Kiss of Snow

Chapter 10

HAWKE’S WOLF WASN’T riding him as hard as it had been doing for the past week when he drove down to DarkRiver territory the next morning—to talk to Lucas about the weapons coming into the area, to see if DarkRiver had any news on possible Pure Psy operatives in the city. It didn’t take much thought to figure out that the wildness in him had been temporarily sated by the contact he’d allowed himself with Sienna.

He’d been so angry at her—always pushing his buttons, that girl. But then he’d taken her into his arms, and all that anger had blazed into a darker, hotly possessive need that had urged him to bend his head, bite down on the throbbing pulse in her neck, leave a mark.

God, that shirt. One tug and those snaps would’ve come apart, revealing the gold-kissed cream of her skin. He’d wanted to taste her, stroke her, pet her. Simply holding her, simply dancing with her, had driven his wolf half to madness . . . but he would have shredded anyone who’d dared interrupt that slow dance stolen in the silken shadows of night.

“Your pelt,” a lazy voice drawled as he walked into the clearing around Lucas’s home, “would make a nice coat for my mate.”

Giving Vaughn a desultory finger where the amber-haired sentinel stood in the shade of a large juniper tree, its trunk a rich reddish brown, Hawke said, “I can scent Luc—he inside?” He nodded at the cabin below another large tree, an unoccupied aerie perched in its branches.

“Yep. Don’t even think about going in.”

“Do I look like I’ve had a lobotomy?” Lucas’s mate, Sascha, was heavily pregnant. As a result, the leopard alpha’s protective tendencies had moved into the lethal range. “I’ll wait here. He’ll scent me soon enough.”

Lucas exited the cabin on the heels of that statement. “Sascha’s sleeping,” he said, angling his head toward the forest. “Vaughn.”

“I won’t take my eye off the place.”

“How is she?” Hawke asked as they stepped deeper into the dappled sunshine filtering through the canopy.

“Ready to give birth.” A chuckle. “Unfortunately, the baby is comfortable right where he or she is.”

“You still don’t know the gender?” Hawke wouldn’t have had the selfcontrol to hold out—and yeah, it hurt like a bitch to know he’d never have the chance to test that theory, but that didn’t dim his joy for the leopard alpha. “If I ask Sascha, will she tell me?”

“Try it.” A feral grin that was all teeth. “So, fill me in on these weapons shipments your people have detected.”

Hawke gave him a quick rundown. “My gut says the Scotts—everything points to them—are going to mount an assault this time. Full-out, open.”

“Not surprising, given that they and the others have tried covert ops a number of times and failed.” Lucas halted on the moss-covered verge beside a small, clear stream. “Sascha spoke to her mother—there’s definite Pure Psy activity in the city, but they’re being very careful. They’re well aware that not only are they not welcome, but that the last operative ended up with his brains leaking out his ears after Nikita found him out.”

Hawke didn’t like Nikita Duncan, but he could appreciate the woman’s efficiency in taking care of a threat. “That’ll make them harder to pinpoint.”

“Rats are spread out across the city. Smallest sign of a Pure Psy base and we’ll know.” The leopard alpha glanced at Hawke. “Are you planning on moving your vulnerable out?”

“Not at this stage.” Hawke had already discussed it with his lieutenants. “There’s no overt threat yet, and we’re wolves, Luc.” Evacuating their home on such flimsy grounds would demoralize any predatory changeling, dominant or not. “If and when there is a credible threat, that’s when we’ll evacuate the noncombatants.” The escape plans had been drafted long ago, could be put into motion within an hour, and the entire den cleared of their vulnerable within four. It would take far longer than that for any invader to break through SnowDancer’s first line of defense.

Lucas’s eyes gleamed cat-green in the muted light of the forest. “We made the same decision. I want Mercy to liaise with Riley to coordinate our evacuation plans. Work for you?”

“Do it. I think we should give WindHaven a heads-up, too.” The falcons could provide air support if necessary. “I’ll have Drew talk to them,” he said when Luc nodded.

“I hear your boy’s been out to the Canyon.”

“Falcons love Drew—I think he even had an indecent proposal or three.”

Lucas’s head turned toward the cabin. “Indigo know?”

“I didn’t want bloodshed.” Hawke fell in step with the other alpha as he began to head back. “Sascha awake?”

“Yeah.”

A pang of envy uncurled in Hawke’s gut. He wondered what it would be like to be connected to a person with such intimacy. Yes, he was alpha, linked to his lieutenants and, to a lesser extent, to the rest of his pack. But it wasn’t the same. None of them were his.

A rush of memory, a sleek feminine body pressed against his own, the scent of wild spice in his every breath as the rapid tattoo of her pulse sang a sirensong to his dominant nature. The wolf whispered that she could be his, only his, until possessive hunger pulsed through him, turning his muscles rigid.

He parted with Lucas at the clearing, digging his claws into his palms to cut through the compulsion. The scent of blood licked into the air, and he let it overwhelm the burn of sexual need for the moment. It wouldn’t last, he was fully aware of that. If he knew what was good for him, for his pack, he’d finish what he’d started a couple of days ago and take a lover. A lover who knew the score, who wouldn’t look at him in the morning with eyes bruised with the knowledge that he’d given her all he could.

There was nothing else left in him.

HAVING done a half-day shift on perimeter security, Sienna was home in plenty of time to work on an academic project and have dinner with Marlee and Toby. “They’re both in bed,” she told Walker when her uncle walked in the door after a later shift.

Walker shrugged off his jacket to reveal solid shoulders covered in a rough denim shirt. “I’ve got it now.”

Instead of leaving, she heated up a meal, put it on the table. Walker, having ducked into his bedroom to kick off his shoes and wash up, came in as she was placing a glass of water beside his plate. Putting his hand on the back of her head, he leaned down to press his lips to her forehead, much as she’d done with Toby and Marlee. “You’re troubled.”

It almost broke her, the tender way he held her. “It’s nothing.” She couldn’t bear to discuss last night with anyone, to share the painful magic of a dance, a touch that might never be repeated and yet that had branded her. She could still feel the rough kiss of Hawke’s jaw against her temple, his hand so big and warm on her lower back, his chest a hard, muscled wall that flexed against her breasts.

Drawing back, Walker looked at her with pale green eyes that saw too much, but he didn’t push. Relief a crashing wave inside of her, she said a quick good-bye and shrugged into her own jacket, deciding to go for a walk under the starlit sky. That same sky had been pure midnight when Hawke took her into his arms, as if the universe itself was conspiring to allow them to steal a single hidden moment.

“Sienna!”

Startled, she turned to see Maria running her way. “Are you off to do your shift?”

A bounce of loose, silky curls as the other novice nodded. “So, you going to tell me what happened with you and Hawke last night?”

“Nothing.” Nothing but a slow, heartbreaking dance that had destroyed her illusions about her ability to get over a man who refused to even consider the idea that maybe, just maybe, there weren’t as many years between them as he believed.

Thankfully, Maria took her words at face value. “You had the early shift, right? Must’ve been hard getting up after staying up so late.”

“It was fine.” There had been no need to get up—she hadn’t slept since returning to the den. “Actually, do you mind if I run down with you? I’m not tired enough to sleep yet.” If she slept, she’d dream, the scent of Hawke haunting her in the soft dark.

“Company’s always welcome.” It was the answer of a wolf.

They ran down in companionable silence to the perimeter section where Maria was taking over from Lake. Breathing hard but not winded, Sienna gave the two of them privacy as they touched each other in that affectionate wolf way—nose to nose, body to body, the kiss an extension of the full-body contact.

Sienna had done her own shift in a different area of den territory, so there were new things to explore here. But still she almost missed it: a pen, gleaming and dark. Guessing it had fallen out of a packmate’s pocket, she picked it up—the pack was scrupulous about ensuring no garbage littered their land. It wasn’t until it was in her hand that she realized the sleek metallic cylinder wasn’t a pen at all but a high-powered torch, an expensive item.

The SnowDancers had a small number of them. Used almost exclusively by non-changeling members of the pack—the wolves’ night vision was better than any illumination the torches could provide—they were logged in and out with meticulous precision. Someone was probably in trouble for losing this. Sliding it into a pocket, she walked over to join Lake as he got ready to return to the den.

Body exhausted enough that there was a chance of a dreamless sleep, she parted with him at the entrance and went to log in the torch . . . to discover each and every one of the pack’s set sitting in the box where they were stored. Hairs rising on the back of her neck, she made a call to Maria. “Can you do me a favor?” she asked when the other woman answered.

“What do you need?”

“Go about a hundred meters east of where Lake was standing when we arrived, tell me what you scent.”

No sounds except for rustling as Maria jogged over. Then, “Psy. I smell Psy.”

HAWKE finished checking out the section where Sienna had found the torch. Like Maria, he immediately caught the harsh metallic scent exuded by some Psy—as if they’d gone so deep into Silence, they’d lost their humanity. Nothing but the most brittle cold remained.

Sienna hadn’t been cold.

Warm and curvy and muscled in a supple feminine way, she’d surprised him with the softness of her. They’d always been antagonists, always fought. To have her so sweet and lush against him had been a gift, walking away pure torture. His wolf didn’t understand why he’d done so—to the animal, she smelled like a mature female. It didn’t comprehend that she was a young girl barely become a woman.

I haven’t been a child since the day they came for me when I was five.

The memory incited a killing rage within him. He’d always known she’d been conditioned into Silence as a child, but until she’d said that, he hadn’t understood the painful depth of what her gift had demanded from her.

She’d never played.

How was that possible? Play was as necessary for a wolf as breathing.

She played with us.

It was the wolf’s voice. Scowling, he went to reject the assertion. Sienna had driven him crazy with her tricks since moving into the den. The party she’d thrown to celebrate her eighteenth birthday had ended up with a lot of naked wolves freezing their asses off in the lake, their clothes scattered over so many acres, he didn’t ever want to know that the hell they’d been doing.

If her intent had been to drive him to the asylum—

“You confirm it?”

He’d scented Riley nearing, didn’t startle. “Yeah. Definitely Psy.”

“Damn.” A harsh exhalation. “They’re really going to do this.”

“Any word from our sources?”

“Lucas spoke to Nikita. She says tensions are increasing in the Council, and it’s out in the open now. Henry and Shoshanna Scott are making it clear they think the two of them should lead. Anyone who argues differently is in their sights.”

“We don’t need to be in the middle of a Psy war.” His duty was to protect his people—the Psy could destroy themselves for all he cared . . . as they’d once almost destroyed SnowDancer.

Riley said, “No,” but his tone brought up another question.

Hawke stared at the pine needle–strewn land in front of him, the ground otherwise clear because of the heavy canopy. “You’re thinking the same thing I am—no way is this going to be contained to the Psy.”

“Like Max pointed out,” he said, naming Nikita’s human security chief, “this region’s already seen as interlinked. No matter what, they won’t leave us be.” A shrug. “And fact is, we’ve bitten back and bitten hard. I think at least part of the Council has decided we have too much power to be allowed to continue as we are.”

Hawke knew that. He also understood that Nikita and Anthony were the lesser of two evils, but it still pissed him off that the pack had been forced to work with a couple of Councilors. “Let’s increase the security patrols around the boundary. Don’t worry too much about the border with DarkRiver, but we need to let them know the Psy might be sniffing around even though it looks like they’re focused on us.”

Riley nodded, his gaze thoughtful. Hawke waited for the lieutenant to speak. Riley and Indigo were the solid foundation on which he stood—Riley had been there since before Hawke became alpha at fifteen. At the time, Hawke had had the strength of the remaining lieutenants around him, but he’d gone most often to the level-headed teenager who was his best friend. Indigo, a little younger, had entered the picture a few years later but had become Hawke’s left arm as Riley was his right. They’d pulled Hawke back from the edge more than once, pushed him when necessary, and offered support without question. It was a gift, one he never took for granted.

“I’m going to ask Kenji and Alexei to fine-tune our strategic plan,” Riley said. “The fact it appears they’re running physical reconnaissance in our territory argues for a rapid escalation. We need to be ready.”

Hawke nodded. The two lieutenants had the best tactical minds in the pack. “Use Drew as well. He might be able to pinpoint areas of vulnerability we might otherwise miss.” The SnowDancer tracker wasn’t only Hawke’s eyes and ears among the most vulnerable in the pack; he’d also become a clearinghouse for all kinds of information.

“I’ll grab him for the comm-conference with Kenji and Alexei tomorrow,” Riley said, then glanced at Hawke. “I hear you went dancing last night.”

The words made every muscle in his body go tight, but he kept his tone even. “I’ve had a talk with the young males and so has Lucas. That kind of bullshit won’t be tolerated.” A little posturing between young dominants was expected and accepted. Hard physical violence? No.

“Alliance?”

“Rock solid. This isn’t about that—it’s because of you and Mercy.” Everyone was still trying to work out the rules for the whole interpack dating thing, juveniles and older adults included. Add in testosterone and you got last night. “Not that I don’t appreciate you stealing us a leopard sentinel.”

Riley didn’t smile at the familiar joke, perceptive eyes trained on Hawke. “Why did José call you and not Lucas if both groups were making trouble?”

“José switches between us. Luc gets the next postmidnight call.”

A silence filled only with the rustle of the trees as a stiff wind blew through the canopy.

“You need to talk about it?” Riley asked after the forest had gone quiet again.

“Nothing to talk about.”

Riley’s nickname wasn’t The Wall for nothing. “You’ve never been one to ignore a problem.”

“Not a problem.”

“Then why does the gym log show you there half the night, every night?”

Hawke growled low in his throat. “Keeping tabs on me?”

“It’s my job.” Riley’s temper remained even. “I let you go lone wolf up in the mountains, but if you think I’ll watch you self-destruct, you don’t know me.”

Hawke’s wolf snarled, but he and Riley had too much history between them for him to shrug off the concern—and what it meant. “Can you cover for me tomorrow afternoon?”

“You don’t have to ask.” That the other man didn’t question Hawke about what it was he was planning to do, told him exactly how well his lieutenant knew him.