Wild Invitation

Sienna, albeit under tightly controlled circumstances, but the girl who attended their first meeting was a twisted shadow of the vibrant, mischievous infant he remembered.
    Her gaze had been cold, flat, her voice toneless…without hope.
    If it hadn’t been for Judd’s ability to teleport in for far more clandestine visits, paired with Walker’s skill at creating telepathic vaults that allowed Sienna’s mind privacy from Ming’s constant surveillance—a skill Judd had learned, then passed on to Sienna—they might never have reached beyond the dull shell she showed the world.
    “The cold fire,” he said now, wrenching his mind back from the past and the icy rage it continued to incite in him, “is a partof you but no longer the most important facet of your existence.”
    “No,” she whispered, a dawning wonder in her expression, “it isn’t, is it?” Her mouth curved, a burst of delighted laughter escaping her throat…and his mind filled once more with images of the infant she’d been, a sparkle to her eye that had captured him from the instant he first met her, mere days after her birth.
    “If anything happens to me”—Kristine’s fingers so gentle as she tucked the blanket around the tiny body in Walker’s arms, a silent indication of her imperfect Silence—“you will watch over her?”
    “To my last breath.”
    When Sienna, her smile lingering in her gaze, stood and took a step toward him, he rose, opened his arms, and held her close as he once had the babe his sister had borne.
You’ll fly, Sienna,
he said, his heart aching that Kristine wasn’t here to see the incredible woman her daughter was becoming.
Higher and stronger than those who would’ve caged you could ever imagine.
    •   •   •
    LARA’s wolf was padding happily around her skin after a quiet pulse along the mating bond that was Walker’s touch, when her eye fell on the glass spiral of blue and green he’d repaired for her after it shattered.
    “It’s fixed. As long as you don’t mind more than a few scars.”
    Her chest grew tight as it always did at the memory. That was the thing with Walker—he didn’t say a lot, didn’t make big gestures, but when he did speak…“I am so in love with you,” she whispered, thinking of the way he’d held her, listened to her, spoken to her in the intimate dark of their bed.
    Her quiet, strong, intensely private mate was coming to her, one step at a time.
    If only patience would reap the same rewards with Alice. The human scientist lay unresponsive under Lara’s hands as she checked the woman’s vitals, her flesh pallid, her bones far too close to her skin. Lara continued to seek answers for the other woman, but having been able to unload her frustration had helped put her back on an even keel, and she was able tonudge Alice from her consciousness once she left the patient room.
    She and her nurse, Lucy, had decided to use the respite provided by the current healthy state of the pack to tackle a number of practical tasks, with Lucy volunteering to set the storeroom to rights. The chaos of battle had left little time for niceties like neatness and logging supplies, and the pre-battle inventory was woefully out of date.
    Lara, by contrast, was in the process of updating patient records. The fact was, she didn’t
have
to record anything. She had the encyclopedic memory of most healers, could recite every injury or illness that had ever befallen one of her patients. But, she had to think of the future, of the person who would take her place were she incapacitated or otherwise out of the picture.
    Two hours into it, eyes dry and fighting a jaw-cracking yawn, she looked up to find Riordan hovering in the doorway of her office. The young male was cradling his arm in a very familiar way. Boredom vanished under concern. “Broken?” she asked, already around the desk.
    Deep red under his skin. “Not really.”
    “Not really?” Having reached him, she could see significant swelling and bruising. “So your arm is just kind of broken?”
    He ducked his head.
    Surprised—Riordan had the usual youthful cockiness—she shepherded him into the infirmary proper and had him take a seat on a treatment bed. “You want to tell me about it?” she asked, ignoring the technical equipment to run her hands over his injury. As a novice soldier, Riordan needed to be fully functional as soon as possible.
    “No.”
    Her abilities told her it was a bad break. Frowning at the jagged edges