Play of Passion

CHAPTER 7

Indigo didn’t see Drew the next morning as she strode through the corridors, her destination the small office that was her own near the training rooms. She’d glimpsed him leaving Riaz’s party early with Judd the previous night. Now she found herself wondering if he’d stayed with the Psy lieutenant, or hunted up one of his little playmates and gone horizontal.

Gritting her teeth against her mind’s obliging slide show of images that displayed Drew tangled up with some faceless female, she told herself she should’ve taken up one of the offers that had come her way last night as the senior members of the pack let down their hair. A good sweaty workout between the sheets would certainly have wrung the tension out of her body. But she hadn’t—for reasons she couldn’t quite understand—and now she was paying for it, her skin too sensitive, her wolf irritated and out of sorts.

Ordering herself to focus, she switched on her datapad as she walked, bringing up the day’s schedule. She’d been in charge of training the novice soldiers for eight years, four of them as assistant to her father, Abel, the last four on her own, with Abel taking over another role. However, over the past couple of years, she’d also started handling more personal issues related to the young dominants in the pack. They came to her with questions, for advice, to vent, and sometimes just to hang out—because her wolf calmed theirs. “Which you will not be able to do unless you get yourself under control,” she muttered, annoyed with herself for allowing Drew to rattle her in this way.

That was when she ran into the one person who could take one look at her and read her like an open book.

“Baby,” her mother said, her smile so full of love it made Indigo’s heart ache, “give me a hug.”

Indigo was already leaning across to do exactly that, every part of her adoring this woman who was the template from which she’d been cast. Tarah Riviere had the same jet-black hair, though hers bore a few—very few—glimmers of silver now, the same vivid blue eyes shot with streaks that were almost purple, the same long-legged height.

But that was where the similarities ended. Where Indigo’s frame was all supple muscle, her mother was fit but sweetly curved. Where Indigo was a dominant and had been from soon after birth, Tarah was a true submissive, one of the gentlest people in the pack. And where Indigo would never surrender everything to any man—even one she loved—Tarah found incomparable joy in leaning on her mate.

“Morning, Mama.”

Cupping Indigo’s face in her hands, her mother examined her with those wise eyes. “What’s troubling you, my big girl?”

With every other person in the den, Indigo would’ve stood firm and frozen off any inquiries. In front of her mother’s tender concern, she folded like a leaky balloon. “I’m fighting with Drew,” she said, hoping Tarah would take that at face value. She really didn’t want to explain the genesis of the fight.

Tarah laughed and, dropping her hands from Indigo’s face, slipped her arm through her daughter’s and began to walk toward one of the large common areas in the den. “Have you got time for a morning coffee with your mother?”

“Always.” It was a ritual they had—though it had no rules, no set dates. But at least a couple of times a week, Indigo found herself alone with Tarah. Sometimes they chatted over coffee, sometimes they walked in the forest, and sometimes they made a bowl of popcorn and watched some movie that made them both bawl like babies.

Her father tended to avoid being in those nights.

Grinning, Indigo found herself thinking back over the years. “We’ve been doing this in one form or another since I was, what, ten?” It was, she knew, because of Evangeline.

Her much younger sister had been frighteningly weak as a child, though no one could diagnose the reason behind it. Indigo would catch a cold and be up and running the next day. Evie would catch a cold and need to be hooked up to machines so she could breathe, her little body wracked by shivers. It used to terrify Indigo that she might lose the sister she loved so much—and to something Indigo couldn’t fight, couldn’t defend against.

Her mother squeezed her arm. “You’re my baby, too.”

Indigo shifted closer to her mother, the wolf wanting to brush up against her as they walked. “How is Evie? I haven’t spoken to her for a few days.” Her sister had finally thrown off the inexplicable—especially for a changeling—sickliness in her teens. Now in her second year of college, she was a sweet-tempered, submissive wolf chased by more than one young wolf in the den—and humans outside of it.

“She’s coming for a visit in three weeks’ time.”

Indigo’s wolf stretched out its paws and arched its back in pleasure.

“And,” Tarah continued, “she told me to tell you not to scare off all the men beforehand—she wants to date the wild and dangerous types, thank you very much.” Laughing at the look on Indigo’s face, she said, “Grab us a good seat. I’ll get the coffees.”

Still scowling at the idea of her willow-slender sister with some of the rougher young males, Indigo wandered through the room filled with furniture in bright citrus tones until she found two armchairs facing each other in a quiet corner. They were both a funky orange, the table between them a dark, varnished wood that bore the nicks and scratches of constant use.

“Hey, Indigo.”

Waving a casual hello at Tai as the young soldier passed by, she settled in to wait for her mom. That was part of the ritual, too. It was always Tarah who got the coffee, mixing the ingredients in a way that made it taste incredible.

It’s love, Tarah had once laughingly said. That’s the secret ingredient.

“Indigo?” Tai had circled back.

She looked up into his pretty, pretty face, all silky hair and those wild green eyes with a slight upward tilt that spoke of the Balinese ancestry on his mother’s side. “Yes, she’s coming home for a visit. No, I will not give you a free pass. You put one finger on her, I’ll beat you to a pulp.”

Tai snarled low in his throat, his wide shoulders going stiff as he fisted his hands. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll beat you back.” Face thunderous, he stalked off as she fought her smile. Hmm, perhaps Judd’s young protégé had potential. None of the others had dared stand up to her. And Indigo wasn’t handing over her vulnerable younger sister to a wolf who couldn’t protect her from all comers.

Tarah placed a tray between them as Tai left the common room. It held two steaming mugs of coffee and a couple of large blueberry muffins. “They were the last ones there,” Tarah said, shaking her head. “And it’s only nine.”

“Pack’s got a young population,” Indigo said, taking a sip of her coffee before putting down the mug and picking up a muffin. “You should see how much some of my trainees go through in a day.”

“Speaking of the young population”—Tarah eyed Indigo over the top of her own mug—“I told you not to scare off Evie’s dates.”

Indigo wasn’t the least cowed by her mother’s mock scowl, well able to see the amusement behind it. “She’s mine to look after.”

“You always were possessive about her.” Shaking her head, Tarah sipped her coffee.

“Mama?” Indigo asked after several minutes of companionable silence.

“Yes, baby.”

Indigo felt her lips curve. Tarah alone could call her that and make it sound perfectly acceptable. Of course, her father tended to call her “pumpkin” and ruffle her hair like she was five years old. No respect, she thought with an inward smile, she got no respect from her parents. “Do you ever get angry at Dad?”

Tarah’s eyes sparkled. “Sure I do. You know that.”

“No, I don’t mean the little spats.” Though you couldn’t really call them that, either. Her parents were so in sync it was scary. “But at his dominance . . . don’t you sometimes wish he’d let you take control?” She’d never before asked her mother that question, had always felt it would cross some line, but today, she needed to know.

Putting her mug on the table, Tarah leaned forward and picked a blueberry from her muffin. She chewed thoughtfully before answering. “No,” she said at last, her response free of ambiguity. “My wolf needs to feel protected, feel safe.” Angling her head when Indigo remained silent, Tarah said, “I know you’ve never understood that, baby, for all that you love me.”

“Mama, I didn’t mean—”

“Hush.” A gentle command that had Indigo swallowing her apology. “The fact is, you’re a dominant—that’s why you and your father always butted heads.”

“Was I that bad?”

“A terror.” It was a cheerful reply. “But because of the hierarchy, we could deal with you without too many problems. Your father outranked you—so when push came to shove, you had to listen.”

Now Indigo outranked Abel—though she would never in a million years actually bring that up. Ever. Some relationships were sacred, and when she was with her father, Indigo treated him as the dominant. “That used to make me crazy—that he could shut me down by pulling rank,” she said in answer to her mother’s statement, “but at the same time, it was calming.”

“There, you see, you do understand.” Tarah plucked out another blueberry. “Strict adherence to the hierarchy helps maintain the balance of the pack. Our wolves are happiest when they know their place in the scheme of things. For my wolf, that place is in the shelter of Abel’s arms.”

Indigo gave a slow nod, seeing a deeper truth in her mother’s words. “I would never be happy,” she said, the words spilling out before she realized how much they might betray, “either with a man who treated me as a submissive or with a man my wolf saw as weaker.”

Tarah gave her a penetrating look and Indigo knew her mother saw too much, but all she said was, “Yes, that’s true. Your place is not the same as mine. For you to be happy, you must accept and respect your partner to the very core of your soul—or your wolf will make both your lives a misery.”

Having come down to the city to talk to one of his contacts in the human population, Andrew decided to say hi to Teijan as well, figuring he might as well use the time in a productive fashion. Because if he went back to the den, he’d undoubtedly end up tracking Indigo. And he couldn’t tip his hand, not yet, not before he was prepared.

So he was waiting for the Rat alpha at Fisherman’s Wharf as the sun rose high enough to chase off the whispers of fog that still licked over the bay. Teijan turned up as slick and neatly attired as if he’d stepped out of some sophisticated men’s magazine.

“Shucks,” Andrew said, leaning his arms on the metal fence that lined this section of the wharf, “you didn’t have to get all dolled up on my behalf.”

“You should be so lucky.” Teijan aligned his cuffs with the sleeves of his jacket. “I’m going for a job interview.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes. “Since when does the Rat alpha need to find a job?” Teijan operated what was effectively the biggest information network in the city, and probably the state. And there was serious money in information—especially since SnowDancer and DarkRiver had both decided to share the profits from any deals that came about because of intel the Rats passed on.

Brutal fact was, they could’ve demanded that data as a condition of allowing the weaker changeling group to remain in the city, but Lucas and Hawke were highly intelligent men. They understood that the Rats would be far more invested in the protection of the city if they not only had the right to call it home but were treated as an integral part of its functioning. Which they were most assuredly becoming.

Now Teijan shot him a sharp little smile, full of teeth. “Funny how easy it is to get into some buildings if you carry a résumé and look ‘respectable.’”

“Do I want to know?”

“No. Nothing to tell yet.” The dark-haired male looked out over the glittering sun-struck water of the bay. “My animal knows it can swim,” he murmured, “but just the same, neither it nor the human part of me is too fond of the water.”

“Then why San Francisco?”

A shrug. “We’d been scraping by, trying to find a home for a long time, and the old subway tunnels were unclaimed.” A whisper of wind ruffled his GQ-perfect hair. “Good thing it was the cats who found us out. You wolves would’ve probably decided we tasted good spit-roasted over an open fire.”

“No self-respecting wolf would eat a rodent—though we might’ve been able to use your teeth as decorations,” Andrew said with a straight face.

Teijan hissed out a very unratlike snarl. “Why the hell do I bother to talk to you?”

“Hawke thinks I give you cheese.” He pulled a small, foil-wrapped wedge out of his pocket. “Here you go.”

“Fuck you.” But the Rat alpha was laughing. “Why’d you want to meet?”

Putting both hands in the pockets of his jacket, Andrew let the salt-laced wind sweep across his face. “Wanted to see if you had any news to share.” DarkRiver always copied SnowDancer in on any reports as per their alliance, but Teijan quite often had little tidbits in progress that he didn’t put into the reports until he’d confirmed everything.

“Something weird going on with the Psy,” the Rat alpha now said. “Can’t quite put my finger on it, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say they were jumpy.”

Since Psy didn’t feel, that kind of apprehension was more than curious. “Anything to back up that feeling?” he asked, knowing Teijan had finely developed antennae for trouble after keeping his people safe and protected for years in spite of their lack of numbers and physical strength.

Teijan made a clicking noise with his tongue. “I’ve heard whispers of two or three Psy dead in suspicious circumstances, but no confirmations yet. Could just be a bad rehabilitation or two.”

Andrew felt his skin creep at the thought of the Psy punishment of choice—a total psychic brainwipe that destroyed the individual and left a drooling shell behind. “Maybe they suicided.” At Teijan’s glance, he shrugged. “If that was me . . .”

“Yeah.” Teijan blew out a breath. “But word is there’s nobody home after rehab, and there would have to be for them to understand what they’d become.” He glanced at his watch. “I better get going. I’ll send the intel through the grapevine if I hear anything else.”

As Andrew watched the other man leave, he wondered what face this world would’ve worn if the Psy Council had been successful in seizing total power as it had been trying to do for decades.

The vision was chilling.

“Drew?”

Shaking off the brutal images, he shifted on his heel to find himself facing Lara. “You must’ve come down before the shops opened,” he said, looking at the bags she had in hand.

“I’m in a bad mood,” she said. “I decided to work it off by spending money, but I hate everything I’ve bought. Who needs a stupid yellow dress anyway? Not someone with my skin tone.” That skin, a natural dark tan stroked with gold in this light, scrunched up as she made a face.

“I think you’ll look gorgeous in yellow.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, cuddling her smaller body to his. Like most people in the den, he tended to forget she wasn’t that much older than he was, she was so competent. But today she looked unbearably young. “This bad mood have anything to do with—”

“Don’t go there,” she warned, even as she slid her own arm around his waist, the soft black of her corkscrew curls glinting with sparks of red. “And I won’t hassle you about Indigo.”

He froze. “How the hell do you healers pull that shit?”

“Trade secret.” A hint of a smile, those high cheekbones giving her eyes an almost feline appearance as she glanced up. “How come she’s so mad at you?” she asked with a blunt honesty that reminded him of Ben, the pup the healer often babysat for her friend Ava.

“Not telling.”

She scrunched her nose at him. “You going to do anything about it?”

Andrew thought of the plan he’d hatched late last night. “Oh, yeah, I’m going to do something about it.” And the lieutenant would never see it coming.