NIGHT HAD FALLEN by the time Hawke and Judd drove up the final track to the den.
Impatience clawed at Hawke. Searching for something to take his mind off the hunger to see his mate, he said, “What time are you and Brenna heading to Cooper’s territory?” He knew the two had plans to visit friends in the satellite den. “Driving, right?”
Judd shook his head. “We decided to catch a quick flight at eight tomorrow, since our visit’s only going to be a couple of days anyway. It’ll give us more time on the ground.” He brought the vehicle into the underground garage under the den. “Good luck with Sienna.” Unsaid were the words that he’d need it.
Leaving the lieutenant to deal with the vehicle, Hawke jogged from the garage to his and Sienna’s quarters. He was halfway there when he realized the mating bond was tugging him in the opposite direction. Reversing course, he ran out into the night darkness and through the trees for nearly twenty minutes until he saw her standing on a rise, looking out over the fields below.
The moon was full tonight, her body outlined against a sky dotted with stars.
It hit him again, that she was his. His mate. Extraordinary and strong and . . . furious.
Wincing at the look she shot him out of cardinal eyes gone a dangerous black, he braced himself. “Miss me?”
She growled before hauling him close for a kiss, her hands buried in his hair. It was a kiss of claiming, of branding, of angry welcome. Groaning, he had his hands on her hips, his body having turned rock hard in a single pulse, when she pushed him away. “If you ever do that to me again, I won’t forgive you.”
He’d expected anger but not this brittle edge to her voice. “Walker was supposed to talk to you, make sure you knew what was going on.”
“My mate should’ve talked to me.” The obsidian of her gaze flickered with a translucent flame, her tone flat.
Hawke’s gut twisted; this wasn’t anger. It was deeper, harder. “You would’ve wanted to come and there was no way in hell I was taking you.” Even the idea of her anywhere near Ming made his wolf threaten to turn into a primal killing machine.
“Look at this!” Sienna held out a hand, on which danced a red and amber flame. “I’m not helpless! I’m the least helpless person in the world!”
Hawke thrust his hands into her hair, gripped. “But you’re mine to protect!” His heart pounded like a bass drum. “If anything happened to you—”
He couldn’t say it, couldn’t even think it. “I’ve lost too many people, baby. I can’t lose you.”
When Sienna cupped his face, her hands were fierce and gentle both. “You won’t. We’re in this together.” Her nails dug a little into his skin. “Trust me! Treat me as your mate!”
“I do!” Hawke’s voice was turning more and more into a growl. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“Why would you hide things from me?” Sienna yelled, her chest heaving.
They stared at each other for a single, endless heartbeat before their lips were locked in a kiss so passionate that Sienna went up in flames around them. He should’ve been worried, but he was never worried with the woman who fucking owned him. Her cold fire always knew pack. And it definitely knew her mate.
He took her to the ground, or maybe she took him. He tore off her clothes, she tore off his; their naked bodies slid against one another and when he pulled up her thigh and nudged at her with his cock, he found her wet and ready. Then she bit down on his lower lip while clawing his back and it was all over.
He thrust deep, pinning her to the earth.
One stroke, two, and Sienna was clenching so tightly around him that he couldn’t hold back. He gripped her shoulder with his teeth as he came, so hard that he knew he’d leave a mark. Good. He wanted her to wear his mark. Her nails made sure he’d be wearing hers.
The fire flamed hot red, then wild amber around them, a dangerous kiss from his very dangerous mate. A mate who was still pissed off with him when the fire sank into the earth to leave them lying entangled and naked under the stars, neither one able to breathe properly for at least five minutes.
Hawke could’ve dealt with an angry mate. He couldn’t deal with the hurt he saw in her expression.
Hand cradling the side of her face, he said, “I’m sorry.” It was difficult for an alpha to say that, but never to his mate, never when he was fucking wrong. “I was trying to protect you, but I did that by hurting you. I’m so goddamn sorry.”
Sienna’s eyes remained dark, without stars, but she spread her hand over his heart. “I was so terrified for you.”
Hawke thought about how insane he’d go if he knew she was alone with Ming, and wanted to kick his own ass. “I took Judd,” he said, even knowing that was no defense for what he’d done to her, the pain he’d inflicted. “But I was an asshole. I admit it. I won’t do it again.”
Sienna’s lips kicked up a little at the corners, the first stars appearing in her eyes. “I think this may go down in history,” she said as relief punched him in the gut. “An unreserved apology from Your Alphaness.”
“Smart-ass.” He petted her as he spoke, apologizing with his touch as much as with his words. “Seriously—I was thinking with my heart, not my brain.”
“Ugh.” Sienna pushed at his chest. “Stop making it hard to be mad at you.”
Her expression turned on the next breath. “You won’t do it again? Leave me out of a decision that affects both of us?”
Tugging her to his chest as he rolled over onto his back, he brushed her hair off her face. “I promise.”
Sienna nodded. “Okay. I know you always keep your promises.”
The fist around his heart began to open. “Want to know why I went to the meeting?”
When she nodded, he told her, man and wolf both supremely smug when her expression showed admiration for his tactics. “I wouldn’t have expected you to take Judd’s idea and run with it like that,” she said afterward, kicking up her feet. “You’re fiercely intelligent, but you don’t usually think sneaky.”
His wolf decided to take that as a compliment. “Sneaky is for cats,” he growled. “But I have been spending a lot of time with Lucas lately. I guess some of it rubbed off.”
Sienna’s smile was sharp. “I like the idea of messing with Ming’s financial foundation.” Her eyes narrowed in thought. “You know Devraj Santos hates him, too?”
Hawke nodded. He didn’t have any real details on what Ming had done to Dev’s wife, Katya, but he didn’t need them—because what he did know was that she’d been kept captive by Ming LeBon. Dev’s hatred of Ming was something he’d picked up on the last time the Forgotten leader had visited SnowDancer territory to catch up with the Forgotten children embedded into SnowDancer—protected by being claimed as wolves to the outside world.
Hawke had said something about Ming that involved Ming being dead, and Dev had agreed, his voice holding a near-metallic chill that was almost Psy—except for the fury behind it, the rage Hawke could all but taste.
“Katya shot him in the head. The fucker survived.”
Running a hand down the sexy curve of his mate’s back as the memory of Dev’s angry words echoed through his mind, he said, “Arrows have to hate him, too.” That would’ve been easy enough to guess with the defection of the squad from under Ming’s leadership, even without Judd’s close connection to current active-duty Arrows.
“Hmm.” Sienna tapped her kiss-swollen lower lip with a finger. “SnowDancer can blindside Ming a few times, but eventually he’s going to figure out all our major business entities and start to avoid anything where we could have an impact.”
Hawke bared his teeth. “That’s satisfying on its own.” It would mean the pack was forcing Ming to make financial decisions that weren’t in his best interest.
“Yes, but if we get a few other people involved . . .”
Hawke wasn’t used to playing with people outside his pack—and okay, Lucas, since the cat had proven his loyalty to the blood bond between the two packs. But he could see the positives of Sienna’s idea. “Enough people in on this and it’ll become very difficult for Ming to predict who might have an interest in what—or who might develop an interest.”
Sienna nodded. “Dev has financial expertise but I’m not sure about the Arrows—I know Judd didn’t get any financial training as an Arrow. He learned what he did on his own. We don’t want to put anyone in a bad position.”
Hawke nipped at her lips just because, growled when she dug her nails into him in response. It wasn’t a complaint. “This is only fun if everyone but Ming comes out a winner,” he agreed. “I’ll ask Judd to check whether the Arrows have someone with financial smarts. We have people we can lend them if they don’t.” He ran one hand through the dark ruby fire of Sienna’s hair. Yes, his wolf thought, this is better. Working with my mate, coming up with ideas together.
Smiling at him, she ran a finger down his nose. “I feel your wolf prowling in there. You want to run? I have to do a sweep anyway.”
“Yes.” The wolf wanted her fingers in its fur, wanted to nip at her with its teeth, play with her under the moonlight.
Pushing off him, Sienna held out a hand. He took his time rising, enjoying the sight of her nude body kissed by the moonlight and clothed only in the beautiful hair he loved to play with in either form. Her smile, though, that was the most beautiful part of her. He kept that image in his mind as he shifted, the wrenching pain and stunning ecstasy of the shift rippling through him as his body exploded into millions of particles of light, then reformed in another shape.
It was still him. Always. In either form.
He shook his body to settle his fur into place, discovered his mate was pulling on her jeans. Picking up her T-shirt while her back was turned, he started to pad away.
“Hawke!” Her outraged cry came a second later. “Give that back!”
Huffing in laughter, he upped his pace.
An infuriated scream echoed on the air currents, but Sienna didn’t come after him. When he glanced back, he saw her pulling on his shirt—which happened to be torn down one side thanks to her angry, impatient hands earlier. Using the torn halves, she tied the shirt off at the side of her abdomen, then smirked at him and picked up his jeans.
“Guess you don’t need these?” she said before balling them up and throwing them over the side of the rise.
Dropping her T-shirt, he loped back to her and, without warning, nipped her butt. She yelped, clamped a hand over the part he’d bitten, turned to look at him with temper in her eyes. “You are in trouble.”
Fire arced a half centimeter from his nose.
Making a sound more common to a startled pup than a tough-as-nails alpha, he jumped back . . . to hear his mate laughing so hard she could barely take a breath. When he growled again, she just laughed harder. And then she was on her knees and her hands were in his fur and she was pressing her face to his while the jeweled dark red of her hair fell around him and life was perfect.
• • •
HAWKE kept Sienna company all night on her security shift. After their run through the area assigned to her, she told him about her lunch with Kit, the baby cat alpha she insisted on having as a friend.
“Stop growling.” She glared at him from her standing watch position.
He was sitting in wolf form beside her, his fur rippling in the breeze.
He growled again, just to rile her up.
Eyes glinting, she pointed at him. “I think you’ve been hanging around cats too much. You’re getting sly.”
This time, his growl was one of insult.
Her lips twitched. “Got you.” Coming down on one knee to run her hand through the silver-gold of his fur, while still keeping an eye on her watch area, she said, “City’s angry but calm. Word’s gotten around about how quickly the attempted kidnapping was defused, and that’s helping turn aggression into pride.”
Hawke nodded. Strange as it was for a changeling to accept, the humans in the city felt a certain ownership in DarkRiver in the sense that it was their pack that held such power. That extended to SnowDancer in the regions where the wolves held sway. The oddest thing was that a number of local Psy seemed to believe the same, feeling more loyalty toward the packs than they did toward the Ruling Coalition. It wasn’t something either Hawke or Lucas had expected or were used to, but as alphas they saw the pragmatic benefits.
And as two men born with powerful protective drives, they refused to let down the people who’d given them their trust—even if those people weren’t pack. That, too, was a situation Hawke could’ve never predicted. Changeling alphas didn’t run for mayor or for any other political office for good reason; their primary and primal focus was the pack.
The latter would never change, but the line of communication between the packs and the other residents of their territories was stronger and more in use than it had ever before been. A threat to any part of that territory was considered a threat to the packs, and as such, their actions protected all who called it home.
“There’s no more news yet on exactly who was behind the mercenaries,” Sienna added. “At least not as far as Kit knows.” Rising to her feet again, she began to walk the perimeter.
He walked beside her.
“Leila Savea remains missing.” Sienna’s tone turned somber. “It’s going to take a miracle to find her, isn’t it?” Her eyes met his, the sorrow in them potent.
She, too, had once been trapped in a nightmare.
Hawke wished he could tell her that they would find the vanished BlackSea changeling, but Sienna didn’t want empty comfort, had experienced too much harsh reality to accept it.
Instead of giving her words that meant nothing, he held her gaze until she nodded, understanding his promise: No one would stop looking for Leila Savea until they either found her . . . or her body. If, for some unfathomable reason, others stopped, SnowDancer would pick up the baton.
Together, they began to walk again.
At times they talked, but mostly, they just enjoyed being together. As night turned to the gray before dawn, Tai came to relieve Sienna. The young soldier with his big shoulders and slightly slanted eyes of blue-green grinned a hello at Hawke, but he had the good sense not to attempt to tease his alpha about being out all night with his mate. Hawke wasn’t above teasing, but Tai was too young to have earned the right to that much informality.
Sienna had always been the single exception to that rule. From the day she’d entered the den, she’d seemed to make it her mission to drive Hawke insane. He should’ve known then and there that she was destined to be his mate.
“Why are you smiling?”
Still in wolf form, he glanced up at her question.
“It doesn’t matter what form you wear. I know.” An answer to his unspoken question. “I can feel it inside.” She touched a fist to her heart. “Something’s amusing you.”
He bolted into a run without warning, challenging her to keep up with him. Laughing, she pounded toward the den alongside him. They both knew he was throttling his speed for her, but that took none of the pleasure out of it. His wolf loved running with her.
Racing through the dew-laden quiet of the White Zone, they pelted into the den and past startled packmates who jumped out of the way. One yelled out, “Act your age not your shoe size!”
Another growled, “Dignity, Hawke!”
Both of those hecklers were his friends, their words tinged with laughter as well as joy that Hawke had found a mate, found happiness.
Continuing to race through the corridors that were quiet except for the early risers, they tumbled into their quarters together and Sienna locked the door behind them. Hawke shifted in the seconds it took her to do that. Scooping her up in his arms the next instant, he ran into the bedroom to throw her on the bed.
Her hair haloed around her in a ruby-red fan, her face flushed from their run and her breathing rough. “That was fun!”
Coming down over her, he took a morning kiss, his wolf rumbling inside his chest. “I was smiling because I was thinking about what a pain in the butt you were as a teenager.”
“You liked me even then.” She poked at his shoulder. “Admit it.”
“Never.” He grinned and pushed off the bed before her wandering hands made it impossible for him to do anything but strip her naked, make her sigh his name. “You need to eat and then you need to sleep.”
A scowl. “You going to sleep with me?”
Hawke was fully capable of going without sleep, but since SnowDancer wasn’t at any kind of emergency alert, he didn’t need to. “Yes, Sienna Lauren Snow,” he said, drawing out her name because he liked the way it sounded. “I’ll be sleeping with you.”
She sat up and reached back to quickly braid her hair. “Good. Let’s go get breakfast.”
Hawke had recovered the jeans Sienna had thrown over the rise, but had left them—and her T-shirt—cached for later retrieval. Grabbing another pair, he hauled them on, then shrugged into an old black tee before taking her hand.
In sync, with no more need for any further discussion, they made their way together to the room where breakfast was laid out for those packmates coming off night shift or going out on an early-morning shift.
“Sin!” Sienna’s best friend, Evie, waved them over to a table where she sat alone, nursing a cup of coffee. “Hi, Hawke.”
“Good morning.” Bending, he pressed a kiss to her temple, her hair cool black silk under his touch and her eyes deepest gray.
It was extraordinary how differently he saw Evie and Sienna, though they were near the same age. Indigo’s submissive sister was so young in the life she’d lived, so innocent. The alpha in him felt only protectiveness when he looked at Evie, could never imagine seeing her as a woman.
Sienna . . . wolf and man, he’d always accepted her as a strong opponent, even when she’d been too young for him to see her as anything else.
“What are you doing up?” Sienna asked her friend as Evie rose to pour Sienna and Hawke coffee from the carafe on the counter.
Hawke accepted the small gift with a smile of thanks. Had he insisted on getting his own coffee, she’d have lost that sunny light in her eyes, started to feel redundant. She wasn’t. No submissive was. Dominants were the fighters of a pack. Submissives took care of creating the home they protected.
It was a perfect balance in a healthy pack.
“I had breakfast with Tai.” Evie’s cheeks flushed with happiness. “He told me he was taking over from you, so I thought I’d wait.”
Hawke had just accepted a hot bacon roll Evie passed over from the tray that must’ve been brought in a bare minute earlier, when his attention was caught by another woman who’d walked into the otherwise empty room. Alice Eldridge. A gifted human researcher who’d been forcibly put into cryonic sleep for over a hundred years and had woken to find everyone she’d ever known was dead.
Her hair had grown back in the ensuing time, the spiral curls rich brown and gold against brown skin that had regained its glow. Her body, too, was no longer skin and bones. She’d taken up climbing again, regained the lithe muscle tone she’d had before her long sleep. But Alice’s eyes continued to hold a relentless sadness. Unable to see a member of his pack that way, Hawke put down his roll and, leaving Sienna chatting to Evie, walked over to Alice.
She hadn’t yet accepted that she was a SnowDancer, wasn’t sure what her place was in the world, but she was still his responsibility. Not saying a word, he wrapped his arms gently around her, loosely enough that she could escape should she want. She froze like a startled deer.
One second. Two. Three.
A cautious movement.
Alice placed her head against his chest and slid her arms around him.
He tightened his embrace.
All changelings knew that, sometimes, touch could heal what words never could.
“Thank you,” she whispered afterward. “I . . . why does that make me feel safe? You’re a stranger, really.”
Because even a human recognized the power in an alpha wolf. “You’re one of mine,” Hawke told her. “Part of this family. Don’t forget that.”
A shaky smile before Alice nodded and joined the rest of them for breakfast.
Smiling, Evie got her tea and a roll before whispering, “I heard a rumor that a certain dominant is going to ask you out today.”
Alice groaned, her lingering sadness fading—at least for now—under a wave of aggravation. Exactly as Evie had likely intended, even if it hadn’t been a conscious thought on her part. Submissives were good at that, at giving others what they needed to get back on an even keel.
“What is it with wolves?” Alice said with a feminine snarl of which Hawke’s wolf approved. “I’ve made it crystal clear that I’m not anywhere near ready to date.”
Swallowing a bite of her own roll, Sienna shook her head. “You say that and certain wolves hear ‘oh, she wants me to try harder.’”
Hawke wisely kept his mouth shut and started on a second roll, having already demolished the first. Evie got up to refresh his coffee, but her attention was on the conversation.
“So I should just go on a date and be awful?” Alice asked. “Bore the man to tears by talking about esoteric research papers on bat guano or the health properties of wheatgrass?” Her eyes gleamed. “It holds a certain appeal.”
Shaking her head, Evie said, “No, because then all the others will think they can do a better job and it’ll become a contest to see who can make you have a good time on a date.”
“Yeah.” Sienna nodded. “Also, if the male in question makes a real effort on the date, he might get his feelings hurt and then you’ll have to figure out how to deal with a moping wolf.”
Alice stared at Hawke’s mate. “While the fact I’m turning the men down flat isn’t hurting anyone’s feelings?”
Both Sienna and Evie shook their heads, with Evie the one who explained. “Wolves love a good chase. I mean, did you hear what Drew did while he was courting my sister?”
The resulting conversation actually had Alice laughing. “No, he didn’t!” she said several times, only to be met by confirmations that yes, Drew did go there, and yes, he did do that.
Content to be around his mate and packmates, Hawke just grinned and listened.
• • •
AS a result of their lingering over breakfast, he was awake when a call came through that Indigo thought he should answer. He’d just been about to strip for bed, had his T-shirt balled up in one hand.
“Psy called Pax Marshall,” his lieutenant said over the comm. “He’s got a proposal and I figured you’d want to take his measure.”
She was right—Pax Marshall wasn’t simply another CEO. He was a ruthless male who’d risen to the top of his family hierarchy at only twenty-four years of age and, according to Judd’s intel, was considered one of the new powers in the Net.
Whether he has any loyalty to anyone but himself is up for question. But if he doesn’t have blood on his hands, I’d be very surprised.
Judd’s words fresh in his mind, Hawke pulled his T-shirt back on and said, “Transfer Marshall through.”