Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,130
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