The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (195 page)

Hawke brought up an older report. “Henry lost several telekinetics in the last skirmish with us.”

“Yes, so even a generous estimate of the number remaining in his unit doesn’t give him anywhere near the capacity to move the camp using Tk. Logic says he’ll want to save their energy for the assault, so the camp will mobilize using more standard means.” Increasing the image size, he pointed out the half-complete runway. “We need to start thinking about how we’re going to disable them when the time comes.”

“Ideas?”

“It’s not subtle, but I could work at rigging the entire place to blow, focusing on the sections where they’ve stockpiled weapons.” He could teleport in under cover of night, place the charges, and be gone with security unaware of a breach. “If I link the charges to a remote signal, we can detonate when necessary.”

Hawke shifted the images around, bringing up more detailed terrain and aerial maps, the population overlay. “The area is too large for you to handle alone—the teleporting will wipe you out,” the alpha said at last, displaying an understanding of Judd’s abilities that, at one time, would’ve surprised him. That was before he’d learned that Hawke knew the capabilities of each of his lieutenants down to the wire. “Aside from the delay while you recover, a second incursion increases the chances of discovery.”

Judd had to agree. “Alexei and Drew would both be suitable for this kind of an op, but it’s a risk to go in with anyone who can’t teleport out, though I can handle a second individual if the circumstances demand a quick exit.” It was the other issue that was more problematic. “The guards will be on constant alert for non-Psy minds. Even a hint of an intruder, and floodlights will blaze over the entire compound.” Not to mention the number of Pure Psy units who’d respond to mount a search.

Hawke cleared the maps and brought up a list of names. “Psy in the packs. Who has the training to do what you need?”

When the Lauren family had first joined SnowDancer, Hawke would’ve never trusted two Psy with such a critical operation. It humbled Judd, how the changelings had the capacity to accept with such depth and honesty. Once Pack, you had to betray their trust at the basest level to be booted out. It was, he thought, strangely akin to the blood-loyalty that tied the Arrows to one another. An odd correlation.

“Walker is an exceptionally strong telepath,” he said, “but he’s had no training in handling explosives.” No, his brother had been trained in something far more subtle. “Ashaya isn’t military. Neither are Faith or Sascha—quite aside from Sascha’s current physical status.”

He brought up a separate screen. The woman on it wasn’t Pack, but she was linked to a group that had proven friendly. “Katya Haas has had some military instruction, from what I’ve been able to discover, but not enough to make her suitable.”

“I don’t think Santos would go for the idea anyway.” Hawke rubbed his jaw as he named Katya’s husband—the head of the Shine Foundation. “You trust any of your other contacts?”

Judd thought of the Ghost and his enigmatic priorities. “No.” Then he added another name to the list of Psy who were Pack. “She has both the training and the psychic skill to escape detection.”

“No.” Flat. No room for compromise. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest it.”

“Ignoring who and what she is,” Judd said, fighting his own instinctive need to protect the girl who looked so much like his lost sister, “is more dangerous than taking her into an operation.” Sienna wasn’t only powerful, she was disciplined and knew how to obey orders in a tactical situation. “There’s a reason Maria felt compelled to challenge her. You know it and so do I.”

Hawke had been called a cold-hearted bastard more than once. But never when it came to those who were his—he valued the life of each and every member of his pack, would lay down his own for them without blinking. “I don’t send novices into situations that could be lethal.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

Hawke’s wolf bristled at the quiet challenge. “I wouldn’t send Maria or Riordan, even Tai, into that situation.”

“None of those three spent ten years living with Ming LeBon.” Judd kept speaking as Hawke’s vision went wolf-bright. “She was taught to handle explosives when she was nine years old.”

Hawke snapped his head around to face the former Arrow. “Not even in the Net would they do that to a child.”

“Yes, they would.” Judd stared at the stone walls with piercing intensity. “What better way to teach a child control than to put her in a room designed to blow up with her inside if she got something wrong.”

Hawke’s wolf wanted to savage the bastards who’d tortured Sienna, its rage turning his voice almost unintelligible as he growled, “Damn it, Judd. You were an Arrow!”

Judd flinched. It was such a slight reaction Hawke only caught it because his wolf was watching the other man with a predator’s gaze. “We couldn’t risk defection when Marlee and Toby were babies.” Words so precise, they were coated in frost. “There was a high probability the severance of the PsyNet link—and we always knew we’d have to do that to truly escape—would’ve killed them outright.”

A metal letter opener flew off Hawke’s desk and slammed
into
the stone wall, the handle quivering from the force of the impact. Judd closed his eyes, fisted his hands. It took him over two minutes to speak again. “We had to wait.” The bleakness in those words betrayed the cost paid for that wait.

With a wolf, Hawke would’ve clamped him on the shoulder, dragged him into a hug. But Judd wasn’t wolf. Grabbing the handle of the letter opener, he pulled it out with a grunt and handed it to the Psy male. “Get it out.”

The letter opener began to twist methodically into a complicated shape before being crushed into an unrecognizable ball of metal, which Judd began to slam into the wall again and again using his telekinesis. Stone chips flew to the floor.

“Did Sienna know she was going to be getting out?” Hawke asked when he judged the Psy male was able to speak again. Know she hadn’t been abandoned?

“No. Not for a long time.” Judd caught the distorted ball, held it in his hand. “She was too young, and she spent the majority of her time with Ming. We could only trust her with the plan once her shields were strong enough to hide her thoughts from him.”

Hawke imagined Sienna as a small girl with eyes of cardinal starlight and hair of darkest red; thought, too, of the fear that must’ve stolen her breath, squeezed her chest as she was locked inside rooms full of explosives. “One slip of her gift . . .”

“It was a lie at first,” Judd said. “Ming wouldn’t have risked a cardinal X in such an accident. When she did make a mistake, they triggered explosions calibrated to knock her unconscious and injure her enough that she’d remember to be more careful next time.”

Hawke’s claws sliced out. “And later?”

“She asked to be put in those rooms.” The metal ball spun at rapid speed in the air. “She had to know she’d be safe enough to defect with us.”

Hawke didn’t know whether he wanted to strangle Sienna for playing with her life that way or hold her tight, shield her from the world. Except of course, that was an impossibility—she was an X, her mind meant to be a weapon. “Will she obey your orders?” His wolf raked him with its claws, but even it knew the decision was the right one.

“Yes.” A pause as the ball of metal came to a gentle rest on Hawke’s desk. “Yours are the only ones she’s ever had trouble with.”

No fear, Hawke thought. Even after all she’d been through, Sienna had never been afraid to stand up to him. Good. “I want this planned down to the last minute—in and out as fast as possible.”

Judd gave a swift nod, his eyes holding an icy determination, an echo of the memories. “I’ll do the prep work today. I’d rather reserve my psychic energies, so we’ll fly out tomorrow morning into one of the larger cities. I can teleport us the rest of the distance after nightfall. Do you want in on the planning?”

“No.” Hawke knew his instincts when it came to Sienna would get in the way. “Keep me updated.”

“I’ll get Sienna now.”

“Judd.” When the lieutenant halted, Hawke walked over and dragged him into a rough embrace. Psy or not, he was a SnowDancer. “Thank you for getting her out.” For protecting her when Hawke hadn’t known she was out there, hurting.

Judd’s eyes were midnight when he pulled back. “She’s stronger than all of us.”

The words circled in Hawke’s mind long after Judd left, but they didn’t make his decision any easier to swallow. He was about to send a young woman,
his
woman, into a hot zone.

 

 

JUDD
needed his mate with a ferocity bordering on insanity. All but dragging her from her workspace in the tech core of the den, he pulled her into their bedroom and pinned her to the wall. She gasped into his kiss but cooperated when he tore off her clothes, when he opened the front of his jeans and lifted her up by the thighs.

Too fast, too fast,
his mind warned. Gritting his teeth, he tried to slow down.

The whisper was a soft, hot breath against his ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Come inside me.”

“Brenna.”
Thrusting into the tight, wet heat of her in a single hard push, he shuddered.

Her nails dug into his back, her legs wrapped around his waist, and her mouth, it took his, holding him safe as he surrendered to the searing depth of his need for her.

Afterward, as they lay on the futon, he told her everything. “I wish I could protect her from this, but if we don’t give her an outlet, it’ll lead to a dangerous level of frustration.”

Brenna drew patterns on his chest with a fingertip. “We women are tougher than you men realize.” Propping herself up on one elbow beside him, she braced her cheek on her hand. “She doesn’t need that kind of protection anymore—you’re giving her what she needs; support to live her life.”

“I haven’t interfered, but this thing with Hawke . . . I don’t know if she’s ready.”

“Sweetheart, no woman’s ever going to be ready for Hawke.” It was the driest of statements as she leaned in to press an affectionate kiss to his jaw. “But from what I can see, she’s holding her own.”

Her words, her touch, it anchored him, settled him. “I need you,” he said to her, this woman who’d fought for her own right to live her life free of limits, “to build me some remote detonation devices.”

Amazing brown eyes shot with blue peering into his as she pressed her nose to his. “You always say the most romantic things.”

His laughter came from deep within, tangled with her own, as his mate cupped his cheek and took him with a tenderness that made him her slave.

SIENNA SAT ON
a quiet spot overlooking the lake several hours after nightfall. It had shocked her when Judd told her about the upcoming op—but not because she couldn’t do it. The exercise would be relatively free from danger given the strength of her shields and the fact that she could debilitate anyone who threatened her. Of course, contact was to be avoided at all costs, their objective being to get in and out without being detected.

Soft warmth covered her shoulders.

Startled, she turned to see Hawke. It was his jacket he’d put over her shoulders. “We didn’t get to play our game.” The part of her that had never had a chance to be a child was bitterly disappointed.

He sat down with one hand braced on the ground behind her, their bodies close enough that they touched hip to thigh . . . more. “It’ll keep.”

Unwilling to let it go at that, she held out a fist. “Ready?”

“You’re going to attempt to beat me up with that puny hand?” Complete disbelief. “Okay, I’ll pretend it hurts.”

She
would not
laugh. To do so would only feed his arrogance. “Try again.”

Frowning, he held out his own larger fist, smiled. “One, two, three!”

“Rock beats scissors.” It was impossible to restrain her smirk.

A very wolfish look. “Best of three.”

She held out a hand, called the countdown. Found her paper being cut by the scissors. Laughing at the playful way he pretended to chop at her, she made a fist again. “Last one.”

They moved their hands in unison.

Hawke grinned at the result. “Well, there are people who say we both have rocks in our heads, so I guess that’s apropos.”

“Speak for yourself.” But she curled her hand back inside his jacket, luxuriating in the dark masculinity of his scent. “Judd told me about South America.” A silent question hidden behind the statement.

“We need to discuss that.” No longer any humor in his voice. “I need to be certain you’re not only onboard with this, but capable of doing it.”