Wild Invitation

grapevine, the other woman had likely heard that Walker Lauren was inside Lara’s bedroom about two minutes after the event. Lara knew her best friend would ambush her later for a debriefing, but until then, Ava was doing her best to ensure they had some more private time.
    “Marlee just told me Ben’s snoring in wolf form, she made him so tired.”
    Laughter bubbled up in her throat, an image of an utterly exhausted wolf pup curled up nose to tail forming in her mind. “Poor Ben.”
    Ava’s son adored Marlee, the unexpected friendship between the two innocent and joyful. Ben was five and a half, Marlee four years older, but in spite of the age gap, they made each other laugh until they ended up rolling around on the floor, holding onto their stomachs. Lara wasn’t the only one in the pack who wondered if the friendship was an indicator of a far different relationship in the future, but they were babies yet.
    Before she could give voice to her thoughts, Walker’s eyes caught hers, held them. “I’m not likely to be an easy mate.”
    The stark statement was unexpected, but she knew her answer, “I think you’re wonderful. My perfect mate.”
    “Remember that,” he said, continuing to hold her gaze, the intensity of him a near physical touch. “When you ask yourself what you’re doing with me.”
    A sudden fear gripped her, an amorphous, cold thing born of his certainty that their mating would be no simple dance. Shoving it away before it could take her hostage, her wolf’s teeth bared in a snarl, she held on to the glory of a bond that came from a place beyond fear or doubt, a place untainted by the shadows of the past.
    All she said, however, was, “All right,” because she knew Walker. He’d been marked deep within by the life he’d lived, the choices he’d had to make. It would take him time to trust in happiness, in a forever where he no longer walked alone. “But make me a promise?”
    Watchful attention, his hand stilling its caressing strokes.
    “That you’ll talk to me if there’s a problem. Don’t close up on me.” It was what she feared most. She knew that while in the PsyNet, Walker had managed to maintain the fiction of total Silence, of unrelenting emotionlessness, icy and without heart, even as he fought to save his family. His fidelity to them had been unwavering, his dedication absolute. And throughout it all, no one had suspected that Walker Lauren was anything but loyal to the ruling order.
    That kind of a will could turn into a stone wall.
    Walker’s answer was no simple agreement. “I’ll try, Lara.” His hand pressed her closer. “But the quiet, if not the Silence, is a part of me.”
    “I like your quiet.” He was so centered, so solid that he’d become her anchor. “The only thing that’ll hurt me is if you use that quiet as a weapon.”
    “That won’t happen.” A vow, simple and binding.
    She smiled and knew it held everything of what she felt for him, her soul stripped bare. Some would say she was at a huge disadvantage in this relationship, her emotions naked while his were shielded behind a thousand layers of control, but she knew differently. Never would she forget the day he handed her his heart.
    “It’s fixed. As long as you don’t mind more than a few scars.”
    Scarred and battered it might be, but Walker’s heart was a gift beyond price.
    “Marlee,” she said, throat thick with emotion, “must have come as quite a surprise.” Walker’s daughter was a talker,cheerful and with an infectious laugh. Her delight with the world was so open, so innocent that she appeared younger than her years, but Lara had seen Marlee’s schoolwork—the girl was blazingly intelligent. She simply loved life.
    “I don’t know where she gets it from.” The faint smile on his lips faded even as he spoke. “The Marlee you know, she wasn’t that girl in the Net.”
    Lara thought back to the day the Lauren family had walked into the den, more than three years ago. Unconscious at the time, Marlee had been in Sienna’s arms, Toby in Walker’s, the boy much shorter and lighter than he was these days. Both children had been hit hard by the backlash of separation from the PsyNet, the psychic network that provided the Psy race with the biofeedback necessary for life. It also kept them leashed, at the mercy of the Council and of a protocol that forbade joy, affection, and love. The only reason the Laurens had survived was that they’d reconnected their minds in a