Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(21)

Everything went blank.





Chapter 11


Dr. Menet’s fifteen-year study uncovered no common genetic markers among known rogues. However, my research has unearthed three families with at least two rogues in successive generations. Families A and B have provided DNA for further examination. Family C, with three rogues in as many generations, is currently not part of this study.

—Changeling Rogues: Broken Minds & Broken Families by Keelie Schaeffer, PhD (Work in Progress)


HAWKE PULLED ON a T-shirt over his barely dry body, his hair damp from his shower, and his heart a raw knot. Not wanting to think about why, he turned his attention to the woman with cardinal eyes and ruby red hair who stood beside the edge of their bed, attempting to pull on a pair of jeans. Other than the jeans, she wore only a white lace bra and cool-yellow panties with thin white stripes.

Sienna’s breasts bounced as she jumped up and down to tug the jeans up over the curve of her butt. “What?” she demanded in the successful aftermath, the white stars on black of her extraordinary eyes as open to him as her heart.

Hawke smiled slowly—she was the best fucking thing in his life. “I think your jeans need to be tighter.”

A narrow-eyed look. “I’m your mate, Mr. Alpha Wolf. You think I don’t know you’re feeling messed up today? Come here.” She held out her arms.

He had no hope in hell of resisting.

Going to her, he enclosed her in his arms, then bent his head to press a kiss to the plump curve of her breast. Nuzzling the side of his face, she tugged at his hair and, when he lifted his head, met his lips with her own. He was the most dominant wolf in SnowDancer, used to control, to power, but this morning he let his mate take the reins, pet him, kiss him, adore him.

His wolf was no longer as agitated when they parted. “I’m going to talk to Judd.” Rostered on the night shift, the Arrow-turned-SnowDancer-lieutenant had taken charge of tracking down information on the empath Alexei had rescued. “You still want to come up to the substation?”

“Of course.” His mate’s fingers gripping his chin, her tone unbending. “We handle stuff like this together. Don’t you forget it.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” It was a tease but it was also a truth. Sienna might be younger than him, but she was more than capable of calling him on the carpet and holding his behavior to account. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Hey.” She rose up to rub her nose over his. “It’ll be all right.”

Hawke pressed his forehead to her own. “It’s fucking hard knowing I hurt Alexei this badly.” He’d always felt differently toward his youngest lieutenant, could remember Alexei as a shell-shocked seven-year-old boy who’d clung to a teenaged Hawke’s hand the day they buried Alexei and Brodie’s parents.

Brodie had come in wolf form, had pressed his furry body against Hawke’s other side.

Hawke had just become a too-young alpha, one who’d been forced to make a bloody decision that had left two small boys as orphans. A year ago, he’d made the same terrible decision all over again, only this time, he’d left Alexei the sole survivor of the Harte-Vasiliev family. “I fucking broke Alexei’s heart.”

“I know.” Sienna petted his nape, kissed his jaw. “I know, baby.” Shining eyes, a thickness in her voice. “But you had no choice. Otherwise Alexei would’ve been put in an awful position. You know he doesn’t blame you.”

Thank you. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d had to do it.

Grief-stricken words spoken by the lethally trained dominant Hawke had watched grow from a boy to a man he would have at his back anytime. “I know, but it doesn’t help when I remember how long it’s been since I saw the real Alexei.” Though one of the quietest of Hawke’s lieutenants, Alexei had always had a sly sense of humor that took others by surprise. But he rarely laughed these days, his entire being riven with anger.

Hawke was used to making hard decisions, but the one to execute Brodie, it haunted him. “I remember taking Lexie on a hunt when he was a juvenile and how proud he was to be asked along by his alpha.” The age difference between them was only eight years, but when a man was twenty-two and a boy fourteen, it mattered, even more so because they were wolves and Hawke was Alexei’s alpha.

Sienna ran her hand down his spine. “He loves you, Hawke. There’s a reason you scheduled his secondment here at this time, and it’s the same reason he didn’t ask to reschedule—he still turns to you when the pain gets to be too much.” A kiss on the lips, tender and soft. “I know this is the worst possible day for you to go into the bunker.” Fingers stroking through his hair. “Don’t let it get to you.”

His mate was comforting him as he’d let only her. An alpha wolf could never be anything but the strongest person in the room—except when alone with his mate. Sienna knew his every scar, his every vulnerability. If she ever asked him to kneel down so she could slit his throat, he’d do it without blinking. Wolves didn’t mate lightly, and the strongest dominants in the pack were even worse. Possessive, protective, demanding—and devoted. His every breath was hers.

“I won’t,” he promised. “Those bastards hurt my pack once. I won’t allow them to wound us a second time.”