Psy & Changelings 11 - Tangle of Need

but did nothing to ease the ice in his soul.

Chapter 21
    MING EXAMINED THE satellite images captured when Sienna Lauren had allowed her cold fire to feed. Though taken in the night-darkness of the battle, there was no absence of light, the red and yellow of the deadly fire an inferno.
    Setting those images aside, he looked at the ones taken directly after the battle. The carnage was absolute, the forest a wasteland. No sign remained of the Pure Psy army.
    An incredible weapon.
    One Ming had been certain he wanted destroyed if she
had
survived, because she could not be controlled. Except … His eye went to the small steel box on his desk. It held within it a single chip, the last remaining prototype from Ashaya Aleine’s aborted project to instigate Silence on a biological level.
    That chip could also be utilized as a leash.
    The problem with using it in such a fashion had always been twofold. One, the chip was unstable. Two, Ming would need to have a controller chip implanted to interface with Sienna’s, and even had he considered the risk acceptable, this was the single surviving chip of which he had per-sonal knowledge. He’d had it excised from one of the victims the Scotts had implanted, after the male’s suicide. Neither Henry nor Shoshanna had ever realized he knew of their unauthorized experimentation. Ming’s scientists hadn’t been able to reverse engineer the chip, however, one had just informed him that there was a very slight chance it could be altered to allow control via a remote device.
    “Do it,”he said into the intercom.
    If the device worked, he would own an X. If it failed, Sienna Lauren would die in an implosion of brain cells.
    A perfect solution.

Chapter 22
    HAVING HAD A message that the senior lieutenant wanted to see her, Adria knocked on the door to Riley’s office three days after the mating ceremony, found herself being waved in though he held a phone to his ear. “Grab a seat,” he said. “This’ll only take a sec.”
    As she waited, she took in his office. It was—and wasn’t—what she would’ve expected. Ordered and clean, it was free of clutter. That fit the lieutenant’s rock-solid, calm nature. What didn’t fit was the framed poster behind his desk—of the kaleidoscope of color, flesh, feathers, sequins, and more that was Rio de Janeiro’s Carnaval.
    Or perhaps it did fit, she thought with an inward smile. After all, pragmatic, sensible Riley had crossed dangerous pack lines to claim a leopard sentinel as his mate. No one, she reminded herself, was one-dimensional … not even the angry man who’d had his hands so hot and rough on her skin. “Have you been?” she asked Riley when he hung up the phone, shoving the raw memories away before they could derail her all over again.
    Following her gaze to the poster, he nodded. “Survived it, too.” A smile that had a story behind it. “How was the outer-perimeter shift? You got back this morning?”
    “Yes, it was good. Peaceful.” She’d left the afternoon after the mating ceremony, taking over from one of the leopards. “I’m happy to do extra shifts up there.”
    Instead of accepting the offer, Riley leaned back in his chair, dark eyes intent. “You’re a highly experienced senior soldier, Adria—running patrol will frustrate you if you don’t have other outlets for your skill.Matthias tells me you were in charge of training the novices in his region.”
    It had been incredibly hard to walk away from “her” kids, but she’d been worried her emotional troubles would spill over into her teaching. So she’d trained up a replacement and made sure her novices were comfortable with the other soldier before she left. Things had changed in the interim, and she missed working with their young, but would not do so at the expense of another packmate, especially one she loved.
    “Indigo’s brilliant at what she does.” Though she tried to keep her tone even, her wolf bristled.
    “No argument,” Riley said at once. “I have something else in mind for you.” He waited, as if giving her the opportunity to interrupt. When she didn’t, he continued. “According to Matthias, you’re very good with the submissives. Which doesn’t surprise me, given the true status of your rank.”
    Of course Riley would know. “A trainer working with submissives,” she said with a smile, “has to realize that while they’re never going to be soldiers, they have unique strengths of their own.” The most vulnerable