"She's calling you pretty," Sascha translated for the bemused teenager.
Jon sighed. "I don't want to be pretty. I want to be dangerous and kick-ass."
"Pe! Jon!"
Jon blinked, grinned at Naya. "Hey, you know my name. You can call me pretty."
Naya kissed him on the cheek again before stretching out her arms toward Sascha. "Mama."
"Come on, baby." Settling her little girl into her lap, Sascha went to ask if Jon could grab the baby bag turned toddler bag, only to discover the boy had already put it within reach.
"We get any news from the water changelings about the woman who wrote the message in a bottle?" he asked when she smiled at him in thanks.
"No, not yet, but they're working hard to find her."
Worry radiated off him. "I heard Faith's brother helped." The rough edge of frustration in the set of his shoulders, in the way he pulled off his cap and began to twist it in his hands. "I wish I could do something."
"You plucked out that bottle," Sascha reminded him. "We wouldn't even know Leila was alive without that." This tall, beautiful boy, he still carried a lot of hurt in his heart that made him act out on occasion, but when it came down to the bone, he was one of the good ones, with more compassion in him than the world had any right to expect.
His own scars were healing day by day, surrounded as he was by love and by pack. And by a little girl who adored him.
"Jon, look." Leaning against his leg, her blue dress now bearing streaks of dirt and her hair ribbons threatening to slide off, Noor showed him something on her palm. "It's a ladybug," she whispered.
Jon hunkered down. "Wow, it's blue."
"Jules showed me, but we have to put it back. He says we always have to put them back."
Tugging on a lock of her hair, Jon said, "Yeah, Clay made me put back the wolves I caught, too." His eyebrows lowered, his tone dark. "And I had them all neatly wrapped, ready to ship to Timbuktu. I'd even stuck on the postal stickers."
Sascha bit back a laugh, well aware she shouldn't encourage the pranks Jon pulled against wolves his own age, even when those pranks were inspired. Not that the SnowDancer juveniles were taking it lying down. The last retaliation had involved a slime pit and a sulfurous stink so noxious he'd had to bathe in antiseptic wash to get it off.
"You shouldn't catch wolves," Noor scolded her adoptive big brother. "The wolves are our friends."
Jon clutched at his chest with melodramatic flair. "But yeah," he added after Noor laughed, "you should put the ladybug back. It's meant to live outside and you can see it when you come again."
He walked out with Noor as she held her hand carefully half-cupped to protect the ladybug.
Julian and Roman meanwhile had stayed in cub form and were currently being petted by their father, who'd crouched down to rub their heads. When they shifted without warning, Nate didn't miss a beat, just wrapped them in his arms and rose to his feet as they began to talk his ear off about their adventures.
Tamsyn brushed her fingers through the twins' hair before she went to the other side of the counter; her intense joy at having a busy home filled with packmates was a warm taste in the air to Sascha's empathic senses.
"You're all staying for dinner." It was less a question and more a command.
Talin groaned. "I'm so full of cake. Don't make anything delicious."
"I was thinking Vietnamese chicken with glass noodles."
"I'm going to go run laps with Noor so I can make room in my stomach."
Smile deep at that solemn response, Tamsyn said, "Nate, honey, do you want to give Zach and Annie a call, see if they want to come over, too? It'll probably depend on how exhausted they are. Annie said their cub's fond of four a.m. wakeup calls."
Having finished dressing Naya in a soft blue jumpsuit, Sascha put her down so she could toddle around. Her balance had improved in leaps and bounds since she started shifting--as if her brain was using what she was experiencing in cub form to assist her in human form. "I'll call Lucas," she said as Naya wobbled off after Jon and Noor. "He might've been held up."
The mate of an alpha knew too well that his time wasn't always his own.
Chapter 37
ZACH AND ANNIE arrived before Lucas. The DarkRiver senior soldier and his elementary school teacher mate had walked over with their one-month-old baby, even though Annie was currently using a cane to support the leg that had been injured in a train derailment when she was a child.
"I need the exercise," the brown-eyed woman said, a little breathless upon arrival but flushed with health under the delicate cream of her skin. "All this baby weight isn't going to shift itself."
Behind her, her taller mate--their baby boy cradled in one arm--bent down to nip at her ear.
Annie yelped. "What was that for?" she asked, rubbing at the abused ear.
"I seem to remember you throwing up for most of the first half of the pregnancy," Zach replied. "I don't see any extra weight." Bad-tempered words from the copper-skinned male with aqua eyes but the raw tenderness he felt toward his mate made Sascha's heart hurt in the best way.
Annie tilted back her head to scowl at him, the deep black of her unbound hair brushing over his chest. "You need your eyes examined."
Growling, Zach maneuvered her into a chair. "Let me massage that leg."
Annie, who'd always been shy, blushed a little but didn't push away her mate's gentle hands when he hunkered down beside her after handing her their cub.
"Hey, sleepy." She nuzzled their child. "Your daddy's being a grumpus."
Growling deep in his chest, Zach continued to massage Annie's leg.
Sascha smiled. The couple was adorable.
"Did you two settle on a middle name yet?" she asked, leaning over to look into the baby's sweet face. Annie and Zach's first child had his daddy's skin and straight black hair and his eyes looked like they might end up the same stunning aqua as Zach's. But there was a sweetness to his drowsy baby smile that spoke of Annie.
"We're going to leave it as Rowan Quinn for now," Annie said, a stark poignancy to her. "If I ever find the boy who saved my life, I want to use his name as Rowan's middle name."
Sascha could understand Annie's desire to honor that unknown telekinetic boy--if he hadn't lifted the train off Annie, she wouldn't be here today, wouldn't have a mate or a child. And the world would've missed out on the beauty and gentleness of Annie's spirit.
"Zach understands." Allowing Tally to take Rowan for a cuddle, Annie ran her fingers through the hair of her still-scowling mate, who growled at her even as he continued to massage her thigh.
"What I don't understand is why you keep overdoing it," Zach said, then looked at Sascha. "This morning, I stumble bleary-eyed into the kitchen, thanks to the alarm clock called Rowan, and what do I see but my mate on a stepladder trying to fix a malfunctioning kitchen light."
Screwing up her nose, Annie pulled at the hair she'd been petting. "I was being nice, letting you sleep in."
"You were giving me a heart attack, that's what you were doing. It's like you're taking lessons from Mercy."
Tamsyn frowned from where she stood on the cooking side of the counter. "How bad is your leg, Annie?"
"Not too bad really."
Zach spoke without stopping the massage. "In Annie terms, 'not too bad' equals 'yeah, it hurts like a bitch.'"
"Zach's exaggerating." Even as Annie glared at her mate, she was petting his shoulders with the caressing touch of a woman who sensed her mate's very real worry and was trying to alleviate it. "It hurts but nothing major."
Tamsyn's response was a "hmm" of sound.
Leaving Clay to look after the vegetables she'd put on to stir-fry, the healer retrieved a scanner from her kit and, coming down beside Zach, ran it over Annie's thigh and lower leg. "No signs of strain or degradation in the plassteel itself," she said, referring to the way Annie's leg had been rebuilt after the train accident, "but I see a little inflammation in the tissue around it."
Her e
yes met Annie's. "I can give you a localized and gentle anti-inflammatory that'll alleviate that and make you more comfortable."
Annie bit down on her lower lip. "Will it--"
"It won't have any impact on Rowan," Tamsyn promised. "You can continue to nurse him."
Nodding, Annie allowed the healer to administer the anti-inflammatory. Afterward, Tamsyn gave a preloaded injector to Zach before talking to both Zach and Annie. "There are ten doses in there. You can use it a couple of times a week without issue--and less discomfort means less stress on you, which is good for your cub, so do use it." The last words were an order.
Annie smiled. "Yes, Tamsyn."
"You're getting as cheeky as your students," Tamsyn said, rising to her feet to press a kiss to Annie's cheek just as Lucas arrived.
So did Dorian, Ashaya, and Keenan. The three had detoured to run an errand after the couple picked up Keenan from the tea party, then decided to swing by. Tamsyn was delighted to have so many packmates in her space, put a couple of them to work helping her prep for dinner.
"Dev might've inadvertently pointed me to a possible lead on Leila Savea," Lucas told them after claiming a hot, wet kiss from Sascha that left her flushed and breathless and happy he was here, safe and strong and with his heart beating under her palm.
She felt his own protective need to be certain of her welfare in the way he held her snug against his side. The only reason he hadn't hunted down Naya was because they could hear their cub giggling wildly as she played a game with the other young children that had them all in hysterics.
But where her and Lucas's impact on one another was an exchange between mates, he also had a subtle effect on the others in the room. Each and every one of their packmates had become more calm and steady in his presence. For an empath, it was fascinating to witness the primal impact of an alpha--but for Sascha, a member of DarkRiver, it was simply right.
Lucas was the pack's alpha. This was what he did.
Today, as they listened, he laid out the trail of bread crumbs and connections that had put a bull's-eye on the estate next to the IceRock pack's territory. "I spoke to Miane, let her know. We're just waiting on the images from IceRock."
That wasn't the only news he had.
Sascha listened intently as he shared the report from Jamie. "I had a quick chat with Bastien on the way over," he added afterward. "He says the transfer of the twenty-five thousand to the captain was as highly sophisticated as the financial transactions purportedly completed by the SkyElm alpha. He's started pulling things apart, is hoping to get a bead on the person at the end of the money trail."
Sascha couldn't wait for that to happen; she'd accepted that Naya would always attract attention, some of it dangerous, but she wanted at least one threat off the table.
"Couple of Trinity things came in while you were meeting with Hawke," Nathan said after they'd discussed Jamie's information. "I handled it. Basically, Ming's continuing to stir up trouble but Hawke's keeping him too busy shoring up his business interests for it to do much damage."
Sascha had been impressed by Hawke's plan when Lucas first shared it. She was even more impressed by how well all the people who hated the venomous ex-Councilor had worked together to thwart him. As the daughter of a former Councilor herself, Sascha knew enough about Ming to know the combat telepath treasured only one thing more than his psychic skill--his tactical intelligence. To have that so publicly beaten would burn.
"I also wanted to discuss Jon," Lucas said after glancing outside to ensure the kids were all still out there. "I think we should offer him the chance to attend a training camp with the Forgotten. Dev's people have come up with techniques that might help him get a better handle on his abilities."
Talin's expression was tight, but she nodded. "I'll talk to him," she said, and Sascha knew she was having to fight her protective instincts to even consider the idea of allowing Jon to go that far away.
Pulling her back against his chest with his arm around her front, Clay nuzzled gently at her. "We can discuss it with him tomorrow. No need to mess with his mood today."
No one argued, well aware that while the idea was a good one, Jon might well prefer not to go. He'd been lost and alone too long, tended to stick tight to his family and packmates. Today the teen ended up the de facto babysitter when the children eventually decamped to the large living area to play with toys.
He wandered into the kitchen twenty minutes after that, while dinner was still cooking.
Tamsyn pointed to the fridge without looking up. "Leftover lasagna from last night. All yours."
A grin split Jon's face. Taking the lasagna and a fork that Nathan passed over, he would've left to return to the living area if Nathan hadn't made him heat up the lasagna. The teenager had already taken the first bite before he left the room.
"Do all teenage boys eat like that?" Sascha asked, wondering where it all went. Jon was thinner than he'd ever been.
Tamsyn nodded. So did Clay and Nathan, Lucas and Dorian.
"My foster brothers used to get hungry every two hours," Talin shared. "Ma Larkspur bought sandwich fixings by the bucketload."
"I once ate an entire roast chicken my mom had cooked specifically so she could make sandwiches the next day." Dorian winced. "Boy, was she mad when she woke up to a pile of bones."
"But he's so thin." Sascha couldn't help but worry, saw the same concern in the blue-gray of Ashaya's gaze. "Are you sure he's not sick?"
Nathan disappeared for a minute, to return with a photograph. It was of a skinny teen with black hair and midnight blue eyes. "Is this you?" Sascha couldn't believe it, Nathan was so strongly muscular now.
"Skinny as a beanpole until I was about sixteen, seventeen." The senior sentinel touched her cheek with the easy skin privileges of a packmate, including Ashaya in his reassuring look. "Don't worry about the boy. Tamsyn's keeping an eye on him--he's just going through a growth spurt."
"I guess," Ashaya murmured, "we never noticed in the PsyNet because our diet was based on nutrition bars and drinks."
Sascha saw what the scientist was saying. "The menu plans must've compensated for that teenage growth spurt, allowed for extra calories when teens needed it."
"You caught the tail end of it with Kit," Tamsyn pointed out. "He had his main growth spurt earlier, but he was still eating the pack out of house and home until he turned twenty-one." The last was said with so much love that Sascha knew Tamsyn would've fed the young male had he turned up every single day.
That was when Lucas's phone rang. "IceRock just sent through the images," he said after he'd hung up following a short conversation.
He checked the download, then forwarded it to Miane, giving her a call to alert her it was coming through. Simply taking over the operation wasn't on the agenda, not when it was one of Miane's people who was being held hostage. If BlackSea asked, Sascha knew DarkRiver would respond.
Until then, they'd wait and hope that Leila Savea's captivity was about to end.
Chapter 38
HAWKE WAS ABOUT to hold a working dinner with his lieutenants when he received a message from Lucas updating him on the hunt for Leila Savea and on the BlackSea op currently being planned. Sliding away his phone, he decided to give his people a little more time to talk before they began to discuss that situation among others--including the unexpected wrench Lucas had thrown into Trinity by proposing an "adjunct" or provisional signatory status.
The DarkRiver alpha had sent the idea only to SnowDancer and the Arrows at this stage, for their input. Hawke's initial reaction had been a firm "hell, no." He couldn't understand why the fuck Lucas would propose something that could give Ming a way in should he want to take it; it was Riley who'd made him see the reason behind Lucas's idea.
"Trinity is about creating a world without divisions," his best friend and lieutenant had said. "There has to be a way for former enemies to prove themselves, or Trinity fails before it ever really begins."
Hawke wasn't sure he was civilized en
ough to accept such rational necessities, but since they had Ming on the ropes, he was at least willing to listen to feedback from the rest of his lieutenants. Having Riley's calm presence anchor the discussion was partially why this SnowDancer meeting was about to take place in DarkRiver territory.
He and the lieutenants who were based in the Sierra Nevada den had arrived a couple of minutes ago with insulated carriers holding dinner, to find both Mercy and Riley strolling outside their cabin, soaking up the red-orange rays of the setting sun. Alone with Mercy when Riley was pulled into a back-slapping hug by Riaz, Hawke leaned down as if to kiss her on the cheek.
She growled low in her throat. "Try it, wolf, and lose your face."
Grinning, he instead gave her what he'd been holding behind his back. "A little present."
Another growl as she narrowed her eyes. "Why are you giving me gifts?"
"Your pupcubs are half SnowDancer."
Mercy's eyes went to where Riley was laughing with Riaz, Indigo, and Judd, the four lieutenants apparently deeply amused by something. Expression softening, she turned her cheek slightly. "You may kiss me," she said, like a queen bestowing a favor. "But only because you moved your lieutenant meeting all the way down here mostly so Riley could see everyone."
Hawke didn't dispute her interpretation of his actions because she was dead right. The agenda for the meeting offered a good excuse, but this was really about looking after a packmate who'd given so much to SnowDancer. Accepting the invitation to kiss Mercy, an invitation she'd never before extended, he drew in her scent. His wolf considered her part of his pack, especially now, when she carried the twinned scents of leopard and wolf far more strongly than usual. "Open your present."
Gaze suspicious again, she took a seat in an outdoor chair, then tore away the wrapping paper to pick up the baby-sized item on top. It was a legless one-piece bodysuit in SnowDancer blue, with "SnowDancers Rule" written on the front in white and a wolf silhouette on the back in the same shade.
The next item was a tiny white T-shirt with wolves gamboling all over it.
Mercy looked up, her lips trying not to curve. "You're doing this to mess with Lucas."