The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (222 page)

Now that he—
“Touch me and die.” Grabbing those big shoulders, she hauled him up.

“No more oral sex?” A quiet, sexy smile she knew only she would ever see.

Her entire body melted. “Oh, no. Yes, to more oral sex.” Pushing him onto his back, she slid down his body.

Her mate, she learned, knew some very interesting words.

 

 

JUDD
had gone to Xavier’s to pass over a data crystal encoded with information relating to a woman his friend had been searching for, for years, but as he waited for Xavier to finish speaking to someone in his office and come on out, he found a black-garbed male taking a seat on the moonlit back steps next to him.

He wasn’t surprised—he’d expected this from the instant his family’s cover had been blown. “Hello, Aden.”

Aden looked out at the kitchen garden behind the church. “I did not expect to find you so near a place of worship.”

“Have you come to kill me?”

“Those are my orders.”

“Since I can teleport, that means Vasic is nearby.”

Aden looked at him for the first time; that face with its high cheekbones, olive skin, and uptilted eyes was that of the quintessential Arrow. Cold. Without any indication of a man behind the mask “Vasic was taken off Jax when you were,” he said without warning, referring to the drug that turned Arrows into killers.

“Did it help him?”

“He says there was nothing left in him to save.”

Judd’s eyes went to the emblem on the shoulder of Aden’s uniform, a single star. “Kaleb didn’t give the order.”

“Ming.” Aden turned back to look at the garden. “He doesn’t understand us, never has, though he once wore the badge of an Arrow.”

Judd leaned forward to brace his arms on his knees. “I broke the code. I left the squad.”

“To save an X.” Aden echoed his move, unusual from a Silent Arrow.

“Silence was meant to save the Xs, save all of us who don’t fit into the normal world.”

“It’s failed, Aden.”

“Yes. For some at least.” A long pause. “The Council no longer exists, though the populace doesn’t yet realize it. The factions are already forming behind the scenes.”

“You’re talking about a civil war.” One that would devastate the Net.

“Perhaps it’s been inevitable since the instant our race chose Silence.”

Yes.
“How long?”

“There’ll be a small lull as each faction gathers support . . . months, Judd, not years.”

Bells rang somewhere in the distance, and they both went quiet.

“Has Walker ever told you he had me as a student?” Aden asked after the echoes faded.

Judd shook his head. “He doesn’t speak about his time in the squad’s schoolroom.”

“What he taught me . . . tell him it has saved the life and sanity of more than one Arrow.”

Judd thought of his brother’s brilliance at telepathic deceptions, without which they would’ve never have escaped the Net, and wondered just how Aden had utilized those skills. “If you need me, I’ll stand beside you.”

“You exist. Sienna exists. It’s enough. You not only survived, you’ve found happiness. I don’t understand the emotion, but I know it’s better than the dark. So do the others.”

Hope
, Judd thought. That was the word Aden couldn’t find. “What will you do?”

“Silence is falling.” No change in the tone of his voice, nothing to betray the scale of what he was talking about. “We will watch, wait, and fight the war when it comes.”

Judd didn’t ask on which side Aden and the Arrows would stand. He knew.

 

 

DIZZIED
by the turn of events that had left her with decades, maybe a century left to live, Sienna was more than grateful when Hawke took her to the privacy of their cabin. She found herself being kissed an instant later. She wanted to nip at those firm lips, even knowing it would be a very bad idea. Might just get her devoured. “Wait, I—”

“No talking,” he said, a bare millimeter between them. “Skin privileges first.”

“Talk first.” She dug her nails into his chest.

Picking her up, he pinned her to the wall, her legs around his waist. “Okay.” Clever hands opening the buttons of her shirt, a sexy mouth on the skin of her throat and the upper curves of her breasts.

“Hawke.” It was a moan, her fingers in his hair.

“You don’t need these, do you?” Her jeans and panties were torn into fragments moments later, his hand cupping her with heated possessiveness as he kissed the life out of her.

“Off.” She pulled at the sides of his shirt, heard a button ping to the floor.

He refused to help her, more interested in playing with her slick flesh, in teasing and tormenting the breasts he’d bared by cutting her bra with a claw. But Sienna had claws of her own. Putting her lips to his ear, she said, “I want to rub my breasts against your chest.”

She was on her back on the bed with breathtaking speed, a naked Hawke above her moments later. He snapped his teeth at her. Laughing, she did the same. And then she pulled him down and did exactly as she’d demanded.

Her wolf let her play, played with her, and it wasn’t until they were lying on the rug in front of the fireplace—Hawke dressed in a pair of jeans barely buttoned, her in his shirt—nibbling at a tray of food that Sienna plucked out the key she wore around her neck. “What does this open?”

Rolling to his feet, he went out to the vehicle to return with a small metal box that he placed beside her before resuming his previous position. Knowing the wolf wouldn’t give her a clue, she slid in the key and unlocked the box. Lined with blue velvet, it was empty.

Strange how she understood. “For the memories we’ll make.” Her throat grew thick, and though she knew there was a chance his answer would break her heart, she had to ask the question she hadn’t dared to until this moment. “How did we mate?”
Had the events on the battlefield pushed him into it? Did he regret it?
She couldn’t speak those fears aloud, but they lived in her heart, bleak and painful.

 

 

HAWKE
glanced up at Sienna and knew that he held the balance of power, that what he said next would affect the remainder of their life together in the most profound of ways. He could answer her question without giving anything away, without tilting that balance. Or he could make another choice, one that took them beyond lovers, beyond mates, and to a true alpha pair.

“You were right,” he said and saw a storm of emotion in those extraordinary cardinal eyes.

It would’ve been easy for her to smile, to accept the admission at face value, but that wasn’t who Sienna was. “About what?” she asked, watching him with an expression that had turned a little guarded.

His wolf wasn’t surprised. Sienna had her own scars, and it would take time for those to fade. Hawke was okay with that—because he was planning to be there for the long haul, ready to battle any nightmare that dared touch her. “About the mating bond.” Rising up into a sitting position, he braced one elbow over a drawn up knee. “It wasn’t the wolf holding me back.

“When Rissa died,” he said, giving Sienna this last secret corner of his heart, “it was like having a part of me ripped out. I didn’t speak for a month, didn’t do anything but sit by her grave.” Boy and wolf, they’d both kept hoping that if he wished hard enough, Rissa would come back. “It took me a long time to accept that she was gone, that the only thing I had of her was the hole she’d left inside me.”

Sienna moved close enough to curve her hand around the calf of the leg he’d raised, her eyes inky black. But she didn’t interrupt, this woman who understood him in ways he wasn’t sure he understood himself, who’d forced him to face the cold, hard truth of the lies he’d told himself over the years. That didn’t make it any simpler to rip the scab off this wound—hell, he was alpha for a reason. Vulnerability wasn’t a sensation he enjoyed.

It made his next words rough, almost harsh. “It was easier to believe that my shot at mating died with Rissa than to risk that kind of pain again.” Thrusting his hand into her hair, he shook his head. “Except I never had a prayer when it came to you. You’re in my every breath and every thought, intertwined so deep inside me that love’s not a strong enough word—you have my devotion, your name branded on my soul, my wolf yours to command. A hundred years? It’ll never be enough. I want eternity.”

Tears, slow and quiet, ran down Sienna’s cheeks.

He wasn’t finished. “You have the power to tear me to pieces, to wound me so deep and true that I’ll never recover. What Rissa’s death did to the boy I was? You have the ability to do a thousand times worse to the man I’ve become. Some part of me knew that was a possibility from the instant you walked into my life—so I tried to keep you at arm’s length even as I demanded everything you had. I was a coward.”

“Hawke, no.” On her knees in front of him, she shook her head in open distress, wiping away her tears with the backs of her hands. “I should’ve never said that.”

“You called me on my bullshit,” he said, raising his other knee and bringing her in between. “Made me mad as fucking hell, and it’ll probably do the same in the future when you do it again. Fair warning.”

Her lips lifting up at the corners in a shaky smile, she twined her arms around his neck. “You mean you’re not going to become tame and well-behaved now that we’re mated?” Tiny kisses on the corners of his lips, on his cheeks, on his jaw. “Damn.”

Leaning into the affection, he allowed her to soothe the sharp edges within. “I can pretend if you want.” He petted the sweet curve of her behind, naked beneath the tails of the shirt she’d commandeered.

A husky laugh. “I wouldn’t know you.” Her next words were solemn, her expression intent. “I know we had an agreement about no alpha stuff between us while we were courting. But that’s going to change. I accept my rank, and I’ll continue to take orders from those who are more senior. But never you.”

She continued to speak before he could interrupt, her hands moving to cup his face. “I’m yours. No limits. I’ll give you everything you ask, anything you want, except this one thing—obedience because of rank. You will never be my alpha. Not in public, not in private. You’re Hawke to me. Just Hawke. Do you understand?”

His wolf shuddered, relaxed as he bent to touch his forehead to hers. “Understood and accepted.”
Mine,
he thought,
mine.
For the first time in his adult life, he had someone who was his—and with whom he could engage in a way he couldn’t with any other member of his beloved pack.

They sat like that for a long time, his wolf peaceful on a level it hadn’t been since he’d picked up the mantle of leadership at fifteen. And that wolf, it wanted her touch, too. He shifted without telling her, heard her gasp. But when the wolf laid its head in her lap and closed its eyes, her fingers clenched, soft and possessive in his fur. Content, he slept.

SIENNA
sat stroking the silver-gold pelt of the huge wolf who slept with his head in her lap, her heart filled with a depth of wonder and joy she couldn’t comprehend. The words he’d given her, the power he’d given her . . . she hadn’t expected either.

I love you beyond life.
It was a thought sent down the mating bond, and when the wolf seemed to sigh, it was clear some part of him heard her. That bond was so deep, so visceral, she knew there would never be another for either of them if one died. The changelings were right—
mating
was only once and forever.

A silent tear touched her cheek . . . a tear for Rissa. If Hawke ever wanted to visit the girl who had held his heart as a boy, Sienna wouldn’t stop him. Rissa’s ghost had been laid to rest—what remained were memories that should be cherished and held close. In a way, she thought, Rissa belonged to both of them now, as did her mother, Kristine. Pieces of the past that had shaped them, made them, brought them to this moment.

A moment in which she caressed a wolf who’d held together a broken pack through sheer grit and determination. It wouldn’t be a simple or easy life, she thought, her lips beginning to curve. He’d try to dominate her, of that she had not a single doubt. But he would also love her with every powerful beat of that wild changeling heart.

. . .
you have my devotion, your name branded on my soul, my wolf yours to command. A hundred years? It’ll never be enough. I want eternity.

No, not simple or easy.

Vivid and dangerous and extraordinary, that’s the life she’d have with her wolf.

When that wolf raised his head, she smiled. “Hello.”

He shifted, and suddenly, she was being kissed by a naked man who scrambled her brains. Gasping in a breath as he scooped her up in his arms to throw her playfully onto the bed, she laughed. “Is the edge off yet?”

“Ask me again in a month or so.” Then he pounced.

It was a long time later, her skin shimmering with aftershocks of pleasure, that she frowned and said, “What’s your full name?”