She nodded, as if accepting his explanation. "I'm glad."
He kissed the shell of her ear. "No more tears. Ever."
"Sorry, honeypie, but I'm wolf. We're temperamental - get used to it."
"Not that one. I'll accept darling and even baby," he said, feeling something unclench in his chest at hearing her sound like herself again, "but never honeypie."
"Babycakes?" She rubbed her face against his chest.
He took a page from Andrew's book. "Now you're just being mean."
She laughed and it was the best sound he'd heard in eternity.
He was late to the meeting with Indigo - further delayed by a call to let Riley know Brenna was alone - but he truly didn't give a damn. The only thing he cared about was that the captured hyena had once posed a danger to Brenna - his death warrant was already signed.
Indigo was waiting outside the undamaged section of the cabin, her breath frosting the past-midnight air. "Thought you'd never get here."
"Where is he?"
"Inside. Male from the PineWood pack - they control a tiny slice of Arizona." The high tail of her black hair swung as she jerked her head to indicate the door. "He's not talking. That's why I called you. Hyenas usually crack under pressure. They're scavengers, not predators."
Scavengers - those who preyed on the weak and helpless. If Brenna had fallen, the hyenas would have savaged her. His eyes flicked to the windows of the wooden structure behind Indigo, his senses searching for and finding the unfamiliar mental scent of the captive. The urge to crush his skull was overpowering, bad enough for the dissonance to warn him to pull back. He listened because the captive couldn't die. Not yet. "If they're cowards, what's given this one a spine?"
"He's more scared of someone else." Indigo's voice was not pleased. "And people usually start praying when they see me."
"You think it's the Council." They were the nightmare, the thing under the bed, the deepest darkness. And they knew how to wait. Much as a spider knows how to wait.
"Yeah - it can't be another pack." She rubbed her gloveless hands together. "If it were, he'd have sung like a canary by now."
"Is he blindfolded?" If, for no reason that he could foresee right now, Judd let the man live, he could not be allowed to become a threat to the family. Of course, given that Judd knew he wasn't rational where Brenna was concerned, the hyena's chances of walking out alive were close to nil.
Indigo nodded. "I put it on when I heard your vehicle."
"I'll make him talk."
Another nod and then Indigo led him into the cabin. The hyena sat on a chair in the center of the room, fear a damp sheen over his face. Seeing it, Judd glanced at Indigo. "You're right." No one that petrified would have held out for long otherwise, not with four wolves in the room - Indigo, D'Arn, Elias, and the knife thrower, Sing-Liu.
The hyena was thin with sallow skin. Black hair. A pathetic goatee in the same shade. The latter was a straggling attempt to hide a chin so weak, it was a wonder he hadn't wet himself. His eyes were covered by a strip of dark brown fabric but Judd didn't need to see them to know the panic skittering through the captive's bones.
Walking to stand behind the hyena, Judd placed a single finger against his temple. "Which part of your brain do you like the least?" He didn't need touch to work, but the theatrics helped. As did the mental push he applied, the one that must've felt like a slow-moving pincer around the man's head.
The hyena gasped but didn't speak.
"I'll destroy the part I choose, then," Judd said, making his voice metallically Psy. Despite his earlier thoughts about the threat to Brenna, he wasn't enjoying this. It was simply something to be done. Predators and scavengers respected only brute strength. The changelings weren't so different from the Psy in that regard.
The hyena's reaction was surprising. Tears leaked out from under the blindfold. "You weren't there!" he screamed. "You fucking weren't there!"
Judd stopped touching the man, his telepathic abilities sensing something odd. Backing up into the shadows at the edges of the room, he began working on the psychic level, aware of the physical conversation with the section of his mind functioning on that plane.
Indigo glanced at him. At his nod, she tugged down the blindfold. "Don't look behind you" was her first order. "We weren't where, Kevin?" she prompted when the male didn't speak again. "You talk or I let him do what he's good at. I think you can guess what the result will be."
Yes, Judd thought, threaten him with the Psy bogeyman. But he was far more interested in something else he'd found in the hyena.
Indigo growled low in her throat. "Talk. Last warning."
"Parrish, our pack leader" - Kevin almost stumbled over his words in his effort to obey - "he said we had to do what the Psy said and they wouldn't touch us."
"Why?" Indigo folded her arms, looking down on the male. Judd recognized the move as a display of dominance. "Kevin, I asked you a question."