Psy & Changelings 11 - Tangle of Need

with his muscled six-feet-three frame, had made him a successful model while in college. Even now, luxury goods companies chased him to front campaigns, but Felix’s true love was the earth and its flora, his thickly lashed brown eyes bright with satisfaction as he looked out at what they’d already achieved. “Hawke’s going to conscript me helpers on a constant rotation. Six weeks max and we’ll be done.”
    Their alpha walked over at that moment, clapping Felix on the shoulder. “Six weeks? Bloody hell, Felix, you’re a drill sergeant in disguise.”
    Felix grinned, glancing up to meet Hawke’s eyes for a fleeting second before his gaze skated away, his submissive nature uncomfortable with the eye contact. However, his position in the hierarchy made no difference on this playing field—here, they all took orders from him, because here, Felix was the one who knew what he was doing.
    Now, the other man shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “I’m pumped to see it coming together after all the planning. It’ll take a while for the area to regenerate, but a few years from now, no one will be able to tell this patch from any other in the territory.”
    Hawke looked up at the sky streaked with the final fading embers of sunset, lines of tension bracketing his mouth. “I hate that we’ve got this massive gap where the satellites can spy on us.”
    “It’son the edge of the territory,” Riaz pointed out. “Unless you plan to put on a ballet performance while covered in nothing but chicken feathers, they aren’t going to see anything interesting.”
    “Damn,” Hawke said with a straight face. “And here I’d already plucked the chickens.”
    Laughing, the three of them headed for the truck. The alpha jumped into the flatbed at the back, alongside Riaz. As they were the final three to leave, it was a peaceful if yet barren view that drew away from them when Felix started the engine and began the journey home.
    Back propped against the cab of the truck, Riaz let the wind rifle through his hair, grunting when the ride turned bumpy. “Doesn’t this thing have hover facility?”
    “I’d answer but I think I just lost a tooth.”
    The hydraulics sounded on the heels of Hawke’s words, creaking and groaning before they successfully lifted the truck off the ground.
    “It’s well past time we replaced this,” the alpha said, patting the side of the truck. “But Eli was the one who originally bought it for the pack, and he’s attached to the rust bucket. I think he calls it Sheila.”
    “Sheila?” Riaz grinned.
This
was why he’d come home, heart-bruised and licking his wounds, wary of the solitude that had always been so integral to his nature. No one could fix the hurt, but his pack … they gave him the gift of laughter, wrapped him in warmth, and kept him busy. Until he could almost forget the jagged hole that was his heart, its edges bleeding and raw.
    A wild tangle of a kiss. A lithe female body twisting against his own, her legs locking around his waist. His fingers slick with her need. His cock pulsing with the urge to thrust deep.
    Hissing out a silent breath, he strangled the roar of sensory memory. He’d damn well forgotten his mate then, hadn’t he? Not only forgotten, but betrayed in the basest of fashions. The worst of it was that the memory of his hotly erotic encounter with Adria aroused him every single time, his gut clenching not in repudiation, but in claw-raking desire.
    “My father,” Hawke said as they passed under the shadow of a towering pine, its thick trunk scarred with the marks from a hundred claws, “was a lone wolf.”
    Folding his arms on his knees, Riaz continued to keep his eyes on the forest path retreating behind them, the failing light turning the trees into distant smudges. “I know.” A year older than Hawke, he’d been a gangly boy about to head into his teens when Hawke’s father was killed, the pack drenched in blood.
    Even so young, Hawke had already begun showing his inclination to be at the center of pack life, while Riaz had preferred to prowl alone through the mountains. Yet in spite of their differences, they’d gotten along. Some part of him had seen in the boy Hawke had been, the man he would one day become. And when the pack almost broke under a hail of pain and violence, he’d made the decision to follow that boy rather than striking out on his own as so many lone wolves did.
    “That’s why,” Hawke continued, “I