Psy & Changelings 11 - Tangle of Need

territorial.” She tugged on her braid. “I almost lost this when I ventured too close.”
    Having fallen foul of a nesting eagle herself once, Adria knew Sienna had had a lucky escape. “Before I forget—Evie asked me to remind you that you two have a dinner date.” Again, it was a surprise, that her gentle niece was best friends with this tough young woman who’d been forged in deadly fire.
    “I’ve been looking forward to it all day.” A guarded but not unfriendly smile. “Evie said you’re an expert in martial arts.”
    “A particular discipline,” Adria corrected. “It’s one of the more aggressive forms.” She’d had to utilize it in the battle in a bid to protect fallen SnowDancers from the enemy. Her own ears had been bleeding heavily after the sonic blast, her balance shot, but she’d still been able to function on some level, and so she’d fought.
    Right beside Riaz.
    His arm all but flayed to the bone by a laser burn, his eardrums shattered, he’d nonetheless refused to go down. And when she’d been too slow and taken a fracturing kick to the shoulder, he’d acted as a living shield until she could punch in a localized painkiller and rise to fight again. The man might be a bastard personally, Adria thought, her jaw tight, but he was blood-loyal with unflinching courage under fire. “I wasthinking of talking to Indigo about offering a class to her novices,” she said, strangling her body’s unwanted response to thoughts of the dark-haired lone wolf. “Are you interested?”
    An immediate nod. “The reason I was asking is because Evie told me it can be modified to suit a physically smaller individual.”
    Smart girl—aware not only of her strengths but also her weaknesses. Then again, no alpha wolf, much less Hawke, would’ve been attracted to anyone who didn’t have a brain. “Yes, absolutely. This might be one of the times we split classes according to height and weight.” She glanced at her watch. “You’d better head back or I’ll hear all about it from Evie tomorrow.”
    Sienna laughed, more comfortable with Adria than she usually was with people she didn’t know well. And it wasn’t because the senior soldier shared a strong family resemblance with the Riviere women, all of whom Sienna trusted. The truth was, Adria reminded Sienna most of Riley.
    They both had the same quiet, unflashy confidence intertwined with an earthy warmth, the same sense of being a rock in the storm. Sienna didn’t know the pack as well as Hawke did, but she had the gut-deep feeling Adria would soon become one of the unspoken anchors in the den, a woman people went to for levelheaded advice given without judgment or pity.
    As she said, “Have a nice night,” and headed off, she saw Adria’s smile fade, to be replaced by a much more stark expression, her eyes going the amber of her wolf. And it struck her that perhaps, the protective armor of someone like Adria was the hardest of all to penetrate—because she gave the appearance of being an open book … until no one was even aware of the tangled emotions that might lie beneath.

Chapter 11
    VASQUEZ’S GREATEST SKILL was in going unnoticed. It was part of why Councilor Henry Scott had handpicked him to lead the Pure Psy army before the confrontation with the changelings. The fact Vasquez had survived that annihilation spoke both to his intelligence and his ability to come out on top in any given situation.
    And the fact he continued to support Pure Psy even as civil war loomed in the PsyNet spoke to his belief that Silence was their race’s only hope for survival. His dedication to the cause had nothing to do with something as useless and debilitating as emotion, for his conditioning was flawless, and everything to do with history: Who had the Psy been before Silence?
    A broken race on the verge of extinction, murderous and insane.
    Now, they ruled the world … or had done until the changelings gained a clawhold on power. Even the humans were stirring. All as a result of a weak Council, its members ineffectual in holding back the tide of the lesser races. That Council was no longer an issue, and Vasquez had a new set of orders.
    Repeating them back to ensure he’d understood correctly, he nodded to the person who had given him those orders. “I believe we have three operatives capable of undertaking the task, but I want to watch each carefully, do another deep background check before I consider which one to approach. We must be