Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(64)

Good.

This was war.



* * *



? ? ?

THE obstinate, crabby wolf who’d rescued Memory then rejected her left her a full-size apple pie the next morning. In a warmer.

Memory fed it to an ecstatic bunch of empaths.

Two days later, she woke to a basket of exotic fruit.

Those she gave to Yuri, to share with the children at the Arrow squad’s own compound.

Then came the single-serving-size blueberry cake with her name written on it in white icing that glittered with sparkles. It hurt her heart, it was so pretty. She wanted desperately to keep it.

She set her jaw: Alexei didn’t get to look after her when he’d walked away from her and stayed away.

Picking up the small cake box, she headed outside.

No one would take it off her hands. Her fellow trainees fought not to laugh as they waved it off with cobbled-together apologies about expanding waistlines and newborn allergies to blueberries, while Jaya bit down hard on her lower lip and pressed a hand to her heart. “Oh, Memory. That’s so sweet.”

“Hah!” Alexei wasn’t being sweet; he was just trying to win their silent battle.

Giving up on romantic Jaya—who was convinced the damn wolf’s feelings would be hurt if anyone but Memory ate the cake—Memory went to the most clear-eyed and practical people in the compound. But the Arrows solemnly stated that they didn’t wish to start a war with SnowDancer.

“Very funny,” Memory muttered to a stone-faced Yuri before heading toward her next target.

Riaz, his hair tumbled from his run, took one look at the cake she thrust out under his nose and whistled. “What’d Lexie do to make you this mad?”

“Do you want it or not?” Memory tapped her foot.

“While the woman I love and adore would find it highly amusing if I ate that, Lexie would tie my intestines into knots.”

“Ugh!” Stomping back to her cabin, Memory slammed the door shut behind her. Then she put the lovely little cake box in the center of the table and, hands fisted on her hips, stared at it. She was going to have to eat it. Wasting food was beyond her. And such a lovely confection of a cake?

No way she could throw it away. But she wasn’t going to take this lying down.

Hauling her door open, she saw Riaz finishing up a conversation with Yuri. “Riaz!”

The wolf glanced over, one eyebrow raised.

“Tell Alexei he’s a big, wolfy chicken!”





Chapter 29


As the first generation born and raised in Silence comes of age, a problematic abnormality has come to light, one that appears to affect only those with abilities above 8 on the Gradient.

—Report prepared for the Psy Council (circa 1997)


THE ONE WHO had awakened stared at the papers on his desk.

Things hadn’t developed as he’d planned. Dr. Mehra had found no defects in his brain, but this new power was a huge, rapacious beast that wanted to devour him whole. He’d nearly suffered an out-of-control emotional reaction to a problem the previous day, and this morning, he’d woken obsessing over the empaths.

The pen in his hand snapped, spilling blue ink across his skin.

He watched the runnels of blue as they spread out in a spiderweb, and he thought of the web in which he was caught: the Honeycomb. If he was having trouble with his Silence, it couldn’t be the power at fault—he’d always had that inside him. Which left only one other possible explanation: the Honeycomb must be altering him on a far deeper level than he’d realized. He had to contain the damage.

If he didn’t, he would become a slave to his power rather than a master of it.

Two hours later, as he thought over a critical business move, he didn’t realize he was writing Honeycomb-Designation E, Honeycomb-Designation E over and over on his datapad.





Chapter 30


Hey, Lexie, I hear you have your own handpicked flowers situation going on. Unlike some wolves who laugh at their friends’ misfortunes, I am piously sad for your disappointment.

Shut up, Matt. No one likes a gloater. And scuttlebutt is Nell sent back your handwritten letter after stamping it with Not interested in red. Don’t be too brokenhearted though—she got the stamp made special for you.

Karma will come for you, you asshole. And if you don’t steal that fucking stamp off her desk and throw it in the deepest hole you can find, I’m gonna come over there and beat your skinny ass.

You could try, you lumbering bear masquerading as a wolf. I already have the stamp—what do you take me for? I put it in the pack post for you so you can hold it hostage.

—Messages between Matthias Agrey García and Alexei Vasiliev Harte


ALEXEI GRITTED HIS teeth and kicked the wall.

That bastard Renault had gone under so deep that he’d become invisible on every technological level. Aden had confirmed that even the PsyNet was devoid of useful data. “The man is a ghost.”

Not that Alexei was about to stop hunting. Just as he wasn’t about to stop his daily run to and security review of the empathic compound—even though he’d been accused of being a “big, wolfy chicken” by an E with a mouth he wanted to devour. After he bit her for the insult that had spread through the pack like wildfire.

If he found one more rubber chicken in his gear, he was going to wring the pranksters’ necks. The entire pack found it hee-fucking-larious that a tiny E had no fear of one of the most dangerous wolves in SnowDancer. D’Arn the future dead man had opened a betting book on the “Memory versus Alexei Live Action Drama.”