The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (164 page)

Her normally tan-brown skin holding a tinge of gray, she nodded at Indigo. “Tell him to stay in wolf form for the time being.”

Indigo didn’t argue, just said the words, and Hawke knew she’d be sending the force of her command down the mating bond as well. “Don’t you dare shift until I say it’s okay.” Her voice was taut, her will absolute. “Lara?”

“I think I got the major damage,” the healer said, her body trembling from the exertion.

Hawke tugged Lara to the warmth of his body. “He finally got Indigo to accept the mating bond,” he said. “Do you really think the damn stubborn wolf will give that up?”

That made Lara’s lips curve a little and she rested against him as Lucy started to clean up. But she only allowed herself a short break. “I don’t think we should move him, but we need to change this sheet. I have just about enough energy left for that.”

“Hold on.” Releasing her after a small squeeze, he moved around to slide his arms under the body of the large silver wolf as Indigo did the same for his head. “Lucy?”

The trainee nurse, her eyes red with unshed tears, nodded. “Ready.”

As they lifted, she whipped out the bloodied sheet and slipped in a new one, with Lara helping from the other side. It only took a few seconds, and Drew didn’t stir once.

Shoshanna put down
the incident report. “Your unit failed.”

“Yes.” The only positive news was that the highly intelligent man who’d organized the operation had made it out alive. “We won’t get another chance. They’re continuing to dismantle the surveillance and they’ve further strengthened their security.”

“You should have hit the wolf alpha in the city.”

Henry wondered if his wife thought she was in charge of their “partnership” again. But he said nothing on that point. Let Shoshanna lull herself into a false sense of superiority. It would, in the end, make her easier to kill. “Such an operation would not have fit in with our long-range plan.”

As that plan included taking the city and its resources as cleanly as possible, Shoshanna had to agree with her husband. “The others?”

“My men were ordered to eliminate the DarkRiver alpha, but as our surveillance efforts were focused on the wolves, they could not get to him. It appears he spends most of his time away from the city at present.”

“Protecting his unborn child,” Shoshanna said. “A child that should not exist.”

“Be that as it may, we’ve tipped our hand and they are now all on high alert.” Henry’s head gleamed mahogany dark under the lights as he rose to his feet. “It may be time to change the long-range plan.”

Shoshanna wasn’t Henry’s wife except in the legal sense, but she’d worked with him long enough to comprehend his meaning. “You want to sacrifice San Francisco.”

Henry turned from the window. “It will cause economic chaos on a mass scale, but that can be managed once we remove the roots of the trouble.”

Shoshanna considered their options. An all-out war would have a serious impact on the world, including on the businesses that had backed the Scotts to date, but by the same token, a clean strike would eliminate ninety percent of the problem. “How strong is your army?”

“Give me two more months.”

And then, Shoshanna thought, San Francisco would burn.

Indigo sat in
the curve of her father’s arm on the edge of the White Zone forty-eight hours after the shooting. She hadn’t wanted to leave Drew even for an instant, but Lara had pulled in Hawke, and her alpha had ordered Indigo to take a break or he’d carry her out.

“I’d decided on him,” she told her father. “My wolf had decided on him, but he didn’t know.” There had been too many people around before he went up for his security shift, and she’d wanted it to be a special, private moment. “I was going to tell him when he got home, but—”

Her father stroked a big hand over her hair, slow and easy. “Do you think he didn’t know when the bond snapped into place?”

“I just keep thinking if I’d accepted the bond earlier, I could’ve—”

“You held him,” her father said, his voice stern. “That’s all a mate can do in that situation. You did it. You’re still doing it.”

“Drew’s in my heart. So deep,” she said, “until the thought of losing him feels like razors cutting across my soul.”

“It’s who we are, pumpkin.”

She knew the childhood nickname was meant to make her smile. Nothing could. But she accepted the comfort of his hold. “All this time, this was what I was so scared of—of loving someone this much and losing them.”

Abel brushed her hair off her face. “You were always going to love with all your soul, sweetheart. You’re built that way.”

“So is he,” she whispered. “There’s so much love in him, Dad.” The mating bond showed her a depth of feeling, of heart, even greater than she’d imagined. He was someone special, Andrew Liam Kincaid, and he was hers. “I wish you could see him as I do.”

“That would be against the laws of nature,” Abel said in a somber tone. “I have to be able to kick his ass if necessary—therefore, I must see him as the filthy bastard who dared hurt my daughter by getting himself shot.”

“Are you threatening my mortally wounded mate?”

Her father pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’ll hold off until he’s healthy.”

About to respond, she caught a gentle scent as familiar to her as her own. “Evie’s here.”

“Of course she is.”

Her sister’s embrace almost brought moisture to Indigo’s eyes, but she swallowed back the tears. She would not cry. To do so would be a surrender. And she refused to give Drew up.

 

 

Having just spent
an hour beside Drew’s motionless form, Hawke pressed his palms to the wall outside the infirmary, wanting to do some damage, find his revenge, but knowing that even if he was able to get his hands around Councilor Henry Scott’s neck right this instant, it wouldn’t help Drew.

Logic didn’t matter to his wolf. It was enraged and—

A scent. Rich and exotic. Sandpaper across his skin.

He stayed still, hoping like hell she’d pass by.

But she stopped and to his shock, put a hesitant hand on his back. “Is he . . . ?”

He didn’t turn, knowing that if he looked at her right now, he might do things that could never be taken back. “He’s stable, but otherwise, no change.”

Her fingernails scraped against his T-shirt as she curled her hand into a fist. “He’ll be okay, though, won’t he?”

She was asking him for reassurance, and had it been any other member of the pack, he would’ve turned and taken them into his arms. But this was Sienna Lauren, and he couldn’t trust himself around her. “He’s strong.” When her hand dropped from his back, he felt the loss like a knife wound. “Lara’s hopeful—and your uncle’s worked on him, too, helped repair some of the microscopic damage.” But the bullet fragments had caused so much harm that even Judd couldn’t be sure he’d found every lethal cut and nick.

Sienna nodded and he just caught the movement with his peripheral vision. As he watched, she went to the door of the infirmary and slipped in. Only then did he push off the wall, his muscles taut as iron.

It was agonizingly tempting to give in to his wolf, to run until the violent emotions within him were exhausted to silence, but he was alpha. And there was work to be done. One of the most important things was ensuring that every single surveillance device within the entirety of den territory had been found and destroyed. SnowDancer, in concert with DarkRiver, had already launched an all-out search, but there was still a chance of overlooking one or two.

“Do you have anyone who can help us be certain the land is clear?” Hawke asked Lucas on the phone a few minutes later, thinking about the Psy members of the leopard pack.

Lucas didn’t. But he made a discreet inquiry, which led him to ask Hawke an odd question. “The devices you’ve found all have metallic components?”

Hawke checked with Brenna. “Yeah, there’s at least a little metal in some form or another in every single one of these things.”

“Give me a few minutes.”

When Lucas called back, it was with an offer of assistance from one hell of an unexpected source. Devraj Santos, director of the Shine Foundation and one of the Forgotten— descendants of those Psy who’d dropped out of the Net before Silence—had volunteered his services.

“How is he going to find them?” Hawke asked, his wolf unwilling to put its faith in a man he hadn’t ever met. “And what does the metal have to do with it?”

The leopard alpha sounded annoyed when he answered. “He won’t say, but I trust him. The Forgotten hate the Council even more than we do.”

That much was true, and it made him consider Santos’s offer. “What does he want in exchange?” Hawke knew of Shine, knew Santos wielded considerable power. No man kept that many people safe from the Council’s assassins by doing good deeds for free.

“We’re already linked to Shine,” Lucas said. “He wants some kind of relationship with SnowDancer.”

“No alliance.” Hawke didn’t ally with anyone he didn’t know inside out. “But we’ll owe him one if he can deliver.” A favor from SnowDancer was worth a hell of a lot.

Dev Santos agreed to the deal.

It took the Shine director a week of eighteen-hour days—the man located the cameras unerringly even in the blackest darkness and across immense distances—to clear their entire territory.

Hawke decided to up the favor count to Santos’s benefit.

“I occasionally need to ‘disappear’ people when the Council gets too interested in them,” the man said afterward. “Can’t think of any place better than in a pack of wolves. You’re so secretive, I had to sign my name in blood in triplicate before being allowed to set foot on your land.”

“No promises,” Hawke said, “but contact me when you need a disappearance and we’ll talk.” There were hundreds of places across the state controlled by wolves where a man or woman could vanish and not be found. And Dev Santos’s people had Psy genes; as the man himself had shown, those genes could prove very useful.

Devraj Santos held out a hand.

Hawke’s wolf decided they could deal with the man. They shook.

Indigo touched her
lips to Drew’s. They were soft, warm, as if he was simply resting. He’d shifted into human form spontaneously earlier that morning, and they were all hoping that meant he was about to break through the comalike sleep that had held him in thrall. She hated seeing him so quiet, so still.

Drew was never quiet. He was energy and life and mischief.

“Indigo?” Lara asked. “You okay?”

“Yes.”
No.
“What’s this?” she asked, distracting the healer by gesturing at something on Drew’s bedside table.

“What?”

She held up a small yellow action figure, complete with fangs and claws.

“Ben.” Lara smiled. “He keeps sneaking in here and leaving his soldiers to ‘guard’ Drew.”

“See, Drew,” Indigo said as Lara left to check on Silvia, who was well on the way to recovery, “you have to wake up now. What’s Ben going to play with if he gives you all his soldiers?”

She was brushing Drew’s hair off his face when she caught Riley’s scent. The other lieutenant came in and took his brother’s hand. “How is he?”

Riley always asked her, not Lara. Because he was mated. And he’d almost lost his mate once. “Strong,” Indigo said, “so strong that when I fall asleep, I swear he’s curled up around me.” Sometimes she woke feeling as if she’d been rubbing her face against thick, lustrous fur the shade of silver-birch bark. It comforted her in sleep . . . and caused incredible desolation when she woke.

Meeting her gaze in silent understanding, Riley leaned down to whisper something in Drew’s ear before leaving several minutes later. Brenna had already been by that morning and would likely return again within the hour.

Lara touched Indigo’s shoulder some time afterward. “Come have a cup of coffee.”

Indigo shook her head.

“Fine, then I’m pulling rank,” Lara said in a steely voice. “You will get up right now, sit your ass down at my desk, and eat what I put in front of you.”

Startled, Indigo stared at Lara. “You can only pull rank when a pack member is in danger of harming herself.” In that situation, Lara outranked even Hawke.

Lara poked Indigo in the ribs. “When was the last time you ate?” She didn’t wait for a response. “If you don’t do this voluntarily, I’ll call Hawke and Riaz and have them hog-tie you to a chair. Then I’ll spoon-feed you, and after that, I’ll pump you full of narcotics so that you get at least eight solid hours of rest.”

Indigo’s wolf wanted to snarl, but it loved the pack healer too much. “You play mean, Lara.” Bending down, she pressed her lips to Drew’s. “I’ll be back after I satisfy General Lara.” It was hard to pull herself away, harder still to stuff food down her gullet.

It took her ten minutes—because Lara refused to let her go until she’d finished every bite. “Drew, sweetie, I have some bad news,” Lara said, after Indigo returned to his side. “Your mate’s lost twenty pounds and looks like a fish stick. You’re going to find yourself mated to a skeleton if you don’t open those baby blues.”

Indigo scowled, but her response was lost in a rush of noise as Riley, Brenna, and Judd all returned, along with Hawke and a couple of the teenagers who’d gone up into the mountains with her and Drew. Too many people—but this was how they healed.

By touch. By Pack.

Hawke asked Lara for an update, and the healer began to speak, but Indigo was focused only on Drew . . . and her wolf caught it the instant his breathing changed.

Then she heard the sweetest sound of all.

“Where’s Indy?” It was a groggy question.

 

 

A whirl o
f sounds and scents crashed against Andrew’s senses. He felt Lara’s warm hands on his face, his chest, heard his sister’s cry of welcome, saw Hawke’s distinctive hair glint in the light, but—