Psy & Changelings 11 - Tangle of Need

Elias’s water bottle. “Looks like the kids have started the party early.”
    Instead of replying in kind, the senior soldier stared after where the children had disappeared, his expression pensive.
    “Don’t worry,” Riaz said, thinking Eli was worried the boy would hurt Sakura. “Drew checked the water bombs. They don’t hit with any kind of impact—it’s just about getting the other person wet.”
    “What? Oh.” Elias shook his head, shoving a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “No, it’s not that.” A pause as he drank. “Thing is … I haven’t seen that smile on her face since before the burns.”
    Hit by laser fire in an unprovoked Pure Psy attack, Elias had suffered injuries so severe, he’d been in shock by the time they got him to the infirmary. Little Sakura had been disconsolate—she was the apple of her daddy’s eye, her sadness all the more poignant for being so silent. She’d been this big-eyed, shocked waif it had broken the pack’s heart to see.
    Riaz knew both Eli and his mate, Yuki, continued to worry about the long-term impact of the trauma on their child. “It’ll take time,” he said,his mind on another child, another father, “but she’ll get over it. Kids are tougher than adults think.”
    Elias met his gaze. “You sound certain.”
    “My dad was badly hurt in the fighting when Garrick died.” His teacher father had known he had no chance against the dominants who had turned, but he’d stood firm in defense of the innocent. “It really shook me.” He didn’t like thinking about it, even now. “Because dads aren’t supposed to get hurt, you know? Best thing my parents did was to not baby or coddle me or my brother afterward—the normalcy helped us settle down.” And even as a boy, he’d known that he was lucky, so lucky.
    Riley had lost his parents.
    Hawke had lost his father … and not long afterward, his mother.
    So many other friends had been made orphans or been left with only one parent.
    “Just love her,” he said. “That’s all she needs.”
    “I’ll never forget what the den was like back then, after everything was over.” Chill shadows whispered into the warmth of Eli’s eyes. “How eerie, how quiet. So many of the strong were dead. I was a novice at the time, and terrified the pack was going to shatter around us.”
    But SnowDancer hadn’t broken. It had grown stronger. Until tonight they celebrated the mating of the boy who had given up his childhood to lead the pack out of the darkness. Nothing and no one, Riaz thought, his own wolf fierce in its loyalty, would ever sway the pack’s devotion to Hawke. “Come on,” he said to Eli, “the megalomaniacs called the techs are gesturing for us to hurry up.”
    It was two hours later that the other man said, “Done! Don’t know about you, but I could do with a beer.”
    Picking up the T-shirt he’d stripped off earlier, Riaz used it to wipe his face as he nodded. He draped the T-shirt around his neck as they left the Pack Circle, and wasn’t really paying attention when a group of female packmates walked past, carrying small boxes loaded up with decorations.
    Until a wolf whistle pierced the quiet.
    Glancing back, he found himself being observed by a sexy dark-eyed beauty with curly blonde hair to the middle of her back. She cocked thebox on her hip, her full breasts pushing against the cotton of her navy blue tee, her smile an invitation. Most hot-blooded males would’ve closed the distance between them to accept it, but Riaz shook his head with a gentle smile to soften the rejection, and continued on his way.
    Elias didn’t say anything until they’d passed out of the heavily forested area immediately around the Pack Circle, and to an otherwise empty section of track. “You already have a date?”
    “Not interested.” His wolf peeled back its lips in a snarl that exposed razor-sharp canines—because the words were a lie. There was one woman who interested him a whole damn lot.
    A short pause. “Do you … er … swing the other way?”
    Riaz halted, stared. “What the hell, Eli?”
    Elias shrugged, unabashed. “Word is, the women are starting to wonder why you keep turning them down when it’s obvious you need to share skin privileges. And don’t shoot me, but Lara’s apparently been asked a few pointed questions, too.”
    “Great.” Riaz gripped the ends of his T-shirt, twisted. “My cock is fixated on a woman who makes my blood boil”—a fixation that kept