“Every member of my pack is important to me.” It came out sharp, the words serrated.
But Ethan didn’t flinch. “Some people always hold more value in any group,” he responded quietly. “I am on the periphery of the squad. My loss wouldn’t cripple Aden. If he lost Vasic, however, the impact would be significant and long-term.”
Selenka snapped.
Hauling his head close with a hand fisted in his hair, she slammed her mouth over his. The kiss was on the edge of violence, but he didn’t draw back. No, he wrapped his arms around her and held her in a way she’d permit no one else.
Everyone else in her pack needed her to be strong right now, needed her to be their rock. She couldn’t be Emanuel’s grieving friend, acid on her heart. Even now, she fought the need to break, afraid that once she allowed the grief a voice, she’d never be able to silence it. Her emotions were too big, had always been too big.
Ah, my Selenushka, so strong and wild. Her grandmother’s soft voice, even softer hands on her face. You carry a storm inside. Be careful that it does not savage you with its fury.
It had certainly not been anything Kiev Durev could handle.
“If you don’t release it now, this rage I feel inside you,” Ethan said, “it’ll explode out of you without warning.”
“How do you know?” He was right, but damn if she didn’t want him to be wrong.
“Your wolf howls inside me.”
Selenka dug her nails into his back, struck by the visceral power of his words.
No Arrow should be so good at describing emotion. But then, most Arrows weren’t hauled into a mating bond without warning. And as Ethan had told her more than once, he wasn’t a usual type of Arrow. Her mate had turbulent depths beneath the light-cracked ice of his surface, a massive surge she could just sense.
“Emanuel was special,” she admitted, her voice husky with the scream he could hear and she couldn’t bring herself to voice. “He could make even Gregori laugh—I used to joke he should have his own comedy show. I’ll miss him.” The words weren’t anywhere near adequate for the depth of loss tearing her to pieces, but they were all she had.
Ethan bent his head so his chin rested on her hair, his arms steel around her. “I think, to be missed is a gift. To be remembered an even bigger one.”
“I’ll remember him. We’ll all remember him.” After allowing herself one more moment in the strange comfort of his arms, she broke the embrace and looked Ethan in the eye. “No more hugs, no more affection, no more comfort. Not until after I’ve done what I can for my pack. From now on, I’m Alpha Durev and though I’ll never be that to you, I need you to help me maintain that part of me.” Because he was inside her now, an icy night, calm as a frozen lake.
The calm might only be on the surface, but it was enough to chill the fire of her rage, give her the ability to think with reason.
“Use me in any way you wish,” said the Arrow who was hers.
Selenka sucked in her stomach at the potent power of his words. Even if Fate, that bitch, was laughing at her by tying her to a mate who was a stranger, she’d also sent him to her at the hardest time in her life.
Her wolves did a double then triple take when she appeared with Ethan by her side, but no one challenged him—he was with their alpha. That was good enough for everyone in her pack except her father. Those who picked up the scent bond that shouted their status as mates shot her confused and stunned looks, but even they were too grief stricken to comment on how she’d appeared with a mate after leaving the den that morning without even a lover.
Their den had multiple levels and was built under a hill, with extensions into the surrounding land. It had been constructed year after year from the dawn of their time as a pack and had the look of a home put together in pieces, but the pieces flowed, corridors going this way and that, up and down.
Some wit long ago had compared it to a rabbit warren and so now the deadliest pack of wolves in Russia lived in a place called the Warren. Its walls and floors were relatively simple, carved out of smooth gray stone, with floors that glittered with minerals. But plants thrived everywhere, wild splashes of green and red and yellow.
The lighting inside the Warren had cost them a bundle, but it was worth it.
Hawke, the alpha of the pack that had invented the artificial sunlight and moonlight technology, was a tough bastard, but he hadn’t tried to gouge her. And now BlackEdge’s den shone bright with sunlight even as the wolves within grieved.
She hugged those she saw, but most got out of her way, aware others had a deeper claim on her. She went straight to Emanuel’s parents’ quarters. Ethan took a watch position by the door without her having to say a word, his dog at his feet.
Heart tight, she stepped in to find not just the two older wolves within but also Emanuel’s brother Vadem, and Dia, the sweet young submissive Emanuel had been courting. While Vadem, an aggressive dominant, paced, his rage straining his skin, Dia sat between Emanuel’s mother and father, their arms around her.
That was the well of love and kindness from which their son had come. Vadem was the same when he wasn’t so angry.
All four looked to her with huge eyes devastated by pain.
Closing the door behind her, she went first to Vadem, took his hand. “This won’t destroy who you are. I won’t permit it and neither would Emanuel.”
Swallowing hard, he nodded; then, together, they went to his parents and Dia . . . and just held them. Held a family as they grieved, their hearts forever broken.
* * *
—
ETHAN kept watch outside the room into which Selenka had disappeared, the dog sitting silently by his side. Inside his mind, the tendrils of fire continued to stretch out, and with each increment of gain, he felt himself open up, his insides raw. Like sandpaper rubbing against his brain, against his senses.
Wanting to forestall the inevitable, he began to patch up the increasingly thin sections in his internal shields, the ones holding back the wave of Scarab power. It was a losing battle, but it was a battle he’d fight to the end. If he permitted his mind to expand as it was attempting to do, if he allowed the massive wave of power to explode out of his shields, it was all over. Scarab Syndrome had no cure, though Aden had told him one particular E might be able to help him manage it when the time came.
Memory Aven-Rose.
The leader of the squad had shared that data with him after Ethan was forced to ask for a medical checkup as the pressure in his brain grew and grew. Even deep in the gray fog, he’d known his already unusual brain was starting to show signs of severe abnormalities.
The diagnosis had been: “Strong indication of Scarab Syndrome.” But the squad hadn’t turned him in to Dr. Maia Ndiaye’s team. “I won’t take this choice from you.” Aden’s face had been set in unyielding lines as he spoke, his eyes brilliant with what Ethan now recognized as angry sadness. “You’ve had enough choices stolen from you. But I need a promise: you’ll come to me when things are critical.”
Because Ethan would then be in danger of spilling innocent blood. As Yuri’s blood had been spilled—because it was Patient Zero who’d caused the senior Arrow’s critical injuries. Since even in the fog, Ethan had no desire to be a mindless beast with no control over his actions, he’d made the promise.
Command over his mind and his body was everything to him.
Aden had also briefed him extensively on Patient Zero. Zero, according to Aden, had been in a far worse state than Ethan was now, but Memory Aven-Rose had stabilized him. It’d be a thing of luminous hope if not for the twist in the story: Patient Zero had a twin who was sane.
Ethan had no twin. No one to leach off part of the pressure building in his brain.
It was time to ask Aden for the favor he’d promised.
He stepped out into the sprawling psychic space of the PsyNet. Faint lightning strikes lingered and flickered against the night sky of the Net, each mind a bright star. A number of the strikes were strong, most weak, others all but faded. He’d seen such lightning strikes all his life—mostly during the times when he was permitted a strictly controlled look into the PsyNet.
Ming had allowed him those “furloughs” because the psychologists had made the recommendation. Ethan had read the psych report after Aden took over, seen the relevant paragraphs: The boy’s mental state is precarious. Total isolation from the PsyNet may pitch him over into a condition where he will be of no use as a weapon.
We recommend supervised visits. The vastness of the Net will help temper his psychological distress at being kept underground and alone the great majority of the time, and he is not a flight risk. He cannot escape the walls you’ve constructed around his mind.
The glimpses hadn’t had the intended effect. Instead of soothing the maddened beast, they had only enraged him in the deep, cold place where he’d existed. The only things he’d enjoyed during his visits had been the mind-stars that went on forever in a glittering carpet—and the flashes of lightning. But it was only recently that those strikes had become more than faint echoes.
It was even more recently that he’d realized others didn’t see them. Something had always been very wrong with his brain. No one had noticed because he was so isolated, and trapped in Ming’s shields. The secret would die with him, but until then, he’d stand in a starry night riven with silver strikes.
Aden didn’t respond to his attempt to make contact. From the faint ripples Ethan could see in the PsyNet, the other man had to be busy sealing another rupture in its failing psychic fabric. Aden and Kaleb Krychek took it in turns, so that one of them was always at full strength in case of a major rupture.
Dropping out of the Net, he used the comm function of the gauntlet on his left forearm to send a message: I would like to meet Memory Aven-Rose.—Ethan
In the time since he’d first taken up position by this room, multiple wolves had passed through the corridor. All made eye contact and all had slumped shoulders or wet faces, but only one approached him: a tall woman older than Ethan with an angular face and a sense of tranquility to her.