PLAY OF PASSION

But she stopped and to his shock, put a hesitant hand on his back. “Is he …?”


He didn’t turn, knowing that if he looked at her right now, he might do things that could never be taken back. “He’s stable, but otherwise, no change.”

Her fingernails scraped against his T-shirt as she curled her hand into a fist. “He’ll be okay, though, won’t he?”

She was asking him for reassurance, and had it been any other member of the pack, he would’ve turned and taken them into his arms. But this was Sienna Lauren, and he couldn’t trust himself around her. “He’s strong.” When her hand dropped from his back, he felt the loss like a knife wound. “Lara’s hopeful—and your uncle’s worked on him, too, helped repair some of the microscopic damage.” But the bullet fragments had caused so much harm that even Judd couldn’t be sure he’d found every lethal cut and nick.

Sienna nodded and he just caught the movement with his peripheral vision. As he watched, she went to the door of the infirmary and slipped in. Only then did he push off the wall, his muscles taut as iron.

It was agonizingly tempting to give in to his wolf, to run until the violent emotions within him were exhausted to silence, but he was alpha. And there was work to be done. One of the most important things was ensuring that every single surveillance device within the entirety of den territory had been found and destroyed. SnowDancer, in concert with DarkRiver, had already launched an all-out search, but there was still a chance of overlooking one or two.

“Do you have anyone who can help us be certain the land is clear?” Hawke asked Lucas on the phone a few minutes later, thinking about the Psy members of the leopard pack.

Lucas didn’t. But he made a discreet inquiry, which led him to ask Hawke an odd question. “The devices you’ve found all have metallic components?”

Hawke checked with Brenna. “Yeah, there’s at least a little metal in some form or another in every single one of these things.”

“Give me a few minutes.”

When Lucas called back, it was with an offer of assistance from one hell of an unexpected source. Devraj Santos, director of the Shine Foundation and one of the Forgotten—descendants of those Psy who’d dropped out of the Net before Silence—had volunteered his services.

“How is he going to find them?” Hawke asked, his wolf unwilling to put its faith in a man he hadn’t ever met. “And what does the metal have to do with it?”

The leopard alpha sounded annoyed when he answered. “He won’t say, but I trust him. The Forgotten hate the Council even more than we do.”

That much was true, and it made him consider Santos’s offer. “What does he want in exchange?” Hawke knew of Shine, knew Santos wielded considerable power. No man kept that many people safe from the Council’s assassins by doing good deeds for free.

“We’re already linked to Shine,” Lucas said. “He wants some kind of relationship with SnowDancer.”

“No alliance.” Hawke didn’t ally with anyone he didn’t know inside out. “But we’ll owe him one if he can deliver.” A favor from SnowDancer was worth a hell of a lot.

Dev Santos agreed to the deal.

It took the Shine director a week of eighteen-hour days—the man located the cameras unerringly even in the blackest darkness and across immense distances—to clear their entire territory.

Hawke decided to up the favor count to Santos’s benefit.

“I occasionally need to ‘disappear’ people when the Council gets too interested in them,” the man said afterward. “Can’t think of any place better than in a pack of wolves. You’re so secretive, I had to sign my name in blood in triplicate before being allowed to set foot on your land.”

“No promises,” Hawke said, “but contact me when you need a disappearance and we’ll talk.” There were hundreds of places across the state controlled by wolves where a man or woman could vanish and not be found. And Dev Santos’s people had Psy genes; as the man himself had shown, those genes could prove very useful.

Devraj Santos held out a hand.

Hawke’s wolf decided they could deal with the man. They shook.





CHAPTER 47


Indigo touched her lips to Drew’s. They were soft, warm, as if he was simply resting. He’d shifted into human form spontaneously earlier that morning, and they were all hoping that meant he was about to break through the comalike sleep that had held him in thrall. She hated seeing him so quiet, so still.

Drew was never quiet. He was energy and life and mischief.

“Indigo?” Lara asked. “You okay?”

“Yes.” No. “What’s this?” she asked, distracting the healer by gesturing at something on Drew’s bedside table.

“What?”

She held up a small yellow action figure, complete with fangs and claws.