Wild Invitation

integral to his existence.
    The wolf looked away…and suddenly, the air fractured under his palm, her body dissolving into a million particles of light. He froze, his heart a drum. Her trust in him cut him off at the knees, told him all over again what he was to her.
I will never, ever let you down
. It was a renewal of the vow he’d made the instant he claimed her.
    A heartbeat…an eon later, he was touching night-cooled skin, a woman with eyes of fox brown kneeling in front of him, her hands cupping his face. “It’s not you, not us. You’re my everything.”
    He felt something in him break at the fierce honesty of her, didn’t quite understand what it was, his emotions stuck in his throat. “Come here,” he said, his voice a rasp.
    Once she was in his lap, he petted her without further demands until she curled into him, her hand on his heart. He knew she had a high tolerance for cold, but he took off the shirt he wore and made her shrug into it.
    She did so without argument, then put her head back against his shoulder, her legs silky under his touch. “No one”—a long, appreciative sigh—“will ever convince me that there is a more beautiful place on this earth.”
    Walker couldn’t deny her words, the Sierra night a thing of near-painful beauty, but his attention was on his mate, on what might have caused her to snap at him in such an uncharacteristic way. There was only one possible answer.

Chapter 5
    “ALICE?” THE HUMAN scientist had been put into cryonic suspension by unnamed parties over a hundred years ago, and now lay in a coma in SnowDancer’s infirmary. Inside her mind were secrets that might further help Sienna understand her abilities, but whether that mind would ever wake, ever function as it should, was an unanswered question.
    Lara fisted her hand on his chest, shuddered. “I can’t reach her, no matter what I try.” Not only frustration, but pain. “She doesn’t deserve to die without ever living. I found out today that she was
my
age when they took her—she never had a chance to complete her work, fall in love, have children. The bastards stole that from her.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I want to give her life back to her, but I can’t!”
    He gathered her closer to his warmth. “You know what was done to Alice was a high-risk, experimental process—the fact you’ve managed to keep her alive is an indication of your skill.”
    “Logic won’t help, not when my wolf just wants to heal her.”
    Helpless, he realized, that’s how she felt. And for a woman as strong and as dedicated to healing as Lara, that would be a terrible blow. Alice was likely never far from her thoughts, and source of intense stress though it was for her, that was nothing he could or would change about Lara—because her ability to care was at the very core of who she was as a person.
    “Tell me,” he said, and then he simply held her and listened.
    Much later, after they’d made their way back to the den and to bed, she nuzzled a kiss into his throat. “Thank you forlistening.” Another soft kiss, her fingers petting his chest, her legs intertwined with his. “I’m here anytime you need the same.”
    He’d never shared his day-to-day worries with anyone—he was the head of the family, used to being looked to for advice, and it wasn’t a role he resented. No, it fit him. But that wasn’t the role he occupied in Lara’s life, wasn’t the role he
wanted
to occupy.
    “I’m meeting with Sienna tomorrow,” he said, and it felt as if he’d taken an irrevocable step on this new road he walked with a woman who had never accepted that he was forever broken. She’d taken him scars and all, and in so doing, taught him he could be far more than he’d ever believed. “I worry about her.”
    •   •   •
    HIS conversation with Lara was still vivid in his mind early afternoon the next day, when he took a seat across from Sienna in a small, isolated clearing. The two of them had discovered this spot—complete with the stumps they used as seats—six months after they first joined SnowDancer. Over the years, it had become an unofficial meeting place for family discussions.
    A polite mental knock broke into his thoughts.
    Answering it, he heard Judd’s voice in his mind.
Running late. Be there in fifteen.
    “I’m surprised Hawke isn’t with you,” he said after answering his brother. “Especially considering the subject matter.” So soon after Sienna’s brush with