She took a jerky breath. "Well, guess what, you know nothing! You haven't been where I've been. You haven't even been close. Let. Me. Go." The words were no longer enraged but calm. Normal for a Psy. Not for a wolf changeling. Especially not for Brenna. Judd's senses went on high alert.
Andrew shook his head. "I don't care what the hell you say, little sister, you don't need to see that."
"Then I'm sorry, Drew." Brenna slashed her claws across his arms a split second later, shocking her brother into letting her go. She was moving almost before her feet hit the ground.
"Jesus," Andrew whispered, staring after her. "I can't believe..." He looked down at his bloody forearms. "Brenna never hurts anyone."
"She's not the Brenna you knew anymore," Judd told the other male. "What Enrique did to her altered her on a fundamental level, in ways she herself doesn't understand." He took off after Brenna before Andrew could reply - he had to be beside her to deflect the fallout from this death. What he couldn't understand was why she was so determined to see it.
He caught up with her as she raced past a startled guard and into the small room off tunnel number six. She came to such a sudden halt that he almost slammed into her. Following her gaze, he saw the sprawled body of an unknown SnowDancer male on the floor. The victim's face and naked body bore considerable bruising, the skin splotched different colors by the damage. But Judd knew that that wasn't what held Brenna frozen.
It was the cuts.
The changeling had been sliced very carefully with a knife, none of the cuts fatal but the last. That one had severed the carotid artery. Which meant there was something wrong with this scene. "Where's the blood?" he asked Indigo, who was crouching on the other side of the body, a couple of her soldiers beside her.
The lieutenant scowled at seeing Brenna in the room but answered, "It's not a fresh kill. He was dumped here."
"Out-of-the-way room." One of the soldiers, a lanky male named Dieter, spoke up. "Easy to get to without being spotted if you know what you're doing - whoever did this was smart, probably chose the location beforehand."
Brenna sucked in a breath but didn't speak.
Indigo's scowl grew. "Get her the hell out of here."
Judd didn't follow orders well, but he agreed with this one. "Let's go," he said to the woman standing with her back to him.
"I saw this." A faint whisper.
Indigo stood, an odd look on her face. "What?"
Brenna began to tremble. "I saw this." The same reedy whisper. "I saw this." Louder. "I saw this!" A scream.
Judd had spent enough time with her to know that she would hate having lost control in front of everyone. She was a very proud wolf. So he did the only thing he could to slice through her hysteria. He moved to block her view of the body and then he used her emotions against her. It was a weapon the Psy had honed to perfection. "You're making a fool of yourself."
The icy cold words hit Brenna like a slap. "Excuse me?" She dropped the hand she'd raised to push him aside.
"Look behind you."
She remained stubbornly still. Hell would freeze over before she obeyed an order from him.
"Half the den is sniffing around," he told her. Pitiless. Psy. "Listening to you break down."
"I am not breaking down." She flushed at the realization of so many eyes on her. "Get out of my way." She didn't want to look at the body anymore - a body that had been mutilated with the same eerie precision Enrique had used on his victims - but pride wouldn't let her back down.
"You're being irrational." Judd didn't move. "This place is obviously having a negative impact on your emotional stability. Step back out." It was a definite command, his tone so close to alpha it set her teeth on edge.
"And if I don't?" She gladly embraced the anger he'd awakened - it gave her a new focus, a way to escape the nightmare memories triggered by this room.
Cool Psy eyes met hers, the male arrogance in them breathtaking. "Then I'll pick you up and move you myself."
At the response, exhilaration burst to life in her bloodstream, chasing away the last acrid tang of fear. Months of frustration - of watching her independence being buried under a wall of protection, of being told what was best for her, of having her rationality questioned at every turn, all that and more snowballed into this single instant. "Try it." A dare.
He stepped forward and her fingertips tingled, claws threatening to release. Oh yeah, she was definitely ready to tangle with Judd Lauren, Man of Ice, and the most beautiful male creature she had ever seen.
Chapter 2
"Brenna, what are you doing here?" The sharp question was bitten out in a familiar voice. Lara didn't wait for an answer. "Move aside, you're blocking the doorway."
Startled, Brenna did as ordered. The SnowDancer healer and one of her assistants slid past, portable medical kits in hand.