Psy & Changelings 11 - Tangle of Need

eyebrows. “Hawke?”
    He was wolf, was alpha. Revealing vulnerability, even to his mate, didn’t come easy. “I almost lost you,” he said, the memory making him want to rage, as he relived how close he’d come to never again seeingSienna’s smile. “I need—” He couldn’t complete the sentence, his emotions too raw.
    Cardinal eyes devoid of stars stared back at him. “I understand,” she said, and he felt the depth of her perception along the mating bond. “We, both of us, need a little more time to convince ourselves we made it.” Stroking her hands over his chest, she wrapped her arms around him to rest her cheek against his heart.
    He hadn’t expected it, that she’d surrender to the violent depth of his need to hold her safe, if only for a fleeting whisper of time. And he knew he couldn’t allow her to do it, couldn’t steal her freedom to assuage his need. “Go,” he said, forcing the words out, “speak to Riley. Ask him to pair you with someone senior and experienced.”
    Pushing away from his chest so she could meet his eyes, Sienna touched her fingers to his face. “Beautiful man.”
    His claws pricked the insides of his skin, his wolf fighting the human’s decision.
    “I’ll stay.” Her palm against his cheek, her eyes luminescent with emotion. “It’s the logical choice.”
    When he cocked his head, she said, “If I go out there, you’ll be half insane with worry and of no use to the pack.” She pressed her fingers to his lips to stop him from speaking. “I’d be the same if it was you.” A crooked smile. “I’m making this choice not for you, but for both of us—I’ll have other chances to help the pack in that way. This time, I’ll help by being one of the ones who’ll remain behind to guard our territory.”
    Taking her hand, he kissed the slightly rough skin of her palm, that of a soldier, a fighter … and of a woman who understood him in ways no one else had ever done, or ever would again.

Chapter 59
    I AM NEVER
letting you go.
    Adria held Riaz’s passionate words to her heart during her first watch on anchor detail. But it was hard, so hard, when she knew he had a meeting with Lisette this afternoon. He’d asked Adria if she wanted to accompany him, and the feral wolf in her had swiped at the chance, but Adria wasn’t a jealous, angry woman, wouldn’t allow herself to become one.
    So she’d reined in the urge and said no, trusting him to honor her faith.
    But she was still a woman who loved. It hurt to imagine him speaking to Lisette, until her every pulse was a razor cutting her from the inside out. Part of her pain was for him, for the agony that had to be tearing him to pieces. To be so close to the one meant to be your mate, only to be denied. It was such a cruel idea, it made her chest ache. Or perhaps the ache was for her, a symptom of her knowledge that this truth would never change—she would never be who Lisette was to Riaz.
    At that moment, she could almost envy the Psy their Silence.
    The older man she guarded, his hair a dusty gray, his eyes near the same shade, looked up from the papers he was grading. He was a teacher at the university, he’d told her. Anchors didn’t need to work, and often couldn’t because of the mental discipline required of them on the Net, but Bjorn Thorsen was a mathematical genius. “It makes no rational sense,” he’d told her, “to have my knowledge die with me.”
    Now, he said, “A wolf in my study. The world has changed indeed.”
    Adria liked Thorsen. There was something about him—as if in spiteof his mathematical bent, he had the capacity to see the most nonnumerical of subtleties. “Yes,” she said. “This is the last thing I ever expected to be doing.”
    “I’m eighty-five years of age.” He brought up his computer screen, showed her an image of himself as a much younger—and stiffer—man. “At the start of my lifetime, changelings weren’t even a blip on the Council’s radar. I’ve watched your people’s power grow ever stronger, and I’ve watched my people make bad choice after bad choice. This latest state of affairs, it’s no surprise.”
    Startled, she turned to lean her shoulder against the wall. “You expected someone to begin murdering anchors?”
    “It’s only logical, Adria.” Putting down the pen in his hand, he met her eyes, his gaze holding a fierce power. “If you control the anchors, you control the Net.”
    “But they’re killing, not