Her mate didn't miss a beat. "No, you're not. And she's a sociopath who you really shouldn't be listening to."
"I don't pretend!" She turned, pushed at his chest. "I love you so goddamn much it tears me to pieces. Why the hell would I feel that if I was pretending?"
"Again," Lucas said, holding her to him with his arms around her waist, "consider the source."
She muttered and yelled some more, releasing the anger, before collapsing against his chest. "She got to me."
"It happens to the best of us."
"Yeah? Who gets to you?" He was so strong that sometimes she worried. Everyone needed to bend a little, even a panther responsible for the lives of his entire pack.
"That damn wolf. He sent you a present last week."
Sascha smiled at the thought of Hawke's flirting. The SnowDancer alpha did it only to jerk Lucas's chain. "I never saw any present. What was it?"
"How the hell should I know? I stomped on it and threw it into the deepest crevice I could find." He smirked. "Then I called him to ask how Sienna was doing."
She burst out laughing. "Wicked, wicked man." Everyone knew Sienna Lauren was the short fuse on Hawke's temper. The Psy teenager appeared to have made it her mission in life to get on his last nerve. "What did he say?"
"That she's planning a party for her eighteenth birthday." The laughter in Lucas's tone told her exactly what Hawke had sounded like as he shared that tidbit.
"But doesn't she still have half a year to go?" She figured out her mistake before Lucas could answer. "Of course. She was sixteen when they defected, but that was months before we first met her." Her eyes went wide. "That means we've been mated close to a year and a half."
"Yeah." He stroked her back slow and sure, the caress of a panther being gentle with his mate. "And I've almost killed Hawke a hundred times since then. I swear to God, he calls you 'darling' one more time, I'm going to put him on his wolf ass."
She laughed, but he'd proven his point. Everyone had their tipping point. Hers happened to be Amara Aleine. But she wasn't the important one here. "I need to do something - this is bad, really bad, for Dorian. He was just starting to come back to us. When I saw how he was with Tally, I thought things could only get better." The sentinel seemed to adore Clay's mate, flirted with her on a regular basis. "Now this."
"Do I need to get rid of Amara?" The hard edge of an alpha in his tone.
Sascha had been part of DarkRiver long enough to understand the ties of loyalty, of Pack. But the harshness of it still startled sometimes. "You'd spill blood for him?"
"That's not even a question, kitten."
No, she thought, it wasn't. "It's too complicated, Lucas. Even in the PsyNet, twins tend to stick together. Most die within days of each other."
"Ashaya is Dorian's mate. I can feel it." Lucas's face was a study in shadow and light, pure strength and protectiveness combined. "She'll survive no matter what happens - he won't let her go."
"But she might be permanently damaged by such a traumatic loss." She shook her head. "We have to figure another way out."
Lucas didn't say anything, but she knew what he was thinking - there wasn't any way out that would leave all parties without scars.
Chapter 45
Dorian is in my blood, in my very veins. Never in all my lectures on "sexual biology" and "animal behavior" did anyone tell me of this incandescent joy. When I lie with him, there's pleasure, incredible pleasure - my cat knows how to drive a woman to insanity. But there's more, this indefinable, near-painful happiness. I don't know what to call it, how to describe it. I just know that I would die for him.
- From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine
Psy Councilor Anthony Kyriakus had been part of the rebellion for longer than most people had known it even existed. But now Ashaya Aleine had taken it public.
He could understand her actions - a life in hiding was nothing he'd choose for his own child either. He glanced reflexively at the holo-image he kept in a highly secure file in his computer: Faith, laughing. He could almost hear the sound. His daughter had grown into a beautiful, gifted woman. Anthony, too, had broken rules for his child. He'd let Faith know that she mattered. As her sister had mattered. As her brother mattered.
However, the goalposts had shifted again. He was a Councilor now, under intense scrutiny from every quarter. His contact with Faith wouldn't have to cease, but he'd have to be very, very careful. As he would have to be with this new contact. He touched the screen, pulling up the untraceable e-mail that had come in a week ago.
It was signed by the Ghost, the most notorious rebel in the Net.
Anthony wanted very much to know how and where the Ghost got his information. Only a select few knew Anthony's true loyalties. And no one in his tight circle would've betrayed him. Zie Zen had never even told Ashaya.
But the Ghost had a way of unearthing secrets - in this, the other rebel could prove an invaluable asset. Anthony didn't agree with everything the Ghost had done, but their basic vision aligned. Still, he hadn't risen to the Council by being stupid. This would be a very slow and careful process.