Tangle of Need

She had to, of course she had to, but she was weak enough that she clung to the solid strength of him for long minutes before allowing him to walk her back to her room. But when he would’ve come in, she put her hand on his chest and held him at bay. “No.” It was so hard to get the single word out past the violent need choking her up.

Eyes of Spanish gold slammed into hers, the fury in them tempered by a tenderness that killed her. Ignoring her hand and her declaration both, he walked in and closed the door behind him.

“Riaz—”

But he was already spinning her around and tugging off her damp T-shirt. Gripping it in one hand, his other splayed on her abdomen as he stood behind her, he said, “I will never forgive you if you don’t let me take care of you tonight.” It was the vow of a predatory changeling male driven to the brink.

To her shame, she wasn’t strong enough to push him away a second time. Instead, she let him strip her with gentle hands, let him join her in the steamy warmth of the shower and tend to her with a wild affection that broke her heart. There was no longer any anger in him, only a possessive gentleness that branded her as his.

Snuggled in a towel afterward, she sat while he dried her hair, then held on to him as he picked her up and carried her to the bed. Where he cuddled her close and ran his hand down her spine until she knew that held safe in his arms, the woodsmoke and citrus bite of his scent in her every breath, she’d have no nightmares.

“Te amo.”

She was on the verge of sleep, her eyes heavy, but she heard the words of love he spoke, her beautiful black wolf … and she knew this night would break the last remaining fragment of her heart.





Chapter 68


VASIC WAS A killer. It was what he’d been programmed to be since he was a child pulled into the Arrow Squad. He’d been so confused, so scared. Because he’d still felt then, had known even as a four-year-old that the people who’d come for him weren’t people he wanted in his life.

He’d escaped them, too. Multiple times. No security could contain a Traveler. That was why he’d been placed in the “care” of another Arrow, the only other Tk-V he’d met in his entire lifetime—and the only one who had understood how Vasic’s mind worked well enough to trap him.

“Don’t you feel anything?” It had been an innocent question from a child to the man who would become his father, trainer, and jailor.

“Emotion is a weakness. You’ll be Silent soon enough, then you’ll understand.”

Vasic hadn’t simply become Silent, he’d become even more an Arrow than his mentor. Patton had been on Jax, the drug used to control Arrows, so long that he’d become a weapon that was aimed, pointed, and told who to kill. And when his performance began to slip, he’d been put down like a dog.

Vasic hadn’t been on Jax anywhere near as long as Patton, and so, in spite of what many believed, he could still think for himself. Jax might create perfect soldiers, but it also eventually numbed the minds of those soldiers. Vasic’s mind remained razor sharp, his abilities honed to a lethal edge—after all, as a Traveler, he was part of Designation Tk, teleportation not his only skill.

Now, Vasic turned from the view of the Pacific afforded by this remote headland, the grass reaching the tops of his combat boots, and said, “You have Henry?”

“Yes.” Aden’s gaze was on the horizon, the sky a pale gray that merged into the black lick of the sea, sunrise at least an hour away.

“How?”

“I didn’t look for Henry,” Aden answered in an apparent paradox. “I looked for medics trained in treating severe burn injuries who’d disappeared off the grid.”

And that was why, Vasic thought, Aden led the Arrows. “Send me the markers for the teleportation lock.”

A quiet knock on his mind, a request for entry. When he opened the telepathic channel, Aden sent him detailed images of the sterile glass chamber in which Henry lay, his body scarred by X-fire. The medic from whose mind I took the images will not sound the alarm—he has no awareness that I infiltrated his shields.

“Henry,” Aden added aloud, “has never thought long term, so the fact he left his medics unshielded was a foreseeable error, but I expected better from Vasquez.”

Vasic considered what they knew of the man who was Henry’s general, weighed it against his acts to date. “No matter what he believes, reason alone doesn’t drive him.” And such a man made mistakes. “What about Ming?”

They both knew Henry had had help in his more recent military activities—the former Councilor wasn’t creative enough to have come up with strategies such as the sonic weapon that had turned the changelings’ sensitive hearing against them. It was impossible to prove if Ming had also had a hand in the evolution of the idea to cripple the Net by murdering anchors, but the likelihood was high.