"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 h.e.l.lo at Tai as the young soldier pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s. 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 protege 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 m.u.f.fins. "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 m.u.f.fin. "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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 m.u.f.fin. 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 b.u.t.ted 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.suredly 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 resume 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 h.e.l.l 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."
"f.u.c.k 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 sh.e.l.l 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 n.o.body 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 ha.s.sle you about Indigo."
He froze. "How the h.e.l.l do you healers pull that s.h.i.t?"
"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.
CHAPTER 8.
Having said good-bye to her mother a few minutes earlier, Indigo found Hawke and they sat down to coordinate the pack"s resources. "We have a lieutenant meeting later today," she said toward the end.
"I remember." Rising from his desk, he folded his arms, unfolded them, then shoved his hands through his hair, hair that echoed the stunning color of his pelt in wolf form. Right now, that wolf was riding him hard.
"Want to go for a run?" she asked, feeling more than a little twitchy herself. "We could both use it."
The fact that Hawke didn"t even bother to pretend he didn"t need to let the wolf roam told her more than anything else. "Wolf or human?" he asked, his voice shifting in a way that made it clear the wolf was already in charge. His eyes, too, shimmered in the most subtle of ways-the wolf watching her from a human face.
"Human wolf," she said, "it"s harder to maintain."
"Let"s go."
By the time they cleared the den, her wolf was at the forefront of her mind. She was still physically human, but her thought processes were no longer those of the cool, collected lieutenant. They were of the wolf who lived in her soul-of her body, only her eyes would"ve reflected the change. Though as they began to run, she felt her claws p.r.i.c.king at the insides of her skin and decided to let them slice through.
They ran side by side, getting out of the White Zone and into the thick darkness of the forest beyond, the trees whipping by in a blur of rich green and-as they began to climb higher-the occasional splash of snowy white. She was d.a.m.n fast, but she knew Hawke could"ve outstripped her. It wasn"t simply that he was alpha-though that played a part in it. Her own wolf didn"t want to outstrip him, would"ve been confused if it could. But a larger part of it was that he was naturally faster.
But she was making him work for it, and that was what was important. It was a lieutenant"s job to challenge her alpha when necessary-as it was an alpha"s job to look after his pack. So Indigo ran them both to the edge of exhaustion, flying over fallen rocks and old trees, branches grazing her arms and threatening to slap her face, the wind a crisp knife across her skin.
Her wolf gloried in the rush of speed, the pump of blood, the wild pleasure of running with a packmate. It was only when they reached the top of a ridge, when there was only silence around them, the pack lands spread out below in a sea of white, green, and lake blue, that the wolf sighed and halted. Hawke stood with his hands on his knees beside her, chest heaving and face gleaming with sweat.
Glancing at him, she saw his wolf grinning back at her, the shimmering ice of his eyes filled with fierce joy. She grinned back, allowing herself to collapse onto her back on the snow-dusted gra.s.s, the chill a welcome kiss against her heated skin. The sky was a gorgeous crystalline blue overhead, Hawke"s eyes a curious and much paler hue as he looked down at her, his head angled in a way that was simply not human.
She snapped her teeth at him.
It made him laugh, relax, and lie down beside her, their arms companionably tangled. "So," he said, his voice holding the edge of a growl.
"So," she replied, her own wolf prowling contentedly inside her skin.
Shifting, Hawke raised himself on his elbow before leaning down to nip at her lower lip in a quick, sharp bite.
With those amazing eyes, and that gorgeous mane of silver-gold, many women would"ve taken what he"d done as a sensual invitation. She was wolf. She knew that coming from her alpha, it was very much the opposite.
Rubbing at her lip, she scowled. "What did I do?" Because it had been a rebuke. A playful one, sure, but a rebuke nonetheless.
Hawke tapped her on the nose with his index finger. "My wolf can sense that yours is in trouble. Why didn"t you come to me?"
"It"s nothing," she said, pushing him away with a growl when he would"ve used his teeth on her a second time. Yes, he was alpha, but she was a dominant female. "Correction-it is something, but it"s not anything I need your help to manage." Drew was her problem, and she would get a handle on the situation.
Bracing himself on his elbow again, Hawke watched her for several more minutes, the eye contact searing. His wolf was far closer to the surface than that of any other male in the pack, and she was one of the few people who probably knew why. Reaching up, she clenched a hand in his hair and tugged him down until their noses almost touched. "I"m not the only one who"s got a problem."
He growled at her. She let him feel her claws against his face. Ice blue eyes locked with her own. "You know what it is," he finally said, his voice so deep it was difficult to understand. Rolling away from her, he lay on his back with one arm under his head.
Yeah, Indigo knew what it was. "She"s far older now than she was when she first entered the den."
Hawke said nothing. He didn"t need to-she could all but feel his thrumming tension.
"No one"s going to stop you if you decide to-"