"I don't understand." Her changeling instincts urged her to hold him to her with tactile contact. The need was so strong she had to physically force herself to pay attention.
"I'm her exact opposite." Judd crossed his arms over that beautiful chest that made her want to stroke. "She heals. I kill. Those are our gifts."
Anger burned through her sensuality but paradoxically stoked up the more profound hunger inside of her. Oh, how she wanted Judd Lauren. "Why do you insist on seeing yourself that way? You helped heal me, remember?" He'd "fed" Sascha his psychic strength, had often ended up totally drained, only to show up again the next day.
He waved off the reminder. "A lesser ability. My main one can be used for little else but death. For me, Silence - all of it - is necessary. As long as I can discipline my emotions, I won't kill. Simple."
"I don't buy that."
"You've forgotten what happened to those like me pre-Silence."
"No, I haven't." The idea of her beautiful, loyal, and strong Judd spending his life alone or in a jail cell was her personal nightmare. "But they were the other extreme - no emotional control at all. I'm asking you to consider that there might be a middle way."
Something beeped, startling her into a slight jump. Judd took a sleek silver phone from his pocket and spoke a few terse words into it. All she really cared about were the last - "I'll be there as soon as I can."
She waited until he'd hung up to ask. "Where?"
"That was Indigo. They think they've tracked down one of the hyenas responsible for the cabin explosion." Picking it up off the floor, he pulled on his shirt. "They're holding him at the cabin."
"Why do they need you?" Her craving for touch, his touch, was a biting ache by now. Unable to resist, she closed the distance between them and began doing up the shirt buttons. "The soldiers question people all the time." If they got the wrong answers, they did more than just question. Brenna accepted the necessity of that - in their world, mercy was often taken as weakness. Which was why the SnowDancers made certain their public face was one of vicious strength.
Judd didn't push her away. "To scare him, what else?"
Finished with the shirt, she dropped her hands and looked up. "What's that supposed to mean?"
His eyes hadn't returned to normal. "Everyone in the pack has a position. You're a tech, Riley's a soldier, and Lara, a healer. Haven't you ever considered what I am?"
"A soldier like my brothers," she said, a painful knot forming in the pit of her stomach.
"The kind of soldier they call on when a mess needs to be cleaned up."
Chapter 29
"Hawke wouldn't use you like that." Wouldn't demand that price for the sanctuary Judd had sought for the children's sake.
"Hawke will do whatever it takes to keep the SnowDancers at the top of the food chain." A blunt answer. "But you're right - changelings don't much like to use assassins."
Attack from the front. It was a matter of pride. Of honor.
"But," he continued, frost chilling his voice, "there are a lot of things I can do without killing - or even leaving a bruise - in order to get someone to speak."
Brenna knew he expected that to send her running. But she'd grown up in a family of tough men. She wasn't some wide-eyed miss who didn't know the facts behind SnowDancer's power. "That doesn't scare me, Judd." Though she'd be lying if she said it didn't worry her - for him. What impact did it have on a man to be the darkest of enforcers?
"Good, because I told you - there's no going back." He turned toward the door.
"Bite me," she snapped, frustrated at his stubborn will, his refusal to even consider a way out of Silence. In the tense pause that followed, she finally listened long enough to her own instincts to understand something she'd known subconsciously since the day he'd told her about his telekinetic abilities. Frustration transformed into anger and it flowed through her like fire. "You know what really pisses me off?"
He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "I don't have time for games, Brenna."
"What really pisses me off," she continued as if he hadn't spoken, "is you daring to come across as so possessive and protective when you've been lying to me for months."
He went very still. "That's a dangerous insult."
"You're a Tk. Enrique was a Tk. You can throw men against walls and crush their bones. So could he. How am I doing so far?"
"Get to the point."
Her blood boiled at his icy response. "If strong Tk are so damn lethal, how did SnowDancer and DarkRiver men manage to execute Enrique without a single changeling fatality or major injury?" Striding to where he stood, she went toe-to-toe with him. "You were there the night they rescued me and executed that monster." She had complete faith in her pack's ability to deal with a murderous Psy, but Santano Enrique had been a cardinal Tk fighting for his life. "Weren't you?"