Wild Invitation

needed nonetheless, as was Walker. The week passed in a rush of helping the pups resettle into the den, soothing their worries, and—for Lara—talking privately with packmates who’d been so badly injured that in any other situation, they’d be dead.
    Tai had been dodging her in true wolf style, but near the end of the week she finally cornered him by the waterfall closest the den. Crushed skull, catastrophic damage to internal organs, as well as a laser burn on half of his body, Tai had been so critical, she’d shut herself in her office and burst into tears for a single stolen minute during the aftermath of the battle, her heart breaking at the sense that he was slipping through her fingers.
    Taking a seat beside him on the stony outcropping that overlooked the crashing thunder of water, their feet hanging over the edge, she drew in a deep breath of the crisp air. The sky was a stunning mountain blue, the fine spray from the waterfall cool against her skin, but her wolf was focused only on the young male beside her. “How are you, Tai?”
    “Fine.” Pure exasperation. “Seriously, Lara, do I look like I need counseling?”
    No, he didn’t. Vivid blue-green eyes uptilted at the edges and skin of golden brown, his shoulders broad, he looked strong and young and gloriously alive. But he was a dominant, and admitting weakness was a thing he’d fight with gritted teeth and clenched fists. So she kept her tone undemanding as she said, “Most changelings don’t have to confront their mortality until they’re good and ready.” Male and female alike, they thought they were invulnerable at this age, and that was how it should be. “You were forced into it.”
    Tai stared at the waterfall, eyes unblinking. And she thought he’d simply refuse to speak. If he did, there was little she coulddo about it—yes, she outranked him, but an order would gain her nothing, not with a wolf as strong and as determined as Tai. He had to trust her.
    “You know what bugged me the most when I took that blow to the head?” he said almost ten minutes later. “When I realized I probably wouldn’t come out of it alive?”
    Breathing out a silent sigh of relief, Lara shook her head. “What?”
    “That I’d never have a stupid fight with Evie ever again.” He gave her a lopsided smile, that handsome face suddenly beautiful. “Dumb, huh?”
    It eased her worry to hear no bitterness in his tone. “Do you enjoy the fighting or what comes after?”
    His grin grew deeper. “A gentleman never tells.” His smile faded into an intensity of purpose that brought a memory into sharp focus; something Hawke had said to her over two years ago—that Tai held the potential to one day be a SnowDancer lieutenant. Now, the young male looked back out over the foaming crash of the water. “There are so many things I want to do with my life, but Evie? She’s at the top of every list I’ve made since the first day I realized neither of us was a pup anymore.”
    Evie, too, Lara thought, looked at Tai with the same devotion. “You took your time making a move,” she said, thinking of the man who loved her in the same unwavering way, steady and sure…but with a raw depth of passion that grew ever stronger.
    “I had to grow balls big enough to stand up to Indigo,” Tai muttered. “First time I even looked at Evie, I got the ice stare and everything shriveled up.”
    Laughing at his reference to the lieutenant who was Evie’s older—and very protective—sister, she nudged his shoulder with her own. “Liar. I bet you were sneaking off with Evie before anyone knew you two were an item.”
    A very satisfied grin was her answer.
    “I really am okay, Lara,” he said when he spoke again. “I know most guys my age don’t think about death and stuff, but my generation didn’t have a choice. We were born either directly before or after the violence in the den.”
    That violence, incited by an ugly Psy “experiment,” had devastated the pack. So many of their own had died, leavingbehind pups who were suddenly motherless or fatherless, or in the worst cases, orphans. Tai hadn’t lost his parents, but he’d been surrounded by loss all the same—his uncle, his best friend’s father, his novice-soldier cousin, the list went on.
Of course
he understood death.
    “Has it…your life…”
    Wrapping an arm around her in a dominant’s instinctive effort to comfort, Tai tucked her against the wild heat of his bigger body. “You know the