ETHAN HAD NO place in BlackEdge’s hierarchy except as an adjunct of Selenka—and Selenka’s priority in the lead-up to the funeral was to ease her people’s pain. His was to do whatever she needed.
He wasn’t, however, expecting her to turn to him and say, “Will you help in the nursery?”
But all he said was, “Yes.”
Guessing she’d assigned him the task because he had the training to protect the children, he deferred to Alia, the lieutenant having volunteered for the same task. “I’m ready to do whatever you require,” he told her once he reached the nursery—after checking on his dog and discovering the stray bathed and fed, and fast asleep in a pile of blankets.
The tall woman with gentle eyes gave him a funny look. “I can’t quite work out what you are,” she murmured. “You’re obviously extremely dangerous, but I’m a submissive, and my wolf is comfortable in your presence in a way it shouldn’t be with a strange dominant.”
“Likely because I’m mated to Selenka,” Ethan said absently, far more fascinated by the rest of her statement. “How can you be a submissive and a lieutenant?”
“Selenka.” Lush lips forming a tranquil smile. “She finds my advice useful and is of the opinion that dominance alone shouldn’t keep the pack from recognizing my value to her. So I am a lieutenant.”
Alia’s advice had to be far more than useful for Selenka to take such a step; she must consider the woman a key member of her team. “How do the dominants who aren’t lieutenants deal with it? Is there resentment?”
“No, they treat me the same as they would a healer.” Alia continued to examine him with a piercing attention that should’ve seemed aggressive, but wasn’t, not with her.
“There is precedent in changeling history of high-ranking submissives, so I’m not unique,” she added. “We’re sometimes called gamma wolves in the history books. It helps that the senior lieutenants accepted me from day one—to those who came after, I’ve always held the position, so they never think about it.”
Alia might not know it, but her psychic presence had a lot to do with her packmates’ response to her. She was the most serene being Ethan had ever met, and that included Ivy Jane. “Were you born this way?” he asked, unable to resist the compulsion. “So . . . balanced.”
A tilt of her head. “I’ve always felt the rhythms of the universe. We are but motes in the slipstream.” Her smile deepened. “Ethan, I like you.” A statement laced with joy. “We will be friends, you and I.”
Oddly enough, Ethan agreed with her. “Is Artem your mate?”
Bright wolf eyes. “Yes, and how funny that you didn’t say lover or boyfriend. Did you pick up anything else?”
“Margo and Gregori are siblings.”
“Exactly nine months between them. Who is the older?”
“Margo,” he said without having to think about it.
“Ethan, oh, Ethan,” Alia whispered. “Who are you?”
Ethan went to reply when a sense of movement made him glance down.
Now dressed in soft blue fleece pants and a matching long-sleeved top decorated with a rainbow, Zhanna was petting him on the calf in an effort to get his attention.
“Did you escape again?”
Solemnly shaking her head, she raised her arms. He bent, picked her up. “Last I saw her, she was with her parents.”
“Her father is a senior soldier, her mother a florist,” Alia told him. “All the pups in the nursery tonight belong to wolves who’re helping with the preparations. That’s my little Inja there.”
Ethan followed her gaze to a tiny wolf pup who was using her nose to roll a ball to another small wolf, who’d then roll it back.
When Alia began to move around the room, Ethan copied her example.
The children seemed at ease with him. Probably because he smelled like Selenka. Understanding the value of that trust, he helped with their projects and—after Zhanna scrambled down—held any that wished it.
All the while, the rogue Scarab power shoved at the walls he’d built to contain it.
The clock was counting down faster than he’d expected. If Memory Aven-Rose couldn’t help him . . .
Ethan. Aden’s telepathic signature, accompanied by a sense of tiredness Ethan had never before intuited from this type of contact.
Was there a Net rupture? he asked.
Yes. I’ve contained it. No fatalities. I’m back in Moscow to see Kaleb, and I’ve also spoken to Memory—she’s happy to meet with you tomorrow.
Ethan considered what was happening in the pack, weighed it up against his degrading mental status. He wouldn’t be any use to Selenka if he was insane or dead. I’ll be there.
I’ll forward you her comm details so you can settle on a time. Don’t attempt telepathic, PsyNet, or physical contact without permission.
Understood. He would’ve ended the conversation there at any other time before Selenka and the shredding of the gray numbness. Today, he said, I thank you for the help.
Aden took a long time to reply. I hope Memory can assist you. I would not lose you, Ethan.
Hope alone wouldn’t be enough. Not when the Scarab power was creating fissures in his shields faster than he could patch them up. It was gaining in strength, becoming a behemoth that would soon erase all evidence of an Arrow named Ethan Night.
* * *
—
SELENKA was ragged at the edges by the time the funeral drew near. Everything was in place, the only thing left being to ensure their young and vulnerable would be protected while the vast majority of her wolves attended Emanuel’s farewell. She left the nursery to last, wasn’t sure what to expect when she finally stepped into the doorway.
Others might question her decision to place Ethan in the nursery, but others didn’t have his presence inside them. Cold and jagged he might be, but he was also devoted in a way that wasn’t healthy, wasn’t normal. That obsessive devotion meant she could trust her stranger of a mate without question.
Ethan was hers.
What she saw inside the nursery had her halting in the doorway. Most of the children were asleep on thick mattresses, their small bodies covered by fluffy blankets. More than a few were in wolf form, snuggled into the bodies of their playmates.
The few who remained awake were heavy eyed . . . and her black-clad Arrow had one of the littlest in his arms, the pup’s face buried against Ethan’s neck. Her wary heart opened a crack, and for the first time, their mating moved beyond a primal bond desired by the wolf and into a promise that beguiled the human side of her.
Because violence was easy. It was the rest that came hard.
She watched as Ethan got the pup to sleep before placing him on a bed beside two other pups in wolf form. The boy curled sleepily around his packmates.
Rising, Ethan turned and looked directly at her. And the dark embers in her gut sparked to full life, the craving even deeper and hotter than it had been before. She needed her mate on a bone-deep level, and it wasn’t about intimate skin privileges. It was about having one person with whom she could drop her head and just fucking cry, give in to the emotions lodged like a stone on her chest.
“Not yet,” she ordered herself, as he closed the distance between them.
His eyes pale and fathomless, the ice of him cracked with ever-bigger fractures of light, he reached her at the same time as Alia. Kind and gentle Alia, with her way of seeing the world that was beyond the here and now. It was as if she’d been born wise.
No wonder her parents called her “owlet” to this day.
“Your relief’s on the way,” Selenka told the lieutenant, for the pack would need Alia’s serenity at the funeral.
Dark eyes examined her before Alia walked into her arms on a wave of muted perfume. Taking comfort but giving more. A sneaky thing submissives had long perfected.
“Thank you for sending Ethan,” the other woman said when she drew back. “The children adore him.”
After Alia left to do one last check on the sleeping pups, Ethan moved closer to Selenka. His eyes devoured her, the air between them hot with need and something more—a hunger to smash through the fog in the bond, claw into each other’s souls. But his voice was tempered when he said, “Do you want me to stand security while the funeral takes place?”
Selenka nodded. She’d spoken to each of her lieutenants privately, needing to know how her shock mating had affected them. Her pack was her heart; if they were uncomfortable with a Psy presence in the den, she’d find a way to deal. A good alpha didn’t put her needs first, didn’t focus on her own emotions.
But all her closest people had backed her.
“Mates don’t betray one another,” each had said in their own way, that fact as fundamental as that the sky was blue, and the grass green.
Margo had added, “Thanks for stealing an Arrow for the pack. SnowDancer’s all smug about having that Tk who can lob missiles about. I can’t wait to brag about our Arrow.”
“Uh-huh.” Dinara had nodded. “Also, now when the bears smirk at us because their alpha managed to court himself a kickass mate, we can smirk right back.”
Kostya had bared his teeth at that. “Yeah, and Valentin had to climb her building to get access to Silver. Our alpha, meanwhile . . .” He’d bumped fists with Ivo, before they both said, “Boom.”
Only her father had questioned Selenka’s decision.
“That Psy might be your mate,” he’d said with a condescension that was business as usual with him, “but have you considered whether he’s controlling you psychically?”
Not only was the supposition ludicrous given the strength of natural changeling shields; it brought her instincts as alpha into question. So much of what she did, the decisions she made, ran on instinct. She wasn’t Psy or a human CEO, to make a decision based on a step-by-step decision tree. She was a wolf.
And her gut knew Ethan was hers.
When he touched his palm to her cheek, she leaned into the warm strength of it. Her eyes began to flutter shut, body and mind giving in to the need to take just one moment. That was when she scented blood. Her eyelashes flew up at the same time that Ethan dropped his hand and reached into his pocket for a tissue. Even as he blotted up the drops at his nose, she took a step back, her claws shoving at the tips of her fingers.