His lashes came down, swept back up.
His ability to teleport to individuals meant nothing, not in this particular situation. For some reason, he could not teleport to the one person he’d spent years learning to know, to understand. Opening his psychic eye again, he considered the pathways he’d already traversed. He was getting closer, that much was inarguable. The only question was whether he’d be fast enough to—
Councilor.
Shifting his focus at the telepathic hail, he slipped back into his mind and out again onto the PsyNet, this time devoid of the shields that made him invisible. “Silver.”
His aide’s mind was crystal clear, with none of the hairline cracks that signaled broken or compromised conditioning. “Sir,” she said. “My family did not lose its contact inside Pure Psy in the fight against the changelings, and his most recent communiqué makes it clear the group is stirring again.”
“I assumed as much.” Pure Psy had been heavily damaged but not destroyed by the cold violence of Sienna Lauren’s X-fire combined with a fierce fighting force of changelings, humans, and Psy.
An unusual mix.
Kaleb had watched from a distance, weighing up what the group effort meant for the future not simply of his own race but of the world.
“Their new goal?” he asked.
“Unidentified. Information is being communicated to a select number of individuals on a need-to-know basis. The only fact our contact was able to confirm is that they’ve shifted their attention from the changelings to the Net.”
Kaleb considered the radical change. After the decisive defeat Pure Psy had suffered, it made sense for the group to rethink its objectives, but it had to be more than that. Fanatics did not think in a logical fashion, and Pure Psy was a construction of absolute fanaticism, no matter what its adherents told themselves about the “Purity” of their Silence.
More than likely, the Pure Psy membership had decided that anyone who had not supported the group’s attack on the changelings was to be treated as the enemy, including those of their own race. “Thank you, Silver.”
“Sir.” Her roaming presence streaked away, a shooting star.
Kaleb stared out at the gorge on the physical plane, but on the psychic, he was reaching for the DarkMind. What do you hear? What do you see?
The broken, twisted neosentience, created of all the emotions the Psy refused to acknowledge, much less feel, twined around him, a pet seeking affection. Except it was no pet but a nightmare, and Kaleb didn’t understand the concept of affection. Still, he could mimic it enough to calm the DarkMind.
The neosentience showed him minds disrupted, areas of the Net disturbed, but Kaleb had seen that for himself, monitored Subject 8-91 on a continuous basis. Pure Psy, he said, narrowing the search parameters.
The DarkMind had nothing new to show him on the topic.
So, Silver was righter than she knew—Pure Psy was keeping all information about its new plans under a mental and psychic lockdown. That meant its members had to be limiting their communications to telepathy or in-person meetings. Slow … but an excellent safeguard to ensure no one would uncover their objective until it was too late.
Chapter 17
SIENNA LOOKED IN the mirror, startled by the woman who looked back at her.
Everything else new she’d purchased over the past couple of years, she’d acquired on shopping expeditions with friends. But not the dress she wore today. Hauntingly aware that this night when she made a public claim on her wolf, was claimed in turn, would resonate in her soul for the rest of her life, she’d needed it to be a private thing.
She’d picked the design on her own, sourced the emerald green fabric, cut out the pattern using the template, then asked Tarah to sew it for her. The result was breathtaking. Made of a silky material that caressed rather than clung, it had straps that crossed her upper chest before curving around her neck in a halter, and a graceful, flowing skirt that kissed her ankles. Supremely elegant—but for the hidden slit on one side that hit mid-thigh, and appeared only if she moved a certain way.
It made her feel young and sexy, beautiful and graceful, at the same time.
For her feet, she’d chosen not respectable heels, but the very unrespectable thigh-high boots she’d worn the night Hawke had carried her out of Wild. That was the night they’d danced their first dance, a dance she would never forget.
Her hair she’d left down, because her wolf preferred it that way.
That wolf now growled. “Come here so I can take a bite.”
Her thighs clenched. “Behave.” He looked gorgeous in a formal black shirt and pants, his hair and eyes thrown into startling relief, but she had another outfit in mind. “I bought you a present.”
A slow wolfish smile. “I have one for you, too.” Closing the small distance between them, he made her hold out her hand, palm open.
“Oh,” she said in delight, “which one did you get?” The intricate toys he’d given her during their courtship were some of her most cherished keepsakes.
When he put the old-fashioned mechanical toy on her palm, she stopped breathing. It was a tiny representation of an atom, complete with colored ball bearings standing in for neutrons, protons, and on the outside, arranged on arcs of fine wire, electrons. Turning the key on the side made the electrons move, what she’d thought were ball bearings actually finely crafted spheres of glass that sparked with color.
A brilliant, thoughtful, wonderful gift for a physics major.
Eyes burning, she swallowed. “It’s perfect.” It still shook her at times, how he remembered things that mattered to her—even when she didn’t think he was paying attention. The other day, a book had appeared on her reader that she’d only mentioned wanting in passing.
He rubbed his knuckles over her cheek, as if he understood exactly what his care meant to her … then she realized he did. The mating bond connected them on a level that was as primal as the heart of the wolf.
“Why magnesium?” she asked, identifying the atomic number of the light metal.
His hand on her jaw, his mouth on her own. “Because it’s beautifully explosive, just like my X.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I like the way you pet me, too.” The way he made her feel as if her cold fire was a gift, not a curse.
Placing his gift on the vanity when the clockwork mechanism wound down, she reached for the box she’d laid on the seat in front of it. “This is for you.” Nerves knotted her stomach. “If you don’t like it, it’s okay,” she said as he pulled off the ribbon with male impatience and opened the lid to reveal the contents.
Silence.
“I can send it back, reorder another—” His kiss stole her breath, stole her words, would’ve stolen her heart if it hadn’t already belonged to him.
Touching her fingers to her passion-swollen lips, her breasts straining against the bodice of her dress, she watched him put the box back on the seat and strip off his shirt, exposing the beautiful chest she’d licked and sucked in the shower not long ago—her mate could be patient now that “the edge was off,” though patience was a relative thing.
She’d ended up pinned to the wet tile, her legs wrapped around lean hips. Petting her with lazy possessiveness, he’d stroked into her slow and deep until she came in a rain of pleasure. Yet her body pulsed for him all over again, the sensory memory of rubbing against his chest sensitizing her nipples to aching points.
Hawke’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t stop what he was doing.
Dropping his shirt onto the bed, he lifted out and shrugged into the one she’d spent hours upon hours searching for online. When he raised his hands to the buttons, she stepped into his space. “I’ll do that.” She couldn’t resist kissing each hard, muscled inch before she covered it up.