Tangle of Need

Adria was trying so hard not to burst out laughing, she had to fake a coughing fit. Several people seemed to have been struck with the same affliction—though Inés managed to keep it together, slapping Adria helpfully on the back. “Must be the pollen in the air,” she murmured in faux concern.

Adria would’ve kicked the other woman if Sam hadn’t been sitting in front of her.

“As I was saying,” Elias continued, a rare strand of silver glinting in the rich brown of his hair, “it’s time for the ceremony. But since we appear to have an intruder, we’ll have to deal with him first.”

Sam rose to his feet, dusting off his jeans. “Look, hey, I can book if you guys—”

Elias raised a hand for silence, moving to stand in front of Sam.

“Sam Baker,” he said, his face solemn, “according to those witnesses who weren’t unconscious at the time, you ran onto the field of battle time and time again to rescue injured packmates, though you’d been hit with a bullet yourself.”

“It was what any one of us would’ve done.” Sam’s words were quiet, the playful soldier replaced by the courageous man who’d fought with all his heart, even when surrounded by blood and agony and an enemy devoid of mercy.

“Yes,” Elias said, reaching out to pin something on Sam’s stone gray shirt, “and we’re proud to call you one of our own.”

Adria saw the instant it hit Sam. His fingers trembled as he touched the regal form of the small silver wolf on his shirt collar. None of the senior soldiers wore the pins in daily life, but each one did so tonight—her top too light to hold it, Adria had attached hers to a thin silver bracelet on her left wrist. That tiny badge was a source of enormous pride, not being simply an indication of promotion from soldier to senior, but of acceptance within the rank.

Slapping a still-stunned Sam on the back, Elias raised his glass, “To Sam!”

“To Sam!” Adria cried with the rest of the group, and right then, she knew she’d make it. Maybe her unhealthy and untenable attraction to Riaz showed no signs of abating, the clawing need tearing at her gut, but she was more than the primal urges of her body. She was part of this strong, loyal group, a woman who had built a new life, new friendships from the cold ashes of the old.

No man was ever again going to drive her to question her own worth.

Her wolf’s body thrummed with defiant, determined pride. And when the newest senior soldier in the den threw back his head and celebrated with wild abandon, she lent her voice to his song alongside those of her packmates.

THE bristles on Hawke’s jaw caught on Sienna’s hair. She’d watched him shave before the ceremony, but it was now on the edge of dawn and they were finally in bed, his arm holding her to his chest. Enjoying the intimacy of talking with him as much as she’d enjoyed dancing in his arms until the sky shimmered with the first pearly kiss of morning, she glanced up when he shifted to fold one of his arms behind his head.

Eyes of wolf blue met her own. “Your friends snuck off to do some mischief.” An alpha’s amusement. “I expected you to join them since you’re the head troublemaker.”

“I warned them they’d be on their own tonight … last night now.” The friends she’d made were friends she intended to keep for life—but the night had been hers and Hawke’s. “I waited so long for this moment,” she whispered, touching her fingers to his jaw, the stubble rough against her fingertips. “Sometimes, I think I’m dreaming and I’m so scared I’ll wake up.”

Hawke didn’t try to talk away her fears—he understood the life she’d lived, this wolf who had never known the PsyNet, and yet who knew her. He understood that some nightmares couldn’t be overcome by logic or reason. Only time had that power. Her fear of losing him, as she’d lost her kind, gifted mother, as she’d lost her brother and the rest of her family for so long, was a darkling thought that had made her gasp awake more than once, her heart pounding as if she’d been racing desperately toward him.

Then she’d feel her wolf strong and warm beside her, or open her psychic eye to the wild silver-blue and flame-hued passion of their bond, and the terror would abate. One day, she thought, it would no longer return, but until then, her wolf would walk beside her into the darklands. “I wanted my mother at our ceremony,” she confessed, eyes burning.

Indigo and Tarah had done their best, been there for her every step of the way, but it wasn’t the same. “I don’t even have anything of hers to hold on to.” It had all been destroyed after her mother’s suicide, while Sienna had been trapped in a psychic prison with a monster named Ming LeBon.

“This beautiful hair,” Hawke said, his chest rumbling under her palm. “Judd once told me it reminded him of his sister.” He played his fingers along the strands. “You are a piece of her, you and Toby.”