Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,2
vise around his heart by this point, nails that threatened to puncture his lungs. Gritting his teeth, he continued on, uncaring of the sharpness of the rain, the danger of the uneven and rocky terrain. He was a wolf. He was a lieutenant. He was a SnowDancer. And this was wolf land.
The grief reached a screaming crescendo . . . only to begin to fade as he ran on.
Halting, he backed up until the pitch grated and scraped and told him he was right beside her.
Only there was no one within sight or scent. Rain or not, his vision was acute enough that he could see a hell of a long way at this treeless elevation. The only things in his line of sight were patches of snow, exposed juts of rock, the odd area of grass-speckled earth revealed by the recent warm spell, and, over in the distance, a falcon riding the powerful wind.
A changeling bird. It was too big to be a natural falcon.
But the falcon was no concern. The WindHaven falcons had an agreement with SnowDancer that permitted them flight paths over SnowDancer land. Plus, the falcon was far distant and heading in the opposite direction, nearly a dot by now, yet the pain, the pain, it continued to rise and rise and rise.
Her heart, it was breaking.
His wolf clawed at the inside of his skin. The primal urge rippling through his blood, Alexei’s human hands sprouted claws as he began to hunt among the nearby rocks, on the impossible chance that she was curled up hiding behind one. Impossible because there weren’t many rocks large enough. And because how could she be here? This area was so deep in SnowDancer territory that you’d have to be a teleporter to get in without being spotted.
A teleport-capable empath?
Alexei had never heard of that combination of psychic abilities, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t exist. There was a lot changelings and humans didn’t know about the Psy. The psychic race had kept a wall of cold Silence between themselves and the rest of the world for over a hundred years.
The protocol that had stifled emotion among the Psy race had also severed their bonds with those outside the PsyNet, the sprawling psychic network that connected all Psy on the planet but for the defectors and renegades. For more than a century, the Psy had focused on icy perfection. They had regarded the other races as lesser, as primitive beings driven by basic animal urges.
Things had changed in recent times, and Alexei’s alpha was mated to a deadly cardinal Psy, while one of Alexei’s closest friends was a telekinetic former assassin. But even his Psy packmates and friends didn’t know all of their race’s secrets—Psy leaders had kept the truth from their own people, too. Hidden monsters and predators and psychopaths.
For it was only the pathologically emotionless who’d truly thrived under Silence.
Where was she?
He growled deep inside his chest, his wolf rising to the surface to alter his vision. Had anyone been looking at him, they’d have seen his gray eyes turn a shockingly pale amber shot through with shards of gold, his pupils pinpricks of black.
The effect was startling because of his dark eyelashes and eyebrows—quite unlike the “sun-gold” of his hair—as described by his aunt. Even wet, it didn’t darken much. Thank God the color didn’t translate into his wolf’s pelt; his packmates would’ve never let him live down being a fucking yellow wolf.
Agony, such agony.
Clenching his jaw, he tried to pick up any scent that denoted a living being. He caught hints of a small woodland creature and of a wild bird, but that was it. Only sodden vegetation, snow, and rock.
Hauling himself over a large jut of rock as the rain became a raging waterfall, he dropped down into an easy crouch on the other side. He found nothing but a thick pile of snow protected by the shadow the rock would throw in sunlight. Glancing absently back at the rock he’d scaled, he stilled at the sight of the jagged crack in the stone. Once, as a pup, Alexei’s brother had found a small cave behind a crack just like that one and turned it into their secret hiding spot.
Brodie had always been generous with his kid brother. Maybe because he’d somehow known that, in the end, it would come down to the two of them. Except it hadn’t worked out that way.