Kiss of Snow

It broke her heart, that he was hers. “I love you.” I’m sorry.

A caress down the mating bond, an untamed kiss that she knew was her wolf before he said, “Forever,” and dived with her in his arms, the water closing over their heads in a sheet of sparkling blue.

Cold. So, so cold.

It was the last thing she had physical awareness of before the crimson and gold collided to create an inferno that poured over and through her shields with a vicious strength she could never hope to control. Hawke! It was a telepathic cry as the flame seared down the mating bond, turning it into an incandescent ribbon.

His arms clenched around her, shocking her back to the world for a single instant before she was wrenched to the psychic plane once again. She watched in horror as the rapacious tempest of her power surged into Hawke. Instead of burning out his mind, it encased it . . . and continued to spread out on the bonds that tied him to his lieutenants, their mates, the healers.

It wanted all of them.

No! No!





Chapter 53


THE FIRE RACED along the familial bonds, too.

First it hit Judd. Then it hit Walker. And held. She knew both men had risen to consciousness, were shielding to the limit of their strength to save the children as well as Brenna, but she also knew they’d fail. The power continued to pour out of her, surge after surge after lethal surge.

For a blazing instant, the SnowDancer Web was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, a brilliant gold and crimson network lit with pure raw energy. It spoke not of death, but of life. But of course, that was a lie. Even as the minds of Hawke’s lieutenants blazed a terrible red, Walker and Judd finally broke.





WALKER knew the moment before Sienna’s strength overwhelmed him that he was going to break. Reaching out with his telepathy, he knocked both drowsy children back into unconsciousness. They wouldn’t feel any pain, have any awareness of going into the final goodnight.

Lara.

A single, painful thought before there was no more time. The brutal energy of an X shoved into his mind. For an instant, it was a thing of beauty, such unadulterated power that he was staggered by it. If only there was a way to harness this.

Then it rammed into his final telepathic shields, burning them to ash as the wave crashed. He had a moment to glimpse the web and think that the power was arrowing itself to him, as if he was some kind of lodestone. The flame—so cold, so violent—shoved into his psychic core a second later.

Death had never felt so exhilarating.

In the physical world, he went to his knees, his vision flame yellow and bloodred, but on the psychic plane, his telepathic reach was magnified a thousand times over for a gleaming instant, and he had time to be grateful that he hadn’t been born that way, for a man was not meant to know the world’s secrets.

He waited to die, to feel the frigid burn of an X’s touch, but the power continued to pour through him. Gritting his teeth against the impact of it, he reached out to touch a telepathic hand to the children, found them unconscious but unharmed. That was when he focused his psychic eye beyond the avalanche of power. And saw something so incredible, it would’ve brought him to his knees if he hadn’t already been on them.

The strange twisting motion at the center of his mental star, it had nothing to do with children, nothing to do with telepathy. It blazed diamond bright as it spun at phenomenal speed, acting as a filter for Sienna’s energy. The destructive potential was trapped, eradicated, the rest returned to the network. The interconnected threads of the web continued to burn but second by second, the vicious red was fading into a shimmering gold . . . until at last, there was no more raw power.

Walker’s mind blinked out.





IT wasn’t until two days later that everyone was functional enough to have a rational discussion. They met in the main conference room, the lieutenants from around the state coming in via comm feeds. Cooper’s mate stood by his side, while the others in the SnowDancer Web, as the Laurens were calling it, took seats around the conference table. The only ones missing were the children, and the healers from the other sectors—they’d decided to head back home, leaving Lara as their representative.

“That was some trip,” Tomás said, breaking the ice. “Holy hell, I was on speed for two days. I swear I ran patrol nonstop for thirty-six hours.”

“We healed everyone,” Lara said, flexing her fingers, her voice too jerky, too fast. “Everyone in the infirmary, everyone in the pack that we could find with even the slightest injury. Anyone have a sore back? Scratches?”

Beside her, Walker did something Hawke wouldn’t have expected from the quiet, contained Psy. He put his hand under Lara’s hair, curving it around her nape. It was a very changeling display of possession—a signal to every other male in the meeting that Lara was now off-limits.

Hawke’s wolf approved.