you.”
A pat on the child’s back, before the other man was gone. But Ethan was no longer lost. He knew the child in his arms was content to be there. Even as he held her, he worked on his shields. It was difficult. Things kept cracking and breaking, his mind feeling as if it were bleeding from the constant barrage.
“I no cry now.” Sitting up against his arm, Zhanusya—an affectionate diminutive for Zhanna if he had it correct—rubbed at her eyes. “Vika sad, too.” Holding up the doll.
The doll wasn’t sentient, but Ethan could see that to Zhanna, her invisible wounds mattered. “Yes,” he said, because it wasn’t hard to know what to say to a child—Zhanna was wide open in a way that only heightened his protective urges. “You should wipe her tears.”
After doing so with soft little fingers while murmuring soothing words, Zhanna cuddled her doll close. “Lenka man?” A pointed look at him.
“Yes.” Pride was a roaring lion inside him. “I’m hers.”
Smiling, the child leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Nice dress,” she whispered a moment later, as if telling him a secret. “Don’t dirty. Party.” Her face fell. “Don’t wanna party. Pack sad.”
Ethan cradled her distressed body against h
im again, rocking gently in a way that seemed to soothe her. Whatever plans this pack’d had for today, they lay in ashes. It was a time of pain and sorrow—and though the weight of those emotions in the air was exacerbating his lack of control and the rising Scarab power, he wouldn’t leave the den.
He wouldn’t leave Selenka.
Not until he had no choice.
Not until he lost the battle against Scarab.
His telepathy wasn’t strong enough to reach outside Russia, but it was more than strong enough to touch base with Axl. Even with what had happened earlier, his acceptance that Axl wasn’t a villain, the engagement caused him intense discomfort. Scars didn’t fade overnight.
The senior Arrow responded at once, his own voice crystalline—Axl was a Gradient 9.7 telepath. Ethan, what is it?
I’d like to request time off for the foreseeable future. It was the first time since his escape from Ming that he’d made a request for leave. I also promised to cover Nerida’s shift tomorrow.
I’ll take care of it, Axl said. Is there a problem?
No. This is a personal request. Words he’d never thought he’d utter. I’ll speak to Aden about the long term. Though it wouldn’t be necessary; Aden would know some of it at least the instant he saw Ethan’s request to meet Memory Aven-Rose.
Understood. Leave actioned.
Thank you.
“Itchy head,” Zhanna said, screwing up her nose.
“Your head is itchy?”
“No, you itchy head.”
Ethan realized belatedly that she must’ve sensed something while he telepathed. He’d never come across that before, but he didn’t exactly have a wide social circle. “Perhaps you have a Psy ancestor.”
Zhanna smiled. “You funny talk, Lenka man.”
The door opened on those words and Selenka walked out. When Zhanna lunged for her, she brought up her arms to gather the child close. “I should’ve known I’d find you here,” she said with a nip of Zhanna’s nose that, from the way the child burrowed into her, didn’t seem to cause any pain.