Shield of Winter (Nalini Singh) (23 page)

“They’re protecting their vulnerable.”

“Yes.” The fact this compound existed at all was a huge trust on the part of DarkRiver and SnowDancer, the biggest step in the relationship between the Psy and the changeling races for over a century. “The other Tk-V,” she said when the wolf song died down, leaving only a lingering sensory echo of its primal beauty. “He was an Arrow, too?”

Vasic nodded.

She waited for him to say something, but he’d answered her question, and as she’d already learned, he wasn’t a man who talked more than he had to. The snow crunched under her boots as they walked on, the sky a deep midnight dotted with stars. She didn’t interrupt his silence this time, her thoughts of a boy who’d grown up in a cage, taught to become a tool his captors could use . . . of the man who’d survived that with the will to protect a flame inside his heart.

Chapter 22

Kaleb Krychek may have mandated the fall of Silence, but he gives us no answers for who we are without the Protocol. He leaves us to drown.
Anonymous PsyNet posting
COMFORTABLY ENSCONCED IN
the sun-drenched breakfast nook, Sahara completed the lesson she’d downloaded and considered the question asked by the lecturer. “What is the meaning of good governance?”

Kaleb looked up from the counter where he’d just finished preparing two nutrient drinks. Drinking from the glass he passed her, she blew him a kiss. “I love you.”

“You only say that because of my cherry flavoring.”

She almost splurted the drink out of her nose. “And to think people say you have no sense of humor.”

Having finished his drink, Kaleb did up a cuff link. Sahara’s stomach heated as it always did when she watched him dress or undress.

“Why are you studying politics when you’re living it?”

She walked over to finish buttoning his shirt and do up his tie, the strip of deep blue, almost black silk lying around his neck in readiness for her touch. “Because,” she said, delighting in this small ritual that had quietly become a part of their lives, “people who think they know everything end up becoming despots.”

Kaleb’s hands on her hips, his thumbs brushing over her skin after he nudged up her knit top as he had a way of doing. “Good governance,” he said, “is acting for your people rather than for your own gain.”

Her fingers stilled on his tie. “Yes,” she whispered to the man she adored, a man who’d been brutally scarred by “leaders” acting for their own selfish interest.

“That is your definition.” His fingers squeezed her hips. “Mine is to do nothing that would make you ashamed to be mine.”

Sometimes, he broke her heart. “Never will I be ashamed to be yours.”

Kaleb bent his head toward her, his eyes a moonless night. “Don’t say things like that, Sahara. What will I become if I don’t fear losing you through my actions?”

“You’ll always be mine.” She cupped his face, his jaw smooth. “And I won’t let you cross those lines.”

He said he had no conscience, but he loved her with a wild devotion that made her feel safe, feel whole, feel
cherished
. In that love she saw hope for who they’d become together.

His kiss was raw, sexual, his hands lifting to place her on the counter. Standing between her spread thighs, his shoulders beautifully muscled under the fine fabric of his black shirt, he kissed her as if she was his air. She thrust one hand in the damp strands of his hair, cupped his nape with the other, and kissed him back with the same hunger. They’d both been deprived of touch for so long, and now they denied themselves nothing.

When he tugged up her top, she lifted her arms to allow him to pull it off. Wrapping those arms around his neck afterward, she luxuriated in the feel of his hands on her skin. “I thought you had a meeting,” she said, kissing his jaw, the line of his throat, the masculine scent of him overlaid by the clean bite of his aftershave.

“I’ve told Silver to postpone it.”

Leaning back, she simply looked at him, her dangerous lover who always put her first. “We’ll beat it,” she said, conscious the infection was a problem about which he never quite stopped thinking. “With the empaths and the Arrows and our race’s will to survive.”

Kissing the upper curve of her breast, Kaleb bracketed her rib cage with his hands. “The Arrows and the empaths—perhaps. But you have more faith in our race than I do. Right now most are burying their heads in the sand, hoping I’ll tell them who to be, what to become. They’re sheep.”

She tugged up his head with a hand fisted in his hair. “If they are, it’s because they’ve been trained to be that way for a century. A good leader will lead them to true independence. You’ll lead them to freedom.”

Kaleb might not be a white knight, but he was the knight the Psy race needed. Strong, fearless, and willing to make the hard decisions. And he was
hers
. Wrapping her thighs around him, she sank into the kiss, into him.

Chapter 23

There have always been unsubstantiated rumors of a hidden designation in the PsyNet. Sascha Duncan’s defection brought those rumors to the surface, only for them to be thoroughly quashed by the Council at the time. Now, however, new whispers are coming to the fore—and the Ruling Coalition has yet to make a statement to either confirm or deny their veracity.
PsyNet Beacon
ADEN MET WITH
Vasic close to dawn the next morning, the two of them standing near the trees looking out over the mist-licked peace of the compound.

“Nightmares,” the other man said, referencing the telepathic conversation they’d had the previous night.

“Ivy was unable to give me any specifics.” Vasic had asked toward the end of their walk, when she’d seemed more centered, no longer afraid. “She described it as a feeling of suffocating darkness.”

“Was she discouraged by the incident?”

“No.”

The single word answer was characteristic of Vasic, yet the depth of confidence in it intrigued Aden. Vasic had stopped getting to know people in tandem with his increasing remoteness when it came to the world. Even with new members of the squad, he made no effort beyond what was necessary for him to function as part of the team. And
still
, he was one of the first ports of call for any Arrow in trouble. Not because he was a Tk-V, but because he inspired trust on a visceral level.

Vasic simply did not let people down.

“The other empaths?” Aden asked, remembering how he’d felt that same trust as a boy. It had never altered.

“I haven’t had a chance to assess them, or to speak in depth with their Arrows, but it’s possible we may lose one or two.”

Empaths, Aden had learned from Vasic, weren’t all the same. Rationally, Aden had already known that, but the mystery of the E designation was such that he’d lumped them into a single mental category.

“The recent episodes of violence in the Net”—Vasic put his arms behind his back—“seem erratic and small scale.”

“The agitators tend to be individuals who are finding it difficult to adapt to the fall of Silence, but in one case at least, it was a surviving Pure Psy sublieutenant.” Aden looked down at the small white dog that had appeared out of the mist to sit at his feet, its shining black eyes trained on him.

The canine belonged to Ivy Jane, he remembered. “We were able to eliminate the sublieutenant and his attendant cell,” he told Vasic. “The cell was planning a larger-scale event that had no chance of success, though they were too wrapped up in their fanatical ideology to see that.” Pure Psy didn’t have the necessary independence of thought to function efficiently without their leader. And that leader was dead.

“Krychek?”

“He’s left the Pure Psy cleanup to us and is concentrating on ensuring the Net remains stable.” The latter couldn’t be done by brute force alone, but Krychek was far more than that, the former Councilor’s intelligence a blade, his connections labyrinthine.

“We don’t need you on the team handling the cleanup,” he said, to head off any offer Vasic might’ve made. “Your skills are better served here.”

Vasic’s gray eyes were penetrating when they met Aden’s. “I can’t leave the Es, not given the security leak we had with Lianne and the proximity of the infection.” A glance at his gauntlet to check incoming data before he turned back to Aden. “That doesn’t mean I’m not cognizant of your attempts to shield me from overt violence.”

“I’ve never done anything behind your back.” Aden had only ever had one true friend, someone he knew would fight for him and with him regardless of whether he held any power or not. The others in the squad he trusted, but Vasic occupied an entirely different place in his life, until it was as if their blood was the same. Aden would do whatever was necessary to make sure the other man made it, though he knew it might well be an impossible task.

The reason he and Vasic had become friends as children, the reason the others in the squad looked to him instinctively, was the same reason Vasic had never been meant to be an Arrow. He felt too deeply, was too much the protector. As an angry, scared eight-year-old boy when he and Aden first met, he should’ve been focused only on himself—yet he’d sensed Aden’s continual and crushing fear for his Arrow parents.

Instead of resenting Aden for having parents who’d cared enough about him to fight to keep him with them through his enrollment in the squad’s training program, Vasic had come up with distractions to help Aden cope. Later, Vasic had risked severe punishment to help Aden break into the control room so Aden could read the files on his parents’ missions.

That part of Vasic had been buried beneath the weight of the life he’d been forced to live, but it existed. It had always existed. And it would destroy him if Aden couldn’t find a way to redirect his self-hatred and guilt.

“It appears you’ve captured Rabbit’s interest,” Vasic said into the comfortable silence between them, and it was an unexpected comment.

Aden glanced down at the canine that was still sitting on its rump, eyes locked on him. “Perhaps he’s weighing the pros or cons of biting me.”

Vasic didn’t answer, his head angled toward one of the cabins to their left.

Ivy Jane appeared on the porch a second later, a large Arrow jacket engulfing her small body and two steaming mugs in her hands. “Here,” she said when she reached Aden and Vasic, the shadows under her eyes smudges of purple. “Hot nutrient drinks.”

Aden recognized the jacket from a small tear on the upper left sleeve. It had happened during a brutal mission in Alaska, Vasic left alone in a ghost town full of corpses. Aden hadn’t been able to prevent that, and Vasic had asked him not to try. To have done so would’ve put their entire plan to oust Ming LeBon in jeopardy. So Vasic had spent hours teleporting out the dead, the inhabitants of the remote science station having fallen victim to the infection in what was the first known outbreak.

The squad hadn’t been aware of that fact at the time, however; Ming LeBon had withheld the information as he’d withheld so much from the men and women who’d trusted him because he’d once been an active member of the squad. It had taken them too long to realize that while the latter might’ve been true, Ming had never been one of them. He’d always been an “I,” his personal political aspirations trumping any other loyalty.

The Alaska incident, Aden realized, was also the last time he’d seen Vasic wearing that jacket. The other man had used it in the interim, of course, but Aden hadn’t been with him during those operations.

To see it now in such a different context was . . . interesting.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the drink Ivy had prepared. Arrows never ate or drank anything from an unfamiliar source, but taking his cue from Vasic, Aden took a sip of the drink.
Why is it hot?

Ivy doesn’t want us to feel the cold.

From which, Aden deduced that Vasic hadn’t told her about the weatherproof properties of the combat uniforms. He immediately understood why. It was strange to be cared for in this fashion, and the strangeness was so unlike everything else in the life of an Arrow that he could find no motivation to clarify the situation for Ivy, either.

He drank a little more, as the empath, her hair braided but curling tendrils falling around her face, looked pointedly at Vasic.

An instant later, the other Arrow said, “Ivy, meet Aden.”

“Hi.” The empath’s smile was open. “It’s nice to meet you when I’m not about to fall unconscious. Thank you for saving my life.”

Before Aden could respond, Vasic spoke again. “You should still be asleep.”

Ivy’s shoulders rose then fell. “I tried but couldn’t. I’ll catch a nap later.” Bending, she petted the little dog with unhidden affection. “My stubborn Rabbit will need a rest, too. He was wide awake and waiting for me when I got back from our walk last night.”

Our walk.

Zeroing in on the words, Aden found himself thinking about the possible unintended side effects of being around the empaths for an Arrow. It was something he’d begun to research when Vasic reported Abbot’s new stability, but the post-Silence Council had done what appeared to be an immaculate job of scrubbing the Net clean of data about the Es. Even non-Net databases had been cleared, printed books taken off shelves and incinerated. Rare copies were rumored to remain but were proving near impossible to track down. As soon as a merchant got even a whiff of Psy interest in the subject, the listing disappeared.