Tangle of Need (A Psy/Changeling Novel), page 13
Riley had the same solemn knowledge in his eyes when he said, “Questions?”
“Anything I need to know about the kids that might not be immediately apparent?”
“Walker’s probably the best person to answer that,” Riley said, picking up his phone. “I’ll see if he’s available.”
Walker wasn’t in the den, but they were able to catch him on his cell. “Call me at any stage,” he said after they’d finished going through the list, his insight into the pups she’d be taking on displaying a sensitivity to the needs of the young that resonated deeply with her. “They know they can come to me no matter what, and might do so until they begin to trust you—I’ll let you know if any issues crop up.”
“Thanks.”
Ending the call soon afterward, Riley said, “Half your group’s on a field trip, but they’ll be back by seven. Unless you have another commitment, we’ll meet at eight.”
“Eight works. See you then.” She headed out of the office, deciding to use her free time to further explore the territory as Hawke had requested.
She’d only been walking for a minute when she saw the most amazing sight.
Two small leopard cubs scrabbled around the corner, obviously racing each other … to come to a dead stop, claws scraping on stone, when they saw her. Two heads lifted. Two pairs of beautiful green-gold eyes held her own.
Glancing around, Adria saw the corridor was otherwise deserted. “I don’t think,” she whispered, crouching down to run her hand over the fur of the one closest to her, “you’re supposed to be here.” DarkRiver and SnowDancer were blood-allies, but leaving a child to roam the den alone was a huge step beyond that. So either these two adorable troublemakers—both of whom were now demanding to be petted—had escaped their frantic mother, or they’d somehow snuck in. Adria would’ve said they were too small to navigate the distance from DarkRiver land, but she’d known too many children.
The sound of more claws against stone, right before a tiny wolf pup attacked the cubs from behind. Stunned, she was about to pull them apart when she realized the growling and snarling and clawing was all for show. She rose to her feet, her wolf too amused to think about spoiling their fun.
“That’s a sight.”
The hairs on her nape rose at the low, deep timbre of that male voice, but she didn’t startle, having scented the exotic dark pine and biting edge of citrus that was Riaz’s scent. “Yes,” she said, proud of herself for keeping her cool.
Another scent. Unfamiliar. Feminine.
The cubs and pup jumped apart as if they’d been doused with cold water, and suddenly, they were sitting quiet and lovable, three of the most well-behaved little ones Adria had ever seen. “Little fakers,” she said, attempting to hide her laugh.
Beside her, Riaz coughed just as a tall brunette turned the corner.
“What,” the woman said to the cubs, “did we discuss before we left home?” Folding her arms, she tapped an impatient tattoo on the floor with her booted foot.
The wolf pup barked.
“Hush, Ben. These two were supposed to wait for me to finish talking with Lara.”
Dropping their heads, the cubs made piteous mewling sounds. Adria caught the amusement in the eyes of the woman who had to be their mother, but her voice when it came, was stern. “You have a choice of punishments: either no playtime with Ben and the other pups, or no chocolate cake for dessert tonight.”
All three children looked at the woman in unmitigated shock.
Who didn’t budge.
The leopard cubs nodded at their friend—who was apparently more attractive than chocolate cake. Bending down, the brunette grabbed and kissed each sweet face in turn, including Ben’s. “Now go wait for me over there”—she waved to a spot a couple of meters down the corridor, where they’d remain in her line of sight—“unless you want playtime permanently cancelled.”
Only when the boys had padded away to take meek seated positions, did the woman rise and meet Adria’s and Riaz’s gazes. “They give me three new gray hairs hourly.” Exasperated affection.
“Tamsyn,” Riaz said, the heat of his body too close, too aggressive, “this is Adria.”
Adria forced herself to think past her gut-clawing awareness of the male next to her. “The DarkRiver healer.” All senior personnel had been briefed about DarkRiver long ago.
“If you say you’re not related to Indigo,” Tamsyn said in response, “I’ll eat my boot … if the twins haven’t already.”
Laughing at the dry codicil, Adria admitted to the familial relationship. “Social visit?”
“Ashaya’s here, too,” Tamsyn said, referring to the M-Psy mated to a DarkRiver sentinel. “We want to discuss Alice, go over some new scans.”
“Alice” was Alice Eldridge, a human scientist who had been put into cryonic suspension over a hundred years ago and now slept in a coma no one could break. Adria couldn’t imagine what Alice’s life would be like if she did wake—the world had shifted dramatically since the beginning of her forced sleep. Her friends, her family, each and every one was dust. And yet Alice endured.
“I better get back and organize an escort for the hooligans,” Tammy said, looking over her shoulder at the children with an affectionate smile. “It was nice to meet you, Adria.”
The silence that fell after Tamsyn and the boys left was awkward. However, when Adria would have continued on her way, Riaz shifted to block her. Lines of strain marked his face, a heavy shadow over the beaten gold of his eyes, but his words were unexpectedly generous. “I have some time free—why don’t I show you some of the more hidden parts of den territory?”
Unsettled, Adria glanced up, found herself unable to read his expression. She’d spent far too much time with another man whose face she couldn’t read, so she was blunt in her disbelief. “What possible reason could you have for inviting me to spend time with you when we both know how you feel about me?”
Riaz had expected the claws, his wolf taking the hit without flinching. “Because,” he said, carrying through the decision he’d made that cold, lonely dawn after Hawke and Sienna’s mating ceremony, “it’s not your fault you’re not my mate.” It felt as if he’d stripped off his skin with the admission, but he owed Adria the truth. “And I’m sorry I punished you for that.”
Adria had frozen after his first sentence, horror dawning black and violent over her clean, beautiful features. “You found your mate? How could you kiss me?”
He didn’t want to talk about it, wanted to pretend he’d never set sight on Lisette, but the time for hiding behind anger and an obstinate refusal to admit the truth was over. “She’s married.” In love with another man. Coop was right—he could allow that to destroy him, or he could rebuild a new life from the broken shards of the old.
He was a wolf, a dominant, a protector. To give up and leave his pack without his strength was simply not in his nature. So he’d find a way to survive, and to once again become a man he could face in the mirror with pride.
In front of him, Adria’s eyes turned the pale, haunting amber of her wolf in painful sympathy. His jaw set. He didn’t want pity, had told her only because she’d borne the brunt of his rage when she’d never been at fault. But there was no hint of pity in her response, simply a warm generosity of spirit that rocked him. “If your wolf isn’t troubled by my presence,” she said, “then I’d appreciate your help.”
Troubled?
Riaz swallowed a harsh laugh. “We’ll drive out of the section you already know well,” he said, determined to treat her with the courtesy he should’ve shown her from the start, regardless of the touch-hunger that continued to claw at him, “and explore a less accessible part of the remaining area on foot.”
Adria stayed silent until they’d driven for at least ten minutes, but it was a silence heavy with things unsaid. When she did speak, he flinched.
“Did you … have a chance?”
His hands flexed on the wheel. “She loves her husband. I just found her too late.” He regretted saying as much as he had as soon as he’d spoken, his wolf uncomfortable with the sudden, stark vulnerability. “Indigo knows the bare facts”—and he wished she didn’t—“but no one else does, so if you could—”
“I won’t say a word,” she promised in that slightly husky voice that was an unintended provocation. “You can talk to me about it, you know.” A hesitation. “It can’t be good for you to hold everything inside.”
Shifting the vehicle into hover mode, he took them over a rocky patch. “There’s not much to talk about.” He wasn’t being obdurate—what else was there to say? Lisette belonged to another man, and Riaz had to figure out a way to live with that.
“No, I suppose there isn’t.” Not speaking again till they stepped out of the vehicle in a relatively isolated section of den territory, she said, “Let’s stay in human form. It’ll be easier to talk.”
He nodded—a few sections would be tricky to navigate on two feet, but they could always reconsider shifting at that stage.
As they walked, he saw Adria take in everything with those stunning eyes of blue-violet. It was the first time he’d really looked at her, not blinded by the caustic mix of anger and desire that had colored their earlier interactions. There was a steely strength to her gaze—as if she’d been tempered in pain and come out of it harder, less breakable.
His fascination with her shifted a fraction, became more subtle, more complex … more disturbing, as he realized he wanted to know of the crucible that had honed her. “There’s something you should see here,” he said, caught between the competing needs of a fidelity that would destroy him, and a silken betrayal that might tear him apart.
Chapter 23
“DO YOU SEE your parents often?” he asked almost two hours later, unable to resist the urge to solve the mystery of her.
A pregnant pause filled only with the sound of the wind rustling through the trees. “Not as much as I should.”
Reading the tension in the line of her spine, he knew she wanted him to drop it, but regardless of all else, he’d never been a man who took orders when he didn’t want to take them. “Odd for a wolf.”
No response as they walked through the spring green meadow. Just when he was beginning to believe she’d simply ignore the question, she said, “I was in a relationship. It made my parents unhappy.” Plain words that told him nothing.
“Did they make you choose?”
“No, but we ended up arguing about it every time I went to see Mom and Dad.” She blew out a breath. “Tarah, Indigo, neither of them approved, but they let me be for the most part.”
Riaz wondered what the hell had been wrong with the male Adria had chosen that her entire family hadn’t liked the guy. However, the shuttered expression on her face told him the discussion was over; he could push, but this time, he decided for patience. Dominant female wolves didn’t react well to pressure beyond a certain point.
As she walked ahead a few steps, his eyes lingered on the soft skin exposed at her nape, beneath the silken rope of her braid. The golden warmth of it glowed in the harsh mountain sunlight, and he wanted only to push that braid aside and run his fingers over the spot.
Adria jerked out and to the side, her hair brushing the back of his hand.
And he realized his fingers had done exactly as he’d imagined. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
Brilliant blue-violet eyes streaked with precious gold watched him with too much knowledge. “You need to do something about your hunger, Riaz.”
The idea of being with any woman but Lisette made his entire body revolt, but even then, the scent of Adria, the remembered feel of her, it was a drug, an addiction that gripped him in powerful teeth and shook. “Can you get back on your own?” The words were harsh, his wolf too close to the surface.
Adria gave a simple, “Yes,” before turning and walking away from him a second time, a tall, strong woman with hair as dark as onyx and a pride that he knew would never again allow her to invite him into her bed.
ADRIA bent over with a shudder, hands on her knees, after Riaz disappeared in the opposite direction. Her body felt as if it wanted to burst out of her skin, torn by a chaos of competing needs and desires. When Riaz had touched her, she’d almost melted into the rough heat of his fingers in spite of her every vow to the contrary, her body already conditioned to expect primal pleasure.
Inhaling another shaky breath, she took a detour on her way down to the den, following an overgrown path that, if memory served her right, led to a small hidden waterfall. She’d found it as a young girl, and it had become her secret place, where she came to think over important decisions, or to indulge in frustration and temper.
A smile tugged her lips. God, she’d been such a serious, temperamental child. As she’d grown, that wildness of emotion had matured into a quiet intensity of passion, restrained and tempered.
“You’re magnificent and I can’t wait to learn all of you.” Words Martin had spoken to her during their first year as a couple.
Her smile faded, into a sadness so deep, it lodged in her chest, a heavy lump. Even the sight of “her” waterfall, small and secretive and effervescent, didn’t lift her spirits. Her mind was with the woman she’d been, so very ready to start what she’d thought would be the next phase of her life, with a man she’d believed would walk beside her as they both changed and grew. And for the first time since she’d made the decision to end their broken relationship, her anger was washed away by grief.
The Martin she’d known hadn’t been the standoffish man he so often was with strangers, a man secretly uncomfortable in social situations. He’d been so sweet in private, with a wicked sense of humor and a way of looking at her as if she were the most alluring woman in the world. Not only that, but he’d celebrated her achievements as she’d celebrated his.
She’d taken him to dinner in a posh restaurant when he was awarded his doctorate, and stranger to the kitchen though he had been, he’d once put on an apron and baked her a cake when she’d completed a particularly grueling training course. It had collapsed in the middle and been uncooked around the sides and it had been wonderful. They’d giggled and gotten drunk on cheap pink champagne, eating so much cake that they’d solemnly sworn, “Never, ever again.”
That was what she’d tried to save for so long, unable and unwilling to believe that something so innocent and bright could sour into such hostility. She’d thought if she tried hard enough, she’d be able to fix it. It was how her brain worked—even as a child who had found martial arts didn’t suit her blunt style of movement, but who knew the skill would come in useful as a soldier, she’d just gritted her teeth and practiced over and over until her body moved with flawless grace.
Only after she’d been broken on the ruins of their relationship had she understood that no matter how hard she tried, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because somewhere along the way, a poison had infiltrated their relationship. Quiet and stealthy, it had eaten into the fabric of emotion that bound them until that fabric was threadbare … and her wolf had withdrawn totally from the relationship.
Martin had known. It had only deepened his resentment.
Moisture on her cheek, a trail leading down to her mouth. Salt. It was the taste of the first tear she’d shed since shutting the door in Martin’s face over a year ago, knowing she’d never again open it. So fragile, the single iridescent droplet nonetheless shattered her defenses. Dropping to her knees, she allowed the sorrow to pour out of her, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.
RIAZ caught Adria’s scent as he ran, and snarled, frustrated that her phantom presence continued to haunt him. When it grew stronger instead of fading, he realized she hadn’t returned to the vehicle but had instead continued on foot. He would’ve carried on, except that he caught the barest whisper of a sound that made his wolf snap to attention. Frowning, he moved close enough to ensure that she wasn’t in trouble … and heard the raw, painful sound of a woman whose heart was breaking.
His chest knotted, protective instincts roaring to the surface, but he didn’t approach. Adria was a proud, strong woman, wouldn’t appreciate anyone finding her at such a vulnerable moment, her defenses shattered. But even as he told himself to leave, the ragged sound of her tears ripped him apart.
She jerked up her head the instant he came into view, her face ravaged by tears. “Go!”
Wanting to hunt down whatever had so devastated her, but aware it wasn’t a physical foe he could defeat, he went down on his haunches and took her into his arms. She began to struggle, all sharp elbows and tightly fisted hands. “Let me help, damn you.” It wasn’t the smoothest or most charming of things to say, but it came from the gut and the heart, his voice rough with the wolf’s frustration at being unable to do anything.
Another heartrending sob, and then she was melted wax in his arms, as if she couldn’t deal with the agonizing depth of her pain and hold him off at the same time. Cuddling her as close as he could, his knees spread to tuck her in between, he cupped the back of her head with one hand, wrapped an arm around her waist … and simply held her as she cried.
He’d seen strong women cry before, but never like this. Until it felt as if she were being torn apart from the inside out. Hand clenched in her hair, tangling in her braid, he pressed his cheek to the inky black and let her fingernails dig into his back as she wrapped her arms around him in a fierce embrace.
A minute, a lifetime, later, those hands turned into fists again and she punched at him. The blows had no impact because of her position, but the agony in them was excruciating. His wolf raged at its helplessness, but even then, it pressed against Riaz’s skin, wanting to soothe, to reassure. But all they could do was hold her, the scent of crushed berries in ice drowning in salt.
The wind was quiet, the sun lower in the sky when she went silent, lying against him in a way that said all the fight had been taken out of her. He’d known her a fragment of time, but he hated seeing her so defeated. Adria was pride and spirit and strength. Not a woman who gave up. “Did you lose someone?” Death was the only thing he could think of to explain the depth of her despair.
