She stirred under his hand and he thought she must’ve woken, but then a small sound escaped her throat. It was tiny, as if she was fighting to hold it back, and it was a sound that did not belong in Zaira’s throat. The sound of a trapped creature frantically trying to escape.

“Zaira.”

She woke at once at the command in his voice. Her body stiffened a second later, and the instant after that, she was out of bed and standing beside it. He didn’t take any countermeasures to stop her, simply rose to a seated position on the bed after she was out of it.

“You promised to keep me safe.” A raw accusation that tore him to pieces.

As a child, Aden had once asked Vasic if he could travel through time as well as space. He’d never wanted that to be true as much as he did at this instant. He’d go back, kill her parents before they filled her head with nightmares. “I know,” he said, admitting his culpability. “I’m sorry.”

Her body rigid and her expression stark, she turned to the balcony doors. “Go.”

Rising to his feet, he went to her instead and wrapped his arms around her, holding her unbending form. “I’m sorry,” he said again, his jaw pressed to her temple. “I will fight every nightmare with you. Just let me in.”

She stayed stiff for so long that he thought he’d lost her, but he wasn’t about to surrender to the demons that haunted her, wasn’t about to leave her alone when aloneness was her worst nightmare.

Making a keening noise in her throat, she turned without warning to beat at his shoulders with her fists. “I was fine before! Why did you wake me up?” Gritted-out words. “Why did you show me things I can’t have!”

He bent, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’m yours. No matter what.”

Huge, dark eyes, small, deadly fists on his shoulders . . . and a wild bird on the verge of flying away. “Don’t go,” he whispered, the words holding his heart. “Don’t go. I need you to stay.”

“Aden.” She crumpled into him, her arms locking around his waist.

There were no tears, no screams. Only harsh breaths and whispered horror about a nightmare that had once been real. His own muscles taut, he held her with painful fierceness, his wild bird who had chosen to come to him even in the darkest hour.

•   •   •

ARRIVING at Central Command sixty minutes later, having forced himself to release Zaira so she could return to her duties, Aden showered and changed into black cargo pants and a black T-shirt. He had no outside meetings today, intended to work in the valley, interact with the children.

An alpha was meant to be respected but not feared. Not by the innocent.

He never wanted to feel a child flinch from him as Tavish had done.

About to head out, he was halted by an incoming call from Judd. “Aden,” Judd said before breaking off. “Give me a second.”

In the background, Aden heard a childish voice, followed by Judd’s deeper one. More children’s voices followed before Judd spoke again. When the other man came back on the line, Aden said, “Where are you?”

“Watching over the pups. Their usual caretakers are having a meeting so we’ve been roped in.” A warmth in the other Arrow’s tone that Aden would’ve never predicted when Judd had still officially been part of the squad. “I was mediating a disagreement between three pups who wanted to play with the same ball.”

“How did you mediate it?” It was a question with intent—if Aden’s plans succeeded, Arrow children wouldn’t be so perfectly behaved in the future. He needed to learn how to deal with these kinds of situations.

“I told them they’d have much more fun if they played a game between the three of them. Wolves are social by nature, so I didn’t have to do much convincing.” A short pause, the phone muffled again for a moment. “Okay, we can talk now. Drew’s watching my group.”

“Were you able to make contact with the leader of the water changelings?” The squad had kept a quiet eye on BlackSea the same way they kept an eye on any other group that might one day prove a threat, but they’d never been able to isolate BlackSea’s leadership. What evidence they had pointed to a woman named Miane Levèque, but she was all but impossible to find if you didn’t know where to look.

Vasic had once managed to teleport onto one of BlackSea’s floating cities after using a known water changeling’s face as a lock. He’d ’ported back with a bullet lodged in the armor covering his shoulder and a wound on his temple where another bullet had grazed him. If he wasn’t so fast, he’d have been dead soon after arrival.

Ming, in charge at the time, had decided not to waste any more manpower on a group that kept to itself, and the water-based changelings had ignored them in turn. Until the Venice incident.

Judd, on the other hand, was part of SnowDancer. The wolf pack was not only the biggest and most powerful pack in the country, it held that position even when worldwide packs were factored in. There was no way the wolves weren’t aware of BlackSea on a deeper level, the reason Aden had reached out to SnowDancer via Judd.

Judd’s next words confirmed his call had been the right one. “We’ll be talking to them in a few hours. I can’t tell you how it’ll go—according to Riaz, who deals with BlackSea most often, the water changelings make SnowDancer look friendly.”

Aden didn’t ask if he could join the meeting. The wolves had barely begun to trust the Arrows, had gone that far only because they had Judd and the other Laurens in their midst. A group as reclusive as BlackSea would never agree to a face-to-face with Aden at this point. “I’m sending you everything we have to date,” he said to Judd. “Tell BlackSea we don’t want a war, but we’ll give it to them if that’s what they want.”

Tags: Nalini Singh Psy-Changeling Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net