the lieutenant’s answer. “I’m fucking impressed Lucas was able to fight his own instincts enough to put the proposal together.”
Hawke was quiet for a while, the wind cool against his face as they ran. “Having a cub, being responsible for that vulnerable life, it changes a man.” He’d seen it in Lucas, only now understood the depth of that change—to give Naya an undivided world, Lucas was willing to battle even his panther’s most primal urges.
Because the cats? They were as possessive and as territorial as Hawke’s wolves, and they did not forgive anyone who’d harmed their own. “Five years is a long time,” he mused. “Plenty of room for people to fuck up if they’re trying to game the system.” Arrogant bastards like Ming LeBon would never have the patience to stay “clean” that long.
“And just because an asshole signs the accord doesn’t mean we have to work with them.” Riaz’s voice was familiar in the night, as familiar as the dark woodsmoke edged with citrus that was his natural scent. “Open communication doesn’t mean open access.”
“Yeah.” Hawke pushed his hair off his face, decided the adjunct proposal was one he’d have to sleep on. This would not be an easy or uncomplicated decision. “In other matters,” he said to the man who ran beside him, “you’re scaring people with your happy.”
Riaz’s laugh was all wolf, his eyes night-glow in the darkness when they met Hawke’s. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
“I’ve got some clue. You want to tell me if I’m right?”
“You know how I had that mating tug toward Lisette?” Riaz asked. “Like she was meant to be my mate?”
Hawke nodded, aware that lingering remnant of a relationship that had never been and never would be, had deeply frustrated Riaz. Wolf and man, both parts of Riaz had chosen Adria, loved the senior soldier with a furious passion.
“It’s gone.” Riaz’s tone was jubilant. “Like it stretched so thin it just broke.”
Hawke’s wolf opened its jaws in a lupine grin. “I’m guessing this doesn’t worry you.”
“Are you kidding? It bugged the hell out of me. I love Adria, and that tug, it was like a splinter stuck under my skin.”
Hawke could hear Riaz’s scowl in his voice.
“Lisette and I had a chance once, sure,” the lieutenant added, “but that chance passed. Adria’s my woman, the only one I want. The suggestion that it might be otherwise pissed me off every fucking day.”
“I get it.” A predatory changeling who truly loved, loved all in. “People have always wondered what would happen if a changeling found his mate but chose to walk away.”
“I don’t know that my experience would apply to everyone,” Riaz said after they’d navigated around a large rock in their path. “I mean, the whole situation was messed up. Lisette being human and madly in love with her husband, for one. That would’ve never happened if she’d been changeling. It was all off from the start.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” If a changeling was in love, the mating bond couldn’t come into play with anyone else—it was a law written in stone. Hawke knew of no exceptions. “You just did things backward,” he said in realization. “Your love for Adria pushed the possibility of the mating bond with anyone else out.”
“Damn straight.” Riaz’s tone held wolfish satisfaction.
“Hell, Riaz.” Hawke whistled. “You’re going to give the philosophers enough meat to chew over for years, if not decades. What, for example, happens to two changelings who try to walk away from a bond when neither is attached to anyone else?” Hawke couldn’t imagine why anyone would walk away from the other half of their soul, but the philosopher types tended to think up ridiculous questions like that.
Riaz shrugged. “I don’t think that would happen unless they were at war, like this couple Dalton told me about who were on opposite sides during the Territorial Wars. Even then, it’d be a two-way pull—I can’t see how that’d give you enough breathing room to fall in love with anyone else. With me and Lisette, it was a dual repudiation.”
A sudden grin as the lieutenant turned to run backward for a minute so he could face Hawke. “But really, I don’t give a fuck about the philosophers. They can philosophize all they want. I just want to love the woman who owns my heart, the empress whose name is on my fucking soul.”
Nothing more needed to be said.
• • •
RIAZ caught the scent of crushed berries and frost the instant he entered the den.