Psy & Changelings 10 - Kiss of Snow

she decided it was unfair he had that lickable upper body on display. “Put your sweatshirt back on.”
    His eyes gleamed wolf-blue in the night. “Come closer and make me.”
    Her lips twitched, though she’d thought the cold fire had seared the laughter right out of her heart. “Maybe I should take off my own top.”
    A smile full of teeth. “Maybe you should.”
    Laughing, she set her feet for another attempt at taking him down. “Talk me through the pack’s defensive plans.” If she managed to hold off synergy, then she might yet be able to assist SnowDancer.
    Moving with lethal grace around her, Hawke spoke, listened when she asked questions or made suggestions. There was a perfection to the moment that made Sienna think: Yes, this is it. This is who we’re meant to be together.
    If she could have, she would’ve frozen time at that instant, but second by second, minute by minute, the stars would dim, the sky would lighten—until dawn streaked a brilliant explosion of color across the Sierra. As brilliant as the cold fire inside of her, voracious and violent.
    “Sienna, your eyes.”
    “I know.” Stepping a small distance away, she let the flames pour out of her and into the earth in a storm of wildfire that was an impenetrable wall between her and her wolf.

Chapter 50
     
    HAWKE HUNG UP the sat phone feeling as if he’d been punched in the chest by a granite fist. Sienna glanced back at him from where she sat on the edge of the lake, the early morning sunshine dancing over hair as black as the heart of a ruby. “What is it?”
    “A dead woman come back to life.” When he told her what— who —Judd had brought home, hope flared a shiny new coin in her eyes for a single bright second.
    It turned dull almost as fast. “There’s no knowing if she’ll ever wake,” Sienna said, “much less if she’ll come back whole. I have to stay up here.”
    He’d thought he could leave her, could sacrifice his heart for his pack, but now that the moment had come, man and wolf both rebelled. “No,” he said, going to crouch by her side. “You’re heading down with me.”
    “Hawke, you promised you’d listen to me about my ability.” A firm reminder, but the fingers on his jaw were a caress. “I know what I am. I know the destruction I’m capable of—don’t make me kill those I love.”
    “You’re able to monitor your power levels, know when you’re about to go critical.” He’d watched her leach off the violence of her ability twice more during the night, the flames seeming to flicker out over the lake itself.
    “We can’t gamble on that.”
    “You can move closer to the den.” He wasn’t used to losing.
    However, Sienna’s iron will was one of the things that had first drawn him to her. “No.” Rising to her knees, she put her hands on his shoulders, no stars in her eyes. “But I won’t go any farther from this point.”
    He stared at her, the wolf attempting to dominate her into acquiescence. Even when he said, “Promise?” there was nothing of acceptance in it.
    “Cross my heart.”
    Hauling her against him, he branded her with his mouth, his lips, his breath before leaving with a single, furious command. “Stay alive.”
     
     
    WALKER knocked on Lara’s office door that afternoon, wasn’t surprised to find her still dressed in the clothes she’d worn yesterday, black shadows under her eyes. This time, he didn’t berate her for not taking better care of herself. Instead, he drew her into his arms, held her for a long moment before allowing her to pull back. “Eldridge?”
    Lara’s gaze was bleak. “The scans detect brain activity, but that means nothing if we can’t figure out a way to wake her. Ashaya and Amara came up with a chemical cocktail, which we shot into her a few hours ago, but so far there’s been no change.”
    Walker knew both Judd and Sascha had been attempting to get through the strange shield around Alice’s mind in an effort to nudge her to consciousness on the psychic level. Walker, too, had tried. To no avail. And now—“I have to leave.”
    Lara touched him in that wolf way, stroking back his hair, sliding her hand over his pectorals as if to smooth his shirt. “Why?”
    He bent toward her, making it easier for her to “pet” him as the wolves called it. “Hawke wants me with the children when they evacuate.” The SnowDancer alpha’s face had been drawn in harsh lines when he returned to the den this morning, but he’d given the