Psy & Changelings 09 - Play of Passion

you insist on seeing me as a less dominant young male to the exclusion of all else.”
    Indigo was damned if she was going to have this fight in public. Grabbing the harness, she slammed it onto his chest. “Gear up.”
    He began to do so, moving at high speed, but his temper continued to flash. “If we weren’t sleeping together,” he muttered, “you would’ve listened to me from the word go, instead of trying to go in half-assed because you think you have something to prove.”
    Indigo’s hold on her own temper snapped, a snarl burning its way out of her throat even as her claws sliced out. That was when Hawke appeared out of the trees. “Enough.” It was a snapped order. “Drew, check your harness. Indigo, do you need to take a walk?”
    Only a lifetime of control allowed her to rein back the wolf, to say, “I’m fine. I’ll organize things on this end.” As she spoke, she realized Lara and Brace had also arrived. The fact that they’d witnessed Hawke slapping her down further increased her icy rage, but she kept it in ruthless check.
    Drew didn’t say a word as he double-checked everything and slipped a listening device in his ear while Sing-Liu clipped a mike to the collar of his tee. “I’m ready.”
    “So are we.” Indigo had set up the anchor using the tree as a base, but she and the others would manually control the backup; they couldn’t be too careful with two lives at stake. “Go.”
    Hooking himself up, Drew disappeared over the edge of the cliff, and Indigo’s heart slammed bruisingly hard against her ribs for a long, still instant. Then the rope went taut and she knew he’d started to rappel down.
     
     
    Having made the descent faster than would’ve been safe for most, Andrew crouched down beside his fallen packmate, doing a visual check for injuries after he’d ensured her airway was clear and felt for a pulse. “Broken leg, broken ribs, it looks like,” he said into the mike, “severe bruising, a bad gash on the back of her head.” He could feel her blood, wet and sticky. “She’s unconscious, but breathing.”
    Lara asked him to assess the breaks more closely. “Do you think you can move her onto a stretcher for us to haul up?”
    Andrew shifted his body carefully on the narrow ledge so he could get a better angle at Silvia’s back. “I’m worried about her spine, Lara. The way she’s twisted . . . there could be damage if I move her.” In spite of the huge technological advances of the late twenty-first century, spinal injuries continued to be problematic. Most could be healed, but the recovery process was brutal.
    Lara’s voice faded a fraction, as if she was speaking to someone else. “I need to go down.”
    “I’ll come back up, guide you down,” Andrew said, because even a controlled rappel down this cliff face could prove dangerous for the inexperienced. “I see some footholds. I should be able to climb up unassisted.”
    “We’ve got you if you slip.” Indigo’s voice in his ear, calm and steady.
    “Thanks.” It took him considerably longer to clear the cliff face than it had to come down. His muscles were screaming by the time he reached the top, but it was a burn he could live with.
    Lara was ready to go when he arrived. As the healer took a deep breath and prepared to descend with him all but glued to her, Andrew fought the urge to search for Indigo’s gaze—that particular fight could come later—and stepped back over the edge of the cliff.
     
     
    It took an hour for Lara to heal Silvia enough for the girl to be safely winched up, another quarter of an hour for Lara to ascend, with Andrew climbing behind her. In the chaos of stripping Lara of her harness and coiling the ropes, he didn’t see Indigo leave, though he assumed she was helping carry the injured girl to the infirmary.
    Just as well, he thought, teeth gritted. Putting his rope on the ground, he was coiling Lara’s when Hawke returned. “Jesus Christ, Drew,” his alpha muttered, gathering up the other abandoned gear. “I thought you were good with women.”
    Andrew dumped the rope and turned on the other wolf. “I was right. She wasn’t using resources properly.”
    Hawke didn’t growl back, simply raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what I said.”
    Blowing out a breath, Andrew turned to stare out over the jagged mountainous vista. So fucking beautiful—and so incredibly lethal when the mood took it. The description, he thought, fit his lieutenant to a T. “Then