Tangle of Need

“Is that coffee?” Indigo groaned as she walked in behind him.


Putting down his mug, Riaz poured her a cup from the carafe on the table, aware the other lieutenant had worked until nightfall with Felix’s team, then returned to supervise her novices in a night training exercise. Riaz had offered to handle the latter, but Indigo had wanted to personally judge their progress since a couple were edging toward full soldier status. “Don’t tell me your boy toy isn’t treating you right,” he said as he handed the coffee over.

Indigo swigged half of it before saying, “I shall deal with you later,” in an ominous tone stripped of its menace by a jaw-cracking yawn. “Do you know what this is about?”

“No.” Grabbing a seat, he turned toward the monitors as Alexei’s and Jem’s feeds came online. “You two have any idea what’s happening?” he asked.

“My guess—something’s up with the Psy,” Jem said. “I went for a street run this morning like I sometimes do, and I don’t know how to describe it; there was this eerie quiet on the face of every Psy I passed.”

“Whatever it is,” Alexei pointed out, “if we’re having a meeting and not going into emergency mode, it’s probably not an imminent threat to the pack.”

Tension level dropping a notch because the young lieutenant was right, Riaz went to ask Alexei about the wolves who wanted to merge with SnowDancer when Hawke entered with Riley and Judd. Conversation stopped for a minute as the other lieutenants started to come online. Kenji, Tomás, Matthias, and Cooper all snapped into focus one after the other. Coop was as bright eyed as if he’d been up for hours, and Kenji appeared to have come in from a night shift, but the others didn’t look impressed.

“I thought the war was won,” Tomás groaned, a giant mug in his hand. “This was my sleep-in day.”

“I thought that was yesterday,” Cooper said.

“Shut up. Just because you’re getting laid on a regular basis doesn’t mean you have to be smug about it.”

Coop’s smile was slow and definitely smug.

Tapping the table with a finger on the heels of that smile, Hawke called the meeting to order. “Judd, Lucas, and I,” he said, “had a very interesting conference call with Anthony and Nikita a few minutes ago.”

Everyone quieted. The pack’s relationship with the two powerful Psy was shaky at best. There was no doubt both had done their share of the heavy lifting when it came to protecting the city from Henry Scott’s army—they’d provided combat-ability troops, used their own considerable telepathic powers to repel the intruders. However, that didn’t mean they could be trusted.

“Good news is,” Hawke said, “it’s highly likely we’re no longer target numero uno as far as Pure Psy is concerned.”

“Why aren’t you celebrating?” Indigo asked, reaching for the carafe and pouring herself a second cup of coffee, topping up Riley’s when he held it out.

Hawke’s expression was grim, the words he spoke even grimmer. “Because the civil war in the Net isn’t a possibility—it’s begun. The most recent casualty count is five hundred and seventeen.”

“Shit.” Matthias rubbed his face, his dark skin gleaming in the light of the little table lamp he hadn’t yet turned off. “An explosion of some kind?”

Judd was the one who answered. “Part of the Net collapsed last night.”

A shocked hush.

“The victims’ separation from the Net was so violent,” he continued, “they would’ve had no chance to attempt to reintegrate. Men, women, children … entire families wiped out.”

“Angry as this makes me,” Coop said, his scar white from the force of his emotions, “we can’t affect the Net. Why did Nikita and Anthony contact us?”

“The Net collapsed because the anchor in the region was murdered, as were all his fail-safes,” Judd explained. “Anchors are protected on the psychic plane by permanent shielding that’s close to impossible to break. However, they’re still mortal.”

Riaz saw it then, what Nikita and Anthony wanted them to do. “They need our help to protect the anchors in the territory.” It was a historic request … especially when Riaz thought it through and realized the two Psy were willing to trust SnowDancer with the locations of people who were the greatest vulnerability of their race.

“Yes.” Judd pushed his hand through his hair, a rare physical betrayal of his emotions. “Before we make up our minds on that, there’s something I’m not sure you all realize.”

“Wait,” Indigo said, pushing over a cup of coffee. “Drink this first. No offense, gorgeous, but you look like hell.”