Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 48

“You’re walking funny,” Lucy said, a shit-eating grin on her face.

Five days of out of this world sex with a starving man could do that to a girl. “You’re just jealous.” Brenna pushed through the door into DarkRiver’s business HQ.

Lucy made a mournful face. “Yes, I am. Goddamn but your man is hot. And he smiles at you! I’ve seen him do it, even if no one believes me.”

“I know.” She smiled herself and it was so wide, her face felt as if it would crack. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I have to talk to Mercy about a joint holovision project. CTX thing.” Lucy looked over her shoulder after naming the leopard-wolf communications company. “Here comes your beautiful man. Talk to you later.”

Judd put a hand on her lower back as they walked down to the basement. He did that a lot—touch her. Her smile stretched impossibly wider. “I think we should play ‘who’s more patient’ again tonight.”

“Fine.” He sounded oh so Psy but his hand had slipped down to caress her hip. “You do remember that you always lose?”

Losing had never been so much fun. “We’ll see.” She walked through the basement door to find Dorian already at the console. “Where are Lucas and Hawke?” The alpha had preceded them here.

“At the building site,” Dorian replied, referring to the joint Psy-changeling development being designed and built by DarkRiver for Nikita Duncan.

“I thought the wolves were silent partners in the project,” Judd commented as she took her seat beside Dorian and began to check the lines of programming for the last time. “They just supplied the land, correct?”

Dorian nodded. “Lucas and Hawke were talking and decided to give themselves an airtight ‘alibi.’” He smirked. “Hard to accuse them of masterminding this when they were in a meeting with Nikita at the time.”

Of course, Judd thought, the Council would know exactly who to blame for the technological strike, but that was the point. The alphas were sending a message: You attack us and we’ll bite back, and we’ll do it where it hurts. The six Psy assassins who had butchered the DawnSky deer had already been dispatched—that op had taken place the same day Judd obtained the names. Now it was time for the second strike.

He glanced at his watch. “The stock exchange opens in ten seconds.”

“Give it a few minutes—let them think everything’s okay.” Dorian leaned back in his chair as they waited. “Okay. Time’s up. You want to do the honors, kid?”

“Oh yes.” Rubbing her hands, Brenna held her finger over a key. “They should have never come into our territory and taken the lives of those under our care.” She pressed down. “We look after our own.”

The Psy Council convened an emergency session within minutes of the exchange failure. They had barely gotten a handle on that situation when other systems began to fail in a relentless cascade. Major Psy banks and large Psy businesses were the worst hit.

There was no signature, no way to identify the perpetrators of the rapid-fire assault. But Nikita Duncan had looked into two pairs of alpha-changeling eyes today. She got the message. And she made sure the rest of the Council appreciated it.

For the first time, no one argued with her. The damage was too widespread, the intelligence behind the stealthy attack too finely honed. There was no doubt the animals had won this skirmish.